A Robin Here and a Robin There.

Nico Robin considered herself an observant woman. Having lived in the dark underbelly of society for all of her adult life, and some more besides, where a single moment's unawareness, a single fact, interaction, or twitch overlooked, could lead to death it was almost a given fact that she noticed more than your average person.

And it wasn't a trait she could simply get rid of, nor indeed was it one she wanted to. It was useful to her and her crew in all kinds of ways. Such as the attempted poisoning of her captains drink two ports back, the more successful poisoning of her captains meal which left him bedridden for the sum total of an hour before he got bored of being ill and just… willed it away she supposed, the kindly old man who was actually an evil warlord hell bent on conquering the island nation upon which he lived, and a few other things.

And one of the things she noticed happened to be her captain.

How could she not notice him after all, bundle of bright, smiling energy that he was? Even a blind man would notice him.

But what she noticed was more specific than just her captain in general, as stated Monkey D. Luffy wasn't a man easily missed, but more a part of her captain. It wasn't a good part, but nor was it a bad part, avoiding the deeper philosophical question of what good and evil actually where and the fact that Robin wasn't certain she believed good and evil existed as more than mere concepts, it was simply a part of Luffy, and aspect of what made him him, a piece of his overall personality that affected all of his personality and was in turn affected by all the rest of his personality.

Luffy imitated.

It wasn't very noticeable, it wasn't like he wore a haramaki and went around toting katana's, or flirted with every girl he saw, or grew bashful at being complimented, it was more subtle than that.

And this was Luffy they were talking about. Luffy didn't do subtle… at least not consciously.

But it was noticeable, to her at least. Luffy imitated the people he was with, admittedly he never stopped being energetic about the smallest things or rather simple minded, as previously stated it was more subtle than that. It was little changes in how he acted and reacted to various situations.

For instance if he was with Zoro he'd be more willing to hurt people and more aggressive in general, much like the rather aggressive and rather violent green haired former bounty hunter turned pirate, Roronoa Zoro.

And if he was with Usopp, or Sanji for that matter, he might become slightly perverted. And with Chopper he'd be even more childish than usual, which was saying something rather remarkable as Luffy was usually pretty darn childish.

And when he was with her…

"Hey Robin, looks it's a robin… shishi" he grinned at her from behind Nami's scarf, a necessity on the winter island they were currently docked at, and the Navigator had begrudgingly given it up for the princely sum of twenty thousand belly "A Robin here and a Robin there… shishishishishi."

…he became, dare she say it, slightly more intelligent, more observant at least as usually Luffy would have never noticed the connection between her name, Robin, and the red breasted bird, the robin.

"Yes it is…" she looked at the robin herself "Almost looks like it's bleeding to death doesn't it?"

Hmm... I think its alright, but then that's my opinion, what do you guys think? This is my first attempt at writing for One Piece, a manga series that I've only recently gotten into. It never interested me before, but then I started reading the manga (would you believe that it was the anime (and more particularly the English dub(the old one)) that turned me off?) and all of a sudden I was at chapter 700. Haha, chapters fly by when you're enjoying yourself, and I was definitely doing that. I like manga more than anime, because with anime the animation slowly gets outdated, but not so with manga because there isn't any animation... and while that might be kinda obvious its still true, so there's nothing to get outdated. Anyway, this is gonna dwarf the short story soon enough, so I hope you enjoyed it.

Toodles.