A/N: This chapter brought something special to my attention. I only ever have "Hai" as a sort of formal version of "yes." Militaristic, almost. Try not to let it get to you.
You guys also get a bit more in depth about why else I think Robin is capable of taking on most of the shinobi there. In my opinion, Robin is the pirate equivalent of an A-rank if we're using ninja classification in the One Piece world. Maybe low S-rank, but probably just high A-rank. I mean, S-ranks in One Piece are like some of the Supernovas, the Yonkou, the Admirals (maybe Vice-Admirals), the Shichibukai, etc. Robin's good, but not quite that good. I'm willing to reconsider post-3D2Y, though. At that point she may be considered S-rank.
o.o.o.o.o
"Robin-san! Robin-san!" Naruto ran past Robin's apartment and into his own, shouting all the way.
Robin came out of her own apartment, and smiled at Naruto as he quickly packed all his bags. She raised an eyebrow at the ramen, but ignored it in favor of asking exactly what was going on.
"We got a C-rank mission! We're gonna be escorting this old guy back to his house in Nami no Kuni so that he isn't robbed by bandits."
"Nami no Kuni?" Robin's voice was low and thoughtful. "I read that there are some rather interesting ruins on the west side of the island…"
"Robin-san?" Naruto was fully packed, only a few minutes after he'd come by. He watched as Robin sifted through a few papers, pensive look on her face.
"Naruto-kun?"
Naruto straightened up as Robin finally spoke up again. "Hai, Robin-san?"
Robin smiled at him, and he could have sworn that he felt a shiver go down his spine.
"Do you mind if I come with you so I can talk to Hatake-san?"
Naruto nodded mutely.
What just happened?
o.o.o.o.o
A whirlwind of confusion later, and Robin had been approved by the Hokage to come with Team 7 on their trip to Nami no Kuni, for an archeological expedition on her part. When Tazuna asked why Robin got to share the protection of the team, he was quickly handed the answer.
"She's just as capable as we are. She's only coming along now instead of on her own because it's convenient."
Tazuna accepted the extra protection as what it was: coincidental.
Upon the attack by the nukenin—Robin did have to admit that she hadn't noticed the puddle, though that may be because Naruto was trying to start a squabble with Sasuke again—the pirate woman had been just as quick to draw her new dagger, coated in paralytic poison, as the shinobi were to draw their kunai, not that she ended up using it. She didn't even have much of a stance, just stood there, as if ready to do something completely different than what she was projecting of her intentions.
That night, she and Kakashi had a conversation by the campfire as everyone else was asleep.
"I offered to take first watch already. You don't need to stay up."
Robin shrugged, the movement barely there. "It's been a long time since I've slept full nights. I had to learn to do without sleep when I was only eight years old. I've been a bit of a forced insomniac for over twenty years. It's not a problem for me to stay up like this."
Kakashi made a noncommittal noise as he poked at the fire with a branch. "Why didn't you help out when the Demon Brothers attacked?"
Robin smiled, looking up from the text she had been looking at. "You really are curious, aren't you? You seem to be underestimating yourself. You handled the situation quite well."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"No, it doesn't, does it?" Robin murmured, looking down at the fire, smile still on her face. After a few seconds of silence, she looked up to see Kakashi giving her a deadpan expression from the other side of the fire.
She laughed softly. "I think you're underestimating just how much I would like to keep my abilities a secret."
Kakashi snorted. "It's not that I don't understand that, but you're going to farther lengths than any ninja I've met."
Robin replied easily. "My powers are unlike anything anyone here has. By keeping them in reserve, I am more likely to be able to take an enemy by surprise with them. I'm in a good position the way I am, and I do not intend to compromise it."
"A good position."
She nodded. "Exactly. If a ninja were to come to my world, I'm sure they would do the same. Powers work differently between the two universes, of course, so a shinobi would be in a better position than you'd think in my world, and a pirate or marine would have the same here. If I keep my powers hidden from as many people as possible, it's easier for me because they expect my powers to fall within a set of certain conditions that are governed by your rules for chakra and the like."
"My powers don't follow those rules." That was the clincher.
"And yet," She leaned back slightly, her smile looking more like a smirk in the firelight. "I have the advantage because I can study your own styles of fighting innocuously; I could get more knowledge from a civilian on the street about shinobi techniques than you could about my powers from almost anyone in this world."
Kakashi nodded slowly. "You have the advantage, then. You can predict possibilities concerning our moves, but no one can predict yours."
"They can predict, but they will be wrong."
Silence…
"Do you want to take the next watch?"
"I'd be happy to do so."
o.o.o.o.o
The next morning found them on the road again, Tazuna staying as close to Kakashi and as far from Robin as possible. After some thought, Kakashi just decided that, since Robin was a rather good-looking woman, and a dangerous one at that, Tazuna probably just didn't want to do anything that might accidentally be viewed as perverted by the woman and be subject to her 'feminine vengeance.'
It was understandable, if a bit too far over the top. Kunoichi, as a general rule, were well known for taking great offence to perversion and exacting punishment from the presumed offender. Robin was rather level-headed and understanding when it came to a man's perversity. Of course, that didn't mean that she would take it lying down if someone did something to her, but cracking a dirty joke wasn't going to make her 'flip out' like so many other women. It was… refreshing.
"Naruto!" Sakura's shout drew his attention back to his team. "I can't believe you! You almost killed this poor bunny rabbit!"
Kakashi raised an eyebrow as his two genin fought about the bunny, ignoring Robin's comment about an accidental lobotomy and how terrible of a way it would have been to die, how the blood and brain matter would have done this and that—he really didn't need that image in his head, thank you, he'd seen similar things happen enough times and did not want—and wondered just how Sakura would react when she would have to take a human life, not just a simple rabbit.
Kakashi's eyes narrowed at the rabbit. It was summertime, and yet the rabbit was white. That meant it had been raised in captivity.
His eyes widened again as he heard the telltale noise of something large and probably deadly flying through the air, ready to kill.
"Look out!" He threw the people that were with him in the path of the whatever-it-was to the ground; he barely snagged Sasuke, who was farthest from him.
"Oh my, that's a rather large sword, isn't it?" Robin commented, speaking to the figure standing on the sword that was imbedded in the tree trunk, probably with enough force to bisect an ox. "You must be quite strong in comparison to most shinobi to be able to carry such a weight."
The figure hesitated for a moment, and Kakashi managed to identify him as Momochi Zabuza, Demon of the Mist. The man was probably a little confused at Robin's reaction to his attempt at murder. He was likely expecting something like Tazuna and the kids, frightened out of their senses, or on guard and ready to fight like Kakashi. Small talk was obviously not on his agenda, but it apparently was on Robin's.
"I've seen larger, of course." Kakashi willed his mind not to think of how else that statement could be regarded. "But, then again, I also knew a man that could turn any part of his body into a steel blade, and met another that had a sword longer than he was tall. It was not quite such an odd shape as your own, though."
Naruto and Sakura had come back to them, getting into the manji formation around Tazuna at Kakashi's signal. He stepped forward and began to talk to Zabuza. The two quickly bantered back and forth, Kakashi cringing as his Sharingan was revealed by Zabuza and Sasuke's head whipped around to stare at him.
Don't take your eyes off the enemy, Sasuke. He thought, and felt relieved, if only slightly, when Robin reached out and turned Sasuke's head back to watch for attacks.
"Who are you?" Zabuza was pointing at Robin, who simply smiled back in the same unnerving manner as always.
"Nico Robin of the Straw Hat Pirates. I am also known," Kakashi imagined that he could suddenly see flashbacks of Robin's past and see the expression under Zabuza's wrappings, but shook the images out of his head as Robin spoke after the pause that felt far longer than it was, "as the Devil's Child."
Kakashi tried to imagine thunder striking in the background, but he couldn't. He could, however, notice the shudder that seemed to go down Tazuna's spine and the look that entered the eyes of the genin.
"Got a bounty on your head?" Zabuza asked, tilting his head to the side, getting into the swing of Robin's rather alternative methods of meeting possible enemies. Small talk was fun, even if it was a bit odd.
"It was at eighty million Beli when I last checked. The local equivalent would be approximately eight million ryo." Kakashi cursed silently as Zabuza's eyes widened in surprise, and then narrowed in thought. "It's not particularly important, since getting my body or head to the proper authorities would be impossible for almost anyone other than the man who sent me here in the first place. I can see why you would want to know, considering you are a fugitive from the local governments yourself."
Zabuza raised a nonexistent eyebrow. "What did you do to get it?"
She just shrugged, still smiling cheerfully. "I know too much. I am also a powerful fighter in certain circumstances, but it is mostly my knowledge of an ancient language that my government fears."
"So you're more of a political enemy than a true criminal." Zabuza sounded almost… disappointed?
"I was, when I first went on the run when I was eight. And then my crew declared war on the government earlier this year and I fully embraced my position as a pirate."
Zabuza stared. "You became a nukenin at eight?"
"I'm a pirate, not a nukenin, Momochi-san." Robin corrected him. "I am not, nor have I ever been, a shinobi. As for the answer to your question, I was feared nearly worldwide even as a child, yes."
Tazuna looked like he was going to soil himself. The kids were looking on in a mixture of respect, anticipation, and fear, though the latter two were mostly due to Zabuza and his giant cleaver.
Ten minutes later, it was chaos.
o.o.o.o.o
Naruto, quite honestly, was panicking. How was he supposed to keep Tazuna safe, and get Kakashi out of that weird water ball prison thing? Robin had been helping, and had even seemed to be a lot better off during the thing with the mist (maybe she grew eyes and ears everywhere? He didn't know and couldn't think) but something happened by the water that he couldn't really see and she'd fallen to her side in the shallows and wasn't getting back up to fight. She was trying to get out of the water, but she seemed weaker than normal; maybe it was blood loss from a wound that he couldn't see, he didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't know.
He had to get them out. He had to do something, hurry up and…
His eyes locked with Sasuke's, ignoring even Sakura's scared breaths only a few feet behind him as she stood ready to protect Tazuna, inconsequential though she would be to someone like Zabuza. As he stared into eyes black as night, he realized…
He had a plan.
o.o.o.o.o
He hadn't known. It had been lucky on Zabuza's part. He had no idea how he'd managed to more or less incapacitate and mitigate the woman, but he was glad that he had.
The hits came out of nowhere. He could see where the woman was standing, see how she held her arms up to her shoulders, muttering words that he didn't recognize, but he couldn't see how she was hitting him, tripping him, and even throwing off his sword swings. He could swear that she'd somehow made Kubikiri Hochou heavier, if only by a few pounds, and done something to increase wind resistance greatly. He'd at once point felt something choking off his airway and sent out a blast of chakra from his neck to get rid of what he knew had to be a genjutsu. It was then gone, and the woman, Nico Robin, was looking at him with a frown on her face.
Oh, he could feel her chakra, or at least something similar to it, acting up and showing up in places other than her body, but he couldn't see what it was that it was doing. Just like he couldn't tell why she was so much more sure about where he was than any of the others when he hunted through the mist.
He'd led her to the water, and shot a Suiton at her. It made her fall down, thankfully, and then she hadn't gotten up, even though he'd gotten her with another one earlier and she'd gotten up easily then. But she was down, and not getting back up, and that was the important thing.
Now he just had to take care of Sharingan Kakashi, an even bigger danger, and the man's brats.
He hoped Haku was on standby if the Konoha Jounin proved to be just as dangerous as his Bingo Book entry claimed him to be.
o.o.o.o.o
A/N: I'm actually going to end it there. I'm ahead of schedule, yeah, but this was a much better place to stop than anywhere else I could have done so.
