"So that was how you two first met? It's so romantic!"
"You think so?" Robin said with a slight laugh with a hand over her mouth. Nami just can't stop gushing over how she and Jake first met. Personally, Robin finds nothing romantic in how they first met because back then, she was just a little girl on the run. He was a child soldier who was unwilling to do his job. That was all.
"I'm not crying… I'm not crying…" Chopper sobbed out loud from where he was sitting on one end of the table, doing just the opposite of what he was saying. Usopp is not any better. He is crying even louder than Chopper.
"That's it, I've decided!" Luffy declared as he slapped his right fist onto his left palm. "We need to have this Bake guy in our crew!"
"It's Jake, dumbass!"
Ignoring how Usopp and Luffy are now quarreling, Nami turned to Robin eagerly.
"So, what happened next?"
Robin stroked her chin slightly in thought.
"It wasn't anything too interesting, but if you want to know…"
Ever since he defected from the World Government and met up with her, everyday is a fun and happy day. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into years. Soon, she found herself unable to imagine a life without him. She found herself unable to imagine trying to live the life before she met him once more, all alone when she was one person against the world.
Now, it's her and him against the world. Even if it's just the two of them, she feels as if they can take on the world together.
"Man, the Sky Island trip was really fun." He commented while stretching his arms.
"You say that because you burnt the lightning guy into a crisp." She retorted. Being by Jake's side had allowed her to learn very early on that her friend is a certified pyromaniac. Although, she cannot really fault him for it since he ate the Flame-Flame fruit.
"He simply pisses me off for trying to declare himself as God of Skypiea." Jake gave an unapologetic shrug. "If one can become a God just because he ate the Rumble-Rumble fruit and knows some Observational Haki then the title really comes too cheap. Besides, we found ourselves another poneglyph, what is there to be unhappy about?"
"You nearly burnt my hair along with it too." She said with a deadpan, to which he pointedly tried to ignore.
"You know, there's another location which I think might have another poneglyph from what I could remember during my CP-0 days." He mused as they both continued to sail the seas on their little raft.
"Really? Where?"
"I think Fish-Man Island might have one." He admitted. "And if I recall correctly… Zou might have another. And where else… Alabasta? That place might have one too. Sorry, that is all I am able to recall."
"That is more than enough." She reassured him. "Although for now, we might have to set our sights on Alabasta. Fish-Man Island is too hard to access without a proper ship and if we want to get to Zou we will have to cross the Red Line, something which we cannot safely do without the permission of the World Government."
"Or we could follow Fisher Tiger's example and climb the entire Red Line by hand…" He suggested.
"We are not going to do that." She emphasised. She may have the power to produce many hands, but even that wouldn't be enough to get them past the Red Line.
"Oh fine, spoilsport." He very childishly sniffed and turned his head away in the other direction, causing the edge of her lips to twitch in amusement.
"But I heard that Germa 66's amphibious ships could cross the Red Line with ease. If we could get something like that on our hands…"
"Oh forget Alabasta. Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?!" Predictably, Jake jumped up from his seat as he began to adjust the sails of the raft immediately. "Come on, we are stealing a Germa 66 ship. You are not going to convince me otherwise."
"Wait, you did WHAT?!"
"Yup, that was what we did." Robin said with a happy laugh, her palms pressed together. Sanji's jaws dropped even lower than what is supposedly possible upon the confirmation.
"So… that was what happened that day…"
"Huh, Sanji? You said something?"
"Huh? What? No, of course not! Why would I say anything?" Sanji immediately redirected the attention away from him. "What happened after that, Robin-chan?"
"Oh, we stole a Germa 66 ship alright, but we realised that we do not know how to operate it at all because everything is too high-tech for us to understand! So we left it in the middle of the ocean and fled!"
The crew collectively face planted onto the ground at the answer.
"It's a Germa 66 ship!" Franky yelled after he finally picked himself up from the floor. "Probably the most super technologically advanced ship out there in the world and you just left it there?!"
"It was either that or the Germa 66 caught up with us." Robin shrugged. "Because of that Jake and I were forced to go into hiding for about another two years until the Germa 66 gave up on the chase. They are persistent, I give them that."
"I'm surprised that you actually survived two years of being chased by them in the first place." Sanji muttered under his breath.
"That too." Robin commented with a laugh. "Now that I think about it, there were many times where we would have been caught if it wasn't for Jake's Observational Haki warning us about the danger beforehand."
"Observational Haki?"
"You guys don't know what Haki is?" Robin asked curiously before deciding that showing is a lot more easier than explaining. "Here, let me show you…"
It's been hours ever since he started teaching her about the advanced aspects of Haki. She didn't have much progress, so she couldn't help but complain about it out loud.
"How did you use Haki so easily? It's so hard."
"Practice, my dear student." He drawled out loud from where he was lying on a thick tree branch above, eyes closed and hands supporting the back of his head. All in all, the very picture of carefree and relaxed.
Meanwhile, she is a sweating and panting mess below, frustrated at her lack of improvement.
For some reason, seeing him so relaxed while she is working hard below just ticks her off. So, she did the mature thing and used her devil fruit powers to knock him off the tree and drop him onto the ground below.
"Ow! Hey, what's that for?!" He pointed an accusing finger at her from where he sat on the floor, nursing the slight bump on his head from the earlier fall. She simply crossed her arms over her chest.
"I felt like it."
He snorted, and then suddenly picked up a small pebble from the floor and flicked it at her head before she could react.
"Ow! What's that for?!" She asked in reflex as she nursed the sore spot on her forehead where the pebble had knocked her earlier.
"I felt like it." He said with an unrepentant grin. She narrowed her eyes. Oh, this is it. Now, there is going to be war.
She ignored the whisper within her mind that she was technically the one who started this in the first place.
Hands sprout all over the area as they grabbed anything that could be grabbed within her line of sight and hurled it at him. He gave a lighthearted laugh as he easily dodged them with a sidestep.
"No way you can ever hit me with those sloppy throws, Robin! My Observational Haki is too good for that! Unlike a certain girl I know!"
Of all the things he had to bring up, it has to be Haki. The one thing which she could never get right no matter how much she tried. This is on purpose, it has to be.
"Let's see how long more you could keep dodging them all then!" She challenged with a grin as she upped her pace, continuing to pelt debris at him without mercy. He will be fine even if he gets by those, she had seen him getting hit by worse and come out of it without a scratch.
Throughout it all, she never stopped smiling once.
"Ahahaha! It's been a long time since I could do something that fun! We should do it again some other time!"
In the end, the both of them were a tired and panting mess when their little game was over. They both lie side by side with their backs on the ground, gazing at the starry night sky.
"We should." She replied with a small smile, her eyes still fixed onto the night sky above them. "Maybe once we found all the poneglyphs and deciphered the true history of the world, we can do this whenever we want to, wherever we want to."
He hummed a reply and slowly, she turned her head to face him. His eyes are closed, his facial expression the usual carefree look that she had grown so accustomed to seeing throughout the years that they had been on the run together.
She didn't know how long it took for her to realise that she had been inching her face closer to his, only that she realised she was doing that when her face was mere centimeters away from his. She doesn't know what was in her mind at that time. It may be a moment of impulse, it may be because she simply wasn't thinking, it may be because of another reason that eluded her entirely.
Gently, she pressed her lips to his.
She could taste the faint taste of alcohol that he likes to drink so much. She could smell a little of the smoke that usually clung to his body due to his ability to generate fire from his body. She could smell his scent, the sweat clinging onto his body after their fun-filled day doing nothing but throwing things at each other and laughing like a couple of five years old, laughing as if there is no tomorrow.
She didn't know how long the kiss lasted. When she finally separated her lips from his and opened her eyes again, she saw him looking up at her in surprise.
"Robin?"
"Sorry." She apologised. "I…"
He didn't let her complete her sentence. In the next instant, his palm was at the back of her head, gently guiding it back down to him as their lips met once again. She was caught by surprise, but soon allowed herself to indulge in the moment as she closed her eyes and enjoy the kiss once more. She opened her mouth when his tongue begged for entrance and they continued to wrap themselves around each other.
If anyone told her when she was eight years old after the destruction of Ohara that she would one day find a person who could trust wholeheartedly and love wholeheartedly, she would laugh at them and call them crazy. If her eight year old self could see her now, she would no doubt call herself crazy too.
However, right now, she doesn't mind doing crazy.
Somehow, somewhere down the line, she had somehow fallen so crazily in love with this crazy fire breathing man that always does things with her best interests in mind. An ex Cipher Pol agent and a fugitive, two different people that by all means, should never love each other.
It's crazy, but it is what it is.