"Right, Nico Robin!" Yosaku nodded with a smile. "That's exactly her name!"
"You know her too?" Johnny immediately asked Luffy.
"Not exactly." The young man shook his head. "But when I was little, someone showed me her poster. I wouldn't have remembered it if Yosaku hadn't mentioned it. The men laughed that if she and I ever got together, we'd make a perfect couple."
"What?!!" Nami immediately snapped upright.
Robin's face, meanwhile, acquired a truly indescribable expression, though it still retained a very pronounced shade of fear.
"Don't pay attention to it." Luffy waved a hand carelessly through the air. "I was quite the monster as a child," the young man said in a tone suggesting something had changed since then. "These days I prefer to remain in the shadows, but back then I simply charged straight ahead, demolishing everything in my path and immediately turning anyone I disliked into fertilizer. Zoro can confirm it. He knows more about my childhood than any of you." The green-haired young man grimaced involuntarily; he would very much have preferred not to know. "For example, the first thing I did when I met my brother was try to feed him to crocodiles. I had no idea who he was at the time, but that little brat dared show me disrespect during our very first meeting. And since I was a child myself, I couldn't have cared less about his age. Fortunately for my brainless brother, our grandfather arrived in time to save him. And that's only one incident out of hundreds. So when everyone who knew me saw a wanted poster with a little girl's photograph on it, they immediately began joking that if anyone could ever live with me in the future, it would be the 'Devil Child.' Others insisted that the 'Son of Satan' and the 'Devil Child' could never be together, since that would be pure incest."
"What kind of idiots did you associate with as a child? Was it Conrad? It was Conrad, wasn't it? Of course it was! Who else could it have been? There's almost a ten-year age difference between you and her!" Nami exclaimed indignantly.
"You think anyone cared?" Luffy snorted.
"Seventy-nine million berries." A short distance away, Johnny grinned at Law. "Hey, Traffy, she beat you by a whole million!"
"She beat you by twenty-nine million. So what?" the captain of the Heart Pirates shot back.
"I'm allowed!" Johnny countered without losing his grin. "By pirate-crew standards, I'm just a pathetic underling, while you're a full-fledged captain!"
"Are we going to interrogate her or not?" Usopp finally lost patience.
The young man had never interrogated anyone and had never seen an interrogation, so he felt a painful curiosity about what it would look like. His imagination offered the widest variety of possibilities, but 'for some reason' every one of them was bloody, which seemed unlikely with Nami present. Or at least it had seemed unlikely before. After all the talk about an ideal couple, Usopp no longer trusted quite so strongly in the girl's desire to follow her moral principles. Although he preferred not to comment on the somewhat peculiar relationship between Luffy and Nami, the young man had drawn his own conclusions long ago.
"Maybe we shouldn't interrogate her after all?" Sanji made a courageous attempt to stand up for Robin. "Women should be treasured and protected! What would be the point of interrogating her anyway? We'll take Crocodile's money regardless, and everything else is trivial. She didn't try to kill any of us, and if she wanted to run away, that was her right! If I were in her place, I would have tried to escape too."
"What do you mean she didn't try to kill anyone? I don't count anymore? Besides, I dragged her a full five kilometers to get her here! I got tired! Rubbed my foot raw! Wore out my sandals! So she isn't getting off that easily!" Luffy 'fired up' instantly.
Robin, including all her clothes, weighed no more than sixty kilograms, perhaps only fifty, which made no difference whatsoever beside Banchi's ten tons. As for an attempted murder, there was no question of one. First, their 'weight classes' were too different—like a nursery-school girl against a trained soldier—and second, Luffy had provoked her himself. Robin truly would have been an idiot had she not attempted to resist. Who in this world had not heard what happened to beautiful women captured by pirates? Not to mention every other reason.
"That's rather poor motivation, honestly," Yosaku commented on his captain's words.
Two old comrades resembled one another in many ways after all. Yosaku constantly pulled Johnny back over his excessive curiosity and passion for 'truth-telling,' yet he himself was only slightly better. Who had pulled his tongue now? Unlike Johnny, he could actually be killed! And that was precisely what Luffy did. Yosaku's final words had barely faded before his brains scattered beautifully across the surrounding area. In general, the young man died quite frequently with or without reason, but killing him for a 'valid' cause was far more pleasant and entertaining. Every member of the family recognized that fact. Except Usopp. He remained the only one who had not yet fully mastered the concept of 'blowing someone's mind' in the literal rather than figurative sense.
"He's been getting on my nerves for a long time," a satisfied Luffy explained to the shocked Robin. "Always forcing his damned logic on everyone, but who needs damned logic at all?!" he added emotionally, then fired four more bullets into the head of the already dead Yosaku lying on the ground.
How did one convince everyone around them that they were a merciless bastard and an unpredictable lunatic? 'All' one needed to do was begin killing one's own subordinates. For anyone unaware of Yosaku's fruit power—which meant Robin—Luffy's latest actions contained a very real degree of madness and bloodlust. Something the young man exploited constantly and shamelessly! Specifically, by 'killing' Yosaku. What kind of person could kill members of his own crew so casually? And what kind of crew could fail to react at all when one of its members was murdered? Robin distinctly saw complete indifference on the faces of nearly every 'Pirate Slayer!' As though the dead man were not one of their own but a total stranger! Even the nearby Heart Pirates reacted far more emotionally and now could not take their eyes off the Butcher's murderer. This Luffy. Robin could not believe such a Monster possessed so harmless a name.
"Shoot more carefully next time," an annoyed Nami said, the only person to show any emotion over Yosaku's 'murder.' "You nearly splattered me with blood!" The reason for her emotion, admittedly, left something to be desired.
"But I didn't splatter you, did I? Besides, of all people, you're the last one who would have been hit!"
"It could have splashed Sanji! And he's dressed entirely in white! I chose that suit for him! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to wash blood out of white fabric without ruining it?"
"Fine, fine, I understand! Stop nagging! Next time I'll definitely be more careful!"
It was quite the conversation for anyone unaware of all the nuances. That was why truth had always been and remained Luffy's favorite and most effective weapon. Everything happened directly before Robin's eyes, so from her perspective it could not have looked more convincing, but without possessing all the information, she drew entirely incorrect conclusions. Most importantly, no one imposed those conclusions on her. She reached them with her own mind, making them seem even more credible. And it was not merely Yosaku's 'murder' that Robin misinterpreted—she even misunderstood Law and his men's reaction! In reality, none of them cared about Yosaku in the slightest—the young man sometimes died ten or twenty times in a single day, so everyone had long since become accustomed to it—and they watched Luffy without blinking for an entirely different reason. In truth, only one question interested them: where had the holster with the revolvers come from?! What the hell?! Every one of Law's men, and Law himself, could have sworn that there had been no holster on the young man one minute earlier! They still could not come to terms with his endless ice creams, and now there was an invisible holster as well! So they kept their eyes fixed on Luffy, hoping to catch the moment when his holster and revolvers disappeared again. All the other Hats, meanwhile, were pleased for once—someone else finally shared their 'pain'!
"Now, as for you." Luffy looked again at Robin where she sat on the ground, causing her to flinch in fear once more. Even before Yosaku's 'murder,' the young man had inspired nothing in her except terror and terrible associations. Now, all the more so. "I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that we aren't going to rape or torture you, so you don't have to worry about that. Captain's word! The bad news is that you're Crocodile's partner, and simply letting you go would somehow feel wrong."
"She's beautiful, isn't she? Why not make an exception?" Sanji did not miss the opportunity to interject.
"But don't worry, we have everything under control!" Luffy continued, pretending he had heard nothing. "For certain cases like yours, we use a little game. This is a revolver with one bullet remaining inside." Luffy displayed the weapon with which he had 'killed' Yosaku. "And here I have five additional." The young man showed Robin the empty palm of his other hand. It did not remain empty long. The moment he closed and reopened his fingers, five bullets appeared on his palm, to the irritation of the other Hats and the surprise of the Heart Pirates. The trick belonged to the simplest category, but in light of all Luffy's other oddities, it involuntarily raised the question: had it actually been a trick? Or, for example, the power of some unknown fruit?
"Bastard," Johnny muttered almost inaudibly.
The excessively curious young man suffered more than anyone from such 'jokes' by his captain.
"The game works like this: you give us information voluntarily, and if we find it useful or interesting, I remove one bullet," Luffy continued pretending he had heard nothing. "We already have a couple of questions for you, so consider yourself down by one bullet." Confirming his words through action, Luffy removed one bullet from his palm. "As for the rest, do you know a game called 'Russian Roulette'? You spin the cylinder of a revolver containing one bullet, stop it sharply, put the barrel in your mouth, and pull the trigger. If your brains remain where they belong, you insert a second bullet into the cylinder and repeat the procedure. At present you have five bullets, meaning you'll have to play five times in succession, and honestly, your chances of survival under those conditions are poor. In my experience, no one has ever survived five bullets, and only one Orc managed to survive four. Incidentally, he's now one of my most loyal people. An amusing twist of Fate, wouldn't you say? In any case, if you truly want to live, I advise you to start talking—and to make it interesting."
"Do you often... entertain yourselves this way?" Law asked, evidently replacing the word 'torment' with the more euphonious 'entertain.'
"Not particularly." Luffy sighed in disappointment. "What interesting thing can an ordinary person, pirate, or common Marine tell us? It isn't worth the trouble with people like that. They couldn't earn the removal of even one bullet. In those situations, we leave everything to Fate. Depending on the person and the circumstances, we remove one or two bullet, sometimes three, and in only a couple of cases have we removed four. If a person is destined to survive, they will."
"...Fate." For some reason, Law singled out that particular word from Luffy's entire explanation. "If it's destined... You know, I've only just realized that I've never heard your full name."
"My full name?" Luffy looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"When we first met, you introduced yourself by your given name and the title of Pirate King, but you never told me your complete name, including your family name."
"Really?" The young man was surprised. "Not once in an entire month? Well, if you're so curious, my full name is Monkey D. Luffy."
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