-Discussion

Robin while this was happening was standing to the side and not interfering, she had wanted to help when they attacked Ian, but things happened so quickly... She didn't understand what was happening at the moment, but she still gave them some space to sort things out. They will probably ignore her anyways, or anyone else for that matter, since they entered their own world the moment they locked eyes.

She had seen how Ian had dominated the two people who were coming towards him. He didn't even look at them for a second as he incapacitated them. His eyes were fixed on the girl not budging at all. Which led to Robin's curiosity spiking.

'Who is this girl?' she thought to herself internally as she checked the girl Ian was hugging. But since Ian had his back toward her the girl was hidden from her view. She just shook her head and decided she'll do it later. There was time…

She then walked closer to the young girl and the mink person who were sitting on a log by the fire. It was the first time for her to see a mink person. She didn't even know the tribe he comes from.

She sat on the opposite log from them, and decided to ask the girl. She didn't want to be rude in case they have some customs.

"Hello, my name is Robin. What's your name?" She introduced herself. If this was in the past she would have just lied and used a different fake name, but things are different now. She isn't as scared as before. She knew how strong Ian is. And she was also anticipating when he will train her to reach such a level too.

The girl looked at her for a bit, before looking at the couple hugging in the distance.

From her features Robin estimated that she was only 15 or 16 years old. Which was quite young, and quite dangerous for someone in the new world.

"My name is Stella, and this here is Bert." After a bit the girl replied, and pointed at Bert who gave her a nod in greeting.

"I'm sorry about this. Usually Ian is not like this. But he was agitated then, I hope you can understand him?" Robin spoke when she saw that he gave her a nod. She knew Ian to be a good person. She was sure he had a good reason for this.

The lion mink person had a bit of surprise on his face. He wasn't prepared for her to apologize to him, when people usually are either disgusted by him or ignore him.

After a while he recovered and replied to her with a small smile.

"It's fine, actually it's my fault as we were already waiting for you two. But in the heat of the moment I just misunderstood and thought he was attacking Elene." They had already seen their posters. And Elene had told them to just stand by. It was a bit of an overreaction from their parts. He was a man of his words, and he wouldn't twist the truth around just so he won't be faulted, as such he readily admitted his fault.

Stella who saw that Robin only had curiosity in her eyes, gave a gentle smile too. Not many people liked Bert, since he was a humanoid lion mink. Many would be disgusted by him.

Bert saw that curiosity and said to her.

"I come from a tribe called the Mink Tribe, which is a race of humanoid people with animal features as you can see. I am a lion mink. I went to the sea at a young age, and since then I haven't returned yet" He said.

"The Mink tribe…" Robin said with a hint of wonder in her voice.

"You are Nico Robin right? We had read how 'he' came to save you at Enies lobby along with another pirate crew. It was actually the first time we heard about him and saw his bounty. But Elene and us had been waiting for him for a while before that. It was just that we didn't have any way of locating him." Stella said. She didn't mind speaking this much, after all, according to Elene they will all be joining his crew.

Robin nodded with a smile.

"So you already knew about Ian before?" Robin asked.

"Well we never met him, but I guess that Elene perhaps did" Stella said as she sneaked a look towards Ian's direction. She saw how the two of them had separated a bit and were now talking in a low voice.

.....

"I missed you…" Ian whispered as he separated from her a bit and looked at her face.

He stroked her cheek with his hand as he looked at her with longing.

"Me too honey, me too" she replied. "But now we are here, united again, so there's no need to miss me anymore and nor I you." She said with a smile that brightened the mood. Ian couldn't help but smile himself.

"But how is this possible, you know? Even I found it impossible to come to this world, if I hadn't been lucky and an entity helped me, I wouldn't be here as I had been stuck in a place" Ian said after a while.

"So that's it. You know I had a guess to why you didn't set out to sea at the same time as me. How old are you Ian?" She asked him to understand things more.

"18. Why?" He replied.

"I knew it. You had been stuck in that place for two years. Because I'm 20 years old." She replied. And Ian nodded. He knew he had been there for a while from before. But he was still perplexed of how she managed to reach here before him. Did the entity help her too?

Perhaps Marie knew what he was thinking of so she shook her head and said.

"At that moment when we were shot… with my last remaining consciousness I managed to see an energy come out of you and wrapped me up. When I came to next, the energy was bringing me around in a very, very dark place." She said.

"I'm guessing that, that energy should have been responsible for delivering you sort of like some karmic energy like in those novels we read. But since you gave it to me, you yourself was stuck there." She said her guess. She had tears in her eyes once again.

Ian hugged her. He had reached the same train of thought when she explained her side of things.

"Listen, let's just put this aside for now. There is no use talking about it. Besides I think you need to introduce me to your friends no?" Ian said.

She nodded her head.

"Mn"

"Do you think, ah, he'll forgive me?" Ian said, as he pointed at Bert with his eyes.

"Oh about before? Don't worry, Bert is a good person" She replied with a smile, before she grabbed his hand and started dragging him to the place where they were sitting at.