156- "I trust you"

"I just came to watch, this little bunch is so interesting" she mused as her eyes flickered up to Ethan again.

he hadn't take his eyes off her and she didn't know why but she found his gaze lacking in the heat she expected (She had been expecting to see the same greedy eyes she had been receiving since she was little because of the bounty on her head), it wasn't like he was looking at her as an enemy but there was something else in his eyes that she place.

Deciding to think more on it later she looked down to Vivi, "so this is the group you have chosen to protect you, sixteen pirates and a princess against the thousands of agents that Baroque works has in its employ, I wanted to say that you don't stand a chance of winning, but if your strength is equivalent to the bounty on your heads, there is a good chance you will win."

"But your good luck ends here I'm afraid, given where your log pose is pointing, the next island is called little garden" she mused, "Even if you manage to survive there, you will be too late to save Arabasta."

Ethan closed his eyes as he took a breath, he knew what she was talking about, Little garden, not only was the island dinosaur park come to life but it took a full year for the log pose to set when they reach there.

if anything specific changed from the events of the canon they would be stuck on that island for a year and Alabasta would have fallen and been rebuilt by the time they finally left.

'No, I still have ways out of this situation, after all I have a sweet and cute system.' Ethan looked at Freya and saw her cheeks turning red.

[Am I really cute and sweet?!]

'Sometimes.'

[What a cruel person you are, at least say yes even if you're lying.]

"Do you not think it's a little foolish, to allow yourselves to be late." Robin said as she tossed Ethan an eternal pose which he caught.

"that's an eternal pose to an island closer to Alabasta, with it you can skip little garden all together and then just sail on to Alabasta right after, none of our agents know that path so you won't be followed" she explained.

"You are a really nice person, first you help Vivi find out the identity of the crocodile and then now you do your best to get us to Alabasta." Ethan smiled as he put the Eternal Pose in his pocket. "But are you doing it because you feel guilty? After all, many people have suffered because of the person you work with."

"You know who I am, right?" Nico Robin looked at Ethan seriously.

"Yes, I know who you are." Ethan let out a chuckle.

"And though you know who I am, do you still think I feel guilty for people's suffering? And do you still trust me and go to the island that eternal pose is pointing to?" Robin looked into Ethan's eyes as if she wanted to penetrate his soul to see if everything he would say came from the heart or not.

"All I'm going to say is that I think you're a good person. It's just that the world has treated you so harshly since you were a child." Ethan also spoke kindly and told her honestly what he thought of her.

'He's telling the truth.' Robin lowered her purple cowboy hat and covered most of her face with her hat, while at the same time her eyes became wet while biting her lip. 'Why did such a person appear so late, why did he not appear earlier when I was a child.'

After a while Nico Robin calmed herself down and then heard Ethan say, "Despite all of this, I'm going to the little garden."

"Why? Do you not trust me?" Robin raised her hat and looked into Ethan's eyes.

Ethan: "I trust you, and I bet that if we follow the path you have chosen for us, our journey to Alabasta will be comfortable and we will not find any enemies in our path."

"Then why don't I follow this path? It's because I want to meet two people who have been living there for over 100 years." Hearing this, Nico Robin understood what he meant but all the girls stood in a daze and didn't know what Ethan meant, it could be said that they didn't know what this conversation meant from the start.

"But I will make sure to use the eternal pose after I do what I want in the little garden." The corner of her lip rose to reveal a slight smile when she heard this.

"It's time for me to leave." she said as she swung her legs over the railing, knowingly or not giving Ethan a great view of her skirt clad ass as she did so before looking back at them.

"I hope that we meet again." she said as she began to walk toward the side of the ship.

"Nico Robin." She froze when she heard Ethan say her name for the first time. "We will surely meet again, and I will bring you out of the darkness you are in."

Eventually Robin spoke knowing she needed to leave, she needed to think, "Bye Ethan." she said before jumping off the edge of the ship and landing on her giant turtle that immediately began to swim way in another direction from the Black Pearl Freya.

Ethan walked to the side of the ship and looked out watching her go, once she was out of sight he turned only to find everyone looking at him with many questions on their minds, he mentally sighed, 'I should have seen this coming'

Nami: "Who was she?"

Vivi: "do you know her?"

Lucy: "Is she a good person?"

Zora: "Who are the two people you want to meet in the little garden?"

Sanju: "What did you mean when you said you were going to bring her out of the dark?"

Almost immediately Ethan was flooded by questions coming from every member of the crew.

"that woman's name is Nico Robin, she's been a wanted woman since she was a young girl with a bounty of seventy nine million, she is wanted by the world government for being the only person alive who is capable of reading ancient texts that are written on indestructible stone monoliths called Poneglyphs." He explained.

"the ancient texts are rumoured to speak about various things, one of the many things in those rumours are of three ancient weapons that have the power to destroy the world, which is supposedly why the government outlawed any research into how to read them and why Robin has such a high bounty" Everyone listened to his explanation and found themselves even more afraid of what they heard, weapons that could destroy the world, that was just insane.

"Nico Robin, since she was eight years old, has been chased everywhere for that bounty on her head."

"She had no friends or someone to depend on, and even the people who helped her in the beginning tried to hand her over to the Marines and the World Government when they found out about the high bounty on her head."

"She has lived her entire life in fear and caution, and the suffering she has experienced cannot be described in words alone."

When Ethan finished explaining, Sanju looked at him, "I now understand what you meant when you said you were going to bring her out of the darkness. You want to save her."