Legend of the Hero

The people left on Enies Lobby stare toward the sea as the impossible begins to happen. Someone cries, "H-HEY!! LOOK AT THAT!! THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE EVER SEEN IT...!!" Another voice answers, "OH, WOW... I'VE NEVER EVEN HEARD ABOUT IT!!!!" The Gates of Justice, normally only partly opened, now spread wide in full view of the island. Panic rises with the realization: "I'VE NEVER HEARD THAT THE 'GATES OF JUSTICE' EVER FULLY OPENED...!!!" The explanation follows immediately, grim and military: "IT'S SO WARSHIPS FROM THE 'MARINE HEAD-QUARTERS' CAN COME IN!!!" Then the fear is named outright. "IT'S FOR THE BOMBARDMENT OF THE 'BUSTER CALL'!!!" The vast doors yawn open like a path for disaster, and everyone understands that the island has become the target.

The shock spreads through the allies still fighting and waiting below. Someone remembers, "I'M SURE KOKORO BAA-SAN DID SAY THAT THE GATES WOULD NEVER FULLY OPEN...!!" Another voice, shaken by the pressure in the air, asks, "What is this intimidating feeling!? What the heck is the 'Buster Call'!?" The answer is worse than a rumor: "They are really trying to blow away the island" and "Along with the Strawhats, who picked a fight with the world...!!!" The Franky Family and the others can only shout toward the battle they cannot reach: "Damn it~~!!!" "Please don't die, bro~!!!" "Come back alive, Straw-hats~!!!" Far from them, Luffy stays locked on Rob Lucci and thinks of the promise he has made with his actions: "I left Robin up to Franky...!!!" Lucci studies him and admits, "I didn't know you had this much power." Even as the Buster Call approaches, Luffy refuses to move backward.

Lucci watches the steam rising from Luffy's body and measures the cost of his new power. "It seems that you are short of breath... But is that because of the steam?" he asks. Luffy does not waste words on fear or pain. "As long as I can defeat you, everything will be all right!!!" Lucci answers with cold respect: "I see... You are tough." While their duel burns on, Franky races desperately toward the Bridge of Hesitation, refusing to let the distance close around Robin. His thoughts and voice push forward with him: "Don't go just yet, Nico Robin!!!" and "Please make it!!" The page splits the battle and the rescue into the same urgent heartbeat: Luffy must hold Lucci, and Franky must reach Robin before Spandam takes her through the gate.

At the far end of the Bridge of Hesitation, the escape route is already prepared. The labels place the scene with brutal clarity: "Bridge of Hesitation / The very end," "Convoy Anchorage Port," and the route beyond it, "to the 'Marine Headquarters' and 'Undersea Prison, Impel Down.'" Orders snap across the bridge. "GUARDS, OUTSIDE!!" "YES, SIR!" The convoy reports, "THE CONVOY IS READY FOR AN IMMEDIATE DEPARTURE!!!" Then the command spreads to the stationed forces: "GATES OF JUSTICE 'GUARDS'!!" "CONVOY SAILORS OF THE 'MARINE HEADQUARTERS'!!" They are told, "CHIEF SPANDAM OF CIPHER POL NO. 9 IS CURRENTLY CROSSING THE BRIDGE FROM THE JUDICIAL TOWER TO TAKE THE CRIMINAL AWAY!" The soldiers line up for the formal transfer: "STAND IN A ROW AND SALUTE!!!" "YES, SIR!!!" Rows of Marines stand ready, turning Robin's abduction into an official ceremony.

Spandam drags Robin forward, already celebrating the victory he thinks is certain. "WA HA HA HA HA HA!! LOOK, TRAVEL PREPARATIONS ARE COMPLETE. NO ONE WILL INTERFERE!!! DO YOU WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING GOOD, NICO ROBIN?" He reveals the trap behind them with cruel delight: "I ACTIVATED A MINE THAT IS SET ON THE TOP OF THAT STAIRCASE WE JUST CLIMBED. JUST... IN CASE... ANYONE TRIES TO COME UP HERE, HE WILL BE BLOWN AWAY ALONG WITH THE STAIRCASE. ISN'T THAT INTERESTING?" Robin struggles against him and refuses the fate being forced on her: "I WON'T GO THROUGH THE GATES...!!!" Spandam laughs because he believes the bridge, the guards, the sea, and the mine have all closed around her. "WA HA HA HA. BUT DON'T WORRY ABOUT THEM. NO ONE CAN REACH THE STAIRCASE ANYWAY!!" In his mind, rescue has already become impossible.

Robin keeps fighting because the words of her friends have reached deeper than Spandam's threats. "THEY TOLD ME... THAT THEY'LL 'SAVE ME'...!!!" Spandam snaps back, "NO ONE WILL COME, IDIOT!!!" To him, the Buster Call is not a tragedy but the perfect eraser. Robin sees the nightmare of Ohara returning as he tells her that everyone will be burned away in the hellfire of the Buster Call, and he boasts that "THE 'BUSTER CALL' WILL EVEN ERASE THE FACT... THAT THE PIRATES DISGRACED OUR SACRED FLAG!!!" The memory hits Robin like a wound reopening. "It'll be just like when that giant Marine rampaged in Ohara 20 years ago...!!" she thinks, and the name follows with pain: "Saul...!!?" Spandam keeps dragging her onward, shouting, "HAHA... NOW, WALK!!! WALK WITH YOUR OWN LEGS!!!"

Spandam's composure breaks into ugly shouting as the soldiers urge him on. "ARGH!!!" A Marine calls, "CHIEF, PLEASE HURRY!!" Spandam barks back, "I KNOW, JUST SHUT UP!!! I’M A HERO!!!" Then he turns Robin's past into another weapon. "YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING HUH?" he says, naming the history she carries: "ABOUT THE FORMER MARINE HEADQUARTERS' VICE ADMIRAL HAGWAR D. SAUL'S VIOLENT CONDUCT...!!" He says he knows about her mother too: "ABOUT YOUR MOTHER, OLIVIA. I KNOW EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN OHARA BACK THEN!!!" The cruelty sharpens when he reveals the connection to his own bloodline. "IT'S ALL BECAUSE I WAS TOLD ABOUT THOSE THINGS...!! STEPPING INTO OHARA, WHERE THE DEVILS LIVED, REVEALING THEIR GREAT CRIME, AND TRIGGERING THE 'BUSTER CALL'!!!" Finally he declares, "THAT WAS ALL DONE BY THE FORMER CHIEF OF 'CP9,' MY FATHER, 'SPANDYNE'!!!" Robin hears not only the government speaking, but the inherited pride of the man who helped destroy her home.

Spandam declares Robin's fate as if he is closing an old case. "YOUR DEATH PENALTY IS ASSURED!!!" His words twist back toward Ohara and the day Robin escaped. He echoes the hunt from twenty years earlier: "I'VE FOUND HER!!! EVACUATION SHIP!! DON'T LET THAT BRAT GET ON BOARD!!! DOCTOR!!!" Then he laughs, "WA HA HA HA..." and explains the grudge he thinks has survived correctly through the decades. "THE GOVERNMENT BELIEVED THAT WHOEVER WAS ON OHARA ISLAND DIED THEN. BUT THEY OVERLOOKED ONE BRAT THAT SNEAKED OUT." He imagines her childhood as a hunted survivor and taunts her with it: "How was it? How many times was an eight-year-old brat about to be killed for money by adults? Couldn't trust anyone who approached you. No place to get a good night's sleep... No food, either. I don't even want to imagine having such a shitty life for 20 years." Robin trembles under the weight of every year he reduces to mockery.

Spandam mistakes Robin's tears for defeat. "HA HA...!! WAS IT SO MISERABLE THAT IT MADE YOU CRY?" he asks, before driving the final insult home: "THE ONE WHO PUT THE BOUNTY ON YOUR HEAD 20 YEARS AGO WAS MY FATHER!!! WA HA HA HA!! ALL FOR WORLD PEACE!!!" He frames the present as the end of a battle begun at Ohara. "And now, 20 years later... I, the son, hunt the only survivor..." he says. "And the Battle of Ohara will finally end!! OHARA HAS LOST!!!" But Robin's memories answer him. Saul's voice returns from the past: "YA'LL PASS ON DA HISTORY OF DIS ISLAND SUNDAY, ROBIN!!" and "OHARA FOUGHT DA WORLD!!!" Robin screams the truth Spandam cannot erase: "I'M STILL ALIVE!!!" Spandam answers with the sentence he intends to make real: "AND YOU'LL SOON BE DEAD!!!"

The path behind them explodes as the mine finally goes off, but the blast does not bring the certainty Spandam expected. The guards cry out, "...!!" and "WHOA, WHAT!?" Then recognition hits them: "C-CUTTY FLAM!!!" Someone realizes what has happened: "THE MINE...!? WHY IS HE HERE!!?" Robin sees through the smoke and understands before Spandam does. "...!! HE CAME TO SAVE ME...!!" Spandam bursts into laughter anyway: "AH... WAH HA HA!! BUT HE FELL FOR IT!! WHAT AN IDIOT!! THAT FOOL FELL FOR IT!!!" Yet the scene has changed. Franky has reached the bridge even through the trap. Robin's tears keep falling as the relief and frustration mix inside her: "IT'S SO VEXING, AND THE TEARS WON'T STOP." Spandam tries to force the march onward, shouting, "LET'S GO! MARINES, HOP TO IT...!!! SET SAIL!!!" and the Marines answer, "YES, SIR!!!" But the rescue has already stepped into the story.

The moment Spandam tries to turn Robin's capture into history, Franky breaks that history with his own hands. The bridge erupts in impact and chaos, the sound of the blow crashing across the page as Spandam is struck down in front of the soldiers. Robin watches, still bound and still crying, as the man who mocked Ohara is suddenly the one thrown aside. Franky's arrival is not clean or ceremonial; it is smoke, force, and a body hurled into the path of the execution route. The rescue is no longer a promise from far away. It is standing on the bridge with her, and Spandam's control over the scene collapses in a single violent interruption.

The soldiers rush to Spandam as he reels from the attack. "CHIEF, SIR!!!" they shout, while he can only spit out a warped cry, "HAPE BARA BOGE PYA!!!" The Marines panic because the assault seems to come from nowhere. "WHAAAT!? WHO IS IT!!?" one yells. Another insists, "No one else is on the bridge!!" The confusion grows: "There's no way anyone could be here. He must be hiding somewhere!!!" Orders fly in desperation: "Search for him...!!!" Robin sits in the middle of the scrambling guards, not yet free, but no longer alone. The enemy cannot understand the rescue because they are looking only beside them, not far enough away.

Spandam screams at his men as the invisible shots keep disrupting them. "HEEEY!!! WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU GUYS DOING!?" A Marine protests, "But chief, sir, we cannot identify the enemy!!!" Robin, through tears, looks outward and softly finds the answer: "there..." The soldiers finally follow her gaze. "Chief, sir, over there!!" "What!? There!!?" The direction is absurd at first: "On the top of the Judicial Tower...!!!" Spandam cannot believe it. "Did you say Judicial Tower!? What can someone do from that place!?" But high above the bridge, on the distant tower, a masked figure stands with the wind at his back. The distance that should make rescue impossible has become Sogeking's stage.

Sogeking reveals himself at the top of the Judicial Tower, turning an impossible distance into a sniper's line. From the side of the allies comes the amazed shout, "LOOK!! OUR SHARPSHOOTER RULES!!! TAKE THAT SHIT, BASTARDS!!! ROBIN-CHAN, RUUUN!!!" One of them even mutters about the theatrics as Sogeking sings and poses, but his aim is perfect. The Marines below are battered by shots they cannot return. "CHIEF!!!" they cry. Spandam howls back, "DAAAM-MNNN YOOOU, BASTA-AAARD!!!" and then orders, "DAMN IT!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? SHOOT HIM DOWN ALREADY!!!" The answer exposes just how impossible his position is: "We've been trying, but our bullets won't reach, let alone hit him...!!! That sharpshooter's skill is really amazing!!!" Spandam turns his rage back on Robin: "Don't let her get away, idiots!!! You can shoot her to death... but don't kill her!!!" The Marines shout, "Nico Robin is running away!!!" Robin looks toward the distant tower and recognizes the impossible rescuer: "Naga-hana-kun...!!?" Sogeking's shots keep landing with terrifying precision, and the tower becomes a legend's perch.

The Marines try to turn their guns back on the bridge. "FIRE!!!" The order explodes into bullets, but Franky throws himself between Robin and the shots. Metal rings under the barrage as the soldiers cry, "What!!?" and "Huh!?" Robin looks up at him, stunned: "You..." Franky plants himself like a wall and speaks to Spandam with absolute confidence. "There are no more mines, are there, Spanda? I'M TOUGH AS STEEL." The Marines recoil with a terrified "HEEK!!" Sogeking may be covering them from the tower, but on the bridge itself Franky becomes Robin's shield, taking the fire on a body built to protect what he has chosen to protect.

A Den Den Mushi crackles, and Sogeking's voice comes through with the calm of a completed delivery. "This is Soge-King." He calls, "Franky-kun, Franky-kun." Franky answers with a rough "HRMM?" and then notices the receiver: "Huh? This Denden-Mushi's supposed to belong to..." Sogeking explains, "I got it from Nami! Anyway, you should see a 'red cloth bundle' around there." Franky spots it at once: "Ooh, yeah, here." The message inside is the real miracle. "There are two keys in it. With the ones you have, they should complete the whole set!!" Franky erupts, "ALL OF THE KEYS~!?" Sogeking confirms, "DELIVERY CONFIRMED." Elsewhere, Sanji closes the mission with sharp urgency: "Mission complete. We'd better hurry. It's gonna get worse." The chapter ends with the rescue finally holding the tools it needs: Robin is reached, covered, and the keys to her cuffs are gathered.

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