Declaration of War

After the Buster Call, Ohara is left as a burned ruin. Marines move through the silence and expect nothing living to remain. "Survivors...?" one asks, only for another to answer, "There's no way there'd be any." Then someone notices the lake. "Hey..." "Look at... this lake..." Shock spreads through them: "!?" "This..." The water is packed with books, the scholars' knowledge floating where the flames could not reach it. "The lake's filled with... books..." A Marine can only wonder, "Is it... a coincidence?"

The hunt for Robin begins almost immediately. A report races through the Marines: "Ooh!!" "This is her!!!" "This is definitely her!!" They had searched using only the clue of a suspicious girl. "Yes... using 'suspicious girl' as a clue." One report says, "We found her on a passenger boat that had departed from an island far northeast of Ohara. But we lost her again shortly after..." Another Marine insists, "It's true, I saw the brat escaping from the burning Ohara with a boat!!!" The order is blunt: "Don't deliberate on a method! If you don't capture her ASAP, what we've done here will go to waste!" Robin is no longer treated as a child. "A scholar who can decipher Poneglyphs... She's a dangerous entity, even if she's a kid." The man who saw her escape adds that when he tried to follow, "my helm suddenly froze up and wouldn't move...!!" Someone concludes, "I bet Mr. Saul left her go when he was about to die!!" To them, the surviving girl is a curse: "She has the luck of the devil himself...!!"

Robin's wanted poster spreads through the world with the name NICO ROBIN and a bounty of 79,000,000 Beri. People recoil at the number. "79 million Beri!?" "That big of a bounty for an eight year old kid!?" Rumors replace truth: "It's that... the 'survivor of Ohara's demons'..." They speak of Ohara as "The group that attempted to destroy the world...!!" and gasp, "That Ohara's...!?" One rumor claims, "I don't know how she did it, but I heard she sunk six warships!" Another says, "No wonder it's such a price...!!" The Government and Marine Headquarters are said to be directly pursuing her. The world repeats the lie that she inherited the executed scholars' will and must not be allowed to roam free. The verdict placed on a child is merciless: "She's a child of a demon that shouldn't be alive!!!"

Robin survives by working where she can, quietly thanking an older woman who has taken her in. "Thank you," Robin says, "For helping me all the time..." The woman answers, "No, thank you for letting me work." But kindness gives way to fear and greed. Before dinner, the woman tells her, "By the way... before today's meal, you have some guests." Men burst in shouting, "Don't let her get away!!! She's only a child!!!" The woman demands payment: "I notified you!!!" "Now, give me my money!!" Even as she betrays Robin, she admits, "She works very hard, even though she's young..." In memory, that same woman once told Robin, "What, you're still awake? You have to wake up early tomorrow to buy some things, so go to sleep." Robin answered, "Okay." Yet the woman had already decided, "She's a good girl... But if she stays with us, we'll be in danger, too..."

The betrayers stare at Robin's bounty and realize too late that she has fled. "And... look at this bounty..." one says. "She's not in the room...!!" Another curses, "Shit...!! That brat overheard us!?" They twist their own betrayal into accusation: "Forgetting all the kindness she's received 'til now, damn it!!!" "Look for her!!!" Robin keeps moving, laughing Saul's laugh through the pain: "Dereshishishi!" On another ship she apologizes, "I'm sorry... I don't have any food." A captain says, "I know a great deal about you, Nico Robin." Robin answers carefully, "I'm on the wanted list, too..." The man offers a place as an apprentice in exchange for work and food, but the pattern repeats. When Marine Headquarters closes in, the ship erupts: "Ooh...!! Save me!!!" "It's the Marine Headquarters!!!" "Captain!!" "Where's Robin!? Hand her over!!!" "Damn it!!! It's because she's onboard!!!" "Robin!!!" "That plagued brat!!!"

Years of pursuit harden around Robin. Everywhere she goes, people whisper, "Nico Robin is in this town!?" She keeps searching and finally finds what only she can read: "I've found it... A Poneglyph." But the world answers her existence with hatred. "Your mere existence is a sin!!!" A shopkeeper throws her out: "Get outta my store!!! I've got nothing to sell you!!" Former allies turn on her: "You betrayed me, Robin!!!" By sixteen, Robin has learned to offer her usefulness before anyone asks. "I'm 16. I'll do anything. Please let me work for this organization." Crocodile, seeing the value of her forbidden knowledge, tells her, "I want you to help us. I heard that you can read... The 'Poneglyphs'..."

Back at Enies Lobby, Robin faces the same terror that destroyed her home. Spandam holds the threat of the Buster Call over everyone, and Robin understands what it means. "If you..." she says, realizing the danger. "Ask for the Buster Call now..." Spandam snarls that it will destroy more than their enemies: "You'll be blown up, too... Along with Enies Lobby...!!" Franky refuses to believe such madness: "Don't be silly!! How could we be blown up by our own allies' attack!?" Robin asks, "What're you talking about!?" Spandam answers with the weight of her trauma: "Twenty years ago... just one attack took everything from me and ruined the lives of many people! That is the 'Buster Call'...!!"

Robin's fear is no longer only for herself. She looks at the Straw Hats and tells them that the same power that erased Ohara is now aimed at the friends she finally found. "That attack... is now aimed at the dear nakama that I've finally found." The more she wants to remain with them, the more dangerous her life becomes. "The more I wish to be with you, the more my fate will bare its fangs at you!!!" There is no sea where she can outrun it. "No matter what sea I go to, I have this great foe that I can't shake off!!!" Her enemy is not a person standing before her; it is something vast and hidden. "Cause my enemy is... the 'world'... and its 'darkness'...!!!"

Robin's confession spills out across the gap between her and her crew. "First, the incident with Aokiji!! And now, this...!! I've gotten you involved twice already...!!!" She is certain the burden will someday break even their kindness. "If this goes on forever, even good-natured people like you... will eventually consider me a burden!!! In time, you'll betray and abandon me!!!" That is the fear beneath everything: "That's what I'm most afraid of...!! That's why I didn't want you to come and save me!!!" If her life will only lead to loss, she would rather end it here. "If it's a life that I'll eventually lose, I want to just die right here, right now!!!" Franky, listening from beside her, laughs through the grim truth. "Wahahahahaha!! I see... that's so true!!"

Franky does not soften the danger. "Of course!! No one could think you're not a burden with all your problems!! Wahahahaha!!" Then the World Government itself is pointed out as the thing standing between Robin and her friends. "Look at that symbol, pirates!!!" Spandam shouts from beneath the flag. "That mark represents the unity of over 170 nations in the four seas and the Grand Line...!!! This is the World!!!" He wants the Straw Hats to understand their smallness before it. "Do you understand how insignificant you are to stand against us!? Do you understand how big of an organization is after her!?" Luffy's answer is calm and absolute. "I understand Robin's enemy very well!" Then he turns to his sniper. "Sogeking..." Sogeking answers, "Hrm?"

Luffy gives a single order that turns understanding into action: "Shoot that flag." Sogeking accepts without hesitation. "Roger!!" Sanji reacts in surprise, "Huh?" Sogeking raises his new weapon and announces it to the battlefield. "New weapon: the Great Pachinko called 'Kabuto.' Carefully observe its power!!!" He draws back, aims at the symbol of the World Government, and calls his attack: "Hissatsu..." "'Fire-Bird Star'!!!" A flaming shot launches across Enies Lobby toward the flag.

The Fire-Bird Star strikes the flag, and the World Government's symbol erupts in flame. The officials and soldiers can only stare. "!?" Cries break out: "Argh...!!" "Ah..." Robin, stunned by what she is seeing, whispers, "... No way." The onlookers understand the meaning immediately. "They've... done it...!!" "They've really done it now~~!!!" One voice asks the question hanging over the battlefield: "Do they even understand the meaning of attacking that flag...!!?"

The flag burns above Enies Lobby, and Luffy stands by the choice completely. "I'd be happy to live with that!!!" The meaning becomes undeniable: "The pirates have... declared war... against the World Government~!!!" Robin looks on in disbelief, and Franky is overwhelmed by the sheer recklessness of it. "Are you bastards insane!!? Don't you dare to even dream that you'd survive having the world as your enemy!!!" But the Straw Hats have already chosen Robin over the world that hunts her.

With the flag burning behind them, Luffy calls across the distance: "Robin!!!" He refuses to let the Government, the past, or even her fear decide for her. "I haven't heard it from you yet!" Everyone waits as he demands the one truth she has been denying herself. "Say you wanna live!!!" Shock ripples through the battlefield: "...!?" "!!" Her friends call to her too: "... Robin!" "Robin!!!"

Robin hears the word that has always felt forbidden. "Live...!?" Her memories answer with voices that told her the opposite. Spandine once condemned her: "You must not live in this world, Robin!!!" Another voice burned the same sentence into her life: "Your mere existence... is your greatest sin, Robin!!" She thinks of Olvia and Saul, of the impossible wish she had buried. "I thought it was something I couldn't wish for..." Saul's promise returns: "Sumday, surely..." "The sea is vast..." Robin had once chosen despair and said, "I want to die!!!" because, as she admits, "Nobody has ever allowed me that." But Saul's hope remains: "Yer 'nakama' will appear to protect you!!!" A voice urges her to trust the man before her: "Trust in Luffy!!!" Robin begins to let herself say it. "If I can really..." "Declare my wish... I..."

Robin finally breaks. Tears streaming down her face, she chooses the life she had been told she could never ask for. "I WADDA LIVE!!!" The words carry across Enies Lobby, raw and unmistakable. She asks the Straw Hats for the future she had stopped believing in: "...!! Take me with you" "To the sea!!!" Franky, unable to hold back his emotion, sobs from beside her: "Woooooh, I love you guys, damn it~~!!!"

The drawbridge begins to come down, opening the path between the Straw Hats and Robin. "The drawbridge is lowering!!" Someone realizes the allies below have done their part: "I guess they've done their job well." Panic and anticipation rise together. "They're coming!" "I... I'm trembling from the excitement..." Another voice screams, "Gyaaaaah, don't come!!!" The order goes out: "Hurry up and lower it." The enemy stares at Luffy's expression and mutters, "What an evil face...!!" As the bridge drops with a cracking sound, Luffy launches the charge: "Here we go!!!"

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