Author's Note: Characters may be a little OOC and it's been a few years since I've watched One Piece but an AMV really inspired me to right this chapter.

Chapter 2: Robin

When the screams wrench through the air like cutting blades, when the sound of fighting and hurting and excitement lulls and Robin falls, there is silence.

A silence so loud that it stuns all in the vicinity just by the duality of a loud, desperate silence.

Zoro, the ever-loyal first mate, does not stop. He glides through the battleground killing all the enemies in his wake. He is a flash of blades and just as cold as the metal of his swords. He is not rage and fire, that is not his role.

He is the silence in the night, the wind of the storm, fast and ruthless and so very deadly. The wind does not care about collateral damage, it simply does. That is what Zoro was before Luffy found him and as much as Luffy is a friend, he is also a boundary, for as long as there is Luffy there is a tether keeping Zorro from simply fighting and raging and destroying and never stopping (for who did he have to stop for, before Luffy and his crewmates?).

Sanji doesn't even bother with the enemies, going to Robin first. He loves his female crewmates like he loves all his crewmates, although he'll never admit it. He is too much of a gentleman to be serious about his passes at uninterested women but he does have a reputation to keep up…and the others simply understand. His reaction to woman too engrained, too much of a façade and defense mechanism, to change now.

He kicks and breaks and shatters when he has to but he does not stop. Quick and swift and as deadly as a lightning strike, he takes a moment to relish the fact Nami, Chopper, and Usopp are gathering supplies and that only Zoro, Robin, and Luffy came with him to explore the island. Not because they were a burden or unworthy but because the fallout of this was going to be worse than that time with Smoker. There was no prior relationship with this bastard to save him, no ignorance in his actions.

To attack Robin when their backs were turned all over a simple bounty (and not even Luffy's bounty but Robin's herself, thinking her weaker simply because she was a woman) was unacceptable.

There was no pity for this weak-willed pig of a man in him, if Luffy would punch a celestial dragon for the insult against a new friend what would he do for one as old as Robin? For all that she was any enemy to start, she is a treasured friend now.

Robin knows as she falls that something is going to happen. She is prepared for the yelling, the screaming, the rage; but not the silence.

She looks up from her position on the ground, where she fell from the surprise attack from a fat, drunkard with his unkempt hair and grease-creased clothes who had a gang following him.

She is not hurt, although something inside of her burns at being caught unaware because she is a pirate and how can she protect her friends if she can't even protect herself? but her injury is not why Luffy is angry.

No, it is the fact that someone attacked her when her back was turned and Luffy did not see it coming that has him so enraged. When she sees Luffy she stills – this is what others see when Luffy tests his will against theirs (she'd seen an inkling of it when he faced Crocodile but nothing so tempered, forged even hotter, even more ruthless with the death of Ace) Robin is normally fighting right alongside Luffy so she never sees- but now she does and the look in his eyes makes her wonder how anyone could ever doubt he would be Pirate King.

Luffy steps forward and the world blurs and in that moment there is no time or space or impossibility.

There is Luffy.

And there is his will.

The Haki pouring off of him drops the people in the vicinity (excluding his crew, because he could never hurt them in anyway) and he gets right in the face of her attacker and bears his teeth.

It is not a smile, it is not a grimace, it is not the bearing of teeth a predator gives its pray. It is the bearing of teeth a shark would give a plankton, an abject predator looking at something so weak their presence is a nuisance at most, nothing to worry about. Then he leans forward and whispers in that greasy man's ear and the man's eyes go wide with panic and Luffy steps back.

Quietly. Cleanly. The opposite of what Luffy embodies (but Luffy has always been the shadow, and many people will argue and say he is the light, and Robin can see their point, but Luffy is the one eclipsing his enemies and surging ahead to meet the next enemy, next challenge (the light) long before it ever reaches where it was trying to go.)

Luffy is the one who changes people, eclipses things in the past with his smile and words and charm. And Luffy is also the one who hides beneath a veneer, oh it is not all fake (he is not that good) but it is not all truth.

Luffy is very smart but not in the way intelligence is normally judged, he knows people. Their joys and triumphs and their fears and weaknesses. Being a shadow does not mean Luffy is dark or sad or not his bright, optimistic self (dark isn't inherently bad just as light isn't inherently good) but Luffy simply has more in common with a shadow.

Luffy runs no risk of burning himself or his friends to ashes for his endeavors, he cloaks them, keeps the safe, and he would never climb too close to the sun for there is no too close for Luffy.

(Besides, how could Luffy stand to be the Sun if he could not even reignite the flame of his brother?)

The grimy leader stays, in shock where Luffy had talked to him, threatened him, and the man's gang is piled around him, dead or alive Robin does not know (and does not care too). Instead, she gingerly steps forward with Sanji hovering behind her and Zoro playing both lookout and silent support and grasps Luffy's shoulder.

He stiffness at her touch, his eyes serious.

"I was thinking about Tuna for lunch." Robin says, instead of all the other things she could say. Things like thank you, it's enough, you are my family Luffy but you can't always predict everything, because really her sentence says all of that if you know how to look.

"TUNA! TUNA! Come on Sanji I'm HUNGRY!" Luffy sings as he takes a bouncing step forward but not before squeezing Robin's hand. Luffy has always been good at reading what is going on underneath the words said and Robin loves him for it.

Robin knows this incident will stick with Luffy for a while, the potential to lose any member of his crew hits him so much harder after Ace's death, but she also knows he'll get over it and that he will let her fight her own battles unless she asks for help or desperately needs it.

That just endears her to her captain more. Losing, being tricked or fooled or distracted enough to miss seeing an attack, and he will defend you and he will not blame your skills but simply see to it that you train more, are more aware. Luffy makes them stronger.

And that is why Robin, why the crew of the Straw Hats will defend him to their deaths (any maybe even beyond that).