Edensphere Application
PLAYER INFO
NAME: Jennifer
CONTACT: PM this account
LOCATION/TIME ZONE: EST
CURRENT CHARACTERS, if any: Sha Gojyo/Smoke and Tsuri/Rauxes
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME: Nico Robin
SERIES: One Piece
RESERVED: Y
WISHLIST: N
PERSONALITY:
Robin's most basic personality trait is that of an intelligent scholar; she knows a lot, and what she doesn't she researches. She was born on the island-city of Ohara in the ocean known as West Blue, a place renowned for its experts in the field of archaeology. Robin spent the 6 years without her mother studying to pass an exam so that she would be officially recognized as an archaeologist. Her goals were two-fold: she wanted to be recognized by the scholars on Ohara as a colleague so they would help her learn how to read Poneglyphs*, and ultimately - as an archaeologist who could read Poneglyphs - Robin thought she'd be able to join her wayward mother. The Oharan scholars were very encouraging of her natural curiosity and love of learning. She was able to deal with the poor treatment by her aunt at home and the nasty things that the villagers said to her because she looked forward to her time with the archaeologists, particularly their lead researcher Prof. Clover.
*Poneglyphs are black cubes with writing on them that resembles Egyptian and Mezzo-American characters; the writing is like Latin in that the characters comprise a dead language. Finding out what the Poneglyphs say - or "The True History of the Void Century" - and why it is forbidden to study them is an ultimate goal of Robin's that she inherited from the Oharan archaeologists, including her mother.
As a result of her dedication from an early age, Robin is a highly educated woman with a passing knowledge of many different fields, but a deeper knowledge of the ones closely related to archaeology. She has shown an extensive knowledge of history, folklore, the military structure of the Marines (principle army force to be reckoned with in One Piece), and she readily absorbs information from others. She has a strong bond with Franky (the Strawhats' shipwright), a great deal of respect for Tony Tony Chopper (the Strawhats' doctor), and is also close to the only other female on the ship, Nami (the Strawhats' navigator). As a result, she has a bit more knowledge of those areas - shipbuilding / general mechanical tinkering, medicine / herbology, and weather-forecasting / cartography - than might be expected of her.
Robin can read very quickly, retain what she's read, has no qualms about asking for clarification on unfamiliar things, and takes extensive notes. Her idea of a pleasant afternoon would be sitting outside alone on a nice day and just reading for hours. She seems to be more fond of non-fiction than fiction, but has an appreciation for the fact that what some people may call fiction is not always that.
The second facet to Robin's personality developed along with her Devil Fruit Powers. The extent of these powers will be detailed in the abilities section, but the basic premise is that Robin can duplicate parts of her body. Her power comes from the "Hana-Hana" fruit, with 'hana' meaning flower, so her power treats her body like the main tree/root to a plant and allows Robin to make 'blossoms' appear on or near her body. Most often, Robin manifests additional hands/arms, feet/legs, eyes, or ears. Robin gained this power before the time she was 8 years old, and it's never explicitly stated how, but given her maturity at such a young age, it probably wasn't an accident. Many people with Devil Fruit powers only use them during battle, or only discover the most powerful aspects of their fruit powers when their lives are threatened.
Since Robin has had this power almost her entire life, she has had the opportunity to fully explore her abilities outside of combat as well. She regularly manifests additional limbs to aid with daily tasks, or sometimes simply to play a small prank on someone / watch them freak out at her dismembered-yet-moving limbs. She has a morbid sense of humor in that regard and, combined with a generally pessimistic/realistic view of situations, she often flusters others by pointing out gross or ominously factual details. An example is when Nami wondered aloud if Zoro (another Strawhat crew member) was eaten by a monster; Robin's response was that the area would be red had he truly been eaten. In conjunction with her fast reflexes and quick wit, Robin's powers also allow her to react to situations with a calm demeanor. For example, if someone drops a plate, Robin would simply create a hand out of the floor to catch it without budging an inch or appearing distressed.
This power also requires Robin to be an accomplished multi-tasker, as every conjured body part must be moved independently. She can make large clusters of body parts work together like a swarm of nanomachines, but the more she creates the more intensely she must focus. In her day-to-day activities, when she would only ever summon a few extra body parts at a time, she is able to use her powers without any visible effort. The other extreme is when she summons 100 extra body parts at once - in that instance, she usually closes her eyes, keeps her arms close to her chest, and the mental strain is reflected in her facial expression and body language.
Robin was once a precocious young girl until her homeland was razed by an attack from the World Government's "army" (Marines), using a battle plan known as the "Buster Call." A brief reunion with her mother was heartwrenching, Prof. Clover tried and failed to protect Robin from the Government, her new friend - a giant named Jaguar D. Saul - died trying to protect her, and the Marines ransacked the Tree of Knowledge. The few things she'd loved in Ohara were destroyed, and so began her 20 years on the run. The formerly well-renowned scholars were dubbed "Demons of Ohara," and Robin was known to be one of them. Coupled with her identity as a Devil Fruit user, she was soon known as "The Last Demon of Ohara."
Her 20 years on the run made her an extremely distrusting person and very solitary. Before Ohara's destruction, Saul had taught her that laughing even in bad situations was a way to cheer up, but she stopped mimicking his way of laughing within her first few years as a fugitive. For years she was told that the whole world would be better off if she was dead. Soon Robin's only goal in life was to learn as much about the Poneglyphs as she could - to carry on the legacy of her mother, Prof. Clover, and the rest of the Oharan scholars. Her drive to accomplish that goal ran deep, but it was also all she had to look forward to in life. She started to loathe the government's policy of "absolute justice" and developed her powers not just as defensive tools, but in ways that were ruthlessly painful or horrifying to her opponents. Shock value became just another combat tactic. Her moral alignment had completely shifted; she had no qualms lying, stealing, killing, or doing any of a number of other unsavory deeds to accomplish her missions. She never felt any loyalty to Crocodile or Baroque Works or any of her other past associations; she didn't trust anyone by that point.
Yet Luffy saved Robin twice, the second time with the help of all the Strawhats plus Franky on Enies Lobby. After that, Robin's friendship with the Strawhats was sealed. She'd gone from thinking there was no place in the world for her to belong - and essentially suicidal thoughts - to wanting them in her life more than anything. Whether romantically or platonically, Robin's bond with the character Franky is unique and strong due to the events of the Water 7 / Enies Lobby arc, because Franky wasn't even a member of the Strawhats at the time he put his life on the line for her sake.
In terms of how her pre-Strawhats life reflects in her current personality, she is still pretty ruthless in battle and uses her powers to force her enemies into painful submissive poses. This is okay with the Strawhats because they are pirates and the people who confront them are often Marines. By Captain Luffy's personal honor code, Robin does not involve normal citizens in combat by choice - however, she'd be quick to retaliate if they attacked her. She still distrusts non-Strawhats and deceives them when necessary, though this will be a bit muted in Edensphere. She also does not willingly volunteer personal information, feelings, or anecdotes except in very rare moments. For example, she admitted to Brook (the most recent addition to the crew as of her canon point) that she too had felt "unworthy" to be part of the crew and tried to find her place within it. He hadn't been around for the Water 7 / Enies Lobby arc, and no one told him about it, but what she volunteered also paled in comparison to what actually happened and how she'd felt at the time.
In Edensphere, she'll still be a very private person, but she’ll smile & laugh more, and not have a desperate need to feel safe and secure before she can unwind a little. Her morbid humor, dry wit, and pessimistic/logical outlook on situations will remain. She still won’t emote nearly as emphatically as her canon-mates and will often be the "straight-man" in comic situations. For the most part her bitterness went away, replaced with a grudging reminder to let herself have fun every once in awhile. To the casual observer, Robin may still look like a "party-pooper" type, but she'll have come a long way from how she was while in Baroque Works. She’ll definitely retain an intuitive sense of how to get by on her own after all her years as a fugitive; she’ll have more to guide her than some of the other Strawhats when it comes to a solitary lifestyle.
To people who haven't proven their friendship, Robin will generally be neutral-polite with a side of curt curiosity. She's much more interested in gaining knowledge from others than revealing information about herself, but that aspect of her personality may soften with the memory loss. She'll probably come off as aloof or picky when it comes to helping others - she’ll have to have a vested interest before assisting someone. Having gripped with borderline suicide tendencies multiple times in her life, her resolve to survive and reunite with the Strawhats (even if she doesn’t remember them) will run very deep - enough that she’ll fight tenaciously to stay alive. She has the potential to be a dedicated ally, but only to people willing to consistently prove they care about her.
TIMELINE: Anime-verse, episode 455: after Robin is released from the prison on Tequila Wolf by the Revolutionaries
BACKGROUND:
[CHILDHOOD LOSS]
In the world of One Piece, more of the surface is water than even our world, so the World Government - exactly what it sounds like - is made up of city-sized societies that take up whole islands and nations that take up small continents. Robin was born on the island nation of Ohara in West Blue. When she was very young, her father died, but her mother - Nico Olvia - was still around. When she was only 2, her mother left the island with a research team. After that, but before she was 8 years old, she ate the "Hana Hana" Fruit, explained in detail in her Abilities section. Given her maturity at even age 8, it's unlikely she ate the fruit by mistake, and nothing else is known about how she came into possession of the fruit.
Devil Fruit users are regarded as powerful beings to be wary of, in most places. In Robin's case, she was regarded as a monster, a demon, etc. This may have been in part due to the local culture, or in part due to instigation by one of Robin's caretakers, or a combination of both. Her mother's brother and his wife were saddled with Robin when her mother left, and the wife had a decidedly unfavorable opinion of Robin. A Cinderella/Harry Potter story, essentially. So even before Robin could remember, she was ostracized by her hometown. She sought solace with the scholars of Ohara, whose headquarters was a library inside of a gigantic tree, and they called this HQ the Tree of Knowledge. No one was more important than the lead researcher Prof. Clover, who became her father figure.
It was for that reason that the destruction of Ohara traumatized Robin so much. At age 8, she became the sole survivor of an effort by the World Government to wipe Ohara and its research off the map. Prof. Clover and his colleagues had not only learned to read the Poneglyphs*, they'd also done enough research on the Void Century** to develop a theory on what the Poneglyphs were and why the World Government forbade people to learn about the Void Century through reading them. Prof. Clover's theory was that the Poneglyphs were written by a people that were subjugated by what would become The World Government. Against Prof. Clover's wishes, Robin listened to him say this aloud. In the chaos, Robin managed only a brief reunion with her mother. Robin had wanted to be with her mother for so long that she tried everything she knew to get Olvia to acknowledge Robin as her daughter: Robin said she was a recognized archaeologist now, and that she could read the Poneglyphs.
*Poneglyphs are like Egyptian and Latin in that they are characters comprising a dead language.
** The Void Century (or Lost Century) is a period of time 800-700 years into the past from the start of the series. Like it sounds, there is no formal history recorded for this period of time, but just as it ended, the World Government emerged as the sole power on their planet.
Unfortunately, by announcing all that, and then listening in on Clover's theory, Robin made herself as much a target for the World Government as any of the other scholars. Thanks to a giant friend by the name of Jaguar D. Saul, Robin was able to escape the initial attempts by members of the Marines (the World Government's "army") to kill her, but that meant parting from her mother yet again. As Saul ran away, Robin wailed - her mother, Prof. Clover, the archaeologists, the Tree of Knowledge… everything she'd loved in Ohara was being destroyed. Saul tried to explain it to her as best he could while they ran: that Ohara wasn't wrong to research, that her mother was a great woman, and to remember that some day she'd find friends who'd stand beside her in spite of the World Government's target on her back. Part of the reason it was so hard to believe Saul was because he became another victim of the destruction right before her eyes - he was encased in ice by Kuzan, a Devil Fruit user with the Marines. Robin fled, abandoning her last living friend to his death. For reasons that Robin still doesn't understand at an adult age, the same man who killed Saul - Kuzan - provided Robin with a boat to leave the island, and a lane in the water - using ice as buffers - to guide Robin's little boat to the next island.
[MORAL COMPASS SHIFT]
She became a fugitive for the next 20 years, with a bounty on her head of 79 million beri (OP's monetary system). For scope, in the Strawhat crew, Robin has the third-highest bounty after the main character / captain of the Strawhats (Luffy) and his right-hand-man (Zoro). When Robin first joined the Strawhats on their ship, hers was higher than Zoro's. People wondered what Robin must have done to earn such a bounty. Normal civilians only heard that Ohara had been obliterated by the Marines, and so assumed that it must have been with good reason. The formerly well-renowned scholars were dubbed 'the Demons of Ohara,' and Robin was known to be one of them. They also heard that the Buster Call - the ultimate Marine attack force of 5 vice admirals and ten ships - wasn't enough to kill Robin. The Marines started rumors that she had sunk 6 ships in order to justify her bounty and get the public to help track her down.
Robin joined the Warlord (Government-backed Pirate Lord) Crocodile's Baroque Works at age 24, but it wasn't her first secret society; by then she'd become a specialist in assassination, leaving a trail of societies in her wake that were all crushed by the Marines seeking her out. Yet Robin survived each assault. Crocodile's ultimate goal was an ancient weapon called Pluton, which he believed was somewhere in the country of Arabasta and that directions to it were inscribed on a Poneglyph. Robin had no problem leading Crocodile to it - what she did when she got there was a different matter entirely.
Robin first met the Strawhat crew as they were leaving Whiskey Peak - at the time it was Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Princess Vivi, and Vivi's duck mount Carue. She'd been sent there to convince the Strawhats to not help Princess Vivi and to leave well enough away from Arabasta, telling them they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Through their association with Princess Vivi, Robin - as "Miss All-Sunday" - was aware that the Strawhats knew who the leader of Baroque Works was, by his real name and not his alias of "Mr. 0," yet she took no actions against them, speaking to her lack of loyalty to Crocodile. With the Strawhats thought dead - at the hands of other Baroque Works agents - Robin helped Crocodile start a civil war in Arabasta, all in the interest of discovering information about the Void Century from a Poneglyph. In the midst of Crocodile's plans, the Strawhats reappeared, but Crocodile defeated Luffy and left him for dead. He would have drowned in sand, but Robin intervened - apparently for no other reason than because he had inherited "the Will of D," referring both to what looks like his middle initial in "Monkey D. Luffy" and to a trait that reputedly comes along with the name 'D.' She chose to see how a bit of folklore would develop in a person rather than help kill one of Crocodile's enemies, though her early friendship with Jaguar D. Saul may have also had something to do with it.
[GIVING UP ON LIFE]
When at long last Robin and Crocodile found the Poneglyph, Robin chose to lie to Crocodile and say that it only recorded Arabasta's history and didn't actually specify anything about Pluton. She tried to kill him, but he retaliated and nearly killed her in the process. The reason she'd been trying to locate that particular Poneglyph was because she was looking for information on the True History of the Void Century. She'd thought the Poneglyph in Arabasta would tell her that, not believing it would say anything about Pluton. When it did turn out to be information about Pluton, Robin simply lied about it out of spite. For 20 years Robin had sought information on the Poneglyphs, her only lead ending in failure. She resolved to die there, her spirit broken; she was exhausted from her life as a fugitive and felt like she'd never accomplish her dream while running. Against her wishes, Luffy saved Robin from being buried alive.
[LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN]
With nothing to go back to, Robin chose to stow away on Luffy's ship. It wasn't for any feelings of loyalty towards her savior; she actually felt Luffy owed her a debt for ignoring her death wish, and demanded he let her stay on the ship. To her surprise, Luffy agreed, declaring to the crew that she was "not a bad person." Luffy intrigued Robin on an academic level, since she'd been so many years without positive relationships. She observed the crew without aiding them for a long time, and called all of them by their ship roles, not their names. She watched how they interacted with each other, how they reacted to Luffy's whims, and started to appreciate how different they were. Still, she treated them like a sociologist watching a live experiment. She didn't reveal personal information or recount stories of her past, and scarcely participated in some of the Strawhats more festive activities. Basically, she kept her distance emotionally in many ways.
That changed with the Skypiea arc, after the Rainbow Mist filler which essentially sent Robin and some of the Strawhats to a pocket dimension. Seemingly on a whim to aid them, she used her covert ops skills to get a lead on the mysterious Sky Island that Luffy so desperately wanted to find. After that, Robin continued to tag along with the crew and simply observe the strange Skypiea culture even as they all became 'criminals' in the eyes of the 'God' Enel. She went with Nami and Zoro to explore Skypiea's Upper Yard, and it was then that they made a discovery: Upper Yard used to be a part of another island, not in the sky! That meant that a legendary City of Gold - another thing Luffy wanted to find - was possibly somewhere on the Upper Yard. It wasn't Poneglyph-related, but it caught Robin's interest. It was the first time she'd been willing to support the Strawhats in their adventures. Soon the Strawhats managed to regroup and figured out the direction to head to look for the City of Gold, but had to wait to leave until morning. That night after dinner, Robin was still feeling very solitary and covert ops-minded as she warned them to put out the campfire, so they wouldn't give away their location. They put on a celebration instead with an even bigger bonfire. She watched in fascinated amusement as the other Strawhats danced and shouted and generally had a good time, eagerly awaiting the next day's adventures without fear.
The next day, Robin was the first to request being in the group going to the ruins of the City of Gold. They ended up separated, but Robin managed to defeat a man called Yama while drawing him away from some ruins, showing just how important protecting history was to her. She soon realized that what she thought was the City of Gold at first couldn't possibly be it because the size and topography were different. She discovered the lower half of the city, and was astonished to find another Poneglyph. It read: "We are those who will weave history, with the ringing of the Great Belfry." Robin posited that the City of Gold, Shandra, fought to protect the Poneglyph she found, and was destroyed by a great adversary as a result. It was a HUGE lead, and she knew there might be more if they found the Great Belfry. She had to help the Strawhats defeat Enel to do it, but when they did she got another clue. The Belfry itself only told of another weapon, Poseidon, and she thought it was another dead end, until some writing on the side was pointed out to her. It implied that the legendary Pirate King Gol D. Roger had found that Poneglyph once as well, and she suspected he learned the True History that she was searching for. She realized that the fabled Rio Poneglyph was not just one Poneglyph; instead, it was what was formed when all of the Poneglyphs were read as one. According to Roger's writing, his completed text was on Raftel - the same island at the end of the Grand Line that the Strawhats were aiming for as Luffy sought out Roger's treasure, One Piece.
Feeling she owed a great debt to the Strawhats, she started to think of them more as companions than accidental acquaintances. Her loyalty to the Strawhats was tempered during the Davy Back fights and an instance of temporary memory-loss, but her desire to live and her place in the crew were still fragile. The World Government decided to exploit that.
[GIVING UP ON LIFE: THE MARTYRDOM REDUX]
Robin was confronted by secret agents of the World Government in the island-city of Water 7, and given an ultimatum: help the agents (group name CP9) and turn herself in afterwards, or they would use the Buster Call to wipe out the Strawhats and Water 7 too. No matter what she chose, she felt her bright future with the Strawhats was over - that they had no chance of standing up to the World Government. Thinking she had no other choice that would keep her first real companions in 20 years safe, she agreed to CP9's terms, seemingly betraying the Strawhats. She helped CP9 in a plot to harm the mayor of Water 7, in hopes he'd reveal the plans to another ancient weapon that were entrusted to him. When that failed, she left with them for Enies Lobby as agreed. The Strawhats and Franky tried to stop the train transporting her, but the end result was Franky getting captured as well.
Upon reaching Enies Lobby, the leader of CP9 named Spandam started to physically and mentally abuse Robin. He told her repeatedly how she didn't deserve to live and that he was justified in treating her like trash because she was a criminal. Remember that her 'criminal' status came from academic pursuits, then fleeing her own destruction as a child. Spandam's cruel treatment only strengthened Robin's resolve to be a martyr for the Strawhats.
For the second time, Luffy denied Robin her death wish. He told her, while she was still Spandam's captive: "Do me a favor, Robin! Whether you wanna die or not, I don't care what you say! Say that kind of thing while you're by our side!" She finally admitted to the Strawhats that her greatest fear of all was being abandoned by them at some point down the road; she wanted to die as their friend by helping them, rather than dying alone. The Strawhats countered her fear by setting a World Government flag on fire. They were effectively promising to take on anyone and everyone who stood against them - so long as Robin would return to them. That action brought her to tears and finally convinced her that they were indeed her friends. It was hard for her to comprehend - because she hadn't met one person in 20 years who wanted to her to enjoy life. Finally, her friend Saul's words from 20 years ago were being fulfilled. At last she trusted in the Strawhats, believed in their strength and the bonds they'd forged with her. At Luffy's insistence to speak her true feelings, she cried out to them: "I WANT TO LIVE!! TAKE ME OUT TO SEA WITH YOU!!"
[LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN: THE TRUE FRIENDSHIP REDUX]
All six Strawhats plus Franky were happy to hear it, expressing it in their own ways, and the seven of them joined forces to rescue Robin. She took some more abuse from Spandam along the way, and he accidentally triggered the Buster Call, but this time around Robin started to fight back. She couldn't use her abilities due to the special handcuffs on her wrists, but she was no longer the quiet and amenable hostage Spandam remembered. When Robin was finally rescued and reunited with all of the Strawhats, she got her revenge on Spandam by breaking his back with her abilities.
Robin was with the Strawhats when the Going Merry finally broke in half, followed by Luffy giving it a viking funeral. Seeing the ship burn didn't hit her as hard as it hit the others, but it did open up a chance for the Strawhats to need a new ship. Franky offered to build his dream ship and give it to the Strawhats, but all of Franky's friends from Water 7 could pretty much tell that Franky wanted to go on the ship with the Strawhats. They begged the Strawhats to take Franky with them against his protests, but Luffy insisted that Franky come willingly - even if Franky wanted to in his heart, he had to come of his own accord. This led to Franky being the first recipient of genuine goodwill on Robin's part in the vein of "one good turn deserves another." He went through a lot of effort to ignore her death wishes and make her happier than she knew she could be, so Robin used her powers to 'force' Franky to join them. To Franky's friends, it looked like she hurt him so much that he was crying in pain and that Robin wouldn't let up until he boarded the ship. In reality, Robin only hurt him a little and then stopped, but Franky continued acting like she was hurting him - it was a cover to let out all of his tears. That way, he could do something he wouldn't have been able to bring himself to do without crying: leave Water 7 and pursue his personal dreams.
In the Thriller Bark arc, Robin was - par for the course - not very freaked out or shocked by all of the ghoulish, nightmarish things the Strawhats encountered, including the skeleton who would become their ninth crew member, Brook. She in fact called a zombie that looked like the legendary Cerebus "cute." Of note is the fact that Robin is one of the few people to know what happened between Zoro and the Warlord Bartholomew Kuma. The Strawhats had managed to defeat the Warlord Gecko Moria who ran Thriller Bark and successfully get everyone's shadows back before the sun rose, but then Kuma showed up - while Luffy was unconscious. Kuma used an ability that knocked everyone out, hoping to just snatch Luffy and run. Robin found out the rest of the story later by eavesdropping, using her ability to create an ear on someone's back. Zoro asked Kuma to take his head in place of Luffy's, then Sanji woke up and asked the same, but Zoro knocked Sanji out. Then Kuma used a power that took all of Luffy's pain from the ending Thriller Bark battle and transferred it to Zoro. Out of respect for Zoro's loyalty to Luffy and endurance to withstand the pain transfer, Kuma let them all live. Robin never let on she knew. Later on, Brook's efforts to make himself "useful" and "worthy" of being part of the crew also struck a cord with Robin. All in all, the Thriller Bark events served to bond her tighter not only to the Strawhats as a whole, but especially the older members: Franky and Brook for the most part, but Zoro to a lesser extent as well.
When "Golden Lion" Shiki took Nami away, Robin was more than willing to help get her back. After they agreed to help the mermaid Caimie rescue her friend "Hatchan" from some slavers, the original five members of the Strawhats had to explain that Hatchi was a former enemy, but she had no qualms helping out when the rest of the Strawhats decided it was more for Caimie than it was for Hatchi. All in all, things were just business as usual - for an adventurous pirate crew, anyway - as they stepped onto the Sabaody peninsula. Before long, they were helping destroy a slavery auction house to save Caimie and going against the Celestial Dragon nobles, descendants of the World Government's founders.
It wasn't until the Strawhats had a chance to speak to Gol D. Roger's first mate - Silvers Rayleigh - that Robin had a new lead on any Poneglyph-related information since Skypiea. Rayleigh told her that Roger and he had indeed learned the True History of the Poneglyphs, but telling her straight out may ruin the impact of what the True History contained. He said he'd tell her if she still wanted to know - but she agreed with him, and willing left his presence without learning a single new bit of Poneglyph information herself. The contrast with her reactions in Arabasta is striking, but that's how much the Strawhats had come to mean to her. She was willing to spend more time learning about the Poneglyphs herself because she had the Strawhats to support her. According to Rayleigh, all they had to do was wait 3 days and he'd have their ship ready to continue on their journey, because he had to coat their ship to allow it to go underwater. How that worked they wouldn't find out in the near future, because tragedy struck before the first day was done.
[THE SEPARATION]
Bartholomew Kuma appeared before the Strawhats again and used his Paw-Paw Devil Fruit power to start "repelling" the Strawhats one by one. It didn't kill them - which is what they all thought it did at first - but rather sent each of them flying across the OP world. Robin was the second to last one to get "repelled," so she saw all seven of the other Strawhat members get stripped away from the group. It was an extremely emotional parting for everyone, and Robin reached out to Luffy as her last action on the Sabaody peninsula before she was repelled.
Being apart from the Strawhats was pretty upsetting for Robin, given their significance as the only friends she'd had since she was 8 years old. She wanted more than anything else to reunite with them, but she was also an intelligent enough woman to acknowledge that it may take a great deal of planning and effort to make that happen. However, the bonds of friendship were strong enough that she believed a reunion would happen, rather than wallowing and wondering if it was even possible. In canon, it's a 2-year gap before she reunites with them, but I'm pulling Robin from before then - only because her last appearance is in episode 455. It was just one scene before she's handed the newspaper with Luffy's picture-message in it that the Strawhats will be meeting in 2 years instead of the previously agreed on 3 days.
ABILITIES:
Like all Devil Fruit powers in One Piece, Robin's power comes in the form of a simple concept, but one which has many varied applications. A Devil Fruit is simply a kind of magical, edible object that grants one new trait to a person's body. In Robin's case, her "Hana Hana" power is the ability to reproduce parts of her body, like many flowers sprouting from the main body of a single plant. Since Robin can use this power in so many different ways, I'm going to try to break down the constraints of the power first, then list her most common specific applications for the power. I'm going to use "blossom" as the generic term for a body part that Robin has manifested using her power, rather than the part of her real body.
How many extra 'blossoms' can she manifest? The most Robin has used in canon at that canon point is 100, and she denotes such skills with the vocal component: "Cien Fleurs." The limit seems to be "as many as Robin can concentrate on using at once," since it goes up to one thousand later on. As I stated in her Personality section, Robin has apparently adapted incredible multi-tasking skills for this expressed purpose, thus being able to use 100 separate blossoms at once. As she approaches the 100 mark, the more inclined she is to make the blossoms act as one unit rather than going off in 100 different directions. As I also stated in the Personality section, if Robin is only using a few extra blossoms, then she can get away with manifesting and directing the blossoms without any visible effort.
Where can she make these blossoms appear? On her own body, on other people's bodies, on physical objects, and on any matter packed tight enough to act as a solid - such as sand in a desert, not sand blowing in the air. I plan to post a Permissions entry in her journal for these situations, but still ask for permission in each instance of use. The actual distance from her body that she can manifest these blossoms is not stated in canon, but the starting point appears to be roughly 40 feet away from her - about 4 stories high. She absolutely must have some visual gauge for where to manifest her blossoms - she once summoned an ear on someone's back, but she could only see the front side of that person's body. A specific loophole in her power is that she can manifest blossoms on top of other blossoms, creating things like ropes and nets out of her blossom-arms strung together, as well as more complex creations detailed in the list below.
What body parts can she use for these blossoms? Theoretically, any part of her. My understanding is any named body part that has a fairly simple function for duplication purposes. For example, she most often manifests hands/arms, feet/legs, ears, and eyes. This does include regenerating body parts that have been severed, I think. It's theoretically possible that she could regenerate her whole body, but I'm pretty sure that would require her head/brain/heart to be intact. I'm willing to discuss it with moderation first if such a situation were ever to arise.
What are the physical limitations of the blossoms? The same as Robin's normal body parts; they are proportioned to exactly the same size and cannot stretch bigger or smaller. Similarly, blossomed hands/arms and feet/legs have the same weight-bearing capability as Robin's natural limbs. Each blossom is rooted to where Robin first manifested it, but she can freely dismiss them and create new ones. One extreme drawback to Robin's power is that she can feel any pain or ailment directed at one of her blossoms, in a proportionally smaller quantity. This isn't a big deal for little cuts and bruises - she'd feel it, but it wouldn't reflect much on her body. However, if someone were to break a blossom-arm, she'd definitely recoil in pain, probably create an opening for her opponent to exploit, and it'd look like she sprained or fractured one of her own arms. If the damage is severe enough - especially multiplied through many extra blossoms - Robin would pass out from the perceived pain, even though her natural body remained mostly intact, albeit bleeding profusely and possibly a real broken limb or two.
What are the verbal/somatic requirements for Robin to use her powers? It depends on how many blossoms Robin is manifesting along with the amount of stress she's under - both of these compounded is the amount of concentration required. If she needs very little concentration, then she doesn't have to say or do anything to use her powers. Specifically, Robin rarely says a command phrase for anything less than six manifested blossoms. However, if she requires medium to great concentration - either because she's in a battle or because she's just using that many blossoms - then she says and does things that bolster her concentration. She doesn't have to say or do anything - she chooses to do it because it helps her focus. When she speaks, she usually says the number of how many blossoms she's creating (in Spanish) combined with the world "Fleur" (Hana/flower in French). Her physical actions include crossing her two normal arms over chest in an X shape with her hands following that same line, palms up. She also usually keeps her legs togethers when standing, basically trying to pull her natural body in as tightly as she can.
Do her powers leave any lingering effects? When Robin first manifests her blossoms and when she dismisses them, a short trail of flower petals follows plus a scent of some kind that I've head-cannoned as lavender.
Below is the incomplete list of "techniques" Robin has developed using her powers. She often does not preface her spoken command with the name of the body part if using arms, since they are her most common blossomed body part. The other Spanish terms she has used are Ojos (eyes), Oreja (ears), Pierna (Feet), and Manos (hands).
- Grab: The 'technique' that Robin used to 'force' Franky to join the Strawhat crew - it speaks to her personality more than her battle prowess. She manifested two blossom-arms on each of Franky's upper thighs near his hips, then quite literally grabbed him by his balls. [YT link because the scene is so freaking funny]
- Twist: Robin uses 6 arms blossomed on her foe to sharply rotate the foe's upper body, severely injuring their back but not killing them outright.
- Flip: Robin uses 8 blossomed arms to force a foe to tumble backwards - two arms push them back, two arms grab their legs to make them stumbled backwards, and four more arms hold the foe down.
- Clutch: Robin uses hands blossomed near the opponent's chin and as many other arms as necessary to restrain her foe, then pulls the head back to snap the foe's neck. In more intense cases - such as Robin's revenge on Spandam - she can use the restraining arms to also break the foe's back.
- Linked arms: Robin can use as many blossomed arms as necessary to act like a rope or a net. She has used this both of her own sake and to reach out to others to catch them.
- Ladder limbs: Robin can manifest single blossoms or pairs in a line up a cliff or other sheer wall, but she has also used this - in both horizontal and vertical applications - to pass objects along like a bucket brigade.
- Marching feet: Robin can manifest blossom-feet or -legs below a person or object in order to move them.
- Calendula: Robin manifests 20 blossom-arms at her own elbows - 10 on each arm - and rotates them in a circle. While meant to be used as a kind of shield, because Robin can still feel pain from her blossoms, it isn't the most effective technique.
- Hang: Robin anchors the first of 30 blossom-arms at a high point and then links them together to form a rope. Not only does she try lift an opponent off the ground, she also tries to strangle them in a Clutch-like maneuver.
- Delphinium: Robin uses 100 blossom-arms in pairs manifested in a horizontal line to roll a person or object down the line. For opponents, this may be over a cliff or into a wall with great velocity.
- Big Tree: Robin uses 100 blossom-arms to act as one gigantic arm -- not fused together, simply a swarm of little arms. She follows this up with one of her more "normal" attacks that wouldn't work on larger opponents.
- Wings: Robin uses 100 blossom-arms to make two wings grow from her back - 50 for each wing. She can hover, glide downwards, or slowly ascend, but her time limit is only about 5 seconds long.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Void
DREAM:
There was no warmth to be found. She huddled with her face in her arms for a long time, just trying to forget all the cold enveloping her.
But something caught her attention - a faint sound, so small and distant she almost didn't catch it. Gradually it got louder, and she recognized the lull of the ocean and the salty scent as she started to rock this way and that. She actually smiled - this was familiar, comfortable, good.
Yet it was still dark - no stars in the sky to guide her anywhere, although it occurred to her she had nowhere she wanted to go. And there was nothing she wanted to see, so the stars were hardly a concern either.
"...uuuu uuurrrRRRRRRRRRRAAAARR!!"
Out of nowhere a gust rushed past her face. No, the whole boat was racing along the water on its own power. She tried to turn her head to look at the back of the boat, finding herself quite shocked by what she saw. There was a large doll-like teddy-bear-slash-lion, and it was roaring with its arms raised in triumph while sporting a straw hat that had fallen over its shoulders, held on by a string. The roar was what was pushing their boat along as it faced away from her. Next to him, facing her, was a teddy-bear-slash-ram sitting on the back edge of the boat and holding a rudder. The ram was also wearing a straw hat, but when it noticed her looking at it, its face broke into a smile. It took off its hat and held it out to her.
Curious, she reached out for the hat, but they suddenly hit a bump, or so she thought. The boat took a nose-dive and they were suddenly plummeting into the ocean. Her gut instinct told her this was not a good thing, for more than just an inability to breathe underwater.
Yet they weren't underwater - instead of feeling that weight all around her, she was falling in open air. Finally able to open her eyes, she noticed that a multitude of objects surrounded her: green & pale purple leaves, gold coins, scrap metal & tools, mandarin oranges, crushed cigarettes, ammo pellets, instrument strings, swords & sheaths, and mortars & pestles emptying out their crushed contents. Even as she fell, she could only smile at it all and murmur to herself, "My, what strange weather." After all, she'd forgotten the cold.
It all started to spiral around her in a whirlwind, aiming her now more horizontally than vertically. It all blurred together until she only saw white - and then she felt the impact. Instinctively, she knew it should've hurt more than it did, but when she sat up she saw why. Beneath her was snow - at least she thought it was. It felt like snow, tasted like snow, smelled like snow, but it was warm to the touch. In fact, she felt comfortable just laying down in the small crater she'd made, burrowing underneath the snow a little bit, and sleeping just like that.
JOURNAL SAMPLE:
I suppose I should be flattered that others would want to read what I write, but I must admit I'm not accustomed to it. Or I should say: I don't think I'm accustomed to it. My mind is a blank and I told that man as much, yet he insisted I draw upon all that I don't know to assume a new identity. An interesting concept, to say the least, placing so much emphasis on dreams.
But mine was not one of those all-important dreams, I assured him. That's most likely why he decided to just call me 'Void,' since he had to write down something, he said, and it was a little better than 'Blank.' Either one suited me fine, and likewise you all may use the names as you wish.
There's quite a bit that I feel is missing here - a literal void that the metaphorical one prevents me from placing, so instead I'll ask: what do you all do here, apart from writing? How do you spend your time, your lives?
ASPIRATIONS: I want to see how long I can keep Robin from learning about the parts of her past that make her so wary of the world and the people in it, including no memory of her powers at first. I'd like her to work at the Bookstore (spoke to Tisha about that already) at least for starters, and see if she can be a social adult for awhile. Hopefully, by the time she learns anything about her past, she won't immediately go underground, or even if she does she'll have a few characters by that point she'd trust as much as she does the Strawhats in canon. I have no plans to try to immediately reconnect her with cast-mates, instead allowing it to happen naturally over time.
PLOT PERMISSIONS:
ES 4th Wall: Yup
Chara 4th Wall: Yup
ES Mysteries: Yup
Memory Rec'v: Yup
Memory Distrib: Yup
Dream Distrib: Yup
Your Wilderness: There are so many interesting places that could be used XD But yes~
NAME: Jennifer
CONTACT: PM this account
LOCATION/TIME ZONE: EST
CURRENT CHARACTERS, if any: Sha Gojyo/Smoke and Tsuri/Rauxes
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME: Nico Robin
SERIES: One Piece
RESERVED: Y
WISHLIST: N
PERSONALITY:
Robin's most basic personality trait is that of an intelligent scholar; she knows a lot, and what she doesn't she researches. She was born on the island-city of Ohara in the ocean known as West Blue, a place renowned for its experts in the field of archaeology. Robin spent the 6 years without her mother studying to pass an exam so that she would be officially recognized as an archaeologist. Her goals were two-fold: she wanted to be recognized by the scholars on Ohara as a colleague so they would help her learn how to read Poneglyphs*, and ultimately - as an archaeologist who could read Poneglyphs - Robin thought she'd be able to join her wayward mother. The Oharan scholars were very encouraging of her natural curiosity and love of learning. She was able to deal with the poor treatment by her aunt at home and the nasty things that the villagers said to her because she looked forward to her time with the archaeologists, particularly their lead researcher Prof. Clover.
*Poneglyphs are black cubes with writing on them that resembles Egyptian and Mezzo-American characters; the writing is like Latin in that the characters comprise a dead language. Finding out what the Poneglyphs say - or "The True History of the Void Century" - and why it is forbidden to study them is an ultimate goal of Robin's that she inherited from the Oharan archaeologists, including her mother.
As a result of her dedication from an early age, Robin is a highly educated woman with a passing knowledge of many different fields, but a deeper knowledge of the ones closely related to archaeology. She has shown an extensive knowledge of history, folklore, the military structure of the Marines (principle army force to be reckoned with in One Piece), and she readily absorbs information from others. She has a strong bond with Franky (the Strawhats' shipwright), a great deal of respect for Tony Tony Chopper (the Strawhats' doctor), and is also close to the only other female on the ship, Nami (the Strawhats' navigator). As a result, she has a bit more knowledge of those areas - shipbuilding / general mechanical tinkering, medicine / herbology, and weather-forecasting / cartography - than might be expected of her.
Robin can read very quickly, retain what she's read, has no qualms about asking for clarification on unfamiliar things, and takes extensive notes. Her idea of a pleasant afternoon would be sitting outside alone on a nice day and just reading for hours. She seems to be more fond of non-fiction than fiction, but has an appreciation for the fact that what some people may call fiction is not always that.
The second facet to Robin's personality developed along with her Devil Fruit Powers. The extent of these powers will be detailed in the abilities section, but the basic premise is that Robin can duplicate parts of her body. Her power comes from the "Hana-Hana" fruit, with 'hana' meaning flower, so her power treats her body like the main tree/root to a plant and allows Robin to make 'blossoms' appear on or near her body. Most often, Robin manifests additional hands/arms, feet/legs, eyes, or ears. Robin gained this power before the time she was 8 years old, and it's never explicitly stated how, but given her maturity at such a young age, it probably wasn't an accident. Many people with Devil Fruit powers only use them during battle, or only discover the most powerful aspects of their fruit powers when their lives are threatened.
Since Robin has had this power almost her entire life, she has had the opportunity to fully explore her abilities outside of combat as well. She regularly manifests additional limbs to aid with daily tasks, or sometimes simply to play a small prank on someone / watch them freak out at her dismembered-yet-moving limbs. She has a morbid sense of humor in that regard and, combined with a generally pessimistic/realistic view of situations, she often flusters others by pointing out gross or ominously factual details. An example is when Nami wondered aloud if Zoro (another Strawhat crew member) was eaten by a monster; Robin's response was that the area would be red had he truly been eaten. In conjunction with her fast reflexes and quick wit, Robin's powers also allow her to react to situations with a calm demeanor. For example, if someone drops a plate, Robin would simply create a hand out of the floor to catch it without budging an inch or appearing distressed.
This power also requires Robin to be an accomplished multi-tasker, as every conjured body part must be moved independently. She can make large clusters of body parts work together like a swarm of nanomachines, but the more she creates the more intensely she must focus. In her day-to-day activities, when she would only ever summon a few extra body parts at a time, she is able to use her powers without any visible effort. The other extreme is when she summons 100 extra body parts at once - in that instance, she usually closes her eyes, keeps her arms close to her chest, and the mental strain is reflected in her facial expression and body language.
Robin was once a precocious young girl until her homeland was razed by an attack from the World Government's "army" (Marines), using a battle plan known as the "Buster Call." A brief reunion with her mother was heartwrenching, Prof. Clover tried and failed to protect Robin from the Government, her new friend - a giant named Jaguar D. Saul - died trying to protect her, and the Marines ransacked the Tree of Knowledge. The few things she'd loved in Ohara were destroyed, and so began her 20 years on the run. The formerly well-renowned scholars were dubbed "Demons of Ohara," and Robin was known to be one of them. Coupled with her identity as a Devil Fruit user, she was soon known as "The Last Demon of Ohara."
Her 20 years on the run made her an extremely distrusting person and very solitary. Before Ohara's destruction, Saul had taught her that laughing even in bad situations was a way to cheer up, but she stopped mimicking his way of laughing within her first few years as a fugitive. For years she was told that the whole world would be better off if she was dead. Soon Robin's only goal in life was to learn as much about the Poneglyphs as she could - to carry on the legacy of her mother, Prof. Clover, and the rest of the Oharan scholars. Her drive to accomplish that goal ran deep, but it was also all she had to look forward to in life. She started to loathe the government's policy of "absolute justice" and developed her powers not just as defensive tools, but in ways that were ruthlessly painful or horrifying to her opponents. Shock value became just another combat tactic. Her moral alignment had completely shifted; she had no qualms lying, stealing, killing, or doing any of a number of other unsavory deeds to accomplish her missions. She never felt any loyalty to Crocodile or Baroque Works or any of her other past associations; she didn't trust anyone by that point.
Yet Luffy saved Robin twice, the second time with the help of all the Strawhats plus Franky on Enies Lobby. After that, Robin's friendship with the Strawhats was sealed. She'd gone from thinking there was no place in the world for her to belong - and essentially suicidal thoughts - to wanting them in her life more than anything. Whether romantically or platonically, Robin's bond with the character Franky is unique and strong due to the events of the Water 7 / Enies Lobby arc, because Franky wasn't even a member of the Strawhats at the time he put his life on the line for her sake.
In terms of how her pre-Strawhats life reflects in her current personality, she is still pretty ruthless in battle and uses her powers to force her enemies into painful submissive poses. This is okay with the Strawhats because they are pirates and the people who confront them are often Marines. By Captain Luffy's personal honor code, Robin does not involve normal citizens in combat by choice - however, she'd be quick to retaliate if they attacked her. She still distrusts non-Strawhats and deceives them when necessary, though this will be a bit muted in Edensphere. She also does not willingly volunteer personal information, feelings, or anecdotes except in very rare moments. For example, she admitted to Brook (the most recent addition to the crew as of her canon point) that she too had felt "unworthy" to be part of the crew and tried to find her place within it. He hadn't been around for the Water 7 / Enies Lobby arc, and no one told him about it, but what she volunteered also paled in comparison to what actually happened and how she'd felt at the time.
In Edensphere, she'll still be a very private person, but she’ll smile & laugh more, and not have a desperate need to feel safe and secure before she can unwind a little. Her morbid humor, dry wit, and pessimistic/logical outlook on situations will remain. She still won’t emote nearly as emphatically as her canon-mates and will often be the "straight-man" in comic situations. For the most part her bitterness went away, replaced with a grudging reminder to let herself have fun every once in awhile. To the casual observer, Robin may still look like a "party-pooper" type, but she'll have come a long way from how she was while in Baroque Works. She’ll definitely retain an intuitive sense of how to get by on her own after all her years as a fugitive; she’ll have more to guide her than some of the other Strawhats when it comes to a solitary lifestyle.
To people who haven't proven their friendship, Robin will generally be neutral-polite with a side of curt curiosity. She's much more interested in gaining knowledge from others than revealing information about herself, but that aspect of her personality may soften with the memory loss. She'll probably come off as aloof or picky when it comes to helping others - she’ll have to have a vested interest before assisting someone. Having gripped with borderline suicide tendencies multiple times in her life, her resolve to survive and reunite with the Strawhats (even if she doesn’t remember them) will run very deep - enough that she’ll fight tenaciously to stay alive. She has the potential to be a dedicated ally, but only to people willing to consistently prove they care about her.
TIMELINE: Anime-verse, episode 455: after Robin is released from the prison on Tequila Wolf by the Revolutionaries
BACKGROUND:
[CHILDHOOD LOSS]
In the world of One Piece, more of the surface is water than even our world, so the World Government - exactly what it sounds like - is made up of city-sized societies that take up whole islands and nations that take up small continents. Robin was born on the island nation of Ohara in West Blue. When she was very young, her father died, but her mother - Nico Olvia - was still around. When she was only 2, her mother left the island with a research team. After that, but before she was 8 years old, she ate the "Hana Hana" Fruit, explained in detail in her Abilities section. Given her maturity at even age 8, it's unlikely she ate the fruit by mistake, and nothing else is known about how she came into possession of the fruit.
Devil Fruit users are regarded as powerful beings to be wary of, in most places. In Robin's case, she was regarded as a monster, a demon, etc. This may have been in part due to the local culture, or in part due to instigation by one of Robin's caretakers, or a combination of both. Her mother's brother and his wife were saddled with Robin when her mother left, and the wife had a decidedly unfavorable opinion of Robin. A Cinderella/Harry Potter story, essentially. So even before Robin could remember, she was ostracized by her hometown. She sought solace with the scholars of Ohara, whose headquarters was a library inside of a gigantic tree, and they called this HQ the Tree of Knowledge. No one was more important than the lead researcher Prof. Clover, who became her father figure.
It was for that reason that the destruction of Ohara traumatized Robin so much. At age 8, she became the sole survivor of an effort by the World Government to wipe Ohara and its research off the map. Prof. Clover and his colleagues had not only learned to read the Poneglyphs*, they'd also done enough research on the Void Century** to develop a theory on what the Poneglyphs were and why the World Government forbade people to learn about the Void Century through reading them. Prof. Clover's theory was that the Poneglyphs were written by a people that were subjugated by what would become The World Government. Against Prof. Clover's wishes, Robin listened to him say this aloud. In the chaos, Robin managed only a brief reunion with her mother. Robin had wanted to be with her mother for so long that she tried everything she knew to get Olvia to acknowledge Robin as her daughter: Robin said she was a recognized archaeologist now, and that she could read the Poneglyphs.
*Poneglyphs are like Egyptian and Latin in that they are characters comprising a dead language.
** The Void Century (or Lost Century) is a period of time 800-700 years into the past from the start of the series. Like it sounds, there is no formal history recorded for this period of time, but just as it ended, the World Government emerged as the sole power on their planet.
Unfortunately, by announcing all that, and then listening in on Clover's theory, Robin made herself as much a target for the World Government as any of the other scholars. Thanks to a giant friend by the name of Jaguar D. Saul, Robin was able to escape the initial attempts by members of the Marines (the World Government's "army") to kill her, but that meant parting from her mother yet again. As Saul ran away, Robin wailed - her mother, Prof. Clover, the archaeologists, the Tree of Knowledge… everything she'd loved in Ohara was being destroyed. Saul tried to explain it to her as best he could while they ran: that Ohara wasn't wrong to research, that her mother was a great woman, and to remember that some day she'd find friends who'd stand beside her in spite of the World Government's target on her back. Part of the reason it was so hard to believe Saul was because he became another victim of the destruction right before her eyes - he was encased in ice by Kuzan, a Devil Fruit user with the Marines. Robin fled, abandoning her last living friend to his death. For reasons that Robin still doesn't understand at an adult age, the same man who killed Saul - Kuzan - provided Robin with a boat to leave the island, and a lane in the water - using ice as buffers - to guide Robin's little boat to the next island.
[MORAL COMPASS SHIFT]
She became a fugitive for the next 20 years, with a bounty on her head of 79 million beri (OP's monetary system). For scope, in the Strawhat crew, Robin has the third-highest bounty after the main character / captain of the Strawhats (Luffy) and his right-hand-man (Zoro). When Robin first joined the Strawhats on their ship, hers was higher than Zoro's. People wondered what Robin must have done to earn such a bounty. Normal civilians only heard that Ohara had been obliterated by the Marines, and so assumed that it must have been with good reason. The formerly well-renowned scholars were dubbed 'the Demons of Ohara,' and Robin was known to be one of them. They also heard that the Buster Call - the ultimate Marine attack force of 5 vice admirals and ten ships - wasn't enough to kill Robin. The Marines started rumors that she had sunk 6 ships in order to justify her bounty and get the public to help track her down.
Robin joined the Warlord (Government-backed Pirate Lord) Crocodile's Baroque Works at age 24, but it wasn't her first secret society; by then she'd become a specialist in assassination, leaving a trail of societies in her wake that were all crushed by the Marines seeking her out. Yet Robin survived each assault. Crocodile's ultimate goal was an ancient weapon called Pluton, which he believed was somewhere in the country of Arabasta and that directions to it were inscribed on a Poneglyph. Robin had no problem leading Crocodile to it - what she did when she got there was a different matter entirely.
Robin first met the Strawhat crew as they were leaving Whiskey Peak - at the time it was Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Princess Vivi, and Vivi's duck mount Carue. She'd been sent there to convince the Strawhats to not help Princess Vivi and to leave well enough away from Arabasta, telling them they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Through their association with Princess Vivi, Robin - as "Miss All-Sunday" - was aware that the Strawhats knew who the leader of Baroque Works was, by his real name and not his alias of "Mr. 0," yet she took no actions against them, speaking to her lack of loyalty to Crocodile. With the Strawhats thought dead - at the hands of other Baroque Works agents - Robin helped Crocodile start a civil war in Arabasta, all in the interest of discovering information about the Void Century from a Poneglyph. In the midst of Crocodile's plans, the Strawhats reappeared, but Crocodile defeated Luffy and left him for dead. He would have drowned in sand, but Robin intervened - apparently for no other reason than because he had inherited "the Will of D," referring both to what looks like his middle initial in "Monkey D. Luffy" and to a trait that reputedly comes along with the name 'D.' She chose to see how a bit of folklore would develop in a person rather than help kill one of Crocodile's enemies, though her early friendship with Jaguar D. Saul may have also had something to do with it.
[GIVING UP ON LIFE]
When at long last Robin and Crocodile found the Poneglyph, Robin chose to lie to Crocodile and say that it only recorded Arabasta's history and didn't actually specify anything about Pluton. She tried to kill him, but he retaliated and nearly killed her in the process. The reason she'd been trying to locate that particular Poneglyph was because she was looking for information on the True History of the Void Century. She'd thought the Poneglyph in Arabasta would tell her that, not believing it would say anything about Pluton. When it did turn out to be information about Pluton, Robin simply lied about it out of spite. For 20 years Robin had sought information on the Poneglyphs, her only lead ending in failure. She resolved to die there, her spirit broken; she was exhausted from her life as a fugitive and felt like she'd never accomplish her dream while running. Against her wishes, Luffy saved Robin from being buried alive.
[LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN]
With nothing to go back to, Robin chose to stow away on Luffy's ship. It wasn't for any feelings of loyalty towards her savior; she actually felt Luffy owed her a debt for ignoring her death wish, and demanded he let her stay on the ship. To her surprise, Luffy agreed, declaring to the crew that she was "not a bad person." Luffy intrigued Robin on an academic level, since she'd been so many years without positive relationships. She observed the crew without aiding them for a long time, and called all of them by their ship roles, not their names. She watched how they interacted with each other, how they reacted to Luffy's whims, and started to appreciate how different they were. Still, she treated them like a sociologist watching a live experiment. She didn't reveal personal information or recount stories of her past, and scarcely participated in some of the Strawhats more festive activities. Basically, she kept her distance emotionally in many ways.
That changed with the Skypiea arc, after the Rainbow Mist filler which essentially sent Robin and some of the Strawhats to a pocket dimension. Seemingly on a whim to aid them, she used her covert ops skills to get a lead on the mysterious Sky Island that Luffy so desperately wanted to find. After that, Robin continued to tag along with the crew and simply observe the strange Skypiea culture even as they all became 'criminals' in the eyes of the 'God' Enel. She went with Nami and Zoro to explore Skypiea's Upper Yard, and it was then that they made a discovery: Upper Yard used to be a part of another island, not in the sky! That meant that a legendary City of Gold - another thing Luffy wanted to find - was possibly somewhere on the Upper Yard. It wasn't Poneglyph-related, but it caught Robin's interest. It was the first time she'd been willing to support the Strawhats in their adventures. Soon the Strawhats managed to regroup and figured out the direction to head to look for the City of Gold, but had to wait to leave until morning. That night after dinner, Robin was still feeling very solitary and covert ops-minded as she warned them to put out the campfire, so they wouldn't give away their location. They put on a celebration instead with an even bigger bonfire. She watched in fascinated amusement as the other Strawhats danced and shouted and generally had a good time, eagerly awaiting the next day's adventures without fear.
The next day, Robin was the first to request being in the group going to the ruins of the City of Gold. They ended up separated, but Robin managed to defeat a man called Yama while drawing him away from some ruins, showing just how important protecting history was to her. She soon realized that what she thought was the City of Gold at first couldn't possibly be it because the size and topography were different. She discovered the lower half of the city, and was astonished to find another Poneglyph. It read: "We are those who will weave history, with the ringing of the Great Belfry." Robin posited that the City of Gold, Shandra, fought to protect the Poneglyph she found, and was destroyed by a great adversary as a result. It was a HUGE lead, and she knew there might be more if they found the Great Belfry. She had to help the Strawhats defeat Enel to do it, but when they did she got another clue. The Belfry itself only told of another weapon, Poseidon, and she thought it was another dead end, until some writing on the side was pointed out to her. It implied that the legendary Pirate King Gol D. Roger had found that Poneglyph once as well, and she suspected he learned the True History that she was searching for. She realized that the fabled Rio Poneglyph was not just one Poneglyph; instead, it was what was formed when all of the Poneglyphs were read as one. According to Roger's writing, his completed text was on Raftel - the same island at the end of the Grand Line that the Strawhats were aiming for as Luffy sought out Roger's treasure, One Piece.
Feeling she owed a great debt to the Strawhats, she started to think of them more as companions than accidental acquaintances. Her loyalty to the Strawhats was tempered during the Davy Back fights and an instance of temporary memory-loss, but her desire to live and her place in the crew were still fragile. The World Government decided to exploit that.
[GIVING UP ON LIFE: THE MARTYRDOM REDUX]
Robin was confronted by secret agents of the World Government in the island-city of Water 7, and given an ultimatum: help the agents (group name CP9) and turn herself in afterwards, or they would use the Buster Call to wipe out the Strawhats and Water 7 too. No matter what she chose, she felt her bright future with the Strawhats was over - that they had no chance of standing up to the World Government. Thinking she had no other choice that would keep her first real companions in 20 years safe, she agreed to CP9's terms, seemingly betraying the Strawhats. She helped CP9 in a plot to harm the mayor of Water 7, in hopes he'd reveal the plans to another ancient weapon that were entrusted to him. When that failed, she left with them for Enies Lobby as agreed. The Strawhats and Franky tried to stop the train transporting her, but the end result was Franky getting captured as well.
Upon reaching Enies Lobby, the leader of CP9 named Spandam started to physically and mentally abuse Robin. He told her repeatedly how she didn't deserve to live and that he was justified in treating her like trash because she was a criminal. Remember that her 'criminal' status came from academic pursuits, then fleeing her own destruction as a child. Spandam's cruel treatment only strengthened Robin's resolve to be a martyr for the Strawhats.
For the second time, Luffy denied Robin her death wish. He told her, while she was still Spandam's captive: "Do me a favor, Robin! Whether you wanna die or not, I don't care what you say! Say that kind of thing while you're by our side!" She finally admitted to the Strawhats that her greatest fear of all was being abandoned by them at some point down the road; she wanted to die as their friend by helping them, rather than dying alone. The Strawhats countered her fear by setting a World Government flag on fire. They were effectively promising to take on anyone and everyone who stood against them - so long as Robin would return to them. That action brought her to tears and finally convinced her that they were indeed her friends. It was hard for her to comprehend - because she hadn't met one person in 20 years who wanted to her to enjoy life. Finally, her friend Saul's words from 20 years ago were being fulfilled. At last she trusted in the Strawhats, believed in their strength and the bonds they'd forged with her. At Luffy's insistence to speak her true feelings, she cried out to them: "I WANT TO LIVE!! TAKE ME OUT TO SEA WITH YOU!!"
[LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN: THE TRUE FRIENDSHIP REDUX]
All six Strawhats plus Franky were happy to hear it, expressing it in their own ways, and the seven of them joined forces to rescue Robin. She took some more abuse from Spandam along the way, and he accidentally triggered the Buster Call, but this time around Robin started to fight back. She couldn't use her abilities due to the special handcuffs on her wrists, but she was no longer the quiet and amenable hostage Spandam remembered. When Robin was finally rescued and reunited with all of the Strawhats, she got her revenge on Spandam by breaking his back with her abilities.
Robin was with the Strawhats when the Going Merry finally broke in half, followed by Luffy giving it a viking funeral. Seeing the ship burn didn't hit her as hard as it hit the others, but it did open up a chance for the Strawhats to need a new ship. Franky offered to build his dream ship and give it to the Strawhats, but all of Franky's friends from Water 7 could pretty much tell that Franky wanted to go on the ship with the Strawhats. They begged the Strawhats to take Franky with them against his protests, but Luffy insisted that Franky come willingly - even if Franky wanted to in his heart, he had to come of his own accord. This led to Franky being the first recipient of genuine goodwill on Robin's part in the vein of "one good turn deserves another." He went through a lot of effort to ignore her death wishes and make her happier than she knew she could be, so Robin used her powers to 'force' Franky to join them. To Franky's friends, it looked like she hurt him so much that he was crying in pain and that Robin wouldn't let up until he boarded the ship. In reality, Robin only hurt him a little and then stopped, but Franky continued acting like she was hurting him - it was a cover to let out all of his tears. That way, he could do something he wouldn't have been able to bring himself to do without crying: leave Water 7 and pursue his personal dreams.
In the Thriller Bark arc, Robin was - par for the course - not very freaked out or shocked by all of the ghoulish, nightmarish things the Strawhats encountered, including the skeleton who would become their ninth crew member, Brook. She in fact called a zombie that looked like the legendary Cerebus "cute." Of note is the fact that Robin is one of the few people to know what happened between Zoro and the Warlord Bartholomew Kuma. The Strawhats had managed to defeat the Warlord Gecko Moria who ran Thriller Bark and successfully get everyone's shadows back before the sun rose, but then Kuma showed up - while Luffy was unconscious. Kuma used an ability that knocked everyone out, hoping to just snatch Luffy and run. Robin found out the rest of the story later by eavesdropping, using her ability to create an ear on someone's back. Zoro asked Kuma to take his head in place of Luffy's, then Sanji woke up and asked the same, but Zoro knocked Sanji out. Then Kuma used a power that took all of Luffy's pain from the ending Thriller Bark battle and transferred it to Zoro. Out of respect for Zoro's loyalty to Luffy and endurance to withstand the pain transfer, Kuma let them all live. Robin never let on she knew. Later on, Brook's efforts to make himself "useful" and "worthy" of being part of the crew also struck a cord with Robin. All in all, the Thriller Bark events served to bond her tighter not only to the Strawhats as a whole, but especially the older members: Franky and Brook for the most part, but Zoro to a lesser extent as well.
When "Golden Lion" Shiki took Nami away, Robin was more than willing to help get her back. After they agreed to help the mermaid Caimie rescue her friend "Hatchan" from some slavers, the original five members of the Strawhats had to explain that Hatchi was a former enemy, but she had no qualms helping out when the rest of the Strawhats decided it was more for Caimie than it was for Hatchi. All in all, things were just business as usual - for an adventurous pirate crew, anyway - as they stepped onto the Sabaody peninsula. Before long, they were helping destroy a slavery auction house to save Caimie and going against the Celestial Dragon nobles, descendants of the World Government's founders.
It wasn't until the Strawhats had a chance to speak to Gol D. Roger's first mate - Silvers Rayleigh - that Robin had a new lead on any Poneglyph-related information since Skypiea. Rayleigh told her that Roger and he had indeed learned the True History of the Poneglyphs, but telling her straight out may ruin the impact of what the True History contained. He said he'd tell her if she still wanted to know - but she agreed with him, and willing left his presence without learning a single new bit of Poneglyph information herself. The contrast with her reactions in Arabasta is striking, but that's how much the Strawhats had come to mean to her. She was willing to spend more time learning about the Poneglyphs herself because she had the Strawhats to support her. According to Rayleigh, all they had to do was wait 3 days and he'd have their ship ready to continue on their journey, because he had to coat their ship to allow it to go underwater. How that worked they wouldn't find out in the near future, because tragedy struck before the first day was done.
[THE SEPARATION]
Bartholomew Kuma appeared before the Strawhats again and used his Paw-Paw Devil Fruit power to start "repelling" the Strawhats one by one. It didn't kill them - which is what they all thought it did at first - but rather sent each of them flying across the OP world. Robin was the second to last one to get "repelled," so she saw all seven of the other Strawhat members get stripped away from the group. It was an extremely emotional parting for everyone, and Robin reached out to Luffy as her last action on the Sabaody peninsula before she was repelled.
Being apart from the Strawhats was pretty upsetting for Robin, given their significance as the only friends she'd had since she was 8 years old. She wanted more than anything else to reunite with them, but she was also an intelligent enough woman to acknowledge that it may take a great deal of planning and effort to make that happen. However, the bonds of friendship were strong enough that she believed a reunion would happen, rather than wallowing and wondering if it was even possible. In canon, it's a 2-year gap before she reunites with them, but I'm pulling Robin from before then - only because her last appearance is in episode 455. It was just one scene before she's handed the newspaper with Luffy's picture-message in it that the Strawhats will be meeting in 2 years instead of the previously agreed on 3 days.
ABILITIES:
Like all Devil Fruit powers in One Piece, Robin's power comes in the form of a simple concept, but one which has many varied applications. A Devil Fruit is simply a kind of magical, edible object that grants one new trait to a person's body. In Robin's case, her "Hana Hana" power is the ability to reproduce parts of her body, like many flowers sprouting from the main body of a single plant. Since Robin can use this power in so many different ways, I'm going to try to break down the constraints of the power first, then list her most common specific applications for the power. I'm going to use "blossom" as the generic term for a body part that Robin has manifested using her power, rather than the part of her real body.
How many extra 'blossoms' can she manifest? The most Robin has used in canon at that canon point is 100, and she denotes such skills with the vocal component: "Cien Fleurs." The limit seems to be "as many as Robin can concentrate on using at once," since it goes up to one thousand later on. As I stated in her Personality section, Robin has apparently adapted incredible multi-tasking skills for this expressed purpose, thus being able to use 100 separate blossoms at once. As she approaches the 100 mark, the more inclined she is to make the blossoms act as one unit rather than going off in 100 different directions. As I also stated in the Personality section, if Robin is only using a few extra blossoms, then she can get away with manifesting and directing the blossoms without any visible effort.
Where can she make these blossoms appear? On her own body, on other people's bodies, on physical objects, and on any matter packed tight enough to act as a solid - such as sand in a desert, not sand blowing in the air. I plan to post a Permissions entry in her journal for these situations, but still ask for permission in each instance of use. The actual distance from her body that she can manifest these blossoms is not stated in canon, but the starting point appears to be roughly 40 feet away from her - about 4 stories high. She absolutely must have some visual gauge for where to manifest her blossoms - she once summoned an ear on someone's back, but she could only see the front side of that person's body. A specific loophole in her power is that she can manifest blossoms on top of other blossoms, creating things like ropes and nets out of her blossom-arms strung together, as well as more complex creations detailed in the list below.
What body parts can she use for these blossoms? Theoretically, any part of her. My understanding is any named body part that has a fairly simple function for duplication purposes. For example, she most often manifests hands/arms, feet/legs, ears, and eyes. This does include regenerating body parts that have been severed, I think. It's theoretically possible that she could regenerate her whole body, but I'm pretty sure that would require her head/brain/heart to be intact. I'm willing to discuss it with moderation first if such a situation were ever to arise.
What are the physical limitations of the blossoms? The same as Robin's normal body parts; they are proportioned to exactly the same size and cannot stretch bigger or smaller. Similarly, blossomed hands/arms and feet/legs have the same weight-bearing capability as Robin's natural limbs. Each blossom is rooted to where Robin first manifested it, but she can freely dismiss them and create new ones. One extreme drawback to Robin's power is that she can feel any pain or ailment directed at one of her blossoms, in a proportionally smaller quantity. This isn't a big deal for little cuts and bruises - she'd feel it, but it wouldn't reflect much on her body. However, if someone were to break a blossom-arm, she'd definitely recoil in pain, probably create an opening for her opponent to exploit, and it'd look like she sprained or fractured one of her own arms. If the damage is severe enough - especially multiplied through many extra blossoms - Robin would pass out from the perceived pain, even though her natural body remained mostly intact, albeit bleeding profusely and possibly a real broken limb or two.
What are the verbal/somatic requirements for Robin to use her powers? It depends on how many blossoms Robin is manifesting along with the amount of stress she's under - both of these compounded is the amount of concentration required. If she needs very little concentration, then she doesn't have to say or do anything to use her powers. Specifically, Robin rarely says a command phrase for anything less than six manifested blossoms. However, if she requires medium to great concentration - either because she's in a battle or because she's just using that many blossoms - then she says and does things that bolster her concentration. She doesn't have to say or do anything - she chooses to do it because it helps her focus. When she speaks, she usually says the number of how many blossoms she's creating (in Spanish) combined with the world "Fleur" (Hana/flower in French). Her physical actions include crossing her two normal arms over chest in an X shape with her hands following that same line, palms up. She also usually keeps her legs togethers when standing, basically trying to pull her natural body in as tightly as she can.
Do her powers leave any lingering effects? When Robin first manifests her blossoms and when she dismisses them, a short trail of flower petals follows plus a scent of some kind that I've head-cannoned as lavender.
Below is the incomplete list of "techniques" Robin has developed using her powers. She often does not preface her spoken command with the name of the body part if using arms, since they are her most common blossomed body part. The other Spanish terms she has used are Ojos (eyes), Oreja (ears), Pierna (Feet), and Manos (hands).
- Grab: The 'technique' that Robin used to 'force' Franky to join the Strawhat crew - it speaks to her personality more than her battle prowess. She manifested two blossom-arms on each of Franky's upper thighs near his hips, then quite literally grabbed him by his balls. [YT link because the scene is so freaking funny]
- Twist: Robin uses 6 arms blossomed on her foe to sharply rotate the foe's upper body, severely injuring their back but not killing them outright.
- Flip: Robin uses 8 blossomed arms to force a foe to tumble backwards - two arms push them back, two arms grab their legs to make them stumbled backwards, and four more arms hold the foe down.
- Clutch: Robin uses hands blossomed near the opponent's chin and as many other arms as necessary to restrain her foe, then pulls the head back to snap the foe's neck. In more intense cases - such as Robin's revenge on Spandam - she can use the restraining arms to also break the foe's back.
- Linked arms: Robin can use as many blossomed arms as necessary to act like a rope or a net. She has used this both of her own sake and to reach out to others to catch them.
- Ladder limbs: Robin can manifest single blossoms or pairs in a line up a cliff or other sheer wall, but she has also used this - in both horizontal and vertical applications - to pass objects along like a bucket brigade.
- Marching feet: Robin can manifest blossom-feet or -legs below a person or object in order to move them.
- Calendula: Robin manifests 20 blossom-arms at her own elbows - 10 on each arm - and rotates them in a circle. While meant to be used as a kind of shield, because Robin can still feel pain from her blossoms, it isn't the most effective technique.
- Hang: Robin anchors the first of 30 blossom-arms at a high point and then links them together to form a rope. Not only does she try lift an opponent off the ground, she also tries to strangle them in a Clutch-like maneuver.
- Delphinium: Robin uses 100 blossom-arms in pairs manifested in a horizontal line to roll a person or object down the line. For opponents, this may be over a cliff or into a wall with great velocity.
- Big Tree: Robin uses 100 blossom-arms to act as one gigantic arm -- not fused together, simply a swarm of little arms. She follows this up with one of her more "normal" attacks that wouldn't work on larger opponents.
- Wings: Robin uses 100 blossom-arms to make two wings grow from her back - 50 for each wing. She can hover, glide downwards, or slowly ascend, but her time limit is only about 5 seconds long.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Void
DREAM:
There was no warmth to be found. She huddled with her face in her arms for a long time, just trying to forget all the cold enveloping her.
But something caught her attention - a faint sound, so small and distant she almost didn't catch it. Gradually it got louder, and she recognized the lull of the ocean and the salty scent as she started to rock this way and that. She actually smiled - this was familiar, comfortable, good.
Yet it was still dark - no stars in the sky to guide her anywhere, although it occurred to her she had nowhere she wanted to go. And there was nothing she wanted to see, so the stars were hardly a concern either.
"...uuuu uuurrrRRRRRRRRRRAAAARR!!"
Out of nowhere a gust rushed past her face. No, the whole boat was racing along the water on its own power. She tried to turn her head to look at the back of the boat, finding herself quite shocked by what she saw. There was a large doll-like teddy-bear-slash-lion, and it was roaring with its arms raised in triumph while sporting a straw hat that had fallen over its shoulders, held on by a string. The roar was what was pushing their boat along as it faced away from her. Next to him, facing her, was a teddy-bear-slash-ram sitting on the back edge of the boat and holding a rudder. The ram was also wearing a straw hat, but when it noticed her looking at it, its face broke into a smile. It took off its hat and held it out to her.
Curious, she reached out for the hat, but they suddenly hit a bump, or so she thought. The boat took a nose-dive and they were suddenly plummeting into the ocean. Her gut instinct told her this was not a good thing, for more than just an inability to breathe underwater.
Yet they weren't underwater - instead of feeling that weight all around her, she was falling in open air. Finally able to open her eyes, she noticed that a multitude of objects surrounded her: green & pale purple leaves, gold coins, scrap metal & tools, mandarin oranges, crushed cigarettes, ammo pellets, instrument strings, swords & sheaths, and mortars & pestles emptying out their crushed contents. Even as she fell, she could only smile at it all and murmur to herself, "My, what strange weather." After all, she'd forgotten the cold.
It all started to spiral around her in a whirlwind, aiming her now more horizontally than vertically. It all blurred together until she only saw white - and then she felt the impact. Instinctively, she knew it should've hurt more than it did, but when she sat up she saw why. Beneath her was snow - at least she thought it was. It felt like snow, tasted like snow, smelled like snow, but it was warm to the touch. In fact, she felt comfortable just laying down in the small crater she'd made, burrowing underneath the snow a little bit, and sleeping just like that.
JOURNAL SAMPLE:
I suppose I should be flattered that others would want to read what I write, but I must admit I'm not accustomed to it. Or I should say: I don't think I'm accustomed to it. My mind is a blank and I told that man as much, yet he insisted I draw upon all that I don't know to assume a new identity. An interesting concept, to say the least, placing so much emphasis on dreams.
But mine was not one of those all-important dreams, I assured him. That's most likely why he decided to just call me 'Void,' since he had to write down something, he said, and it was a little better than 'Blank.' Either one suited me fine, and likewise you all may use the names as you wish.
There's quite a bit that I feel is missing here - a literal void that the metaphorical one prevents me from placing, so instead I'll ask: what do you all do here, apart from writing? How do you spend your time, your lives?
ASPIRATIONS: I want to see how long I can keep Robin from learning about the parts of her past that make her so wary of the world and the people in it, including no memory of her powers at first. I'd like her to work at the Bookstore (spoke to Tisha about that already) at least for starters, and see if she can be a social adult for awhile. Hopefully, by the time she learns anything about her past, she won't immediately go underground, or even if she does she'll have a few characters by that point she'd trust as much as she does the Strawhats in canon. I have no plans to try to immediately reconnect her with cast-mates, instead allowing it to happen naturally over time.
PLOT PERMISSIONS:
ES 4th Wall: Yup
Chara 4th Wall: Yup
ES Mysteries: Yup
Memory Rec'v: Yup
Memory Distrib: Yup
Dream Distrib: Yup
Your Wilderness: There are so many interesting places that could be used XD But yes~