Breakfast the following morning was a raucous affair.
“I’ll have seconds, Koala!” requested an eager voice.
“Me, too!” called out a second.
“Wait, wait! Not so fast!”
A huge line of people waited for Koala to ladle out more soup from a large pot on the stove. Hack was on baking duty, wearing an oven mitt that was too cutesy by far for his imposing looks. He pulled a metal tray from the oven and hurriedly handed out fresh pieces of toast to those in line. People packed the cramped mess hall; even Dragon, who had holed up in his chamber for the last few days, waited in line with an empty cup in his hand.
Koala’s Rubery mushroom and egg soup was a massive hit.
The mushrooms’ bitter taste, so prominent in the previous night’s sauté, was completely gone, and all agreed that they would happily eat multiple servings of the mushroom soup.
“Keep toasting that bread, Hack! It’s perfect with the soup,” said Koala.
The revolutionaries, who were normally so stoic and hardworking, were at ease this morning, basking in the comforting glow of the warm, delicious meal.
“The flavor of the mushrooms is completely different. How did you cook them, Koala?” asked Bunny Joe.
✦ ✦ ✦
She gave him a mischievous grin.
“It’s a trade secret!”
From the kitchen, Robin observed Koala’s frantic service with a smile on her lips. As it happened, that clay tablet had contained a recipe for soup. It was the Eucaly palace specialty, an egg soup with plenty of Rubery Shrooms. The mushrooms were naturally very bitter—to the point that they could numb your tongue if eaten raw—but after being boiled for two hours, they became mild and rich. Koala had been skeptical as she followed the recipe’s steps, but her culinary success was obvious from the reaction in the mess hall.
Without realizing it, Koala had learned a local recipe from the Eucaly civilization. It had crossed hundreds of years to get here.
One of the diners in the hall, feeling blissful after his meal, took his dish back to the kitchen. When he saw Robin at the washing station, he remarked, “You’re doing the dishes again, Robin? Stop it right now! We’ll get a scolding if we let you.”
“Just give that to me.”
She grew a hand from the shelf nearest to where the man was standing and snatched the dish from him, then grew more limbs as necessary to relay it to the sink.
Even Sabo’s name was included on the ship’s chore list, but Nico Robin’s was excluded. She had asked to be included, but Sabo had steadfastly refused, claiming that they couldn’t have Robin, “the Light of the Revolution,” doing menial tasks. But she didn’t like the idea of being the only one on the ship without work. Since they wouldn’t assign her a duty, she had taken matters into her own hands.
Robin’s ability to grow hands from any surface made her extremely efficient at chores. Cleaning high places was a cinch for her, and she could get the dishes washed very quickly. The cook on the Thousand Sunny absolutely refused to allow any women to wash dishes, so it was a talent that she rarely got to exercise.
“I’ll help,” Sabo said, walking into the kitchen.
“I’m fine. I’ve already got all the hands I need,” Robin replied.
“But you’ll get tired. They’re still all your hands,” he retorted. Refusing to take no for an answer, Sabo grabbed a cloth from one of Robin’s many hands and began to wipe the wet plates and cups.
“Thank you,” she said.
The pair split the task. When she stopped to consider it, Robin thought that washing dishes next to the second-in-command of the Revolutionary Army was quite a strange and remarkable experience. She wondered if Sabo had really come into the kitchen to help her with dishes. Maybe he had something else to say to her, and had tracked her down here in order to relay the message.
He put some dry plates back on the shelf and cast a baleful eye at the mess hall. “They could barely gag down the sauté I worked so hard on last night,” he said sarcastically.
Robin chuckled softly. “It didn’t taste very good.”
“Fair.”
It wasn’t Sabo’s fault that the dish had been spectacularly bitter. Without a recipe, who would have guessed that if you boiled the mushrooms for two hours the bitterness went away?
Sabo closed the door to the cupboard with an audible thump.
“Listen,” he started. “It’s about Luffy…”
So that’s what he wants to talk about, Robin thought. She turned to look at Sabo, though she kept scrubbing plates in the sudsy water.
“I know,” she said. “I won’t tell him that I met you here.”
“Er, it’s not that.”
Luffy didn’t know that Sabo was still alive. She thought perhaps he would demand her silence. Instead, Sabo looked her in the eyes and said gravely, “I’m entrusting him to you.”
She stopped scrubbing. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Surely he would rather protect Luffy himself, rather than having someone else do it. Robin would be boarding another ship at the next port, but if Sabo went with her, he could meet up with Luffy at the Sabaody Archipelago too.
“I’m a revolutionary and he’s a pirate,” said Sabo. “It doesn’t make sense for us to travel on the same ship when we have different goals. As long as we’re both at sea, we’ll meet again someday, guaranteed. I’m fine waiting until then.”
Despite what he said, it was obvious that Sabo was eager to see Luffy again, as soon as possible. He had a problem with always looking out for others—he did it compulsively.
“Just watch out for Luffy, okay?” he pleaded. “I know he’s a handful.”
“I will,” Robin said, casting a glance out the kitchen window. The slice of sea she could see from there was both narrow and endless, stretching into oblivion.
At the next port, she would part ways with the Revolutionary Army and continue on to Sabaody, until she found the place where she truly belonged, after the journey of a lifetime. Her reunion with the Straw Hat Crew was close at hand.