By the time Amon finished testing the Water Dragon Jutsu, the ship had carried the three of them into Water Seven. They tied off at the dock and stepped ashore.
"There's actually water running through the city!" Lily had heard Amon describe it, but hearing and seeing were entirely different things. She stood at the edge of the dock with her eyes stretched wide, staring at the canals threading between the buildings in every direction.
"Of course there is. Water Seven is built on water. The whole city moves by boat." Amon patted the top of her head and flagged down a small rental vessel. "Come on, let's take a ride."
Lily perched at the bow as they drifted into the canal network, her head swiveling from one side to the other, taking everything in.
Robin watched her with quiet amusement. "Come on, Lily. Let's go shopping. I'll buy you something nice."
Water Seven was more than a city built on canals. It was one of the grandest commercial hubs on the Grand Line, its streets lined with merchants and craftsmen dealing in goods from across the world. The foot traffic had thinned in recent years as travel became harder, which was part of what had driven Tom toward the Sea Train project. But the shops were still there, and they were still well stocked.
"Shopping?" Lily's ears perked up immediately. Then her face fell. "But I don't have any Berries."
"Don't worry about it. Whatever you want, I'll cover it." Amon had somewhere north of a billion Berries on him. Clothes were not going to make a dent.
Lily grabbed Robin's hand and pulled her toward the nearest storefront before Amon had finished the sentence.
What followed was something Amon had not adequately prepared himself for.
He had always approached shopping the way he approached most practical tasks: see what you need, take it, leave. The idea that anyone could spend this long moving between shops, comparing items, circling back to reconsider something they'd passed twenty minutes ago, was genuinely foreign to him. And yet here he was, following behind two women who seemed to draw energy from the process itself, emerging from each store with bags that multiplied at a rate he found difficult to track.
Robin was not shy about it. As far as she was concerned, she was on his ship now, and that meant his resources were fair game. Amon didn't particularly argue the point. Money existed to be spent, and watching the two of them light up every time they found something they liked was, he had to admit, not entirely unpleasant. The shopkeepers of Water Seven were having the best afternoon they'd had in months.
"Finally," Amon exhaled, when the last bag had been purchased and the two of them showed signs of winding down.
"Let's find a café. I need to sit."
"Are you really that tired?" Robin looked at him with disbelief as he collapsed into the first available chair at a café overlooking the canal.
Amon didn't answer. He was already done moving.
"Three coffees," he told the server who appeared beside him.
He waited until the cups arrived before he said anything else. "I would genuinely rather fight all three Admirals than do that again. At least that has a clear ending."
Robin raised an eyebrow. "You pick things up and walk away, is that your idea of shopping?"
"Yes."
She laughed quietly and let it go.
"Lily, go help the captain recover. He looks like he needs it."
Lily nodded obediently and concentrated, letting her telekinesis settle across Amon's shoulders in a steady, even pressure.
"Right there. A little harder."
"I am already using maximum power," she said, pouting. Her telekinesis had come a long way over the past few months, but Amon's tolerance for massage had apparently grown faster than her ability to meet it.
"Here, let me." Robin leaned forward and took over, her Hana Hana abilities blooming a row of pale arms from the nearby surface. Her actual hands stayed free, leaving her perfectly positioned to hold her coffee cup and maintain complete composure while the additional limbs worked across his back. It was, Amon had to admit, a very Robin way to do things.
"Better?" she asked.
"Not bad."
He closed his eyes. The canal sounds drifted in from outside, and the coffee was good, and Robin's hands were considerably more effective than telekinesis. He was starting to think of something when he noticed the pressure shifting. Her rhythm had gone uneven, the focus bleeding out of it.
He opened his eyes.
Robin was staring straight ahead. Her hands had gone still. Her eyes were fixed on something across the canal, and what was in them wasn't anything he'd seen there before. Fear, held barely in check, threaded through with something older and harder. Hatred, maybe. Or the memory of it.
Amon followed her gaze.
Across the water, a group of people in black clothing were moving along the far bank. At the front walked a man with pale purple hair and a distinctive tinted visor across his eyes.
It took Amon only a moment.
Spandam.
Son of Spandine. Current chief of CP5.
Robin's expression suddenly made complete sense. It wasn't Spandam himself who had broken something in her. It was his father. Spandine was the one who had issued the bounty that turned Robin into a fugitive at eight years old, the order that had followed her across every ocean since. The name meant nothing to most people, but what Spandine had done to her was the kind of thing that didn't leave.
And here was his son, walking the same streets, wearing the same authority.
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