The memories came back all at once. Robin stood there trembling, tears sliding silently down her face and into the corners of her pressed-together lips, her whole body tight with something she couldn't push back down.
Amon stepped forward and took hold of her arm.
The contact pulled her back. She turned and found him looking at her steadily and the shaking in her chest eased by a fraction.
The scars from Ohara had faded over the years, more than she sometimes gave herself credit for. But Spandam had a way of undoing all of that just by existing in her field of vision. He dragged everything back up with him. The only way to be free of it was to be free of him.
"Help me," Robin said quietly, her eyes still fixed on the figure across the canal.
Spandam hadn't come alone. He had several CP5 operatives with him, and Robin knew her own limits well enough. Taking all of them on by herself wasn't something she could guarantee.
Amon wiped the tears from her face with the back of his hand.
"You're on my ship. That makes you mine to look after." He said it plainly. "But we're not moving yet. We need to catch him in the act first."
Robin blinked. "In the act?"
"Trust me. Follow his lead and wait. It's about to get interesting."
Amon knew exactly where this was going. Spandam was here for the Pluton blueprints. Tom would refuse him, which meant Spandam would need another way to apply pressure. And the way he'd choose, because it was the only thing he had to work with, was the Franky Shogun ships sitting in the yard. He'd steal them, wait until the Sea Train was finished and everyone's guard was down, use the ships to bombard the courthouse and frame the whole crew for it. Then he'd leverage that crime to force Tom's hand.
In the original story, it had worked. Tom had taken the fall to save Franky, and Franky had thrown himself in front of a Sea Train to protect Tom, and had come out the other side as something no longer entirely human.
Things were different now. Franky had the mech. Hyozo had Machamp. How the details would shift, Amon wasn't sure. But none of that mattered yet. What he needed was for Spandam to actually commit the act, in plain sight, with witnesses. Then there would be justification for everything that followed. Garp, Sengoku, the Marines at large. He still wanted to keep that relationship manageable. The World Government ran this world, and a merchant who wanted to operate quietly still needed to respect certain surfaces.
"Come on. Let's go watch."
He led Robin and Lily after Spandam's group, keeping enough distance to stay invisible.
It played out almost exactly as expected. Spandam found the shipyard without difficulty and made his request. Tom refused him, firmly and without leaving much room for negotiation. Spandam considered making a move then and there, but the presence of other judicial officials nearby held him back. He withdrew.
But then he saw the Franky Shogun ships.
Whatever coldness had been in his eyes sharpened into something else entirely.
You won't give it to me? Fine. I'll make you hand it over yourself.
He gathered his two most trusted subordinates away from the others and kept his voice low.
"I want those ships stolen. Quietly. When the Sea Train is finished and they're all celebrating, you use those cannons to shell the courthouse. Then we'll see how long they keep looking down at me."
The memory of Tom's refusal was still sitting in his chest like a hot coal. Spandam was his father's son in every unflattering sense, the same cruelty dressed in different clothes, the same compulsion to watch someone's hope collapse into despair. He'd had every opportunity to act earlier. He'd waited deliberately. He wanted to see their faces when everything turned.
His two men slipped away toward the yard.
Franky was too deep in the construction work to notice. The days passed. Spandam didn't return to the shipyard, and without the pressure of his presence, Tom and the others threw themselves into finishing the Sea Train. With Machamp handling the heaviest lifting and the two new sets of blueprints guiding the construction, the work moved at a pace none of them had thought possible.
The Sea Train's first trial run was a success.
With the test completed, the courthouse officials arrived to formally begin the process of clearing Tom's name. Tom walked toward the courthouse with the first genuine lightness he'd carried in years, Franky and Hyozo alongside him.
Spandam watched from a distance, his expression unreadable to anyone who didn't know what to look for.
Go ahead. Smile. The bigger the smile now, the worse what comes next.
He waited until Tom's group had passed through the courthouse doors. Then he turned to give the signal.
He raised his telescope. Pointed it at the ships. Waited.
Nothing happened.
He waited longer. Still nothing. He lowered the telescope and turned around to find his two subordinates, already composing the reprimand in his head.
They were on the ground.
Both of them, unconscious, laid out neatly where they'd been standing. And where they had been standing, three people were standing now. A man with an expression of calm, unhurried interest. A woman whose eyes held something that had been building for a very long time. And a small girl watching quietly beside them.
Spandam stared.
"You." His voice found its footing quickly. "Robin. The Demon of Ohara. I'd have thought you'd be better at staying out of sight by now." He recovered his composure quickly. "Actually, this saves me some trouble. I was going to come looking for you eventually. Seems you've saved me the trip."
Robin said nothing. She didn't need to.
Spandam's mind was already working through the possibilities. Robin carried the ability to read the ancient weapons, to decipher what Pluton's blueprints actually meant. If he secured both her and the documents, everything he'd come to Water Seven for would fall into place at once.
His eyes moved to the man beside her.