The bomb was planted in the tower of Alubarna’s central square.
From a distance of miles, Kael could tell that much by how its explosive signature resonated with a note of gunpowder and modern explosives—a particularly dense and intense kind of energy—rising up through the tower as someone ascended with it in their possession.
Pell, the raven-haired falcon-man of Alabasta’s royal guard, had picked it up and had begun climbing with it to the top of the tower, the man knowing exactly why he would die that day.
Kael, racing, knew he wouldn’t make it in time to stop Pell’s climb up.
Three blocks separated him and Pell, and the bomb carrier had already ascended above the tower and was ascending higher yet.
So he used two Orbs of Truth.
Two orbs, which left him in an instant at the speed of intent, were faster than anything except a beam of light itself.
Two orbs traveled from Kael to the tower so quickly that they cleared the rooftops separating them in an instant and continued upwards in the direction Pell was climbing, intercepting the man at the apex of the explosive’s signature, the precise moment his wings strained for their final thrusts and the bomb started to glow.
Two orbs collided with the bomb.
The bomb stopped being a bomb.
The chakra of its explosive charge dispersed, ceasing to exist, leaving only an ordinary metal canister filled with explosive material.
Its chakra fuse burned away; its trigger mechanism fired and there was nothing left to trigger, because the bomb was no longer a bomb.
Kael’s Orbs made sure of that.
Pell, sure he was about to die and not doing so at all, didn’t understand that at first.
His momentum carried him onwards, upwards, his wings faltering despite their exertion.
And Kael, running towards the tower, caught the falling Pell right under the bomb just as the man realized he was not going to die.
Not that it had been much of a graceful catch.
Kael’s was the catch of a man who ran across several blocks on the spur of the moment at chakra-enhanced speed and reached a split-second ahead of falling Pell, simply catching the man as he fell without any effort but catching him anyway, despite Pell’s heavy weight by his standards.
Kael laid the fallen man gently against the stone of the tower wall—learned to do that from Chopper—and started to examine his pulse.
There.
Heart beating frantically, lungs straining, but both still functioning.
There was no serious harm done, and there were hours of rest and plenty of cool water to heal it.
Kael called the royal guards.
They came shortly, and he told them what had happened.
He left Pell with them.
The plaza had been preparing for another round of hostilities, the army and the rebellion—both, an hour ago, standing on the verge of the battle Crocodile had planned for them—facing each other, the sky above the tower undarkened by smoke, Pell laying against the tower wall, Vivi standing on the palace steps along with her father, and beginning to give her speech.
And Kael didn’t stay to listen.
He read her thoughts in her chakra before she gave her speech, but she’d been practicing it so much, she didn’t even need to prepare now.
Kael turned and descended into the palace, descending down the stairs into the heart of the ancient country—into the underground chambers and corridors which had long ago become the foundation of everything above—and where he knew he could find a familiar chakra signature.
He had known it since they had reached the western port.
She was already here.
An hour ago, she descended the staircases alone, using the morning chaos as cover to sneak past the tomb’s security.
She descended quickly and alone, having been able to read her Poneglyph by the time Kael detected the bomb in the tower.
He left her alone—she deserved it for all that.
He descended down the darkened staircases lit by oil lamps.
Tomb of the Kings was literally that—an underground tomb, the very stone of which kept a memory of the unnamed island, but unlike the former, unfragmented and complete, a stone-memory hundreds and thousands of years old and powerful.
As Kael descended down the tomb, the old memories of the stones rose around him, mingling with his senses and perception of reality.
The Poneglyph was located in one of the chambers deep underground.
The ceiling was missing, the chamber having become open at its top, the stones of the walls arching high above into a vaulted ceiling which had been, millennia ago, and collapsed under the weight of centuries and more centuries since.
The Poneglyph stood on the stone pedestal at the center of the chamber, tall, dark, with the angular script Kael had recognized as the writing of the unnamed island.
She sat by the stone in front of it, her back to Kael as he entered the chamber.
She didn’t turn around upon hearing him enter, feeling his presence before he had even stepped down into the tomb chamber.
“You came down.”
“Not willingly.”
“Come here.
You shouldn’t have.”
“Crocodile.”
“He’ll come.”
“He will,” Kael said.
“I know.” She turned.
“What does it say?”
“Wait.”
She sat still again, looking at the Poneglyph with the expression on her face that told him she was about to start reading.
He seated himself behind her on the floor, touching the stone at the bottom of the pedestal and opening the channel to the old stones of the tomb and to the memory they kept.
The pedestal opened instantly to him, and Kael could feel the hand of the people who had worked the stone of the tomb—the same hand that had cut the walls of the unnamed island—and the man who had carved the inscription and his tears.
The man had been crying as he was carving the Poneglyph because he knew that he would never meet his children.
Kael let him.
He remained with that memory, did not destroy it and did not break it.
Neither did he say a thing.
She stopped reading the Poneglyph.
She sat silently, settling back on her feet after a long moment of studying the ancient symbols, covering her mouth.
“It’s not what he wants.”
“I read that.”
“It is.
He killed everyone who might translate this.
Ohara scholars, the people capable of reading this.
After that, he killed my mother.
Everyone who—I—” She paused, not saying anything.
She steeled herself.
“It is the location of a weapon.
That’s what he wanted.
But it’s not—it’s elsewhere.
Some other Poneglyph has the location, and this one points to it.
He will know I read it.
He will know that it has none of what he wanted.
He will come to kill me as a courtesy.”
“Hmm.”
She finally turned to him, meeting his eyes for the first time in months—and she was not the person he remembered from the unnamed island.
She had been acting as a person on a long-term mission for a long time, but now she was herself again.
She was exhausted, sad and very alone—and nearly out of patience.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I felt the bomb stop.”
And I came down because stopping the bomb would mean the country could start to heal, and if the country healed, you would be alone in this room, and I came down because you owed me the company you owed me.
“I owe you nothing.”
“I beg to differ.”
Her gaze fell on him.
Under the lamp, the blue in her eyes darkened to grey.
“He is up above, in the chamber.
He will be here in a few minutes.”
“I know.”
“You cannot fight him here.
This chamber will collapse.”
“I have no intention of fighting him here.”
“What do you—”
“I intend to wait, here with you.
He will come down, and he will see two of us.
He will see that you have read the Poneglyph, that I have been with you while you have been reading it.
He will have a calculation to make, and this calculation will not involve ridding himself of every Devil Fruit ability.
He will leave.”
“He won’t.”
“Then I will make him leave.”
She looked at him.
She let out a soft breath, but no laughing sound.
The closest relative of the laughter, the sound of a person who had been staring into terror for a long time, alone, until told it would not be alone in the next minute.
He sat beside his hand on the pedestal.
She sat beside hers on the Poneglyph.
The footsteps ascended from the stair.
Crocodile stepped into the chamber, with all the assurance of a person who had walked into many other chambers.
At the sight of Kael, he stopped where he was.
The dialogue between them was short and not worth quoting.
Kael did not threaten.
Crocodile did not threaten either.
The orbs circled around Kael.
Crocodile, who had picked up their signature during the party in the casino, knew what the orbs were now.
Robin stayed by the Poneglyph, her back against it.
She said nothing, for she had no need to.
The mere fact of his presence beside her spoke enough.
Crocodile observed the chamber, then he observed Kael, then, eventually, his country—which had been lost in any regard, since the bomb had failed and the army and the rebellion had remained idle while Vivi made her way to the steps of the palace to deliver a speech after which he was going to spend two years trying to get away—and he realized that spending even one more minute here was worse than wasting part of his future.
So he left.
He ascended the stairs.
Kael did not stop him.
Somewhere in the high above, Kael felt the chakra signature of a young man with a straw hat, moving in a certain direction, and he knew that letting Crocodile ascend the stairs would bring him to meet the young man on the surface, and the encounter would end in the way it should have ended.
The footsteps faded into distance.
Back in the chamber, the lamps remained lit, and the Poneglyph stood untouched.
Kael and the woman, who had said his name months ago in an unnamed island, sat together on the chamber floor.
They did not speak at first.
It was afternoon outside, and the country seemed to recover from the recent turmoil.
Light filtered in through the upper vault in a narrow stream, gold and yellow, spreading across the face of the Poneglyph.
A little while passed.
“You have read the man who carved this.”
“You have read him weeping.”
“He had children.
He was a craftsman.
He was selected for the job because of his carving skills and his capacity to keep secrets.
He kept it a secret.
He would not be seeing his children again.”
For a while she said nothing.
She simply sat there, with her lamp casting the shadow of her tall figure against the chamber wall.
“I know something you have been trying to find out for twenty years.”
“I know more than that.
I could not share this knowledge for twenty years.”
“Tell me.”
And so he told her.
Then he told her about the room above that used to have a roof, and about the people who used to stand there on a particular day, under the certain lighting, coming through the high windows.
He told her about the lead carver, the woman who was the clerk, the boy who would bring them food and water, the carver’s son.
He told her about the food they ate at the long table as soon as their job was finished and the chamber sealed.
He told her about the song they sang.
He told her about its melody, although the melody itself was not carved into the stone.
She sat still, as if rooted to the spot.
Once he had finished, she did not even bother with writing.
She simply listened to him, and it was enough, for she would carry everything she learned with herself for the rest of her days.
Once he had finished, the lamp had burnt itself down, and darkness spread in the chamber.
“How long will you keep this up?”
“For as long as the stone remembers.”
“For every Poneglyph.”
“Surely.”
“For every ruin.”
“Absolutely.”
“For all of it.”
“I suppose so.”
She covered her lips with her hand.
She was not crying, for she had shed all her tears the day before in the corner of this chamber, while reading this Poneglyph by herself.
Now she was past crying.
“I have spent my whole life hunting for the words.
Words are merely a quarter of it.
I never even imagined there was anything else, for if there was, and I could not get to it, it would kill me.”
“You can get to it now.”
“Through you.”
“Through us.”
She turned her head to face him, catching the last ray of light with her cheek.
“What do you want?”
“To do this with you.”
“For how long?”
“Until this is finished.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, releasing at last all the weight of the burden she had been carrying in herself for twenty years.
The chamber floor received it at last.
“That’ll do.”
It was not a yes.
It was an older word, a more cautious one, signifying that she was ready to let whatever happen next, happen.
He knew what it meant.
They left the chamber once it grew dark.
They went up the stairs and into the late afternoon, where the country shone bright in gold.
They saw the city starting to regain its former glory.
Vivi stood at the steps of the palace with her father beside her, where the army and the rebellion put aside weapons after two years of war, and Luffy—a bruised, tired but smiling fellow—ate some stolen food at some street stall after his fight with Crocodile, twenty paces behind whom were the irons.
The crew re-congregated in the palace courtyard by dusk.
Kael appeared there, leading Robin by the hand.
Every single member of the crew noticed her.
For a long minute, the moment stayed there, suspended.
Luffy, so simple, yet the central fact of himself, looked from her to Kael and back.
“Are you hungry?”
She looked at him, smiled, and laughed.
It was a small, short laugh, but it was laughing.
“Yes, I am.”
“Sanji’s cooking dinner now.
Let’s go.”
He turned around and went to the palace courtyard kitchen, leaving without waiting for her.
The crew waited, giving her space.
Without turning to look back at Kael, she walked towards the crew.
He was right behind her.