Edwin had liked Scorpia, in a peripheral sort of way. She’d been a little too much for him when she’d turn her full attention on him, and yet her cheerful disposition hadn’t seemed so bad when her attentions rested elsewhere and he could hear her distant chatter as he’d sat in the small library of the bookshop, enjoying a sandwich or a scone and a light book with his tea, and it hadn’t taken many visits before Scorpia had, more or less, left him to it, except when he’d come up for a refill on his tea. He’d been a little sad to see her go, but hadn’t been disappointed that Robin had taken her place.
He hadn’t known Robin especially well before he’d taken the job, but he recognized her; she’d often sat not far from him in the tea shop when she’d been a customer, and he knew her face even if he hadn’t known her name.
He ordered an Earl Grey tea at the counter, and a blueberry scone with butter and jam on the side. There were very few customers in the tea shop at this time, and none waiting behind him in line, and he was, evidently, feeling unusually gregarious, because it was a little to even his own surprise that he asked, “How are you enjoying the new job so far?”
Robin answered Edwin with a fond smile, the corners of her eyes scrunching up slightly. “I’m enjoying it just fine,” she said and laughed softly. “If you had asked me a year ago if I would have seen myself working at a tea shop the answer would have been a resounding no.”
She prepared his tea as she spoke. Next to her a set of slender arms had sprouted from the counter top and were going about preparing the blueberry scone. Occasionally, Robin glanced in their direction to ensure that they picked up the correct pastry and that the butter and jam were actually going into the little containers to place on the side. Being able to sprout multiple body parts was certainly handy for filling customers’ orders quickly, but Robin still had to pay attention to what she was doing. It wouldn’t do Edwin any good if the jam was smeared all over the plate.
“But I think I’m doing an alright job,” she said as she handed him his tea. “What do you think?”
Edwin had seen plenty of strange things in his time in Vallo, but even so, it was hard not to be slightly unnerved to see someone not only sprout extra limbs, but to have them float, disembodied, to do their bidding.
He bit back the immediate questions that sprang to his lips. He was trying to do better with social niceties, which generally involved not immediately asking the first things that came to mind; Nikolai wasn’t a king here, and he’d never shown anything more severe than a light amusement at Edwin’s impulsive questions, but Edwin thought if they were to have any sort of future together he should at least attempt to cultivate something like manners.
“I have no complaints,” Edwin assured her. “What was it you did back home that was so different than serving tea?”
“I was a pirate,” Robin said simply. “The adventure and treasure seeking kind, not so much the murdering kind,” she explained. “This is….” she paused, looking about the tea shop, a smile playing at the corner of her lips, “...a lot more peaceful than that.”
Edwin’s scone was ready and the arms disappeared back into the countertop, leaving behind a small flurry of cherry blossoms that disappeared shortly after. Robin picked up the plate to hand to Edwin.
“Not much sea to sail on here,” Edwin said. He’d never taken to the ocean himself – hard very rarely even ventured across the Channel, and so it didn’t bother him much, but he’d heard from others that if you sailed far enough in any direction, eventually you’d just find yourself back at Vallo Island. As for Vallo being more peaceful, well, he supposed that was possible, though it wasn’t true in his own case.
“I imagine the… the limb thing,” he grimaced for a lack of a better term, “probably helped out if you were a pirate though.”
Edwin was right, there wasn’t so much sea to sail. Not that Robin had any way of actually sailing at this point. Plus, she had been warned that any attempts to actually leave the island would be impossible. It was too bad, actually. Robin would love to be able to do a bit of exploring. Oh well. There was still plenty to explore and discover on the island itself.
Robin couldn’t help but chuckle when Edwin mentioned her Devil Fruit power and the face he made by calling it the “limb thing”. “It’s a Devil Fruit power,” she told him helpfully. “And yes, it is definitely helpful when you’re a pirate.” She tilted her head slightly. “Did you want to ask me about it?”
“If you don’t mind,” Edwin said, and then plunged right ahead without giving her the opportunity to object. “You called it a Devil’s Fruit power? Could you elaborate on that at all?” Edwin wasn’t particularly religious – magicians, as a rule, tended not to be – but he’d become aware enough since coming here that in some worlds, Heaven and Hell were very real concepts, and he was fairly sure there was an Outlander somewhere on the Network who claimed to be Lucifer himself.
“Devil Fruit,” Robin corrected. She glanced around the shop again. At the moment, Edwin was the only customer there, so Robin didn’t see the harm in stepping away from the counter to have a proper conversation with him. She motioned to one of the tables for them to sit. Once they had, Robin continued. “There are certain types of fruits in the world that I come from that grant special abilities to those who eat them. The one I ate gave me the ability to sprout parts of my body almost wherever I want.” She gestured to the table next to them as two more arms sprouted up from the surface to wave at Edwin before once again disappearing in a small flurry of cherry blossom petals.
“Not a lot is known about the fruit,” she continued. “At least not a lot that has been released to the general public. In fact, it seems as though only high ranking members of the Navy know anything about them at all, mostly because it seems in order to become a captain or an admiral, you have to eat one yourself.” She chuckled. “Devil fruit are supposed to be rare, but the more encounters my crew and I have with powerful people, the less rare they seem to be.”
Edwin followed Robin to the table, dropped a cube of sugar into his tea, and stirred it absently.
He knew a little of artificial scarcity, and could see that being especially the case with something that seemed as valuable as the Devil Fruit: if there were a way for the non-magical population of England to obtain magic, he was sure the Magical Assembly would stop it from becoming common knowledge. He thought uncomfortably of the Last Contract, how its use might ensure that all magicians could have access to the same amount of magic, of how it might be if he had as much magic within him as his brother, of how some part of him longed to use it to make the magical distribution more equal, and how he knew he couldn’t because of the risks associated with it, of how some people would undoubtedly abuse the power of the Last Contract. He didn’t know if he and Robin necessarily had the authority to make that decision on behalf of all magician kind, but for the moment, it was a moot point: they didn’t have all three parts of the contract yet, perhaps never would – not if he’d always be here in Vallo – and in the meantime, Edwin intended to do as much research as he could to make the best decision.
Besides he’d been learning enough of using ley lines since arriving in Vallo that it didn’t make much of a difference in a practical sense now; he could use magic more freely than he ever could at home, and if he ever went back home, he suspected he’d learn to use the ley lines there in much the same manner. He realized he’d fallen quiet for longer than he’d meant to.
“And am I correct in assuming that the powers differ on who eats them?” he asked. It didn’t sound as if Robin was implying that everyone who ate a Devil Fruit could sprout miscellaneous limbs however they chose.
Robin nodded. “That’s right.” She put a finger to her lips thoughtfully as she tried to think of the best way to describe the Devil Fruit. She had eaten the Hana Hana No Mi as a child and it wasn’t until she was an adult that she learned anything about it. In a way, being a wanted criminal had actually made that a lot easier than it would have been if she had lived a “normal life.”
“From what I’ve been able to learn, there are three types of fruit, but only one fruit for each power,” she continued. “For example, there is only one Hana Hana No Mi -- the fruit I ate -- therefore, I am the only person in my world who has this ability. When I die, the fruit will regrow somewhere in the world.”
Well, that lead to a whole host of other questions on the nature of the fruits, where they’d come from and how had they come into the world, what in their nature allowed them to know when another fruit was needed. He doubted very much that anyone in Robin’s world would know the answers to that, any more than anyone in his world could answer where did magic come from (aside from the obvious, of it was a gift from the fae before they departed the mortal realm, but even that was an answer shrouded more in myth and legend than anything that that would provide satisfactory answers to someone who was asking the question).
So he settled for, “What are the three types of fruit?”
“Logia, Zoan and Paramecia” Robin answered, listing the three types on her fingers. “Logia Fruits are the most powerful and I believe the rarest. Someone who has eaten a Logia Devil Fruit is granted the power to create, control and transform an element such as sand, fire, ice, electricity, etc. Someone who eats a Zoan Devil Fruit is granted the power to transform into an animal that’s either real, extinct or legendary. I heard a story once of a Mythical Zoan Fruit allowing the eater to transform into a blue phoenix. And finally there are Paramecia Fruits.” Robin tilted her head as she tried to think of the best way to describe the most common of the fruit. “Essentially the Paramecia fruit is anything that doesn’t fit into the first two. Those abilities can be anything you can think of. On my crew we have a reindeer who ate a fruit that gave him the ability to develop human traits. Another member ate a fruit that let his soul re-enter his body after his death.” She smiled remembering poor Brooke’s story. “Though they do have their set backs. Brooke became lost while he was searching for his body. By the time he found it, it was just a skeleton. So now he’s a skeleton man.”
Edwin took a long moment to think that over. Some of it sounded completely implausible – returning from the dead as a skeleton man – but other parts didn’t sound completely different than what magicians in his own world were capable. One couldn’t create something out of nothing, that went against the laws of natural science, but Edwin himself had developed a spell that could create a snowflake by pulling water molecules from the air, and while he hadn’t had enough magic to create fire, he could control it with certain spells, and other, more powerful magicians could, in fact, bring forth fire.
“And so your power comes from Paramecia Fruit?” Edwin asked; he’d have thought the ability to create limbs was more rare than the ability to create something like ice, but if she’d meant the Logia Fruit could create any sort of matter, surely she’d have said as much instead of specifying elements. “Does your magic – or rather, your power, I suppose – have a limit? How far from your body can you create or control your limbs?”
Robin looked thoughtful. “I can only sprout a body part on a surface of some kind,” She said. “They can’t just appear in mid-air. That would look ridiculous.” She laughed. “But the type of surface doesn’t seem to matter. I can even sprout them from living tissue.” To demonstrate she extended her left arm out to the side. From the top of her shoulder another arm appeared, reaching straight up, as though she was reaching towards the ceiling. She lowered her arm again as the one sprouting upwards disappeared. “As for how far away it can be, I’m not sure. It doesn’t have to be within line of sight, but I’ve never had to sprout anything further away than 20 or so meters. It helps if I have an idea of what surfaces are available.”
Edwin bit back his next comment; even he knew that saying it doesn’t look much less ridiculous sprouting from another surface was rude. “Would you like to test it?” he asked, after a moment. “Not now, or here, obviously.” He didn’t thing the tea shop was large enough for a proper test, and Robin was, technically, at work, even if he was monopolizing her time entirely. “I could have you at my cottage, if you’d care to; there’s plenty of space, and it’s relatively private once the public hours of the garden are over.”
Robin had never thought about “testing” her ability before. She had the power since she was a child and was extremely adept at using it. She’d also been in too many combat situations to count in which she’d had to use her ability to defend herself and attack her enemies. But testing to see how far away she could sprout a limb or an ear or an eye simply for the sake of it? It had never occurred to her. Perhaps that was due to having to hide who and what she was until she was old enough to fight back…
“Alright, Edwin,” she said. “I would be happy to come by.” She had a feeling that Edwin was just as curious about what she was abe to do as she was. “Maybe in exchange, you could show me some of your magic? We don’t have magic in my world. Not anything like spells or potions or incantations.”
“I would be happy to,” Edwin said, and he actually smiled. There were few things that he liked more than getting to discuss magic, and Robin would have been the perfect person to demonstrate in front of even if he didn’t have access to the ley line magic he had here: she’d have no idea what the magic was supposed to look like, so even the meagre supply of it he had would have impressed her. Here, at least, he could at least make a showing that he wouldn’t have been embarrassed at, even if she wouldn’t have known better.
“Let me know when you would like to get together; I’m sure we won’t have much difficulty finding a time that’s convenient to us both.”
“I’ll be done with my shift in a few hours,” Robin said. “I could come by after that, if you’d like. Or perhaps this weekend? I’m free any time in the afternoon.”
“This weekend then. I’ll make sure to have the tea on,” Edwin said. An eager light glinted in his eye as he already starting to think of the different experiments they might run; it had been a long time since Edwin last had a project. He took a sip of his tea. “Thank you, Robin; I’m looking forward to it.”