Robin hadn't expected Amon to already be inside Rain Dinners. Every scout she had stationed along the approach routes had gone silent without sending back a single report, though she had no way of knowing they had all been quietly put to sleep one by one. Under the blanket of his Observation Haki, no one had been able to pinpoint his location.
"Sothing wrong, Miss Robin? Am I not welco?"
"Of course you are. More than welco." She kept her tone smooth, though behind it her thoughts were already moving. She set aside the question of how he had slipped through undetected, because right now she had a more imdiate problem sitting across the table from her.
"Gambling is a dangerous habit for a young man," Fujitora remarked, tilting his head in Amon's general direction.
Amon had made no effort to conceal himself with his Haki, so Fujitora had sensed him clearly the mont he stepped forward.
"Ha, I just saw a man winning at impressive scale and felt like trying my luck. You don't mind, do you?" Amon glanced aningfully at the towering pile of chips in front of Fujitora. "Though I'm not sure you're really in a position to lecture anyone about whether gambling is a good idea."
He found a seat and settled in.
Fujitora's expression sharpened for just a mont, then broke into a full laugh. "Fair enough! A interesting young man. I'd be happy to play."
A gambler rarely turned down soone worth playing against.
"Then let's go. Open a new round," Amon said to Robin, waving a hand.
"I bet big." Fujitora slid the full mountain of chips forward, dropping everything he had won onto one side. Over a hundred million Berries.
"Then I'll take small."
While the two of them had been talking, Amon had already exchanged for chips at matching value.
Robin paused, montarily thrown.
She had been quietly dreading the Fujitora problem, and then Amon had materialised from the crowd and inserted himself into it directly. More confusingly, he and Fujitora were now betting against each other at identical amounts, one on big, one on small, which ant the casino would co out even regardless of the result.
"Why are you helping ?" she asked, studying his face with an unreadable expression.
She had spent the last few days helping Crocodile plan how to deal with Amon, and now here he was bailing her out of a difficult situation. It left her genuinely unsettled.
"Ha, no, no. Don't misread this, Miss Robin." Amon smiled easily. "I'm not doing this for you. I just find this particular old man interesting and wanted to play a round with him. That's all there is to it."
He had spotted it from the sidelines. Fujitora had been reading the dice through Observation Haki the entire ti, sensing the result before the cup was ever lifted. Technically he was placing the bet before the shake, so it wasn't cheating in the traditional sense. But it was Observation Haki, and that was exactly what made Amon want to sit down. Part of it was curiosity about the man. Part of it was wanting to test how his own upgraded Haki would hold up.
"An interesting man," Robin said, using the sa word she always seed to reach for with him. She picked up the cup and began to shake.
The mont she did, Amon channelled his Observation Haki directly into the cup, wrapping around the dice and sealing them off completely.
Fujitora went still.
The connection he had maintained effortlessly through every previous round simply wasn't there anymore. He extended his Haki further, pushing against whatever was blocking him, probing from different angles. The dice remained invisible. Completely opaque, no matter how much he increased the effort. Across the table, Amon lay back in his chair confidently.
After several more attempts produced nothing, Fujitora quietly let the effort go.
"Ha! Now that is sothing. In all my years I've never run into anything quite like this." He turned toward Amon with appreciation. "The young should not be underestimated. Truly."
The words landed strangely on the crowd around them. Nobody quite knew what had just happened, but the tone made it clear that sothing significant had passed between the two n.
Robin's gaze moved across Amon slowly, reading him.
"Go ahead, open it," Amon said to Robin, ignoring the curious stares.
"No need." Fujitora raised a hand before Robin could reach for the cup. "I concede."
He hadn't even asked to see the result.
The crowd stirred with confusion.
"He's giving up? Just like that?"
"They didn't even open it. What happened?"
"Who is this kid? He just beat the blind old man?"
Robin was equally surprised. She had felt the weight of Fujitora's presence clearly enough, the pressure he carried was comparable to Crocodile's, possibly more. And yet this sa man had just folded without asking to see the outco.
She didn't know what had passed between them beneath the surface of that round, only that sothing had, and that Amon had co out on top.
"I'm called Issho," Fujitora said, making no effort to seem troubled about the pile of chips he had just surrendered. His attention had shifted entirely to Amon. "And you, young man?"
"Amon. A Jar rchant."
Fujitora went quiet for a beat, then his brow lifted with recognition.
"Amon. So you're Amon. That explains it. That explains quite a lot, actually."
"You know ?"
Fujitora's reaction was the last thing Amon had expected. The man clearly knew the na.
"Heh. I've heard of you." He left it deliberately vague, offering nothing about where or from whom.
Then he said sothing that caught Amon off guard entirely.
"On a different note, are you still selling those Jars of yours? I've heard about them from more than one person now, and I find myself rather curious about my own luck."
He wanted to open a Jar.
Amon hadn't seen that coming. But the fact that Fujitora already knew about them, and seed to know their reputation, said sothing about how far the word had spread through Navy circles. Whether he had heard it from Sengoku, Garp, or Kizaru was anyone's guess.
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