Author's Notes: So, with the Kamikaze Pirates being planned to expand in membership over the Paradise portion of the Grand Line, some discussion was made about how to help folks get to better grips with the original characters who'll be joining the crew. This is the end result; an experiment in trying to provide a basic lore dump/recap in an in-universe way that should hopefully make it a little easier for people who come into this fic later to understand who the heck we're talking about.

Ship's Log: Miriam Recruited

It was a crazy important day today. We finally have a ship to call our own; the Stormbringer! ...I don't care that Nabiki thinks the name is 'pretentious', I actually like it. Sounds badass, to me. But that isn't all that happened, though that'd be important enough... we got a new crewmember! Yeah, that's right, somebody's actually crazy enough to want to travel with us! Then again, this weird world is full of wannabe pirates, so I guess it's not that strange...

Anyway, Shampoo suggested I write up some kind of "profile" for her. Said it would be good record keeping. I think she's just hoping she can sweet talk me into putting down my thoughts on her and the other girls from Nerima, so they can find out what I really think of them... like I'd be that dumb!

So, yeah, no idea how I'm supposed to do this, so I guess I'll just throw mud an' see what sticks, as the old saying goes...

Our new crewmember is called Miriam, and she's a female "wotan" - that's a fancy way of saying her mommy was a giant and her daddy was a fishman - with the features of a tiger shark.

She came from a little shipmaking giant's colony called Shay-Lot, here in the part of the Grand Line known as Paradise. She was trained as a shipwright, so that's the position she's officially going to fill for us, though honestly she also makes a pretty damn good supply of extra muscle, which is always useful.

What else do I need to say here? Um... vital statistics, I guess?

Age: ...Apparently, she's sixty-two. Knocked us all for a loop when we heard; we would have sworn she was sixteen, maybe seventeen. Apparently, that's exactly what she is by giant standards; they age slower than humans do.

Height: She's 426 centimeters tall, which works out to be... just shy of 14 feet tall. Huge by our standards; a tiny little runt by giant standards. They average about 40 feet or more!

Weight: ...I don't care what Ryoga says, not even I am that dumb to ask a girl. Between how tall she is and, well, she's not exactly a waif... let's just say "heavy".

I'm not going to do her measurements, because a) that's creepy, and b) how do you even start to figure those out with the proportions she has?

What's she look like? Okay, that's kind of complicated... she's got sea-green hair and amber eyes (gets them from her mom), and she keeps her hair short - not like Nabiki does, more hacked to keep it out of the way. I thought the girls were gonna faint when they heard that. Looks-wise... well, I'd call her cute if I weren't more married than any guy has any business being, but even so, you can't help noticing these things. She goes around in what's basically a glorified bikini, but then giants don't seem to dress up in too much - apparently it's really hard to get ahold of enough fabric to fully cover up if the Navy aren't paying for it, which, fair enough, makes sense. Still think we gotta do something about that before we end up somewhere cold.

Her fishman traits are pretty obvious. For starters, they give her funny shaped ears - she insists they look like a shark's fins, I think they look more like an elf's ears, kinda like Deedlit from Lodoss Wars or something. She's got webbed hands and feet, small fins on her arms and legs coming from her wrists and calves, gill-slits on her neck, a dorsal fin, a shark-like tail (which is apparently a really rare mutation that most fishmen don't have), claw-like nails, and serrated triangular fangs for teeth. Also, she's got this funny two-toned skin; most of her is a dark "sea blue" with tiger-like black stripes all over her arms, legs, tail and ribs, but she's got this oval of gray-white that runs from around her mouth down her torso, kind of like she was wearing one of those really slutty outfits with the crotch-deep cleavage-holes, y'know? Oh, and she's got a stripe across her nose and under her eyes... she really don't seem to like it when people stare at that one.

Build-wise... it's kind of hard to explain, especially because, y'know, I'm not a perv who goes around paying close attention to how girls are put together! Kami, I don't even feel safe writing this down, but I guess I gotta... she's got this weird "buff but sexy" thing going on; she's got a lot up top (and I mean a LOT - I think she'd be bigger than my girl side even if we were the same height!), and plenty of butt, but her arms and legs are all muscley. But she likes to eat, so she's got this permanent soft, sort of paunchy belly - unless she's been actively gorging herself, in which case she looks like a snake that swallowed a big fat rat. Umok says she kind of reminds him of some girl he knows called "Cattleya", only she's a teenage and not a MILF... whatever that means!

Anyway, that ain't important. What's really important is that we know what kind of person she is. Honestly, at this early stage, I'd call her quiet more than anything - but then, we've only known each other a short time, I'd expect her to be a bit standoffish. She believes in the maxim "work hard, play hard", and honestly she's probably the biggest tomboy I've ever met - even Akane and Ukyo act more like girls than she does. Then again, Shay-Lot's a town of dockworkers - giant dockworkers, at that, so what would she really know about acting like a proper lady? She's definitely got a stubborn streak, but... something about her tells me I can trust her, too. I guess we'll have to wait and see in order to learn what kind of person she's really like.

I guess I should finish up by talking about her strengths and weaknesses... well, like you'd expect a giant/fishman hybrid to be, she's stupidly strong. She's gotta be at least as strong as Ryoga, and I suspect probably more. And she gets tenfold strength if she's underwater, which I'd call just plain cheating, but, well, how often are we going to fight underwater anyway? She's got all the skills a shipwright needs - ropemaking, woodcarving, steelwork, etc - and she knows how to put them to use, which is more than I can say about the rest of us! And, of course, being half-fish, she can swim like a sea devil and breathe underwater. Nabiki's already been plotting to go hunting for sunken treasure with her. She carries two old ship anchors she's basically sharpened into axes, which she can either swing in melee or twirl around on their chains like a flail... It's an unusual weapon, but then, Ucchan uses spatulas and Kodachi used hoops and ribbons; who are we to judge?

Her biggest weakness has to be that her technique absolutely sucks. Seriously, it's like Ryoga all over again. She can take a hit, and dish it out, but she's got no finesse. Even Akane would know how to throw a punch better. It's clear she's gained everything she knows by brawling with giants and sea monsters... gonna have to work on that... Also, she's kind of slow and clumsy, but I think that's more a side-effect of her lack of training. Being so big, even if she is only a runt by giant standards, still makes her an obvious target, and is obviously going to impede how well she can get around in human-sized terrain.

Also... she's a glutton. Like, damn, this girl can eat! I would have thought it was just part and parcel of being a giant, but nope, she's a glutton even by their standards. She swears she doesn't need to eat that much, it's just that when she gets bored or upset, her first impulse is to grab a snack. Nabiki almost threw a fit at our likely grocery bill before Miriam reminded her that she can pull her own weight with the rations by harvesting from the ocean as we sail. Even when she's not eating real food, she tends to gnaw on stuff that shouldn't be edible, which she blames on her tiger shark instincts.

Lastly... she's got a temper. Sheesh, she really is Ryoga 2.0.

Hm... can't really think of anything else I should add here, so I guess I'll leave it at that. This is Captain Ranma Saotome, signing off.