The New World was, above all else, a hostile environment.
Behind the masquerade of untapped mysteries and breathtakingly exoctic scenery, the ultimate sea was a terrifying beast waiting to devour the unprepared in an instant, leaving behind naught but shipwrecks and cautionary tales. Yamato knew the dangers of the Grand Line's greatest test more than most thanks to her bible, but the first hand experience was on a different level. Pirates and marines, Sea Kings and tsunamis, weather bizzare enough to make you question your sanity: everything was a threat, and Yamato was starting to realise that Oden had not been exaggerating any of it.
Naturally, this life or death way of existence took a toll on any vessel unlucky enough to sail through it all, which is why Yamato was so baffled as to how the Sunny always looked so pristine. Well, that is, until she got to see Franky in action.
She gawked in awe as the cyborg zipped from bow to stern, patching up the (mostly superficial) damage that the Sunny had sustained from their encounter with the marines, hands moving so fast that, if he had had normal skin, his hands would be 90% splinters. The spare lumber she had been given to help with repairs hung loosely in her arms, all but forgotten in the wake of Franky and his constructive whirlwind: the heavy wood disappeared from her grasp, several pieces at a time, whenever the blue blur passed her brain, still addled by the adrenaline of combat, could barely keep up.
When she had woken up that day she would never have guessed that, before the morning was up, she'd be playing assistant shipwright, but then again life with her new crew was as unpredictable as it was fun so maybe that surprise was on her.
The Marine ambush had been so sudden that it was a wonder that Chopper wasn't busy as well but mostly, Yamato was pissed at the disturbance of her relaxation. Normally, she welcomed the rush of battle and on most days, the presence of such powerful foes such as those Marines that patrolled the New World would be cause for celebration in her book, but the issue was that they had happened to attack during a particularly pleasant nap that she was sharing with her captain. The first wave of Navy cannonballs had rocked the Sunny hard enough to send both of them tumbling from the deck hammock they filled, and Yamato had virtually atomised the mast of the enemy's warship in blazing retaliation.
So there she stood, awkwardly carrying several hundred pounds of building materials, waiting on Franky's orders, all the while lamenting the bits of her broken peace. It took her mustering up all of the willpower that she possessed to prevent herself from dumping the wood over the rail and going to find Luffy again. That and the fact that Nami would probably kill her if she tried to shirk the job of helping Franky fix the ship. 3 months as a Strawhat and still, the navigator was the scariest person she'd ever met.
She wasn't sure how long her mindless stupor lasted but eventually she felt the clap of a giant metal hand on her shoulder and only then did she notice that she was holding nothing and that the master shipwright was standing beside her, grinning in real appreciation.
"AOW, thanks for the SUPER help Yamato! Couldn't have done it without ya!" he bellowed, winking and flexing his free arm in an exaggerated pose.
Early on in her days as a crewmember, Yamato had misconstrued Frank's exuberance as sarcasm, but one couldn't live alongside the radical robot for very long without picking up on the fact that he lived with his heart on his sleeve. He truly saw Yamato's gormless idling as helpful and it made her inexplicably happy.
She turned to the cyborg and couldn't help but laugh, "Something tells me that you could have done all that without my help with your eyes closed Franky, but you are welcome anyway," she smiled back at him, slinging an arm around his truly ridiculous shoulders. Her height wasn't something that had ever really bothered her, but sometimes it was nice to interact with someone who was similar in size, even if that someone was almost as wide as he was tall.
Franky shrugged and laughed with the nonchalant ease of someone trying to hide the fact that their ego had just ballooned, but still he carried on with his praises, "Maybe so, maybe so. Still, you gave me a hand which is super appreciated!" he posed again, making Yamato chuckle at his antics. His wild blue hair, expertly coiffed into the shape of Chopper's antlers and hat that day, shook with his every sudden movement, and Yamato would have burst into raucous laughter had she not been adjusted to his particular brand of insanity.
"Anything else I can do to help?" She asked, privately hoping that he'd say no, she had important business to attend to after all.
The cyborg pondered her question for a moment, scratching his chin with his smaller, extendable hand and humming to himself. A moment or two later he waved her offer away, "Nah I think Sunny's in good shape for now, I'm the one who built her after all," he smirked. Yamato was about to excuse herself with a smile and an exasperated laugh when a gleaming shine appeared behind Franky's eyes: a flash of red behind the usually deep silver, like he'd just detected something alarming. His excited smile and the childish giddiness dissuaded her of any notion of danger. "OHH, I almost forgot, I've got something to show you! It's SUPER so I know you'll love it!"
Without so much as a warning, Yamato felt the cool steel of Franky's tighten around her forearm before she was yanked unceremoniously across the deck. The sudden lurch of motion almost had her face first into the floor and somehow Yamato doubted that Franky would notice that he was dragging her prone form, so she did all she could to prevent a splinter ridden forehead. He pulled her towards the open doorway that led to his workshop, past the grassy expanse of the main deck, barely taking the time to avoid stepping on a slumbering Zoro, all the while chattering incessantly. Yamato could only pick out the odd word or two from his ramblings, 'Samurai' and 'Design' spilling past his lips in a jumbled mess of words padded out with his usual cries of 'SUPER' amongst other things.
It wasn't until he'd dragged her into his workshop that he finally halted, bringing them both to a stop just in front of a bench littered with tools and off cuts of wood or metal. Not an inch of the actual surface was visible under all the random pieces of unfinished projects but at its center sat a pristine rectangular book that seemed so out of place amongst the organised chaos of the rest of the shop. The entire room was wall to wall industry: each and every scrap of material or random tool had a place and purpose but it looked as if the entire place had been the scene of a brawl. All of it except for the immaculate spot that held that book.
Out the corner of her eye, Yamato could see the manic grin on Franky's face and for a moment she was worried he'd start his tugboat act all over again, but he merely nodded expectantly at the book, encouraging her to open it, so she did.
She quickly found that the 'book' was less of a book and more a collection of ramblings and scribbles of a mad scientist. Cover to cover, each page was filled top to bottom with ink stained blueprints, equations long enough to make her forehead throb, and theoretical questions about whether or not building various insane implements of death was; A.) ethically sound and B.) possible in the first place. Unsurprisingly, the later question seemed to feature a lot more than the former. Not one to dwell on mechanics herself, Yamato absorbed roughly 2% of what she read and, just when she felt like her head was going to explode, she came across a page that held the image of someone quite familiar. Oden's wild hair and strong features were hard to miss, after all. There was no mistaking that it was him, but the question was, why was his face staring back out at from the confines of a pencil sketch of a robot the size of a building. Just above the drawing, three words stood stark against the paper, underlined several times in black ink: General Franky 2.0.
The giant mecha was mostly familiar to Yamato, she'd seen him causing chaos on Onigashima with the rest of the crew, but the robot she remembered looked slightly different to what she saw in the book. For one, this new form wielded two enormous blades instead of one, and the signature hardline face and drill hair of the old model was replaced by the wild grin and generous flattop of her idol. And if she recalled correctly the robot on Onigashima bore the insignia 'BF-38' and not 'BF-39' as the sketch did. Yamato wasn't sure why, but the blueprint had her laughing in childish delight.
"What is this?" She asked in wonder.
"The General was looking a little obsolete over in Onigashima so I'm gonna give him a SUPER upgrade! That Oden guy was a real badass so I thought I'd pay him some respect. Then I remembered Luffy tellin' me how much you admired the guy so I wanted to get your input," he said, clapping Yamato on the shoulder. "So whaddya' think? Pretty super right?" He grinned.
Atleast, Yamato assumed that he grinned. She couldn't really see very well through the mist of tears that began to form in her eyes. Frank's face dropped at the sight. "Aww come on Sis, don't worry, it's not built yet so I can change it," he sounded genuine, which made Yamato tear up even more.
"NO!" she yelled, making Franky jump but he calmed down when he caught a look at her watery smile. "It's perfect Franky, I'm just not used to such gifts," she said, wiping away at the corner of her eyes.
Frank laughed heartily. "What? You're one of us now. This?" he thumbed one giant hand at the blueprints. "This is nothin'."
It was such a simple thing, apparently, for someone to share something with a friend that might make them happy and yet Yamato was still surprised each and every time it happened. Her grin stretched from ear to ear. "Even so Franky. Thank you, this means alot more than you know," she choked.
"Ahh don't mention it," he waved off. "So whaddya think about the face? I only met the guy once but I think I nailed it!" Franky wrapped a knuckle against the desk sending a hollow *thunk* bouncing through the room.
Slowly, as his words began to sink in, Yamato's eyes grew as wide as the boulders that were Franky's shoulders. "You met Oden?!" she borderline squeaked, something that made Franky laugh and raise an eyebrow.
"Met him? He tried to get me to join his crew! Of course I turned him down, had to stick around for our captain to show up after all," he barely managed to get the sentence out before Yamato bombarded him with a litany of questions. For the next few hours, anyone below the decks of the Sunny could hear little more than Yamato's rapid fire questions and Franky's exasperated answers, followed closely by the former's squeals of delight. It was well into the evening before Franky could get to work on his project.