Ship's Log: Dyna Recruited

Y'know, for a group that started out as just us guys 'n' gals from Nerima trying to find a way home, we sure seem to be picking up a lot of local flavor on our little pirate crew. First it was Miriam, the midget half-giant half-shark girl. Then it was Harumi, the crossdressing aspiring swordsman. And now this!

I write this as we depart from Mecha Island - or whatever they end up renaming it, now that they've all learned they're actually living on the back of the biggest turtle that we've seen since we encountered the Octopus Shogunate all the way back near the start of the Grand Line... huh, now I think about it, I wonder if the two are related somehow?

Anyway, we kind of ended up heroes for saving the island turtle from Ratchet's lamebrain scheme - can't believe the nerd thought he was going to conquer the Grand Line with it! Never seen a guy that old get spanked like a naughty little kid, though... y'know, that's actually something my old man never did? He preferred running me into the ground with katas instead. The turtle was sure happy we set her loose - and boy, was Nabiki surprised when it turned out she laid eggs made out of solid gold!

Turns out, that's what that stanza about the "Golden Crown of the King of the Sea" was all about - the golden eggs of this turtle "Sea King", which apparently is what locals around here call the various stupidly huge sea monsters that pop up all over, especially if you get close to the Calm Belts. We couldn't take a whole egg with us - even a half-shell would have ended up sinking, and probably dragged us to the bottom along with it - but we were able to score quite a few good-sized shards of shell, so Nabiki's happy as a pig in slop.

And I've gone off on a tangent again... The reason we went to Mecha Island in the first place was to get a robot girl fixed up after we won her in a race, as I noted in this journal after the Dead End Race. Long story short, Ratchet fixed her before he then betrayed us as part of his scheme to use the island turtle Shimagame as a floating fortress, and now we have a robot girl on our crew.

Her name's Dyna. She doesn't talk much, and she says most of her memory banks've been 'corrupted', but what she can remember tells a really weird story. She says she's from some country that floats in the sky, and she was an artificial soldier made to fight in some great war. But during the fighting, she took a really bad hit and fell through the 'sky-sea' - her words, not mine! - and plunged down into the Grand Line. She was hurt bad, and the impact certainly didn't do her any favors, but she was saved by a brilliant scientist, who patched her up with what tech he had available - that's why she looks kinda like a girl's head sticking out of the bastard lovechild of a mechanical spider 'n' a tank. She insists her original body was better, but this 'steam-powered life-support and mobility unit' is the best she has until she can get home and get properly repaired.

So, we've made a little deal; we'll help her find a way back to this 'sky-sea', and she'll work as one of the crew until we do.

I'd say I was surprised, but honestly, after everything we've seen just getting this far into the Grand Line, the idea that there's some kind of ocean in the air full of floating islands made of solidified clouds sounds downright sensible by comparison.

Honestly? I'm kinda excited to see what we'll find when we get there... Though I don't know that Dyna will like what we find. Judging by the rust an' battle damage on her body when we got her, I think she's been down here on the Grand Line for a looooong time...

Oh, right, I should describe what she looks like, shouldn't I?

Most of what we see of Dyna is her 'exo-suit', as Ucchan puts it; a vaguely barrel-shaped steel body that scurries around on eight piston-driven spidery legs. It's got six little arms that fold up against it for delicate work, and two big arms for fighting; the right arm's a pincer-claw/chainsaw combination, and the left arm's a mounting point for guns, though she don't got any of those just yet. It's powered by steam, so she's got these smokestack-vent-things on her back to let the steam out. It also sports some shoulder-mounted grenade launchers for extra firepower; whoever built it for her sure wanted to keep her safe! All told, it's about 7ft, 8ft tall and I don't know how much it weighs.

Dyna herself is... well, she's admitted she's basically just a head and a spinal column stuck inside the exo-suit at this point. So she looks like a girl's head sticking out of the top of the spider-mecha. She's only got one eye, with a plate attached to the right side of her face to cover where the other was. The eye she still has is electric blue, and pulses with light as she speaks. She's also got bright 'electric' yellow hair, short-cropped save for a forelock she tries to use to cover her eyepatch, and skin that's this porcelain white color... maybe it is porcelain, how should I know?

So, yeah, she sticks out in a crowd, even here on the Grand Line. The Marines aren't gonna forget who we are anytime soon once they find out about her...