Dive NicEustass

In late December 1518, on the seas of the South Blue around the Mouth of the Grand Line, Killer would give birth to a tiny premature baby girl. Too small, too weak, the baby struggled to breathe and would not eat, and passed away after only a few hours.   Killer would lock herself away in the still in-progress nursery with the tiny girl for days, leaving the crew struggling to decide what to do. By the time they decided to try and replace the corpse with a doll until they could get her to professional help, Killer would come out on her own with a strange looking and very much alive baby suckling her.   The infant was a queer little thing - almost human but teeth too sharp, eyes too smart. Each time it nursed, it drew blood - seeming just as happy with that as it was with the milk, and Killer's physical health was clearly at risk but she was also starting to mentally come around for the first time after giving birth. She refused to let the crew that the baby from her, and in the end, they agreed to let her keep it as long as they got Killer eating better and she got stronger. They looped the South Blue in the mean time, needing her at the top of her game before they attempted the Grand Line, delaying their voyage for the next year   And so did the baby. The creature grew fast - much more than any human baby would - at almost twice the rate, and little Dive - as she'd come to be nicknamed after she took to the water with such an ease, swimming far stronger than she walked - looked almost four once the crew finally passed though Reverse Mountain, despite only a year and a half delay after she arrived on the Victoria Punk-go.   No one is really sure what Dive is - just some kind of changeling. They try to keep this from her; Kidd already had declared Killer's child was his regardless of parentage, and he holds fast to this even after that original child was replaced. Once Dive started to piece things together at just how different she is, Kidd sits down and reassures her that the Punk is her home, the Kidd Pirates are her family, and she will always be Kidd's kid - if that's what she wants. That he's always known that there was no blood to tie them together, but she was his the moment Killer introduced them.   When she's older, she asks him about the baby she replaced - if he ever resented her for that? She's afraid to ask Killer, afraid the woman who nursed her might secretly hate her, and Kidd tells her then that Killer's baby had already died. The way he's come to see it, is the sea gave his family a gift; the South Blue herself saw a mother who'd lost her child and gave her a child who needed a mother.