Door

Nami decided to try the door and pushed her way inside. She found herself in a room that was filled with snow. She closed the door behind her then shivered and wrapped her arms around herself as she took in her surroundings.

The room was enormous. It would be easily big enough for a crew of giant’s to frolic in. The walls had been painted with rainbows and clouds which made it look rather juvenile.

The lone occupant of the room was a green haired woman who was sitting in the middle of the room inside a nest made out of snow as she read a newspaper.

Nami blinked when she realized that the woman was using a pair of feathery wings to hold her newspaper. And that her crossed legs looked like a bird’s. But honestly… Nami had seen a lot of weird stuff in her lifetime. On her crew alone there was a rubber man, a transforming reindeer, a woman who could grow parts of her body anywhere she wanted, a cyborg and an undead skeleton. She’d grown up around fishmen and had seen mermaids, dinosaurs, giants and man-eating rabbits. She’d been on a flying ship, had met ‘God’, a race of winged ‘angels’, been chased through a graveyard by zombies and had even been attacked in the shower by an invisible pervert. When she considered all of that, a harpy-looking bird woman didn’t register that far on Nami’s weird-scale.

“Hmm… I need a six letter word for ‘entice’…” the bird-woman mused as she stared at her newspaper through a pair of round glasses with a ripple pattern on them. “The third letter is a ‘d’…”

A crossword puzzle? Those were Robin’s thing. It never failed that ever since Alabasta whenever Nami picked up a newspaper she’d find the issue’s crossword puzzle filled in with an instantly recognizable neat handwriting.

“Um… hello?” Nami called out, announcing her presence.

“Oh!” the harpy lowered her newspaper and then raised her glasses onto her forehead so she could stare across the room at Nami with a pair of amber eyes. “OH! You’re cute… Are you one of Master’s test subjects?”

“No… not really…” Nami replied, “I’m just passing through… You wouldn’t happen to know a way out of here, would you?”

“I do,” the harpy confirmed, “I even know a shortcut to get you to the exit of the lab. But if you want me to help you… you’ve got to make it worth my while.”

Nami blinked, “Um… excuse me?”

“I don’t normally interfere in Master’s experiments,” the harpy stated. “But you’ve caught me at a good time. I’m really bored. If you’re willing to entertain me for a while… I think I’d be willing to show you the way out.” The harpy smirked and spread her bird-like legs. Nami instantly knew what the bird-woman meant by ‘entertain’. “What do you say? You scratch my back… and I’ll scratch yours…”

Nami gripped her ClimaTact. She had no idea what this strange bird-woman could do. But the harpy was offering her an easy way out of this. Did she want to debase herself in order to get the woman’s dubious help… or should she attack her and fight her way through?