Charlotte Soma

Charlotte Soma (シャーロット・ソーマ), also known under the pseudonym of Dr. Hestia, is the Captain of the Gourmet Pirates, a crew operating in the New World with the goal of providing food and essential goods everywhere it is needed, no matter how dangerous the road is. Her goal made her up aligning with the Pirate Sanctuary Alliance, occupying the seat as the captain in charge of supplies delivering. Soma is equally as famous for her skills as a chef and her strength in the battlefield, for which people often compare her with her famous ancestor, the Yonko.

However, both those identities are kept separated, as Soma's greatest ambition can't be fully realized if she were to go against the WG; because of that, she has taken a double identity, one being a Pirate Captain, the other running a chain of restaurants known as Mama Charlotte, which has gained an incredible reputation all around the world.

An Experiment Gone Too Well
Soma’s parents didn’t bring her into this world out of love, but to satisfy their lust for power. The fall of Charlotte Linlin’s reign and the rise of the Second Pirate had the surviving family members scattering throughout the world. Most of them accepted their lower social status and settled for more peaceful existences; others, instead, never abandoned their ambition and dedicated their lives to reclaim the influence and authority they have lost. A Charlotte couple realized that keystone behind the power of their family lied in the matriarch herself: more specifically, in the unnatural genetic framework which granted her strength and durability nearly without equal, something none of her massively numbered descendants had ever managed to fully inherit. Given how fickle Mother Nature had been with her blessings, the Charlottes sought to rig the dices through scientific methods. Scrapping for years in Totto Island like vultures, they amassed all the genetic material left by Big Mom and brought it to one of the most infamous organization in the Underworld, one specialized in making monsters out of children with experiments of morally dubious nature: the Devil’s Playground.

At first, the Charlottes went for the most ambitious projects: cloning Big Mom and create an army of indestructible monsters. However, Charlotte Linlin’s genetic structure proved to be too complex and difficult to fully replicate on a mass scales, causing clones to have short lifespans and plague by cellular degenerations and breakdowns. Realizing beings like Linlin were supposed to be ones of their kind, Soma parents tried a different route: they would infect their own daughter with a retrovirus carrying big Mom genes, then trying a modified version of SIQ the make the recipe fitter for the DNA’s injection. Soma’s mother let her womb be a ground for experiments, welcoming every pain and violation for the sake of giving birth to the next monster of the Charlotte family. The grueling treatment was proving to be incredibly harmful to her own health, so much she had Soma’s fetus removed from herself and put in artificial gestation. She and her husband would wait not only until her birth was complete, but her training too, as they didn’t want anything to do with a failure.

Soma was born among tubes and alembics, coming out in a sprout some sickly green seminal liquid. Her first memories as a child were dominated by either dark or pale white rooms, and lots of doctors making all kinds of analyses with electrodes and stethoscopes. The little girl was boon of health and strength: already growing bigger than her caretakers at four years old, she promised to become just as strong as her ancestor, with no sign of dysfunction or cellular degeneration. An achievement which in itself bore the seeds of their failures: Soma’s strength was so portentous she not only exceeded every physical test but made her a nightmare to be contained by the Devil's Playground.

The girl was incredibly rambunctious as a newborn, exploding in tantrums that resulted in frequent and uncontrollable devastation in the lab, breaking often equipment worth of millions of bellies. Disciplining Soma seemed impossible: she could snap the sturdiest chains like twigs, break out through every door, and no physical method of correction had any effect of her, as nothing from electrocution to punctures had the slightest effect on this. In those early years, the Devil Playground would find itself in an almost comical position, a criminal organization with immense resources in terms of human capital and defenses, feared and sought after the entire Underworld, taken hostage by the equivalent of a giant baby crawling around and playing with everything she could find.

One thing was able to keep Soma somewhat on a leash, and that another craving she had inherited from Big Mom: food, especially sweets. The exuberant little devil turned in a sweet, well-behaved angel every time her masters fed her with some new delicacy. Failing in finding other reliable methods of control, the Devil Playground’s patrons gave in and decided to give Soma back to her parents for the hefty sum of money they promised, with the instruction to always keep her with something under her teeth. They set sail for the place of exchange, Soma kept in the hull like a glorified piece of merchandise, happily resting among food stock and asking for her teddy bear and good bedtime stories.

Outside the hull, the ship was at mercy of a tremendous storm, one of those unpredictable atmospherically events which often happens in certain parts of the New World. Wind and thunder lifted columns of water, crashing against the ship with ever higher height and intensity. It ended up breaking down the vessel; Soma heard the rumbles from above and felt her room cavort up and down. Realizing she was in danger, she asked for help but found no one, water was already pouring near her feet. Soma panicked, and literally broke her way out through the ship, tearing the hull apart. She swam in the black sea, frantically searching for any safe harbor. Her unnaturally powerful body came in great handy, as she found better weather and a good shore without suffering nothing but extreme fear: the safest shores of the pious and welcoming land of Acacia.

Peaceful Shores
Soma sighed in relief once she reached the outer rim of Acacia, her heartbeat slowed down. The panic left Soma which a huge hole in her stomach, which grumbled with the force of a stampede. She walked to the downtown, searching for anything edible to fill her belly with. Then, the scent of food, food delicious she had never imagined could even exist. The little Charlotte was raptured; she broke in a run, rushing to the source of the odor. She found a large party, an entire crowd happily chatting and waiting to receive a portion from a sumptuously large and rich buffet. In the minute she saw the laid table, her mount drooled, and she made a huge leap, jumping right in the middle of the banquet. She ate everything her two hands could reach, not caring a bit about the stupefied commensals, crying with joy for how good it was; once finished, she fell into a sweet sleep.

Soma awoke in a room large enough for her, with light blue walls and lots of ceilings. She found a man waiting near her bed, welcoming her with a bright smile. He presented himself: his name was RuPaul Curry, an Okama cook and former martial artist who had come and settle in Acacia after meeting his sweetheart. Curry complimented on Soma appetite, and, having noticed her tattered clothes, asked she managed to reach the shores of Acacia. Soma told Curry her story and how her ship was caught in a storm: her tale was filtered through her innocence and naiveté, but for Curry, it was enough to discern abuse. The man reassured Soma and convinced to stay with him and his family, with the promise of eating food as good as the one at the banquet every day of her life. She clapped her hands and happily accepted it.

The rest of Soma’s early years and adolescence were mostly peaceful and uneventful, easily the best period of her life. The girl found a family was loved for she wanted and gave her the freedom to do everything she wanted and good food. Soma restlessness made her picked up many interests, from fashion design to scientific pursuits to martial artists. The greatest passion of her life, however, was cuisine. She spent days and nights in her kitchen with her father, working tirelessly to help him bring his delicacies to the table and then eating them up. Eventually, her passion for cooking surpasses even her love for eating, so much so she had herself specializing in fields such as biology and biochemistry just to make sure to make the best dishes. Her father couldn’t be happier or prouder for her baby; the two of them forged a kinship that transcended blood bonds. Because of that, Soma was also instructed in the secrets of the Kamabakka Kingdom kingdom, which Curry had brought with himself, inheriting the complete knowledge both of the 99 recipes of Attack Cuisine and the techniques of Newkama Kenpo. From a hungry and cheerful child, Soma blossomed in an intelligent, beautiful and confident woman, surrounded by the love of her family and countrymen which she reciprocates.

Such idyllic lifestyle rested in large part in the Island blessed climate: the weather was temperate, sun and rain trading place to always ensure good harvests and healthy livestock. Unfortunately, the New World climate is nothing but fickle: months without a drop of water replaced the clement sunny days, and the months when water came, it poured down, bringing ruination on the crops. Extreme weather blighted Acacia for years; citizens were finding less and less to eat and had to live through scrapes. Soma watched the fate befallen on her island with concern, using her strength and knowledge to defend farms from typhoons and gather what possible from the draughty soil, but she was just as impotent against the hand of nature. Her heart chocked seeing at how much toll famine was taking on her people; however, her own table was still filled with the same enormous amount of food she was used to ingurgitating in her better years. She asked her father and the local authorities the reason for this preferential treatment in times of such crises, as everybody else was getting only rations: her father was secretive, giving elusive answers to an ever-angrier Soma. For how much she did love food, she couldn’t stomach to receive luxury while her friends were in pain and misery. Against the orders of her father, she gave larger and larger parts of her food to charity. She and her father argued vehemently to the point of shouting: but Soma was willing to do anything she could for her countrymen, even if that meant starving herself to death. In order to help the poorest and most numerous families to get through the worst periods, she even began to fast. Her hunger, meanwhile, was eating her from the inside, turning her paler and fainter by the days. For the sake of her people, Soma tried to control it with all her strength. Unfortunately, her best efforts only carried out so far.

Endless Hunger
One morning during her fasting period, Soma awoke with a barren stomach and an overpowering sense of dizziness. Her vision was blurred, people and objects looked like phantoms or figures caught in a hazy landscape. Soma never wanted to eat more, she asked for the famous porridge her father cooked the first time he met. Curry was far away on the island, preparing an important banquet for some foreign ambassador with the meager supplies left so that they could take out a loan and ask for more food. People told the girl that her father was busy for the entire the week, but Soma didn’t listen: she wanted her porridge now.

Thus, she rampaged through Acacia, shaking the island with her screaming demands. Soma tore through buildings blocks, shattered the ground with kicks and stomp, broke many eardrums with the volume of voice. Nothing could resist her fury; the kingdom was thrown in chaos and panic. Knowing what do, messengers reached the court and told Curry everything: frightened and worried, he knew the only way to stop Soma from destroying the entire kingdom was to give her all the porridge she could. He hastened the production of his dish, he and his assistants facing a race against time. Just as when she was a child, the scent reached Soma and guided her. She reached the castle, broke down its wall, feasted upon porridge and snoozed with her face still in the plates.

Once awoke, Soma returned the sweet-natured and intelligent person she normally was, completely oblivious about what she did in her hunger frenzy. So, when she saw devastation all around her, it was her father who had to explain her everything: much like her genetic source, Soma had inherited a condition which makes her go berserk if withhold from food for long enough. Curry had always managed to notice and stop those attempts before they caused any damage, but this time he was too far: it was for this reason that he made sure to keep her fed all the time, even when the rest of Acacia was starving.

Soma broke down in a desperate cry; her father rushed to hug her, whispering it was not her fault for what happened. The day after, Soma gave a speech in what remained in the city plaza, where most of the kingdom was present to hear. She tearfully apologized for the damaged she caused and expressed how she had realized she was too dangerous to stay in the barren island while her sanity depended on enormous amounts of food. She swore she would have left Acacia, and never came back she somehow found a way to cure her illness and/or help her citizens getting through their phase of famine. She gave her parents and siblings the biggest hug she could muster and departed in search of a cure.

Soma had not studied her disorder, but she knew it was exceedingly rare and pretty much impossible to cure through conventional medicine. If there was a way out, it could rest only in some esoteric force like the one provided by Devil Fruits. Among those, maybe there was one with the power to either cure any ailment or better to have food and water grow from nothing, solving both her kingdom and her own problems. Given how the knowledge and the means to obtain the most prized of those fable items was not of public domain, Soma had to take a much murkier and more dangerous route, one slithering through the pits of the Underworld.

Hell's Angel
To fulfill one's most outlandish desires in the New World, one needs more than mere power and knowledge, though both were paramount: reputation was key, and Soma, having lived comfortably in a land where war and strife were but foreign concepts, had none to speak of. Fortunately for her, yet regrettably for the rest of the globe, the power of the old generation of Yonko and the Second Pirate King had crumbled, and the powers to come where yet to rise and impose a semblance of order on the New World: seas were crawling with ravagers and looters, and pillage was a daily reality for all but the most prosperous kingdoms or those better hidden by the harshest weathers, such as Acacia. Her first destination was the, relatively neighbor country of Acacia, Joie, a land under the iron heel of the Cipher Pirates, one of the most infamous crews of at the time… [to be continued].

After years of travels, toils, and training, amazing encounters and terrible events, Soma had finally found the solution of all her problems, of her own and her everyone else: the Tsuri Tsuri Devil Fruit, standing right before her eyes. Her heart skipped many beats with joy, so much so that the taste of the magical fruit almost felt good when she crunched it whole. She tasted her new power immediately on the few supplies she had brought in her bag, enough to fill a small carriage: after few minutes of trying, she could already increase them to the size of an elephant, then a whale, then a building, all without them losing their nutritional value one bit. Returning back to her tent, she called her father with a Den Den Mushi, to finally tell them she had succeeded, and she could return home and embrace them. The Den Den Mushi bleeped for many hours, but no one answered. Soma tried the next day, and the day after no one was answering the calling. Soma’s instincts sensed a terrible outcome; her hopes turned into fear and anxiety.

For a World of Full Bellies
Soma flew to her hometown, racing desperately against time, as every hour wasted could be too late. She reached Acacia’s shores at daybreak, not boring even too sleep. What she saw was easily the greatest blow she had ever received in her entire life: houses on the beach burning on fire, trees uprooted, the entire capital even more broken down and in disarray that the day she had succumbed to her hunger frenzy. Soma spotted corpses still bleeding on the ground, both belonging to the city garrison and many bearing the Cypher Pirates insignia.

She immediately reached for the survivors, whom she had spotted thanks to her Haki, helping people in the little way she could while asking what catastrophe had happened. The truth so explained was horrifying: to survive the next year or two of drought and famine, Acacia had to take the resources spared from the Celestial Tributes, violating its utmost duty as one of the nation members of the World Government; thus, the grand organization decided to make an example of them and withholding every Marine garrison, leaving them alone and merciless. The King of Acacia pleaded and begged for leniency, but there was no avail, not until they had shown to the WG they could be reliable partners again. Soma’s parents didn’t lie to her when they told her that crops were getting better; however, that only attracted pirates to the land like honey begets hungry bees. A gang from the Cypher Pirates took the opportunity, sailing in the few days Acacia’s coasts weren’t shielded by storms. Soldiers and garrisons fought with few resources they had, making up with desperate courage for their lack of manpower: Curry himself had stormed into the fray, pouring every fiber of his strength and mastery over Okama Kenpo against the invaders.

Soma asked about her father, but they had little knowledge since everything was taken apart by the chaos of the battlefield. She knew, however, she had to return home: not only to be sure that the rest of her family was doing good but because she knew had her father been alive, he would rush at his loved ones' side. Her relatives welcomed them with cries of sadness and relief; Soma sighed at their sight, happy that none of them was seriously hurt, and asked for her dad. A tremendous silence fell in the wrecked, messy room: Soma didn’t need a single word to fully understand what happened. She rushed as fast as she could to the city outskirt; there, she fell on her knees and cried with all strength. A shriek of pure agony, so piercing it bent down the nearby trees. She spent most of the day spilling tears and devouring mountains of food, to fill just a little the gaping void opened in her heart. When sunset set down, she stopped crying and worked the following three days rebuilding the city. Few things had been left untouched, even less in one piece, but Soma had the now the power to create lakes out of waterdrops and banquets out of crumbs. In a miraculous time, she had already filled Acacia with enough supplies to be satisfied for weeks.

She spent the day after wandering, musing on her life and the memories of her time spent with her father. Months were passed rebuilding, mourning, re-building again, and eventually, Soma's mood improved; Acacia economy was back on track, and they could pay the Heavenly Tribute for a reliable amount of time. The rest of citizens howled of joy, but the perspective didn't Soma all. All those years spent fighting, training had opened her eyes to the cruelty of the world. A world where human life is valued less than dirt and people are constantly starving and being abused. Instead of helping them, the World Government was perhaps the biggest worm at the top of the mountain, more concerned about sustained the privilege of few than the need of many. Soma knew no one could quench her hunger for justice but herself and knew that there were many people sharing her dream and disaffection with the current state of the world. More importantly, she had the actual means to make the better place, to ensure that no one would ever starve again.

She could not do that, nor she wanted to do that within the boundaries of law: thus, she decided to turn in a career of piracy. She had the power, the experience, and the fame to accomplish that. Her time of rest was not too short, more than a year of cherishing every moment with her loved ones. But once that time passed, Soma knew she couldn’t wait any longer. After saying a final goodbye to her relatives, promising, this time, she would have paid a visit much often, she set sail for a life full of adventures and dangers, allies to find and enemies to encounter, all in the sake of her dream: a world of happy, full bellies.

Culinary Expertise
Gourmet à la Carte (食品メニュー):

Physical Abilities
In the era between the two Pirates Kingdom, the Yonko Charlotte Linlin stood as one of the most infamous monsters, a beast capable of destroying islands on her own and shrug off the strongest blows as if they were nothing. Soma was modified in her womb to replicate the nigh unmatched strength of her ancestor, using a combination of Linlin DNA and an experimental reagent derived from SIQ the help the genes match up better. The treatment succeeded, turning Soma in a quasi-clone big Mom; because of that, she has inherited a height and raw power that naturally puts her in the realm of demigods.

In terms of pure strength, Soma is truly a monster, far more than her willowy if fit frames could ever suggest. Even as a newborn she deemed to be the single strongest being ever conceived in her respective Playground, breaking any record held by the organization and routinely shrugging off any mean of control or discipline. Her caretakers begun dreading her power as much as being awed by it, giving the estimation that she would have been able to destroy her Playground of choice by the age of 5. She proved to possess island-shattering destructive power many years later, whereas she annihilated large portions of the kingdom of Acacia while in her hunger-induced frenzy. Even against the pirates of the New World, her physicality proved to be just as overwhelming, being her capable of annihilating entire crews with no efforts and triumphing without failing in any confrontation which required superior strength. Soma’s finger strength alone is enough she can cut through materials as hard as orichalcum with nothing but their pressure, needing her sharp nails mostly to achieve a more precise sculpting; as a matter of fact, she takes carving kitchenware from diamonds as a hobby, boasting she would be capable of cutting seastone if it were not for the debilitating effect it has on her. It is not clear whether she is naturally as strong as Linlin in her better years: given her much healthier lifestyle with regular exercises and better diet based on enhancing Okama recipes, it very likely she had filled more than every gap she had with her ancestor.

Soma’s durability is perhaps even more unnatural, as her genetic implant provides her with the same “iron balloon” skin for which Linlin was renowned for. Soma has exhibited a near-complete immunity to physical harms of all and any kind: from stabs to blunt blows to flesh melting heat and bone chill cold, Soma had withstood it all without accusing damage whatsoever, brushing off attacks capable of annihilating cities or destroying entire islands. Soma can traverse the most dangerous portions of the New World, places known for weather condition as extreme as they can be, on her two feet and remain completely unscathed, the only effect being a slight tan. The secret of her durability is yet to be fully understood by science but is understood to be linked to her unnatural metabolism, which toughens her skin in a proportional amount to how much she eats. Given that her lunch habits are far more extreme than Big Mom herself, Soma might be even more durable to kill her own ancestor, especially as she tends to compress the fat in her cells rather than diminish their mass entirely, adding density and weight to her bones and tissues and furthering their tremendous durability.

Because her skin and flesh were so naturally though they hardly needed any kind of protection, Soma focused on parts of her which were more crucial to her profession of a cook, her tongue and innards. While it was enormously ample, Soma was not sure if it carried the same durability of her outer part, which she deemed paramount to withstand her most outlandish experiment on the dinner table in the disgusting and virtually lethal phases of trial and error. Working well with improved recipes from Okama cuisine, Soma had followed a diet since her early ears tailored to strengthen both her digestive and filtration system while improving her sense of taste at the same time. She gained, as a result, the capability of eating and processing almost every substance on the planet with the possible exception of hard metals in large quantities, as well as an unmatched tolerance for hot and cold substances while and virtual immunity to all but the most lethal poisons. Complementary to her iron stomach, her sense of taste and smell are extremely sensitive, on par if not above that of Minks of the most receptive animals. Soma can recognize and appreciate the subtlest variation of flavor in the most masterful meals while also withstanding the grossest ones without feeling nothing except an unpleasant sense of revulsion.

Along with her natural strength and durability, Soma has taken from Big Mom what was perhaps her most defining trait, an extremely powerful metabolism which can be described almost as all-consuming. So much so that it can also put Soma herself on a risk, as fasting for even few hours will cause to lose her mind for the hunger, withering away by the minute and going on rampages with potentially catastrophic consequences. She has yet to find a permanent solution to her appetite, if any is possible, though she had managed to circumvent the problem by increasing the size of her courses to an unimaginable degree, sometimes by tens of times their original size. With her hunger out of the table, there is no shortcoming in Soma’s stamina, as she can stay awake and perform exercises for entire weeks without the need to sleep if fed properly.