Nola

Pale blue and immense, Nola stretches across hundreds of meters, broad enough to bolt down people and whole buildings at once; its bulk rivals Upper Yard's towering trees, and Luffy once took its stomach for a cavern. Darker blue stripes trace the length of its spine, long strands of light blue hair drape from its sides, and a pair of whiskers extends from beside its nose. Yellow eyes set with slender black pupils sit above a mouth holding four long fangs and a split tongue.

Long ago the beast was scarcely bigger than an everyday viper, which is just what the Shandia took it for upon first discovering it.

Nothing thrills the serpent like the toll of the Shandorian Golden Belfry Bell, and the instant that sound carries it breaks into a happy dance. Let the ringing lapse for too long, though, and the snake sinks into gloom, even shedding tears. Anyone who sounds the bell earns its warmth, much as a pet greets its keeper, and being torn from the ones it loves cuts it as deeply as the quiet does; the passing of hundreds of years never erases those it has lost from its memory.

Four centuries of silence, however, twisted Nola into a vicious predator dreaded by all who set foot on Upper Yard, hounding every human it caught sight of in order to swallow them whole. Once the chime rang out again as the long Skypiea-Shandia conflict finally closed, the snake's elation ran so high it danced for days without pause and softened anew toward both peoples. Pain throws it into a screaming, flailing rampage that puts everything around it at risk.

Nola came from the brood of the storied serpent Kashigami. Better than four hundred years back, its parent and grandparent both died only a few days apart, and shortly afterward the young snake drew near to two figures: Kalgara, a warrior of the Shandia, and the explorer Noland. It trailed them into the wreckage of the golden city Shandora, where the great bell's ringing held it spellbound. Making the ruins its home, it lingered beside Kalgara and Seto, who told it they rang the bell so Noland would catch the sound on his return. Five years later, a single year ahead of Noland's promised homecoming, a Knock Up Stream flung half of Jaya into the heavens; the sky's residents then drove the Shandia out and severed Nola from those it treasured, while the bell vanished and stayed silent for the next four hundred years.

When the Straw Hats roamed Upper Yard, the snake went after Luffy, Zoro, Chopper, and Robin and gulped Luffy down whole, only to writhe in pain as he battered its insides. It later plunged into a savage brawl in the Upper Ruins, brushing off Wyper's Burn Bazooka thanks to its extraordinarily tough hide, before Enel's lightning at last laid it out cold. The venom in its fangs is potent enough to rot trees on contact. After dreaming of Kalgara and Seto and crashing headlong into the giant beanstalk Giant Jack, Nola finally heard the Golden Bell sound once more and cried out for joy, then danced with the Skypieans and Shandia as their four-century war drew to a close. Two years on, it found work at the Wagomuland amusement park, gripping a rubber band in its jaws for a bungee ride named Nola-Bungee.