Kainalu

Dilana Silva has been wandering around for a while now, but is starting to think it's time she settled in somewhere to begin living her new life rather than continuing to drift along with the tides. Likely to be seen looking for a place to live that is near the ocean.

Kainalu is, for lack of a better term, an anthromorphic dolphin-person. Not much is known about her (it?).

Background
Dilana Silva was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up there too. Her father is an oceanographer, while her mother is an accountant working at First Hawaiian Bank. She would often join her father on research expeditions, helping however she could, but mostly just having fun. This is where her love of swimming and marine life started.

Dilana joined the swim team in her freshman year at Kalani High School, and made team captain as a sophomore, only the second student to do so in the history of the school. By her senior year she had set multiple school records and helped her team to win All-State two years in a row. In addition to her athletic achievements, she was also an honor student, a vocal member of the student council, and part of the school choir.

After graduating, she went to the University of Hawaii at Manoa on a partial athletic scholarship, where she took a major in biology and minored in geography. While still in college, she competed in both the 2005 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships and the 2006 World Aquatics Championships, taking home multiple gold medals from each competition. She graduated in 2007 with a BS in Biology, and shortly after, qualified to join Team USA for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

In the coming months, Dilana spent nearly every moment of her day preparing for what would be the biggest competition of her life. Despite being an athlete her whole life, it was hard for her to believe that she had actually made it and was now and forever, and Olympian. She went on to win 4 gold and 2 silver medals, which brought her a pretty hefty amount of attention, having such a successful showing her first time at the Olympic Games.

The future looked bright as several sponsors signed on and she continued training and competing in worldwide events. Everything was going well until tragedy struck when Dilana was driving home after celebrating her birthday with the family on April 8th 2011 during a severe thunderstorm. She lost control when the car hydroplaned, entered oncoming traffic, and was involved in a head on collision. The accident left her mostly paralyzed from the waist down.

Doctors at the hospital where she was treated told her that she would most likely never walk again, but Dilana wasn't about to just give up and resign herself to life in a wheelchair for the rest of her days. She desperately searched for a doctor, a treatment that would heal her damaged spine. She searched tirelessly, and just when hope seemed lost, she was approached by a doctor who claimed he could repair the damage to her spinal cord so that she could not just walk again, but that she would be able to swim again just as before the accident. As it turns out however, this 'doctor' is more of a mad scientist than a medical doctor. The experimental procedure he performs on Dilana does completely repair the damage to her spinal cord, but it also infuses her with dolphin DNA, permanently morphing her into a creature half human, half dolphin.

After she awoke and realized what had happened, she promptly escaped from the facility, drove to the beach, jumped into the ocean and just tried to swim away from her problems, unable to even think about facing her family or anyone she knew as she was now. After months living in the ocean, she learned to communicate with other marine life, and also began to overcome the even more difficult task of speaking English using her now much more dolphin-like vocal system. She spent another year in the ocean before finally working up the courage to head home and face her family and friends.

Homecoming was a mixed bag, with her parents accepting her, blaming the medical research firm and doctor who performed the operation for what happened. But some of her longtime friends however were not quite so accepting of the new Dilana Silva, some outright called her a freak, others just ignored her, as if she no longer existed.

Dilana didn't let that get her down though, and has begun to travel a bit, trying to find where she fit in the world. Her father helped to get her a job as a marine biologist, where her firsthand experience and connection with marine life is more than making up for her lack of advanced degrees.

Personality
Determined: Dilana has never let anything get in the way of her goals in life. Whether it's a subject she struggled with in school, needing to shave another second off her time in a swimming event, or even getting paralyzed, she never stops trying to find a way to succeed at whatever it is that she needs to do.

Competitive: Dilana was born with the blood of an athlete pumping through her veins. She was always very competitive in nearly everything she did, but she never was one to worry about beating everyone else, she only cared about 'beating herself' and knew that as long as she always did her best and continued to improve, that was all that mattered. If she happened to win in the process, great.

Team Player: Since she never really worried about beating anyone other than herself, Dilana was always one to help others improve, constantly helping her teammates to sharpen their ability, and even offering tips to opponents. In the end, she knows that competition is much more fun with a team of friends at your side.

Altruistic: Dilana was always one to care more about others that were in need than herself. She often did community service over the summer during her time in school, and donated a large portion of the money she received from her competition sponsors to charity. She would have donated nearly all of it, but her mother convinced her to save and invest some of it.

Environmentalist: In addition to caring about people in need, she cares strongly about the environment. It was instilled in her at a very young age by her father, as he had seen a lot about what the trash and pollution created by 6 billion people has done to the oceans, let alone the air and land. Living in the ocean for over a year, she saw it all first hand, everything her dad told her about as a child. Now she wants to help people understand the impact we have on the world, and how we can make it a positive one.