Marshall D. Teach

Marshall D. Teach (マーシャル・D・ティーチ, Māsharu D. Tīchi), also better known by his moniker as "Blackbeard" (黒ひげ, Kurohige), is a fictional character and main antagonist of the One Piece series. He is the captain and admiral of the Blackbeard Pirates, one of the Four Emperors. After the timeskip, Teach becomes part of the Worst Generation.

was once a member of the Whitebeard Pirates' second division, but defected after murdering a fellow crew member, Thatch, the 4th division commander, to obtain his Devil Fruit, the Dark-Dark Fruit to start out his own pirate career. Prior to the two-year timeskip, The Straw Hat Pirates first encounter Blackbeard at Mock Town when he hears that the Sky Islands exist and boasts how the pirate's dreams will never cease. He then tries to capture Luffy for the bounty on his head at Mock Town for his plans, but is driven out.

Later, Blackbeard was made and briefly held the position of one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea after a brutal fight, defeating and capturing Ace, and then handing him over to the Marines,, before resigning upon returning from Impel Down with Level Six prisoners.

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 * —Marshall D. Teach.

Appearance & Biography

 * Voice Actor: Not Known (English), Akio Ōtsuka (Japanese), Not Known (Brazilian), Not Known (Chinese), Not Known (Dutch), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (French), Not Known (German), Not Known (Italian), Not Known (Hebrew), Not Known (Hungarian), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (Korean), Not Known (Norwegian), Not Known (Polish), Not Known (Romanian), Not Known (Russian), Not Known (Poland), Not Known (Portuguese), Not Known (Serbian), Not Known (Spanish), Not Known (Swedish), Not Known (Thai), Not Known (Brazilian Portuguese), Not Known (European Spanish), Not Known (European Portuguese), Not Known (Latin American Spanish), Not Known (Latin Spanish)

Biography
Captain of the Blackbeard Pirates. Also known as "Blackbeard". Once in the Seven Warlords of the Sea.

He is now one of the Four Emperors.

With the power of the Logia Devil Fruit, "Dark-Dark Fruit", he can create, control, manipulate, and change his body to darkness. He can also use gravity to pull everything to him and into his dark control. He gave Shanks the 3 scars he carries on his left eye.

Appearance
Blackbeard is an extremely tall man, being exactly twice Luffy's (pre-timeskip) height. He has a massive build as his body is round with relatively thin limbs. He has a big mouth with several broken or missing teeth (though sometimes he does have a full set, which is an inconsistency error made by Oda), a pronounced crooked nose and a very large and hairy chest and torso. Long, thick, woolly black hair falls down the back of his neck, underneath a gray bandana, and a small scruffy black beard (hence his epithet) grows around his jawline. As the series progresses, his beard becomes longer and scruffier.

The Young Past Days
When Teach was younger, he was shown wearing a baseball cap with a rolled up long sleeve shirt and dark shorts. He is also wearing black curled tip shoes.

Pre-Timeskip
At his first appearance in Mock Town, Teach wore an open buttoned red shirt with rolled up sleeves, green trousers with black line patterns, a dark yellow sash around his waist and classic black swashbuckler boots complete with large bronze buckles. He also has three flintlocks and a flask tied to his sash around his waist.

At some point after that and before coming to Impel Down, he had added a large black and gold captain's coat like a cape over his attire, along with a pair of necklaces of red as well as golden-yellow and blue beads to his sash and a traditional black tricorne hat over his grey bandana.

Post-Timeskip
After the time skip, Teech has grown a long beard that he has split into multiple sections, very much like his real life basis. He also wears a new hat with his Jolly Roger embroidered on it.


 * Hair Color: Black
 * Skin Color: Brown
 * Eye Color: Black
 * Age: 38 (debut), 40 (after timeskip)
 * Birthday: August 3rd
 * Height: 344 cm (11'3½")
 * Weight: Not Known

Personality
"This "new era" they talk about is a load of crap. The age where pirates dream is over!? Eh!? Hey! Zehahahaha! THE DREAMS OF PIRATES... WILL NEVER END! AM I RIGHT?"
 * —Blackbeard's opinion on the "New Era" that Bellamy boast about.

Blackbeard's personality seems to be a strange mix of courage and cowardice, as well as high intellectual capacity and stupidity. While at times his character looks strong and fearsome, in others he will seem weak and ridiculous. He is apparently very deceptive, joining the Seven Warlords of the Sea in an elaborate and convoluted fashion for the sole reason of gaining access to Impel Down in order to find new crewmates and later resigning from it in front of the fleet admiral himself saying that he does not need it anymore. He is also exceedingly power-hungry and greedy, aiming to become the next King of the Pirates.

His hunger for power lead him to fashion a very cruel way of recruiting only the best prisoners in Impel Down as comrades: he ordered them to murder each other, and would only take the strongest ones who survived. Though he betrayed the Whitebeard Pirates, Teach takes comradeship with the crew he formed to a high level, which is made evident when he was willing to make a trade with the Marines for a battleship big enough to hold all of them comfortably for the sake of one crew member, San Juan Wolf. Despite his obvious malevolent nature, he is also genuinely compassionate, caring, sympathetic and empathetic towards his crew's well-being and is willing to take assaults intended for his crew. He also has an extreme thirst for adventure, regularly traveling from place to place. However, he tends to play it by ear.

Blackbeard, like others who carry the Spirit Will of the D., has a strong belief in fate and the dreams of men, but unlike the others, is the only one who truly seems to take it to heart. He shares several attributes with Luffy, including having a voracious appetite, carefree attitude, as well as a competitive and reckless nature to the point of persevering even if there may be grave consequences, and huge ambitions to follow his dream of finding One Piece and become the new King of the Pirates. Despite that, there is also a great contrast between him and Luffy: primarily, Blackbeard fears death whereas other D. carriers embrace it if it comes, and was willing to betray his own friends for power. Just before his death, Whitebeard noted that Teach was not the one Roger had been waiting for and dismissed Teach as being incapable of continuing Roger's legacy.

Perhaps because of his strong belief in fate, Blackbeard is highly amoral. He believes that there is no inherent "good" nor "evil" in the world, jeeringly mocking anyone who expresses such belief. He is also patient and conniving, having spent decades on Whitebeard's ship just to get his hands on the Devil Fruit he wanted, before killing Thatch and leaving the crew. His nihilistic tendencies are in line with the power of the Dark-Dark Fruit he possesses, which is said to reduce everything to "nothingness". During his raid on Impel Down, he stated that his plans have not gone exactly as expected, but is willing to take these surprises in stride. He handed Portgas D. Ace to the World Government and finally killed his captain Whitebeard. Despite this, he still displayed respect for his superiors during the events, referring to Ace as his commander, and said that he aspired to be like Whitebeard. He showed his ruthlessness when he killed Thatch, and, with his crew's help, finished off his former captain, Whitebeard.

Blackbeard is often very calm, composed, relaxed, easygoing, cheerful, and free-spirited, but he can be surprised and startled, such as when Koby told everybody present to stop the war, or when Whitebeard had held him by the throat. He is very politely sarcastic and mocking towards those around him, such as when he taunted Luffy, about Ace's inevitable execution, or when he mocked Whitebeard for his age.

He is also overconfident as, while very powerful, he tends to converse and/or taunt his opponents in the middle of battle. He has done this in every battle he has been shown in, and as a result, he always suffers a heavy, painful attack while his guard is down, such as when he taunted Whitebeard about not being able to use his powers, and nearly got cleaved in half with Whitebeard's bisento or when he boasted in front of Magellan and was nearly drowned by the Hydra attack, while only surviving because Shiliew gave him and his crew the antidote. His overconfidence also made him believe that he could do a trade with the Marines despite having betrayed them already, which once again proved to be a mistake. Despite his arrogance, Blackbeard does show a sense of caution, as he refused to fight Shanks and his crew, as well as Admiral Akainu when he was aboard the Marine battleship that they wanted.

Blackbeard is a very patient, conniving, and careful pirate, as stated by Shanks. Unlike other powerful pirates, he never gained renown and remained concealed, up to the point that he only makes his moves when he sees an opportunity for power. The extant of that patience, having spent decades on Whitebeard's ship just to get his hands on the Devil Fruit he wanted, before killing his crew mate and leaving the crew.

Many of One Piece's characters are given a distinct laugh. Blackbeard follows this tradition by starting his laughs with "Ze" (i.e. Zehahahahahaha!).

Devil Fruit

 * Main article: Dark-Dark Fruit

The Dark-Dark Fruit (ヤミヤミの実, Yami Yami no Mi; literally meaning "Fruit of the Darkness-Darkness") the Logia-class Devil Fruit, which was stolen by Joker and eaten by Teach, allows him to create, control, become the element of darkness and manipulate gravity, shown as an ebbing shroud of darkness, shown to possess a strong gravitational pull, thus making him a Darkness Human (闇人間, Yami Ningen). Teach also demonstrates that the "darkness" is a void which devours anything, able to pull in (much in the manner of an actual black hole), and crush his surrounding environment into a pile of rubble. Due to the Dark-Dark Fruit's gravitational ability, Blackbeard does have a certain but strong disadvantage; while using his "absorbtion" or gravitational abilities, he becomes temporarily unable to disperse to non-solid and let attacks simply pass through him, drawing the attacks faster towards himself instead, meaning he takes equivalent or more damage than a normal human would.

However, Blackbeard states that the deficiency this presents is well worth the advantages the fruit bestows upon him, such as the ability to "absorb" certain projectiles and then hurl them back at his foes using moves like "Liberation". The second, and the most frightening power of the fruit is to nullify other Devil Fruit abilities through physical contact, allowing Teach to physically hit Ace, whose body was composed of intangible flames, and injure Luffy, whose body was made of rubber. Teach states that this is because the Dark-Dark Fruit truly holds the power of the devil. As such, Blackbeard's style revolves around getting close to his enemy and grabbing them, canceling out any defensive abilities they have, forcing their own natural resilience to take Blackbeard's massive strength.

Blackbeard must, however, physically touch his enemy to cancel out their powers. This puts him at a huge disadvantage against enemies he cannot reach out and grab, even more so when the enemy can hurt him at a distance. However, this weakness can be rectified somewhat by his signature technique "Black Vortex", which utilizes his suction powers to drag his opponents towards him. This technique opens up another weakness since right after he uses it he is left open for an attack at close range.

Techniques
The named techniques that are used by Blackbeard that involve the Devil Fruit are as follows:
 * Black Hole (ブラック･ホール, Burakku Hōru): Blackbeard spreads his darkness over a large area and, much like an actual black hole, swallows up anything he chooses. When swallowed, the person or object is subjected to a large amount of gravity and crushed, such as an entire castle and forests of Thriller Bark. This technique was first seen as it was demonstrated in front of Trace.


 * Liberation (リベレイション, Ribereishon): Used following Black Hole, Blackbeard expels all of the destroyed remains of what his darkness had swallowed up at once. This is especially good at demonstrating his power. This was first seen being demonstrated before Ace. In the anime, Teach foreshadowed that this attack can possibly be used to launch cannon balls and swords like projectiles.


 * Black Vortex (くろうず, Kurōzu; literally meaning "Dark Water"; phonetically read as "Black Spiral"): Extending one arm towards his opponent, Blackbeard activates the gravity power of his darkness to pull them into his grasp. Blackbeard can then attack them with his massive strength. This move is particularly useful when used in conjunction with the fruit's power-nullifying abilities, since the target could easily avoid it by fighting at a distance from Blackbeard, as Ace attempted. This was first seen being used on Ace in order to grab him. However, this technique has also proven to be a great weakness, as most opponents he draws near him have attacked him while at close range, such as Ace launching two fiery spears into Blackbeard's chest, or Whitebeard slamming his bisento into Blackbeard's shoulder. The name of the attack is also a pun on the English word "close", and it can also mean "black vinegar", a vinegar commonly used in Chinese cooking.


 * Black World (ブラック･ワールド, Burakku Wārudo): Blackbeard covers the area surrounding his opponent in darkness, blocking their vision. This attack was shown and named in One Piece: Pirate Warriors.


 * Black Opening (闇開, Yamiagari; literally meaning "Dark Opening"): Similar to a unique combination of Black Hole and Liberation, Blackbeard draws surrounding enemies into a pool of darkness in front of him before ejecting them, causing heavy damage in the process. The attack first appeared in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2, and is also in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3.


 * Dark Matter (ダーク・マター, Dāku Matā): Blackbeard creates a big ball of darkness and throws it at his opponent. This attack was shown and named in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2, and is also in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. This attack is very similar to the unnamed one Teech used against Ace's Flame Emperor at the end of their battle.

Haki

 * Main article: Haki