For over twenty years, Marshall D. Teach had been a ghost haunting the halls of the Moby Dick. He was the master of the "Quiet Life," an actor who had perfected the role of the mediocre pirate. He was the man who sat in the dark corners of the deck, the one who laughed the loudest at the commanders' jokes but never shared a secret of his own. He fought with just enough strength to survive but never enough to be noticed by the World Government or rival Emperors. To the world, he was a nobody. To the Whitebeard Pirates, he was "Good Old Teach"—a clumsy, cherry-pie-loving brother who lacked ambition.
But while the crew slept, Teach's three souls never rested. They rotated in a perpetual cycle of vigilance, whispering about the one frequency of destiny that would anchor their void. Teach had memorized every curve and swirl of the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia, not for curiosity, but for a hunt that had lasted a quarter-century.
The Spoils of the Fourth Division
It was a humid afternoon in the New World, the kind of day where the air feels like a wet blanket. The Whitebeard Pirates had just finished a skirmish with a rival crew of scavengers near a nameless, jagged archipelago. Thatch, the Fourth Division Commander and the ship's head chef, was leading the salvage team through the wreckage of the enemy flagship.
Thatch was the heart of the ship's morale—a man of boundless energy, famous for his pompadour that seemed to defy gravity and his ability to turn sea-scraps into a five-star feast. He climbed back onto the deck of the Moby Dick, hauling a small, ornate chest decorated with sea-stone filigree.
"Pops! Look at the haul from that captain's cabin!" Thatch shouted, wiping sweat and gunpowder from his brow.
A crowd gathered instantly. Marco, Ace, and Vista leaned in, their shadows stretching across the sun-bleached wood. Thatch pried open the lid with a satisfying click. Inside, resting on a bed of faded red velvet, was the prize.
It was a large, round fruit covered in deep purple swirls, with a stem that curved like a beckoning finger. It looked heavier than its size suggested, as if it were pulling the very light of the sun into its skin. It didn't shimmer; it absorbed.
"A Devil Fruit!" Ace whistled, tilting his hat back. "Looks like a Logia. What do you think, Thatch? You found it, it's yours. That's the rule of the ship."
Thatch grinned, holding the fruit up to the light. "I've been thinking about getting some extra kick in the kitchen. Maybe this one lets me flash-fry a Sea King in five seconds! I'll be the first chef to cook with the power of the gods!"
The crew erupted in laughter, slapping Thatch on the back. But in the rear of the crowd, leaning against a weathered railing, Teach felt a jolt that nearly stopped all three of his heartbeats. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. The "Shadow Triad" in his mind, usually a discordant mess of conflicting urges, suddenly fell into a terrifying, unified silence.
It's here, the voices hissed in perfect, haunting harmony. The Abyss. The Cradle. The Key to the Heavens. The wait is over, Teach. The God of the Dark has come home.
The Three-Sided Conversation
That night, the Moby Dick was a theater of celebration. Barrels of top-shelf sake were cracked open, and the smell of roasted meat and spices filled the air. Teach sat on a crate in the shadows, a plate of his favorite cherry pie in his hand. He watched Thatch.
Thatch had tucked the fruit into a satchel at his hip, intending to eat it the following morning after consulting the ship's medical records. He was laughing, showing Ace a new knife technique, oblivious to the fact that his "brother" was measuring the distance to his heart.
Inside Teach's mind, the void was screaming.
The Coward (Soul One): "Wait! If you kill him now, Whitebeard will hunt us to the ends of the sea! Marco will find us before we reach the horizon. We aren't ready! We haven't built the crew! We are just one man against a fleet of monsters!"
The Strategist (Soul Two): "If he eats it, the fruit is gone for another century. We've waited twenty-six years for this exact shape, this exact pattern. The odds of it appearing again in our lifetime are mathematically zero. If we do not act before the sun rises, the dream dies tonight."
The Monster (Soul Three): "Look at Thatch. He calls you 'brother.' He fed you when you were hungry. He thinks you are a friend. Does his blood taste like friendship, Teach? Or does it taste like the path to Godhood? Kill the chef. Eat the dark. Become the world."
Teach took a slow, deliberate bite of the pie. It tasted like ash and dry dirt. He looked at Whitebeard—the "Strongest Man in the World"—sitting on his throne, hooked up to medical tubes but still radiating a terrifying power. For a fleeting second, Teach felt a twinge of something human—a memory of the hand Whitebeard had extended to him on that snowy dock.
Then, he remembered his mother lying in the mud. He remembered the "Heroes" Garp and Roger shaking hands over the grave of his father.
Family is a lie told by the strong to keep the weak in line, Teach thought. He stood up, the cherry pie falling face-down into the dirt. The "Quiet Life" was over.
The Kitchen of Shadows
At 3:00 AM, the ship was silent save for the rhythmic groaning of the hull and the distant snores of the crew. Thatch was in the galley, prepping the morning's dough. He liked the solitude of the early hours; it was the only time the kitchen felt like a sanctuary.
He didn't hear the door open. He didn't feel a presence until a shadow fell across his cutting board—a shadow that seemed too long, with three distinct, flickering heads that moved independently of the lantern light.
"Teach?" Thatch asked, turning around with a tired but genuine smile. "Hungry again? You're a bottomless pit, man. I've got some leftovers in the—"
Thatch stopped. The smile vanished. He saw the look in Teach's eyes. It wasn't the look of the "clumsy brother." It was the look of a void.
"The fruit, Thatch," Teach whispered. His voice was layered—a triple-resonance that made the copper pots on the walls vibrate. "Give me the fruit."
Thatch's hand instinctively moved toward the satchel. "Teach, what are you talking about? If you wanted the fruit, you should have just asked! We're family, for God's sake! We can talk to Pops, work something out—"
"I don't have a family," Teach said, his voice cold and flat.
He moved with a speed he had suppressed for two decades. He didn't use a flashy Haki technique or a named attack. He used a simple, jagged knife—the same kind of glass-sharp blade he had used to execute the slave-commander years before. He drove it into Thatch's heart with the surgical precision of an assassin.
Thatch's eyes went wide. He tried to speak, to scream, but only a hot surge of blood came out. He looked at Teach, not with anger, but with a devastating, soul-crushing confusion. Why?
"Because dreams never die," Teach whispered into his ear, twisting the blade to ensure the job was done. "But people do. Especially the ones who stand in the way of the inevitable."
Teach reached into the satchel and pulled out the Yami Yami no Mi. It felt warm in his hand, vibrating with a dark hunger that matched his own. He didn't hesitate. He bit into it.
The taste was beyond foul—it tasted like rot, like the bottom of a grave, like every sin ever committed by the "D" lineage. But as the juice hit his throat, the world changed. The darkness didn't just stay inside him; it erupted from his pores in oily, black tendrils that swallowed the kitchen's light. For the first time in his life, the "They" inside him felt whole. The void had been filled with the Void.
The Grand Architecture
As Teach stood over Thatch's body, the darkness whispering secrets to him, he looked at a small photograph pinned to the galley wall—a picture of the commanders, including a young, smiling Portgas D. Ace.
Teach smiled, a bloody, jagged expression. He knew a secret that even Whitebeard kept hidden from the world. He knew that Ace wasn't just a talented kid; he was the son of the man who had shaken hands over Rocks' grave. He was the son of Gol D. Roger and that Monkey.D.Garp raised him.
The ultimate irony, Teach thought. The son of the 'Demon' is the favourite son of the 'Strongest Man.'
Teach's plan wasn't just to steal a fruit. It was a multi-stage architecture of ruin.
The Bait: He would flee, knowing Ace's pride would force him to hunt Teach down for the "sin" of killing a crewmate.
The Sacrifice: He would hand Ace over to the Marines. He knew the World Government wouldn't just execute Ace; they would make it a public spectacle to "end the lineage of the King."
The War: Whitebeard, the man who would burn the world for his sons, would inevitably attack Marineford.
Teach looked at the deck above him. He knew Whitebeard was dying. He had seen the way the old man clutched his chest when he thought no one was looking. The "Strongest Man" had final-stage cancer, a rotting heart in a titanium chest.
If he dies in the war, Teach reasoned, the Gura Gura no Mi—the power to destroy the world—will leave his body. And with the Yami Yami no Mi, I can do what no other man in history has done. I will catch the soul of the tremor before it returns to the cycle. I will steal the heart of the Emperor.
The Departure
Teach didn't wait for the body to cool. He knew that the moment Thatch's heart stopped, the "Voice of All Things" and the Advanced Observation Haki of Marco and Whitebeard would alert them.
He climbed onto the railing of the Moby Dick. He looked back one last time at the "Strongest Man," who was likely still sleeping, dreaming of a family that had just been shattered.
"Enjoy your era, old man," Teach muttered, his body dissolving into a puddle of liquid shadows. "Because I'm going to make sure the next one belongs to the Dark. I'm going to finish what my father started at God Valley."
He dropped into the sea. He didn't drown. His darkness created a buoyant, localized gravity field that allowed him to glide over the waves like a phantom. By the time Marco the Phoenix burst into the kitchen and let out a scream of agony that woke the entire New World, the man known as Marshall D. Teach was gone, leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood and a void in the shape of a brother.
To be continued...