Marco

Standing out atop his head is a tall, pale tuft of hair swept upward at the front. Otherwise Marco is a diminutive nine-year-old boy, his eyes and the rest of his hair both a dark shade.

Brought up to serve, Marco is gentle, obedient, and eager to do right, carrying out his duties without complaint. His innocence runs so deep that even after his arrest he went on tidying up for his executioners, once picking up a collar to mend it purely out of habit. He never grasped why the men grew angry at what they took for theft, since serving was the only thing on his mind.

Marco comes from a family that had served Napoleonic nobles for generations. At nine he was placed with a baron named Rippi, tasked only with polishing shoes and brushing hats. His father sent him off with the advice that staying humble and earnest would bring him a happy life, so the boy rose before dawn each day to keep the baron and his guests immaculately groomed.

Everything collapsed when the baron was exposed as a plotter against the crown. The whole household faced trial, and because the scheme had taken shape on the estate, investigators assumed the child had a hand in it and jailed him alongside the rest, condemning him to lose his head. Gyro Zeppeli contested the ruling and won Marco a stay, then swore to reach America, capture the Steel Ball Run, and use the prize to pressure the king into pardoning him.

Gyro never took the race, yet fortune shifted anyway. The Neapolitan people eventually overthrew the monarchy, the kingdom became a republic's province, and the still-imprisoned boy was set free. In a bitter turn, he soon died of nothing more than a common cold.