Masked Deuce

The mask covering his eyes, worn to keep his identity hidden, is his most recognizable trait. Deuce is a well-built man with long, spiky hair in a pale blue shade. A lengthy open coat reaches his knees and leaves his chest bare, with a belt slung diagonally across it. His trousers, marked by a rose on the lower left, are secured by a belt, and dark boots climb to his knees.

Adventure is what Deuce chases above all, though at the start he had no wish to brand himself a criminal. Serious by nature, he was thrown off by Ace's sunny disposition before learning to admire it, and he carries both dependability and a streak of nervousness. He loves to write and seized the chance to chronicle his time among Ace's crew; anyone who ridicules his work gets cast in an unflattering light or erased from the pages entirely. A careful strategist, he once schemed to draw a fleet of Marine warships into hazardous waters and kept his composure when trapped on the Sabaody Ferris wheel beside the Marine Ensign Isuka. Like many, he scorned the notion that Gol D. Roger could have a child, an attitude that softened as he came to know Ace.

Deuce grew up as a struggling medical student whose parents, brother, and friends paid him little regard, all while his sibling earned praise as a budding doctor in their father's mold. A beloved book titled Brag Men stirred his longing for sea voyages, so he donned a mask, cast off his birth name, and left home, only to wash up marooned on the island of Sixis. There he crossed paths with the shipwrecked Ace, who handed him the alias Masked Deuce. The discovery that Ace was Roger's son drove the two apart at first, and a starving Deuce nearly killed Ace over a piece of fruit before Ace offered to share it; the fruit was the Mera Mera no Mi, but because Ace bit into it first, Deuce gained none of its powers when he ate. The pair built a flame-driven raft called the Striker and launched the Spade Pirates together. As the crew grew, Deuce served as its tactician alongside Mihar and Skull and faced off against bounty hunters, the persistent Ensign Isuka, and Vice Admiral Draw. After the Spade Pirates challenged Whitebeard and lost, they were folded into his fleet, where Deuce joined the medical staff and earned the nickname Doc while quietly guarding Ace's secret parentage. He fought at the Summit War of Marineford and grieved the deaths of Ace and Whitebeard. The non-canon Episode A special shows him afterward reclaiming the Striker and taking up reporting for Morgans, where he refuses to publish his account of Ace yet leaves a copy at the grave.