Portgas D. Ace

A tall, well-built young man, Ace wore his curly black hair at jaw length and carried freckles across his face that he inherited from his mother. Though no blood tied them, he closely resembled his foster brother Luffy, looking older, broader, and far more serious by comparison, and his youthful features mirrored those of his father Roger before the mustache.

His most recognizable markings were his tattoos. The Whitebeard emblem spread across his back, a purple skull bearing a white mustache set over crossed bones, and he named it his pride and joy. Down his left bicep ran the letters reading "ASCE", with the struck-through S standing as a tribute to Sabo. Once he received Whitebeard's mark, he went bare-chested in most climates, covering up only on frozen or desert islands. He otherwise wore black knee-length shorts cinched by an orange eyelet belt, black boots, a leg pouch, a second belt fitted with a red "A" buckle, and his signature orange hat decked with two smiley faces and round beads.

Far more level-headed, courteous, and easygoing than Luffy, Ace often left the Straw Hats doubting the two were related at all, and Whitebeard maintained that his temperament shared nothing with Roger's. What the brothers did have in common amounted to little more than their bottomless appetites, their fondness for a good party, and a streak of recklessness.

Two running jokes trailed him everywhere. The first was a severe narcolepsy that dropped him asleep mid-meal or mid-sentence, alarming bystanders into thinking he had died. The second was a compulsive dine-and-dash routine, a holdover from his thieving boyhood with Sabo and Luffy that carried into adulthood. He could also act on impulse and brush aside sound counsel, most notably when he defied Whitebeard's warning and set off to hunt down Blackbeard over Thatch's killing. His politeness, by contrast, traced back to Makino's upbringing.

Born as Gol D. Ace, he was the son of Portgas D. Rouge and of the late Gol D. Roger, the Pirate King himself. Because his father's reputation hung over him, Roger had asked Monkey D. Garp to raise the child, so Ace grew up in the care of Garp and Curly Dadan, where he formed sworn-brother bonds with Luffy and Sabo. Resenting his lineage, he cast off the Gol name, took his mother's surname of Portgas, and ultimately declared Whitebeard the only father he would acknowledge.

Ace consumed the Mera Mera no Mi, which is a Logia fruit that let him generate, control, and turn his body into fire; his blazing punches, which earned him the Fire Fist title, were later shown powerful enough to raze entire cities. After leading the Spade Pirates and turning down a seat among the Seven Warlords, he joined Whitebeard's crew and rose to command its second division.

His pursuit of his former subordinate Blackbeard, wanted for Thatch's murder, ended in a duel on Banaro Island where Ace was captured and turned over to the Marines. Owing to his parentage, they held a public execution at Marineford, an event that touched off the Summit War. Freed during the fighting, Ace died shielding Luffy from the magma of Admiral Akainu. His death pushed Luffy to suspend the crew's voyage for two years of training, and his reincarnated Devil Fruit was eventually eaten by Sabo, ensuring his will lived on.