Shiki

An elderly giant of a man, Shiki favors traditional Japanese dress, layering a kimono robe of red and black, its edges trimmed in orange, cinched by a deep green sash and a golden waist chain, with a frayed, yellow-striped haori hung across his shoulders. Hair the color of gold spills down to the floor like a mane, and jutting from the crown of his head is a piece of a ship's steering wheel, driven in so far during his fight with Roger that any attempt to pull it out risks killing him.

At his chin sits a bushy golden tuft beside a black goatee tapered to points, his brows run dark and sharp, and faint purple blotches mark the left of his face near the eye. A cigar is rarely absent from his lips. After hacking off his own legs to flee prison, he forgoes ordinary replacements and instead mounts his two swords as stand-in limbs, which he displays without hesitation.

Ambition consumes Shiki, who is certain that he and Roger together could have taken the whole world for themselves. Strength earns his respect whether it belongs to ally or rival, and he found Roger's death in the feeble East Blue a humiliation beyond bearing. Patience runs deep in him as well; told that Indigo's SIQ work would need twenty years, he was perfectly content to wait, although bursts of fury occasionally drove him into rash moves that ran against his usual scheming.

A magnetic leader, he assembled vast armadas more than once and treated his core crew as kin, yet thought nothing of shooting lesser followers over the pettiest slights. His manner is largely jovial and clownish, taking the wheel in his skull, the loss of half a fleet, and the loss of his feet in stride, and he often muddles one thing for another. Storms are the lone thing that frightens him, since even he cannot fully steer his floating masses when caught in one.

A native of Yano Country, Shiki began as a pirate-yakuza feuding with the mobster Kyo before a defeat in a Davy Back Fight against Rocks D. Xebec pressed him into that crew, where he kept no allegiance and even once tried to blow up his own shipmates for a fatter share of loot. He took part in the God Valley Incident, scrambling to reach and win over Shakuyaku, and once the Rocks Pirates broke apart he raised the Golden Lion Pirates and rose into one of the dominant forces of the age alongside Roger, Whitebeard, and Big Mom.

Twenty-seven years back, upon learning that an ancient weapon had fallen within Roger's reach, Shiki sought an alliance and was turned down, sparking the great sea battle at Edd War, where a storm claimed half his fleet and lodged the wheel in his head. Following Roger's capture, he raided Marineford alone, traded blows with Sengoku and Garp in a fight that flattened half the town, and was thrown into Impel Down. He then became its first escapee, severing his shackled legs and grafting the swords Oto and Kogarashi where they had been. His Fuwa Fuwa no Mi lets him take flight and lift any lifeless matter he has touched.

Two decades on, in Strong World, he loosed Indigo's SIQ-warped beasts upon the East Blue and seized Nami to serve as his navigator. The Straw Hats invaded his airborne stronghold Merveille, and Nami steered the island into a storm so that Luffy, charging a giant limb with lightning, hammered Shiki down and dropped the floating islands into the sea. He lived through it, and his present location remains unknown.