Drake D. Banchou likes this
Feb 5, 2016 1:13:09 GMT
Drake D. Banchou
"Drake The Bancho"
"Drake The Bancho"
 | ■ Age: 18 ■ Gender: Male ■ Race: Birkan Sky Islander ■ Affiliation: Pirate? ■ Skill Level: Rookie ■ Hometown: Ghent, Sky Island of Birka ■ Bounty / Fame: 0 |
■ Appearance
Basics
■ Height: 6'7"
■ Weight: 200lbs
■ Eye-Color: Bright Blue
■ Hair-Color: Blonde
Overall
Aside from that, Drake passes for a pretty normal guy. He is unusually tall and lanky, but keeps his body in shape, as a career swordsman. He still tends to wear the remainder of the clothes he fell to the Blues with, currently just consisting of a pair of well-made Shandian pants, with leather and other durable materials to reinforce them. The rest of the clothes he was wearing were damaged as well, but he fashioned the remainder of them into a sash belt, part of which bears the Jolly Roger of the Banchou pirates, a 30 Million Beri crew last seen 20 years ago.
Most importantly, however... Drake still wears the iron manacle rings that bound him right before his escape, three pairs around his arms and one pair around his ankles.
■ Personality
Likes
- Naps
- Sweet baked goods, especially fruit pies
- Swords, especially those of Meito status
- Stories and Legends
Dislikes
- Pumpkins
- The concept of religion
- People who hide behind laws and rules without the strength to back them up
- Mirrors
Habits
- Despite being made of living energy, Drake is... not very energetic, and has a tendency to take naps and relax at the worst times. He can fall asleep at any time.
- Drake has a very 'tough guy' attitude, and tends to ignore or pass off compliments or congratulations aimed his way. He still cares, he just doesn't want anyone to know it.
- Behind that tough guy attitude, he's actually an incredibly nice person, especially when it comes to charity. He also has no real concept of money, having grown up in two societies that had no formal currency, and will frequently give away valuables to those who need them more.
- Drake has a tendency to relax in the "Yanki Squat" when he's amused, happy, or just bored. Particularly, in combat he relaxes into the stance when he feels like he has the upper hand.
Fears
- Leadership. Drake has seen every formal or political leader figure in his life turn corrupt or go mad with power, and is both suspicious of such figures, and fears that if he leads others he will end up the same way.
- Drake is almost comically superstitious and will freak out in response to things that would be "unlucky" or "bad omens".
Overall
Drake is a remarkably kindhearted person hiding behind the appearance of a tall, tough, powerful man. Having grown up basically entirely at wartime, Drake has a very realistic outlook on the world... which ended the moment he plummeted through the White Sea and to the Blues below. He has an almost childlike curiosity about some of the stranger things he's heard about these lands below. He tries to hide his lack of knowledge behind the tough guy act - expect him to say "I knew that, of course" a lot.
Having grown up on two very different sides of a former three-way military conflict which became a cold war, Drake is very aware of battle tactics. He also is very hesitant to let on details about himself more than is necessary. This, ironically enough, even extends to his Devil Fruit. Having never met another Devil Fruit user and believing his mother's superstitions to be true, he truly believes his power is that of the devil, and believes others would hate him if he explained it to them.
Deep down, however, Drake is very much a child at heart, to a degree that is almost jarring with his outward attitude and appearance. He loves cute fuzzy things, flashy techniques, swords, robots, and anything else a little boy would find awesome. He is prone to blatantly dropping his guard in response to such things before he realizes what he's doing, and forcefully returning to calm as though nothing had happened.
■ History
Family & Friends
■ Father: Don Verdain, a scout of the Birkan Divine Army (Age 40)
■ Mother: Grace D. "Suke-"Banchou, former captain of the Bancho Pirates. (Deceased)
■ Siblings: Roan, his adoptive brother, the one who found him after he fell from the sky. (8)
■ Other: Lombard, sort of an adoptive older brother, the Champion of Shandia (30)
Overall
{Click for History. Spoilered for being really long.}
Sky Island has been a land of war for centuries, since the arrival of Shandora from the sea below several hundred years ago. Though the native Shandian people were once settlers themselves from the distant lands of the sky, the arrival of this new place sparked a war between the two civilizations of the Sky Island - Skypeia and Birka. While Skypeia was a land of art, science, and culture, Birka was a land of honoring tradition and the religion of their 'God', an individual of great power. With this new source of land available, both sides sought to claim it as their own - Skypeia wished to claim its resources, while Birka saw it as their divine right to own such a magnificent land. So began a war that only ended after great bloodshed, with all three sides reluctantly agreeing to a truce to save the loss of more lives.
With the "Gates of Heaven" close to Skypeia, the various travelers from the Blues below came there first. And recently, with the rise of the Golden Age of Pirates... that meant pirates and thieves were among them. And among these were the Bancho Pirates, led by a firebrand named Grace Banchou. While many knew her as a vicious rookie pirate from the West Blue, having racked up a bounty of 30Million Beri for a number of violent offenses, she was really just a skilled pirate with a devoted crew who happened to be stronger than the Marines she routinely dealt with. Having followed the path known as the High West from her home sea, she arrived in Skypeia with little left of her crew and treasure, and faced with paying the entrance fee she chose to fight her way in.
The result went poorly for her, and though she inflicted great damage to the White Berets in their attempts to capture her, she was forced to flee from Angel Island into Shandia, leaving her ship behind in their custody. She was discovered by a roaming party of Birkan soldiers once she entered their territory, led by a man named Don Verdain. Due to them having been fleeing the Skypeians and he being a war sympathizer, he took them as temporary allies and ordered his men to care for her and her crew. Having never been shown such kindness and mercy from anyone, however, Grace was flustered by the man's actions and fell in love. In her flustered state, she eventually chose to side with the Birkan army against the Skypeians, as from her point of view they had charged her a ridiculous fee while she was in need of help, and then stolen her ship when she tried to defend her crew - revenge was understandable.
She eventually had a child with Don Verdain, a healthy baby boy she later named Drake, as she likened his wings to that of a dragon, not an angel (likely due to not knowing what an angel was). Though the war had long ended, from an early age both of Drake’s parents urged him to train as a warrior, something he was all too happy to do. The few crewmen left from her crew were all swordsman by trade, as the Bancho Pirates were known throughout the seas as Sword Hunters, pirate swordsmen who searched the seas for Meito above all other treasures. From them and his mother he learned a wide variety of swordsmanship styles, and pieced together his own style from the mix, particularly favoring a single-sword style.
However, as time went on, and Drake's childlike view of the long-finished war began to make certain details very obvious, Grace began to question the concept of the truce so long past. Having lived and fought as a crusader of freedom on the Blue Sea, the fact that she was all but married to a man who stood by the thought that his people rightfully should have taken Shandia as their throne began to bother her. After researching what she could, she decided she could not live with the man any longer, and under cover of darkness fled with her crew and son to the Shandian territory, believing them to be the real victims of the war. Don Verdain was furious, however, that the woman he was taking as a wife would disobey him, and called upon his soldiers to attack the “vicious outsiders” for being sympathizers to the Shandians, a high crime. The pirates managed to escape despite yet another prolonged battle, however not without loss. Don Verdain struck down Grace amidst the fight with a mortal blow, and rather than lose her son as well, she ordered her crew to take Drake and escape while she held them off, and despite his attempts to the contrary he was dragged away kicking and screaming. The last Drake saw of her was a smile on her face, as his father executed her… though he was crying the whole time.
The Shandians, of course, initially took the group of humans as intruders to their territory, and captured them all with relative ease - the Shandians had a variety of Dials they could use in creative ways, and outmatched the group of pirate swordsmen. However, Drake refused to stand down even against their superior odds, and released a strange pulse of sheer will that made many of the weaker Shandians faint. Armed with only a cutlass and filled with rage, he fought through several of the remaining Shandians before being taken down by a swordsman of their people, named Lombard. Realizing Drake was only hostile in self-defense, though, Lombard ordered his men to stand down rather than kill them, and had Drake and the pirates taken back to their village to be healed.
After waking up, Lombard and Drake had a quiet talk about the pirates' purpose in their land. Drake explained, and in return, Lombard explained the truth behind the three-sided conflict - the Shandians were people from the world below, though originally they believed they were too once one of the people of the Sky Islands. Their land had fallen from the sky in ancient times, however, and only a couple hundred years ago had been sent back into the sky by “the power of the Blue Sea”. However, of the three peoples, they were the most harmed by the truce, as all they had wanted from the beginning was to be left alone, while the Skypeians and Birkans both tried to take their land as conquering armies. They had lost so much blood, and while they had repaid it with such vengeance that the Skypeians and Birkans eventually backed off, they had lost hundreds of people for ultimately nothing but an apology.
Drake and the remnants of the Bancho Pirates were moved by the story, particularly the pirates - they were utterly enraged. The ideal of their crew was that <b>“Sorry is a word for weaklings and cowards, who are too weak or cowardly to accept their own fault. A true Warrior of the Sea makes good on his mistakes and debts.”</b> While Grace had fallen, they would not let her dream die, to return to the seas below. And the Skypeians had stolen their ship, and the Birkans had stolen their captain. These were crimes that could not be forgiven with mere apologies. Drake happily followed suit, being young and inexperienced and still on a warpath after his mother’s death.
However, Lombard recognized that Drake lacked the power and focus to really help, and offered a way to train him in a short amount of time. He knew of a place deep within Shandia, in the heart of their former home of Shandora, where a tree grew a fruit rumored to have the power of the gods. It was a quest nobody had ever returned from, as the Shandians had fled Shandora during the war and never managed to reclaim it, but Lombard knew Drake had the will to attempt it. He gave him a map and sent him on his way.
The quest led him deep into the Shandia, but Drake had no problem dealing with the local wildlife. He eventually found the Golden City... and its guardian, a gigantic snake that had guarded the place since the war, the real reason the Shandians had actually left the place. The treasure he was after was near the center of the city, a tree that grew golden apples, but to get there he would have to do battle with the giant serpent.
Or, as Drake found out, run from it. Completely outmatched by the thousand foot long snake, he opted to flee and obtain the powerful treasure before risking a fight with it. And sure enough, it was actually remarkably easy to do so, given the entire city of small buildings and tight alleyways.
He found the tree soon enough, but to his anger, it was in fact not a tree with golden apples, but instead one that had a single, overly large golden lemon. Still, he figured it had to be the right one, and took a big bite out of the fruit, peel and all. He found it to be the most sour, foul-tasting fruit he had ever imagined, and was cringing with the sourness for damn near half a minute, before he felt what it had done. His body seemed to surge with power... literal power, the power of lightning itself. Due to his stalling, however, the great serpent had caught up, but Drake was as ready as he ever would be. After making an impromptu sword using electrical power from the gold of the ruins around them, he charged at the snake. He took his sword in a two-handed grip, and with the sound of a thunderclap, launched himself high up into the air above the snake, before bringing the heavy, electrified blunt sword down on its nose.
While the attack didn't outright defeat it, however, it caused the snake an incredible amount of pain, so much so that it actually began to cry. Drake was puzzled at first, but soon realized the snake was actually a child, and opted to try a different tactic. He didn't apologize, but he did use his lightning powers to numb the area a little, and after several hours of enthusiasm, as well as getting some food for them both and cooking it with his newfound power, he somehow managed to befriend it as though it was a pet.
Drake returned to the Shandian village a hero, having both claimed a powerful weapon to aid them, as well as a giant goddamn snake. For months, Drake and the remainder of the pirates aided the Shandians in reclaiming Shandora, and soon they had reclaimed and rebuilt the city, aided by a boy made of living lightning, and a snake big enough to defend the city against any threat. A great feast was had once the city was theirs again, and for the first time in his life, Drake was happy. He was among people he trusted, and Lombard was the best equivalent of a father he could have asked for, though Drake mostly referred to him as Brother. Aniki.
The Birkans, however, saw more to this - they knew who Drake was, and that he now possessed a power that many claimed to be the Power of God itself. The Birkan God decided that the boy was an affront to their rule and everything they stood for, and more than that… Don Verdain convinced the Birkan God that the act of a Birkan warrior aiding the Shandians was proof that the Truce had been broken once again, but that he had a way to exact justice in secrecy.
Verdain approached the city of Shandora, but rather than fight, he challenged his son to "Taiman", a term for a one-on-one duel his mother had used, knowing that Drake's honor would not allow him to refuse. He challenged Drake to not use his lightning powers, lest he be less of a man for relying on them. Despite agreeing to this stipulation, however, Drake proved to have become a far more competent swordsman than his father. The battle lasted nearly an hour, but eventually Drake took the upper hand, however his father chose to win with a dishonorable tactic, and blocked Drake's final attack with a Reject Dial, before magnifying its force tenfold and striking Drake back with it, defeating him at a blow at the cost of nearly destroying his own sword-arm from the recoil.
When Drake awoke his arms strapped to an iron bar of a standing stocks by several manacles and his legs held down with a final set. As punishment for his "crimes against God", Don Verdain ordered his wings seared off to permanently mark him as nothing more than a Human intruder like his mother. Drake, of course, was about to fight back... until he realized that the Birkans had taken hostage all of the Shandians who had come to see Drake turn the tide of the war, as the entire duel was an underhanded ploy by Don Verdain to start the war once again, as he felt that the Birkan people deserved to rule and the Sky Island and he had manipulated the Birkan God to agree.
Don Verdain threatened that if Drake resisted his punishment, the soldiers would execute them, Lombard and his family included. Though Lombard urged Drake to not worry about them, and to fight back, Drake refused to put this his family in danger. Throughout the entire torturous experience of his wings being ripped out and burned away, Drake simply smiled, refusing to let Lombard and his family see him in pain. In light of this, not willing to accept Drake become a symbol of hope for the Shandians, the Birkan God ordered Drake executed.
While Don Verdain had wanted Drake to suffer, however, he was still very much his son, and he didn’t want him dead. He refused, and pleaded with the Birkan God to instead exile Drake, to throw him to the underworld where he would belong, as "just a human." By playing to the God's ego once again, the Birkan God accepted this alternative punishment, and ordered Drake thrown to the White White Sea. Drake, by this point, was in no shape to resist, but thankfully Lombard had seen just about enough. Having seen Drake’s spirit, his willingness to accept any punishment to save the people he now called family, he refused to let the Birkans take one more thing from the Shandian people.
Lombard drew upon all his strength and broke free of his bonds, before stealing one of the Birkan soldier’s swords and cleaving Drake’s manacles from the stocks, freeing him. He and Drake fought back-to-back, even against the insurmountable odds, but it was all for naught. By the end of the battle, Don Verdain himself had re-entered the fray, dueling with Drake once more. Even more, the Skypeians had heard of this conflict and come to investigate. Rather than deal with the war in full swing once more, the Birkan God ordered a retreat, as did the Shandians. However, Don Verdain refused, and with a single, final attack at the expense of destroying his sword-arm for good, sent Drake flying over the edge of the Sky Island with a second use of the Reject Dial.
Too weak to turn into lightning and move to safety, Drake simply plummeted to the White White Sea with a splash, realizing very quickly that for some reason, he could no longer swim. As he sunk deeper, all he could think of is how he would never get a chance for another feast, with his newfound family happily all around him as the Sky War was truly, finally over, rather than just a truce waiting to be broken as it was.
However... perhaps a testament to Drake's will and stamina alone, he did not drown in the White White Sea, and instead fell all the way through it, and back into the sky of the Underworld. he woke up halfway down to the ground, barely conscious, incredibly weak, but seeing the ground of an island rising up to meet him very quickly. Drake made one last desperate attempt to survive, and converted himself into lightning to protect himself from being killed by the fall. This island, of course, saw it as a single lightning bolt on a clear, sunny day, that slammed into the ground in the meadows and charred a wide mark all around it.
The first person to find where the lightning struck, however, was a small boy named Roan, barely 8 years old himself. Having grown up with a love of pirates, he had seen the lightning bolt while playing pirates with his friends, though they all ran off at the surprise of it. Roan found the badly injured, unconscious Drake in the center of the scorchmark, but above all else, saw the Jolly Roger hanging from his waist, the flag from his mother's ship that she had wrapped him in as a child, and later sewed into clothing for him when she realized her journey would end in the sky. Roan managed to drag him back to his home, where his mother and father quickly called the town's doctor to treat the mysterious man.
Some time later, Drake awoke... but due to the severity of his injuries and perhaps the speed of his fall to earth, he remembered little but his own name, the last words yelled to him before he fell - his father finally calling him by his mother's last name, "Drake D. Banchou", though he thought he said "Drake THE Bancho". He realized quickly that he was a powerful warrior, of course, as well as remembering his powers. While the village initially thought him to be an omen, some angry being who had come to kill them for their research, Drake instead was grateful for their healing him, and offered his service as a warrior to them in thanks. The villagers of Ohara Island reluctantly accepted, and for many years Drake has served as their unwavering guardian.
Through it all, however, he has had a strange sense of wanderlust, of wanting to find out where he's from, and reclaim his lost memories. Roan, however, has helped get him some rather creative false ones in the meantime. Once Roan saw Drake's Jolly Roger and his sword, Roan KNEW that Drake had to be a famous pirate swordsman (since that’s what the pirates in his book look like). Even moreso, Drake carried a tiny journal detailing a number of swords called Meito, legendary swords from across the sea. Roan figured that Drake was on a quest to obtain all of the swords, just like the journal said. And moreso, Roan eventually figured out (due to him being a nerd, and an incident involving a bucket and a bathtub that will never be spoken of again), that Drake's lightning powers were actually that of a Devil Fruit, and that he was weak to the power of the sea, since it prevented him from swimming. However, despite Roan urging him to do so, Drake's honor prevented him from leaving the island to become a "Sword-Hunting Pirate", or seeking out the source of his memories. He has read much about the outside world in books, and longs for one day having a reason to leave and find out who he truly is, but until then he remains honor-bound to guard the island of Ohara.
And so Drake became the guardian of the small island of Ohara, fending off pirates and other threats that came to the village to seek its knowledge, until the village of Ohara came to be known as "Thunderland" by travelers, where lightning could strike at any time.
Sky Island has been a land of war for centuries, since the arrival of Shandora from the sea below several hundred years ago. Though the native Shandian people were once settlers themselves from the distant lands of the sky, the arrival of this new place sparked a war between the two civilizations of the Sky Island - Skypeia and Birka. While Skypeia was a land of art, science, and culture, Birka was a land of honoring tradition and the religion of their 'God', an individual of great power. With this new source of land available, both sides sought to claim it as their own - Skypeia wished to claim its resources, while Birka saw it as their divine right to own such a magnificent land. So began a war that only ended after great bloodshed, with all three sides reluctantly agreeing to a truce to save the loss of more lives.
With the "Gates of Heaven" close to Skypeia, the various travelers from the Blues below came there first. And recently, with the rise of the Golden Age of Pirates... that meant pirates and thieves were among them. And among these were the Bancho Pirates, led by a firebrand named Grace Banchou. While many knew her as a vicious rookie pirate from the West Blue, having racked up a bounty of 30Million Beri for a number of violent offenses, she was really just a skilled pirate with a devoted crew who happened to be stronger than the Marines she routinely dealt with. Having followed the path known as the High West from her home sea, she arrived in Skypeia with little left of her crew and treasure, and faced with paying the entrance fee she chose to fight her way in.
The result went poorly for her, and though she inflicted great damage to the White Berets in their attempts to capture her, she was forced to flee from Angel Island into Shandia, leaving her ship behind in their custody. She was discovered by a roaming party of Birkan soldiers once she entered their territory, led by a man named Don Verdain. Due to them having been fleeing the Skypeians and he being a war sympathizer, he took them as temporary allies and ordered his men to care for her and her crew. Having never been shown such kindness and mercy from anyone, however, Grace was flustered by the man's actions and fell in love. In her flustered state, she eventually chose to side with the Birkan army against the Skypeians, as from her point of view they had charged her a ridiculous fee while she was in need of help, and then stolen her ship when she tried to defend her crew - revenge was understandable.
She eventually had a child with Don Verdain, a healthy baby boy she later named Drake, as she likened his wings to that of a dragon, not an angel (likely due to not knowing what an angel was). Though the war had long ended, from an early age both of Drake’s parents urged him to train as a warrior, something he was all too happy to do. The few crewmen left from her crew were all swordsman by trade, as the Bancho Pirates were known throughout the seas as Sword Hunters, pirate swordsmen who searched the seas for Meito above all other treasures. From them and his mother he learned a wide variety of swordsmanship styles, and pieced together his own style from the mix, particularly favoring a single-sword style.
However, as time went on, and Drake's childlike view of the long-finished war began to make certain details very obvious, Grace began to question the concept of the truce so long past. Having lived and fought as a crusader of freedom on the Blue Sea, the fact that she was all but married to a man who stood by the thought that his people rightfully should have taken Shandia as their throne began to bother her. After researching what she could, she decided she could not live with the man any longer, and under cover of darkness fled with her crew and son to the Shandian territory, believing them to be the real victims of the war. Don Verdain was furious, however, that the woman he was taking as a wife would disobey him, and called upon his soldiers to attack the “vicious outsiders” for being sympathizers to the Shandians, a high crime. The pirates managed to escape despite yet another prolonged battle, however not without loss. Don Verdain struck down Grace amidst the fight with a mortal blow, and rather than lose her son as well, she ordered her crew to take Drake and escape while she held them off, and despite his attempts to the contrary he was dragged away kicking and screaming. The last Drake saw of her was a smile on her face, as his father executed her… though he was crying the whole time.
The Shandians, of course, initially took the group of humans as intruders to their territory, and captured them all with relative ease - the Shandians had a variety of Dials they could use in creative ways, and outmatched the group of pirate swordsmen. However, Drake refused to stand down even against their superior odds, and released a strange pulse of sheer will that made many of the weaker Shandians faint. Armed with only a cutlass and filled with rage, he fought through several of the remaining Shandians before being taken down by a swordsman of their people, named Lombard. Realizing Drake was only hostile in self-defense, though, Lombard ordered his men to stand down rather than kill them, and had Drake and the pirates taken back to their village to be healed.
After waking up, Lombard and Drake had a quiet talk about the pirates' purpose in their land. Drake explained, and in return, Lombard explained the truth behind the three-sided conflict - the Shandians were people from the world below, though originally they believed they were too once one of the people of the Sky Islands. Their land had fallen from the sky in ancient times, however, and only a couple hundred years ago had been sent back into the sky by “the power of the Blue Sea”. However, of the three peoples, they were the most harmed by the truce, as all they had wanted from the beginning was to be left alone, while the Skypeians and Birkans both tried to take their land as conquering armies. They had lost so much blood, and while they had repaid it with such vengeance that the Skypeians and Birkans eventually backed off, they had lost hundreds of people for ultimately nothing but an apology.
Drake and the remnants of the Bancho Pirates were moved by the story, particularly the pirates - they were utterly enraged. The ideal of their crew was that <b>“Sorry is a word for weaklings and cowards, who are too weak or cowardly to accept their own fault. A true Warrior of the Sea makes good on his mistakes and debts.”</b> While Grace had fallen, they would not let her dream die, to return to the seas below. And the Skypeians had stolen their ship, and the Birkans had stolen their captain. These were crimes that could not be forgiven with mere apologies. Drake happily followed suit, being young and inexperienced and still on a warpath after his mother’s death.
However, Lombard recognized that Drake lacked the power and focus to really help, and offered a way to train him in a short amount of time. He knew of a place deep within Shandia, in the heart of their former home of Shandora, where a tree grew a fruit rumored to have the power of the gods. It was a quest nobody had ever returned from, as the Shandians had fled Shandora during the war and never managed to reclaim it, but Lombard knew Drake had the will to attempt it. He gave him a map and sent him on his way.
The quest led him deep into the Shandia, but Drake had no problem dealing with the local wildlife. He eventually found the Golden City... and its guardian, a gigantic snake that had guarded the place since the war, the real reason the Shandians had actually left the place. The treasure he was after was near the center of the city, a tree that grew golden apples, but to get there he would have to do battle with the giant serpent.
Or, as Drake found out, run from it. Completely outmatched by the thousand foot long snake, he opted to flee and obtain the powerful treasure before risking a fight with it. And sure enough, it was actually remarkably easy to do so, given the entire city of small buildings and tight alleyways.
He found the tree soon enough, but to his anger, it was in fact not a tree with golden apples, but instead one that had a single, overly large golden lemon. Still, he figured it had to be the right one, and took a big bite out of the fruit, peel and all. He found it to be the most sour, foul-tasting fruit he had ever imagined, and was cringing with the sourness for damn near half a minute, before he felt what it had done. His body seemed to surge with power... literal power, the power of lightning itself. Due to his stalling, however, the great serpent had caught up, but Drake was as ready as he ever would be. After making an impromptu sword using electrical power from the gold of the ruins around them, he charged at the snake. He took his sword in a two-handed grip, and with the sound of a thunderclap, launched himself high up into the air above the snake, before bringing the heavy, electrified blunt sword down on its nose.
While the attack didn't outright defeat it, however, it caused the snake an incredible amount of pain, so much so that it actually began to cry. Drake was puzzled at first, but soon realized the snake was actually a child, and opted to try a different tactic. He didn't apologize, but he did use his lightning powers to numb the area a little, and after several hours of enthusiasm, as well as getting some food for them both and cooking it with his newfound power, he somehow managed to befriend it as though it was a pet.
Drake returned to the Shandian village a hero, having both claimed a powerful weapon to aid them, as well as a giant goddamn snake. For months, Drake and the remainder of the pirates aided the Shandians in reclaiming Shandora, and soon they had reclaimed and rebuilt the city, aided by a boy made of living lightning, and a snake big enough to defend the city against any threat. A great feast was had once the city was theirs again, and for the first time in his life, Drake was happy. He was among people he trusted, and Lombard was the best equivalent of a father he could have asked for, though Drake mostly referred to him as Brother. Aniki.
The Birkans, however, saw more to this - they knew who Drake was, and that he now possessed a power that many claimed to be the Power of God itself. The Birkan God decided that the boy was an affront to their rule and everything they stood for, and more than that… Don Verdain convinced the Birkan God that the act of a Birkan warrior aiding the Shandians was proof that the Truce had been broken once again, but that he had a way to exact justice in secrecy.
Verdain approached the city of Shandora, but rather than fight, he challenged his son to "Taiman", a term for a one-on-one duel his mother had used, knowing that Drake's honor would not allow him to refuse. He challenged Drake to not use his lightning powers, lest he be less of a man for relying on them. Despite agreeing to this stipulation, however, Drake proved to have become a far more competent swordsman than his father. The battle lasted nearly an hour, but eventually Drake took the upper hand, however his father chose to win with a dishonorable tactic, and blocked Drake's final attack with a Reject Dial, before magnifying its force tenfold and striking Drake back with it, defeating him at a blow at the cost of nearly destroying his own sword-arm from the recoil.
When Drake awoke his arms strapped to an iron bar of a standing stocks by several manacles and his legs held down with a final set. As punishment for his "crimes against God", Don Verdain ordered his wings seared off to permanently mark him as nothing more than a Human intruder like his mother. Drake, of course, was about to fight back... until he realized that the Birkans had taken hostage all of the Shandians who had come to see Drake turn the tide of the war, as the entire duel was an underhanded ploy by Don Verdain to start the war once again, as he felt that the Birkan people deserved to rule and the Sky Island and he had manipulated the Birkan God to agree.
Don Verdain threatened that if Drake resisted his punishment, the soldiers would execute them, Lombard and his family included. Though Lombard urged Drake to not worry about them, and to fight back, Drake refused to put this his family in danger. Throughout the entire torturous experience of his wings being ripped out and burned away, Drake simply smiled, refusing to let Lombard and his family see him in pain. In light of this, not willing to accept Drake become a symbol of hope for the Shandians, the Birkan God ordered Drake executed.
While Don Verdain had wanted Drake to suffer, however, he was still very much his son, and he didn’t want him dead. He refused, and pleaded with the Birkan God to instead exile Drake, to throw him to the underworld where he would belong, as "just a human." By playing to the God's ego once again, the Birkan God accepted this alternative punishment, and ordered Drake thrown to the White White Sea. Drake, by this point, was in no shape to resist, but thankfully Lombard had seen just about enough. Having seen Drake’s spirit, his willingness to accept any punishment to save the people he now called family, he refused to let the Birkans take one more thing from the Shandian people.
Lombard drew upon all his strength and broke free of his bonds, before stealing one of the Birkan soldier’s swords and cleaving Drake’s manacles from the stocks, freeing him. He and Drake fought back-to-back, even against the insurmountable odds, but it was all for naught. By the end of the battle, Don Verdain himself had re-entered the fray, dueling with Drake once more. Even more, the Skypeians had heard of this conflict and come to investigate. Rather than deal with the war in full swing once more, the Birkan God ordered a retreat, as did the Shandians. However, Don Verdain refused, and with a single, final attack at the expense of destroying his sword-arm for good, sent Drake flying over the edge of the Sky Island with a second use of the Reject Dial.
Too weak to turn into lightning and move to safety, Drake simply plummeted to the White White Sea with a splash, realizing very quickly that for some reason, he could no longer swim. As he sunk deeper, all he could think of is how he would never get a chance for another feast, with his newfound family happily all around him as the Sky War was truly, finally over, rather than just a truce waiting to be broken as it was.
However... perhaps a testament to Drake's will and stamina alone, he did not drown in the White White Sea, and instead fell all the way through it, and back into the sky of the Underworld. he woke up halfway down to the ground, barely conscious, incredibly weak, but seeing the ground of an island rising up to meet him very quickly. Drake made one last desperate attempt to survive, and converted himself into lightning to protect himself from being killed by the fall. This island, of course, saw it as a single lightning bolt on a clear, sunny day, that slammed into the ground in the meadows and charred a wide mark all around it.
The first person to find where the lightning struck, however, was a small boy named Roan, barely 8 years old himself. Having grown up with a love of pirates, he had seen the lightning bolt while playing pirates with his friends, though they all ran off at the surprise of it. Roan found the badly injured, unconscious Drake in the center of the scorchmark, but above all else, saw the Jolly Roger hanging from his waist, the flag from his mother's ship that she had wrapped him in as a child, and later sewed into clothing for him when she realized her journey would end in the sky. Roan managed to drag him back to his home, where his mother and father quickly called the town's doctor to treat the mysterious man.
Some time later, Drake awoke... but due to the severity of his injuries and perhaps the speed of his fall to earth, he remembered little but his own name, the last words yelled to him before he fell - his father finally calling him by his mother's last name, "Drake D. Banchou", though he thought he said "Drake THE Bancho". He realized quickly that he was a powerful warrior, of course, as well as remembering his powers. While the village initially thought him to be an omen, some angry being who had come to kill them for their research, Drake instead was grateful for their healing him, and offered his service as a warrior to them in thanks. The villagers of Ohara Island reluctantly accepted, and for many years Drake has served as their unwavering guardian.
Through it all, however, he has had a strange sense of wanderlust, of wanting to find out where he's from, and reclaim his lost memories. Roan, however, has helped get him some rather creative false ones in the meantime. Once Roan saw Drake's Jolly Roger and his sword, Roan KNEW that Drake had to be a famous pirate swordsman (since that’s what the pirates in his book look like). Even moreso, Drake carried a tiny journal detailing a number of swords called Meito, legendary swords from across the sea. Roan figured that Drake was on a quest to obtain all of the swords, just like the journal said. And moreso, Roan eventually figured out (due to him being a nerd, and an incident involving a bucket and a bathtub that will never be spoken of again), that Drake's lightning powers were actually that of a Devil Fruit, and that he was weak to the power of the sea, since it prevented him from swimming. However, despite Roan urging him to do so, Drake's honor prevented him from leaving the island to become a "Sword-Hunting Pirate", or seeking out the source of his memories. He has read much about the outside world in books, and longs for one day having a reason to leave and find out who he truly is, but until then he remains honor-bound to guard the island of Ohara.
And so Drake became the guardian of the small island of Ohara, fending off pirates and other threats that came to the village to seek its knowledge, until the village of Ohara came to be known as "Thunderland" by travelers, where lightning could strike at any time.
■ Combat
Special Abilities
Superhuman Strength - Due to being made of living lightning, much of Drake's physical strength isn't visible just in his physical. He is actually incredibly strong due to spending his entire life training as a swordsman and constantly fighting in one battle or another.
Special Ability # 2
Will Of D - Drake has the power of the D. in his name, granting him an insatiable lust for life, an incredibly strong will, and force of personality that may make people more inclined to aid him or agree with him... even though he doesn't actually KNOW he has that 'D'. He also has the potential to access Conqueror's Haki, however due to the lack of training he has no control over it so far, and isn't even aware of what the power is. While he cannot make specific Haki techniques until he finds someone to explain it to him, he does have an incredibly powerful force of will, and his Haki will occasionally flare up at narratively convenient moments (though never in PvP combat of any kind, of course).
Devil Fruit
GORO GORO NO MI
The Goro Goro no Mi is a Logia-type Devil Fruit that allows the user to create, control, and transform into electricity at will, making the user a Thunder Human. The fruit is unusually sour compared to other Devil Fruits, but still horrendous in taste. While the fruit's power has less innate wide-range destructive power than many other Logias such as Fire, Ice, or Magma, a creative and skilled user can use it to incredible effect.
In addition to the typical Devil Fruit weaknesses, the eater of the "Rumble Rumble" fruit is additionally weak to any material that does not conduct electricity, such as rubber.
ROOKIE
The user can will himself to turn his body into living lightning, and can choose to appear human while doing so, but cannot do so reflexively and is still vulnerable to any surprise attacks that would affect a normal human body. He can, however, turn into lightning in response to incoming attacks such as swords or a gun being pointed at him.Offensively, the user can perform lightning-powered melee attacks and channel electricity through any conductive metal, and can also fire short-ranged lightning bolts, though repeatedly firing off bolts will tire him with repeated use as he is functionally depleting his own body. To recharge, he needs to eat foods high in electrolytes.
Inventory
■ Four pairs of iron manacles left over from his brief captivity. Three pairs are worn on his arm, one pair on his ankles. The ones on his arms function as improvised armor in combat, allowing him to block attacks with his forearms as well as his sword.
■ A golden sword, named "Koyōsei". Koyosei is a sword in name only - it is a large, heavy "bokken" made of pure gold that Drake created during his fight with the giant serpent. It was a roughly 50 pound chunk of gold that was previously used to side a building in the town square, however Drake used his lightning powers to quickly reforge it into a blunt sword. Due to the help of his new home's blacksmiths, he has learned how to reforge it into a blade temporarily using a special technique. While a normal sword made of gold would not hold an edge, this one is incredibly dense and can hold up to repeated combat... so long as it's used by someone who can handle its weight.
■ A small journal containing details on known Meito. The journal is 20 years old, however, so much of the information may not be accurate anymore. It does, however, list most of the known Meito at least in name. (Effectively, this journal exists solely to set up storylines to find Meito, not to actually give useful info.)
■ Clothes. And by clothes I mean a pair of pants detailed with red leather in a Shandian design, and a red and black robe that's pretty much destroyed and worn as a belt, used to hold his sword. The large black part of the latter, however, is embroidered with the Jolly Roger of the Banchou Pirates, a skull and crossed swords with a red headband on the skull's forehead and a red bandana over its mouth.
Techs
As a running pun on his fruit's Rumble name, his name, and his general character, Drake names most of his techniques based on slang terms used by cliche American and Japanese delinquent subcultures, mostly outdated ones.
Legendary
None Yet
Veteran
None Yet
Advanced
None Yet
Intermediate
- Greased Lightning
Rookie
- Menchi Beam
- Ura-Bancho Bullet
- Pon-Tou-Kin
made by jinx of adoxography
ooc name ■ fc name from show
