Happy Holidays everyone! I know I haven’t been able to update in a long time (and kind of won’t be able to) due to Shonen Jump’s upcoming breaks, so I wanted to throw up something me and Zach were talking about just last night, while we were trashed at his place.

Author’s Note: Guys, I’m sorry that this page looks so terrible. I’ll reformat it soon, but for now, keep expecting little updates here and there from comments/thoughts I’ve sourced. I’ll re-do the entire thing (as well as the comprehensive theory page) so stay relatively tuned 🙂

Table of Contents:

– Why did Blackbeard try it on Himself?

– How are the Blackbeard Pirates stealing abilities?

Blackbeard Pirates

Introduction: This will be more of a discussion on what we’re thinking about as it concerns Blackbeard and his powers and the future of the Blackbeard Pirates. As with all good science and hypothesizing, we look for inconsistencies in a seemingly consistent world. But first we must make one big assumption:

–> That Oda is a good writer. In fact, I think that this fact alone makes theorizing about the direction of One Piece even possible. If we assume that Oda is a good writer and is writing a coherent, logically consistent story, we need to..

Re-visit the time when Teach stole Whitebeard’s powers. Two huge questions comes to mind, the first of which I want to pose to you all:

// Why did he try it on himself, with one of the most powerful Devil Fruits out there?

–> Or in other words, why didn’t he have a fodder crew mate try it first, in case he failed and possibly even died? Remember the Blackbeard Pirates weren’t sure that it would work at all.

–> Why didn’t he try it on a Devil Fruit that was lame, in case he failed and possibly lost it? If he failed, he could have tried again and saved the Gura Gura no Mi for himself when the kinks got worked out.

–> Assuming Oda is a good writer, Blackbeard must have had some sort of rationale here.

<– Apforums user Czechmate argues that, as someone who believes fully in fate and destiny, these two actions would not be in Teach’s “style.” Rather (and he puts this extremely eloquently), “trying this never-attempted anomaly with what is arguably the world’s most powerful Paramecia fruit is exactly the kind of gamble that Blackbeard and his crew would take up.” My response, to summarize, was that Teach values his life too much to make that gamble, evidenced by his wussiness in front of Whitebeard during the war. On this point I will elaborate soon but it is a great argument against!

onequestion: How come Teach pioneered the Devil Fruit stealing himself on the Gura Gura no Mi?

0. (Most Recently Added): There is a cap of 2 abilities per person using this method.

–> Teach went to a risky war-zone to get Whitebeard’s abilities. Granted Whitebeard’s ability was highly coveted, he wouldn’t have had to go to such extremes if he could have more than 2 abilities.

–> Teach now considers himself the ultimate being, which implies he may no longer can/needs to get any more powerful.

<– Commenter OOSCHIZO points out Teach bailed on meeting Akainu because he didn’t think he was ready yet. To it, I would say that maybe Teach just wants to get stronger physically (he has insane abilities but takes TONS of damage) but in no way does that discount what OOSCHIZO is saying. Very well said!

–> We consider this the most plausible, especially when coupled with some peoples’ theories on the future direction of the Blackbeard Pirates (see bolded “Diamond Shiryuu” below).

Ramifications: Teach, therefore, is going to collect 1 or 2 abilities for each of his crew mates.

1. That the first time would only work with Blackbeard.

–> We have no real reason to believe this but the possibility exists.

2. That it only works with Teach period (possibly due to his body composition).

–> This seems more likely because Marco specifically mentions that Teach is extraordinary in that respect.

–> But if this is true, that sucks, because some people have made some awesome theories about Shiryuu stealing Diamond Jozu’s ability, forcing Zoro to have to learn how to cut diamond. This is awesome because it’s something we haven’t even seen Mihawk do, and has been foreshadowed for Zoro previously. I think in the anime, Mr. 1 says something to the effect of: what, are you going to cut through diamond next? but it isn’t in the manga redditor El_Unico_Nacho helped find the foreshadowing during Zoro’s fight with Mr. 1. Thanks! 🙂

Ramifications: If this ability only works with Teach period, then is Teach going to become some sort of wacky, 100 fruit ability user? It seems out of place, but would make for an amazing, funny yet impossibly difficult to beat last boss. Apforums user Preston is Pirate says that in the One Piece Databook Green, Blackbeard’s original name was going to be “Everything D. Teach,” giving this explanation a wooden peg leg to stand on 😀

The second question, which everyone is asking, is:

// How exactly is Teach stealing Devil Fruit powers?

–> There isn’t enough evidence to really make a really good hypothesis about this yet, so I hope you’ll accept this preliminary one from me:

onetheory:

// Blackbeard gained the ability to steal Devil Fruit abilities from Impel Down, level 6.

–> If Vegapunk created something capable of doing this, there’d be no better place to hide it than Impel Down.

–> Blackbeard wouldn’t have gone all the way down to ID6 just for nakama (even if they are ridiculous nakama).

–> Until this point, having two Devil Fruit abilities seemed impossible. Then again, Blackbeard didn’t “eat” two fruits.

–> None of the reaction shots from the high ranking Marines seemed surprised that this ability exists, lending credence to the theory that it’s something Vegapunk may have developed and hidden away, but shared with the upper echelon of the World Government.

–> It probably has something to do with the cape he covered Whitebeard with, but that’s fairly obvious.

Added: Commenter Jarrod makes a really great point that if Sengoku knew what Blackbeard was doing with the cape, he would have ordered everyone to open fire on the cape and stop Blackbeard at all costs. This is really convincing evidence that Sengoku did not know what was going on under there, and Jarrod speculates that the cape may not be necessary at all and that it was just to hide what Teach was doing. I’ll add more to this later – great!

Otherwise, we really have no limitations in theorizing here. Maybe the final fight Blackbeard Pirates will have at least 2 fruit abilities, with power scaling equal to how many abilities they have. For example, Luffy fights Blackbeard with 10 fruits, while Zoro fights Shiryuu with 8, Sanji vs. a person with 6, and so on. Or more likely, because their bodies aren’t composed uniquely, that everyone will pick up one ability, like Shiryuu getting Jozu’s which I talked about earlier.

There are tons of other theories floating around out there that I’ll add to this page soon. At some point I’m hoping this page will be comprehensive, but just not yet! I just wanted to put something up for all of us thinking about One Piece over the Holidays/New Year 🙂 Have a great week everyone!