Age 20 | Before the Sea Took Me
Location: Small fishing village, East Blue
Entry: Late Autumn | Cold wind biting
I’m done waiting. Done hoping. Done pretending the world owes me something.
They call this place a home, but all I see are cages.
Fishermen tied to their nets, dreaming of distant lands they’ll never see.
Fathers teaching sons to accept the same chains.
I tried.
Worked the docks, mended sails, hauled cargo.
But it’s never enough.
No matter how hard you pull, the tide drags you back.
Today, I saw a captain laugh as he turned away from a starving boy begging for passage.
The sea was calm, but the man’s eyes were colder than any storm.
That moment broke something in me.
I realized the sea doesn’t care about mercy.
It doesn’t care about justice.
The sea only respects strength — the will to take what you want.
And if you don’t have it, you get swallowed.
So I made a choice.
I’m leaving this village.
Not to find a new home — but to take one.
I’m not waiting to be saved.
I’m not begging for power.
I’m going to carve my own place in the waves.
They say a man needs a Devil Fruit or Haki to matter.
I don’t care.
I’ll prove you don’t need gifts to rule the sea.
Only grit. Only cunning. Only the hunger to be more than a forgotten face.
Tomorrow, I’m heading to Shells Town.
To find a ship, a crew, something.
Anything to start.
I don’t know what I’ll become.
But I know I’m done being invisible.
— D. Jones
Age 20 | Mid-Year
Location: East Blue, Shells Town Marine Detention
Entry: Stormy night
They say a man’s true self is revealed when the walls close in.
I found out who I was behind iron bars.
They caught me with nothing but a stolen sail and a crooked knife.
The Marines thought I was just another drifter, another thief too stubborn to stay down.
They didn’t know I was already building something.
The cell was cold — smelled of salt and sweat and broken promises.
But worse was the company.
Three men thrown in with me.
Men who had no place left in this world.
One was a marine deserter — sharp eyes, colder mind.
One was a surgeon — twitch in his hand, scars like a map across his face.
The last was a brute, the kind who wears violence like a second skin.
They didn’t say much.
But I could tell — like me, they weren’t here by accident.
No one planned to break out.
But when the guards grew careless — when they laughed too loud — we did.
The surgeon fashioned a lockpick from splintered wood.
The brute cracked two guards’ necks with his bare hands.
The deserter kept watch and whispered plans like a shadow in the dark.
And me?
I waited.
When the cell door swung open, I didn’t hesitate.
The fight was messy — screams, blood on the stone floor, the taste of salt mixing with sweat.
We moved like ghosts, brutal and silent.
No glory. No cheers.
Just survival.
We didn’t run.
We didn’t scatter.
We stuck together.
Because out here, it’s simple.
Work together — or die alone.
That night, as we slipped through the docks under moonless skies, I looked at them.
Not as prisoners.
Not as criminals.
But as brothers.
I didn’t say it aloud.
Hell, I barely spoke.
But I knew.
This was the beginning.
The first chain forged in blood and desperation.
And no matter what came next, I swore to myself:
Any man who wants to sail with me would earn it — or drown trying.
The sea doesn’t wait for courage.
It only rewards those who bleed for it.
And I intend to bleed last.
— D. Jones
No one knew it was my birthday.
No songs. No cheers.
Just a candle flickering on a crust of stale bread next to a half-empty bottle of rum.
I blew it out quietly, making a wish.
Wish was simple: Keep breathing. Keep surviving.
The crew had grown — three turned to ten in less than a year.
Scars collected like trophies.
Promises broken like cheap nails holding this ship together.
I could feel it coming.
The undercurrents beneath their eyes.
The grudges they whispered in the shadows.
I didn’t panic.
Mutiny isn’t loud.
It’s cold.
Calculating.
Three of them — the deserter, the surgeon, and the brute — moved first.
The men I trusted to follow me through fire and blood.
Rict, Fallow, Brine.
They cornered me at the helm, under the pale moonlight.
No shouts. No demands.
Just blades drawn and eyes cold as the depths.
I had been charting the tides — quiet as the sea itself.
I looked up, met their gaze, and smiled.
“Then I’ve already won,” I said.
It was over in seconds.
Fallow screamed as my hidden blade cut his wrist.
Brine went down hard, caught by a rigged anchor swinging from the mast.
Rict held a pistol — but he didn’t fire.
He dropped it instead.
Because he knew.
I didn’t kill them.
Not then.
But I made sure they remembered what failure meant.
Tied to the mast for six days. No food. Only seawater.
No mercy.
No mistakes.
Brine’s knees never healed right.
Fallow became the sharpest medic in the East Blue — because he learned to fear pain more than death.
Rict became my first officer — not for loyalty, but because he was smart enough to understand fear.
Mutiny came on my birthday.
No one knew but me.
It was a reminder.
Of who I am.
Of what I command.
The sea doesn’t give second chances.
Neither do I.
— D. Jones
Year 1 | Age 21
Location: Somewhere near Shells Town, East Blue
Entry: Late Spring | Overcast skies
Day One on the Spine.
The ship’s a wreck, and so am I.
No grand name. No legacy.
Just wood, salt, and cold that doesn’t quit.
I’m learning fast.
Not just the ropes and sails — but how the ocean talks.
The way the wind whispers before a storm.
The weight of a rig when the tide turns.
Every creak of the hull is a message, if you listen.
I’ve been a sailor before — a deckhand on a merchant ship.
But pirates? They don’t just listen. They fight back.
The crew’s a mess.
Five men and two women, all desperate or dangerous.
They don’t trust me.
How could they?
I don’t even trust myself.
One old salt, Griggs, says I’m too quiet.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe a pirate needs to roar.
But I’ve got no roar.
I’ve got patience. And sharp eyes.
Found a parrot at a tavern in Shells Town.
Not much company, but it’s better than silence.
It watches like it knows the ocean’s secrets.
Maybe it does.
I’m writing rules — not for honor, but to survive.
Rules to keep fools from turning blades on each other before the first raid.
Rules to keep me alive long enough to see if I’m worth anything at all.
No Devil Fruit. No Haki. No magic.
Just me, the sea, and whatever this broken ship will teach me.
I’m not a hero.
Not yet.
Maybe never.
But I will be a force.
Quiet, steady, relentless.
If the world says I need powers, I’ll prove the world wrong.
Tomorrow, we set sail for Dawn Island.
Practice time begins.
I don’t know what I’ll become. But I’m already tired of being nothing.
— D. Jones
Year 2 | Age 23
Location: Somewhere between Dawn Island and Gecko Port
Entry: Mid-Summer | Winds Eastbound
Sky’s clear. Ocean’s flat. Makes me nervous.
Calm water doesn’t mean peace. It means you’re not paying attention.
There’s a current running against the wind today. Good practice.
The Spine fights me every morning — I think she likes it that way.
Spent the last week drilling sail turns and anchor drifts.
Not glamorous. Not bloody. But necessary.
You can’t lead a crew if you don’t know how the ship breathes.
And this one breathes slow — like something that doesn’t like being woken up.
Got the parrot to take fish from my hand again.
That’s something.
Built the Locker. Finished it yesterday. Didn’t plan to. Just… did.
The hold had space. I had wood. And too much silence.
Took me three days. Not much light. Just enough to see the hammer, not the nail.
No crew to lock inside it yet.
So I locked myself in.
Don’t ask me why.
I didn’t ask either.
I stayed long enough to forget where I was.
Felt like drowning in dry air.
Felt like sinking through myself.
I came out quieter.
The Code’s coming together.
Not the flowery kind with honor and brotherhood. Just the rules that keep fools from getting me killed.
No lies without cost.
No blades drawn without intent.
No voice louder than mine unless they’re willing to die for it.
I’m not a tyrant. But I am the captain.
And I don’t believe in freedom — not out here.
I believe in fear. And structure. And results.
Passed by a merchant junk near Shells Town. Didn’t attack. Not worth the cannon powder.
Instead, I watched how they moved.
Noticed their lookout scanned wrong — just left to right, never behind.
Noted it. Logged it.
Next time, we strike from the aft.
I don’t need a fleet.
I need to know what the fleet does wrong.
No name yet. Not really.
They call me Jones when they remember. Davy when they’re drunk.
But the parrot knows it.
And one day, the ocean will say it like a warning.
I’m not chasing treasure. Not chasing kings.
I just want to know how far a man can go if he never stops learning, and never pretends to be more than what he earns.
And I want to prove that you don’t need a fruit or a gift or a goddamn prophecy.
You just need time.
And the will to never be anything but dangerous.
If I die tomorrow, I die learning.
If I live, they’ll wish I hadn’t.
— D. Jones