Jesus Burgess’s Bounty at 20,000,000 Berries

Champion is the title Blackbeard gave him, and Jesus Burgess wears it literally: a title belt, permanently strapped on, souvenir of a name he largely awarded himself. The Riki Riki no Mi, a Devil Fruit of raw physical force, has made him one of the crew's pillars of muscle since the Jaya arc, before Impel Down, before Marineford, before the name Blackbeard worried anyone at all. He is one of the handful who watched this crew grow from nothing, not one of the recruits who joined after the Level 6 breakout made headlines.

At Marineford, he is the one who rips an entire building out of its foundations and hurls it at Portgas D. Ace, pure force, mid-battle, in the same war that will cost Ace his life and, minutes later, Whitebeard's. That day doubles as Blackbeard's real entrance onto the world stage: the vacancy left by a dead Emperor is one his own captain will step into.

What remains is the number: 20 million. The lowest bounty of the crew's entire founding core, well under what Van Augur or Doc Q carry, his companions since the very first days at Jaya. A sniper or a disease-wielding doctor apparently unsettle the Marine more than a masked wrestler who can tear a building from the ground. For years, the Marine treated Blackbeard's crew as a curiosity rather than a threat: Burgess, helmsman of the fleet's first ship, carries that misjudgment's most visible price tag.