Appearance: Bit over six feet tall with a lithe stature and wiry but decently strong arms and legs, built for speed and flexibility. Unkempt amber-orange hair with faint black highlights and rarely completely clean shaven. Usually wears shirt and shorts, often diagonally striped or cat-themed, and worn sneakers, with the four parts of his bo staff clipped to a black wristband on his left arm. He also carries a large bag everywhere he goes, containing a flower pot under glass holding several cattail fruit plants specially imported from North Blue.

Backstory: Marco grew up in Gutenburg on Printston Island in East Blue, an island famous for being the printing capital of the world, having born some of the greatest novelists of the Six Blues, housing the largest base of the World Economic Journal aside from Morgan HCoo in the New World and having one of the largest libraries since the end Ohara due to trying to keep a copy of anything printed within the island's borders.

He was part of a group of friends who followed the local tradition of Devil’s Dare, teenagers trying to get their hands on a page of the coveted books of devil fruits that are occasionally printed or even transcribed by hand in hidden back rooms or basements. Between the five of them they managed to gather nearly a dozen pages over the span of a year, and each picked one devil fruit as their goal to someday obtain for themselves. They each swore to set out and find adventure, basing their plans off of various adventure books and pirate journals, Marco in particular taking some interest in the journals of Siegfried The Composer.

Several years later they’d all left the island and gone separate ways, Marco taking up the profession of bounty hunting to make a living, have enough money to travel along on various ships across the East Blue and most importantly to be able to import a couple cattail fruits which his chosen devil fruit inhabits according to the sketch on his page. Eventually he came across “Black Knight” Quoth, a bounty hunter from Paradise out on a vacation to the weakest Blue, who agreed to travel along for a few weeks to kill time and helped train him as they tracked down the current user of his chosen devil fruit, a pirate captain with just short of five million Beli bounty.

His lack of a bounty and much of a reputation comes from working as a bounty hunter instead of a regular criminal so far and due to the fact that he has done his best to lay low while searching for his devil fruit; partially to make his hunt easier, but mostly because he wants to become known under an epitaph that fits his devil fruit powers once he has obtained them: "Katsune" Marco.

Personality: Marco is generally laid back and easygoing, and prefers to keep a positive outlook on almost anything. As a result he tends to come of as not really acting serious most of the time. Despite being an optimist he has a certain paranoid streak, however, trying to plan ahead and keep a few contingencies in his mind at all times, likely a result of reading so much in his youth and thus having a certain genre savviness, particularly towards chance and Murphy’s Law. Aside from being an avid reader he enjoys music and sometimes tries to incorporate it into his training, to wildly varying levels of success.

When it comes to battles he likes to draw attention, taunt his opponents while he dodges and exploiting his strengths. However he’s well aware that his fighting style is ultimately geared towards the devil fruit he’s hunting, which leads to a bit of exaggerated caution and underestimating himself as long as he fights without it. Without devil fruit he stays on the defensive and keeps a bit of a distance from enemies he thinks might be stronger than him, refusing to take what he deems unnecessary risks until he has reached his goal. He is also somewhat overly cautious of dealing crippling injuries to others, something he hopes his Zoan instincts are going to override or at least balance out. He dislikes the idea of taking lives and saves his first kill for the current user of his devil fruit.

Abilities: Marco’s weapon of choice is a wooden bo staff in four parts that can be stacked together into a staff of up to a meter in length. He’s decently skilled with using it, but still doesn’t intend for it to be his main weapon. Weaponless and without use of the devil fruit he hunts, his focus lies on agility and flexibility, using a fighting style based primarily on dodging and fast strikes from all angles. He’s also tried to adapt some techniques of the Invincible Siegfried Style from his favorite book series. His strengths are short- and long-term strategy as well as a certain measure of unpredictability. His main weakness is a rather low pain tolerance that he has trained himself to at least sometimes ignore for a few moments, and which he hopes for the Zoan fruit to counter.

Devil Fruit: Neko Neko No Mi, model Housecat
Once he obtains his devil fruit he fully intends to completely break the limits of it, although how long it will take and how many of his planned techniques will actually be within the powers of the fruit he cannot say. He plans to at least try all of them, though, and not to give up while there are still potential abilities to unlock.

He likes to boast about his devil fruit being the strongest of all Zoan fruit, a claim that’s only partially a joke to him.

Techniques:

Bo Twirl: Twirling his bo staff fast to deflect projectiles (with varying levels of success) and shore up kinetic energy for the next strike.

Bo Swing: Extra hard swing of his bo staff, usually wound up by twirling the staff or twisting his whole body.

Bo Vault: Using the bo staff to vault himself higher, either for an aerial attack or to get some distance from the enemy or reach higher ground.

Bo Dance: Pushing his bo staff into the ground to use it as leverage for attacks in all directions, effect limited without devil fruit powers.

Invincible Siegfried Style: Moving with the enemy’s attacks to use their own power against them and to give the impression of staying unharmed despite being hit. Effect and success rate limited without devil fruit powers.

Nekonoke (Short for Neko No Kenpo): Fighting style primarily focused on agility, flexibility and dodging, effect limited without devil fruit powers.

Cat Contortionist: Using feline agility and a Zoan fruit’s shapeshifting ability to dodge more effectively around any attack and get right into the enemy’s personal space to engage them.

Cat Claws: Focusing willpower on the cat’s natural claws to grow them out into blades; four long blades per hand in the first stage, merging into one long blade per hand in the second stage and one long two-handed blade in the third stage. First and second stage also usable on the feet after sufficient training.

Crosscatch: Crossing first stage Cat Claws to block and catch a piercing attack.

Cat Balance: Using the cat’s tail to shift the own center of gravity, then gravity itself. Can be used to supplement general fighting by shifting the own patterns of falling and sliding, then to walk and run along walls and eventually to hover, glide and fly over short distances. Too extensive use of the technique leads to painful and possibly debilitating cramps.

Catfall: Cat’s always land on their feet. Focusing on this ability as a devil fruit power can enable falls from big heights, otherwise impossible twists during fighting and safe landings for teammates and other ‘passengers’.

Bristle: Bristling the fur, diving deeper into Zoan instincts and ramping up focus to increase speed, strength and reflexes; both physically and mentally exhausting.

Pura Pura no Kenpo: Focusing purring vibrations from the whiskers down into the limb to increase offensive and defensive capabilities, leading up into actual sonic attacks.

Bass Buster: Shoring up purrs in one limb for a short- to mid-range sonic blast.

Whisker Gun: Shoring up purrs in the claws before releasing them with a snap for a gunshot-like attack.

Vi-blade: Shoring up purrs in the Cat Claws to turn them into vibrating blades.

Fluff-fluff: Rapid growth of fur to increase defense and boost static-based techniques. High stamina cost.

Static Shock: Using static electricity to add a lightning element to attacks.

Static Archery: Drawing back one hand like a bowstring to aim a static electricity lightning bolt through the other hand at the enemy.

Static Armor: Using Static Shock and biofeedback to turn the fur into an armor-like shell, may eventually upgrade to spiked armor through training.

Bass Cannon: Infusing a double-pawed Bass Buster with electricity to drastically boost power and range.

Strobefight: Weaker version of the Bass Cannon, but able to fire from several limbs at once for area attacks, short- to mid-range.

Cy-blade: Infusing the Viblade with electricity for a futuristic looking blade with long-range energy attacks as flying slashes.

Bass Burner: Overcharging Pura Pura no Kenpo to the point that the vibrations generate heat, boosted limbs catch on fire for a short time. Physically and mentally exhausting.

Katsune, Life Release: Swap: Cats have nine lives; meditation connects to those lives before the end of the current one to enable a switch from one to the other. Injuries and exhaustion remain in stasis until the next time one “life” is swapped in. New lives can have different bodies and personalities as well as learn and develop new techniques, but can not at creation have any skills the original life doesn’t have. A lesser version that is not usually name-called is to merge spirits to let one other life support the currently dominant one with their skills and experience.

Katsune, Life Release: Bijuu: Two or more lives merge body, mind and spirit, usually adding only a tail and minor physicalities to the currently dominant life but greatly increasing all capabilities. Physically and mentally highly exhausting, increasing the more tails are added.