A Place to Belong

"How does it look here, boss-man?"

A large man covered in tattoos speaks loudly at the air as he placed down a small sofa in the entryway of the Capet house, in what was to be the front office of the newly purchased home and storefront. The man was just another worker of the Galley-La Company, a large brute of a man with both an air of professionalism and disinterest in the work he was providing, evidenced by his loud declaration towards his current employer.

"That would do just fine, thank you." Spoke John as he was entering the front of the shop, holding an end table that would go next to said sofa. "If I want to move it later than I will do just that."

"Whatever you say."

The man looks around, giving the room a once over before nodding to himself and looking over to John who just set down the table next to the sofa. After giving John another once-over, as if to inspect his physique, he walks over and begins talking, not caring if John was ready to converse back.

"So, with that, I think we have the furniture you purchased for this room moved in, including the desk and basic furnishings. The bedroom is set up with the bed, basic fridge hooked up to Dock 1's secondary waterwheel, and it's furnishings. The floor in the back office has been re-done to carpet and furniture moved in including that stupid heavy desk and wine cabinet, and everything inside and outside has been repainted." He furrows his brows in thought before speaking again. "Oh, and we changed all the locks in the house, and added the steel bars to the front windows, as per request."

The man spouts off his mental checklist all this while rolling his shoulders, and his voice covered in thick veneer of boredom. It was obvious the man would rather be anywhere else but here.

"Are you sure you don't want to finish the basement floors, get some real coverings on the walls?" The man asks John, giving almost a challenging and disapproving look.

Truly a professional, John could not help but think to himself.

"Perhaps another time, my funds are low at the moment, so I will have to wait until I can make some more money before I start investing more into my home." John rubs his head softly, looking at the ground, attempting to look embarrassed to both calm the man down, and stop further questions.

The man glares at John some a few seconds more before adopting a neutral expression on his face and nodding.

"Alright then, with all the floor and wall work, moving of furniture and other nonsense, that will be 3 million Belly. Add that to the down payment, 4 million Belly. Any problems?"

"Nope, that is a fair price. I will drop by tomorrow to hand over the payment, Cashing can back up my ability to pay."

"For your sake, you better show up. Would hate to have to dismantle the house to get our money back."

John put on a look of his own, as if to challenge the man. He did not like the unkind implications that he would back out on a deal. "I wouldn't dare buy a house for so much, and so close to the heart of the city just to rip off the ones in charge. Think of me what you will, I am not stupid."

The man gives John another glance before his expression softens a bit, clearly somewhat impressed at John's mild snap-back. "We will see. Pay tomorrow."

And with that, the man turns towards the front door, and walks out of John's new home, recently fixed up and ready to be lived in.

John waited a few more moments after the man left before heading to the front door himself and locking the front with his shiny new locks. Than, he turned around to look at the space before him.

He had a new home.

This was only two days after he had initially inspected the house with the real estate agent, and sealed the deal for a quick 59 million Belly. The house met all of John's requirements perfectly from layout to floor layout to even a room to train in with the basement. It was one of the quickest decisions John ever made.

Of course, John could not just move into the house right away. While he could furnish it with his Devil Fruit with anything he wanted, that would instantly be suspicion to anyone who was smart enough to ask a single question, especially once he opened his store. So, once again, he decided to play it safe and spend a few more days at the hotel while he asked the real estate agent to furnish his house with some basic things, and clean up the house a bit.

What took John by surprise was how quick the renovations would take for his house, and who was doing it. The lesser of the two surprises was that it would only really take half a day to get everything done in his house, from floors to painting. John after hearing this estimate remembered that people in the one Piece world, with their superior speed and power could do things in record time, he just forgot what that meant in real-time as a previous shop owner on Earth where a leaky faucet could take days to get a repairman for.

The bigger surprise was that the Galley-La company was doing the work and moving the furniture purchased from other stores into his house. At first, John was concerned that he was immediately being flung into the canon, having to meet Iceburg, Paulie and Kalifa right away, and potentially being immediately tied to whatever nonsense the Straw Hats adventure may bring.

The Galley-La Company, though famous as shipwrights and craftsmen, was a large organization that had people to feed. They were not always building or fixing up ships, which John found out was mostly reserved for the more experienced craftsman of the company, and in fact had many free or low-end members of the group doing basic jobs such as renovating houses, fixing up streets, and even doing chores for some townspeople when business was really slow. Some members even just took second jobs in Water 7 with most of them being dockhands, like the ones John saw when he first arrived.

It made sense when he thought about it logically, but when he compared his old Earth logic to One Piece logic, so many things didn't click perfectly, so when something did it would throw him off even more.

Speaking of more logical things, it turned out that John was going to have to pay taxes if he was going to live in Water 7. The thing was, it was not presented as an actual tax, like property or income, but as a protection tax from trouble.

You see, Water 7 protected its own people, if they were willing to invest into the town. By paying some money every month to the holder of the Dock one lived on, in this case the Galley-La Company, if anyone messed with you, that meant they messed with the Galley-La Company.

And outside of pirates, no-one messed with Galley-La. John couldn't help but wonder if this had to do with the general aptitude and ferocity of the people working at Galley-La as normal people, or if it had to do with troublemakers suddenly 'disappearing' after causing too much trouble.

John suspected that the CP9 were doing some serious cleaning behind the scenes, if only to make their attempts to find the Pluton blueprints more secure without random idiots causing problems.

So, John would have to pay taxes to the Galley-La company, and he was warned it would be about 30,000 Belly a month because he was going to use his home as a storefront as well. John thought that was a reasonable price, less than 400,000 a year, and he could tell that the Galley-La was not really interested in keeping the profits the smaller stores made. They also did not openly advertise who was or was not covered by their protection, so the odds of someone who missed a payment getting robbed or something was still incredibly low.

John didn't know them too well, but he was starting to respect the Galley-La Company.

"Status."

{John Capet [Homeowner]}

[Currency- Around 149,837,000 Belly]

{Attributes}

Strength- 27

Constitution- 29

Dexterity- 32

Intelligence- 39

Wisdom- 51

Charisma- 51

{Skills}

(Mining [18])

(Bartering [52])

(Lying [31])

{Abilities}

(Devil Fruit [Bāta-Bāta no Mi])

(Omni-Buying)

(Omni-Selling)

{Traits}

With their help and his new furnishings, John was now 10 million Belly poorer, having only around 5 million Belly in 'public' money, and 149 million in actual money stored within himself.

At the moment, John now had a safe place to call his own, fulfilling his need to have a base of operations, a safe place to train, and a potential place to start increasing his fortune, which would only aid in increasing his power.

So, the next immediate step was find some quick ways to increase his strength.

Surveying his surroundings once more, John looks at his front room, a reception are with the left side of the room taken by a large reception desk, for when he gets a receptionist for his pawn/loan shop, and the other side having a large, comfortable leather sofa, a magazine rack to be filled at a later date, and an end table for snacks for customers. There was of course basic paintings and other decorations on the wall of course, but they were incredibly basic and 'safe', as many reception areas tend to be.

John thought of putting up meme posters on the wall, or perhaps even recreating some anime and manga cover art for the walls, but he decided that that would be too 'meta' for his personal tastes, plus it would clash with the nicer furniture.

There also was a door by the sofa that led to the customer bathroom, complete with a basic toilet and sink. It was relatively clean and well-maintained when he bought the place, so no real work had to be done on it.

Nodding to himself, John finally moved from his spot by the front door, walking towards the door by the back of the front room, to his office space.

Once reaching the door and opening it up, the room revealed to him is another basic, but large desk, with nothing on it as John was going to fill it with things he purchased later. The front end of the desk was a comfy leather chair a customer could sit in while they were selling to John, with three identical chairs by the right wall just in-case there were multiple customers at once. Then on the other side was a similar looking chair but with a higher back for John to sit in, as a subtle way to show dominance to the customer in a way that was not too aggressive.

Then, to on the left side of the room was John's pride and joy, a very ornate and expensive looking wine cabinet.

This wine cabinet, the most expensive thing John bought for his house (for now), once filled with bottles later, was going to be John's secret weapon. You see, John remembered something about the story of One Piece, and he observed this to be the case with most people he has met since coming here. People love to drink, and will generally take any drink offered to them. Even in the story when things are looking bad and people are looking for a fight, people will eat, drink and monologue.

So, if John was every in trouble, he would offer his expensive and rare wine collection to the person meaning to harm him, sell the contents of the bottle with his power to fill it with something poisonous, and then offer them a drink. They would be dead before they even knew what happened.

Of course, he could always just buy a gun or something and shoot them while they were distracted, but if he offered someone in this world a rare drink, drunk it first to demonstrate that it was not poisoned, then had them drink the switched out poison drink, it was checkmate.

In fact, without having any seastone or access to Haki, this method may be the only chance John has to defend himself against a Logia user, unless he was able to research their weakness, of course.

And besides, who hasn't watched a spy movie and thought poisoned food or drink was the coolest way to take someone out?

Shaking his head to clear his daydream of alcoholic beverages, John walks into the room, strides past the desk, and reaches the door along the back wall, leading to the small stairwell. As he pulls open the door, it reveals a staircase that ascends t the bedroom, and descends to the basement.

Looking up towards the bedroom, John thought it wasn't really anything to talk about, it was basically its own studio apartment complete with a bed, and table, a fridge, and a bathroom that was identical to the one downstairs with an added shower to clean himself. Of course, since it was his personal space where no one was to be barred from employees and customers, John planned to sell all the furniture there at a later date and buy nicer things using his power, but he just bought furniture for it publicly so no-one would question him living there.

Nodding to himself about the upstairs, John headed down the staircase towards the basement, and reached the door.

Opening the door, John looked around to see an unfinished space filled with unfinished walls that had exposed insulation, and the floors made from poorly paved concrete. Besides the vents that lead to the upstairs to keep the air circulation going, the room was devoid of any furniture, or even supplies.

It was the perfect canvas in which John's training form greatness would begin.

Turning around to face the door, John put his hand on it to sell it, and in its place put a large steel door, complete with bars that would dig into the door frame proper. He planned to later reinforce the whole room with steel and other metals to make this both a training room and emergency bunker, but for now that door would keep away any unwanted guests, at least of a lesser strength.

Plus, since he could just sell and repurchase the door on command, he did not need to worry about it having structural weaknesses in its design like needing to be able to open for instance.

From there, John spent the next few minutes plotting how the room layout would be, from where he would place his weight equipment, to his treadmill, and even a small little hammock for when he needed to rest for a moment. He was a little annoyed that Water 7 did not have proper electricity (the waterwheel that powered his fridge just pumped out the heat to make it cold), so he was going to have to go old school until he could pay people to modify his basement so he could put in a gas powered generator, or something.

Finally, with all his basic equipment off on the sides of the room, John headed to the middle of the room to purchase his most important piece of equipment yet, the one that would dictate most of his training going forward.

And so, with an outstretched hand, he mentally mad the purchase.

And what appeared, was a baseball thrower, like the one he used when he was in the mine at Banaro Island.

With John's power to buy and sell, he still needed to think about what he was doing, what to buy or sell, what color or size, how much it cost, and so on. While he made it look quick, it truly took a bit of time.

And if he were in a life or death situation, he needed every moment he could get.

So, when thinking about how he could get stronger, John remembered Crocodile, and how he claimed to have trained his power to such a degree that he could use it with little to no thought.

And that gave John this current idea. He could sell any baseball that hit him no problem, if he thought of a part of body to sell something, he could use his ability (Omni-Selling) to get rid of it.

But what if he instead used (Omni-Buying) to create something to deflect or hit the baseballs as it was coming towards him?

It would improve his reaction time with his power, and be a deadly trick for anyone he was fighting. After all, who would suspect a weak looking guy trying to punch you would suddenly have his fist covered with a spiked gauntlet covered in poison.

With that thought in his mid, John started up the machine, and walked away to the other side of the room,, and purchasing a large slab of steel shaped like the letter U around himself before facing the machine once more, putting his arms up in a boxing stance. To John, this lesson could not be learned easily without pain, and with the steel slab around him, if he did not the baseball away with something, it would most likely hit John and hurt a sh*tton.

John could only hope he was not too sore tomorrow, he had to go and register at the Galley-La Company for his protection tax.

And so, the first baseball shot out towards John, as he was distracted with what tomorrow would bring.

He said "F*ck!" a lot that day.