Cancellation

Hey there!

So yeah, unfortunately this story is dead, though I suppose after a year of no updates that is not terribly surprising. This happened due to a couple of reason ranging from finishing school, multiple hospitalizations, moving, getting a new job, and just losing interest in the premise of the story itself.

Looking back, there are many things that could have been done better, but I am ultimately happy with what I put out, and hope that you all found enjoyment as well.

As a final thank you for sticking around so long, below is the general outline for how the story was supposed to all go down, if you are interested in the plotting of the thing. If you don't want to read it or don't care, that is totally understandable, but I wanted some personal closure with the story, and what better way than to expose my plans for how brilliant/dreadful it could have been!

Thank you all again for reading, and hope you all have a wonderful day!

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Basic Outline (Final TBD)

Write as you go, wing it, relapse, recreate.

+ Introduction – Initial conflict between John and Alexander, vague premise of transportation to One Piece and tricking John to accept a portion of Alexanders system (keep vague and hidden).

Act 1

+ John finds himself in the forest (Banaro), introduction of system and Devil Fruit boon, Bartering. Memory loss plot begins. [Moved heavy system explanation to aux chapter because I suck at explaining shit].

+ Understanding his power as he travels to Banaro village proper, introduction to villagers [Billy], initial fund acquisition through mining. Stress uncomfortableness about system and the world. He can Barter goods and services [he doesn't know he can do services yet], cannot barter metaphysical things until awakening.

+ Show desire to open shop to maximize his gains using his fruit, attempt [lol] to be subtle about his singular desire to do this to hint that the system is trying to make John interact with the plot.

+ Show John's like for the quaintness of the village and desire to repay the village [Billy] for the hospitality.

+ Starter funds acquired and trip to Water 7. Initial conflict with fishmen to achieve "first kill" and further alienate John from the world with reactions to killing said fishmen [did not seem to go over well with audience, consider rewrite or dump].

+ John arrives at Water 7, finds a place to live and sets up the pawn shop to make money and cement a cover story. Start to insinuate that the system is starting to mess with John's memories.

+ John starts basic training arc where John realizes the limits of his power and realizes he can request services from his Devil Fruit.

Head to Galley-La and unwillingly meets with Iceburg, Paulie, and Kalifa. All show interest in the shop much to John's displeasure.

Hiring of the secretary [Daisy] and official opening of the shop. Business starts slow, so John takes this time to train his body more.

Paulie arrives at the shop to pawn off items to John and is impressed by John's fair dealings. Paulie uses this opportunity to promote business to the Galley-La company, increasing business and making John panic about not keeping a low profile.

Luffy's 30 million poster is revealed, making John worry for his future, and during a rant about how he should leave Water 7, the system forcefully calms John down.

John meets success too quickly; people begin to suspect his source of revenue and where he sells his pawned goods. Blueno appears and assumes John is part of the Revolutionary army, threatens John and suggests that he switch sides to the government, while warning him not to try to leave Water 7 or be hunted down.

Panicked by Blueno's threats, John tries to find ways to increase his fighting ability quickly. Remembering Spandam and his elephant sword Funkfreed, John buys the Ushi-Ushi no Mi, Model: Giraffe and "feeds" the fruit using his Devil Fruits power to do services to a diamond dagger he purchases. The dagger giraffe is named Geoffrey because Toys R' Us and is unconditionally loyal to John as its "Father".

Realizing that his Devil Fruit can "feed" other fruits to objects, John learns that some non-canon zoan Devil Fruits are available to purchase. John then purchases both the Tori-Tori no Mi, Model: Eagle from the One Piece: 3D movie and feeds it to a jacket he purchases so he can use its transformation to fly away if things go bad [named Wingul, Tales of Xillia], and what he calls the Neko-Neko no Mi, Model: Cheetah from the anime character Chiqicheetah and feeds it to a six-shot revolver [named Ocelot, like Revolver Ocelot, hur-dur]. Both are loyal, and since all three can be kept on his person John always keeps them with him as insurance. John also buys the Awa-Awa no Mi just to screw over CP9 more since Blueno threatened him.

John has the idea of feeding SMILE fruits, which he can buy an unlimited number of since they are not "real" devil fruits, to other inanimate objects to create more avenues of protection. Doesn't start this yet as he is worried that messing with SMILEs in an uncontrolled manner could get him hurt or killed.

Franky shows up to request to buy Adam wood from John after hearing the rumors. After failing to convince Franky he doesn't do that, he agrees to get him the wood if the Franky family can build him a hidden bunker lab in the ship graveyard that connects to his house, so he can safely escape if CP9 comes after him, and safely experiment on feeding SMILE fruits to objects.

Act 2

Time-jump/training arc; John is training his body and reactions in conjunction with his new animal buddies and renews his confidence that he can repel CP9 long enough to flee if needed, so he decides to stay at Water 7 until Luffy arrives.

Franky and John develop a quirky friendship as they chat while the tunnel and base are under construction. Iceburg also has a renewed interest in John because of this and frequents the pawn shop more often; Franky and Iceburg grow closer than in canon because of this.

John reconnects with Banaro Island through transponder snail and starts to worry about Blackbeard and Ace destroying the place. John decides to attempt to assassinate Blackbeard by sending purchased copies of the Tamatebako bomb through black market couriers (thanks to Franky's connections) that would hand it to Blackbeard's ship while at sea as an anonymous "thank you" for killing Thatch. The idea was that if the bomb didn't kill Blackbeard, then at least he would drown in the ocean. While recognizing that this would make the world of One Piece recognizable if he succeeded, John rationalized that he already screwed up the timeline by existing. The system starts to act up again.

Franky completes the tunnel just as Luffy receives his 100 million bounty.

John starts experimenting with SMILEs. Results are very mixed with only half of the SMILEs changing what they are "fed" into, and even when it does work it sometimes results in "feral" objects that will attack anything in sight. The experiment is still considered a success, just that he needs plenty of time and money to make it a worthwhile endeavor.

Feeling the pressure of Luffy's imminent arrival, John tries to subtly warn Iceburg and Franky that something is coming up, but both laugh it off. John chides himself for getting so attached.

One of the couriers reports that the Tamatebako was successfully delivered to Blackbeard and detonated, and while John is breathing a sigh of relief while wondering about the crazy changes this will bring, Luffy rolls into town.

Luffy and Nami come to John to sell of their gold since they heard from the town that John would buy it off them for the fairest price. John does, and John realizes that there is a small chance they may not get the canonical Thousand Sunny since he gave Franky the Adam wood so early, so he overpays them for the gold to clear his own conscience in case they need to pay to have a new ship built.

The Nico Robin and Franky situation plays out like in canon in the beginning, and John stays home in the hopes that he can stay out of it.

Blueno appears in John's shop demanding that John come with them to Enies Lobby and start putting his resources to work for CP9. While Blueno is distracted by John's small talk, Geoffrey and Ocelot kill Blueno in a surprise attack, shocking John as he just meant them to keep Blueno at bay while he escaped. In his panic, John ends up selling Blueno's dead corpse, realizing that he can do that for a modest sum.

John, panicking and not thinking straight because he thinks that the other CP9 members would come find him since Blueno was taking too long, uses his Devil Fruit to buy Blueno's now free Doa-Doa no Mi, and attempts to combine it with a common knitted glove. It works, and by using the glove he can create doors like Blueno and decides to hide. This ends up being for naught as no other CP9 member stops by.

John waits out the rest of the Enies Lobby arc in his bunker until he hears the cheers of Luffy and his crews return.

Rejoining the town, John learns that, while the Buster Call was initiated, because of the absence of Blueno and the weakening of Kaku and Kalifa, the Straw Hats were able to leave before the marines arrived, so the Buster Call destroyed Enies Lobby and got nothing in return. As a result, the Straw Hats all have a higher bounty since the marines believe them to be more capable than portrayed in canon.

During the celebration, John succeeds in buying the Neko-Neko no Mi, Model: Leopard, the Inu-Inu no Mi, Model: Wolf and the Zou-Zou no Mi since all CP9 was killed in the Buster Call without Blueno saving them. He feeds the wolf and leopard fruits into swords called Sol and Luna respectively and turns the elephant fruit into another dagger that he just calls Funkfreed. He decides to call his beasts the Six Guardians as a joke.

As Luffy and his crew leave for their adventures, Franky stops by with Luffy and thanks John for his friendship and help making his dream ship and claims that he will be sailing out on his new ship. Luffy offers John a place on the ship, and John asks for a day to consider it, fully intending to go with them.

As Luffy and crew prepare to leave with John packing up his stuff to go with them, John receives a message from a shipping contact he made; Blackbeard and his crew somehow survived the bomb explosion (though John did manage to kill Jesus Burgess), and in a fit of rage Blackbeard killed all the inhabitants of Banaro Island instead of just destroying the town like in canon, and still defeated Ace.

John is filled with rage and sorrow at this revelation, and with Wingul's help flies to Banaro Island. During this flight, his mind keeps trying to steer him back to Luffy, but his rage pushes him to keep flying to Banaro Island.

Once he arrives at the island, John witnesses the carnage and breaks down, seemingly awakening something akin to Conquerors Haki, and his Devil Fruit goes through its awakening, which allows John to be able to barter things around himself without having to touch them and allows him to now barter metaphysical things such as strength, lifespan, and even souls. Then, after selling the whole town, including the dead inhabitants, John blacks out.

Act 3

During this blackout, John remembers the conversation with Alexander, and how John would be given a system where he would be able to travel into multiple fictional universes and have fun in each world. Alexander claims to have done this many times, and merely wants to rest in the real world for a while, gifting John a portion of his system.

Surprisingly, John declines the offer to accept the system, but Alexander forces it on John anyway and somehow manipulates with his memories, leading to the beginning of the fiction.

Waking back up on Banaro Island, John realizes he was forced to be here, and decides he needs to get back to his own world, but to do that he needs to find a way back home, as well as getting rid of the system. Additionally, John does not want to leave until he can get his revenge on Blackbeard, even though the deaths of the inhabitants of Banaro Island were ultimately John's fault.

John realizes that the system is tied to his soul somehow, so he decides that he needs a way to remove it from himself somehow. Not knowing exactly how to accomplish this, John makes the decision that he must somehow attempt to kill both Brook and Big Mom to obtain their Devil Fruits, thinking that he can maybe use their powers to remove the system from his soul and send his soul back to his original world.

Using the spoils gained from selling the inhabitants of Banaro Island, John creates a large laboratory and a few Pacifistas to both help mine the island bare and allow John to sell the resulting ore and shoot down any ships that approach the island.

With his new source of income, John proceeds to make huge amounts of SMILE infused weapons, keeping the most well behaved and powerful ones for himself, while planning to sell the strongest ones on the black market. John's plan is to become a black-market arms dealer by selling his unique sentient weapons, and gain so much infamy that he is invited to Big Mom's tea party, where John can assassinate her.

While mass producing weapons, eventually it is time for Ace's execution, and John watches on as events unfold like in canon. After Ace is killed by Akainu and Whitebeard is killed by Blackbeard, John only buys The Gura-Gura no Mi to hinder Blackbeard as revenge, while leaving the Mera-Mera no Mi in circulation to hopefully induce the Dressrosa events later in the story.

After the Marineford war is concluded, John contacts Buggy the Clown, who is now a Shichibukai, and offers him weapons and funds to support Buggy's Delivering, and succeeds in becoming a founding officer, going by his epithet "The Zookeeper".

Act 4

TBD