Nicolas gets a little protective here and Martina just gives in to madness.

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He closed his eyes and stood in silence, unnoticed and ignored; A piece of the house as he should be, like a good and useful tool propped by the side of the door. Close to hand and ready to be used. And he waited for whatever use they had in mind for tonight, enjoying the tiny sense of relief in his wrists as he rubbed them and made the skin - and his hands too - warm again. A tiny kink in his mouth loosened at that.

But still he couldn't relax too much; He had to be careful of his back and make sure not to bleed, make sure not to stretch his wounds and dirty the floors that were so precious to his master. The slave didn't understand why though, it was just wood to be stepped on; But it wasn't his business to know, just keep it clean, and he guessed it must have costed more than him.

At least, he guessed, a slave wasn't a tool to be stepped on. He wouldn't like it at all, what with the wooden soles the men wore and the knify shoes the women used. A shudder went through him as he thought about someone like Orillas stepping on him, death would be kindest no doubt.

A noise brought him out of his thoughts, the banging on the door followed by a slap and the noise of a metal plate clicking against the wood. He kept his eyes closed as the order to stand by came and gave the rhythm of boots his attention -he could pay attention to both sounds, no trouble- they got in front of the room's door and began to speak.

The slaves heart began to flutter, and he held a hand to his chest -trying to calm it and failing- as he felt his skin prickle at the sound of the voices; They had new songs to give now, humorous, appraising, impatient, and tired. A delight run through him as they went in and he sharpened his ears.

There they were, a song of three until they began to fight to be the lead; The woman with a voice of gunfire let go of it for a minute as she reloaded and with a second volley tore apart the hands that clutched it.

Slowly, without realizing it, his worries and pains and duties began to lessen until he shed them like his irons. And soon he was but a listener, uninterested in the result, only in the act.

[O.o]

Martina licked her lips as she put together her demands. What to ask, what to say, and how much? Questions and more plagued her as she sat and looked at the boss and his son, the pair had the same face -sharp by the chin and blocky at the forehead with black hair- but you could see the difference in the eyes. One was old and great and knew pain while the other, well, the other was made with what was left.

A man shivering and tittering as his plans were torn apart and he now stood alone, her [Hunter's Aura] seemed to be enough to give him a heart attack; Why, he was already shaking in his seat as she blasted the both of them with it when she walked in, matched her footfall to each explosion of fear for a Tell-tale heart effect.

It was pathetic for the antagonist to be so feeble, was he not up to par to her adventure? Disappointing.

"Let us be reasonable here, present your demands and we- I will answer them as best as I can. Yes?"

Spoke Lotta from his seat behind the giant piece of a desk, so big it was she had confused it with a dining table.

"Well, if you are so accommodating its difficult to say no. What we want is simple, pay for our expenses and then hand over reparations."

The bossman considered her words for a second and put a face like he came to a decision; Martina knew he was winging the whole thing by the coat of mud brown uncertainty that covered him.

"Let us speak about these expenses of yours, what do you think goes in this category?"

"The very basics of course, food stuff, medical supplies, gunpowder, guns, ammunition," She paused for a second and considered, "hooks. Yes, we need hooks too,"

"We absolutely don't," Whispered Nicolas under his breath.

"And how much do you say all that comes to?"

"Oh, I don't know. Medical stuff includes soap and alcohol and needles and thread and antibiotics. And let's not forget about child's bane."

"Child's bane?" Nicolas questioned in almost a whisper.

"Contraceptives, to push my period by a couple of months."

He gave her an uncomfortable look and nodded, Lotta coughed to get her attention and spoke only when she was facing him.

"We can send several boxes from our company's storage if it helps with the end cost."

Both siblings raised an eyebrow at the older man, askance why they would have a storage full of contraceptives. Martina couldn't hold herself back and asked, after all what was the worst answer? That they hosted orgies?

"And why do you have them at the ready? Lots of pirates asking for Child's bane as compensation?"

"Not at all, we provide them to our members at the buying cost. A benefit of working for us."

Martina gave him an appreciative nod.

"So, are you interested in this exchange?"

"Oh, absolutely. But you need to pay the rest of the bill still, and it comes up to seventy-five thousand. Excluding the herbs, obviously."

She straightened herself in her chair and linked her fingers to hide her smiling face. She had thrown such a crazy number, had had the gall to do it and she was a little giddy, it was almost double what she needed to restock her case. She would get spending money! About forty grands for herself.

But her excitement died quickly as the Mondo's faces went from terror to doubt to incomprehension, that took the wind out her sails as she stared at them and their changing moods.

"Tha- That's perfectly reasonable to be honest."

Well that was disappointing, she guessed, was I asking too little? Are they that rich? She questioned herself.

"Oh- Well, I see. Guess there are no dramas with the price then?" She asked them and they both nodded, "Then I guess foodstuff is next then." She nodded to her brother to take the stage.

"What am I supposed to say?"

"Have you been staring into the void until now? We want to know the price to stock our larders."

Martina huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, this stupid brother of hers.

"Oh, ok. We need two hundred kilos of flour, forty kilos of white and black sugar each, ninety kilos of butter, eight live chickens, sevent- "

The three in the room stared at Nicolas as he recited a humongous shopping list by heart, and as Martina was adding up the weight of it she came up to an amount that was close to a bloody ton of food. She didn't know if their little schooner could pull such a weight without the railings touching the top of the waves, and she hoped this was a bluff on his part because she wasn't fancying a trip to the bottom of the sea.

"Wait! Wait!"

Lotta almost shouted the order as his head worked through the jumble of ingredients and proportions that he had been preached on.

"Just tell us how much it amounts to and we will work from there."

"In total its eight hundred thousand bellies, without charging transportation. We can do that ourselves."

For the second time in almost as many minutes everyone looked at Nicolas in shock.

"How come we put ten times the money in food than we do in medicine? Do you know how much equipment I could buy with that?"

"Mar, you use your supply only when we get hurt and that happens once a week. Instead we eat six times a day, of course it wouldn't come cheap."

"Six times a day? No wonder you stayed so plump with Grandma's training, Nicolas you will get diabetes if you keep it up!"

"I added your drinks to the sum. Your bottles pile up too, you know?"

"Please, how much could I drink?"

"Three bottles a day, and you always start with the expensive ones. So about eighty thousand a day."

Martina opened her mouth to object and closed it to bring up the bottles she drank the day before and opened it again, except she remembered it came up to four bottles yesterday and lost her point.

"Cirrhosis is just as bad, Mar," He added with a shit eating grin on his face.

Martina was about to say something hurtful, something about him needing a few more stabs in the gut to shed the weight, but she was rudely interrupted.

"May we remain focused now? We have a deal to make here."

Began Lotta with parched lips before his son spoke for the first time in the night.

"Deal? They are asking almost a million for food! Its ridiculous!"

"Sit down, now!"

In a moment of inspiration Martina raised a finger and pointed it at junior.

"I like his idea, let's keep the numbers nice and round it up to a million. Sounds reasonable to me, right?"

"Right," Answered Nicolas that had gotten closer to her when the boy had risen.

Lotta looked ready to have an aneurysm right there and looked conflicted in who to blame for this.

"You must understand we don't have a million just lying around, what we earn we invest it or must use it or repairs in the shipyard. A million is simply unreasonable, please reconsider it."

He answered with a tick in his eyebrow, and she wondered if she should allow Puma to slap him a few times to get his senses back.

"I have decided I want a million."

She repeated herself with a smile playing on her lips, it was fun to mess with people.

"We don't have a million!"

Screamed Coltello exasperated and Nicolas quickly put a hand on his shoulder and forced him into his seat once again. Seeing him angry at her tickled something and a sense of distaste creeped to her throat.

"I ask you forgive my son's attitude, but he is partially right. We just can't give you millions in such short notice. It would break us."

"Listen here now, we had to waste a lot of time in this place because of that dim wit. We had to waste ammunition and supplies to get to speak to you and I plan to make it all worth it, understand?"

For the first time, for the very first time in the whole time, Lotta lost his accommodating smile and his subservient attitude. He changed them for an angry crook to his lips and a crease to his nose.

"This is not how business is done, you can't come here asking for more than what we have like we are bloody mages. I tell you what I have and what I need to pay for what you broke, and we make a deal, that is how it works."

He straightened himself and tried to look down on Martina but realized he fell short by a bit and decided to puff his chest.

"You don't come demanding everything like we owed it to you, these are the rules of engagement and if you choose to break them then I can assure you there will be no place left for your crew in the North Blue once voice starts going around."

To this outburst of determination and steeled eyes her answer was a lazy tilt of the head and a face of understanding.

"Oh. You still think you have authority, don't you? Too long in a tall chair does that, sadly that isn't how this works. We aren't making a deal."

She leaned forward in her seat.

"We aren't arguing about compensation."

She stood up and put both her hands on the edge of the desk as she stared down at the gang's boss and said.

"This are the terms of your surrender. Accept them or don't, it makes no bloody difference to us because we will take what we want."

Her open hand came down on the wood and a crack appeared from the spot where she hit it and went all the way to the edge where it split and let a splinter fall.

"You are mad."

"Just like everybody else."

[O.o]

She listed demands and invented numbers that were ridiculous to the point of being funny, but no one laughed. Because she was serious, despite the crescent in her face the woman was serious about each and every number down to the fourth decimal.

Coltello watched her speak and asked himself how she expected to get that money, from which hole would she wring that sum from? Would she sell his family as slaves or take over their bar and the deposits? There was no business so lucrative in their whole island.

Anger gave way to calmness as he thought, what were they expecting from all this theatre? Did they actualy do it for the money or was it something on the side they were working for, he had discarded already the coffer he had as being their reason here. They clearly didn't know about it nor cared, but what were their motives then.

Perhaps they were here to settle an old grudge or perhaps to start a new one to shoot their name out there, whichever it was there was no doubt they would be the ones coming out short if they allowed her to keep this up.

Slowly he looked at his father, he would surely have a plan to stop this madness. But as they fought and the woman pressed her demands against his, he always came out short. His gaze now fell upon a man defeated, and for the first time maybe, he saw that the sharpness in his father's face had been mellowed by his years. This wasn't the boss he grew up looking at, the iron handed man that commanded in the deck just as well as at the desk.

For Coltello he hadn't aged a year until now, but with the pane that tinted his eyes broken he now saw him for what he was. For the first time he saw the white in his hair, the wrinkles nestled by his eyes, and the weakness of his frame. A man that gave up the life at sea to raise him and fought to protect and provide him and the family, he was a man that had shoulder the family all this time. Shouldered the responsibility for so very long.

He had to work to lessen this burden.

He started rising from his chair before a hand like a labourer's glove fell upon his shoulder, when he looked back he saw the man that looked like a shaved gorilla shaking his head at him and making for him to sit back.

"Let him Nicolas, let's see what he has to say."

Just like that the weight on his shoulder was moved and he was allowed to stand up in his own home. It was denigrating, but it was what he had summoned.

"We have told you we can't pay what you are asking from us, that much is clear. But we can give you something of equal value, maybe more or maybe less," He swallowed before carrying on, "Its all up to you if you are willing to negotiate with us, instead of doing this."

"I will consider it if I find your proposal acceptable, otherwise forget it. Agreed?"

As he considered the hand that was offered across the table he peeked at his father's face that was struck in an expression that said 'what the fuck are you doing?', and without much thought he took the hand and spoke.

"My offer is simple, I offer you power. The seed of devils and their strength, I will give you their contract,"

He gave the deal more flourish than he was used to, but when you had the one thing to sell it was best to make it look like the very best.

"A devil fruit?"

"Yes," He answered.

"What kind?"

He remembered what he had been told by the ship's Captain and how much it was worked and answered with a confidence he thought gone.

"It's the Kaze-Kaze no mi, a Logia fruit," He let his smile show in his face before he added, "I believe that is plenty for what you are asking, right?"

"You see there is a problem here and that is neither of us is going to eat that fruit, I already have one in my sight and my brother is too exquisite to try one. So, it isn't worth as much as you think."

Coltello's face fell as she spoke; It was a Logia fruit! The strongest kind in the seas and they were rejecting it?

"Now, now, don't give me that face. We will take it, but it won't cover millions, just the one."

"But it´s a Logia."

"I know, but it's the rules of the market. The demand for it doesn't justify a higher price, we want it but not for us and we don't know when we will need it so it isn't worth wasting too much money for it. Understand?"

"But its a Devil fruit! You won't find anything better to become stronger, why wouldn't you want it?"

"Because we already are strong."

Answered the man behind his back, and Coltello sat down and put a hand to his face because it was true. They were strong already, strong enough to defeat users and there was no denying it; So why did he think he could bribe them with something they had aplenty, a stroke of stupidity surely or a vain hope dashed as quickly as it came.

"Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir!"

He heard the voice as it drew nearer to the house, a rising bass that called for him as the marching of boots and grew louder and louder. When he was about shout for silence he saw him standing at the door with its locks cut, panting and wheezing as if he had ran a few laps around the island. Petro took one glance at the room his stony face became harder and his thin lips were pressed together until they were but a line in his face.

"And you are?"

Asked the woman with interest.

"Petro. Here to speak with Mr. Coltello."

"Well then come on in, speak."

"Only to Mr. Coltello."

They stared at each other, one a man stubborn as stones and the other a woman that commanded respect. And before Petro got his face bashed he intervened.

"Speak Petro, no need for secrecy now."

"Preparations done, Sir."