Chopper Bust a Move!

Clad in a red t-shirt, shorts and a straw hat, Luffy walked with a skip in his step to the bus stop, swinging his red plastic lunchbox with a rooster on it.  He had on his blue backpack and when he reached the general vicinity of the bus stop, he caught sight of one of his very best friends; Zoro!

Zoro raised his hand in a courtesy wave to acknowledge that he recognized Luffy's existence.  He was wearing the same black shorts that were decorated with hundreds of huge pockets and his dark blue sleeveless shirt with the double zero on the front.  Of course, he was a cool eighth grader reaching the end of the year so he never bothered to even take off his headphones anymore.  They were a permanent accessory, hanging around his neck when class was in session, as well as the baseball hat that never came off and hung had a weird angle that not even his geometry teacher could figure out!!

"Hi Zoro!!" said Luffy as he stood up next to Zoro.

"Hi." Zoro answered, even though Luffy was only a dweeby little sixth grader.

"I have a BIG test today in math!!" Luffy exclaimed.

"Didn't you have that yesterday?" Zoro said with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh right!" said Luffy. 

It was then that Nami appeared, exchanged a quick hello with the other two and then began to hike up her skirt and pulled a pair of high heels out of her backpack and put her sneakers in it.  Then she removed her sweater and stuffed that in the bag as well and handed Zoro a small mirror.

"Hold this," she instructed.

Since he went through this every morning, it didn't offend him as much as it did the very first day. The only thing that DID bother him about it, though, was that she still continued to tell him to hold it even though she could very well just hand it to him and he would know that he had to hold it.  After all, it was June already.

Zoro and Luffy both knew very well that they weren't allowed to make a sound while Nami was applying her make-up so they waited patiently for her to finish and place it back in her bag.

"Today someone is going to ask me to the dance!" Nami declared.

"You've been saying that every day since Monday." Luffy said.  "It's Friday now and the dance is tonight.  No one has asked you."

"The end of the year school dance is a big deal!" Nami said.  "And I just know there are plenty of guys who want to go with me!  I mean, I can't just NOT go to the dance!  It's the end of the year dance!"

"Why can't you go without a date?" asked Zoro who was genuinely confused.

"You just don't understand!" sighed Nami.  "EVERYONE has to have a date!"

Just then, they heard a few squeaks and honks which told them all that Usopp was on his way.  He was wearing his white collared shirt with the red suspenders and socks that were pulled half way up his shins and ugly brown loafers.  His backpack was on wheels but also had straps so he could conveniently put it on his back if he needed to go down stairs.  At the present moment, he had it on his back with all the clips around his waist so it was more comfortable to carry and didn't put any stress on his poor, frail back.

"HEY GUYS!!!" he screamed at the top of his lungs as he ran up and had to catch his breath since he was so out of shape.  Then he stood up and struck a pose dramatically, smiling so wide that his metal braces made a glare in the sunlight.  "Today is the day I will get a date for the dance!"

"Oh Usopp, sixth graders don't NEED dates to the dance!" said Nami.  "Plus, who's going to want to go out on a date with you?"

"EVERYONE, once they see this!" Usopp said as he pulled out a red bowtie with white polka dots from his pocket and hooked it onto his shirt.  "Watch this MAD action!!"  Then he spun it and it whirled around in circles, making a whistling sound as it did so.

"THAT'S SO COOL!!!" yelled Luffy as he ran up to Usopp's tie and spun it a few more times for good measure.

"NO girl is gonna go out with you, ESPECIALLY if you're wearing that tie!!" Nami yelled as if the mere thought offended her.  Zoro laughed out loud at the stupidity of it all and was glad that he wasn't a lowly sixth grader anymore.  Nope, he was an eighth grader now, soon to be a freshman in high school at the start of the next school year.  This made him above everyone else.  He wasn't about to run around begging girls to go to the dance with him, he was going to wait for them to come to him…but then turn them down.

"NAMI!!" came a voice as Sanji came sliding in with a flower in his hand.  "I picked this flower for you!  Please go to the dance with me…"

"Sanji, if I've told you once, I've told you a THOUSAND times, I'll never ever go to any dance with you as long as I live!" Nami said, crossing her arms and turning around.  Sanji stood up with his head hung low, his bag hung over one shoulder.  Despite the hot weather, he was wearing his nice black pants with a plain brown short-sleeved shirt that said, 'Banana Republic' on the front.  He had his yellow sunglasses on the tip of his nose too, so he couldn't imagine how Nami could possibly turn him down.

"Nami, you were just complaining about how no one had asked you yet." Zoro said.  "But Sanji's been asking you every day."

"I want to go with someone besides Sanji!" Nami said.

"Even if no one asks you?" Sanji pleaded.

"I'd rather not go than go with you." Said Nami truthfully.

"But you would look so cool if you were going out with a guy who's a grade older than you are!" Sanji reminded her.  "And then next year when I'm in high school, I can come by and pick you up and you can show everyone that you have such a suave boyfriend who goes to high school!"

"I'd go out with any eighth grader except for you." Nami said.

Sanji sighed and pulled out a cigarette.  He lit it, much to everyone's dismay and disgust since they had just learned about the harmful effects of smoking in their D.A.R.E. teachings and were still young and pure in the middle school years.

It was then that Sanji caught a glimpse of Usopp's spinning tie and nearly spit out his cigarette.  "WHAT is that?" he demanded.

"It's Usopp's girl magnet." Zoro said with a laugh.

"I'm going to get a hundred dates with this baby!!" Usopp yelled as he spun it again.

"No one is going to go out with that tie." Sanji said, exhaling some smoke.

"I bet everyone I ask is going to want to go out with me!" Usopp said.

"Fine." Said Sanji.  "Get a girl to go out with you just by spinning that tie."

"I WILL!" Usopp said in a determined voice.

"Here comes the bus!!" Luffy cheered since he had probably been sitting there staring down the road waiting for it to come, like he does every other morning while small talk was exchanged.  "We're going to school!!  HURRAY!"

There had never been a more peculiar circle of friends; composed of a variety of ages and grades but most of all because all were from entirely different groups at school but managed to bond and have time for each other.  An idiot, a jock, a 7th grader, a dork and a prep all coinciding together and living together, even eating lunch together, in perfect harmony.

They got on the bus and that meant it was time to split up and take their seats.  Zoro went off to his seat in the back that is really only half the regular size of a bus seat and sat with all the other people that were 'his type'.  Usopp and Luffy jumped to the very front most seat where all the sixth graders sat and talked about Star Wars and The Matrix.  Nami sat towards the back where she and her female 7th grade friends talked about make-up and the cutest guys in school.  As for Sanji, he sat somewhere in the middle where all the girls from all the grades sat, swooning over his mere existence.

"Hey Zoro, I found a girl who would be perfect for you and doesn't have a date yet." Said an eighth grader who was not quite as cool as Zoro as he hung over the back of his seat since he was only sitting in the second to last seat.

"Huh?" Zoro said in his perplexed way.  "I thought you guys knew that I'm not going.  I never go to dances."

"But this'll be your last middle school dance!" said a seventh grader who was sitting next to the eighth grader and wished he was as cool as everyone else.  He was really only there to do all the dirty work and go in and distract the cashier as everyone else ran out of the store with a bag of chips.  Of course, that was only when Zoro wasn't present or else that kind of stuff wouldn't have gone down.

Zoro raised an eyebrow at the existence of the seventh grader.  "Who is this?" he asked.

"My little brother." The eighth grader replied.

"Right." Said Zoro.

"I'M going out with that girl over there!" said the eighth grader who was sitting in the other back seat across from Zoro.

"A seventh grader?!" gasped the entire back of the bus.

"She's HOT!" said the kid in the back.  "Besides, Zoro hangs out with seventh grade girls!"

"No I don't." said Zoro.

"Yeah you do!" he answered.

Zoro looked over at the mass of seventh grade girls.  "Oh wait." He said.  "I hang out with that one sometimes." He pointed at Nami.  "But that doesn't mean I…I don't know…go out with them… or seek them out for conversation."

Meanwhile, the seventh grade girls were talking about the dance as well.  "I STILL don't have a date." Nami sighed as all of her girlfriends complimented her on how pretty and wonderful she was but couldn't POSSIBLY fathom why no guy had asked her out…even though they most likely all had dates already.

"What about those guys you always eat lunch with?" asked one of them.

"Oh, you mean Zoro and Sanji, the eighth graders?" Nami made sure to mention.  "Sure, I'm good friends with them and they have both asked me to the dance numerous times but I turned them down."

"WHY?!" screamed all the girls at the top of their lungs.

"Zoro's just not my type," Nami continued.  "After he asked me out and to the dance, I told him that I just wanted to stay friends and he just wouldn't take no for an answer.  I mean, this morning he came up to me with a flower and begged me to go with him but I didn't want anything to ruin our friendship.  As for Sanji…"

"Sanji's going to the dance with me." Sighed one of the girls happily.

"What?" said another.  "Sanji said I was his one and only!"

"You're a liar!" claimed yet another.  "When I called Sanji's house and asked him, he told me that nothing would make him happier!"

"Well…Sanji apparently already has a date…" Nami said.  "Or three."

"Four." Said one of the more tentative girls of the group who originally wasn't going to say anything but had to put her two cents in.

Sanji didn't have only four dates, he was increasingly getting more and more as the time of the dance grew nearer and the swarms of girls grew larger.

"Why, of course I'll go to the dance with you." Said Sanji from atop his perch on the seat with the wheel on it.  He was leaning against the window with his arms on either side of the seat in a very suave fashion.  "Nothing would make me happier."

"I'm so happy!" said a girl as she returned to her seat to go and tell her friends.

"Sanji, you are so cool!" exclaimed a group of girls who had counted to three and then said that.

"Really?" Sanji said, playing with his Mr. Prince sunglasses, even though he knew very well that he was a lady's man.  The girls screamed with delight and fawned over his every word.

"Sanji, I heard a boy asked you out the other day, is that true?" one girl asked as the entire group fell silent in anticipation for the great Sanji's answer.

"This is true." He replied.  "I said no of course."

All the girls sighed with relief.  "Was it Zoro?" asked a girl.  "You always eat lunch with him so he probably thought that there was something between you two."

"Come now, you all know well and good that Zoro is perfectly straight." Said Sanji.

"Sanji, you're so considerate for not starting bad rumors!" said another girl as she came close to fainting.

"Was it one of those sixth graders?" questioned a girl skeptically.  "I mean, I could see why they would want to ask you but why they thought they had any sort of chance is just beyond me."

"It was not one of them." Laughed Sanji.  "One of them has not quite grasped the concept of asking a girl out to a dance and the other is stuck on the fact that his spinning tie will get him a date."

"Spinning tie?" said one girl.

"Yes," Sanji said, simulating spinning a tie.  "Like that!  And it makes a whirring sound."

The crowd erupted with hysterical, though some of them might not have found it funny at all but just felt that since Sanji had said something mildly humorous, that meant it was time for laughing.

Speaking of Usopp, and especially his spinning tie, he and Luffy were sitting in the front seat giddy with excitement as the bus pulled closer into the middle school.  "I still have to find a date." Said Usopp as he scanned the area while Luffy continuously spun his tie.

"SPIN IT AGAIN!!!" Luffy cheered, clapping his hands.  The bus came to a stop to pick up more students.

Then she got on.  The sunlight behind her made her face glow as she spoke to a friend and laughed happily.  Usopp was entranced by her beauty and watched her closely as she walked by him and sat behind him.

"That's her!" Usopp whispered to Luffy.  "That's the girl I want to ask to go to the dance with me."

"Kaya?" Luffy said.

"Shh!" Usopp hushed him.  "Don't say it too loudly or she'll know!"

"Don't you want her to know?" Luffy asked, looking puzzled.  "If you don't talk to her, then she won't know you want to ask her to the dance."

Luffy then sat up on his knees and looked behind him at the beautiful Kaya who was talking to her friend.  "Hey Kaya!" she said.  "I'm Luffy!  My friend wants to ask you a question!"

With that, Usopp nervously poked his head up over the seat.

"H-h-h-hi…K-k-k-kaya!" Usopp stuttered.

"Don't talk to me!" Kaya said, looking distressed.  "Your nose frightens me and you never brush your hair and that is bothersome!"

"I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to go to the dance with me!" Usopp said quickly.

"Never!" Kaya answered.  "Why would I want to go to the dance with you?"

"Because if you do, I'll let you spin this all day long!" Usopp said as he sat up straight and spun the tie.  Kaya's friend looked on with shock and disgust as Kaya only gazed upon it in silence and wonder.

Then, suddenly, she began to laugh.  "Do it again!" she said happily.

"If you go to the dance with me!" Usopp said.

Kaya nodded excitedly.  "Yes, yes!" she answered.  "Show me again!"

Usopp then began to spin the tie as Kaya continued to laugh more happily than ever before.  But then the bus stopped and Usopp had to be the first one off so he jumped off his seat and ran out of the bus, followed quickly by Luffy.

"Thanks for helping me out, Luffy!" said Usopp.

"No problem!" said Luffy.

"Maybe you can get yourself a date if you borrow my tie." Usopp offered.

"No thanks!" Luffy replied.  "I don't need a date."  Then Kaya came off the bus and waved to Usopp and ran off to homeroom with her friend, giggling the whole way.

Then came the swarm of scantily clad girls of all ages, in the midst of them being Sanji.  "I'll see you tonight, ladies!" Sanji called to them, blowing a kiss just as Nami and her friends got off the bus.

"Later!" Nami said as her friends all left and she waited with the other three for Zoro to come off the bus.  Of course, he had to be the last one so they patiently waited for everyone else to get off since they had gone through this process every day for the whole year.

When Zoro finally got off, they all looked at each other and began to walk as their big multi-grade posse to go their individual homerooms.  They dropped Luffy and Usopp off first, then Nami and then Zoro and Sanji walked off to their own homeroom.