Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece.
Holly- Guten abend! Or guten morgen, or hi, or hello, or just a generic 'how the hell are you all'?
Chapter 2 - Entirely Inappropriate
It's a moment of bliss.
In a very awkward and semi-psychotic way. It's my turn to gaze around at other students like a hawk, hungry for information on those that I'll be learning with from this day on - to my delight they all seem to have their own little quirks that differentiate dramatically from the mainstream cretins that I encountered in the main foyer.
It's always a huge relief to be able to stand among my peers and not unintentionally attract attention. I hate it when people stare, gazes crawling on my skin like the ants on a picnic, and I hate being questioned on my entire life story. Teenagers tend to ask the most ridiculous questions, and it's patronizing as hell.
For now, I'm ignored, and it feels great.
I gaze around at the dyed hair colours, the greens and the pinks and the blues (I envision that there was once a huge hair dying party of some kind.) From the corner of my eye I can see a stray fellow redhead, much like myself, though his own fiery locks stand almost dead straight in defiance of gravity. It's mesmerizing how the tips seem to scrape the heavens.
I watch him turn back to speak to a lanky boy just behind him and my I feel my jaw unhinge. It's not his thuggish expression, the scowl or the sharp features. It's the lack of facial hair, there's no way it couldn't be.
He has no eyebrows. Not a single hair adorns his lily-white brow.
There are atoms all around us, they make up everything, even our very beings. Hundreds upon thousands upon billions upon trillions of tiny little micro-particles that swirl and twirl in an endless tandem. Infinitesimal grains of sand shaped to build up the whole of all we know to exist. Every centimetre and inch.
It's taking every single miniature atom of me, Dakota Seagrave, to keep my composure. To not let my willpower crack under the urge to hoot with unsophisticated laughter.
In retrospect I'm a terrible human being and Satan himself will probably have me smothered in barbecue sauce and rotating on a spit-roast for eternity in the flaming pits of Hell for finding something so unfortunate so amusing; but what can you do? The deed is done.
But on a slightly more important sidenote: how can one tell if he is angry or surprised?
And it's a ripple, a supreme domino effect that I realize belatedly has me at the source. It's the tittering of poorly extinguished laughter and I clap a hand over my traitorous mouth. I'm almost dead certain that my face is on fire and oh dear god, I hope he hasn't heard me!
Making cruel comments on a boy's facial hair (or lack thereof) definitely isn't going to get me on his Christmas Card list. Not to mention that I think he could make a fairly decent toothpick out of me. I'm downright suicidal!
"You're funny!" The boy closest to me exclaims, grinning so wide underneath his lop-sided straw hat that I fear he may be having some sort of premature stroke.
"Hey, are you the new kid?!" A girl with ginger hair gushes, seemingly intrigued by my presence as she eyes me over far too many times to make anyone feel comfortable. I think she might be a year younger than me, sixteen perhaps, and the defined cleavage she boasted to the inky blue on her shoulder is screaming at me to turn and run.
Bad news. Nadah. Not your crowd Dakota.
However, she seems genuine as she holds her hand out for me to shake, "I'm Nami."
"Dakota," I say with an expression I pray appears much less intimidated than I think it does (which is bordering on startled deer in headlights.)
She throws names at me for the next few minutes while pointing out to her friends that they belonged to. I'm struggling to keep up but I nod jovially to appease her.
There's snail-brow Sanji who attempts to sniff me rather conspicuously (Nami's fist saves me from that traumatic episode, and it's quite majestic how the blonde takes the blow to the side of his face.)
The boy with the straw hat and face-splitting smile is Luffy, who asks me persistently if I had any food in my bag that he could have when he noticed the bulging contents (he receives the same Nami-fist of doom.)
Zoro is a guy with grassy green hair whom I suspect has some kind of mental health issues, since the bamboo swords hooked into his belt look entirely out of the ordinary. I'm not sure how they pass the school safety regulations.
The rest of Nami's friends introduce themselves - Usopp, Robin and Chopper - as Nami and the swordsman make noises like disgruntled rhinos at each other over something trivial.
"SUPERRRRR!"
I nearly have kittens on the impossibly clean carpet. He's a man with outrageous issues I assume, the hawaiian shirt paired with the black slacks leaves me in a horrified awe. Not forgetting the neon blue locks pushed back with a pair of edgy sunglasses. The eyewear leaves me especially perplexed - today's an especially cloudy Monday.
This isn't easy on the eyes so early in the morning.
Whereas before the laughter had been kept to a close proximity, the entire line starts choking on the line of my accidental outburst while I question my incapability to keep my god damn mouth closed.
Even the presumed 80's reject laughs at what he probably presumes to be wittiness. It's painfully obvious that he's going to be my Tutor for the next year: Mr Cutty Flam.
"Ah! You must be the new girl!" I wince, "I'm your Tutor for this year! Call me Franky! What's your name?!" The words roll off his tongue at a quick pace and it takes a few seconds for me to realize that he asked me a question.
"Oh! Er, Dakota Seagrave, sir. N-nice to meet you," I choke out in a rush, slapping a what-I-hope-to-be-convincing smile on my face.
The man - Franky - chortles again before turning to the classroom door and unlocking it with the keys attached to the orange lanyard around his neck. "Hopefully we'll find you a seat!" He exclaims.
He flings open the door so we can slowly trickle into the room.
I make my way in last, or rather, I'm dragged along by the excitable boy named Luffy and the rest of his crew. If I wasn't wholly intent on staying beneath the radar I might have enjoyed having such companions. Noise and lots of people just isn't my forté.
I'm assigned to the seat next to the window in the fourth row, right behind no-brows. I must contain myself. After the string of bad luck and happy accidents I have endured so far this morning this is how The Man Upstairs repays me?
What if I start sniggering?
I bite my lip, say a couple of prayers to Lucifer and Beelzebub (since they seem far more reliable right now) that I won't start laughing. I don't want to unintentionally piss the boy off, I'm not subtle, and he looks as though he could kill my entire family and make it look like an accident.
Alas, the image of the redhead turning and giving me 'angry eyebrows' is far too much for me to handle, and dear Franky has to pause in reading out the register as I struggle to find my dignity amid snorting into the desk.
I sit up after a while, wheezing like a heavy smoker to find multiple pairs of eyes staring at me like I've just recently stepped out of the whacky shack. Unfortunately, I'm trying to calm down, and the red head in front of me is staring with wide-eyed concern. I purse my lips and feel my face turn purple.
"D-don't mind me," I stammer, snorting out into my cupped hands as the world turns wobbly around the edges with tears of mirth.
I can count on Luffy it seems to join in with the inevident hilarity for my own benefit, to make me look less crazy. He's quickly shut up by a 'light tap' to the back of the head from Nami, and it's a wake up call I also need.
I must look like a complete basket-case.
No, worse, I look like that strange cake your dear old Grandma turns up with at Christmas that nobody ever eats. You the one I'm talking about, the one with all the almonds and walnuts and things that look as though they were once glacé cherries. That is how nutty I look right now. A real oddball.
The lanky boy next to me - Eyebrowless' pal - scowls at my shameful face and I shrink in my seat.
His freaking laser-eyes are going to melt my fucking face off.
Franky graciously continues with the register, ignoring my loud escapade of 5 minutes in Coo-coo Land that nobody but I could truly appreciate. What a star, I hope they're paying him enough.
I'm not sure how many names are answered in total, as the students around me seem pretty absorbed with watching me with complete apprehension. As if I might start crawling up the walls like I'm straight out of The Exorcist. My face feels like it's being smothered by an expensive pillow.
So much for good first impressions.
Holly- Dakota just sums up my entire personality, except maybe the accidental voicing of thoughts, I'm loud and proud about what's going on inside of Coo-coo Land.