Yay, baby Chopper's turn finally! Merry Christmas, y'all!
Chopper had only celebrated his birthday with Dr. Hiriluk once.
"Say, Chopper, when's your birthday?"
"I . . . I don't have one."
"What's that!? Don't be ridiculous! Everyone has a birthday!"
"B-But . . . I don't know when mine is."
"We can't have that! Why don't you pick a day—any day!—and that'll be your birthday from now on!"
"Really?"
"Of course!"
"Th-then—how about today?"
"Sure! It's already afternoon, but we've got time to celebrate!"
"Celebrate? Really? How do we celebrate?"
"Well, let me think . . ."
Chopper had had six birthdays with Dr. Kureha.
"U-Um . . . Doctorine?"
"Yeah?"
"Today's my birthday!"
"And?"
"I was wondering . . . can we celebrate?"
"Celebrate? What on earth for?"
"Well—it's my birthday. Doctor always said you're supposed to celebrate on birthdays."
"That old quack . . . don't think I'm getting you any presents, got it? Go do what you want."
". . . Okay."
Today would be Chopper's first birthday with his crew.
His morning began with a scream.
"Morning, Chopper!" Luffy said, unfazed by the reindeer's screaming. He had decided to wake him up by standing over him and staring directly at his face. "Sanji's almost ready with breakfast!"
"Don't do that!" Chopper exclaimed.
Luffy laughed and started to leave.
"Wait, Luffy," Chopper said, scrambling out of bed. "Today's my . . ."
"Huh?" Luffy turned back.
Chopper shuffled his feet, recalling his past birthdays with Doctorine. ". . . Never mind."
Luffy shrugged and went out. Chopper sighed.
The morning passed by unusually peacefully—Luffy only tried to steal food once (though it was once from each crewmember), and Usopp hadn't told very many fantastic tales.
"Chopper, is something wrong?" Sanji asked as he served Luffy up a third helping with the warning that this was his last one. "You've been awfully quiet."
Chopper hesitated. "It's nothing . . ."
After breakfast, Chopper retreated to his room to experiment.
"Hey, Usopp?" Luffy said as he and Usopp played jacks. "What's the date?"
"Uh . . . the 24th," Usopp said after a moment's thought. "Why?"
Luffy winced as some of the jacks stabbed his fingers. "I dunno, I was just thinking that something's happening today, and Chopper knows but he's not telling us."
Usopp stared at him. "That doesn't sound like a sentence you start with 'I dunno,'" he muttered. "Actually, you're probably right."
Luffy thought. "Hm . . . December . . . 24th . . . 24th . . ." he frowned. "Tomorrow's Christmas . . . maybe that's it?"
Usopp shrugged. "I guess so? No, hang on—I could have sworn—we asked Chopper something, and he told us the 24th, and you said it's really easy to remember because it's right next to Christmas."
Luffy nodded. "Yeah, yeah! I remember that! But what did we ask him . . . ?"
A few seconds of silence passed. Then the two looked at each other with wide eyes.
They stood and ran to Chopper's room.
"Chopper!" Usopp exclaimed as they piled into the room.
"Is today your—" Luffy began, but was cut off as Chopper whirled around and yelled, "Guys, get out of—"
BOOM
A huge explosion from the failed experiment blew Chopper, Luffy, and Usopp back. Chopper was thrown into the air and landed safely on the bed, while Luffy and Usopp were thrown into the wall, hitting their heads and landing facedown.
Chopper shook his head and exclaimed loudly when he spotted Luffy and Usopp.
"Guys! Are you okay!?" he exclaimed.
Luffy and Usopp slowly got up.
"What happened?" Luffy mumbled, shaking his head.
Usopp shrugged. "What're we doing here . . . ?"
Chopper looked very worried. "You guys were coming in here to talk to me, and then the flask exploded, and you hit your heads . . ."
"Oh," Usopp said. "Um—well, my head hurts, and I don't remember why we came here . . . but I'm fine, I guess."
Luffy nodded. "Yeah, I'm just hungry now."
"What's the last thing you guys remember?"
Luffy looked thoughtful. "Um . . . going outside. We were gonna start a game of jacks."
Usopp nodded. "Yeah, same here. If we remember what we were gonna say, we'll come back."
Chopper still looked worried. "If you guys still have a headache by lunch, come and see me!"
They nodded and went out of the room, scratching their heads.
Sanji poked his head through the door. "What the hell was that explosion?"
"It's nothing," Chopper said, staring after the two.
"Is today your—"
Had they been about to say what he thought they were going to say?
The afternoon was fairly quiet for the Strawhats. A Marine ship had passed by, but they'd laid low and managed to pass it without detection. Their victory, of course, was probably due to incompetence or cowardice on the part of the Navy.
Dinner began quietly. Luffy and Usopp said nothing about headaches, but Chopper made a mental note to check on them later anyway.
"Oh, Chopper," Robin said as they all dug in. "Is there some reason you didn't remind us today's your birthday?"
The others stared at Chopper. Chopper shrank back. "Well—Doctor told me that birthdays should be celebrated, but Doctorine never really celebrated my birthday or hers—so I wasn't sure if we were gonna celebrate it if I reminded you guys."
"Chopper," Luffy said seriously.
Chopper waited.
"That's dumb!" Luffy exclaimed. "Of course we're gonna celebrate your birthday!"
"Really?" Chopper exclaimed happily.
"Sure," Sanji said. "I'll whip up some cotton candy."
"And we gotta do a double celebration, since it's so late," Luffy said firmly.
"A double celebration?" Chopper asked. "How do we do a double celebration?"
"We'll think of something!" Luffy exclaimed.
And so Chopper had his first real birthday celebration in seven years.
~Fin~
Happy birthday, Tony Tony Chopper!
So yes, there will be more crewmembers in the New World. But because we don't know who they are yet (at the time of this chapter), I've decided to mark this story as complete. Once all the crewmembers are confirmed, I'll start a new story called "Happy Birthday, New Strawhat Pirates!" and it'll feature the birthdays of the NW members. I'll be posting the link to it here once it's up.
Story's done! Thank you for all your support, minna-sama~!
