Title: Movie Night
Theme: #25: Horror
Claim: Zoro
(Words:) 1,954
Rating: PG-13 (mostly for safety's sake)
Warnings: Continuing the college AU setting, so Chopper and Brook are obviously fully human here. Tiny bit of language. A few references to random horror-movie-ish scenes but nothing really graphic. Most of the references don't come from actual movies either; I just made the stuff up on the spot.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own, or pretend to own, One Piece or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs solely to Eiichiro Oda. I do not own the prompts either—those are assigned by 30_OnePiece. Nightmare Before Christmas is Tim Burton's.

Luffy's group was a mixed bunch, from all walks of life, but there was one thing Zoro could say with certainty they all loved to do: movie nights.

Initially it had started with just Zoro, Luffy, and Nami getting together on weekends to go to the movies whenever they had the spare cash, after meeting in class in their Freshman year of college. (That had been back when Luffy still went to classes, not that he ever did well in them). Usopp joined the group a semester later, and Sanji not too much longer after that. That was when they switched to renting movies instead and used Usopp's surprisingly large dorm apartment for viewing; one of his room mates had a big-screen TV and neither of them were ever in the apartment, so the arrangement suited them just fine. When they hit sophomore year Luffy pulled in the rest of the group one at a time, until finally they'd scored big: Luffy had helped big-time musician Brook recover a few stolen items the police couldn't seem to track, and subsequently earned his friendship. And Brook had one hell of a home theater and surround-sound system set up in his basement.

So movie-nights became very big with Luffy's unexpected gang very quickly. It was an opportunity for all nine of them to hang out and do something that they all enjoyed together, which wasn't always easy to organize when everybody had jobs and classes and tours to deal with.

Of course, everybody had their own movie preferences, which sometimes made it difficult to agree on movie nights. Luffy was a huge fan of action adventure flicks (and absolutely anything with pirates in it). Nami enjoyed deception and mystery movies, mostly because she liked to try and assimilate the tricks for later. Usopp enjoyed comedies and fantasy stories, and while Sanji vehemently denied it, everyone knew he had a fondness for sappy romance flicks. Chopper was still a kid (advanced medical degree or no) and often enjoyed animated films. Robin preferred documentaries and historical films, but also enjoyed darker film noir (Zoro was hardly surprised by this). Franky adored classic rock-and-roll, and had a fondness for sci-fi movies as well (especially ones involving robots), and Brook had a vast collection of musicals that he enjoyed—and frequently sang along with as well. As for Zoro, he enjoyed classic samurai movies, but had a fondness for slasher horror films as well—one that his friends mostly did not share.

It made movie nights difficult sometimes, so they usually ordered a medley from the video stores and film delivery services, picking a title here and there from everyone's preferred genre to make sure at least a few people were satisfied with each movie night. If something was on the list that the others weren't interested in, there was plenty of other stuff to do in Brook's house while the rest watched the films. Zoro usually skipped the sappy romances (gag), and rarely stuck around for Chopper's animated films or Brook's musicals either.

Many of the others, he noticed, usually skipped his horror movies. Sanji would inevitably watch just to prove he wasn't a pansy like Zoro claimed (so easy to bait), Robin never appeared phased by any of the blood and gore, and Luffy would usually watch due to some of the adventure elements involved. Others were less inclined to stick around. Brook almost never did—despite the man's strange fascination with his undead character in Zombie Dungeon Wars the man could not stand monster movies for some reason—and Chopper and Usopp rarely if ever stuck around to watch them either. When they did, they usually insisted that the horror movie go first, so that the silly comedies and romances could wash away the scary things afterwards. And even then Zoro still usually had to walk the two of them back to their dorms while they all but clung to him in a trembling panic.

"Wasn't that part with the entrails scary?" Chopper whimpered the first night he'd watched one of the horror flicks.

"They didn't even look real," Zoro said, and wondered how a doctor-in-training of all people could miss that.

"Well the monster sure looked real," Chopper argued.

"Like anything like that could actually exist," Zoro said, with a roll of his eyes.

"That part when he started chasing them down with that sword and just chopping everybody to bits was so gross," Usopp said another night, huddled as close as he dared to Zoro and completely ignoring the weird looks other students in the dorms sent his way.

"You can't even use a katana like that," Zoro said reasonably. "That'd never happen in real life."

"Stop being so nitpicky!" Usopp answered sullenly. "Don't you get scared by any of these movies?"

"Nope," Zoro said truthfully. The thrill and intensity of the flicks were nice, but they were rarely if ever scary...just suspenseful, and exciting as a result.

"I don't see why you like those movies," Chopper whimpered on a third night, after cajoling Zoro into giving him a piggy-back home so the monsters of the latest horror film didn't pop out to eat them (or something). Zoro was just lucky he was still smallish, or it might've been more obnoxious. "What could have possibly been enjoyable in that last movie?"

Zoro shrugged. "The part when that guy's arms got cut off was kinda cool. Real great effects."

"Zoro," Usopp said with exasperation, "What is with you and the limb-chopping-off scenes? You know they're supposed to stay attached and when they lose their arms and legs that's a bad thing, right?"

"What do you think I am, stupid?" Zoro growled back sullenly.

The conversations after every horror flick were exactly the same, always: Zoro would criticize the effects or the realism, or point out his favorite scenes or monsters, all to his less-than-excited friends' incredulous stares. Zoro didn't really mind. It was sort of funny to see their reactions, both to the movies and his own interest in them. And, very deep down, he was also sort of pleased that they inevitably turned to him to protect them from the monster madness in the movies (even if nothing in them actually existed, it was still nice to know they thought he could take down swamp monsters and chainsaw murderers with his bare hands).

But inevitably even Zoro would meet his match one day. It was a Friday night, which meant no classes the next day, and Sanji, Robin, Franky and Brook were all free from work that Saturday. They'd unanimously agreed to spend the night at Brook's enormous home with a movie marathon, watching films into the late hours and sleeping in the next day, and likely with a Sanji-made brunch to look forward to after that. Usopp was put in charge of obtaining a selection of movies that everyone could enjoy, and the group arrived at Brook's house ready to go with the promise of a romantic comedy, the latest release from the pirate action-adventure series clobbering all contenders in the box office, a mobster film with touches of noir and mystery to it, a classic sci-fi film based off some book or other, and a horror film.

As usual, the younger members of the group insisted upon the horror film going first, while the night was still fairly young, with much friendlier, funnier things to look forward to after that. Zoro preferred to watch his slasher flicks in the dead of night for added effects, but he didn't want Usopp and Chopper to be bugging him all night long with nightmares, so he compromised and agreed to let his horror film go first.

But when Usopp dug his hand into the bag of movies and pulled out the horror flick, he frowned in surprise. "Uh-oh," he said. "There must have been a mixup. This isn't Nightmare on Elm Street, it's...Nightmare Before Christmas. Oops."

That was a little disappointing, Zoro thought with a sigh. He could never pass up Freddy Krueger, and had been looking forward to the film, but there wasn't much they could do about it now. "It's still a horror flick, right?" Zoro asked, eyeing the painted skull on the front cover, and the twisted, macabre-looking scenery in the background. He'd never heard of it, but a horror flick centered around Christmas could be kind of interesting.

"I guess," Usopp said with a shrug. "I've never heard of it myself." The others hadn't either, and their movie nights were about seeing new things, so Usopp popped the disc into the DVD player and hit play. Zoro settled back onto one of Brook's enormous, comfy couches, and prepared himself for some terrifying goodness.

That was when the singing started, and the animated ghosts and ghouls appeared on screen, and Zoro realized with a cold plummeting in his stomach that this was anything but the thriller he'd been anticipating for the past few days.

An hour and a half of sheer torture later the film finally, finally ended, and blissful silence filled the room as Usopp popped the disc back out and settled it back in its case. Usopp and Chopper were quite thrilled with it—it had been animated, which was right up Chopper's alley, and not really scary at all. The terrifying two hours they had been expecting had turned out to be quite entertaining. Brook was still humming some of the animated skeleton's numbers from the movie—it was a musical of all things, and he'd actually enjoyed the musical monsters and dancing undead despite his usual fear of such things. Franky was attempting to conceal his sobbing over the poor 'skeleton-bro' and how he'd just been trying to find where he belonged, and Luffy was still yammering over how cool it'd be to find a real-life singing skeleton to be friends with him.

And Zoro sat through all the cheerful chattering with a look of abject horror on his face, muttering under his breath, reasonably sure he'd just been traumatized for life.

Sanji finally spotted his blank stare and snickered. "Was that too much for you, marimo?" he sneered.

Zoro was too much in shock to even argue against the name. "How could they do that," he muttered under his breath to himself. "Destroying perfectly good horror movies with...with music and freakin' dancing monsters and...just...why. Why would you do this?"

Robin chuckled in amusement, and said calmly, "I think we finally found the perfect monster movie for Zoro-san."

To Zoro's complete and abject horror and mortification, the movie ended up sticking around as a favorite for the vast majority of the group. Brook quickly added The Nightmare Before Christmas to his collection of musicals, and would frequently break into Jack Skellington's songs for no reason at all, other than that he enjoyed them. Chopper and Usopp enjoyed it because it was animated, silly, and not scary, and even more importantly because they could finally use it to pick on Zoro whenever the opportunity presented itself. This was apparently something the rest of the group eagerly got into, since they bought him the collector's edition as a gag gift for Christmas.

Stupid singing skeleton. But, Zoro had to admit, as he glared down at the painted skull on the cover, it was definitely the very first time a so-called 'horror' movie had ever managed to scare him—even if it was more concern for the sanity of the human race than for himself.

Yeah, he'd give the Pumpkin King that, at least.

The majority of this piece was written to the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack lol. I happen to love the movie, but I know plenty of people (especially guy friends) who avoid it because singing.

(I bet anybody familiar with my writing figured I'd be doing something genuinely horror-ish with this prompt lol).

Does anybody else really, really wish that Jack Skellington could meet Brook somehow? I mean geez...super tall musical skeletons super loyal to their friends, they would get along so well!

~VelkynKarma