Release Update Timeline:

Just to confirm, I'm still taking my time when it comes to writing the chapters leading up to Homecoming. It'll be a little while before more chapters release, but I thought I'd release the pre-title stinger of 'Things That Can't Be Faked', my chapter 8, to celebrate the release of the One Piece Live Action! If you're excited as I am, make sure to go watch it after reading this chapter! I personally wouldn't call it perfect, but I love the cast and they deserve to travel the Grand Line as far as they can! I've even gotten a bit inspired for Luffy's dialogue as it's something that I've always personally struggled with, but hearing Luffy talk a lot more casually than in an animated format really reminded me of what I wanted to do with Luffy.

When I'm finished with this chapter (which won't be soon as I'm trying to polish the entire next six chapters first) I'll just release it as it's own separate page for retention's sake... or I might just re-release this chapter. I haven't decided yet, but it won't be bad either way as the releases for the chapters will be much more consistent by that point.

Thank you for returning to Making the Grade! Especially after my elongated break!

First things first: I'm looking for a Beta Reader! If you happen to feel as though you're qualified for the position, I'm mainly looking for someone who can help me organize ideas about the story structurally rather than someone looking to polish my grammar, although it wouldn't hurt to have someone with eyes on the chapter before it's published as well. I want to try and practice improving on that myself!

But… planning for the next six chapters (including this one!) has been a bit of a herculean task, and I would really appreciate the help of anyone who likes these sorts of longer, multi-layered fanfics being released! This saga is intense as it is, but I have plans down the line to introduce One Piece's worldly scale with that flare of high school drama that makes Making the Grade so special. DM me with any relevant qualifications (even if that's just your own work) if you'd be interested.

Other than that, Homecoming is fast approaching! The winds of chaos are gonna be blasting through Grand Line High, and it wouldn't be a One Piece fic if Luffy wasn't at the front of it!

Hope you continue to enjoy my re-imagining when we return in the future!

XXXXXXXXXX

3. Workout, and clean yourself up afterwards.

Kuro confidently jogged along his usual route, the ticking clock of his mind running as perfectly on point as the motions of his legs down the street.

The strength of his body cried with satisfaction, the muscles of a teenager about to become an adult toned to the point of perfection; At least to Kuro, they were perfect. His muscles weren't noticeable to most who passed him by in school, and that was precisely the point. Strong enough to get himself out of any situation he might put himself through, confident enough to follow through with any physical motion, like a stab, jab or kick. Just lean enough that those opposing him would let their guard down.

"What can such a scrawny guy do to me?"

"You're just a kid."

"Don't worry about him."

Many have said those things directly to his face. And sooner or later, all of them fell victim to the black cat's claws, hiding just beneath the surface of the innocent paws of a cat people couldn't help seeing in him. But Kuro saw the truth in others. How couldn't he? The world was against anyone with the determination to fight for what they deserved, and the eyes of those unwilling to sacrifice for the endgame would always look like absurd, ignorant monsters to him.

After a few more minutes of a grueling morning workout, Kuro arrived back at his room… covered from floor to ceiling in scattered documents and binders. Some were printed out, but most were notes done entirely by him.

'Monkey D. Luffy - Grade Report |6th Grade - Semester 1|' was printed out into a binder of similarly printed material.

'Tashigi = Kuina?' The words scribbled themselves out, pinned pictures of two similarly-looking teenage girls right below their respective names shimmering in the low light of the room.

Koby and the risks involved with further Navy Club involvement…

Certificate of Divorce: This is to certify Mikan Bellemere and Fisher Arlong…

"We offer you a lunch and dinner reservation to Baratie"...

The list of documents never ended, at least from Kuro's eyes. He needed to make sure every angle of this operation would work. Doing anything too rash would lead to him being sloppy. But taking the time to plan something out, even if it were a bit more convoluted than simply a kidnapping or a killing, would ultimately reward him in the end.

It certainly had rewarded him before.

After picking up a pile of fresh clothes, Kuro turned around to use the mansion's back restrooms to take a shower.

"I think this is all coming together quite nicely…" He muttered to himself, sure that he was only talking to himself. "I'll be able to kill Usopp at Homecoming, and no one will be able to stop me. I've viewed this from every angle, and now there's nothing any of those idiots can do that would surprise me."

~ X X X ~

After several days… Usopp finally had it. He had a plan to outsmart Kuro before Homecoming. He could save Kaya, keep his friends out of danger, and get one of the most powerful students in school arrested before he had a chance to harm him or anyone else close to him.

If nothing went wrong, of course.

Usopp sketched out the final part of his plan onto a sheet of notebook paper, the finished result looking more like a railway map with scattered notes than anything coherent. Despite its confusing nature, he knew that challenging Kuro would be like playing with fire… the Student Government's Treasurer wasn't a title he'd received half-hazardly. From what Usopp was able to put together, Kuro might be one of the smartest students in this school of already highly-educated and vastly rich peers.

The details on budgeting Kuro had done over the years were psychopathic, to put it bluntly. He examined the budgets from nearly a hundred angles, each vastly different considering the breadth of scale that the Grand Line Student Government was able to be given. Grand Line High was a school ripe for rich parents to donate to, after all. And for the school's part, many of those donations were to be processed by the students themselves. More specifically… their Treasurer. And with that much money in the palm of his hands, the ebbs and flows of powerful programs throughout the school could be considered something entirely in Kuro's hands.

He must have some serious connections, Usopp was confident. To threaten him so brazenly, and yet to never hear a bad thing about him… Usopp could only consider that he has the power to sway a lot of important people his way just when he needs it.

Usopp had learned most of this over the past few days, while the rest of his friends were too busy making sure Luffy was okay after his announcement to run for Homecoming King along with Nico Robin. He didn't exactly trust her, but all he could do to make sure his friends weren't in Kuro's crossfire was enjoy the fact they were as distracted as they had been. And Kaya… he'd been struggling not to talk to Kaya. She'd only gotten more persistent from the first day or two of him holding back from her, but now that their group assignment had been completed, he was able to keep away from her almost completely, just as Kuro asked of him. If he did anything too rebellious… then he might attract unwanted attention before he could stop Kuro in his tracks.

That's why Usopp had to take him down today. If he didn't, then who knows what he had planned for him… or his friends… or Kaya, down the line. And he couldn't keep these secrets from his friends much longer. He wanted their help, more than anything, but Usopp knew he could take Kuro on his own. And if he just simply didn't try, then that would make him the kind of man he could never be proud of.

He had to fight this, even if it was the most terrifying, threatening encounter with another person he'd ever come across. He'd come across his fair share of bullies, but none of them come close to a man who'd threaten your life, and the lives of everyone you hold dear, before leaving his actions entirely in your hands.

"I can do it…" Usopp muttered to himself, exhausted and lumbering over his desk. "I can stop Kuro from hurting any of my friends… and there's nothing he can do about it-"

Before Usopp could finish his morning affirmations, the light buzzing and rattling of his alarm went off. 7:45.

"Wait a minute…" Usopp glanced around his room for a minute, before the realization hit him.

"HONK HONK!" The blaring sound of a bus stopping on his street hit him like, well, a bus, causing the teenager to launch himself from his chair and around the messy room. He was already dressed for school (mainly because he hadn't gotten out of his school clothes the night before), but the sounds of the bus's gears turning and engines revving were masked by his panic to pick up his bag, his notes, and finally his cheap, worn headset before bursting out of the bedroom door.

"Have a good day at school…" Usopp's mother called from her room, her volume barely strong enough to hold an intimate conversation with, but Usopp could always hear when his mother needed him.

"Love you!" He called back, his backpack rattling around in his arms and his headset sliding around his neck as he turned the corner of their shared hallway and nearly burst out of his front door…

Only to hear the sounds of a bus making a turn at the end of a long, busy road in the process. Usopp bolted out of his house, an exasperated panic nearly sending his heart out of his chest.

He was going to be late for class… and he couldn't be late. Not today.

Barreling down the road at a rate Usopp couldn't even fathom was legal, Grand Line High's signature bus was a blur to his eyes before making its way past a sea of suburban homes. For only the briefest moment, Usopp let out a heavy sigh on his porch… before dashing off into the street ahead of him.

Usopp couldn't catch up to the bus if he just followed it down the road, but he knew at some point the bus would eventually have to make another left. He could cut it off by just making his own shortcut through a block of suburban houses. What could go wrong?

The beats of a fast-paced song blared through Usopp's headset ('I'm Invincible' by UTA) as he just barely missed being hit by a car, the thumping of drums covering up the sounds of a cursing neighbor whom Usopp would have to deal with later. Without even attempting to follow the road to the intersection down ten or so houses, Usopp ran up the driveway of the house right across from his own and dashed through the backyard's gate.

"Hey!" Heracles, an older man tending to his garden, nearly fainted at the sight of Usopp barging through his plants. "My Pop Greens! I've been taking care of those for weeks!"

"I'll pay you back!" Usopp hurriedly yelled.

"Uh… don't worry about it…"

"What do you-?" Before Usopp could question further, he felt the solid CRUNCH of a bundle of seeds beneath his feet, before a series of long, sharp vines wrapped around his school shoes. Hoping to pull right through them, Usopp charged forwards-

Only to have the vines pull him right down to the ground, face first. With another solid series of CRUNCH CRUNCH sounds releasing as he hit the floor, more vines popped up from all around him, nearly holding him in place.

"Oh, come on!" Usopp cried, scrambling on the ground in some attempt to wedge himself out of the increasingly growing series of vines.

"Hold on!" Heracles called out to him, pulling a pocket knife out from a sleeve in his old-fashioned overalls and slicing most of the vines open with a quick swing of his arm. Without hesitation, Usopp launched himself back up, patted himself to make sure he had everything, and continued to dash towards a dingy wooden fence.

"You have weird plants, Mr. Heracles!" Usopp called out to him, exasperated before the full stretch of his run had even fully commenced.

"And you're a weird kid, you know!" He simply called back, sitting back down on a fading white lawn chair before taking a resigned breath.

Usopp, without much skill, scrambled over the wooden fencing separating Heracles' home from a more Northern residence, only to find three large dogs taking a nap near a doghouse just big enough for the three of them. One was beige and the other two were a dark gray, with the front of the red doghouse displaying a classically-styled 'Cerberus' name over the door.

Just be quiet, Usopp thought to himself as he slid down the other side of the fence-

CRUNCH! One last Pop Green stuck to Usopp's shoe, and as a pathetic string of vine shot out from the seed, the three dogs immediately woke up from their naps and proceeded to growl at the yard's intruder.

"Uh… hi?"

"BARK BARK BARK!" The dogs launched into a fury of noises and jolting movements, running up to Usopp with zero hesitation.

"AHHH!" Usopp screamed, dashing as fast as he could to the next fence over. He hopped over without so much as a glance over to what he was falling into. With the roar of the dogs pushing closer and closer, he didn't exactly have much of a choice before already flying down into the backyard below.

SNAP! Usopp coughed as a plume of sand blasted from underneath him, his location seeming to be the sand pit of some child's backyard. And underneath him…

A wooden toy lay about, its arm fallen off from his crash into it. At least the child wasn't there to-

"AUGH!"

A young girl, no older than ten, leapt back in fear from just beyond the border of the sand pit. Wearing a white dress with blue polka dots, and draped in a large red blanket with bear-like ears, she collapsed in on the blanket with sheer terror as Usopp could only continue to cough from the sand lodged in his lungs.

"Sorry- cough! But I have to get to school!" Usopp scrambled to his feet, just in time to hear the roar of cars passing. From just beyond their house on the road ahead, a large street filled with cars made their way. And on top of all of that, Usopp could faintly hear the sounds of a bus screeching as it lumbered into a large turn. It was close to its final stop, and Usopp had to hurry.

He slid and fumbled from out of the sand pit, letting out coughs every few seconds as he slowly stabilized himself, before dashing out and hitting the grass around them. He patted himself down, just in time to hear the bus approaching its nearby stop…

And the sound of a young girl crying.

Usopp turned back around to see the girl holding her half-broken doll, tears draining down her face like a faucet. It was the only figure out of all the toys in the ball pit, and it certainly looked worn. To her, Usopp wondered if she cared about the doll as much as she cared about other people. But that wasn't the point, was it?

Usopp let out a sigh, keeping his ear out long enough for the bus to hit its stop. He could just barely make it, if he ran out onto the house's lawn right then… but he couldn't.

"Hey…" Usopp looked at the girl, a weary smile on his face only trying to ease any tension between the two. "I think I can fix that doll of yours."

"Don't bother." The girl pouted. "His arm's already fallen off."

"But wait!" Usopp lit up a bit, the thoughts of school and friends and enemies slowly being drowned away by this one little intimate moment. Kids were always his weak point, he supposed. "I like to tinker with things! I might just have a tool right in my bag here to fix him right up!"

"...Really?"

Usopp's smile was finally genuine, the relief that he could finally do something right washing away the sounds of a bus driving away. "Of course."

~ X X X ~

After a few minutes of fiddling with the toy's arm (it was a lot more precise than he'd expected), Usopp was able to lock the arm back into place using a mixture of adhesives and a thin screwdriver. He beamed with pride as one fixed toy was handed back to the girl whose nickname happened to be 'Sugar'.

"There you go! One toy soldier, all fixed up."

"Yay!" She snatched the doll from Usopp's arms, hugging it in a tight embrace. "I'd thank you, but you're the one who broke her!"

"Yeah yeah…" Usopp scratched the back of his neck before getting up from the grass, patting down any stray pieces stuck to his pants in the process. "Well, I guess I should start on my walk to school, kid."

"You go to Grand Line High, right?" Sugar asked matter-of-factly.

"Uh… yeah. Why?"

"My cousin goes. He can drive you if you're gonna be late."

"Really?!" Usopp spoke with sudden surprise and interest. "Is he here?!"

"Yeah… COUSIN!" Her screech was as loud, if not louder, than her cry of sadness from losing her favorite doll. Within a few seconds, a tall senior in full school uniform bolted out of the sliding glass door attached to the backyard, just a wave of moppy blonde hair covered by a dark red hood with two heart-shaped accents.

"What's up?" He casually remarked, as though his young cousin screaming at the top of her lungs and a stranger in the backyard were common occurrences.

"Uh- do I know you from somewhere-?"

"This guy didn't make it to the buses on time because of me… can you please drive him to school? Please?"

"Uh…" He pondered for a moment, less of an incredibly thoughtful glare than a simple, inquisitive ponder. "Sure." Then, without hesitation, he closed the glass door and walked back into the house.

"That's it?!" Usopp questioned, turning back to the young girl who only motioned for him to follow her cousin inside.

"Go on! He's fine!"

"Alright! Alright!" Usopp gave the young girl one last nod, unable to stop himself from grinning as he noticed she held onto her fixed toy tightly. She smiled brightly as they waved each other off, likely to never see each other again.

After passing through what Usopp noted to be an oddly nice house for the neighborhood, he and the senior made their way into a garage where an old silver sedan awaited them. While the garage door slowly creaked open, the senior casually turned to Usopp like a stranger unusually confident in making conversation in an elevator.

"You're Straw Hat's friend, right?"

"Oh- yeah… how do you know that?"

"I'm the Student Government's President." He replied as matter-of-factly as their cousin talked to him before, but this time with the weight of his words hitting Usopp like a school bus.

"P-p-p-p-PRESIDENT?!"

One Piece - Making the Grade

New World!

Chapter 8: Things That Can't Be Faked

(Coming Soon)

- There will be no BTS for this as it isn't a full chapter, I just wanted to give you guys a little taste of what's to come.