[X] A Chat With Pops
Well, first thing's first. Going to your door, you call down the stairs, "Dad?"
"Sweetheart, come here if you want to talk."
"Are you trying to make me marry Sakkun?"
Almost immediately, there is a whoosh of displaced air; a drawing you did of Menka falls from where you taped it to the wall, one of your library books gets knocked off its stack, and Dad is in your room.
"You know Mom hates it when you shunshin in the house," you point out.
"No, I am
not trying to make you marry Sasuke!" He looks horrified by the very notion.
"Hello, Sasuke," he adds as an afterthought.
"Hello, Inoichi-san," Sasuke says timidly.
"Where exactly did you get this idea?" Dad demands.
"Sakkun's dad thinks I'm trying to seduce him on your orders or something," you explain, rolling your eyes. "Do you know if there's anything I can say that will convince him I'm not trying to tempt Sasuke into becoming Mr Yamanaka?"
"Hey, that's not how it works!" Sasuke objects. "You'd become Mrs Uchiha."
"That's
totally how it works," you declare smugly. "I'm the clan heir; I can't marry out, my spouse has to marry in."
"Now I'm definitely not marrying you," he says sullenly.
Dad, meanwhile, has taken a minute to breathe deeply and calm down. His smile is strained, but you're pretty sure that's because he's trying to hold in the impulse to storm over to the Uchiha Compound to switch bodies with Sasuke's dad and headdesk him into unconsciousness, so you smile back.
"Don't worry, sweetheart," he says, smoothing your hair out of your face. "I'll walk Sasuke home and have a long talk with Fugaku-san. Dad will straighten everything out, don't you worry."
"Are you gonna ask that he stop trying to use reverse psychology on me and Sasuke to make us hook up?" you ask eagerly.
His smile becomes much more genuine, and a little proud. "... I am
now."
"Yay!" You hug him. "You're the best, dad."
Sasuke squawks in horror.
=
Dad gets home much more quickly than you would have expected.
"Well, I had a little fun with him," he says when you ask for details, "but in the end, when the dojutsu-interference argument failed to sway him, I had to reveal your dual-affinity to properly reinforce that it'd be bad for the clan's future to marry you to an Uchiha. We still don't know if Ranton is hereditary yet, after all, or what a Sharingan would do to the mix."
Roundabout bragging. A rather crude tactic, and not something your dad usually encourages, but apparently when dealing with a family of battle-nin the easiest way to make them understand a new idea is to drop an anvil on their heads.
You frown. "But what about the Yamanaka way? Couldn't you have just said we only marry for love and I'm not in love with Sasuke?"
"If I wanted to be laughed out of the compound, yes," he says bluntly.
"Mou," you say, pouting. "Lollypops have no sense of romance."
You could swear you hear dad mutter, "Thank heaven for that."
----------
So. How do you want to handle things with Chouji?
[X] Lupin Sansei Route: You're sad, but... if he wants to go his own way, you don't want to stop him. If he's decided he can't accept the kind of stuff you do, it wouldn't be fair to either of you to try to force an active relationship. You'll still always have his back, though. Ino-Shika-Cho.
[X] Lupin Issei Route: You want your brother back, damn it.
He's a worrywart and he has that pesky moral fibre thing going on, but you miss him. Ino-Shika-Cho, yo. You can fake being an upstanding citizen until you're old enough to deploy your talents in the field, right? Right?
[X] Write-in
Free time? Pick two.
[X] The theatre books you take out of the library have all sorts of tips about mending garments and stuff; could be handy on missions. And one of them has sewing patterns for costumes and props and stuff in the back pages - that's just
fun. Teach yourself to sew.
[X] Expand your sensing range.
[X] People-watch. See if you can imitate them convincingly on the smallest of personality-cues.
[X] No, seriously. Guns. Why are they so much better in your dreams? Fucking bullets, how do they work? (Yooooooog~ come out and plaaa~aay~)
[X] Dad says you can start practicing building memory palaces whenever you like.
And whose Ino-time do you wanna peek in on? Pick two.
[X] Menka
[X] Kiba
[X] Ami
[X] Neji
[X] Lee
[X] Sasuke - you're already training with him after school. This vote's only concerned with whether you wanna see Ino's continued attempts to bring Lollypop-kun to the Light Side of the Force (we don't have cookies, just lots of hot girls, diamonds and car chases).
[X] Hinata - you're already going for parkour runs with her in the morning and training with her and Sasuke after school. Again, this vote's only for extra hanging out fluff. Said fluff will probably happen regardless of whether you ask to see it.
... just out of curiosity, how old are you guys? Because, honestly... no one knows why I gave Sasuke the nickname Sakkun?
