Inoichi saw his daughter come into the front door of the clan flower shop looking somewhat less than amused. One of her tentacles was wrapped up in something that would have looked like a hair decoration to most but which he recognized as a splint or cast of some kind.
"How did you do in the sparring?" he asked forcing himself not to make a big deal of the injury.
"She sort of won by luck," Anko Mitarashi said enthusiastically as she popped her head around into the entrance. "Hey, Inoichi, how's things around the flower shop here?"
"She followed me home, Dad, can we kill her?" Ino muttered.
Anko chuckled loudly at that and put a hand down onto Ino's head over her mass of tentacles and ruffled it about as if she had hair.
"This is a cute kid you have her, by the way," Anko said.
"Anko?" Inoichi said as he looked toward his daughter sighing helplessly. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, seriously speaking," Anko said, calming down a little. "I want to look at your girl. I got a look at her under this half-henge she's doing..."
Ino hmphed and crossed her arms.
"...and she's been scratching every few minutes a few places. I'm guessing hygiene for the scaly inclined wasn't on her list of things to learn growing up."
"Wait, you're going to teach me hygiene stuff?" Ino said. "But you're like one of the most tomboyish, dirty, scruffy ninja in the Village!"
Ino grumbled as she set off balance by Ino ruffling her tentacles again.
"Cute kid, pretty mouth," Anko said with a smile and twitching eyebrows. "Anyway, do you mind, Inoichi?"
He grimaced and looked to Ino.
"Have you been having any trouble?" he asked.
"Well everything does itch, but I thought that was normal," Ino said. "Like maybe that's why snakes are so irritable all the time."
"Hahahaha!...no," Anko said ending the last in a serious tone of voice.
"Fine, whatever," Ino muttered.
"It's fine with me as long as you don't do anything to hurt her in any way," Inoichi said warningly.
"Of course not," Anko said, turning back toward Ino. "All right, let's go in back here, sure you got a bath in this place or something close to it."
Anko led Ino to the back of the room, quietly ignoring the fact that her father was boring holes in the back of her head.
"So, how long you going to stave off work in the flower shop?" Anko asked. "Not that many young kids in your family, and you're making them do a bit extra."
"What, I'll attract customers like this?" she muttered.
"You have a point, now, drop the disguise and let's see what you have," the special-jonin said when they reached the family bath in one of the back rooms past the greenhouse.
Ino willed the change back to what she'd been told was now normal for her and grimaced as Anko started to look her over a second time. Apparently she'd been more focused on the tentacle the first, either that or she just wanted to look again.
Ino tried hard not to think about that.
"Okay, when you changed, did you shed skins?" the woman asked.
"Ewww, yes," Ino said. "It was like popping out of my own back and looking down at my dead body."
She shivered.
"Uh huh," Anko said, giving a firm examination to an arm and squeezing down on it. "You didn't get all the way out."
"Ehh, what are you talking about?" Ino asked. "Of course I did."
"You've still get pieces of the old skin stuck in your scales in places," Anko explained. "You can see it if you look under the scales a bit."
"What you mean like this?" Ino asking reaching over toward the arm Anko was examining and lifting it up.
"Not so rou..." Anko stopped as Ino ripped her own scale off and shrieked as she did so.
"You said to lift it up!" Ino protested, pulling her arm away.
"No, I said to look under," Anko corrected her. "You can do that without ripping stuff off like a maniac. Okay, going to have to teach you how to clean that. Let's see..."
Anko looked toward the Yamanaka furo.
"Okay, I've heard rumors," Ino said. "This isn't anything to do with trying to get me in some kinky sex thing, is it?"
"Kid, about the only thing you're old enough to get from me is a skinship grope," Anko said with a laugh.
"And what is that?" Ino responded.
"I could show you," the special-jonin noted.
Hinata heard the knock on her door at the inn and walked over to see who was behind it with a mild frown of confusion. Opening it up she found Ino standing there head cocked up pridefully and eye twitching.
"Umm, Ino, is there something you need?" Hinata asked.
"I don't like skinship gropes," Ino noted by way of explanation.
"Ahhh, would you like something to eat, Naruto-kun and I were going to meet for something?" Hinata asked.
"Eh, you want me to interfere with your date?" Ino asked.
"No, no nothing like that and...well, you're a new teammate so, uh..." Hinata fumbled about nervously. "Let's go find Naruto."
And she dragged the gorgon out of the door into the day.
Anko came back to consciousness in her body and looked around blinking at the people looking up at her and laughing uproariously. It was quickly obvious that she was currently in the chunin staff room doing...she wasn't sure what she had been doing.
"How the hell did I get here?" she asked.
The laughing stopped as the chunin looked up at her statement and quickly vacated the room as they realized that Anko was back in control of herself again.
Glancing down in confusion, Anko found herself wearing a very youthful and feminine kimono. Her fingernails were manicured, her toes pedicured and a mirror told her that a good job had been done of her face.
She looked very girly.
Very girly.
"Okay, note to self, skinship groping the Yamanakas is dangerous to the dignity," Anko said. "Sheesh, Inoichi, she literally asked."
More muttering was done as Anko tried to get out of the staff room and to the streets without being seen by anybody who hadn't already.
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(Posted Sat, 21 May 2011 11:20)
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