trans_9 | Hello Kittenland

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Hello Kittenland

Welcome to Kittenland, the most adorable place in Happy Happy Fun World! If you didn't like Kittenland, you probably had no soul at all.

There was the Kitten Go Round, a Merry Go Round where everyone could ride a kitten; the Nyan Cat Coaster, a rollercoaster where the carriages were in the shape of kittens with pop tart bodies, racing along a rainbow track to the constant sound of 'nyanyanyanyan'; the Kitten Petting Corner (with real kittens!); and the Hello Kitty Teacups.

And then there was the merchandise - the Nyan Cat Coaster had a shop of it's own, as did the Hello Kitty Teacups, both with a considerable range in merchandise; there was Kitten Candy, kitten t-shirts, kitten magnets, and more. Oddly enough though, you couldn't buy actual kittens.

[ooc: Feel free to make up any other kitten related rides or merchanise if you want!]]

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Marco shrugged an affirmative, feeling weirdly awkward about admitting it out loud to his own mother. He'd never really figured that 'tell the parents' would actually figure high on the scale of importance when actually getting a girlfriend. Plus Sakura was weirdly quiet, and he had no idea what she was thinking right now.

"Dunno, it's too hard to tell with Stacy's mucked up time. Not that long. Although if you're going to insist on knowing all the details I'm going to get seriously creeped out, Mom."

It had to be cultural. It had to.

Sakura moved up by Marco, presenting open hands for the kitten he was still clutching. "Let me put him away," she said, offering a smile a half-second after she already should have been smiling. She wanted the both of them in sight, if there wasn't any clear and present danger. Watching for hints in body language would be more helpful than anything else.

Thinking on that, she forced herself to relax, shoulders falling as tension fled (for the moment). "Unless you plan on dancing around with him for the next," she glanced up at a clock on the wall. Analog. Her favorite. "Nine minutes. On the other hand, if you need more time, I do have all these extra tokens..."

That glare Eva gives you, Marco? That's a genuine pissed-mom glare.

But it quickly melts into her trademark levity, because it's just rude to be irritated at your son in front of his girlfriend. Especially when the opportunity to mortify them both presents itself!

"Let me help you put that kitten away, Sakura. I need to take a look at your hand to figure out what your wedding ring size is! Welcome to the family."

Somehow, Marco had actually forgotten that he was still holding a cat. "Hey, this whole thing was your idea..." he said to Sakura, before trailing off when he saw Eva's expression.

Oh man. Marco winced, knowing that this wasn't going to be good. The Pissed Mom Glare was never good. And sure enough, it quickly proved to be really, really not good.

"What - Mom!" he cried, staring at Eva in horror. Wedding rings? Wedding rings?! "Are you insane?!"

Sakura whisks the kitten out of Marco's hands, turns around and gone back toward the cage with nary a pause to give Eva an opening to actually help. Partly she doesn't want anyone to see her face, if her shoulders are tense in a mixture of surprise, shock, and (honestly) irritation.

Then sinking realization that if one person makes this mistaken assumption, than it might be less of an assumption than she assumes it to otherwise be.

The saving grace to this is her look of horror is directed away from either party, and the kitten is the only one to feel her unsteady hands for the beat before she's in control again. She forces her tone light, grasping for what seems to be -- humor, maybe. She doesn't know. Parents don't spend a great deal of time embarrassing their kids in public, if she should have remembered, with how Ino and her father interacted years ago, or how she'd felt her own mother impose on her while she was in the Academy.

Even if back then it had more of a taste and feel for dictations on how she should be doing in school, if she was doing well, if she was getting along with the other kids (which wasn't the point, she said once, if the rest of the time it was yes, yes, I'm doing well, Iruka-sensei says I'm really understanding this, why do you ask, it's fine, thank you, I'll be down for dinner, I already did my chores). Nothing like this, if she expected it once, if Sasuke had ever been the kind of fantasy she'd created him into being. Back when infatuation was infatuation, before she knew him, and before she really got a taste of love.

"It's all right," she says, an upward lilt in her voice. "I've got him in hand."

Is she supposed to blush? This feels more like flushing, a tie between anger and embarrassment and even more personal embarrassment as denial wavers. Making a fool of herself, being more stupidly, willingly blind because it's easier.

In a way, she wishes that the rising urge to yell comes to mind. Something high and outraged, turning to make a fierce denial of anything of the sort. It's why she made the kitten grab, forestalling herself, since as much as she does like Marco (ass that he is), and respects Eva (more as a paragon of herself and motherhood and survival than for anything especially bonding between the two), they aren't her people. Her people have only recently appeared, and none of those three (four, with the Mizukage) are the ones she relates to as peers. Fears, adores, respects, yes. But she'll no more turn around and deck Marco in the face for being part perpetrator in this than she will Tsunade, if the reasons are vastly different.

Naruto, she might have. Naruto will have said something right afterward, or made some noise she could take offense to, focus on, and then there'd have been that safe avenue to express the anger that was more at herself than anyone here. She's been stupid. She's been in denial.

Latching the cage door closed, she says, "I'm not sure if Earth has a similar saying, but we have one in Konoha that goes something like... Speak of tomorrow, and the rats in the ceiling laugh." She turns back toward them, smiling, subdued, awkward, and uncomfortable. "And you haven't even asked if we ninja believe in marriage."

Well, her teasing certainly seems to have elicited to appropriate response from her son, but she's a little let down to see that Sakura isn't quite taking it in stride. And here she was hoping that she'd have a team player in humiliating her firstborn-and-only.

"What? I think Sakura's a perfectly lovely young woman, and I have to say I'm pleased you're dating someone who can actually count past twenty this time." She shakes her head and turns back to Sakura. "You're such a step up, dear."

She pulls a kitten of her own out of the pens, using the moment to try and decide whether or not to descend into idle chitchat or continue making fun of her son.

"We have a phrase that goes something like that, only it's a bit more foreboding and forewarning. 'Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos'." Eva's smile goes all the way up to her eyes. "Breed crows and they'll rip your eyes out."

Seriously? Sayings? That's what they had decided to start talking about?

Marco was surrounded by crazy people. Crazy people who were determined to make him feet utterly embarrassed.

"I am not getting married," he hissed at Eva. "Not now, not ever. And...wait, step up from who? There haven't..." Marco trailed off, frowning. Those goddamn three years again. And the idea that his mother knew more about the girls Marco would apparently date in his future than he did was...well. Really unsettling.

"Yes, and we all love to hear about the crows ripping people's eyes out," Marco said, making a sarcastic quip to try and regain his footing.

"That's the fun thing about birds, you rarely hear about them going for the jugular." This time she grins and promptly chooses to ignore all the rest.

"Not ever? But you have to give me grandchildren, and Lord knows any child you have out of wedlock will birth a scandal. No pun intended." Eva feels the slightest pang as she thinks of that, of how Marco has probable left her and Peter bereft back in her timeline. No grandchildren for her. No son for her.

She flicks a finger at Marco's ear. "You have no respect for your cultural heritage."

"See, this is why you should have had more than one kid if you wanted grandchildren. I might just never have any just to spite you," Marco quipped back. His mother making jokes about wanting grandchildren wasn't exactly new for Marco, but...oh man, did she really have to talk about it in front of his girlfriend?!

It'd be just his luck, to finally get a girl who would actually go out with him only to have his mother scare her off.

"I have no respect for any heritage," he scoffed. Maybe if he just kept making jokes, this would somehow turn into a situation that didn't make him want to morph into something invisible...

"Legitimacy claims are that important to you?" Sakura found that a little interesting, if the subject itself was negligible future, usually unspoken standard fare back home.

She also found it a little surprising, but she hadn't focused on family social dynamics in her readings on Earth. Why should she? She wasn't planning to ever have an Earth standard anything in the future. Why compromise off and away from her own core values? She did that enough with everything else.

Yet that idea -- and hearing Eva mention heritage -- prompted her into a hesitant question. She hoped the hesitation didn't show outwardly, if her tone did mellow and her voice was softer than it had been before. The last time she'd tried to figure this out around Marco had led to him getting angry over it, and she figured it might garner the same response now.

But with Eva... maybe there'd be a change. "Exactly what heritage is that? Does it have anything to do with being Hispanic?" She held up one hand, toward Marco, as if to forestall him cutting her off too prematurely from this particular line of questioning. "I know that in your world's history Hispania was the name of a particular empire involving countries I've half forgotten the names of, but that in closer to the times I'm guessing you're from, it became less of a national identity, and more a cultural one spread through parts of three different continents."

She let her hand lower, honestly concerned that this was far too direct and offensive. She did want to know, on the other hand. Between weighing the two options, she'd rather ask forgiveness after the fact.

Not like things could get much more awkward than they were right now anyway, right?

"My family has no history of bastard children and we aren't going to start with this generation." She flicks at Marco's ear again, but she smiles at Sakura's question. "Less to do with being Hispanic and more to do with being South American. Marco was raised American, but he tends to forget how much effort I put into getting to that point. It would be nice if I got a little respect for it."

And she had to walk uphill both ways to school and it was always snowing and in her day they called the internet books. So there, Marco.

"No one that you know about," Marco said to Eva, rolling his eyes.

And far from being offended, Marco was thrilled to have a subject - any subject - other than marriage and children to latch onto. Really, he could talk about his family heritage for ages if it meant not talking about how much his mother wanted grandchildren.

Course, it would have helped if Marco had actually paid any attention to his family history. Well, he'd instead for sniggering at Sakura instead. "You went and researched it?" he said, before attempting to put on a straight face. He didn't quite succeed. "But Mom, we're totally really from Hispania."

Marco had never mentioned he was part of a clan -- or a family with clan tendencies. Then again, Marco was master of not mentioning one hell of a lot of important details.

Like the apparent fact he considered them to be dating.

Her smile was less humorous when she responded to Marco, having nodded to Eva's explanation. America wasn't much of a narrowing, but talking with Setsuna left her believing Eva meant the United States of America, and not one of the other regions. Adapting an eerily accurate match of Marco's own voice, she held up her fingers to make those ages old endearing marks of air quotations as she quoted: "What the hell does dual citizenship have to do this? You think that I can't be a citizen of anywhere other than a 'Hispanic country', is that it?!"

With a pause for appreciation, she gave him a flat look. "You're telling me if you said something that managed to piss me off, you wouldn't spend the time trying to figure out why it did?"

[ ooc: for your reference as to the when ]

Oh, Eva's liking Sakura all the more. She crosses her arms and waits for Marco's response, a badly-hidden smirk creeping around the edge of her mouth.

Dating is what generally happens after you ask someone out on a date, Sakura.

But at Sakura, he blinked, trying to remember that conversation. He'd be stuck in a bubble and deaged to thirteen then, so his memory was a little fuzzy.

"Hey, it's not my fault that you went and mixed up a race with a country!" Marco protested. "And Barbie, come on. You turn 'finding something out' into writing a goddamn research paper."

She and Naruto had gone on dates. They were never dating.

"No, no, it's your right to make assumptions and act like an id-- superior person, as if everyone who isn't from Earth must have a clear, obvious understanding of exactly what your Earth terms mean, no matter the context. It's all right. I forgive you... for being thirteen at the time."

We were all insensitive around that age. Generally speaking.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "And that didn't answer my question."

"Well I'd try, I don't know, actually asking what the hell pissed you off instead of trying to find it in a book somewhere," Marco said, crossing his own arms and scowling.

"Would you take the time to shut up and listen afterward?"

"...Is there any safe way to answer that question?"

"Yes." If she's answering him, or instructing him in the answer, it's exceedingly hard to tell.

She's smiling as she turns to Eva, giving a shallow bow as she says, "It's good to see you again, Eva-san. I'm sorry to have to run so soon after you got here, but I have a previous engagement I should get to before too long."

"And lovely to see you again, too, Sakura." She can't and doesn't scrub away the sound of concern from her voice. She's not sure what just transpired, but she can tell that quite suddenly, tension arose. Genuine tension, not just teasing tension with some genuine undertones. "I hope we'll see more of you in the future."

Marco clenched his fists, narrowing his eyes. She didn't hadn't mentioned any 'previous engagements', and Marco wasn't stupid. There was no previous engagement. He knew a bullshit excuse when he saw one.

"Right your previous engagement," he said, his voice deceptively neutral. He didn't look at Eva. It was bad enough that Sakura hadn't even seen to fit to actually tell him the reason reason why she was blowing him off, but no, his mother had to be here too to witness it all.

She makes her exist as reasonably as she can. She can already tell this will be a problem with Marco later.

It's a problem for her right now.

With that, Sakura is gone, melting away into the outside crowds like she truly does look like just any other alien, and not a pink haired humanoid.

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Hello Kittenland

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short tag is short, sorry XD

Re: short tag is short, sorry XD

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