Sakura Dress Up Game: Hinata

This one was really fun. Aliya recommended it after a comment Hinata made in a recent chapter, and I was just like "yes, I do want to write that, let's put it in the poll."
Then I forgot to put it in the poll and here we are I wrote it anyway. My $10 patrons are my peeps.

I did sneak some lore in here, always do.
Enjoy the cute.

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“Oh, wow!” Konoha doesn’t have sidewalks, but it does have side paths that take you right by shops in the market district. It’s like a special place just for shoppers like her to bump into each-other, get pick pocketed, and marvel at what’s behind the glass. Ino finds herself in one such situation right this moment - gazing through the window, not getting pick pocketed - and she can’t keep the shiny stars out of her eyes. She’s been staring somewhat long actually, and she can tell the shopkeep is getting impatient with her. There’s this urgency in their looks, a ‘go away or buy something’ glare that’s hidden behind a smile and half twitch to their eyes.

That might just also be how everyone in retail looks, she’s not really sure. She doesn’t see it in higher end stores but they probably pay more… Whatever the case, she’s looking at something magnificent in the middle of the store, and she’s a little too stunned still to actually go buy it at the moment.

Another moment passes.

One more for posterity.

She’s over it, she slips through the store door and holds in a giggle at how cutesy the bell above the door sounds. It’s not the kind of luxury store she would normally shop at, but that makes it better because no one will recognize her and ask why she’s buying something like this. Her hands rub together, and she darts around trying to make it look like she’s looking around, but she only has the patience to do that for all of thirty seconds before she picks up the piece she’s looking for and approaches the counter. Holding it in her hands she can tell it’s in just the right ballpark for easy modification for what she needs, she’s so lucky today!

“I’ll take this.” She plops it on the counter with a big award winning smile that she’s sure lights up the room. It only takes one moment of the worker behind the counter looking her over, then the coat, then back at her for her to get self conscious enough to explain. “It’s not for me.” There’s a number of reasons one might question this purchase, one of which being it’d be somewhat big on her, another being that it’s not her color at all. She chooses to accept the silent scrutiny for what it is, a girl looking out for another, even if unspoken. Or maybe she’s misreading it and the girl is contemplating the meaning of life while trying not to gargle mysterious chemicals in the back, the reality is that for all her Charm civilians live in a different world and she doesn’t know the first thing about them.

She brought her own discreet bag, so after paying and skipping out the door, she’s already on her way home to plan the rest of the outfit and maybe look up where she can find the other pieces she needs.

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After what feels like an eternity but is only like a week in reality, the Blonde heiress finds herself calling Sakura to her house with a big smile and a devious glint in her eyes. There’s a lot on the docket today but only one thing is important enough to put everything on hold and it’s right in front of her. She’s right in front of her, she means. “Let’s go, I have something to show you!”

Sakura follows behind her while she practically vibrates in her steps, jumping for joy and leading her up the stairs to her room. In a compound like this there’s a few twists and turns but as the heiress she has a priority room so it’s not that far from the front. It also helps her get to the shop quicker, since she has frequent shifts there. With great main-branch genetics does come great main-branch responsibilities.

In Sakura’s house she’d already be jumping into action but here, they enter her expansive room after a solid minute of walking. The suspense tries to kill her, it almost succeeds. The first moment she can she points to her bed and watches Sakura plop down on it, before she makes her way to the closet while struggling to hold in the potent energies threatening to break free from her skin. Best day, ever, and she hasn’t even gotten to the cool part yet!

She throws open her closet and poses beside her prize, “behold, greatness, ahahahahaha!” She can’t help the way her inner villain comes out, it’s too perfect. She’s set it up on display at the front. Her closet is like a walk-in clothing shop of it’s own, and it’s currently parted and pushed to the sides so that a standing mannequin at the front can catch the eye immediately and show itself as the centerpiece of their evening. It holds on it everything they need, including a bottle of hair dye sitting on a bald plastic head.

“Uh, Ino, why did you take Hinata’s clothes?” Sakura can’t help but ask, looking at the fluffy coat before her. It looks very comfortable, it always does, it has for the several years in a row she’s seen it regularly. Blue leggings wrap the mannequin legs baggily before stopping a few inches above the ankles. Blue sandals cover most of its feet and ankles, only stopping right above the toes. These are definitely the clothes of their practically royal classmate. “She’s going to want those back.”

“I bought them at a store, nevermind that.” Ino waves a hand at her in dismissal, spinning around in an elegant and playful circle before throwing both hands out to frame the outfit again. “It took me days to find the exact shade of hair dye, but I figure we can practically make you look just like her with a little effort. I’m super excited, I’ve practically been foaming at the mouth all week.”

“Uh… why?” Sakura asks, nervously rubbing her hands together while staring at her crazy best friend.

“Because it’ll be cute,” Ino looks back at her with furrowed brows, “why do we do anything? Please don’t ruin this for me.”

“Right, um, won’t Hinata be a little bothered if I start walking around as her? Somewhat worried I might get interrogated for impersonating someone that important.” Sakura admits, reaching up with those hands to scratch at her neck.

“You won’t be leaving the house, I just, Sakura, play along!” Ino shakes her wrist at her. “I even got a quick wash-out dye for this, it was actually quite a bit of work because they sell the normal shade here but I had to get the quick stuff specially ordered which means I had to pay a lot more…” She winces at the memory, daddy won’t be happy with that bill. She is though, this is going to be amazing!

“If you’re sure.” Sakura gulps, apprehensively looking over the outfit again. She doesn’t question it having likely been tailored to fit her, or that Ino has her exact measurements, she’s so passed that. “You’re not going to make me dress up as Naruto or Sasuke next, right?”

“No, girls first, it’s Tenten next.”

“That’s a worrying answer-”

“Get in my closet and change!”

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Despite her own misgivings, Sakura can’t deny it feels nice to play around a little with her day and do something childish for once. Sure she has her games, and people say they’re childish, but a lot of the time they feel intense or stressful on their own and while the intensity and investment is a good thing she wouldn’t call shopping, grinding, preparing and taking on a false god childish by any means. Her games are doors into another world that others fail to understand, not a child’s getaway from the world in front of her. Anyone using games as an actual escape is misusing them, and she’ll freely admit she was doing that for a while. A part of growing up was making her games less childish, and instead something to do to connect with something outside of herself to help her gain perspective… It’s complicated when she puts it like that, the point is there’s something nice about giggling with Ino and forgetting about responsibilities; whether they be to her family, her village, or to some elven princess in a faraway land.

The feeling of the coat on her chest is nice, it’s very fluffy inside and warmer than it has any right being. She wonders if this version is slightly different or if Hinata is boiling at all hours of the day. She’d get her a desk fan but they’re not in school anymore so that’d just be weird. Still, if she ever attends classes with Hinata again some sort of cooling is the first gift she’s giving the girl, in fact she might do it anyway. She’s supposedly welcome with the Hyuuga’s if Neji getting punished for pissing her off is any indication, let alone the implications of Hanabi frequenting her house, so maybe she could walk right in with a fan and put it in Hinata’s room?

Sakura’s used to a skirt of some sort, or at least a dress, her legs breathe and Hinata’s don’t. It’s so sweaty but it feels nice to be wrapped in comforting cloth as well. Almost none of her skin is showing, and Sakura’s pretty sure that’s intentional now that she gives it some thought. Just how self conscious is Hinata? She could probably benefit from a few of her self help books, maybe she’ll drop them off with the fan.

Surely Hinata’s charm is better than her own, but now she has to wonder how much. She never saw her talking to other people either, she is shutting herself away quite decisively, and wow is she warm… She just can’t stop thinking about it, she understands Hinata always looking a little light headed, her head’d be spinning too if she tried to exercise in this! Has she not heard of breathable clothes? You can have breathable yet covering clothes… then again a lot of those are less formally acceptable and Hinata probably has to look at least passably rich and fabulous at all times of the day, the coat is probably a middle ground. All this empathy is screwing with her head, it’s making her simmer which is not good because she’s already melting!

“Come on, I’m not even done with the dye and you’re squirming.” Ino chides, and Sakura does her best to stay still. Her hair is longer than Hinata’s so she’s not exactly sure how Ino plans to make this work. In fact, she asks. “Ino, my hair is like three times as long as hers, easily. Won’t this look awkward and off?” Sakura asks, “Shouldn’t I just wear the hood or something?”

“What? That’d defeat the purpose!” Ino throws her hands up-Before quickly remembering what she’s doing and going back to rubbing Sakura’s scalp over with the dark blue paint-like substance. She chooses to ignore the fact that Ino just splashed the ceiling with coloring, she’s sure Ino will appreciate her silence.

“The purpose?” Sakura can’t help but ask, holding in a sigh. In fact, she takes a deep breath like her mom would want her to, and centers herself in the world around her. Ino’s treating her and it’s nice, the fact that it’s for her own goals can easily be forgotten for a nicer experience.

“I was thinking I'd dress you up slightly differently in a bunch of different ways and take pictures, that way if Hinata ever asks me for advice I can show her what she’d actually look like with my suggestions.” Ino explains, “I sort of have a lot of them, that girl’s got the cute going like nobody’s business but she’s too closed off and it shows in her body language and fashion.”

“... That’s terrifying.” Sakura can’t help but wonder just how much stuff Ino does like that. She’s planning future social interactions that might happen? Is that benevolent or creepy? She spent money on this! How many future conversations with her has Ino planned for, prepped for, and already funded?

“I’ll take that as a compli-stop moving!” She tugs her a little to the side, and Sakura does her best to stop squirming. It’s hard though, Ino’s fingers feel so invasive when she’s focused. It’s a nice feeling but sometimes nice can be bad, awkward or uncomfortable, mostly when she’s thinking and Ino’s being affectionate. It’s like a probing ‘pay attention to me’ that she’s just not ready for.

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Standing with her hands held together, and her hair let down behind her, Sakura can’t help but feel like this is mocking the heiress. She mimes the way Hinata’s top two fingers sometimes twitch to tap each other when she’s feeling nervous but trying to get a point across, which is pretty much anytime she’s trying to get a point across. Ino’s camera is taking a million pictures a minute, and she tilts her head to the side to give a very gentle, shy smile.

Ino better not actually show this to Hinata. They’ll probably both die of embarrassment if Ino does. At the very least she hopes Ino doesn’t tell her if she shows Hinata, because Hinata would literally never bring it up and she can live blissfully unaware. “Just like that, can you kneel a little? Sometimes she tries to make herself smaller, it has to be representative of stuff she’d actually do or pictures won’t get the point across.”

“You just want to see me meekly duck down!” Sakura scolds with a Hinata like scowl, which is actually more pronounced than her own scowl but not by much. Yet again, she has to wonder how much better Hinata is than her… for a noble clan heiress it’s not as much as it probably should be.

“That too, chop chop!” The camera flash blinds her, and she does as she’s told.

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Ino’s gotta be messing with her, there’s no way she’d actually be dumb enough to show these to Hinata. Right?

“How in the nine hells did you manage this?” Sakura’s question hangs in the air, but for the stoic and well-dressed man standing across from her, it seems her question is as pointless as it is strangely worded.

“Stop complaining, I was told I could help Hinata by doing this, I owe her dearly for her intervention after the botched mission.” Neji Hyuuga stands across from her, palm in the air, one leg back, footwork put into practice and body steady. “Now get into this stance or I’ll hurt you.”

“He jumped at the opportunity, I didn’t even have to finish explaining, I just showed him one picture and said ‘fashion advice.” Ino laughs, “the hard part was getting him to come to the Yamanaka compound.”

“Being seen in another clan’s compound would be an issue.” He explains while Sakura does her best to mime that position, taking note of the flowy movements he starts to run her through including a wheel motion with her arms. Hinata’s clothes may be baggy but they stick to her very well when she moves, she’ll have to take note of that when she gets to designing her own clothes one day, when she inevitably decides to venture into tailoring. It’s a truly broken skill in some games, for instance in Project Zomboid it might legitimately be the most important skill out there. She hopes it’s as simple as tearing up a horde’s clothes in this world, err, maybe she doesn’t, that’d imply the zombies that keep invading her dungeons get to the overworld.

“I would not call that mission botched by any means.” Sakura refutes him, Neji shows her a kick, and of course Ino is happy to take pictures of every mimed movement. Her dark hair moves with her, flowing in the way Ino has it currently done up. She’ll be advising against this one, it’s pretty clear it’d go against the style because of a visibility issue-no it wouldn’t, Byakugan! Ino’s a genius, it’ll look like she can’t see to foreigners! “First of all, it got me a new brother.”

“I will take note that you feel that way.” Somehow her statement makes Neji slip up enough he has to catch himself from tripping onto his butt. “The Hyuuga clan would think otherwise.”

“Fuck em.” Is Sakura’s sincere and automatic reaction, “there’s not a single thing I’ve heard about Hiashi so far that’s made me go ‘that’s a man I should respect’, if you’re going to pick someone to look up to pick dad.”

“Not to belittle your family, but what does your father have on the hierarch of the Hyuuga clan?” Neji asks, he’s long since forgotten what they’re doing, running her through random Hyuuga movements while Ino takes pictures of them both a few feet across from each-other is just a natural thing he’s doing without thought. She’s pretty sure they’ve moved into some sort of ceremonial moveset because the swings and spins are over and it all feels very stiff. Well, besides her hands, something about the way they move their hands is magical and hard to mimic.

“Well, he was originally one of those guys fast tracked to become potential Hokage candidates before the Fourth took over.” She explains, there’s actually quite a few people like that. The third was getting old and with most of their best talent not really up for the task, they thought the best idea was to start training new candidates as early as Genin. It was a strange period of history, before Minato showed up and shattered everything with his pure awesomeness. She’d think they should do that again but then the third is really, really old now, it’s probably that generation which’ll take the mantle up anyway. It’s not like the other candidates poofed into thin air, right?

“Yet he’s only a Genin?” Neji asks, “that would normally be a reason not to look up to him, Sakura, squandering an opportunity like that…”

“Well, mom got pregnant.” She shrugs, disrupting the routine but quickly folding back into it at his irritated glare, it appears he is paying attention. She’s sure she’s not doing this amazingly, she doesn’t have the Sharingan or anything, but as her hand makes a flowery movement in front of her chest she’s pretty sure she’s at least pulling off the timid version Hinata probably does. “He actually turned down a promotion, he said the enhanced responsibility would take him away from me. People are more important than status, at least to him. He loves his family and has never hurt me, while Hiashi would torture you for returning having mildly angered a fellow Genin. I don’t understand what you’re not seeing there.”

“Huh… I will have to think on that.” She can see something behind Neji’s eyes. She’s not sure what it is, but she’s satisfied with that at least. “Though you should probably put some thought into yourself, the fact that you think you are simply a ‘fellow Genin’ as you put it, is laughable.”

She doesn’t like that at all, but he does have a point. Still, she doesn’t let him know that. Anything that even remotely justifies that bastard’s actions to Neji is best avoided at all costs. “Am I doing this right?” She asks, as he finally throws another spin into it. Her heels work well, Genin Agility is very useful for this because while she’s starting the movements late her ability to move at full speed from nothing means she can spring into it and be almost as fast, if not a little less accurate.

“Well enough for fashion advice.” Neji affirms.

“These pictures are amazing!” Ino’s excited at least.