I'd like to thank MooseTracks from the Asushin server for being my most vocal support. As well as that guest on Fanfiction dot net who is adamant that I shouldn't write another chapter. I don't think I'd have done this one without you guys cheering me on.
Also you should really read this on AO3. Fuck this place's formatting.
"Minigolf?" Shinji asked.
They were standing in front of a local minigolf course, a large sign with the words "Krazy Kaji's Putt-holes" written in fading letters.
Asuka raised a brow. Dang it, it was still cute.
"Ragrah grah gr?" She answered his question with one of her own.
"What? No, I wasn't even thinking about that. I figured you knew what you were gonna do to make that work," Shinji replied, "I just haven't ever played before."
She stared at him in disbelief. "Rargra gra gar ra?!" She waved her tiny arms for emphasis at the last word.
"No, I've never played. It seems kind of weird now that you bring it up. Seems like the kind of thing Misato would have been all over," Shinji said, scratching the top of his head in confusion.
Asuka's eyes narrowed into slits. For a split-second Shinji wondered if that was jealousy, before the tilt of her head cemented it as innocent curiosity.
"Graraga? Grah rahgra?" She asked.
"Misato? Oh, she was my caregiver growing up. My mother passed away when I was little. My father worked a lot, and wasn't really the best at the whole parenting thing. Sometimes he'd be over there for days at a time, and then he'd be times when they were out of the country for weeks. It ended up being easier for me to live with a family friend."
"Grah," Asuka said softly, apparently not really sure how to respond to that.
Shinji shrugged. "It is what it is," he said, "and it was fine. He tried his best, and when it didn't work he did his best to be there when he could. And Misato really cared for me. She's fun, just, not exactly the best at keeping a house running," he chuckled, "I had to learn to cook pretty early, or I might not have made it."
Asuka nodded, seeming a bit more at ease. There was an uncomfortable silence that Shinji really, really wanted to break. He didn't want his history to make things awkward.
"Uhhh, so have you played minigolf before?" Shinji asked, trying his best to to keep the conversation going back into safe territory. Something not related to Asuka's family. He could see she didn't want to talk about hers, or she'd have mentioned it already.
Asuka's eyes closed in a smile as she nodded again. "Grar grarah rah," she boasted.
"Really? I didn't know they had tournaments for minigolf."
Asuka lifted a brow ridge, "Ragra?"
"No. I mean I guess it makes sense. They have tournaments for pretty much everything at some level. Just, you know, didn't really cross my mind that there'd be ones for minigolf," Shinji shrugged. Really, it's not like it would be something he'd spend a lot of thought on, how was he supposed to know?
"Rahgra," she shrugged back. Apparently, she was thinking along the same lines.
"But still, tournaments. Plural. How many have you won?" Shinji asked, sounding impressed.
Asuka was taken aback. He was genuinely interested. It had just been something she'd mentioned off the cuff, a little casual boasting to stroke her ego.
"Er, gra ragra," she said, not entirely concealing her surprise.
"That's really cool," Shinj said, "how do they work? I mean, what all do you do in the tournament?"
"Gargra ragra rhah gra. Grr rah gra," she explained, happy to be able to fall back into the more comfortable role.
"Oh, neat," he said. Another pause, although this one much more comfortable then the last.
"Gra rargra grarag?" Asuka waved her claw towards the door to the small building at the gate.
"Yeah, this should be fun."
Right. Fun. Just don't make too big a fool of yourself. Shinji tried to psych himself up. He'd already been thrown a little off balance from the previous bit of awkwardness and he really didn't want to lose his composure in front of her. There was something about her that had helped him push past his natural introverted tendencies so far, but it apparently had its limits.
'It'll be fine,' he told himself, 'She knows I haven't done this; she won't expect me to be good right away.'
His rational side tried to reassure him that this line of reasoning made perfect sense, but that damn nagging voice wasn't convinced. 'She's so talented,' it whispered, 'It seems like she can do anything, how will she react when you can't even hit a ball into a hole.'
'You haven't even tried,' his voice of reason chimed in, 'it could be easy. You could be good at it.'
'Or you could fail and look like a fool,' the anxiety whispered.
'And that could be really funny,' the positive voice answered, 'You've already made her laugh several times. She wanted to go on this date. She's smiling.'
And with that, his fragile confidence reasserted itself. It didn't matter how he did. He liked hanging out with her. She apparently liked hanging with him. All he had to do was focus on her and having fun. And she found this fun. He could do this. He could do this.
Shinji's mental battle had thankfully ended by the time they got to the counter.
The bored attendant behind the counter took a moment before his eyes glanced up from his phone. With a small sigh, he put down his phone turned to face them directly, "Welcome to Kaiji's minigolf thing. Entry for two?"
In another time, in another place, Asuka might have gotten a bit agitated at the dismissive and unprofessional attitude. But Asuka worked in a coffee shop, and she understood the pain of the service industry. Putting on a safe smile, being careful not to show any teeth, she nodded.
"Okay, that'll be 2,000 yen. You have any preference in colors?"
Shinji made to pull out his wallet when Asuka waved her claw in front of him. "Ragra gra," she said, pulling out some cash from her purse and putting it in her grabby arm to hand it to the attendant over the counter. She glanced over to Shinji with one eye, an almost expectant look in said eye.
Shinji's eyebrows furrowed a bit before nodding, "Okay, if you want to cover entry, I'll take care of lunch."
Her tight smile didn't change, still making an effort not to show teeth, but Shinji could see her brows crinkle happily. He figured it must have been some sort of test, and he passed? Well, if she has happy then he wasn't going to question it. Hopefully he'd keep passing and she'd explain when she was ready.
Turning her attention back to the attendant, Asuka pointed her grabby arm at the red putter and ball, "Ragra rah."
Shinji made a mental note of her color preference before making his own choice, "I'll take the blue ones, please."
The attendant put the payment in the register, grabbing their balls and clubs and a stamp before coming back. He put their tools on the counter and then picked up the stamp, "Okay, so I'm going to need to stamp your hands."
The couple each held out their hands or claws. The attendant stamped Shinji's hand before hesitating for a moment. He then shrugged and stood on his toes to stretch across the counter, barely managing to land the stamp on Asuka's claw.
"There you go. The first hole is on the other side of the lot. It's got a big one on it, you can't miss it," he leaned back and pulled out his phone again, once more in his own little world.
Shinji grabbed the clubs and balls from the counter and handed the red one to Asuka. Asuka raised a hand with a hum before reaching back into her purse and digging around. With a growl of triumph, she pulled out what looked to be another of her inventions. Taking the offered club with her other claw, she clipped on the device toward the handle of her club.
Looking back up at Shinji, she let out a toothy grin, "Rag grah."
Shinji smiled back, "Alright. Lead the way."
Asuka led them out the door and towards the first hole. Walking past the different courses, he noticed that most of them seemed to follow a 'worldwide' theme. Some were clearly supposed to be miniature cities, some were just specific landmarks, and some seemed to just be weird shapes.
Reaching the first hole, Asuka stepped up to the starting area. She fiddled some more with the doodad she had pulled from her purse, letting Shinji get a good look at it. It looked to be a sort of rectangle-ish shape, with a clip for the club on one end. On the side there was what was apparently a brace for Asuka's small arms that she was currently putting on. As she did her was able to see how it worked, keeping it steady to her arm without relying on her weaker grip, with a small joint letting her use her limited digit movement to make adjustments. Extending from inside the rectangle was another pole, this one either spring-loaded or something, capped off with a mirror angled towards the putter's head and letting her see ball below her.
Once again, Shinji was in awe of just how clever his date was. "Did you design this too?" he asked, not bothering to conceal how impressed he was.
Asuka grinned even wider than earlier, face full of pride. "Grah grah, rahgr rah gr rahra," she explained, her enthusiasm causing her words to run together.
The small smile Shinji had been wearing most of the date softened. She was really cute when she got excited.
Asuka paused for a moment to inhale. She had a bad habit of forgetting to breath when she really got going on her projects. Noticing the soft smile on Shinji's face, a flush of warmth went through her body, settling in on her face. It was always a bit embarrassing when she got caught up in her passions, but… maybe it wasn't so bad if he kept looking at her like that.
"Argrah ragra," she looked away, not able to keep eye contact. Probably best to get back to the game.
"Sure, you first. You can show me how it's done."
She nodded, as much as response to him as it was to regain composure. Right, minigolf. Settling into the familiar stance over the ball, she made some adjustments on her club before tapping the ball.
Bounce. Bounce. Thunk.
Hole-in-one. Not super surprising. The first hole was always super easy, which was nice since she could feel a bit of rust on that put. Those wall bounces were not quite where she saw them happening in her mind's eye.
She stepped away from the starting spot, waving Shinji over with her club.
Shinji hummed, setting down his ball and standing in the spot she had just vacated.
He squirmed a bit, trying to get into the pose he remembered seeing golfers on tv take when putting on the green. Asuka imagined coming up behind him and guiding his limbs into position, their bodies oh so very close. She looked down at her claws and tiny arms. Yeah, not gonna happen. Instead, she gave him a low growl to relax, almost a hum. A lot of tension left his body and he settled into a comfortable stance, somehow far closer to the poses he'd been trying to emulate then his earlier attempts.
He tapped the ball, emulating the same path Asuka had taken. He missed the bounce right before the hole, requiring a second putt, but he was okay with a two.
He looked over to Asuka, "Par." She grinned back, it was infectious.
The next several holes passed about the same way. Asuka sinking her putts in one or two shots, while Shinji managed to hover around par. There was one hole where he slipped and somehow managed to sink his ball into the next hole over. Unfortunately, Asuka did not approve his suggestion of counting it as a hole-in-one for the hole he landed in. Shinji made some half-hearted grumbles, but Asuka's barking laugh cemented that as the shot he was most proud of.
Sadly, focus on Shinji caused her to take her attention off her surroundings. And the universe decided to punish her arrogance in the form of small children. Unable to hear their approach over the sound of her laughter, Asuka was taken by surprise when a gaggle of children ran screaming past her. In a combination of trying to dodge and the children's own uncaring shoving, Asuka lost her balance and fell on her side.
Shinji rushed over, opening his mouth to ask if she was okay, but the words died as she let out the loudest growl he'd heard from her. Following her eyes, he saw that she was glaring at her putting tool as if trying to set it alight with her mind. After a moment, he realized why. The braces had snapped, both on her arm and at the junction where it met the small box. The clip to the club was skewed, but still had a decent hold and the pole with the mirror was still intact. But without the brace, she was barely going to be able to hold the club.
He helped her too her feet, and he could tell she had to make a visible effort to not yank her claws from his hands when she was up. Staring again at her broken device still clipped to her club on the ground, she growled again and waved her arms at him before stomping off.
She was livid. Those damn brats, were they blind as well as stupid? She growled and snarled as she stomped away to settle down. Thankfully Shinji seemed to understand. The last thing she wanted was to let loose her temper in front of him. She wasn't ready to show him that side of her. And she wasn't sure he was ready to see it yet, either. She'd been doing so much better about keeping her temper in check the past year or so, but her worry about this date had frayed her nerves already and her patience was thin.
Thankfully there were hedge barriers between several of the holes, so she could have a bit of a tantrum without him seeing. So she did. Growling and stomping, she cut across the closest hole, her teeth gnashing and tail swinging wildly. She didn't notice the children who'd been about to play the hole, didn't notice their screams of excitement change to screams of fear as they booked it at the sight of the enraged dinosaur. That the fear may partially be fear of being tattled on by the angry dino-lady for running when they weren't supposed to was left unsaid.
The hole was modeled after Tokyo, heavy wooden boxes shaped like buildings littered across the green. Boxes that, surprisingly, were not fixed to the ground, rather they were weighted down with heavy stone at their base. Something that Asuka barely noticed when her powerful tail knocked them over without much trouble.
Carnotaurus don't roar. Most therapods don't. But that didn't really matter to Asuka as she tried her damnedest as she stomped through the miniature Tokyo. At this point she'd really gotten into it, rampaging towards the Tokyo tower replica in the middle of the hole and bashing it with her head and sending it tumbling with a mighty crash.
The sound of the crash brought Asuka out of her rage with a jolt. A chill went down from the base of her neck to the tip of her tail. The hole was in shambles, as if a hurricane had rolled through. Or some other disaster. Which is pretty much what happened, she thought. A disaster on two legs.
Asuka looked around nervously. Hopefully no one had seen her. She slinked off as stealthily as possible, tail tucked low. Head swiveling to try and spot any onlookers; she missed looking where she was going until she almost bowled over Shinji. Regaining her balance, Asuka couldn't bring herself to look at Shinji's face. This was exactly what she hadn't wanted him to see. What would he think about her now that he'd seen the her temper out in the open. More and more dark thoughts started swirling through her head, each one worse than the last, until a snort cut through it all and made her pause.
Looking over at Shinji's face, he saw him looking over the results of her rampage. And smiling. He snorted again; a heavy shaking started in his chest before bursting forth in the deepest laughs she'd ever heard from him. He looked over at her and immediately put his fist in front of his mouth, trying to stifle his laughter.
"I'm sorry," he choked out, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything bad." He managed to get himself under control, taking a deep breath before continuing, "I'm sorry-" she was getting real tired of hearing that "it's just, I mean look at it," he waved his hand towards the hole. She looked over at the mess she made before looking back at him with a raised brow.
Taking her silence as a sign, he continued, "You Godzilla'd Tokyo!" Another snort broke through as he said it. She blinked. Looked over to the results of her rampage and then looked back at Shinji again. And then snorted, starting a low rumbling chuckle that broke out into her own deep barking laughs. Shinji joined in, not able to hold it in anymore. They both laughed until they felt sick, reduced to leaning on each other to stay upright.
Eventually they were able to get their breathing under control and stand on their own power. Looking back at each other, Asuka hoped that he would mistake her blush for being red in the face from laughter.
"Grah ragrarah?" she asked, just a hint of nervousness in her tone.
"What? No!" Shinji shook his head, "I'd have been furious too. Though," he glanced over at the 'ruins', "I don't know if I'd have been quite as impressive."
Hearing admiration in his voice rather than judgement or scorn, Asuka felt the weight start to ease off her chest. "Raga," she muttered.
"Yeah, probably," he nodded, "But despite that handicap, I had an idea." He reached behind into his back pocket, "Probably not anything as clever as what you'd come up with, but I was able to get this from the guy at the counter." He pulled out a roll of duct tape, getting a skeptical look from his date. Asuka gestured for him to continue, not going to dignify this with a response yet.
"Well, I figure if the brace was mostly just holding it to your arm, we could use this to get something similar."
Asuka snorted, that's what she'd been afraid he'd say. "Grah, ragra rah. Raga," she said with only mild reluctance. Honestly it would probably work. Sort of. It was just so ridiculous that she almost wished it wouldn't. She started heading over towards their last played hole where she'd left her club.
"Wait."
She stopped, turning to look back at him.
"I brought your club to the next hole. We were finished with that one."
Asuka smiled a little at his thoughtfulness, before nodding and turning to go to the next hole. The next hole looked like it was modeled after Paris, the janky looking thing in the middle apparently supposed to be the Eiffel Tower. Eh, she'd seen worse. Pulling out her grabby arm, she reached out to pick up the club off the ground and bring it to her claws. She then tried her best to hold the handle end flush against her putting arm with the other one, though the angle made it less than an ideal position. She turned to face Shinji to find him already walking over and pulling off a strand of tape.
"You ready?" he asked.
She wanted to roll her eyes, but knowing that he was completely genuine in his efforts to help, she just settled on nodding. Gently, he started wrapping the handle flush against her arm, keeping to the forelimb so as not to hinder her weak claw joints. When he finished, he made a gentle tug on the club, both forward and away from her arm.
"Feel alright?" he asked, "Not too tight, not too loose?"
Asuka wiggled her digits and moved her arm side to side before looking up and nodding. This might work better than she thought.
"Okay," Shinji took a step back with a grin, "you're up. Ball is on the tee."
Stepping up to the starting area, Asuka looked down at the ball with the mirror still intact.
The rest of the game went by smoothly. The roughshod solution worked better than either teen had hoped. And there was no trouble as a result of Asuka's episode either. Apparently, everyone who cared was too worried about stereotyping to suggest anything, and the kids who actually saw what happened were too afraid of being ratted out for breaking the Dino-lady's expensive-looking thingamajig.
Returning the putters and balls after finishing the last hole, the pair left the course without any particular direction.
"So, where do you wanna eat?" Shinji asked. He smiled again as her face scrunched up in thought. He still couldn't get over how cute she was when she did that. He didn't really care where they ate, as long as they were eating tog-
"Ragra ra?"
"Italian? Ew!"
"Graa?! Gra ragra rah, RAGA!"
"Well maybe, but I can tell you that there's no good Italian in this town!"
Preview:
"Grar ragra rah?"
"No, it's my turn to choose the date. When it's your turn to choose, then you can choose arson."