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He had scraped up enough money for this. It took a lot of jobs - and a willfulness that had to be stronger than his urge to gamble it all way - but he was able to raise just enough to get what he needed.
But of course, this was Sakata Gintoki. He didn't like doing things the easy way. He called together an "important business meeting" concerning the Yorozuya over some nice dinner. As the kids sat down, they saw a cooker in front of them. Empty.
And Gintoki was grinning.
"Today's dinner is teamwork."
Teamwork..? Kagura raised a hand. "As Madame Foreman, can I be exempt?"
"No." Gintoki crossed his arms. "If you wanna eat, you gotta team build! And that was only one time, Kagura. If you get us tickets to Disney Sea, you can be foreman for a week."
Shinpachi groaned. The usual, it seemed.
A big bowl of batter was placed on the table, along with octopus, some vegetables, shrimp, sauce... Shinpachi caught on pretty quickly. Oh, they were going to make takoyaki! He used to make this a lot with his father, but after he died the takoyaki pan was sold to help pay for the dojo.
Gintoki demonstrated, pouring one ball and dropping the ingredients inside it before turning it around to cook it. Eventually, the ball was finished and he put it on a plate, holding it up. "Presenting: takoyaki! You're making your own dinners tonight." He held the plate out of Kagura's reach before splitting the takoyaki ball in half and eating it.
"Excuse me, how is this team building? This looks easy!"
"There's a catch."
That is, until their hands were tied together. Gintoki had this grin on his face - team building indeed! "You have to properly cook and eat the takoyaki while your hands are tied to each other."
Shinpachi sighed. Why did he have to be in the middle?
"Ready, set, go!"
Immediately, Gintoki captured the spoon to pour the batter and started to pour. However, reaching over the others was difficult to get the batter in further spots in the pan. He bumped heads with Kagura, who was leaning the other direction to put the other ingredients inside the batter. Shinpachi held up his (and their) hands to stop them from fighting after that.
So far, not so good.
"Kagura, Gin, you two have a free hand, so you should turn the balls."
"I did it last time." Gintoki picked something out of his teeth with one of the sticks. "Kagura should do it."
She tried flipping it while it wasn't fully cooked on one side, causing it to splatter. Shinpachi grabbed a stick and tried, but that required moving Kagura's hand and she was... strong. Her hand was not budging. Now she was just being difficult! He was left to using his left hand. At least Gintoki wasn't as bad, but he jerked his right hand back to pick up an ingredient once and caused the stick in Shinpachi's left to go flying.
"This is impossible, Gin." Shinpachi leaned back. "We need to coordinate. We should all have a section to work on. We'll pass the spoon back and fourth and things like that. You two should pass everything with your two free hands."
Kagura shook her head. "Let me pour first."
"Fine, you pour. Hand over the spoon, Gin."
With that system, Shinpachi actually did almost nothing, and the other two used their free hands to pour and turn the balls. Eventually, a small pile had formed in front of them. Finally, Gintoki unclipped their hands.
All three of them were pretty proud of this.
That wasn't bad!
"Teamwork for dinner tastes good," Kagura remarked as she stuffed three in her mouth at once. "Is this missing something?"
They glanced at the table. All the bowls of ingredients were still full of ingredients. "Shinpachi... weren't you supposed to put in the ingredients? Now they're just ball batters," Gintoki muttered.
In fact, they hadn't assigned anyone for those ingredients.
And they were out of batter, too. The three of them just stared at the table for a bit before smacking Shinpachi on the face. It hadn't been his fault! Damnit!
"...Let's just go buy some takoyaki."
Family meal outings were just as good as failing to make said meals.