Great Lakes & Expectations chapter 15

She woke up probably about an hour later, feeling the ache in her muscles. 

It was dark out. Ugh. Could she go back to bed?

Regina laid on the floor, listening. Evidently Shizune and Momo were back- there was some light noise emanating from the next rooms. Someone was unwrapping or wrapping something with plastic. 

Shizune would want dinner. Momo, too, probably.

Regina idly wondered whether Jiraiya was aware that a missing ninja was her contractually-obligated bestie. 

At least dinner would be interesting. They could hardly leave Momo to his own devices. The anbu would flip their shit. 

She rolled over and crawled out of the futon, bidding it a fond goodbye. 

Regina stood up and padded over to the fusuma, opening the door slightly. 

Shizune was briskly Being Productive, evidently. There was a bag of detritus and a lot of storage seal papers. She was currently muscling a bunch of stuff into one- which was bizarre. If you could fit stuff into tiny papers, why overcram them?

She used her chakra and rammed the pile of clothes in, sealing it shut. 

Regina dutifully pretended not to see anything, and made some intentional noise in closing the open fusuma door. 

“Just getting ready.” Shizune said, in a brusque way that said she was taking no questions whatsoever. 

Regina distinctly saw no less than 5 drums of high-grade sake, and a pile of weapons on the floor.

It just seemed like something not worth dying for. Shizune could handle herself just fine. 

Momo was just waiting by the genkan with the door open, polishing his kunai. His big-ass sword was on the table. 

‘Just glad this isn’t my house. I don’t think I want weapons where I eat food.’

Then she remembered something. He was doing this in full view of the street? That probably seemed really aggressive. Was this the shinobi equivalent of peeing on someone else’s stuff?

She plopped down next to him and watched him work. Jiraiya-dad had to be arriving soon to take them all to dinner. 

“Hold this.” He told her, carefully handing her the handle end of a short sword. 

Regina dutifully took it and held it out from her not unlike how she would hold venomous snake. 

He produced some cloths and poured some oil on them. 

“Rub them in circles.” He instructed, pointing his finger at the blade. “From here,” the hilt, “to the end.”

She did not grumble, but just looked at him. 

“If you’re going to live here, you should know how to care for a weapon.” He grunted. “They’ll never respect you if they think you don’t know anything.”

That was a fair point, probably. She wasn’t going to be using any weapons (hopefully), but that didn’t mean she should be completely unaware of them. 

Regina followed instructions, polishing the short sword until it gleamed. Momo showed her how to tell how sharp it was- and showed her kunai to demonstrate what damage meant it was irretrievable or just needed to be filed and sharpened. 

Some of that was vaguely familiar- Regina’s real dad, universes away, had been something of a gun and knife enthusiast. He’d shown her how to polish them when she was little, and the kitchen knives they’d had would have served handily as murder weapons. 

Regina had displayed roughly zero interest in the subject even then, but had learned the required levels of competency to keep in her father’s good esteem. 

She probably wouldn’t remember all of this, but Momo did end up teaching her sharp thing words that she hadn’t known. Those would probably be important to her impending career. 

Speaking of which. 

She felt doom on the horizon. It started as a shiver up her spine and a learned tightness in her stomach. 

Regina swallowed the excess saliva in her mouth and looked up slowly from her ‘arts and crafts with Danger’ project.

The first thing she saw was a claw the size of her leg outside the genkan.

‘Nope.’

She looked back down. 

It smelled like lake water. 

Momo didn’t seem to even register it, so she refused to, either. 

Somewhere above her there was a small coughing sound. 

She polished the sword. Yes, it was shiny and she was probably done. But there was no way she was moving on from it without being budged. It was going to be the shiniest fucking sword in the Elemental Nations. That or she’d wax it to a stub long before acknowledging Jiraiya’s giant fucking toad summon 3 feet from her body. 

‘Nope nope nope.’

She even polished the handle, wiping away the grime before taking a clean towel to get the oil off. So shiny. She was such a good helper. 

There was a surprisingly high-pitched whine somewhere above her head. 

She examined a nonexistent scratch. 

“Regi!” Jiraiya whispered, sounding like he was doing it out of the corner of his mouth. She had no idea how, but that’s what it sounded like. 

She carefully did not look up. 

Someone observant and not entirely kind might observe this was similar to how she’d met him again this morning. 

Someone kind would say that civilians maybe lacked spatial/danger awareness. 

She knew well enough that the only real danger was how much more weird he could get. And that seemed to usually correspond with engagement. If she met him on his terms and gave him a reaction, he would be delighted. And do it again. And again. 

If she ignored him for long enough, sometimes there were baffling and positive behaviors. It didn’t stop him from trying to do the same weird shit, but at least sometimes she got cake instead of a headache. 

“Regiiiiii,” he stage-whispered. “Come on. You can hear me.”

Momo clanged two kunai together for seemingly no reason. It drowned out Jiraiya’s whining, even if it hurt her ears.

“Oh no.” He said, without emotion. “These two need to be sharpened now. Rejina-hime, would you mind?”

She took them without comment.

Momo was her hero. Why couldn’t she hang out with him and not be subjected to people who needed her to clap for them and their coordinated toad self introduction song?

She could feel her father’s eyes popping out of frustration and Sad.

Shizune was evidently the weak link (that, or maybe just nice), because she huffed out past them and gamely said, “Why, Jiraiya-sama! You look so impressive!”

Fair enough. Regina wasn’t naive enough to believe that it could last forever. She looked up, dully, and purposefully suffocated her natural response to 7 foot tall toad with her dad on it. 

No wonder he’d been upset- he’d been holding a pose with one leg out. He was grinning so hard she could tell it ached. 

She tried not to look amused, but she was sure she failed. She could tell because he suddently looked victorious. 

Then he did that snaky kagura dance, shaking his hair like an oni. He jumped from foot to foot, making some sort of drumming sound. How he did that, she didn’t want to ask.

‘Is that why he does his hair that way? You’d think it would be easier to just brush it.’

Luckily, he only did the short version of his self-introduction. That was kind of him, since at least two people had already known him. 

A lady with a baby walked behind him, pushing a toddler in a stroller. She took one look at the toad and sped up, rounding the corner so fast that one of the carriage’s wheels left the ground. 

Regina held in the snort that inspired- it just came out as a huff. Hey, improvement. 

He twirled and then sashayed down the surprisingly amenable toad, then unsummoned it in a puff of smoke. 

Momo coughed really loudly, and put his many weapons on the floor with a clank. 

Shizune gave him a stink eye of such incredible power that it almost blew Regina’s hair back. 

Momo prickled for a second, but then quietly put all his kunai and other murder accoutrement away into his pouches and wherever the hell else he’d been storing them. 

Jiraiya was holding a pose, obviously expecting applauge. 

Regina clapped for him, feeling resigned and actually kind of… impressed. He was very dedicated to this bit for some reason. 

“I have come to escort you two beautiful ladies to a dining experience of wonder and utmost romance!” He wiggled his big fingers. 

“....I’ve never been invited to a ‘dining experience’, with or without romance.” Momo grumbled. 

She could just make out Jiraiya saying something like ‘what a surprise’ sourly, but ignored him. 

“You have now.” She said, standing up and brushing off her clothes. 

Then she looked at her father, who was probably carefully not reacting to that. 

“Please tell me I don’t have to eat fish.”

Jiraiya recovered quickly. His daughter was a little shit, that’s what she was. But honestly, it was a massive improvement from the (admittedly shell-shocked) soft kitten he’d had to haul around. 

Shockingly, he was proud. If her new independence and the way she was engaging with him was any indication, she was going to be the best/worst thing to happen to Konoha in decades.

Being a father was not all that bad- past the crying and potty training stages. He wasn’t fooling himself that he’d gotten a kid at the hardest juncture. She wasn’t a pubescent kid, either- no puberty talks for him, thanks.

Unfortunately, she was probably at the age where someone would have to give her the sex talk. Had Hime done it? Probably not. 

But he’d at least heard some interesting and positive things about her time in Iron from Sensei.

‘And what I could get out of the limited gossip, anyway.’ 

Samurai never really had any good gossip. It was hard to get information out of them. Unfortunate, boring bastards. 

He’d anticipated that Zabuza (and how the absolute hell had she befriended an A-class missing nin? It beggared belief) would probably be invited. They made an odd little pair. 

It was unfortunate, but that’s what it was. 

He was good at improvising. 

It wasn’t really going to change anything. Sensei had already evidently decided that Zabuza was either not that much of a threat with about two full ANBU teams following him around, or that he could kill him off later when Regina was secured. 

It may have helped that Jiraiya had been spying on them since yesterday. Zabuza didn’t seem to be a threat to Regina at all, which was odd.

He would reserve judgement for later. Sometime after Tsunade-hime got whatever stubborn little brat he’d been dragging around to talk. Apparently he was just shyly watching her from corners and occasionally picking up the mail.

Still, both his little himes’ wishes were his command. There would be no fish at dinner tonight. Just his most fervent admirer, and Sensei. 

She probably wouldn’t love that, either, but not everything was about what she wanted. 

He seated them at the private room in the yakiniku restaurant. Regina was on one side, with her little shinobi entourage. 

That part was super cute. Even if he didn’t currently totally approve of one of her companions, she looked good with bodyguards. 

Not as if she’d ever be able to leave the country without them, now. That would be unfathomably stupid. 

He just hoped she’d be amenable to trading out her missing nin with someone nice and respectable, preferably with excellent literary tastes…

Which was why Hatake had been invited, even as Sensei grumbled. That grumpy little shit would show up on time for Jiraiya. Especially if he wanted the signed copy of the new book he’d just finished. 

Someone staring caught his attention. 

Regina was giving him a surprisingly hard stare. 

Could she read minds, or had he been giggling again? The book was definitely *inspired* by her, but it wasn’t *about* her…

Okay, so it was about her. He was man enough to admit that. A silver-haired princess lost in time and space, needing to be rescued by a gallant shinobi, who was actually definitely not him. He wasn’t that perverted, no matter what Tsunade-hime said. 

To be honest, he’d probably paid her her share of royalties in kimono. But hey. Having a cute kid wasn’t so bad, even as she gave him an impressive stink eye accompanied by what had to be one of her first attempts at killing intent. 

So cute. So quality. 

Sensei came in, accompanied by a flock of anbu, and took his seat at the head of the table. 

He actually smiled at Regina, and she smiled politely back, hostility at her own father evidently forgotten. 

A book with her actual face on it was on the table. 

Regina prayed for strength. To whom, she didn’t know. 

It didn’t help when Jiraiya started cackling like a sea witch while clutching it. 

Shizune quietly placed a hand over hers and gave it a comforting squeeze. At least she was sure that he was gonna get his ass beat when he left town. Tsunade would probably be waiting for him. 

‘Avenge me.’ She thought, with some level of malice. 

He stopped giggling, and actually watched her for a minute. 

Then he smiled? His eyes were beaming. 

‘What the hell is that for?’ she felt confused and angry about it. ‘Why are you so happy? What’s about to happen to me, now?’

She got her answer when the fucking Hokage ambled in, looking like he was wearing his pajamas. 

Oh, wait, he’d been wearing those pajamas earlier anyway. They were, like, his daywear?

Incredible. 

He sat at the most prestigious spot at the table, and his ANBU guards flickered back to the corners of the rooms. 

‘What could possibly happen to anyone in this room but me?’ She thought out of entertained curiosity. She was the only one in the room that wasn’t apparently some sort of monster even by ninja standards. She was, obviously, a nothingburger on any scale. But it didn’t bring the room down. 

The Hokage smiled at her, evidently more relaxed than earlier. She smiled back, well aware that this particular military dictator was now her military dictator cum employer. Manners mattered. 

Seiza the whole time was going to suck, but she hadn’t had to go to finishing school for nothing. Obviously they hadn’t taught her any of this shit, but she’d genuinely rather die than embarrass herself. There would be no failure at this juncture, even though her shitbird fake dad had somehow managed to ruin grilled meat by bringing decorum into it. 

She noted that there was an unoccupied seat next to Jiraiya, and realized that was probably why the staff hadn’t brought any food in yet. 

They were waiting on somebody. 

The Hatake brat slunk in twenty minutes past when he was supposed to be there. Jiraiya was only mildly surprised- but made a show of sliding the draft book back into his shirt. Dammit, without his vest, he was much less cool-looking. 

He avoided looking at Rejina, who was watching him with that smirk that seemed to be permanently affixed to her face. 

It wouldn’t do to let her have that point. 

He’d just sneak into the quarters and steal it back later. 

Poor Kakashi-kun evidently was suffering as intended. He took his seat quickly, and tried to sit up straight. 

If he was going to convince Reji-chan that Konoha was actually worth trusting, his most dedicated fan was going to have to give at least a decent impression. He hadn’t failed to notice her evident distrust of the ANBU in the room, as small as her reaction was. He had been watching her like a hawk. 

To be fair, it was super creepy to never see someone’s face. He looked at Kakashi-kun, who was, in retrospect, probably not the person he should have asked if that was a source of discomfort. 

At least he wasn’t shouty or something. And the way she’d reacted when he’d used a senbon to clean his teeth meant Shiranui was right the fuck out. 

He willed Kakashi-kun to behave. He had no doubts that Shizune-chan had orders and the gall to pick up Reji like a sack of flour and high tail it if Reji didn’t like it here. 

In front of the Hokage or not. 

“So, should we get the meat plate, or the meat plate?” He asked, pretending that he actually gave a shit about the menu.