Great Lakes & Expectations chapter 12

Regina changed and sponged herself to a reasonable level of cleanliness. She scrubbed off the makeup, but left the hairdo. She was sure it was going to take hours to get all the pins and hairspray out. 

And she was too hungry to wait that long, to be honest. 

She dressed in one of her silk outfits and low heels, because Tsunade would probably be appalled if they’d gone to all the effort of polishing her up to a princess and she’d immediately attempted to look like a pile of wrinkled laundry in public. 

Shizune had changed, and surprisingly Momo had, too. He had changed into a clean outfit. 

Regina supposed the filthy one had been for the Sandaime Hokage’s sake. Shinobi stuff seemed to be pageantry of a different kind. 

The anbu were obviously following them when they left. Regina caught glimpses of mask details in the darkness. 

Two of them were wearing the same or similar masks to the ones that had been Tsunade’s messenger pigeons. 

Were they assigned to a particular person? Or was there just a big bucket somewhere full of creepypasta masks?

If there was a bucket, Regina wanted to find it. Some of the masks obviously needed more details, and she wanted to bless them with really big painted mustaches. 

The ramen shop wasn’t really a shop- it was one of those booths with a curtain separating the patrons from the outside. 

Momo held up the curtain for Regina and Shizune to pass through. They flanked her on both sides. 

The booth was too small for all the anbu to join them. 

Regina followed Momo’s gaze to the bottom of the curtain, where she could see four pairs of toeless-shoed feet pacing. It was hard to tell from feet, but they seemed unhappy. 

Shizune just ordered for the two of them, Momo ordered what amounted to “and keep ‘em coming.”

Regina looked around, curiously. It was a really small place, which was typical for this kind of business. It only had four seats and seemed to be staffed by a man and his daughter.

The other seat in the ramen stand was occupied by a child. 

That was confusing. 

Was it ramen man’s other kid? Probably not. The small (and filthy, Regina noted) child had blond hair. The man and his daughter had brown. 

It wasn’t impossible, but it also wasn’t the most likely thing. Blond hair genes were pretty recessive. 

The little boy was working his way through a massive bowl of ramen, slurping and getting broth everywhere.

He had also picked out all the vegetables and put them into his napkin.

‘Sounds right.’

Regina and her companions were served not long after. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that the boy was now staring. 

He was not particularly discreet, even for a kid. He ogled Momo for a while, because he was nearest. Also, he was basically a brick house of a man with cowprint arm warmers. 

Then he thought Regina merited some observation- probably because she was foreign-looking? 

He passed over Shizune with barely a glance. 

‘Mistake. She’s the most terrifying person here.’ Regina thought, not uncharitably. She ate her ramen dutifully. Frankly, she didn’t care for the genre much. Pork belly and soft-boiled eggs? Good. But ramen was just so damned salty.

She finished as quickly as was polite, and turned to examine her gawker in detail. 

Her initial assessment of ‘filthy, small’ hadn’t been off. He was covered in dirt and minor scrapes. His clothes didn’t look well-cared for- they had some exceptional wear in places that would have merited patching or replacement. His eyes had little hollows under them- she wasn’t sure that was healthy. It was compacted by his underlying skin tone. 

It reminded her of her own miserable childhood. She wanted to look away. 

Then he made eye contact. 

His eyes were blue- so blue. And had a fire in them that she had to respect. 

‘But you’re about as ‘Japanese’ as I am, I’ll bet.’ 

Momo continued to slurp down what was becoming a troubling amount of soup. 

‘Shinobi must have to eat like crazy to keep that muscle mass, they seem to do a lot of weird shit.’

Ten bowls later, he was satisfied. 

Regina paid, because that seemed like the thing to do when they were escorting her through a place she didn’t want to be.

There was a tiny shriek off to her right, and a lot of frantic patting. 

She turned to see the kid full-on panicking. He was turning out his little pockets, which mostly seemed to be full of dirt. 

And one live toad that hopped out of the stand. An anbu poked their creepy little head in.

But he wasn’t stopping. He took off his jacket and shook it out, shoving his hands into pockets. 

‘He can’t find his coin purse,’ she realized, feeling panic start to set in, even though it wasn’t happening to her.

He stood there in shock. The jacket slid to the ground.

“Teuchi-san, I-” he started, looking about ready to cry. He noticed the anbu and that Regina and her companions were staring. His face turned red.

Regina immediately turned and smacked another bill on the table. This was horrible to watch. She couldn’t handle the secondhand embarrassment, or the reminder of how horrid it was to not have enough money for something. In public. 

“For him.” She clarified, gesturing to the boy that was obviously about to have a breakdown. 

The man who was evidently Teuchi-san took it and nodded, smiling slightly. 

She stared at the boy, who looked back at her, confused. A little line of snot was rolling down his chin. He’d evidently managed to keep from actually crying, though. 

Poor thing was obviously holding it in, hard. Regina could sympathize.

“Let’s go home.” Shizune said, sounding gentle. 

Regina stood, still locked in eye contact with the little boy. His lip wavered. 

Then he ran outside.

He had left his jacket on the ground. Regina bent down to pick it up. 

It was whisper-thin. If she wasn’t careful, she could tear the seams apart. She winced. 

“Anou, anbu-san.” She called lightly. The anbu turned its face to her directly. It was a… fox? Cat? Dog? Who knew. One of the masks with ears from before.

“Could you return this to that boy?” She asked, holding out the jacket. It nodded. 

God, it was hard to remember there was a person under there. It was just so creepy to keep addressing an emotionless mask. 

They took the jacket from her gently and disappeared. 

They walked back to the diplomatic residence. On the way, Shizune pointed out things. A nice dango shop, a good place to eat lunch, a blacksmith. 

‘I’m not going to need a blacksmith, but I appreciate the sentiment.’ Regina oohed and aahed appropriately, letting Shizune tell her about her favorite places here from childhood.

Shizune was a talker when she was comfortable. And apparently she was very comfortable here. She walked them out of the way just to show them an onsen that she described as ‘the best in Konoha’ and through an older street. Everything was closed- except for izakaya, which Regina could occasionally see dotting the streets. 

There were several fine goods stores- kimono and kanzashi, imported foods. There was a bookstore, which was also closed. Regina stared longingly at it and sighed as they meandered past. 

‘There’s probably no English books in there, though. Everything is work and suffering.’

At some point, her fetch quest anbu had returned, or been replaced by a lookalike. 

‘I hope to god that not everyone here wears masks. My charm and memory only work when i see and remember faces. Names are hard.’

She kept that bit of whining in. She could ask Shizune later, anyway.

They entered the residence and prepared for bed. Momo apparently was going to sleep in the first room, by the genkan. Which was probably for security reasons, but reminded Regina of her homestay’s dog. She wisely did not comment.

Shizune started taking down the futons for sleeping, so Regina followed her lead. The ones here were really fluffy and nice. 

After the beds were prepared, Shizune carefully pulled the hundreds of pins out from Regina’s long hair. The pile was actually kind of intimidating. 

‘You could hide so many weapons in here.” Shizune mused. “We could get you sheathed pins.”

Sometimes, Shizune was scary as shit. 

“I’d probably injure myself.” Regina rebutted, hoping to hell that it would never be necessary for her to hide murder weapons on her head. 

Shizune just hummed in a noncommittal way. “You’ll learn not to do that.”

Regina resigned herself to owning terrifying hair ornaments and imminent finger injuries. They’d probably arrive in the mail next week. Shizune was as stubborn and terrifying as Tsunade, you just tended not to notice because Shizune tended to just do the thing without consultation or warning.

Shizune gave her back a little pat. “All done. We should go bathe now.”

“Fair. I’ve been waiting for this all day.” Regina stood and stretched. Outside the paper screen, she could see an anbu lurking. 

“Uh. They are not going to watch us bathe, right?” She asked, trying to sound as unbothered as possible. This was not a problem. She was cool as ice. 

Shizune laughed. “No. Why would they? You’re not a head of a foreign state.”

“That implies that they watch foreign heads of state in the nude.” Regina grumbled. 

Shizune shook her head. “No, oddly enough, dignitaries don’t tend to want to stay that long.”

“You don’t say.” Regina picked up her pajamas and padded to the bathroom. It was evidently as ritzy as the rest of the house- there was a small hot spring attached. 

Real shame that most people weren’t able to use it. A shame for them. 

Regina used it with abandon. After bathing, she went to sit in the onsen for two hours. She brought one of her books- one of a few English books that she’d been given in Iron. It was a set of classics- Beowulf, the Odyssey, the Iliad. The typeface wasn’t super easy to read, but it was still better than melting her brain on Japanese in her leisure time. 

That reminded her. She should really send a nice letter to Iron, and a request to someone to find her more books in her own language. She’d read fucking Dickens at this point. Or Thoreau, much as she hated his whiny, labor-stealing ass. But Thoreau was definitely too contemporary. She was in a hellscape version of 18th century. Maybe. This place was weird as shit. She knew she’d seen a coffee machine in the Hokage’s office. And generally, much more stable electricity than she had anticipated. 

She didn’t know what that meant for her literary options, though. It wasn’t likely she’d be allowed to leave the Elemental Nations to find out.

But, good side, it meant she had coffee access and the possibility of a quality of life she’d never have been able to have otherwise. 

She stopped reading for a moment, struck by thought.

Where the hell were they going to expect her to live? Not here, this was obviously meant to be temporary. Otherwise she’d be consistently booted out for some daimyo’s cousin. 

‘Guess that’s a problem for tomorrow Regina.’ she thought, putting her book on a dry rock and sinking low into the water. ‘Today Regina is carefree with no muscle pain.’

Unfortunately, tomorrow Regina became today Regina fairly quickly. She woke up with the distinct sense of dread that always accompanied the prospect of participating in capitalism. 

She got dressed anyway, aware that Shizune was fully capable and willing to haul her ass to the Hokage in pajamas if Regina decided to be difficult. That wouldn’t convey the strength and capability that Regina needed to do her fake job. 

She signed over her life in the Hokage’s office, in front of about ten stuffy-looking people she hadn’t seen before.

They introduced themselves as clan heads, and the village Council- which consisted of two old men and one old woman.

Evidently they were the same age group as the Sandaime, and “weighed in on affairs of government”.

‘Welcome to the new government, looks like the old government.’ She thought to herself, remembering how many potential successor Hokages were currently pushing daisies. She wondered why Tsunade hadn’t really briefed her on the Council, outside of generalities.

The introductions took approximately one eon- every single person in the room seemed to have a life story prepared. The Hyuuga clan head kept looking at her vaguely like she was an overly expensive statement piece, the Inuzuka lady was kind of boss but obviously wanted to be anywhere else. The Akimichi clan head was actually nice. 

Regina made note of that. She would not be delaying his paperwork due to ‘quality concerns’. 

It was particularly notable as a meeting for a few reasons. One, despite the fact that Tsunade had briefed her on the Uchiha clan, there was no representative. There was a corresponding awkward gap in introductions. 

The other notable thing was that a lot of these people were real dicks. 

“This is obviously inappropriate.” One of the council members said, disregarding her entirely. “Jiraiya-san is an important shinobi, but why is she useful? She can’t even understand us when we’re talking.”

Regina also made note of that, and wished this particular octogenarian all the worst things in the world. She might personally fill their witch cottage with bees and legos.

The others were less outright demeaning about her apparent lack of skills (which evidently, they had not checked?) but were mostly angling to leave. Hyuuga Hiyashi made a comment that implied that he thought this was pure nepotism, but stopped just short. 

She caught the one eyed one, Shimura, eyeing her. It was evaluative and penetrating. And she didn’t care for it. She looked at him, they were obviously weighing each other up. 

She may have glowered. 

And her new job involved being in contact with him and all the rest of these people, all the time. 

At least she was obviously way too visible to disappear, and not a shinobi. It would be awfully hard for them to plausibly kill her off without outside comment. It was so easy when they were a shinobi- “he died on a mission, how were we supposed to know we sent him into the enemy’s house when they were all home?”

Also, even then they were suspicious af. Regina had to wonder why no one asked. Weird shit apparently happened all the time in Konoha for no real reason, and didn’t happen anywhere else. 

It stank.

She bowed politely at the introductions, and introduced herself as blandly and respectably as possible. She resolutely did not glare at anyone else, even when the Aburame clan head asked quietly if she understood how to use chopsticks or the bathroom.

After about an hour, they all filed out. Important people with important things to do. 

That left her and the Sandaime Hokage in the office, alone. Momo and Shizune were still waiting outside. 

“What did you think?” The Hokage asked, getting out a pipe. 

She turned only her face to him. “Of what, Hokage-sama?”

He blinked slowly, like a cat, either satisfied or amused. “Of them.” He put tobacco in and packed it with his thumb. She watched it, kind of interested. She’d never seen anyone smoke a pipe before.

“All of them?” She asked, trying to leave any judgement out of her tone. “They were very.. polite.”

He hummed and lit the pipe with fire from his finger. Chakra. Then he took a long drag out of it, and held it in his mouth. It looked leisurely.

She wondered if he was any good at smoke rings. 

He released it through his nose like a dragon, smoke billowing out over the desk and her contract. 

“I have a copy already.” He said. “You should take this one. Keep it safe.”

Regina took the few steps towards the desk and slipped the scroll into her pocket. She watched him continue to smoke his pipe. 

After a minute, he was still smoking his pipe and hadn’t said anything else. 

“Is there… anything you would like for me to do, Hokage-sama?” She asked, feeling slightly bored. It’s not like she had a desk or anywhere to go to.

He thought about that a little. 

“Not today…” he trailed off. “I believe your father will be here today to take you home. Please come into the office next Monday for your first day of work.”

It was Tuesday, by her count. 

“Yes, sir.” she said, and bowed lightly. She left the room at a leisurely pace and closed the door behind her.