Great Lakes and Expectations Chapter 8

It took two days for her to understand why Tsunade had agreed to stay. The women returned and grimly waited for a delivery, which turned out to be formal wear, various accessories, and boxes of papers.

The first dress on top of the pile was...alarming. It was a red slip of a thing with a low neckline and about 2 inches of skirt. But Tsunade made a disgusted sound and reached out. She held up the dress and casually ripped it in half. So clearly it was not going to be a problem.

Also, wow. Regina shifted in her seat. She swallowed. Tsunade was, like… really strong. She could pick Regina up, no problem.

Shizune looked over at Regina. Whatever she saw made her sigh and shake her head.  

Jiraiya had probably sent the first dress as a joke, because the next three were much more appropriate and actually coordinated in the same cut, with different colors that went together well-enough. 

Regina was once again impressed by his taste. He liked to act like a total trash can, but he'd matched Tsunade's green dress to the sage jacket she habitually wore, Shizune's deep purple highlighted the sheen to her hair, and Regina would look pretty good in the dark blue she'd apparently been assigned. 

It was awkward to wait while Shizune watched her get prettied up by Fujita-san, pinning a large white camellia as well as at least one of her other assigned hair decorations in. She pulled rather mercilessly, and Regina tried her best not to grimace as her hair felt like it was being ripped from her head into what was possibly either the most painful buns in the world, or those loops, or whatever else Fujita-san had deemed appropriate and fashionable. 

Shizune, of course, had more autonomy over her presentation. Regina was essentially acting as a tall ‘dress me up Sally’. Meanwhile, Shizune had elected to put on her dress, and pinned the camellia into her otherwise normal hair. 

Must be nice. 

Shizune waited patiently as Regina was pinned, spritzed, and pulled. After Fujita-san had thoroughly destroyed her will to live and probably pulled all the hair out by the root, Shizune led Regina out the door, saying polite things. 

They met Tsunade near some bar, which seemed kind of odd. Tsunade was obviously at least tipsy if not downright plastered. 

Regina felt out of place as Shizune stepped into close distance with Tsunade and made some chiding sounds. She heard Tsunade sigh. 

Then Tsunade put her hands together like she was clapping, or making double finger guns at the sky. Then another weird thing that looked like a five legged turtle. 

Regina thought she was witnessing the weirdest daylight version of hand shadows when suddenly the redness in Tsunade’s face cleared up, making it look bright and relaxed. 

‘Oh, no, I just saw crazy magic again.’

But it wasn’t aimed at her and nobody looked in danger of dying, so frankly Regina was inclined to ignore it. She just could only take so much shit at once. She needed to save her energy for the next time some weirdo accosted her on the toilet.

That “red cape” demon story was starting to make more sense to her now, anyway. 

The snow had all been shovelled off the street, so they walked along in silence past storefront after storefront, bright and happy and more importantly warm. Regina wanted to just dive in and collapse at the nearest yakitori stand, and Jiraiya would have let her. 

But they were on a divine quest, or something, for a movie and lots of money. The details weren’t clear, as was Regina’s incentive to do this at all. 

Tsunade stopped walking and made a sound of pure fury. Regina followed her murderous glare upwards, over the door.

...The banner outside the venue had three cartoon women who were clearly intended to represent the three of them, in their current outfits. They looked deceptively friendly and cheerful. They seemed to be offering papers. Regina sort of appreciated it, this was the best information she had gotten so far about what they were meant to be doing today.

Whatever else he was, Jiraiya was slick.  

Tsunade seemed absolutely pissed off by the banner, probably because it meant that Jiraiya had been absolutely correct that she would agree to go to the movie event. She clearly considered tearing it down before she eventually stomped in. Shizune gave a distressed little sigh and hurried after Tsunade.  

But Regina was honestly kind of impressed. Jiraiya had his life on lock, in the weirdest of ways. When had he had time to do that? Had he given his agent the instructions in that bar, weeks ago? Amazing. Murder-Dad was pretty cool.

She took her warm cloak off and spent the next 20 minutes being coached with a couple of phrases and gestures. It kind of reminded her of being in Rainbow. Yeah, sure, fine, she could smile at someone and ask for their name.

People were starting to gather outside. Regina saw them through the glass doors and gave a confused frown. She looked at the papers again, confirming that the movie reception was not meant to start for another hour. They were early. Who came to a movie that early?

It took a couple of minutes for her to realize that everyone she could see outside was apparently a man.

Slowly, Regina looked down at her dress, and then at the two women to her left. She was beginning to have a bad feeling about all of this.  

「しずねさん、」 she said. The other woman turned a grim stare at her. 「どんな種類映画ですか？」

Shizune looked shocked and horrified. She put a hand to her mouth.

Oh, no. That did not bode well. Why did Shizune not want to answer that question? “What kind of movie is this” is a perfectly normal question. Please answer the question.

Tsunade was the one who answered. Her lip was curled up in a sneer, her gimlet stare fixed at the visitors. Regina mentally contrasted her visage with the cutely beaming cartoon representation dotted around the room. 「変な映画」 she said ominously.

Wait, what.

「父は。。。」 Regina let her voice trail off helplessly.

She received a nod in response and sympathetic look from Shizune.  

「大きなへんたい。」Tsunade said it flat. No sugar-coating that one. A big pervert. Fantastic.

Alright, then. So. Murder-Dad had recruited her to hand papers and greet people who came to the premiere of his pornographic movie. She and Shizune and Tsunade were… like, meant to be eye candy. The beautiful assistants.

「つなでさま、」 she said, calmly. This needed to be said. 「自来也を殺し手頃、私は手伝うましょうか？」

She heard Tsunade's laugh for the first time.

The event opened early, not long after that. Men flooded inside. Armed with knowledge that they were enthusiastic perverts, Regina eyed them cautiously. She had no idea what the posters might have implied about her role today. Or how socially adept this group might be. Shizune had protested a lot about coming here today, and Regina was now really anxious about what those objections might have been.

There was staring. Of course there was. But as the line churned on and no one tried to pull anything worse than touching her hands as she handed them a card, Regina began to relax into the monotony. Asking for names, re-affixing her hair flower, and handing out cards. Until she met her first real weirdo.

Regina handed the flyer to the next person on autopilot. He shied back and took the paper with the very tips of his gloved fingers. She ignored that, because a lot of Jiraiya's fans were unique individuals. She braved eye contact to start her spiel- or tried to, at least. He had cleverly made that difficult by combing his light-colored hair to entirely cover one eye, and barely allow the other to peek out.  

This man, she thought, might take the prize for the day's most unusual pervert.  

He looked like some sad variety of sheepdog in an oversized sweater, fuzzy scarf, and bizarrely tactical looking leather gloves with metal plating on the back of the hands. His steel-tipped boots were definitely too big for him. It was not a good look, man. He looked like he was hiding from the world in his mom's old clothes. His mom had liked dogs, apparently. There were ratty pomeranians falling apart on the sweater. Some of them had hints of fluff where puffball tails had once been attached.

...she was kind of digging it, as long as he did not think it was Fashion. Wearing something that aggressively ugly could be a power move. But if he thought it was normal or good, she had to judge him a lot.

The customer looked down the aisle and saw Tsunade, apparently for the first time. His weirdly pale eyebrow shot up. He probably didn't see people like that on the knitting farm in Hokkaido where he obviously did heavy labor and punched hungry wolves.

That was the first time she saw a glimpse of something she could understand in his thought process. She could sympathize. Tsunade was wow.

“お名前は“ , she prompted. She held her pen at the ready to take the note. She was fully aware that she would probably take it incorrectly if it had any long vowels, but did not really care.

He looked back at her, somehow looking startled and unhappy with about 2 square centimeters of skin showing. That expressiveness implied that this ensemble was not new for him.  

Her smile was beginning to feel strained. And that camellia was starting to come loose again. She could feel it. 

'Please, answer the question. Say your name,' she mentally coached. 'You know this one, buddy.'

It was not a hard question. She set her jaw and waited for him to tell her his name. Any name, if he couldn't remember his. There were an awful lot of “Tanakas” and “Sakamotos” in the room tonight, aka Smiths and Johnsons. She just had to have a name for the stupid statistics so that he could take the stamp card.

He seemed stuck on his name. He had not prepared for this test. He had never considered that he might be asked for his name when he got in a line to be signed up for some kind of loyalty rewards program.

“It is okay to lie,” Regina said, and then she tried to say that in Japanese. 「嘘して嘘して.」She might have said 'please lie.' That was close enough.

The scarf he was wearing over his face moved slightly. Oh no. He was mouthing names to himself, trying to come up with a good one. The first thing he said was, 「ぼくは。。私。」

She stared at him like he was the dumbest person she had ever met. He might be. 'I am myself?' What kind of bullshit stalling tactic was that? She had asked for his name, not what passed for philosophy in middle school. “I didn't say it was alright to lie badly,” she said. She didn't bother to translate that into Japanese. If he couldn't get it from her tone, he hadn't even earned her disapproval.

「私佐竹。」 he elaborated. He sounded a little hopeful at this point. He stole a glance at where Tsunade was glowering at some poor fool. His head ducked a little further and he turned his face away from the area where Tsunade and Shizune were taking turns answering questions, or giving directions, or whatever it was that they were doing.

Either he was answering her in broken Japanese that “I Satake,” or he wanted her to believe that his first name was actually “Me.” That was his name, for sure. Me, Bamboo Son. Plausible.  

She looked deep within her heart, stared into the one black button eye that remained on the knitted dog, and gave up on this fucker.

Fuck this guy and the clown car he hitchhiked in with. It was absurd and intolerable. She kind of wished Jiraiya was here to wave his murder fist around and get a better answer, or at least mock Mr. Satake fluently.

Regina considered her options- she might pass over the paper and have him write the kanji he would use for that, to see if he really was claiming that his name was “Me, Satake.” Satake was a real name- the kanji for son, and then the kanji for bamboo. But Watashi was definitely not a name. He was making that shit up. He was a crap liar and he looked like a mop. He owed her a better lie, at least. That was just insulting.

She nodded and plastered a customer service smile on her face as she scribbled on his card. Regina handed him his card to get rid of him. It wasn't registered to any name that he would ever be able to read. That was fine. She would tell Jiraiya to find the worst-dressed man on the continent to accredit the points. He needed to do this personally, so that they could judge him as a family. It would be good for bonding.

Mr. Me took the card and tucked it away… she didn't know where. His hands were very fast. 

Like horrible spiders. She didn't trust anything about this person. Who said it was even a person underneath all of that knitwear? Maybe this was a real Kumo nin and that's why the disguise was so bad. She took a step backward and pushed the flower back into her hair nest.

In English, she brightly said, “Your fake name is very bad. I hate it. Go away!” She pointed at Shizune with her whole hand, demonstrating which route he could take directly to hell.

I, Satake, gave her a grateful nod and shuffled away. She bent over to write “Mr. Me. A bad liar,” on the line for his name, matching his card. 

Then she turned to the next man nervously avoiding her eye contact. He looked like a Sakamoto. “Flyer?” she said, holding it out. 

This particular weirdo got a bit too close when he took the paper. She caught a hint of...nervous sweat, probably. Fantastic. What the fuck was Jiraiya doing with his life? Why did so many incredibly suspicious people come to see Jiraiya's movie? Why had he exposed her to them?

She glanced over to her left and blinked in surprise. Shizune's line was still empty. The man who had dared to talk to Tsunade was now fully sobbing while she laughed. Watashi Satake, the man with a singularly stupid alias, was gone.

Maybe he went home to think about what he'd said. She hoped he did better next time.

The line was interminable, the weirdos kept queuing up outside. Mr. Me was still out of sight, but the Pomeranian shirt had been burned onto the back of Regina’s corneas. No one else was dressed so interestingly though.

「こんにちは！お名前はなんですか？」

The next weirdo (number 76, by her count) just stopped in his tracks. And stared into her eyes.

「急げ、よ。」 A tall man a couple people behind weirdo #76 grumbled.

Number 76 looked around the room like a paranoid groundhog, and went back to the terrified eye contact.

「名前は？ 何でもいい。」 Regina suggested. How was she at a pervert film, having to coach multiple perverts on providing a name? This was not how her life was supposed to work. 76 opened his mouth slightly, but nothing came out.

The next man in line- a very muscular man in working clothes- reached out and held her hand. 「かわいい、ですね？」

She forced down the full-body shudder, and glanced over to where Tsunade and Shizune were.

Tsunade was glaring down a duo of hopeful looking admirers, who seemed to just now be realizing that there was nothing good there to be hoped for.

Shizune was politely directing a group of men about something. She seemed nervous, in the way that she always did- apologetic and mildly frantic. But Regina couldn’t catch her eye, and she wasn’t sure what to do about the man now grabbing her hand. People here really were terrifying. 

And rude. First, lying in a puddle of blood and entrails in front of a Murder Dad, then attacks in the sanctity of the bathroom. Now this, the most recent assault on her personage that this awful magic Japan had to offer.

「出て行く。」Someone said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Regina looked up to see a tall man (even by American standards) grab her newest assailant by the shoulder and physically lift him up and back into the crowd.

He stepped up, made eye contact with Regina, and grimaced a bit. Then he stepped to her side and swiveled around.

「田中みたい。」 He said to number 76, who seemed to be gasping for air. 「田中さんです。」He informed Regina, leaning down.

She wrote the kanji down quickly, and held the card out. 76 took it and sped off to Shizune’s line.

「この失礼な人はアホさんみたい。」 The large man said mildly, gesturing to the weirdo that had grabbed her earlier.

She did not, in fact, know how to write “Mr. Dumbass”. Was there kanji for that? Should she use hiragana?

Regina handed her new coworker the stack of cards. She also tried to hand him her special pen, but he waved it away, and produced one from seemingly nowhere.

He wrote quickly, and handed her the card to copy. She copied his strokes as best she could, and was about to hand it back to the man when her new friend swiped it out of her fingers and deposited it into the man’s shirt pocket.

「人に触れないで、バカ。」 He said gruffly.

The man walked away stiffly, probably sensing that her new friend could probably eat him alive. Regina evaluated her companion.

Tall, yes. With spiky hair. Bad fashion sense, maybe? Here it was hard to tell. He was obviously built like an ox. And both scared the other perverts and had some awareness.

He was, by far, her favorite pervert.

They worked together well- if the perverts weren’t immediately forthcoming with a name, any name, he would assign them one. He would hand her their card to copy what he’d written, and she’d send them on their way into the next line.

After pervert #146, the line cleared temporarily. Regina took advantage of the moment to ask her new bestie (she’d upgraded him, he hadn’t threatened her or anyone else so far and so was not on the default Shit List) some burning questions.

「あなたは。。。」The words were a bit jumbled in her head. 「あのう。私に問題を助けてくれありがとうございたします。」She bowed pretty low, figuring that the politeness couldn’t hurt. 

He turned and looked down at her, obviously evaluating.

「問題ない、姫さん。」He said, after a long moment. 「怖いのか？」

Was she scared? Regina sat on that for a moment. Yes? But probably not of him. 

Yeah, he could crush her with his big hands, and yes, he’d lifted that other muscular dude like he was a bunch of grapes. 

But honestly, this whole world was terrifying. And even where she was from, she didn’t like her chances against a hungry raccoon. She could die anywhere at any time.

So, she didn’t feel particularly scared at the moment.

「怖くない。あなた？」She was feeling feisty. He seemed like he was calmer, on the whole, than her beloved Tsunade.

But to be honest, terrifying women were attractive. Terrifying men were the status quo.

He blinked, slow and deliberate. He turned it over for a second, and looked up to glance at Shizune and Tsunade, who were doubtless being polite and organ-rendingly terrifying in that order. Then he looked back down at her. 

「怖くない。でも、私はカコイイね？」He telegraphed as he stood up straight, and flashed sharpened teeth in a movie-star grin. Of course, he gave a thumbs up. 

「ちょっと。」Being able to banter even a little felt so much better. 「でも、あなたの服はちょっと。。。ああ。色がない。」

He laughed, a little. 「ああ、姫さん。助けてください、あなたは私のただ一つの希望だ。」

Regina took a look around, and the sudden jerking of her head made the big camellia flop right out of her hair again. She caught it, and looked at Large Man Friend.

「ああ。」 She commanded, holding the flower up for his examination. 

「ああああ。」

Friend bent down significantly, and Regina took the opportunity to push the flower stem first into his spiky hair. It was surprisingly thick, so maybe the flower would even stay in it. 

Regina checked her little bag- there should have been a stash of bobby pins in there, she’d seen them among whatever else Murder Dad had decided a young lady would need for a night of fending off weirdoes. Notably, there were no weapons. 

She found the package and popped it open, sticking the pins through his hair in crosses. He was going to have to live with this on his head now. Regina meant to make it immovable.

He grunted- probably she was pulling his hair a bit too violently. 「すみません。」 She said, only meaning that she was sorry about the discomfort. The flower had this 

coming. 「おしいい。。」

Having completed her Great Work, Regina stepped back. Tall Friend straightened back up, and she had to admit that he looked nice in florals. Not a lot of people could pull that off. 

Also, she really needed to get better at asking for people’s names. “Tall Friend” probably wasn’t going to be helpful enough later. 

「あのう、」she started, and tried to go through the Japanese Cute Girl motions. Looking down, clasping her hands together, and looking up through her insufficient eyelashes. She really needed mascara.  

「お名前はなんですか？私はレジナです。」