She escorted Hatake out, but he followed her into her office.
'Oh, no.'
"Saaa, you prepared a presentation against me?" He asked, sounding miffed even as he tried to drawl it out. "You made me do so much work, I thought you supported me."
The absolute gall made her jaw drop. He was upset with her, for doing her job?
'Don't engage. Don't argue. It only feeds his victim complex and gives him material..'
She reached deep, deep down for the emotional reserve to not tell him off. She didn't have anything nice to say, so she ended up being stone silent.
Regina held her head high as she took a seat behind her desk, to make it absolutely crystal clear that she was working, at her job, and not available for whatever this was. She aimed for a neutral expression but suspected it was more flinty.
"I thought we were friends."
She pursed her lips.
'There is no way he thought that.'
"You did a very good job, even the Hokage said so." She pointed out. "I also did my job. You're certainly aware of that."
"You could have just told me." He went to sit on her couch, putting his feet on it. He had to know how much she fucking hated that. She wasn't hiding it. He was poking at her.
She sat down at her desk, trying to ignore how he was grinding mud and god-knows-what on her nice couch. "You didn't ask me what I thought. You just asked to meet with the Hokage."
Scheduling wasn't even really her job duty anymore, either. She had so much other work to do.
"But I did think your presentation was good." She said, trying to put a positive spin on things. "I wouldn't have said so if I didn't."
"You lie all the time." He just sounded amused. "You seriously told me that the Hokage couldn't meet me last week because he had an urgent appointment with a veterinarian and a weasel."
She didn't have a good response for that. The honest answer was that she was told to keep him away by any means possible and it was a lot more entertaining to baffle him with increasingly creative lies. She didn't usually lie on her personal time or about work quality, it was a waste of energy as well as counterproductive.
"And that he has hair."
"Neither of us know about that for sure." She deflected. "Why are you still here, anyway? I don't mean to insult you, but you are a genuinely horrible person and I have work to do."
She gathered her very boring binders full of numbers and got out her pen and highlighters. " I'd rather get it over with if you don't mind. I don't have the free time to explain my personal ethics code to you right now."
"I really don't mind." He leaned back on the couch. "As you made it so very clear in there, I'm supposed to be relaxing."
"Is this punishment? Are you angry at me?" Regina asked, seriously confused.
'He can't possibly be using his actual human company to punish people. Is this… just how he is as a person? How sad for him. And everyone around him. Particularly me.'
"Only a little bit. I think I saw your points." He rubbed his feet against the upholstery. "I respect you much more for it." He looked up to make eye contact. "But I don't like you." His toes were on her couch.
She could feel her ancestors screaming. Her maternal grandmother would have despaired. Her paternal grandmother would have ruthlessly torn his psyche to shreds until he fled, shinobi or not.
"That's nice for you." She replied. She squinted at her files, willing herself back into work mode.
He didn't seem to have any intention of leaving soon, so she dug into her files.
"So that's, like, 200000 ryo missing from T&I, 10000 from Corrections, another 300000 from ANBU…" she added, marking them all down next to the other departments and talking to herself in English. "Christ, that's a lot of money missing."
"Anou, Hatake-san, just for scale, how much would you say 300,000,000 ryo is? Like, in a context. Any. How much of anything would that buy?" She asked, pulling at her hair in a ponytail. She was about to start stress-braiding it any second.
'I think that's, like, the pay rate for about 300 S-rank missions.'
"What are you talking about?" He gave her a weird look. "Don't you know?"
"No." She said tersely, sorting out the parts in her hair. "I'm sorry, Japanese is only my third language, and I'm not very good at it. I've only lived in the Elemental nations for about 8 months total. I regret to inform you that not all the vagaries of existence here are known to me."
"It's a really really big amount. Enough to buy a good chunk of Konoha." He said, reverting to boredom. He stared up at the ceiling and rubbed his feet back and forth on the couch arm.
Regina refused to bow to the whims of yet another white-haired terrorist. She was already stuck with Jiraiya, so she focused intensely on her work. Dammit, he was probably already getting what he wanted, just by being here and making her more stressed.
'Wait- if those are the real numbers, as compared to the rest…' she whistled softly. "Huh."
"What's it for?" He asked, leaning over. He actually looked interested, which meant she had to escape immediately. She didn't want him ruining her work out of spite or something.
She snatched her papers away from his spidery hands. "Just budget stuff. You'd be bored. Don't worry about it. Please, continue to rest. You look overworked."
Then she took all those papers and went into the Hokage's office with them.
"So we're missing that much money." The Hokage sounded mildly ill.
"It's about 15% of your yearly total budget expenditures, altogether." She noted, handing over her math for him to check. "If we're counting 'missing money' as an outgo, it's your second biggest individual expenditure behind shinobi payroll."
"So where is it going?" he asked, rubbing at his temples. "All of the departments want more funding, all the time. I did not think they had this much."
"I don't know, sir." Regina answered honestly. "But since it doesn't seem to be making it into their actual in-office budgets, I'd say it's disappearing before that. Who distributes that money?"
He made a gesture out to the office area behind the closed door. "We do."
"Shit." Regina said, passionately. "Hokage-sama, I don't think something on this level is a mistake. It almost has to be intentional."
He stared at his desk for a moment.
"Whoever is doing it has to have noticed that I'm going through all the receipts, though." She said, thinking out loud. "It might just be best to adjust the budget going forward. Unfortunately, that means more work for you to check and stamp them."
He shook his head. "I already have so much work, Rejina-hime. This is important, however." The Sandaime leaned back in his desk and got out his pipe, shoving the tobacco inside and lighting it.
He took a few puffs, before he looked at her.
"Do you think you might be ready to assume a few of your duties of office, Rejina-hime? You know what numbers should be there, and you already have been approving small budget items."
"I would be pleased to help," Regina hesitated. "But I think my office needs more security before adding any potentially classified functions to my position. Like the seals you and my father use. As of right now, literally anyone can get in at any time."
"Hatake is in there right now, isn't he?" Sandaime asked, amused.
She blinked. "Probably. He might have decided to live on my office couch to punish me for doing my job and betraying his friendship."
He hummed to himself. "Tomorrow, I have a free hour. Keep it free. I'll begin teaching you a little about seals, and you can start to make your own. But tonight I'll have them done on your office."
"Thank you, Hokage-sama." She bowed.
When she returned, Hatake was still on her couch, reading porn.
Honestly, it pissed her off that he was continuing to harass her when he didn't even need anything from her, and that (admittedly, not his fault) Jiraiya hadn't even bothered to give her her own copy.
'I absolutely refuse to pay for a book about me. But Hatake- Hatake who purposefully attempted to drive me insane for weeks, who is destroying my furniture- he got a free copy. For what? Did he sell his life rights?'
"You keep reading that in front of me- are you ever going to tell me what he wrote about me or not?" She leveled a stare at him. He froze.
"Hatake-san, I deserve to know if my character is hot."
His one eye was wide. The book snapped shut.
She was on a roll now, what the hell. "Also- are there actual sex scenes like in Icha Icha Beach Party, or is it just kissing in flowers again like with the movie?" Regina demanded. The absolute nerve of reading that in her office, on her couch. With his filthy shoes on it. "If you won't leave my office, you should at least have the manners to answer basic questions about things you're comfortable reading in my presence. No one else will tell me why they think kissing is the same thing as sex, or what ahegao is. Even context clues have failed me."
His eye widened further- she could see a blush rising high on his slightly exposed cheekbone, his shoulders stiffened- and he poofed.
'Huh. So that's how you get rid of him.'
It hadn't been what she'd intended, but it had worked twice for her now.
'If that's what works, I won't complain.'
Regina left her latest lecture from Danzou-shishou and booked it to the Yamanaka clan complex.
The kids were outside in the training area- evidently having some sort of monitored brawl. Sasuke had Naruto in a headlock.
But Ino had her legs around Sasuke's neck, hanging down and punching Naruto in the leg.
'This is weird.'
"Ah, Yuina-san!" She called, catching sight of her friend at a table nearby. "Are they… alright?"
Yuina-san looked at them, over her shoulder.
"They're fine," she dismissed with a smile. "Inoichi won't let them hurt themselves. How was your meeting?"
"It was good, thank you for asking." Regina looked over at her boys. They didn't seem distressed at all. Naruto was attempting to bite anything within reach, though.
"Time!" A man called out, and Regina looked. Oh. Inoichi-san. She could have guessed.
The children collapsed in a pile, and gave each other exhausted high fives.
"They get along fairly well." Yuina-san said, reaching for a drink and beckoning Regina to take a seat. "Would you like anything to drink? Beer, chuuhai?"
"A chuuhai would be lovely, thank you. Green apple, please." Regina let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and felt stress flow out of her muscles. "Were the boys any trouble?"
"None at all!" Yuina-san reassured her, turning around to beckon her husband and order them more drinks. He went off happily enough. "They've just been playing- earlier they watched a movie and made you some drawings. Shinobi children have a lot of energy, however- so we have to let them work it out somehow. It builds good team dynamics."
The children started to pull themselves off the ground- then chattered about something and raced inside.
"That makes sense." Regina admitted. "They do seem to get very worked up- more so than I would have thought children did."
Yuina-san shrugged, but somehow looked elegant anyway. "They're trained to do so. It is very effective. The most difficult part is channeling that energy into useful actions, and not harming each other. They have to learn to train together- and that means fighting. But they also have to be aware not to harm one another."
'Probably better to monitor them, then.' Regina agreed. Yuina-san's husband came back with their drinks, and they all sipped in companionable silence as the kids also came back outside with juice packets. After they finished, they went to practice kunai throwing at the other edge of the garden.
'This doesn't seem so bad, sometimes.' She sipped at her grape-flavored drink. 'I don't love what they're being trained to do, but I feel like they're in good hands.'
It was a few days later that there was a new meeting slot in the docket accompanying a golden folder, and a weird hush over the office.
Nakamura-san gave Regina an odd look as she handed Keiko-san the budget approvals and denials for the month. She could tell she wasn't meant to see it- but something about it knotted her stomach.
'Whatever this is, it's probably connected and very bad for me.' Regina thought as she went in to the Hokage's office for the meeting. It was at 9:30 am, less than an hour after her working hours started, and was budgeted for an entire hour and a half. Whatever it was, it had to be serious.
When the Council members, clan heads, and Danzou-shishou arrived, she knew it was bad. Yamanaka-san looked her way once, then looked away.
'Very bad for me. Ten points to me for logic, likely minus ten million points for my safety and happiness.'
The beginnings of the meeting took a solid fifteen minutes. After that, it seemed like there was awkwardness in the air. Eventually, Akimichi-san cleared his throat.
"Hokage-sama." Akimichi-san said politely, after bowing yet again. "After much talking, the other clan heads and I wish to raise an… issue that has come to our attention."
"Of course." Sandaime-sama said, sounding genial. Regina tried not to hold her breath. The mood in this room was distinctly off. It was putting her on edge. "It is the right of the clans to bring their questions and concerns to their Kage."
"Well-said, as ever." Akimichi-san swallowed, then straightened out his chest. He set his shoulders high. "We are concerned with a continued trend of nepotism in Konoha."
Regina felt her face burn. She could see the blow coming- she had noted it herself with contempt upon receiving this job she hadn't actually wanted or bid for. But predicting it didn't mean that she didn't want to crawl into a hole and die. She stared resolutely at the notepad and pen. She took a note.
"Jiraiya-hime's appointment to a created position is merely the most glaring of these." Akimichi-san said, evidently gaining some steam. "While some of these appointments have been beneficial to Konoha, including the Hokage Council-"
'Whose members are at least knowledgeable of, if not complicit in, the murder of almost an entire clan.' She thought bitterly. Acid was rising in her mouth. Being named at one of these things was never a good thing. She was their poster child for nepotism- that would explain the way some of the parents had been looking at her at the pickup lately. That gossip must have been making the rounds.
"-others, such as your overly favorable treatment of your students, have been decidedly against Konoha's best interests."
There was a murmur of agreement around the room.
"Tsunade-hime and Jiraiya-san have been essentially derelict of duty for more than ten years. Your other student, Orochimaru-san, was allowed to harm many Konoha citizens before he fled the city. He is still at large."
She kept waiting for the body blow. There was more coming her way, she could feel it. Regina continued to take notes. The only way out of this for her was to be as competent as possible.
'There's no way I can ever tell anyone this job was basically a massive joke on Tsunade's part. Or that I didn't want it. I'd be ungrateful on top of everything, or inflaming tensions.'
"Jiraiya-san hid a daughter from Konoha for most of her life- she is no shinobi." Akimichi-san said, sounding slightly more gentle at the end of the sentence.
'To be fair, I don't believe he's doing this to hurt me in specific. No one cares enough about me one way or the other. I'm merely a symptom of a larger problem.'
"There are also questions as to why she avoided military service- a profession that we find fulfilling, but that we know to be dangerous. Why is she allowed to resume life in Konoha, in such an elevated position, without fulfilling prior requirements?"
This was going to be hell- and not just for her. Regina took a moment to thank Jiraiya for not leaving her in that post office to die and claiming her. He was doubtless going to regret it, if he didn't already.
And Tsunade- she had stuck her neck out. Helping Regina was coming back to haunt her within a year.
'I… can't even think of a solution to this. There isn't one.'
She took notes on the specific complaints, trying not to feel singled out. She had been. But it would be unprofessional to react personally to a professional complaint.
When Regina looked up at the Hokage, he looked shaken to the core. He was fumbling with his hands, obviously wanting to go for his pipe and then restraining himself.
The room was very quiet.
The Hokage looked resigned and exhausted. He swallowed.
"I see. Are there any other specific concerns or examples that the clan heads and Council wish to present at this time?"
"Not at this time, no." Akimichi-san bowed again. "Thank you for hearing our concerns."
"Thank you for bringing them." The Hokage sounded authoritative again, snapping back into some form of normalcy. "Is there anything else my office can do for you?"
"No." The clan heads and Council gathered, bowed, and left. Regina held the door for them, even as she felt the anger, humiliation, and frustration claw at her insides.
She bowed over and over again in front of people who obviously thought she had no right to be there.
They all left.
Regina went back to her office- covered in neat stacks of files. The new personnel requisitions orders had been next on her to-do list.
It felt hollow to pretend she had any business doing them now.
'But the only way out of this mess is forward. I can't pack it up and go home.' She eyed her homework from Danzou-shishou. It was yet another carefully compiled file on an influential person in the Land of Iron.
'He came in there with them. I wouldn't be surprised if he had angled for it. It has a lot more legitimacy if one of the beneficiaries of the nepotism is the one to start advocating against it. Or he could just be doing it for appearance's sake, once they'd made it known that was what they were doing. He got out clean.'
She wanted to throw the file away. Regina willed her hands not to curl into fists.
"Jiraiya-hime."
The voice behind her almost made her startle, she was too keyed up. She turned around.
Akimichi-san was standing just outside her doorway.
'He left. Did he just turn around to come back in?' She bowed.
"Akimichi-san. My apologies, what can I do for you?" She gestured to the inside of her office. "Please." He followed her in, and shut the door. They both stood there. He looked almost a little uncomfortable.
"Akimichi-san, is there something I can do?" She asked.
Regina didn't really want to do something for him, or anyone else, right now. But it was her job. Her job that she hadn't earned.
Even if she did have much more relevant education, that wasn't why she was hired. No one had cared whether she was qualified.
'I doubt anyone would have complained if I'd been a shinobi.' She tried not to be bitter. The ones that they'd specifically complained about were easy targets. The Sandaime's students weren't around to defend themselves to a one. She was brand-new here and had no allies. No friends.
"No."
'Then why the absolute fuck are you here, obviously wanting to talk to me, after throwing me to the wolves in public? I am so fucked. This job, this citizenship, is all that's keeping me safe. It's all in jeopardy now.'
She swallowed more acid and smiled tightly.
"I just wanted to let you know that that wasn't about you." He said slowly, but not unkindly. "You are merely a beneficiary of a problematic system of behavior."
"Thank you, Akimichi-san." She bowed crisply. "I understand. Thank you for your efforts to make Konoha a better place."
'You have good points. I wish they weren't true, but they are.'
And wasn't that a bolt through her heart. All her life she'd had to be so good just to get into the room, and when she finally found herself in a position vaguely similar to her goals, it wasn't as a result of her work.
They were still just standing there in silence.
"Thank you again." She bowed lowly, and noted that he flinched a bit. "For your candor and your concerns. If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know."
He bowed back. "I certainly will. Thank you, Jiraiya-hime." He paused. "Though, if you would be willing and able, a summary of your duties and achievements might help you at this time."
She didn't even know what to say to that, except the polite. "Thank you again, Akamichi-san. I will take that under advisement."
'I don't report to them. They know that. They can only ask- but should I do it anyway? This will tank my personal and professional reputation for a long time if I don't resolve it.'
She escorted him out of the building a second time, bowing and keeping as pleasant a smile on her face as possible.
Regina noted that not a single one of her formerly-friendly coworkers so much as looked in her direction when she came back up the sets of stairs and back into her office.
'My door is still open.'
Better to leave it that way. If she closed it, who knows what they'd say she did in there after that meeting. It was going to be gossip regardless.
'If I want to survive this, I'll need to be the best not-kage they've ever fucking seen. I need to be ruthlessly competent. I can't make any mistakes at all.'
She sat in her desk, opened the requisitions report, and started working. When she finished that pile, she started on the next. Regina double, then triple-checked every single thing she read or wrote.
When she brought papers out or in to the general office, she ignored the glances and just smiled as pleasantly as possible.
'None of these people are my friends.'
She stamped a refusal on a slightly extraneous request with a measured amount of force.
'I can't trust a single one of them.'
Regina added a note as to the reason for refusal into her logs.
'No one is coming to save me from any of this fallout. I have to do it myself.'
And when she ran out of work to do, she memorized everything in the files Danzou-shishou had provided. She wasn't going to be caught slipping.
The Hokage didn't summon her for the rest of the day. She spent her afternoon drafting term limits for active duty for ANBU personnel based on the research she'd had to do for Hatake, and then took another look at the problem of Jounin overwork.