Chapter Text
Jill scans the dance floor idly. The room is packed with dancing women. No one stands out. She holds her glass up to the bartender, who creates another nearly virgin Mai Tai for her. “Slow night, huh?” Ryouko asks her. “Just the occasional stares I get when someone wants to see if I’m cosplaying or actually foreign.” Jill grins. Juri and the Locket’s staff became sort of friends, at least in her American thinking, since she helped sort out a few problems with stalkers. It is hard to get to know Japanese women as friends. Much easier to pick someone up, her exotic looks played into her hands for that. After more than a year in Japan, she still is bad at Japanese social niceties, it was so much more than attaching the right honorific. She can’t remember feeling this clumsy even in her teens.
She looks to the door as a group of women enter. They have that freshly-showered, energetic look of a team after training. They range in age from barely old enough to get in to a few years older than Jill herself. Some kind of martial arts group, then? Ryouko smile as the group approaches the bar. “So, what are Tokio’s finest celebrating today?” she asks. Over the chatter of several voices, “birthday”, “Karaoke”, Jill stops checking out the brown-haired women with glasses whose pose shouts lawyer to her experienced eyes and looks the group over. Policewomen? Her eyes are questioningly held by a tall women in a blue power suit, caution in them. Ryouko intervenes “Sato-san, meet Jill-san. “ The tall women relaxes and smiles. Being introduced by Ryouko has this effect on people, Jill has noticed that before. “Pleased to meet you.” Jill says, bowing slightly. Sato bows as well, but just smiles instead of trying to make herself heard over the noise her team mates make. Ryouko takes all orders, tells them the Karaoke box will be free in 20 minutes and most of the group move off to a table. Sato stays at the bar for a moment. “How have things been?” she inquires of Ryouko. “Fine”, she replies absentmindedly while measuring the cocktails. “Don’t distract the artist” Jill quips. Sato grins at her, relaxing a bit more. “What kind of a club are you?” the blonde asks, looking at Sato while not checking her out. Sato can tell the difference. “Advanced self-defense and street fighting” she replies, wondering what the blonde, Jill-san, is aiming at. Jill sits up straighter. “The everything-that-works-and-keeps-you-alive kind?” Sato laughs at her enthusiasm. “I miss that kind of training” Jill continues. “I’m training in a dojo with Shuri Ryu Karate, but it’s not the same.” Sato nods. “Have you been training long?” “20 years or so?” The blonde throws up her hands in a irresolute gesture, she seems to notice just as she is doing it. For a moment, she intensifies it, manages to look like a total bimbo, but then the smile becomes real again, the sparkle in the green eyes is self-deprecating and full of mischief. “I started even before the police academy, … a long time ago.” Nice bait, Sato thinks to herself. If Ryouko hadn’t introduces them, she would find this stranger definitely suspicious. The green eyes wander to something behind her but Sato decides not to turn around. A moment later, Kisaki Eri, the women Jill had been checking out when Ryouko made the quip about Tokio’s Finest, touches her arm. “I thought I’d better help with the drinks” she says. “Oh, help is always appreciated” Sato tells the lawyer with a raised eyebrow. She pays for the drinks and picks up one of the trays, waiting until Kisaki turns away with the second. Then Sato looks back at Jill. “If you are staying in Japan longer, maybe we will meet again.” “Maybe”, Jill nods. As Sato turns away, Jill adds softly “I’d like to”. Kisaki is waiting for Sato some steps away. As soon as Sato catches up, she throws her a question. Sato answers too low to be overheard, there is slight headshake with her words. They don’t look like a couple, Jill muses. But the women with glasses didn’t like us talking for some reason.
“Since when do you pick up dangerous strangers?” Kisaki hisses. Sato raises an eyebrow at her. “Why do you think she’s dangerous?” she shoots back. “As if you didn’t notice it yourself. She abruptly stopped checking me out when Ryouko said something about ‘Tokio’s Finest. She’s here to pick someone up, but decided this was more important.”, Kisaki began and continued, dropping her voice even more ”she wasn’t the least intimidated by all of us crowding around her, and you know how most women just move away when we are in a group.” Sato grins, she likes Kisaki’s clear way of describing things. “I think she was trying to figure out how to challenge me to a friendly match. I think it would be a hell of a workout. ” Her most challenging training partner throws a glace over her shoulder, than an Sato. “Just like I said, she’s dangerous.” “Yes. Ryouko introduced her to tell me she’s not a danger to us, though. “ Reaching their table, they dropped the subject.