Room 429, Post-Radio

[raspberryturk]

Reno had survived the day, from his training with Ghanima to making plans with Ino, on to Romeo's birthday party and then to do the radio broadcast.

His day wasn't over yet. Oh no.

Smoochy had to die.

[For one!]

Comments

[intraspective]

She tucked the head over her shoulder, making a face at it, before laughing.

"Let's go then," Ino said, quickly moving for the door, "and hope we're not seen."

[raspberryturk]

"Stealthy like... stealthy things in the night," Reno agreed, still chuckling to himself as he made his way through the doorway and into the hall. "Or whatever."

And then he shut his mouth until they were outside again. Not being noticed in the dorms, after all, was far easier when one wasn't flapping their mouth all the way down the stairs.

[intraspective]

Ino's favourite place to train was, really, the preserve. It reminded her of home, and she knew a good bit of it well enough to guide through it even in the dark.

Especially since they weren't going that far at all. Just enough so that no one would see them. She paused at a small clearing. "Good enough for you?"

[raspberryturk]

"Perfect," Reno agreed, dumping the costume body on the ground and digging through his pockets for his smokes.

Torturing things was smoking work. Even purple things that were largely constructed out of felt.

"I vote we strap this bugger to a tree and cut his friggin' toes off, first," Reno mused.

It was entirely possible that he missed doing all the dirty work for the Turks.

[intraspective]

And it was perfectly acceptable to do channel dirty work urges onto a hapless costume! Really!

"I vote yes," she said, lifting Smoochy's head up and making a face at it. "I mean, it doesn't need those toes anyway."

[raspberryturk]

Reno, naturally, was going to have to grin as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a kitchen knife that he'd grabbed from the common room prior to returning to his own room.

It was not a pleasant grin, really. But it was certainly a pleased one.

"Kickass. And anyhow, he won't even feel a thing."

[intraspective]

"And he's got no rights," she said, darkly amused by his preparedness, and propping Smoochy against a good sized tree.

[raspberryturk]

It was possibly not a healthy chuckle that came from Reno as he knelt down in front of the rhino. It was certainly a little disturbing, the way he lightly dragged the blade over the toes of the thing, counting them silently in his head.

"See, the trick of properly torturin' someone," he mused aloud, "is to take it slow. Don't rush it. Let 'em adjust and stop screamin' before you get back to it again. Fortunately," and he picked a toe at random and deftly sawed it off with the knife, "Smoochy here ain't got no feelin' in his feet, so I don't gotta get too artsy with this, yo."

[intraspective]

It would have been more disturbing had it been a person, but it wasn't and the danger made her blood race in a way that only Kabuto had managed. Fear, and thrill. She liked danger.

"Torture 101," she said, her grin wide. "Don't think they'd go for it at the school. But then, there's all sorts of schools, aren't there?"

[raspberryturk]

"Ain't no school like the field," Reno replied evenly, tossing the severed rhino toe at Ino with the faintest of smirks. "You learn this kinda junk in my line of work. Left or right?"

[intraspective]

"Left," she said. "ANBU deals with torture and interrogation back home."

[And I am so so sorry, you have no idea, my computer flipped out last night. AUGH.]

[raspberryturk]

Reno grinned and did a silent sort of eenie, meenie, meiny, moe before plucking a toe from Smoochy's left foot with the same ease he took the first one.

"ANBU, huh? You ain't the first one to mention that group to me, yo. Hinata compared the Turks to 'em, once, back when she was new." A pause while he chose another toe at random and hacked it off to join the first two. "Can you tell me more about 'em, or are they one of them clandestine groups, covert-ops, hush-hush?"

[Totally alright! :) I'm thinking the length of this slowplay means we're going to have to pick another day to present Mom with his 'gift,' though.]

[intraspective]

She watched him silently.

"What she tell you about them?" Ino asked, toying with the first toe he'd cut off. "I know a fair bit for my security clearance."

[Might be best, yeah. XD; Curse our slowplay omg.]

[raspberryturk]

Reno lifted a shoulder.

"She asked what it was I did, the day we met. I told her- I worked for a pretty powerful guy, doin' all the stuff nobody else wanted to dirty their pretty little hands with. She got the idea from there." Reno didn't bother turning around to talk, letting himself get good and absorbed in his work. Off went another toe, and it joined the last two in a pile on the ground. "Black-Ops. Doin' stuff for the village you guys are from. S'about all I know, yo."

[intraspective]

She clasped her hands behind her back.

"ANBU is a subset of shinobi whose specific skills, and inclinations, give them the capabilities of handling the dirtiest jobs we get from clients. It's very very rare that a mission will be turned down, so we get all kinds. Stuff anywhere from 'weed this garden' to 'protect the caravan' or 'impersonate this person' all the way up to 'murder all those kids in that orphanage because I want to buy that land'. The missions get ranked, yeah? And stuff like weeding, and such, gets given to brand new shinobi--it's a teamwork exercise, mainly, but they get paid a little. Stuff like the orphanage gets routed to ANBU, ANBU looks over the mission specs and assigns the agents who'd be best for the mission. And it gets done."

Ino twirled a bit. "Or say a dad really don't like his daughter's boyfriend--if he pays, the dad can hire ANBU to kill the man but make it look like suicide. Dad did a lot of those missions."

[raspberryturk]

Reno nodded, thoughtfully.

"A lot like the ANBU then, yeah. Little less ninja. Same idea. One employer, though. The Turks weren't mercenaries, they were glorified bodyguards and bloodied-up errand boys. And girls. Equal opportunity, zoto."

And there went another toe. One more to go. Stupid fake rhinos and their relatively toeless feet. "You do the job. No matter what. Because you're a Turk."

[intraspective]

She nodded. "Just so," Ino echoed. "Do the job no matter what it is. ANBU isn't for everyone though, so they recruit their own people from the regular ranks. It's seldom that someone volunteers for ANBU, yeah?"

[raspberryturk]

"Turks are all recruited, too, but at least we got a say, up front, if we wanted to join. It's leavin' that's more tricky, yo." Reno severed the last of Smoochy's toes, pocketed the knife again, and grinned up at Ino.

"I vote we put 'em in his mouth before givin' the mess of it to Professor Durden, yo. There's somethin' extra special about makin' the rhino eat his own toes."

[intraspective]

"That's revolting," she said, amused. "Let's do that. What ought we cut off next?"

"Leaving's not so hard, in ANBU," Ino admitted. "Hokage-sama doesn't want more dead shinobi than happen in the line of duty. So if people say 'I gotta get out or I'm going to snap and not get sane again...' they get out."

Sane, admittedly, was more loosely defined in Konoha than it was most other places.

[raspberryturk]

"Only way to leave the Turks up until real recent-like was in a body-bag," Reno mused, hauling himself to his feet to inspect the costume with a critical eye. "We lost a lotta damn good Turks in the past few years, zoto."

He stretched his arms and gave a shake of his head.

"I got the first cut on this sonofabitch, I think it's your turn, yo."

[intraspective]

"Body-bags are more common for ANBU," she conceded, twirling in place while she dug out her cards. "People aren't always real good at knowing when to get out and then, wham, life over."

Ino slipped a single card from the deck and, with hardly a second's worth of concentration--she'd worked at it until she could--sent chakra into the card. With an practiced twist of her wrist she sent it flying at Smoochy. "It didn't need that ear, right?"

As the ear slowly toppled to the ground, the card sticking out of the tree.

[raspberryturk]

Reno eyed the playing card appreciatively, and then turned to grin back at Ino.

"No, really, you gotta teach me how to do that, zoto."

It was pretty kickass, after all. And would come in very handy if ever a poker game went bad.

"Do it again?"

[intraspective]

"Do you meditate?" Ino asked, while snagging another card with practiced ease and adding chakra to it. "Because it helps with learning this."

And fwip and the other ear toppled off Smoochy's head.

[raspberryturk]

"I'm tryin' to get better at it," Reno confessed, stepping forward to gather the ears and stick them in the pile with the toes. "Ghanima told me I better work on it, too. So, I'm thinkin' about headin' into Wellspring sometime, maybe. Hittin' up Cable or someone there to see if they got any pointers, too."

Because, wow, was Reno ever not the meditation sort.

[intraspective]

She grinned. "Wellspring's a good place," Ino told him while tugging out another card and debating what to hit next. "Which, really now, you ought to know. There's meditation that can be done while moving too, if you'd rather that, it's not all just sitting there, like a lump."