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

[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."

[raspberryturk]

...

"It ain't?"

This was news to Reno, who was now toying idly with his bottle of butane.

[intraspective]

Ino grinned. "It ain't," she promised. "Meditation's a pretty broad term, really."

A beat.

"Feel like setting him on fire?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno was now grinning again.

"Hell, yeah! I say we take that horn first, zoto. That shade of yellow's startin' to make my head hurt."

Cap off! Butane open! Woooo!

"So, tell me, how broad is the term, then?"

[intraspective]

Ino just laughed. "I'm not fond of it myself," she admitted. "Burn it good."

She tucked her cards back in her pocket. "The key to meditation is the ability to focus enough on what you're doing that you're able to close out all other distractions and wind up doing whatever almost on auto-pilot. It's why sitting and breathing is the most commonly accepted form of it--it's hard to get more basic than that, right? But the key is in making sure whatever you're doing is repetitious, monotonous, and rather simple. You don't want to be trying anything too difficult."

[raspberryturk]

Reno was halfway through dumping the bottle of butane on Smoochy's horn when he stopped, righted the bottle again, and kind of stared at Ino.

"You're kiddin'," he said, flatly. "The whole point of meditatin' is to bore yourself to autopilot?"

[intraspective]

She'd never heard it put quite that way, no.

"Not exactly," she said, giggling. "Though that's what happens the first few times you try it. Once you've learned to manage that, it becomes a way of dealing with your thoughts, and reaching your center. Your center is..."

Ino shrugged. "It's important. It's, like, while you're there the whole world is better grounded? Your issues, and problems and stuff don't seem so important 'cause your emotions aren't all caught up in them? It's a good mental place to find if you're upset."

[raspberryturk]

Reno mused on that for a moment while he capped what was left of his butane and pocketed it again.

"Know what mental place I go to when I'm upset?" It wasn't really a question. Reno was very good at keeping a conversational sort of tone. Especially while he was in the process of destroying things. He pulled out his lighter and waved it about, a grin on his face again. "Right here, zoto."

[intraspective]

"Funny," she said dryly, taking a step back from Smoochy for safety reasons. "But, seriously, that? You can use that as a focus so it's really all up in your head."

[raspberryturk]

Reno snorted as he tucked his lighter back into his pocket, taking another long drag from his cigarette and thoughtfully inspecting the butt of it for a moment.

"Senseless destruction of sickeningly cute things is meditation," Reno mused. And then he was laughing as he flicked the glowing stub of it toward Smoochy's horn.

And up it went!

"Daaamn. That's satisfying."