raspberryturk | Room 429, Post-Radio

"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.

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."

...

"It ain't?"

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

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

A beat.

"Feel like setting him on fire?"

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?"

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."

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?"

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."

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."

"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."

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."

It was incredibly and utterly girly of her to clap her hands together and bouncy in place at the fire.

Nevertheless, that was what she was doing. And laughing.

"Beautiful," she crowed. "A total improvement over what it was before."

"I vote we make some kinda ritual outta this," Reno chuckled. "A monthly weird-ass cute thing burning. Could be therapeutic, zoto."

He squatted down in front of the rhino, still grinning. "Burning's a good look on you, Smoochy."

"A very good look," she agreed, tilting her head at it consideringly. "And monthly burning ritual implies that we're going out and buying these things and do you really want anyone to see you buying something like that?"

Seriously?

Reno glanced up at Ino.

...

"Point taken. Okay, so we just burn shit like this when we can get our mitts on it by questionable means, zoto." He looked back at Smoochy, supervising the burning process. They only wanted to burn the horn, after all. The rest still had to be recognizable as Smoochy, if they were going to proudly present it to the professor.

"Perfect," she decided. "Clearly that means we're going to have to start paying more attention to who has the most cutesy stuff, but that's way better than buying it."

Ino glanced at him. "I think it's just about charred the poor horn to death enough, yeah? What say we stab it a whole bunch of times?"

"I can live with that," Reno agreed, kicking the costume over to kick dirt over the thing's face until the flames died off. "Stabbin' really makes an impression, yo." A pause. "And it's almost as satisfyin' as burnin' the ugly purple mofo, too, yo."

He kicked another clump of dirt at it for good measure.

"It'd be more satisfying if it bled," she said thoughtfully, pulling out a card, charging it, and flicking it so it sank deep into Smoochy's side. "But I guess we can't have everything."

"Sad, ain't it?" Reno pulled out the knife again and buried it to the handle in the end of the costume's still smouldering snout. "Gonna have to go huntin' monsters sometime, back on Gaia. Ain't like there's a shortage of 'em runnin' around, anyhow. You can pretty much just wander around and beat 'em up wholesale, yo."

He tilted his head, poking at the hole in the costume where Ino's card at hit it.

"Sad thing about this guy is, instead of gil or good materia, the only shit he's gonna drop is cotton stuffing."

"Materia?" she asked twirling another card in her hand. "And, ha, you ever want me to come kick monster ass in your world, I'd love to. Mine don't have random monsters like that. Just a good lot of bandits."

Flick and fwup and another card was embedded in Smoochy.

"Materia. Little round spirit glowy magic lifestream marbles that let you customize your weapons an' armor," Reno answered with a shrug. "Some'll let people cast magic- like throwin' fireballs or callin' thunderbolts from the sky. Some'll let you heal yourself, or other people. There's other ones'll let you summon gods for hit-and-run attacks an' shit. You kinda don't just stumble across ones like that outta nowhere, yoto."

He pulled the knife out again, taking a moment to casually pick strands of cotton stuffing from the serrated edge, before going for a belly wound. Nice and deep.

"Smoochies just don't got summon materia on 'em. Cryin' shame, if you ask me."

"Huh," she mused, flicking another two cards at the rhino. "And just anyone can use these marbles?"

"Well, kinda," Reno agreed with a shrug. "I mean, you gotta have somethin' to set 'em in, like a slotted weapon or whatever. But I seen kids in the slums usin' this stuff. Just takes a little practice, is all."

A pause as he made a bit of a sawing motion with the knife, working it upward so there was a long, deep slit from Smoochy's bellybutton to around where his throat might be.

"I mean, I wouldn't hand out materia to just anyone. And apparently it takes somethin' outta the planet while you're usin' it. Most people on Gaia are too damn scared to look at 'em anymore. Like everything else we used to live on day-by-day. No more mako-" and that was punctuated by a stab to Smoochy's throat, "- No more materia-" and that was punctuated by a stab to Smoochy's chest, "-And no more ShinRa."

And that last one saw Reno burying the knife in Smoochy's forehead. And leaving it there as he pulled himself to his feet.

Ino stared at Smoochy for a moment.

"Geez," she said, voice deliberately light. "Issues, much?"

Reno glanced at Ino over his shoulder, and then grinned one of those supposed-to-be-dismissive grins of his. The sort that really, really missed its mark.

"I'm no good at pickin' up the pieces, Ino. That's someone else's job. I wreck shit."

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