raspberryturk | Kalm, Planet Gaia, Tuesday Night

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Kalm, Planet Gaia, Tuesday Night

And the travels of the two potion-wielding weirdos continued, with Reno and Rikku catching a portal after Reno's radio broadcast to a town called Kalm, complete with cheery little colonial houses that gave no indication of the horrible state of decay that Midgar was sitting in, somewhere not far to the Southwest.

"Nothin' like complete government collapse and mass death and disease to boost the economy for the little folk," Reno mused as he made his way along the street, looking up at the cozy rows of housing around them. "Wanna crash at the inn here tonight, or would you rather start the hike to the chocobo farm place, yoto? It'll be a bit of a hike, ain't nobody here gonna led us their chocobos, and we got no way to snag a car or somethin' from this neck of the woods, yo."

"Where are we?" Rikku asked, peering around at the comfortable houses lined up in rows.

It was crazy, but she had sort of thought maybe all of Gaia was as bleak as Edge. Weird.

"We can get started tonight. I don't know how far the walk is? We can always sleep out in the open, though, can't we?"

Wasn't like they hadn't been camping out for the past week, anyway.

"This place is Kalm. Pretty much any place that had a reactor at one point or another is strugglin' through hell right now, yo. Kalm got lucky. It got a shitload of the Midgar refugees, and none of the Meteorfall downtime. I can do without stayin' the night here, yo. Campin's fine by me, zoto."

Not all of Gaia looked like Midgar. Just most of Gaia. Like Junon, for example. Poor freaking Junon.

"It's a bitch of a hike. Probably best we start the walk now, yo. I only ever saw the place by air doin' chopper fly-bys, anyhow. Rude's a friggin' hero for settin' up the deal for us in the first place, zoto."

"Rude gets cookies," Rikku decided, taking his arm and following along. It'd be neat to see the open countryside. Maybe there was a lot more of Gaia that was still okay than the bits that weren't. "Is he gonna meet us there? I'll give him big squeezy hugs if he is. Does he think you're insane for getting them?"

Hey, Rude, I want to buy some chocobos. Blue! Help me out?

"Rude always thinks I'm freakin' insane," Reno pointed out with a grin as he led her toward the edge of town. "I can't see him stickin' around a chocobo ranch for too long, but you never know with that guy. He's got a soft spot for little cute things that's bigger'n the bald spot on his head."

That was to say, Reno didn't know.

[NFB for distance! For

the_merriest, who helped write this and who rules like a ruling thing!]

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"Is that why he gets along well with you?" Rikku asked. Innocently. As innocently as she could manage, anyway.

It was kinda neat, being out here. Quiet. She peered up at the night sky overhead, frowning.

"That's weird," she said. "You can barely make out the stars."

Reno walked in silence for a few moments before looking her way.

"Ain't really that weird. We're... pretty close to Midgar, you know? Couple years back, you couldn't even see the sun in Midgar, in the middle of the day, from the top of the plates. That haze we had in Edge last time we were here, that was the sky on a good day, zoto."

Gaia kind of sucked, that way.

"At least it don't smell like rust and ass out here. Could kinda get used to breathin' air like this."

"It's nice," she nodded. "So ... you guys lost the sun because of all the pollution stuff? I mean, it's not lost, it's still there and all, but ... you can't see it any more, yeah?"

She stared up at the faint, twinkling stars again. "You'll get them back. Won't you? When the air clears up again?"

It had to, sooner or later. They weren't using those reactors any more, were they?

Reno gave his shoulder a shrug. A kind of halfhearted one.

"I ain't holdin' my breath any, Rikku. The shit that took the sky away in the first place, that's been goin' on for freakin' forever, yo. Some brilliant Shinra asshole, generations on generations ago, decided that they were gonna make money by suckin' the life outta the planet and turnin' it into energy. That... kinda doesn't leave much in the way of lifestream to heal this shit up with now, yo."

He shrugged again.

"Someone bleeds too much, they ain't gonna heal right, either. The planet can't get no X-Potions, yoto."

Edited 2008-12-31 07:45 (UTC)

"That doesn't mean they're going to die," she said firmly, reaching to take his hand with hers. "Maybe it'll never be perfect, but scars fade, yeah? Give it some time. It's still too new to know how much it can heal yet."

She had to wonder if the person had meant well. A renewable energy source, one you didn't have to dig for or burn up. Good intentions, paving the road straight to hell.

Reno lifted a shoulder.

"I mentioned the Northern Crater a few days back, yeah? With the Movers? That hole in the planet happened eons ago. Most of the lifestream the planet has is up there, I think, tryin' to fix up that mess. S'why it's so friggin' cold up there, yo. Gaia's got priorities. I don't think lettin' jerks like me see the sky's one of 'em."

Just because Reno wasn't scholarly didn't mean he didn't pay attention to the shit that the ShinRa scientists and people around Edge went on about, now and then. He kind of felt like some kind of environmental AVALANCHE lunatic, going on about healing and the lifestream, but at this point, he was willing to accept it as the truth.

"It might be a lot easier, fixing the sky than fixing a hole," she said calmly. "You know, maybe the planet just misses having the sky around, wants its air to be okay again. You getting to see it again would just be a side effect, kind of a perk, you know?"

She'd seen lots of weirder things than self-healing planets.

... well, some, at least.

"Would be one hell of a perk," Reno agreed, nodding a little and looping one of his arms around her waist as they walked. "In the meantime, I got a portable one, good for anywhere with an outlet, yo."

That on its own? Freaking kickass.

"The farther we get from Midgar, the clearer the sky should get, anyhow. I mean, there ain't nothin' on the planet like the sky on Spira, or even on Fandom, but at least the chocobos get to look up to see twinkly things at night, yo."

"Which means it's kinda not any good on Spira," she frowned. "The portable sky, I mean. We don't have outlets. But on Spira, there's real sky, so I guess that helps."

It really, really sucked going back to the stone age from somewhere like Fandom. Especially for a girl who was getting addicted to technology.

"Chochos totally deserve stars. So what sorts of monsters are there, on the road? Any? Big, creepy things? Little ones? I gave you a rundown for the Thunder Plains, you know."

Reno stopped to consider, as they went.

"Mostly just more one-hits," he mused, glancing around them. The coast looked clear, for the most part. But then, when you were wandering around the plains, you usually didn't know there were monsters until you were right on top of them anyhow. "Except in the marshlands. There's this huge-ass mofo of a snake-thing out there. The Midgar Zolom. Rude mentioned seein' one of them skewered up on a giant freakin' pike one time, like freakin'... I dunno. Shish kebab, or somethin'. That was a while back, though. I was on leave at the time, so I missed it. Could be more 'n one, maybe."

It was hard to say. For some reason, the big, nasty stuff usually tended to be pretty scarce. You'd think the huge stuff would propegate more, especially with all the munchy little one-hits running around.

Maybe the huge stuff got to be huge because it was good at keeping itself hidden. And alive. Who knew, really.

"We should go find one!" Rikku bounced. "I bet it'd have all sorts of cool things to steal. We could totally take a big snake-thing. We're badass like that."

Well. They were.

"On leave? Like, on vacation, or you got sick? I'm sorry you missed the snake-thing."

"Injuries," came Reno's rather dismissive reply, and he really wasn't showing any inclination to expand on it, either. "I'm pretty sure we could take on the Zolom, anyhow. He probably ain't all that tough."

He was only a thirty-foot-or-more giant underwater cobra according to the locals anyhow. Pffft. That was nothing, seriously. Reno had gotten some exposure to the archaic imperial system the locals were still using while he was in Fandom, after all. Feet were freaking short.

"You wanna take on the snake before or after we meet the chickens?"

Injuries? She almost asked, but he didn't seem like he wanted to talk about it. Okay, then. She filed that and nodded.

"After," she decided. "Chochos first. We gotta name them. Then we can go hunt down the wild beastie. I bet he's not so touch at all. Are you thinking of names?"

"I think it's a toss-up between somethin' generic, like Boco, or somethin' way outta left-field," Reno mused with a shrug. "I mean, I'm gonna have to meet the bird first, you know. Try an' figure it out, that way. I dunno if I got a boy or a girl chicobo. Might make a difference, maybe? I kinda suck at this namin' thing. Mako was the first thing I ever did name, really, except myself."

"How'd you pick your name, anyway?" she asked, giving him a curious look. "I mean. You know. Here, pick a name, that'd be ... I can't imagine what I'd decide my name was, if I couldn't be Rikku any more. Why Reno?"

"Why not Reno? Don't really mean nothin'. Not like Rude or whatever. Still kinda sounds like a name, though. S'more me." Reno shrugged, returning the look. "There wasn't nothin' you ever thought you were maybe more of, when lookin' at names? Like, I dunno, a Yuffie, or a Sky, or somethin'?" He tilted his head, and then shrugged and looked ahead of them again. "Then again, maybe pickin' a new name was easy for me because the old one wasn't someone I wanted to be anymore. It'd be a shame if Rikku ever wanted to stop bein' Rikku, yoto."

"Yeah, but ..." She frowned. "You had to hear it, somewhere. Or think of it. Just, 'hey, I wanna be ...' and then you stuck those syllables together. Right?"

It wasn't based on his real name. She knew his real name, and it wasn't even close to Reno.

She considered that. "Amnesia weekend, I thought maybe I was Lakkam. But I think that's because I know someone named Lakkam. It's an Al Bhed kinda name. And for Mischief Club, I called myself Mercury, but that's just a code name, you know?"

"There was an amnesia weekend?" Reno glanced at Rikku, looking bemused at the notion for a moment. "Must'a been before my time. Almost sorry I missed that one, yo." He stretched the arm that wasn't looped around her waist. Kind of a lazy evening, strolling casually from the town to the middle of freaking nowhere. They could jog, later, if it looked like the trip was going to take a while.

"You know, I really didn't give the name a hell of a lot of thought. It was just, 'Pick a name, or you can't get the job,' and maybe I saw it somewhere, or maybe I just made it up when I was a kid, but I always kinda pretended I was a Reno, somewhere in there. So it just made sense to use it, yo. Sucked less than my real name, anyhow. So why not, right? Make it official."

"I like your real name, too," she said loyally. "You seem more like a Reno, though. Maybe that's because that's what I knew you as, first. Why do they change your name, anyway? It's a Turks thing, you've said, I just don't ... get why they do that."

It was peaceful, out here. Faint stars or no. Deep breaths, and cool night air. They'd walk for a while, and then camp out. Sounded like a good time, didn't it?

Much nicer camping out when it wasn't raining.

"Names are dangerous," Reno said without hesitation. "If I'm Reno, I'm Reno. That's that. If I'm that other guy, the one who lived that other life somewhere else, then that means that whole other life is in danger, zoto. I mean, it ain't a big deal for me, or someone like Cissnei, we didn't have nothin' to look back on after we joined the Turks. But, like, Tseng, or Rude...? Just 'cause they can't go back to where they came from doesn't mean they don't look now and then. If Rude was still so-and-so from somewhere-or-other, and people found that out? In this line of work?"

Reno kind of left that one hanging.

"Used to be, Turks didn't take other names." Like Vincent Valentine. Freaking stupid, alliterative name, but it was real. "Turks didn't do the same kinda shit then that we did, though. They didn't make enemies quite the same way we did, yoto."

"They could go after his family," Rikku said softly, eyes widening. "Would they? I mean, that's ..."

She paused. "You don't get to see your family any more. Do you? If you're a Turk. It's too dangerous, otherwise. They wouldn't need your name if they could follow you home, right?"

"If you're a Turk, your family's the Turks," Reno replied, shrugging a little. "Most of us didn't need nothin' beyond that, anyhow. It was... Kinda a recent development, that too. Somethin' went bad, for one of the higher-ups. Lost most of his family. Tried to leave the Turks when he found his daughter again. AVALANCHE had her. Not that fuzzy little cub-scout squad you met with Tifa and Chocobo-Hair. The nasty ones I actually have a reason to hate."

He pursed his lips a little. And then grit his teeth and gave his head a bit of an angry shake. Not angry at her. Just... Angry. At all of it. For a moment.

"If they knew she was Verdot's kid, it would'a been even worse, I think. For all of us, zoto."

And that was keeping in mind that most of the Turks from that era now existed only in some ShinRa database under the rubble somewhere, with the word "Deceased" sitting next to their names.

"I never said you didn't," she said carefully. "Have a reason to hate them, I mean. Just because ... you know. Sometimes, neither side is right, yeah? There are people over here and other ones over there and ... okay, I kinda don't like your old job all that much, but that doesn't mean anyone against them is right, either."

She may not be making sense. But if he could translate Rude's grunts, there was hope, at least.

"I'm glad they didn't know," she said. "No one deserves that. To have their kid be ... just some pawn. That's horrible."

Okay. Okay. Reno was going to take a deep breath. And hold it for a moment. Shut his eyes. Nod. Breathe again.

Okay.

"There are better ways to get a point across than by killin' people, blowin' up cities, playin' with mind control on whole armies of people, and then tryin' to destroy all life on a planet with a giant freakin' summon. ShinRa wasn't much better. But it's tough to take a bunch of people seriously when they try an' tell you you're fuckin' up the world by... You know. Killin' shit."

Reno shrugged. "Wouldn't have done anybody any good if they ever found out where any of us were from, zoto. They'd take off after some place in Wutai, next, to get to Tseng, or maybe they would'a tried to fuck with Rude. Or me, though there ain't much dirt on me from the slums that could break me. That's all the names are. Security."

"It is," she agreed gently. "If you're killing people, you're not the good guys. Rule of thumb. The rest is just excuses. You don't get to say you're at least better than those other people. Because you're not the good guys any more. Maybe they thought they were, once, and they lost sight of what it meant. That's a scary thought, isn't it?"

She hesitated before adding, "That's ... what worried me. When I ... with your boss, and all."

Pulling a gun on someone, just because you really thought they should be dead now. Really not a good sign.

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