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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"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.

"You wouldn't have done it," Reno said, stopping in his tracks and turnning to face her, to loop his arms around her and pull her close.

Maybe because he really needed it right about now, too.

"And that ain't anything bad about you, either, Rikku. Rufus probably is the kinda guy that's better off in a body bag. But... Like you said. If you're killin' people..."

Reno really wasn't the good guys. Reno was pretty much okay with that.

"I didn't mean --" Rikku stopped short, hoping he couldn't see her blushing in the night air. "That sounded wrong. I'm sorry? That, uh ..."

Snuggling in was perfect, right about now. He had good instincts for that sort of thing. She was going to hold on.

"Just because ... someone's better off that way, doesn't give me the right to put them there," she said carefully. "I mean, then I'm no better. Right?"

"You didn't do it," Reno pointed out. "So you're a hell of a lot better, yoto."

He gave her a little squeeze, turning his eyes upward.

Yeah, the sky here did kind of suck.

"Don't worry about it, anyhow. Some people are good guys. Some people ain't. Some people just do what they figure's gotta get done, no matter what side it puts 'em on. Between you and me, if there really is such a thing between 'good guy' and 'bad guy,' I wouldn't know it, yo."

"Maybe you're just a Turk," she said, trying for a reassuring smile. "Good guys, bad guys, the heck with all that mess. You do your job, and you do it damn well, and then you go grab a beer."

Rikku had the strangest feeling that she might, finally, be Getting It.

"And then we go grab a beer," Reno agreed, a shadow of a smirk creeping over his lips again. "Don't make me nothin' but whatever I happen to be at the time, yo."

He looked back down at her, lifting an eyebrow.

"You do the job. Not because you're a good guy or a bad guy. You don't wanna rule the world, and you ain't really out to save it, either. You just do it 'cause it's gotta get done, zoto."

Edited 2009-01-02 05:46 (UTC)

She nodded. "I'm not saying ... you know. That I think it's awesome and ... all of that."

She got it. She didn't necessarily approve, especially since it felt like he could switch his ethics off and line up with whatever side was passing out his orders, and okay, yes, that bothered her.

But she got it, maybe, and that was progress. Wasn't it?

"Did you ever ... I dunno." She shook her head. "I mean, it's not your job to worry about people, just ... if you could have said no more, would you have? Did you ever ..."

"Put my foot down?" Reno was frowning thoughtfully at that question, pulling back a little and looking at the plains stretched out around them. They had quite the hike ahead of them, didn't they? "Say no?"

...It’s going to look weird if all the townspeople disappear at once. Can’t keep doing stuff like this, you know.

He grit his teeth a little. Gave his head a shake.

"I didn't. And if I did, it would'a been to cover my own ass, back then. Things change, zoto."

"I mean, you couldn't say no. Then." She shrugged, lightly, as she chewed her lower lip. "Which ... I get. I'm just wondering if ... you know. If you ever wanted to, even though you couldn't."

If he'd ever ... regretted it, wished he could do something else, wanted to stay his hand. Something. Anything.

"There wasn't no room for second thoughts," Reno said, pressing onward as though he was going to settle for leaving it just at that.

Two or three steps along, he stopped, turned on his heel, and looked her square in the eye.

"Yeah, Rikku. Even I had second thoughts. Wanted to speak up, sometimes. For all my morals are worth anyhow, yo."

"They are worth something," she said loyally. "I was just ... you know. Worrying that ... I'm not sure what I was worrying. I'm sorry that you couldn't stop any of it. I think I'm just ... sorry that you were in that position, maybe."

"I chose that position. It was my meal ticket." Reno shrugged. Started walking again. "Like I said, though. Shit changes. I'm not in that position no more. I get to say no if I wanna."

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