raspberryturk | Room 429, Tuesday Afternoon

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Room 429, Tuesday Afternoon

"--And you don't even smell that bad," Reno said, holding his ferret in his arms. He'd been going on like this since he'd woken up and decided to strike up a friendly rapport with his pet. "Kinda like sour somethin'-or-other or kinda gunky feet or somethin'. I've smelled worse, yo. I mean, like, I smelled worse, Mako. You should'a seen the kinda junk we had to wade through as Turks. And, I mean, Midgar. There was a city that stank. I miss Midgar. And here I am talkin' to you like a nut. You know, I shouldn't even have a pet? I only agreed to gettin' you when Rikku dragged me to the pet shop 'cause I crave some kinda companionship that ain't gonna leave me just because they find out I'm some kinda heartless government tool--"

That was about the point where he furrowed his eyebrows and frowned.

"And you don't care. You're some kinda weasel thing. So why am I tellin' you this?"

Mako blinked up at Reno lazily, and then set his chin down on his lap and attempted to sleep. Snoozing was hard when someone kept trying to strike up a conversation with you, after all.

[Open door is open!]

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Triela stood in the doorway and eyed the occupants doubtfully. "I knew you were crazy, Reno, but I never pegged you as the talks-to-animals type."

"I heard somewhere that talkin' to animals makes 'em healthier, figured I'd try it out. Plus I got all this junk on my chest I can't tell anyone, and if I bottle it up I go absolutely batshit." Reno blinked and stared at Triela for a moment. "And I didn't mean to say that, but the filter between my brain and my mouth ain't workin' today. Which really sucks."

Triela blinked. "Okay." How were you supposed to respond to that? "You realize how crazy you sound? Because it's pretty crazy." She frowned and shook her head. That wasn't what she'd meant to say.

"What's keeping you from talking about it with other people? They're more likely to understand, you know."

"I sound more crazy when I'm tellin' the truth about the shit I don't want to talk about," Reno replied. "I mean, the things I'm not supposed to talk about, and I don't wanna talk about it because it's hard, and there ain't many people who can understand the stuff I'm tryin' to talk in circles around right now because talkin' about it means I'm admittin' that I'm a murderous psychopath with no conscience or morals and that don't really bother me but it scares the hell out of people who do care and I'm gonna shut up now."

He demonstrated how bound and determined he was to shut up by clenching his teeth and poking at the ferret. Yep. It was totally a ferret.

"So we've got more in common than I thought," Triela shrugged easily. She cocked her head curiously, "Do the people you work for use chemical conditioning too? Or did you just... I don't know, grow up that way?"

"If by chemical conditioning, you mean like doses of radiation to make people stronger and faster and tougher, yeah, ShinRa used to do that. Called it mako. Same stuff we used to run the city on."

Reno was kind of gritting his teeth, now. Too much talking.

No one ever accused Triela of being sensitive to other peoples' emotional states. This was probably because even people as dense as her realized she was almost completely oblivious on the subject.

"Does that affect your memory? Your personality? I mean, conscience isn't all that useful in a weapon. It's one of the reasons the Agency supresses it in us."

"The Turks had to do that part on their own. We were a liability to the company right from the start. That's why Turks who defected were hunted down. Stayin' alive is usually pretty good incentive to stay loyal. Hell, I don't think there were many Turks other'n me to get mako-treated. That's usually a SOLDIER thing, and that's kind of a moot point, 'cause ShinRa's gone now anyhow."

"Oh."

Triela frowned thoughtfully. "How have you managed to stay... relatively sane," she guessed that was the appropriate descriptor, "without them?" Because she was pretty much positive that if the Agency shut down she'd be lucky to make it a month.

"I'm twitchy," Reno replied. "I ain't done any real work in months. Hunted down some birds this weekend, and that hardly counts. I gotta... I dunno, break someone's nose or get stabbed or somethin' real soon or I'm gonna crack."

He was going to pick up Mako under his week little armpits and make him dance. Distracty ferret dance, whee.

"Need work."

Triela pursed her lips. "I might..."

Then she shook her head. She probably wasn't supposed to talk about that.

That earned a raised eyebrow and a very expectant sort of look.

"You might...?"

Enquiring minds needed to know, here.

Triela sighed. "I might be able to snag a few of the Agency's files on targets who have gone international. We don't operate outside of Italy, and almost never outside of Europe."

Reno considered that for a moment.

"You're talkin' about vigilante work?"

And then he was grinning.

"I can do vigilante work, yo."

"Probably in South America," she nodded. "Or possibly Africa."

A small frown settled onto her face. "Assuming I can find a way to get the files and get some sort of vague approval..."

"I don't know where either of those places are," Reno noted. "And if I did take the jobs, I'd have to stop around graduation, yo. I gotta go back to Gaia, where I'll probably get my ass killed, when I graduate. Which is stupid, because they probably don't want me there in the first place. Damn, there are so many freelance gigs poppin' up around this place. If I wasn't goin' stir-crazy waitin' for the rougher jobs, I'd be thrilled."

"If you want rough jobs, I'm pretty sure I can manage that," Triela told him. "I like a challenge myself."

"It's gotta be somethin' I won't have to kill someone for," Reno added, setting the ferret down on his bed and crossing his arms over his chest. "I made a promise, I wasn't gonna go out lookin' for targets that have to get bumped off. I know, it means someone else is gonna have to do it and I could probably do it better, but I ain't gonna break that promise, yo."

Triela pursed her lips in thought. "Would it be okay if I did the killing part? You could handle support and interrogation and stuff?"

"I... Really don't know," Reno mused. "I'd have to talk to Rikku about it, and I dunno if that's the kinda thing you want me just talkin' about either, is it? It usually ain't. I ain't goin' behind her back, either. My twitchy fingers ain't worth riskin' my relationship with her. And now I sound all mushy an' shit."

"You do... I don't understand that sort of thing, but I guess you'd know best."

Triela thought about it for a minute in silence. "If she promised not to tell anyone, it might be okay to let Rikku know. It's not like this would be official for me either... I wouldn't have to report back to anyone..."

"Rikku's all that's holdin' me together now that I don't have the Turks." All the teeth-gritting in the world wasn't stopping him from talking, and Reno was going to pick up the nearest sock and shove it into his mouth in a moment if he kept running on like this. "She can keep a secret a shitload better than I apparently can today, and she hates what I do, but she understands I gotta do it, and here I am talkin' about takin' the jobs, and I don't even know what it is you do, except that they have to fuck with your head so that you'll do 'em. I don't want nobody pokin' in my head."

"The job description is long and complicated and has a lot of technical jargon thrown in, but it boils down to: I kill terrorists."

"Well," she amended, "every so often they want someone alive. So sometimes I only shoot to wound."

Somehow it was at this point that Triela caught onto the fact that Reno probably wasn't intending to talk about all this. "Should I stop asking you questions?"

"For the love of Shiva yes," he hissed, cupping a hand over his mouth and staring at her with wide-eyes. It didn't change the fact that he kept talking. "I dealt with terrorists before. Turns out they were right. Doin' all the wrong things for all the right reasons, and that don't make me a better person for doin' it. Not that I'm interested in bein' a better person. I just don't know if that's the kinda shit I wanna go lookin' for again. Anymore. I got somethin' to lose n-NGH."

He just chomped down on his own finger, and he'd be damned if he was going to take it out of his mouth in order to say anything else.

Triela raised an eyebrow. "How about I come back another time? Maybe we can talk about this tomorrow or something...?"

Room 429, Tuesday Afternoon

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