raspberryturk | Room 308, Thursday Midday

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Room 308, Thursday Midday

The girlfriends had classes. The baby needed to be protected. That was the mission. That was the job.

Hunkered down in Rikku's room. Surrounded by diapers and baby food and a smiling yellow teddybear crib. Watching the baby.

The mind-blowingly adorable baby. With the little red pigtails and the big green eyes and the wiggly toes. Very cute wiggly toes. Reno was resisting the urge to make up his own version of "this little piggy," because he didn't actually know how it was supposed to go.

Yep. Alone in Rikku's room. With a baby.

And Madrox.

"If she craps herself, you're on diaper duty, yo."

[For that guy, but the post is open! If you want to make the boys freak out good, just knock. :D]

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Jamie snorted. "Yeah right, we're taking turns on that one," he replied making sure there were two dupes at the door and two more at either end of the hallway before closing the door behind him.

His casual tone sounded a bit forced, and quite frankly he was looking a bit jumpy.

"First one we flip a coin. Deal?"

Reno fingered the baton that was resting at his hip for a moment, just to be certain it was still there, and then nodded.

"Fair enough. Can't promise any kinda quality though, man. I ain't never held a baby before, nevermind changin' shitty diapers."

His gaze drifted back to Janice, and he was forced to reach forward to wiggle her little feet. He had to. Honest. The forces of the universe made him do it.

Jamie on the other hand was watching the kid from the farthest corner of the room. As if putting that distance between him and the kid would protect him.

"Did Rikku tell you who this baby is?" he asked. "I mean who she really is?"

"She mentioned," Reno replied with a nod. "The kid that's gonna either save the world or be the end of it."

Those toes so needed to be wiggled. Wiggly toes! Wiggly baby toes!

"Kinda like flippin' a coin all on its own, ain't it?"

Who had the wiggly toes? Janice had the wiggly toes!

"Well it certainly puts changing her diapers in perspective, doesn't it?" He said with a little smirk.

"The shit that ate the planet," Reno mused, glancing over his shoulder at Jamie. "I take it you got mixed feelings on the matter, yo."

It wasn't like Reno hadn't dealt with the end of the world before, really. Some people were a little better with it than others. Or something.

"Well when she was born an entire down was decimated because a militant anti-mutant group and another militant mutant group decided to blow the place up just to get the kid. As a result, I got sent forward into the future and got stuck in a incarceration camp for mutants and got this nice little tattoo on my face. I then got blown up for my trouble and left a good friend behind for the sake of a kid who was supposed to be safely somewhere else," Jamie replied.

"So. Yeah. Little bit of mixed feelings on the subject."

That reply earned a bit of a whistle.

"Man, all that for a kid that ain't learned her first words yet," Reno noted. "And you got any clue why people figure the kid with the chubbiest cheeks I ever saw is gonna make or break the place?"

"She's the first mutant born after our entire race was culled down to maybe a few hundred people," Jamie said with a frown. "Cable rescued here because he believes she's going to be the savior of our race. After a few weeks of keeping her here on the island another guy with the same tattoo as me showed up and almost tore the island up trying to kill her because he believes she's going to kill a million people when she grows up."

...

"She does have cute cheeks though."

Reno shot Jamie a wry grin before turning back to tickle the baby's toes.

"Cutest cheeks I ever saw, anyhow," he mused. And then paused. And inched backward a little.

....

"Time for a coin-toss, yo."

Babies were significantly less cute when they were allowed to poop.

Jamie sighed and stepped forward. "I'll do it," he said with a shrug. "At least somewhere down the line I can lay claim to changing the diapers of the savior of mutantkind or the person who killed everyone."

He immediately regretted it as he opened the diaper.

"Dear, GOD!" he cried out as he reached for the wipes. "What has Rikku been feeding this kid?"

"Strained peaches," Reno answered, almost angelically, as he went rooting through his newly acquired shopping cart for a diaper that would fit the kid. "An' mashed peas. An' whatever else I nabbed from T&C."

Reno was very helpful this way.

"I guess I should'a nabbed some FeBreeze while I was shoppin' for baby supplies, huh?"

He'd keep that in mind for future random babies.

"Woo!"

Jamie was pretty sure what Janice's mutant power was. He just didn't understand how creating an incredible stench was going to save anyone.

"Or at least some Lysol," Jamie coughed as he held out the wrapped up diaper for Reno to take. "Wow."

Reno's expression lapsed from smug to slightly horrified as he took the diaper, making a fast-as-possible beeline for the wastebasket.

"Dear freakin' Ifrit, it smells like somethin' that'd come outta a Dual Horn with gas, zoto."

For the record, that was pretty bad, yes. He was never eating with those hands again.

"Quick, slap somethin' fresh on there before she can do it again or somethin'."

"I'm working on it!" Jamie exclaimed as he tried to slap on a fresh diaper. "And for the love of whatever is holy, don't leave that thing in here!"

Reno stared into the wastebasket, at a loss. And then, kind of tentatively, reached to pick up the entire basket, diaper and all.

"Think we can pawn off this mess on the sentries at the door?"

No, there was no way Reno was leaving the room.

Jamie made a face but nodded. "Yeah, take the whole can," he said mangling the new diaper and grabbing another one.

Reno peered over for a moment to toss in his two cents before rushing the door.

"Try puttin' her bum onto the diaper first, instead'a goin' the other way," he stated, the door flying open and the whole mess of it being thrust out into the hallway. "Deal with it," he barked, and then slammed the door shut again.

Because if he did it fast, there would be no time for protest!

There were a few shouts of protest but nothing that caused them to break down the door.

Meanwhile the Jamie in room, in his infinite wisdom, flipped over the baby instead of the diaper and tried to put it on that way.

Janice thought this was very amusing.

"Yeah, this really isn't working."

Reno eyed the setup, his back against the door, and then pinched his forehead for a moment, grimacing.

"Don't diapers come with instructions or somethin'?"

Okay. He wasn't going to break the baby. Nope. Babies were harder to break than the effort it took to change a bum. Yep. He made his way over and reached for the fresh diaper.

"Gimmie that, Madrox. It can't really be that hard, can it?"

Jamie stepped aside. "Yeah, okay, maybe not. Just remember who took the brunt of the mess here all right? Do we have any hand sanitizer?"

"Try the cart. There's a little bit of everything from the baby aisle in T&C in there, yo."

Reno had just grabbed stuff, okay?

He spent a minute to assess the situation, studying the diaper, and the baby, and the way that the diaper probably went, and then he got to work. A sticky tab here, rolling the baby over there, aaaaaand...

".... I think I got it on backwards."

...

"Good enough, yo."

"Didn't I have it backwards?" Jamie asked as he used a half a bottle of hand sanitizer on his hands. "Why is yours better?"

"I did it without manglin' the diaper," Reno said, an air of smugness in his voice. "Ain't that right, Lil'Miss Stinkypants? S'gotta be right. Who'se got her diaper on wrong? Is it you?"

....

Reno cleared his throat. That totally hadn't just happened.

"It's somethin' for the kid to piss in, yo."

"Okay, man. I just don't want to be holding her when does her business and she leaks," Jamie said with a little hesitance.

He looked carefully at the kid.

"Think she knows what's going on?"

"I think she knows that there are two totally freakin' clueless idiots who are standin' around makin' faces at her 'cause they got no idea what else they should be doin'," Reno replied. And then stared at Janice for a moment before reaching out to wiggle her feet again. "I don't think she knows people want her dead. I mean... lookit her. She's all innocent and... burbly an' junk, yo."

"Well if Cable and Deadpool raise her that's going to change pretty quick," Jamie noted. "She'll be the most dangerous toddler in the universe."

That just made Reno grin more.

"Imagine the baby book, yo. Baby's first shotgun. Baby's first military obstacle course..."

"And children books recapping Wade's favorite episodes of the Golden Girls," Jamie said shaking his head. "It's like ~~meta for~~ My Two Dads except one of them is Christopher Walken on Steroids and the other one is an intelligent Sylvester Stallone."

"... Actually," Reno mused, "I think I'd watch that show, if it existed."

He'd pay to watch that show, if it existed.

"It'd be a complete train wreck," Jamie agreed. "I don't think I could stop watching."

Okay, so, she hadn't been gone that long. And babies were pretty resilient. You know. Feed them, change them, don't drop them from any particular height. So she wasn't worried, here.

... Although she was moving pretty fast.

She knocked, and then realized it was kinda silly to knock on her own door, for her own room, so instead she popped her head in.

"Hello?"

She half-expected to see Reno and Jamie waving tiny white flags of surrender.

Temari did as well. But there was no way in hell she was taking over on the babysitting.

Bodyguard, yes. Babysitter... HELL NO.

So she lurked outside the window like a lurky ninja that lurked.

Who had toes? Stinky Janice had toes! Ten toes! Ten stinky to-

Reno went shock still at the knocking, but breathed a sigh of relief when Rikku peered into the room.

"Yo! You back? We were just startin' to bond with the baby, zoto."

A beat, and then Reno added for good measure, "Nobody ever told me that babies smell worse than standing downwind of a still-standin' Midgar during an invasion of Malboro, yo."

Okay, that was adorable, Reno playing with the baby, and she was going to melt a little.

"Only if you don't change them," she laughed, shutting the door behind her and locking it firmly. "Does she have stinky pants? Is she a stinky-pants-baby? Is she?"

Oh, wow, Janice continued to be the most adorable thing on the planet.

"She's a backward-pants baby," Reno clarified. "We dealt with the stinky."

Well. Jamie had dealt with the stinky, and Reno had figured out that diapers came with sticky tabs for a reason. Which was close enough.

"Congratulations," she grinned, reaching her hands out for adorablebabysunshinewinyay. Also known as Janice. "You wanna come here? Uppy? Hey, you."

Janice lift her arms and squeed, and please, do not mind Rikku, she was just going to be a puddle over here.

She scooped Janice up with a few happy nuzzleses and a sigh. "So why'd you put her pants on backwards?"

"It was either that, or Jamie's way of doin' it? With the baby upside-down, yo."

Well. Reno figured that made sense, anyhow.

"At least she's wearin' 'em. I was gonna suggest we wrap her ass in a towel an' see how well that works, but then I got to thinkin' we'd probably run outta towels."

"I bet you would," Rikku cooed, placing a light kiss on Janice's forehead. "Alllll my towels would be icky! Uck! Poo! Did Reno and Jamie take good care of you? Did they? Were they good to you?"

"Bah," Janice declared, bouncing a little on Rikku's hip.

"I bet that was a yes," Rikku grinned.

"She has toes," Reno clarified. "Ten of 'em."

Because, you know, this was odd for a baby and all.

"This little piggy went to Midgar, an' that other one went on a hike in the modeo mountains an' found Tseng's chopper, an' did you know how freakin' hard it is to come up with stuff for piggies to do while tryin' to keep a kid from suckin' on your stun baton?"

"Did you count?" Rikku laughed. She felt giddy, dammit. "Oh my gosh, please tell me the baton is switched off? And is Petey behaving himself?"

... Petey never behaved himself. But Petey and Janice seemed cozily fond of each other.

"She got to play with my Materia for a bit. The baton ain't on until I need it, and Petey never behaves himself."

Which is why Reno had stuck Petey into the crib. It kept him off the floor, where the baby was.

"She threw the Materia, I gotta go diggin' under your bed sometime soon to get Pyramid back."

"I bet she drooled on it," Rikku laughed. "I'll make sure you get Pyramid back. That one's fun. Can't be too hard to find under the bed, right?"

... In the mess of wires and coils and whatever else was down there? Oh, well. They'd find it eventually.

Petey, for his part, liked the crib. There were interesting things to chew on!

"Maybe Materia works better with a little drool," Reno mused. And then shrugged and grinned a little. "It's... Kinda weird. Sittin' in your room, watchin' a kid."

"Yeah?" she asked, taking a seat next to him on the bed. "It ... feels weird. Having her, and ... I dunno."

Red hair, green eyes. Adorable little bundle.

Reno nodded, watching Janice intently for a moment before leaning over to steal a kiss.

From Rikku. Not the baby.

"Weird, yeah. But she's cute. Even if she stinks now an' then."

"So do you," Rikku teased. "I keep you around, anyway, you know."

"Mmm-bah," Janice contributed helpfully.

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Room 308, Thursday Midday

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