raspberryturk | Room 501, Wednesday Evening

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Room 501, Wednesday Evening

Why yes, yes Reno does, in fact, check his e-mail.

Junk, junk, junk, junk with spam filling, ten messages from the boss informing him that his second report is half a week late, junk, invite to the Girls with Guns club, spam, spam, junk, jun-- Ooooh.

He scrolled up and clicked on the invite, reading it over a good three times and grinning all the more as he did so.

"Chicks and firearms," he said aloud. "I'm so there, yoto."

[[Door and post open like an open thing. Give Reno another reason to put off writing that "no, really, I'm not insane, I just wasn't me at all this weekend" report for Tseng.]]

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Naminé was on her way back to the second floor, having destroyed poor Sokka's mind with the suggestion that perhaps, Valentine's advances were not completely unwanted - and it would be cruel to laugh at that, so she would try very hard not to - when she noticed the door to 501 open.

She was only going to glance in and continue on her way, except the boy sitting and checking his e-mail had flame-red hair, sticking out somewhat uncontrollably, and she had to stop for a moment, reminding herself that red hair wasn't that uncommon and some people had very little in common with the person they had switched into. There was no reason to think he was the person she'd been meaning to look up. And yet --

"Excuse me?" Naminé said, leaning against the doorway uncertainly. "Are you ... Reno?"

"Yo!" Reno turned around and grinned. Girl in doorway? Who knew his name? How could be possibly not be smiling?

Oh, hey. She was kinda cute.

It almost sounded like Axel, the voice familiar-yet-different, and Naminé couldn't help smiling back. Maybe they all had oddities tying themselves to the strange others they had become. Interesting to think about.

She flushed, lightly. "I ... was hoping I could come in for a moment, and speak with you. If it isn't an imposition. It's ..." She bit her lip. "It's about this weekend."

The cute ones always came with complications, didn't they?

Reno shrugged his shoulders and closed his laptop, being about as nonchalant as he could manage, given the reminder of the weekend that had threatened to break his brain.

"Door's wide open," he replied, leaning back into his chair. "I'm not gonna say no, yoto."

"But you aren't saying yes?" Naminé hesitated. "I have no right to intrude on you. I don't wish to be rude. You may not know any of what I would ask, anyway. If you'd rather I leave, I will."

"You always so willing to kill a conversation before it's started?" He raised an eyebrow and stood, rolling his chair in her direction before taking a seat on the edge of his bed. "You got somethin' to talk about, come in and talk, yo."

She flashed him a quick smile before seating herself in the chair he'd abandoned, smoothing her skirt and folding her hands in her lap. "It's ... an odd request. If I'm understanding radio correctly, then you ... were someone named Axel this weekend." She looked up, still uncertain.

Huh. He didn't remember seeing her this weekend, so she probably had some sort of passing knowledge about this Axel guy to begin with, he could assume.

"And what if I was?"

Reno's little wall of wariness was being erected, here. He was ever so calm and casual on the outside, but that didn't mean he wasn't suspicious or anything.

She should have expected that, really.

"I know him." She wavered, at that. "Knew him, I suppose is more accurate. I may never see him again, and I don't expect to."

"Okay?" Reno leaned forward into a deep slouch, resting his arms across his knees. "You wouldn't be the first one around here to know the guy. Little late if you were hopin' to shoot the shit with him, yo."

By 'shoot the shit,' it was entirely possible that Reno meant 'break his freaking brain with the rest of them.'

He hadn't had a good weekend, here.

"I wasn't myself this weekend, either," she said, lifting a shoulder. "So I couldn't speak with him, or I didn't know to, I suppose is a better way of saying it. And I don't know what I would say to him, if he were here."

Naminé shook her head. "I'm sorry, I think I'm wasting your time."

"I waste my time well enough without any help," Reno assured her with a shake of his head. "Don't gotta worry about that, zoto."

He threw his chin upward, as though making to point at her with it before he spoke again. "So. I ain't him, but you stopped by anyhow. What for?"

"The truth is, I'm curious," she admitted. "I don't know how much you remember, so I may have to go on being curious. But ... he did something for me once and I still don't understand why."

"Probably won't know the specifics myself." There was a pause as Reno mulled over the events of the weekend before lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "But I think I understand the guy enough to at least give a crack at helpin' you out, here."

Why not, right?

"That's all I can ask," she said, with a grateful smile. "I ... can give some of the specifics, for what it might help. He was ..."

She stopped, suddenly. Amber's behavior had been haunting her for days, and the girl had only been petty. She had no right to tell him about the Organization, or Axel's part in anything they had done.

She shook her head quickly. "Forgive me. This is a bad idea, and I hadn't realized it until now. I wouldn't want to ... you have my apologies."

Eyebrow raised, Reno gave her another shake of his head.

"Whatever you have to tell me, can't be half as bad as the crap that other people were layin' on him this weekend. I'm a big boy, yo. I can take it with a grain of salt."

Naminé looked up, curious at that - what had they been telling Axel? - and then took a breath. "All right, then. He's a member of the Organization. The Organization decided they needed to control someone named Sora, and discovered that I had the power to do that." She stared at her hands for a moment. "The ability, but not ... the inclination."

Well, shit. He had a pretty good idea where this was going already. If the Organization was anything like what he thought it was -- and he had a fairly good idea, given Axel's notions toward loyalty to the Organization and to whoever Roxas was, especially -- it couldn't have possibly gone well for the girl.

"Sora- little kid, big hair and bigger feet?"

Met him.

Naminé nodded. "He wields the keyblade. Which makes him important. So they ..." She bit her lip. "Persuaded me to do what they wanted."

There was, perhaps, a bitter note there, but it wasn't directed at him.

"It would have destroyed his mind and turned him into a puppet, subject to my whims - by which, of course, I mean theirs."

"Of course." Reno was good and familiar with the manipulation and mind-breaking that came with his own particular line of work. Just another parallel between himself and this Axel guy, it would seem. "So, he was involved in this, then? This Axel?"

Naminé nodded. "He was one of the three there, in the Castle. There were more, but they were in the basement doing something else. Although Vexen was more inbetween."

She frowned slightly. "I don't mean for this to be confusing. The point is, we were nearing the end. Sora remembered almost nothing except what I had planted. Marluxia and Larxene were already celebrating their grand victory. Axel and I were alone." She took an uncertain breath. "And he said to me, 'if you don't stop this, no one will.'"

Reno simply looked at her.

"He let you fix it?"

It... really wouldn't have surprised him, he decided. Not that he was the expert on drawing lines. Maybe Axel was better at that. Or maybe...

"What then?"

"He let me leave, when he should have been guarding me. I found Sora and ... stopped it. It was nearly too late." She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "After that, it all got confusing. There's a lot I don't understand. Axel and Marluxia fought, and there was talk of who was a traitor, to the Organization, and ... there had been some intrigue, I think. I tried to listen, but I tried harder not to be seen, and so I missed a great deal."

If Reno had any doubt a moment before, this girl's use of the word 'traitor' put things into perspective for him, if only a little.

"Was what they did to you for the Organization? Who was the one keepin' you? Not this Axel guy, right?" He pursed his lips for a moment, then made a bit of a 'tch' sound and stretched his arms out to his sides before resting them on the bed behind him and leaning backward. "I'm thinkin' that whatever whoever did had a whole lot to do with loyalties and where they actually lie, zoto."

Just because the Turks worked for ShinRa didn't mean that the Turks were ShinRa. Being loyal to one was totally different than being loyal to the other, or to both.

Parallels. Huh.

Edited 2008-01-24 08:10 (UTC)

"It was ..." She had to stop for a moment and consider his questions. "For the Organization, I think, at least at first. They were in charge of that project, but he always seemed ... separate from them. They ... enjoyed it, in a way that he didn't."

She was trying her best to be tactful, to some extent.

"But ... if Marluxia was going against the Organization, why not report Marluxia, or overpower him? Why let me go, to free Sora?"

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