raspberryturk | Room 414, The Arms Hotel, Saturday Evening

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Room 414, The Arms Hotel, Saturday Evening

Grad was over! Reno was a free man! More or less!

And there was no better way to celebrate this fact than to make his way to the hotel, hit up Tseng's room, and then instigate a drinking game of booze purchased straight out of the minibar, while watching some terrible movie on pay-per-view.

One of those Keanu Reeves movies, or whatever. Keanu Reeves starring as Keanu Reeves, doing the things that Keanu Reeves does.

"Two shots if somethin' blows up," Reno announced to the Turks assembled. "Three if it's not because of Keanu, zoto."

[For, like, every Final Fantasy character on the island.]

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"It would be impolite to not at least try some," Rude informed her flatly, as a took a sip of his own drink.

Ulterior motives? Him? Not that you'd know it.

"Well, if it would be impolite," Lulu said, smirking, as she poured herself a double of vodka and drank it down, straight, in one swallow.

Someone had learned to drink in the last couple of months. ... Someone had had to learn to drink in the last couple of months, to keep from casting Ultima and killing everyone.

Tseng was going to give Rude his most subtle 'if you get either of these ladies drunk and take sexual advantage of them tonight, no number of phoenix downs can save you' look.

He had perfected that look, after years of working with the Turks.

Only normally, he was giving it to Reno.

"Make yourselves comfortable. While there might not be enough chairs to go around, there are cushions and pillows. I apologize, these hotel rooms aren't normally intended to accommodate seven people at a time."

"We'll be leaving soon," Rikku said quickly. "Reno and me, I mean? We have a date to be getting to. So if it's too crowded, we can ... just head out early?"

"I'm with her on that one, yo!" Reno wasn't going to bounce. He wasn't. Bouncing meant that precious booze could get spilled, and that would be a sad thing, indeed. "All the more booze for you guys, yo!"

All the more aloooooone time with him and the girl, too.

Well... if it would be rude...

"I suppose I could have a drink," Yuna relented quietly. To be polite.

"More booze is always good," Rude agreed with Reno.

He poured a half-glass for Yuna, and then held the bottle out for whoever wanted it.

"Thank you," Lulu said, taking the bottle and pouring herself another drink. This one she drank a little more slowly.

She raised one eyebrow at Rude and smirked, just a little, over her glass.

Elena glanced at the newcomers, promising herself to watch that none of the got tipsier than they could stand. She didn't think either Rude or Tseng would take advantage, but being the only girl in the group sometimes affected her like that.

Especially as the one with short hair seemed ... innocent, somehow.

"Was your world-saving deliberate?" she asked, offering the girl a brief smile. "Or were you in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

"Oh, we were lucky," Yuna answered quietly. "And it's not like I did it alone. I had a lot of help." She smiled at Lulu and Rikku.

"Damn good help," Reno agreed. He'd only ever fought alongside Rikku, when it came to the help that Yuna here had gotten, but with the way Rikku talked about the other guardians, he had no doubt that they were among the very best.

He gave Rikku a little bump with his elbow. "We wanna get goin'? Leave these ladies to appreciate the quality video?"

"Let's," Rikku said, grinning at Lulu and then Yuna in turn. Lulu would make sure Yuna didn't get too drunk, and okay, she was vaguely amused by the flirtiness that seemed to be passing between Lulu and Rude.

But they had a date to get to. "Don't do anything we wouldn't do!" she sang out, closing the door behind them.

That ... didn't leave much, did it?

"Well, that certainly doesn't rule much out," Tseng mused as the door was pulled shut.

Someone had to be the one to say it.

He glanced around at the assorted company in his room, attempting to steer the conversation back to where it had been sitting, before. World-saving was something of a hot topic, lately. Leviathan only knew that it needed to happen often enough.

"It's been mentioned to me in the past that Rikku knew somebody who could cast Holy. I have to admit to being deeply curious about that."

Lulu shot a warning glance at Yuna -- a covert one, she hoped -- before nodding slowly. "Yes, that's true," she replied. "Why is it that you ask?"

Yuna had been deferring to Lulu's warning glances for most of her life, and she deferred to this one as well. She simply nodded slightly and kept silent for the moment.

Rude was on-duty again, sort of. He nodded at Tseng and then watched Yuna and Lulu intently.

... Which finally gave him a good EXCUSE to examine Lulu's... assets. Not that you could tell, behind his shades.

Elena was going to shoot Rude a dirty look -- some things were obvious, even with shades in the way -- before answering Lulu's question.

"Holy was the only thing that saved our world," she explained. "Sephiroth summoned a huge meteor, one that nearly crushed Midgar. Holy was the only force powerful enough to stop it."

Granted, Holy had been a costly victory -- destroying the Meteor and Midgar in one full swoop -- before the dead Ancient had called out the lifestream itself. Which had, in turn, caused Geostigma.

Wins on Gaia were rarely clean.

Tseng knew better than to trust even the wins that were clean.

"Sephiroth himself has a nasty habit of not staying dead," he added, simply for the sake of getting that fact out there. "Although I can't imagine the black materia that he used to summon Meteor is available to him any longer, Holy isn't exactly available to us, either."

Aerith being dead, and all. Tseng wasn't even going to wince as that thought crossed his mind.

"Would... would it help if it were?" Yuna asked hesitantly.

"If Meteor came again, we would have no way of stopping it," Elena said firmly. "Last time, the entire city of Midgar was destroyed. And that time, it didn't hit."

"Which MEANS," Rude added, "that we'll need to... keep in touch."

"If there's anything I can do," Yuna offered quickly, shooting a quick glance over at Lulu.

Elena was chewing on her lower lip, wondering exactly how one asked what she felt they very much needed to know. Without giving offense, no less.

She brightened slightly, as an angle occurred to her. "If we ... needed you," Elena said, turning the idea over in her mind as she spoke, "and you came, would you ... need anything? Items to assist you in casting, a specific location, a set of conditions? The last person went to a forest to pray for hours; we could offer protection if you need time to prepare."

"And," Tseng added, briskly, "we take our jobs very seriously. You would be safe."

The last person to cast Holy wasn't doing so well, anymore. Being dead and all.

Never again.

"Although you could always... bring your guardians anyway," Rude added.

"I don't think you could keep them away," Yuna smiled fondly.

Elena was going to try, politely, to nudge the conversation back towards Holy itself. They needed information, after all.

Also, discussing Holy meant they would not be discussing Aerith, or watching Tseng mope over the dead girl. Which was never Elena's definition of fun.

"Is it difficult for you to cast?" she asked. "Would you need anything from us, to call it forward?"

"It isn't easy," Yuna admitted, "But it's not the hardest thing I've done. I'd just need time, I guess."

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Room 414, The Arms Hotel, Saturday Evening

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