Edge, Saturday Afternoon

[raspberryturk]

It was a good thing that Bat Eyes were so damn easy to take down, Reno mused, as he wiped some bloody monster sludge off of his baton and onto his pant leg. Things had been busy in Edge over the past few days. A few monsters had wandered into the outskirts of the town out of the ruins of what used to be the Midgar slums, and they were having their hungry ways with the locals.

Which suited Reno just fine. He got the pleasure of being hired on by the WRO in order to take care of the threat while they continued working on setting up their military, and on top of the pay that they were giving him to deal with the job, he got to keep whatever the monsters dropped when he took them down, too. Mostly ethers and bubblegum money, but he could live with that.

He finished rummaging through what was left of the corpse of the last one as it faded away to join the lifestream, or whatever it was that dead monsters did, and then he took a seat on the nearest bench, sprawling out, looking up at the bluish-gray haze of sky above him, pulling out his phone, and turning it on.

Sometimes, rebuilding wasn't really so bad after all.

[For anybody who wants to phone or be phoned! NFB for distance, of course! Zack-related spoilers throughout the threads. Read at your own risk, yo.]

Comments

[raspberryturk]

"Point and hit the button! Point and hit the button!"

It was straightforward, really!

It would be moreso if Reno actually bothered to explain which button he was talking about, possibly.

[bitchprince]

Which was exactly why there was a long, long pause.

"Which button," Arthur said, slowly. "Would that be."

[raspberryturk]

"I dunno," Reno supplied helpfully. "I ain't never owned a Blackberry. Probably the one with the camera on it."

If such a creature existed. It was not Reno's job to be helpful.

Well, it kind of was. But that didn't mean he was good at it. Usually.

"I bet it says in the manual, yo."

[bitchprince]

"You do realise," Arthur started, shaking the phone for a minute (and what sound effects that created) "That this Blackberry has a great deal of buttons?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno was now listening to what he could only imagine were the sounds of a guy who had never used a phone, attempting to shake the 'camera' button out of it.

He really wished he'd thought to record this call for purposes of hilarity and blackmail later, dammit.

"An' if you keep treatin' it like that, a few might fall off, an' you'll never have to worry about that problem again," he agreed, though not unpleasantly.

[bitchprince]

"I can only hope," Arthur said, cheerfully. "As it is, I suppose I'll have to throw the manual at Leto's head."

Just because they weren't fighting didn't mean Arthur couldn't make threats to his health.

[raspberryturk]

"Oooh, tell me if it bounces!"

He didn't even need a camera for that!

"With a friend like you, Leto ain't never gonna need an enemy, is he?"

[bitchprince]

"Please. I'm a good friend to have," Arthur said, idly, "If he has any enemies, he knows he can call on me." Was he deliberately misunderstanding? Was he that dense? Who knew!

[raspberryturk]

Awww, Reno was starting to miss Arthur and his contrary ways!

"And you keep him on his toes," he contributed. At least, he was pretty sure Arthur could keep Leto on his toes. Maybe it was the other way around, and nobody had admitted to that, yet. "That's always good, yo."

[bitchprince]

Please. Like Leto could keep him on his toes. "He needs it," Arthur said, authoritatively, "Or he'd drive us all mad."

[raspberryturk]

"Might even be a little late for that," Reno snorted. "You see the crap that Fandom throws at people just as clear as I do, man. The place is more home to me than Edge is ever gonna be, an' I'm still half convinced that it exists just to prove that we're all completely off-our-chairs-nuts, yo."

[bitchprince]

There was a slight silence.

"I'm not going to let it beat me," Arthur said, at last. Yeah. That was how well he was still coping with that knowledge.

Before Reno could answer that, though, he segued, "How are your people for food?"

[raspberryturk]

Uncomfortable topic was uncomfortable, Reno noted. Okay, he wouldn't get into talking about the crazy of Fandom anytime soon. Or, at least, until Arthur's apparent shellshock started to wear off.

It had taken Reno a while, too. But mostly, he just drank until it didn't show.

"Still hungry," he noted. "One yellow bean ain't gonna feed the masses here or nothin'. But once they get that road up again, they'll have an easier time gettin' food into the city. I got half a mind to just start payin' people to send me canned junk from Fandom so that the starvin' little waifs outside who don't even got parents to feed 'em don't keep goin' hungry. I don't have access to enough as it is to be able to share, zoto."

And the starving little waifs outside kind of struck a chord with him, dammit.

[bitchprince]

"Is there anything resembling an army there?" Arthur asked, propping himself up against the wall in his alcove. Much, much better topic, even if it was one that struck its own chord with him. "How are what little rations there are distributed?"

That was a part of Arthur talking that would've loved nothing more than to march in some troops from Camelot stocked with enough bread to kill a flock of dragons via stomach.

[raspberryturk]

"There's the start of what might be an army, kinda," Reno mused, looking down the road to see a few Bat Eye-mangled signs belonging to the World Regenesis Organization. "Mostly they're handin' guns and uniforms to kids and prayin' that they know what direction to shoot if a monster wanders into town. They ain't payin' in food, though. They get money for their work, an' what they do with it is up to them."

A beat.

"It'd probably be different if they were out on the field or somethin'. There's more access to food outside of Edge, yo. Farms an' whatever, once you get past the wastelands that go on forever. Here, they're still workin' on just gettin' the food into the city. I sorta blew up the road they were gonna do that by, back in October."

It had been flashy!

[bitchprince]

Another silence.

"You blew up," Arthur said, slowly, "The road. The only access point to the city."

[raspberryturk]

"In my own defense," Reno replied after a moment of letting that tone sink in, "it was the only way Rude an' I could come up with to slow down the guys who wanted to resurrect the silver-haired mama's boy who caused all the trouble that left Midgar lookin' like it does now, yoto."

A beat.

"And anyhow, I already got yelled at for that. Once they dug out what was left of me."

[bitchprince]

That light crackling and shifting on the other end of the line that featured no speaking whatsoever?

Yeah, that was facepalming.

"Right," Arthur said, after that was well and truly done with. "Have they made any progress on reconstructing it?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno had totally earned that facepalm. He actually felt it necessary to toss in a facepalm of his own for good measure.

"They got most of the wreckage hauled to the side, now. They're startin' to work on bringin' in the materials they're gonna need to rebuild with, now. But it's kinda slow movin', seein' as we don't really have trucks to do it with anymore. And chocobos can only haul so much. Especially with monsters tryin' to eat 'em on the way."

[bitchprince]

"Well," Arthur said, attempting to sound practical and coming out fairly more sardonic, "That's what happens if your entire economy relies on giant chickens, I suppose."

[raspberryturk]

And that statement earned a bark of a laugh that made Reno drop his cigarette.

"See, we need all the help we can get," he decided, unable to wipe the wry grin from his lips. "Send horses."

[bitchprince]

"I've got two," Arthur told him, grinning. "Will that do?"

[raspberryturk]

"Can they be bred?"

Suddenly, the thought of bringing in animals that were better suited for manual labor really appealed to Reno. Sure, chocobo were excellent for riding on, and their speed was unparallelled, but they only had two legs apiece. They were made for carrying loads, not hauling heavy stuff behind them.

Or, at least, Reno figured the horses might be better at it. He'd been a chocobo before. He'd never been a horse.

[bitchprince]

"Not the right gender, Reno," Arthur said, but by now he sounded thoughtful. "Still, if I could get some access to the mainland..."

Reno really was playing the hero complex like a fiddle.

[raspberryturk]

Reno totally knew how to work the hero types. It helped that he'd been a slimy, underhanded bastard for most of his career as a Turk, and playing people was totally part of the job description.

It also helped that he was kind of playing the part of one of those hero types now, himself. Weiiird.

"It'd probably be a good idea to see how just one horse handles the work around here," he noted. "I mean, before we start up some kinda project or somethin'. If one can't handle the work of one giant chicken, there ain't really a point. It'll be tough to turn ranchers on to somethin' that ain't their chocobos without solid proof that they can do the job, yo."

Maybe they could just swap beasts of burden back and forth all around the circles. Chocobos for Leto, horses for Reno, and... Actually, Reno had his doubts that Arthur probably wouldn't be too keen on sandworms.