raspberryturk | Edge, Saturday Afternoon

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

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."

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

"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.

"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.

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.

Arthur was happy to keep his horses. Really, well, truly happy. He did want a crack at maybe killing a sandworm one day, but mentioning that sent Leto into conniptions, and he didn't, in fact, care enough to deal with that on a regular basis. Which would most likely be the case if he actually went through with it.

"A pair," he said, "They're not solitary creatures, a miserable horse is worth less than dirt." Hey, he cared about his animals. Just not with the same kind of doey-eyed girly cuddling as his manservant.

"Okay, a pair," Reno agreed. Arthur knew his way around the animals, so Reno wasn't going to argue. "I don't wanna leave you without, either. If you can find a way to get your hands on a coupl'a spares or somethin', or heck, if you can find some way to take 'em on a field trip to Edge, that might work."

"I'll see about it," he said. "You'll be hearing from me."

"I can live with that," Reno decided, looking up at the sky again. Yep. Still in Edge. "Take care of yourself, man. Don't do nothin' I wouldn't do."

That really didn't narrow Arthur's options down at all, no worries.

"We'll see about that. Goodbye, Reno," Arthur said, with every scrap of dignity in his body. "Good luck."

There was about two more minutes of crackling, fumbling, a thump ("Bloody--"), more crackling, a louder thunk, and finally a dial tone.

And you better believe that Reno was on the other end of the line, listening to the entire ordeal.

He managed to keep from laughing aloud until after he released the call on his own end, however.

He was so, so getting an audio recorder. Just for calls to Arthur.

Edge, Saturday Afternoon

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