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

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"Maybe that's why Midgar fell," Elena said sourly. "Their forbidden passion made Sephiroth want to end it all."

He was always angsting after someone or other. The Ancient was dead, which made her perfectly unattainable and therefore safe, so it might still be her. Or maybe he had moved on to Rufus. No one had bothered to tell her. She asked, occasionally, and usually got strange looks for it. Bastards.

[raspberryturk]

"No, I'm pretty certain it was because Sephiroth was fucked in the head," Reno replied. See, that made everything better again!

"I'm pretty sure that Tseng would sooner light his own face on fire than sleep with Rufus, though."

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"You forget, Tseng would enjoy lighting his face on fire," she sighed. "It would hurt a lot, and then he'd be in pain for a long time, and he'd have fucked-up scars, and everyone would look at him like he was a freak. Don't suggest it to him, he might try it."

[raspberryturk]

Hooboy. Somebody here was bitter.

"I'll keep that in mind," Reno replied, dryly. "You know, maybe he ain't such a sucker for punishment as you figure he is, Elena. He's just doin' his job."

No, Reno had never in his entire life figured that he'd be defending the Director to the Rookie.

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"Is he?" she asked coolly. "I think he enjoys his misery. He could come drinking with us, you know. It wouldn't kill him. He could make friends. He could go to a bar and take a pretty girl home. It's a shitty job to have, but he makes it worse."

[raspberryturk]

Something in Reno's head was now attempting to picture Tseng making friends. Huh.

"He did make a friend, zoto. He was a damn good friend, too. And we didn't find him fast enough, an' now he's takin' classes at Fandom. I don't think Tseng even knows how, otherwise."

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"We're his Turks," Elena said softly. "All he'd have to do is stop pushing us away."

It could be the four of them, drinking and carousing and fraternizing. Turks against the world.

[raspberryturk]

Reno sighed and nodded.

"He ain't Verdot. He's tryin' to be. An' then Verdot ran off, and left us under Tseng's care, an' then most of us died overnight. I can't imagine where my head would be if I was in his shoes. I don't want that job. But I wouldn't wish it on nobody else, either."

Such was the pit-of-the-gut fear of Tseng's second. Tseng could be a hardass all he wanted, just so long as he didn't bump off and leave Reno with that responsibility. Ever.

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"That wasn't his fault," she argued. "He had to rescue Verdot. The rest just ... happened."

Mainly because she had gotten kidnapped like the idiotic little tag-along that Rosalind always said she was. Elena wondered, not for the first time, if they had only made her a Turk because she knew too much, and it was either that or kill her.

[raspberryturk]

"It's easy to say it just happened, ain't it?" Reno frowned and gave his shoulder another good whallop with his baton. "I kinda figured the same thing. Tseng should get over it. Shit happens. Ain't his fault any more than it is mine, yo. Then you an' him got taken in by the remnants. Just happened. Think I could breathe?"

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

Elena looked squarely at him. "You got Jenova's head to safety," she said. "You followed orders. You did the right thing. The world is more important than a few Turks."

Tseng's voice, bored, from somewhere on her left. You'll kill her. Begging herself not to scream. She closed her eyes against a flood of memories.

"They kept us together," she said, her voice weary in her own ears. She didn't have to say when, did she?

[raspberryturk]

Reno nodded. No, she didn't have to elaborate. He knew damn well what she was saying, there.

"They would." A beat. "You two came back from the dead."

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"I'm just tired of being the weak link," Elena said. She'd lost the thread of the conversation, now, and was trying to blot out images she didn't want to see. She shook her head.

"It's kind of weird, talking to you like this. I mean, it's nice, but it's weird."

[raspberryturk]

"Yeah, well..." Reno offered her a tired sort of grin. "You're the Rookie. That's what I do."

Granted, in the past, he'd kind of sucked at it with Elena. He'd been working on that.

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"Right," she said dryly. She'd heard about Reno's legendary care for rookies from Rosalind. Rosalind was, apparently, a lying bitch. "I guess it helps that you don't hate me any more."

That was a bit of a relief, to be honest. She glanced off towards the edge of town. "Do you think we got them all?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno opened his mouth at that, and then shut it again. And frowned. Oh, great. The rookie thought he'd hated her. In all fairness, he'd been a bit of a prick, yes. She was also hired to replace him because he'd just been beaten to meaty hamburger bits by AVALANCHE, and he'd crushed Sector 7 in the process.

Admittedly, he had been a bit of a bastard, at that point.

"Yeah... Sure helps that I don't hate you," he sighed, running his free hand through his hair and frowning. "Looks to me like we got 'em all. It's been pretty quiet for a while, yoto. Time to head back, Rookie?"

[findingelena.livejournal.com]

"Let's," Elena agreed. "We can go to the Seventh Heaven and tease Rude whenever he blushes."

Somehow, unrequited crushes were funnier when they happened to other people.