raspberryturk | Edge, Saturday Afternoon

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Edge, Saturday Afternoon

There were some things that were totally worth getting in trouble with the boss for, Reno decided. Being a grumpy son of a bitch was good for things like getting on Tseng's nerves, teaching the rookie how to run for cover, and also for getting sent on impromptu vacations to other worlds in order to visit the girlfriend.

It had totally been worth it. But, as such things tend to go, this vacation didn't last forever, and soon Reno was hopping another portal back to Edge.

The first thing he did upon getting home was reach for the Everclear that Romeo had sent him. Romeo was still the best buddy ever, and Reno was going to have to find some way to make it up to him. Maybe he'd ship him some porn or something. That was always excellent payback, right?

And then he checked the texts and voicemails that he'd missed lately. Which led to a lot of alternating between laughing and frowning. Killing beans and killing babies were two very different things indeed. But hey, verbal Twitters were amusing, at least.

It wasn't until he went to check on the beans to be certain that they were still alive (they were) and the ferret to make sure that he wasn't dead (he wasn't) that a chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling, hitting Reno solidly on the head and reminding him quite firmly that he wasn't in Spira anymore.

Sigh.

"Home sweet shithole."

[NFB for distance and all, but Reno's open for phone calls, text messages, random letters, and all of that good stuff.]

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"You can walk for a week outside of Midgar and not come across so much as a weed," Reno replied. Which, he figured, summed that up nicely enough.

"Ahhh. So they think it's holy, hunh." She shook her head. "You can't talk to people about religious stuff like that. You just have to work around it. What is religion like there, right now?"

"Well, the flowers are growin' in the floor of a church," Reno noted. "One of them fancy ones with the steeple an' everything. Slightly damaged. Chunks of city kinda landed on bits of it, here an' there. That's about the closest anyone's got. I dunno. I ain't ever paid much attention to religion. There ain't no gods out there ever did me any favors anyhow, zoto."

"I don't know much about it either. I don't believe the stuff I grew up with." Dinah shook her head. "But it helps out some people? Sometimes?" She was quiet a minute, thinking of her trip to the church yesterday. "Especially when you don't have anything else."

"There are a lotta people here like that," Reno agreed with a sigh. "Maybe I'll ask. Maybe they'll figure the Ancient girl would'a wanted that land to be used to save lives, or somethin'. Food's more important than some smelly yellow flowers, anyhow. I think."

He hoped.

"Ancient girl? It's her church?" Dinah asked. "If she really cared about them, then yeah." She was quiet. "Flowers help too, though. But everything's got its season, right?"

"It's not really a church to her or anything," Reno noted. "It's a place she used to hang out. Those are her flowers."

He was saying this as though it all made sense. It barely did to him as it stood.

"Maybe I'll talk to her friends, see what they think about it. They don't like me none," something to do with him killing a few of their buddies way back, "but it's worth a shot, yoto."

"Why don't they like you?" Dinah asked, wondering. To her, all religion had to be at least a hundred years old. "Or is this about... um. ShinRa, and all?"

What he'd told her the last time they'd talked still stuck with her. And she could understand people having problems with him, based on that.

"Yeah," Reno sighed. "ShinRa stuff. Big ShinRa stuff. I'd probably be better off gettin' my buddy Rude to do the talkin', if I can get him to open his mouth long enough to ask the question."

He was not going to sound defeated at that. He wasn't. He was growing food. That was victory, dammit.

"Poke him," Dinah said, then slightly anxiously, "It'll happen, you know. Crops are slow, that's all. Or, or, OR!" Idea, light bulb, look at that. "Ship in soil! Duh!"

Blink. Blink blink.

"Ship it in?"

That... made sense, actually.

"How you figure we do that?"

"From the countryside-- stuff's still growing out there, right? You can get it in trucks, or little flower beds and pots, or we can ship some from here! People always have stuff left over from building, you know? They have to strip off the top, and they sell it! At least they did back in Missouri, when they put in a new school." Dinah stopped burbling, and paused for breath. "Would that work?"

"Little pots might do it," Reno noted. "I mean, obviously people can't grow crops in somethin' that small, but at least it means some fresh green stuff now an' then, right? Trucks are kinda tricky. After Meteor hit Midgar, people have been kinda freaked out about usin' mako to run their vehicles, an' we ain't really gotten around to processin' oil well enough to get us by yet. There's coal, but that shit's archaic."

He drummed his fingers against his knee.

"I guess we could hitch carts up to chocobo, but they're gettin' burned out just shippin' food up here so that the survivors don't starve, zoto."

"No no, not coal, that is *so* bad for the air and the water," Dinah said anxiously. "So you need more fuel sources too, hunh? That blows." She shook her head, then said, "At least little pots would be easy to move, and you wouldn't have to worry about big space or anything. With the seeds and the soil, and some water-- it's at least a start." She frowned. "Maybe solar stuff? Do you guys get enough sunlight?"

"The sky's gettin' better day by day," Reno noted, leaning forward and squinting out the window. "It ain't black an' green all the time, anyhow."

Yeah. Midgar used to be pretty disgusting.

"But I don't think it's sunny enough most of the time to actually run anything, yo. I was thinkin' maybe wind, instead. The desert out there goes on for-friggin'-ever, an' it gets plenty of wind."

"Ew," Dinah said, making a face into the phone. "But yeah, wind would be better that way. And it's simpler. The parts are easier to get than for solar. You have to be careful of birds, but... do you guys have a lot of birds?" She was quiet a second, thinking. "The water's okay, right? Not too salty or anything?" This was really bringing back stuff from Missouri that she'd never thought she'd talk about again. So weird.

"The water's as good as it's probably ever gonna be," Reno replied, sighing. "There ain't too many birds out there, though. Except the monster kind. There's nothin' out there for birds to eat."

Well. The ravens were having the time of their lives a couple of years back. Plenty of bodies to pick at. But even they moved on when humanity didn't have the sense to.

Damn, people could take lessons from the birds.

"That's something, anyway. And pots would be easier to keep birds and mice away from then a new big crop in the city, too," Dinah realized aloud. "Otherwise, I'd say rooftop garden. Or a greenhouse."

"But would we be able to keep people fed and eatin' comfortably with just whatever can be grown in pots? What's that about greenhouses?"

That sounded intriguing!

"Greenhouse? You didn't see those while you were here? Oh! Um, they're little houses made out of glass, to concentrate the light, and keep the plants warm. And protect them from storms," Dinah added. "You need, umm, kind of greenish glass panes, I think? But it helps with plants that can't take the cold, or need more light than you're getting. So you could get more variety that way."

"Variety's good," Reno mused, smirking. "They probably got that kinda stuff on our world too, but I never paid attention to that kinda thing before even if we did."

A thoughtful pause.

"Think you could dig up information about that kinda thing for me? I'm sure we got enough scrap just sittin' around the ruins of Midgar to throw somethin' like that together."

"Sure! I'll e-mail you whatever I find tonight," Dinah promised. "I don't think they're really hard to build, either. You could put one on top of any building, and you'd be set." She grinned, thrilled again at being able to help, at least a little. "Yaaaay. Too bad we can't ship you the graduates who are working on the Sixth Floor for a weekend or two as well."

"I'm sure we'll be able to find plenty of willin' hands once I let the neighborhood know that we're tryin' to feed 'em," Reno laughed. "But hey, I ain't gonna turn down whatever help people have got, either. Just can't promise I can find room for people. Or food for 'em. Or..."

Snerk.

"The blueprints would be great, zoto."

"Yeeeah," Dinah said, amused. "They could bring their own Twinkies, though. Anyway! Now you won't have to offend peoples. Are you okay there? Aside from Rude and Tseng and Mako, do you have people to hang out with?"

"Rude an' Tseng an' Mako an' Elena," Reno grinned. "The other rookie. One of the other rookies. The not-from-Fandom rookie, yo. She ain't half bad, now that we don't hate each other's guts, zoto."

She hadn't been Reno's rookie. That made all of the difference in the world.

"But aside from the Turks an' the weasel, there ain't been much in the way of a social life. Your verbal Twitter was a highlight, yo."

Edge, Saturday Afternoon

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