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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Ino was bored at the clinic, and avoiding her notes, and vaguely wondering where her boyfriend was hiding out (and sighing about that) when her phone started ringing.

Oh, hey! Distraction!

She pulled it out, and answered without checking the number. "Yesss?"

"I'm lookin' to order some beans," Reno drawled, leaning back against Rude's lumpy couch and grinning. "Ones that don't need too much sun. The ones I got are lookin' all yellow, zoto."

He'd figure out sooner or later that yellow wax beans were supposed to be yellow. Really.

Ino snorted, amused. "Depends on your bean--maybe they ought to be yellow? Hey, you. Did you really need me to do a bean run?"

"... They make beans in yellow, too?"

Well. Huh. Consider Reno educated, now.

"And nah. I don't need any emergency bean runs or anything right now, yo. I'm just callin' to check up on one of my fave rookies, yo."

He said 'rookie' in a friendly way. Honest.

"Got your text, zoto."

"Ah," she said, making a face that she knew he couldn't see. "Yeah. I just--" though he'd get it, "--I'm not a rookie!"

She so so was.

"There ain't nothin' the matter with bein' a rookie," Reno chuckled. "Some of the best Turks I ever knew were rookies, too."

Some of the best Turks he ever knew were still rookies, and would be until Tseng got around to hiring more. Poor Elena.

"What's up, Ino?"

She sighed. "I don't think, we're, like talking at the moment? Me and Romeo? He asked how I was, I told him I was fine and had dealt with injuries from my latest mission, he asked about the mission thing and if my opinions mattered, I said they don't on the mission 'cause the mission is the mission and comes first no matter what it is, and that doesn't have any bearing on how I feel 'bout the mission later. Then he asked 'bout babies and I said yes, he looked horrified and then asked me about if I had a God. Said we didn't much have one back in my world. Then he kinda, you know, fled."

Other stuff was going on, but that was probably the most important one. "So. I don't know. I'm just pretending it didn't happen to other people. He doesn't seem to be talking it out either."

Reno sighed and nodded a little as he listened.

Ow, tricky situation.

"You do the job," he said, at length. "It gets messy. And it sucks. And you do the job anyhow. He ain't from a world that works like that, zoto."

"I know," she said, sounding tired. "But he asked, and I don't like lying to my friends. Maybe I should've, I don't know. And the missions don't always suck and I don't know how to explain that either, I like missions where it's like, 'go kill these bandits' and I'm all 'hurrah, bandit killing!' but I don't think he'd like that either."

"He knows about the things I did for ShinRa," Reno noted. "But I don't think our conversations ever quite went... uh. That way."

He drummed his fingers on his knee for a moment, thoughtfully.

"At least you were honest. It's better to jus' be up-front about it than try an' lie. Lyin' always bites you in the ass, zoto."

"Quite that trainwrecky?" Ino said, grimly amused. "It's a gift, I guess. I don't know--I mean, I don't get why it's hard to get, and I don't think he gets why I don't get why it's hard to get."

"I don't know if it was worth it this time, honest, being well, honest. I mean, he's leaving soon, and off-island it'd be a lot easier for me to keep lying to him 'bout stuff like that."

"It's hard to get because it's different," Reno said, at length. "What you texted about? The killin' babies stuff? I would'a told him the same thing if he'd asked about it. But that don't make it any less..."

Hrm. Words.

"Less rotten, from a civilian standpoint, zoto. Those could be their babies. Or somethin'. I kinda suck at gettin' into a civilian's head unless it's by beatin' on it with my EMR, sometimes."

She nodded. "I just--I mean, I get that to most people killing babies is, like, bad, right? And I even get that, ow yeah, I don't want to kill babies, and that I'd rather no one did, honest. But I don't get the not-getting-it that, if it's a mission, you don't get a choice."

"I mean, some things, mission-wise are fun for me, and probably fun for you that civilians don't get, but I don't think most of us really enjoy killing babies, but will if we got to. I don't think the lack of saying no makes sense to him."

Sigh. Nod. Yeah, Reno could see how that would be an issue.

"Did I ever tell you about Sector Seven, Ino?"

Sharing and caring time was now. Yes, indeed.

Ino contemplated that.

"I don't think so?"

"Biggest, worst thing ShinRa ever asked me to do," he shared. "I didn't say no. You do the job."

Long pause, while he figured out what to say from there.

"I don't regret it, either. I mean, not really. Makes me sick thinkin' about it. I had people stop talkin' to me over it at Fandom when they found out. I had other people throw it in my face to prove that they're better'n me, once they knew. You don't kill millions of people all at once without somebody gettin' upset, after all."

Two towns at once, technically. Bottom and top.

She swallowed, her mind shying away from numbers like that. Her world wasn't nearly so populous.

"But you did the job and did it well," she said quietly, turning the implications of that over in her mind. "And that's something that, somehow, is desperately important."

You did the job.

"Doesn't make it good, but it's not--from malice?" Ino struggled for words. "I mean, at least, not from where I'm standing?"

"I wasn't expectin' to live through that mission," Reno shared. "After I made sure there was no way of undoin' the damage that was about to happen, I was hopin' that I wouldn't, too."

Because we're Turks.

"They ordered me to do it because it was convenient for 'em. I did it because I just.. kinda didn't give a shit no more. Whatever. Do the job. I'm a Turk."

She fiddled with her pen.

"And Turks get the job done," she said. "We call things like that, the not wanting to make it through, mission: suicide. Not 'cause it's a hard mission, but 'cause it's all in the mindset of the operative. I--I don't know what I'd do if I got a mission like that."

She was just a wee Genin, a mission like that was so far out of her usual run that Ino could barely understand the ramifications of it.

"You got two options," Reno pointed out. "Do the job, or say no an' die. Either way, you probably don't make it through. I figured, hell, if I dropped the plate, at least there was no friggin' way I'd make it out alive, an' nobody else would have to do it in my place after killin' me."

He wouldn't have done that to Rude, damn it.

"No," she said, "I mean, after. I'd like to think that I'd do the mission. But I don't know how that'd fall out at all. Bit out of my current range of missions."

Reno gave the phone a wry sort of grin. Maybe his voice conveyed it better, though.

"They put me on leave, afterward. For my injuries. Few strong potions dealt with the worst of that. Once they weren't holdin' my guts inside me with their hands anymore, it was more a matter of..." Sigh. Oh, this was hard to talk about. "They blamed Sector Seven on a terrorist group that we were fightin'. Every friggin' news broadcast. The papers, the radio, the TV. AVALANCHE, AVALANCHE, AVALANCHE. I did a lotta throwin' empty bottles through television screens. You don't walk away from a mission like that. You never do."

She chewed on her lip. "What did--your partner? And the other Turks. What did they say 'bout it?"

"They don't get a say," Reno replied. "Any more'n I do. If I said no, it would'a been one of them doin' it instead, after killin' me. Tseng keeps his mouth shut. Tseng's got tact. Rude just... kinda knows better'n to push. I ain't the sort to really give heart-to-hearts about that shit on a regular basis."

A pause.

"Rude bought me a lot of booze for a while there. Rude's the best partner ever, yo."

"Sounds like it," she agreed, leaning back in her chair. "I don't know, you know? It helps that it happened days ago now, but there's no one really to talk to here 'bout stuff like that..."

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