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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"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..."

"Word of advice," Reno said, after another long moment of pondering the ceiling and then a thoughtful reach for his booze. "Get used to that. It sucks. Fuck, does it ever suck. But that's just the way things are. On Fandom and offa it, yoto."

Mmm. Everclear. Okay, he was good.

"That said, you can message me whenever, okay? No tellin' when I'll get that message, knowin' the way things are? But I've been there. Done that. An' I got an ear for listenin' with, too."

He always had an ear for his rookies.

She smiled faintly. "I'm not used to it sucking so much as you'd be," Ino said, "my world, in a ninja village, most everyone thinks like you and me do--the civilians not so much, but even then, if they didn't get it, they wouldn't last in a ninja village. I guess, I just--you get it."

Ino tugged at her hair. "You get it, and get the problems they've got too, I mean the civilians here. I don't know if I could explain it so well back home. So, I guess, thanks?"

"Anytime." He meant that, too. It wasn't loaded in the least. It was just Reno, offering that understanding ear when someone needed it. He'd do the same for someone on the other side of the situation, too, if they were actually trying to understand.

He was so much more of a bleeding heart that he'd ever admit.

"You see people on all ends of the spectrum around here," he added. "And you get to see it from all angles, too, when the world falls down an' leaves everyone on even ground. So I guess I'm kinda the professional in that department, like it or not, huh?"

"Like it or not," she echoed. "That's one way to live, I guess."

She shook her head.

"It hasn't been all bad, the week though," Ino continued. "'Cause I don't want you thinking I've been hanging around emo-ing and writing depressive poetry."

"Somehow, I can't picture you writin' any depressing poems," Reno laughed. "They'd all have to be, like, shitty limerick or somethin'."

Yep. He knew what limerick was. They were the only poems that Reno had ever really mastered, for purposes of sharing in drunken moments with the other Turks.

There once was a man from Mideel...

"Ewww. I'll have you know I can do poetry, though I was never very good at that bit of culture class in the Academy." Ewwww. "Though limericks weren't big. Think haiku and crap. Thrilling stuff."

"I ain't so great with haiku," Reno noted, "after that one time that Fandom had me speakin' and thinkin' in it, yoto."

It was Fandom. That sentence was not weird in the least, damn it.

"At least you weren't singing?" she teased. "Ugh. Singing."

"Did that tooooo," Reno singsonged, and then he laughed. "On the friggin' radio, even. With Jenny."

That had been one hell of a broadcast, damn it.

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