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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Dinah cracked up. So did that mean he was witty, or just really hilariously doofy?

"Yes, I'm calling to get some kickass," Dinah said, giggling. "We're running a little low here, even if we generated some ourselves with alligator fueling."

"I missed the friggin' gators," Reno whined, effectively destroying all illusion of kickass that he might have had a moment ago. "How unfair is that, yo? See, now I gotta go back to Fandom and camp out somewhere, hopin' for leftovers or somethin'."

"They smelled Reno. And so did we, after we went down in the sewers after them," Dinah said, trying to pretend it hadn't been way fun. "And I got nibbled on! By goldfish with teeth! Although slitting one open, that was pretty cool." She snickered. "You do have to come back! If you camp on the beach, I'm sure something will attack you! You now how this place is!"

"See, now you got me all tempted." Reno was pouting now. Could she hear him pout? "But I got work to do here. Tseng already kicked me offa the planet last week to go visit Rikku. I'm behind, yo."

Behind on what, the world may never know.

"How you been doin' aside from the gators, Rookie? You met the little SOLDIER boy too, huh?"

It was kind of a theme. Talk to someone he was close to from Fandom. Find out that they liked Zack. Agonize over the fact that he knew things. Get drunk.

"We hang out and get sugared up every Monday!" Dinah chirped. "Last week was ice cream sundaes 'cause I had some apologizing to do. This week is going to be cookies because he lost a bet." She coughed. "Um. Things were a little--weird, here, for a few days. You heard about that, hunh?"

Poor Dinah. No idea she was never, ever going to escape the weirdness.

"Heard about it? Dinah, Rookie, I was livin' it here, too. Fandom's kinda like some kinda disease. Or maybe a bad acid trip. Apparently, it's got flashbacks."

Very, very frustrating flashbacks, dammit.

Which were easier to talk about than the fact that Dinah's sugar-buddy was going to have a hard run of things. Dammit, couldn't he talk to just one person who didn't like Zack?

"Oh, ack. I am so so sorry," Dinah said earnestly. "It was really weird here, since everyone was feeling it at once, but I guess it would've been even worse if you were on your own." And that sure explained the trip to see Rikku, whoa. "At least you have a girlfriend? And is she doing okay there?"

"She's pretty busy, too," Reno noted. "Tryin' to keep the peace on a world that don't seem to want it. But I fixed up her old man's airship, so I think things are lookin' up a little for 'em all, at least."

It was easier to relax when you weren't worried about your home chug-chugging to a stop and plummeting from the sky.

"Coooool. The next time you talk to her, tell her I used those potions she sold me, and they worked really well," Dinah said earnestly. "Um. Or you could give me her address, and I could write her... oh! How are the plants working out? The yucca and the palm and the aloe and the cacti?"

"I ain't killed anything yet," Reno said, proudly. "I was worried about the beans that I started, so I ain't really planted much else if I could help it until I got it figured out. But it turns out that the beans are supposed to be yellow. Who the hell ever heard of yellow beans anyhow? That's like... I dunno. White asparagus or somethin'. Red apples. Weird-ass shit."

Yes, he knew that apples could be red. Sssh.

Snickering, Dinah said, "I've seen them in lots of colors. Green and brown and red. Maybe they turned a different shade in your world?" She grinned. "Blue apples, now that's asking for trouble. Then again, I'm just lucky nothing's died in the flower shop. So far, so good on that. I'm never going to make a farmer, though."

"More purple-blue, actually," Reno noted. Not that he'd seen a Banora White in a while. But those were some pretty damn fine apples. "And I ain't no farmer, neither. Just 'cause I'm growin' crops..."

Okay. So he was a farmer. A glorified farmer. Damn.

"You're an agricultural engineer?" Dinah offered, while trying to think of purple-blue apples and not plums. "And so's everyone else there, since you're all trying to get by on the food thing." She paused, thinking. "I grew up with farmers. Some of them were really nice people."

"I was thinkin' of maybe diggin' up the only patch of ground around here that actually does grow anything," Reno mused, "to plant food there. But that place is kinda... sacred, I guess, to the locals. It's covered in flowers, zoto."

Reno took a perverse sort of pleasure in stepping on those flowers. There was nothing wrong with that, dammit.

"They'll lynch you," Dinah said worriedly. "Unless you ask and they say okay, plant some around the edges, or something." She paused. "Why is it sacred?"

"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!"

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