raspberryturk | Rude's Apartment, Edge, Thursday Afternoon

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Rude's Apartment, Edge, Thursday Afternoon

Reno had a bit of a dilemma, and he had today off by some miracle. And so, on his day off, he was going to attempt to fix it.

His living space since he'd moved in to Rude's apartment had become a little on the cramped side. Sure, it was more space than he'd had while he was living in the dorms on Fandom Island. But while he was in school, he hadn't been trying to cultivate greens, either. Unless one counted the green fuzz that sometimes grew on whatever he'd left sitting around, but that was a different thing entirely. As it stood, Reno was staring in bewilderment at the contents of Rude's living room.

Rude had set off for work today with a clearly stated mission for Reno to handle before he got back. He didn't care how he did it, just so long as it was done.

The clutter... would have to go.

So much easier said than done, when you were used to stockpiling whatever you could get your hands on, and you had people sending you care packages from all over creation. Nevermind the assorted bits he'd managed to gather with full intent to toss together a makeshift greenhouse in he future.

"Mako," Reno sighed, plucking the ferret out of his beans for the umpteeth time this afternoon, "I think this couch-surfin' shit ain't all it's made out to be, yo."

[NFB for distance, naturally, but open for the usual riffraff to give their phone calls and what-have-you!]

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"Maybe," Reno mused. "Maybe not. Fiona can't help how fast she learns, right? No more'n someone with a photographic memory can help but remember what it is they're seein'. It don't seem fair to the rest of the kids writin' the quiz, but it ain't like anyone can blame that person neither, right?"

Ino stared at her phone incredulously.

"The kid would get the shit beaten out of him on the playground if they went 'round gloating 'bout how much they remember and crap and their grades," Ino informed him. "At least, in most schools. Normal kid gets right to refuse to play with the Special ones, you know. They don't got to feel bad 'cause all their hard work was obviously not good enough just 'cause someone else can get it faster. Maybe they can't be blamed for what they got born with, but there's only two routes for special--you get damn popular and fast, or you fade into the background 'cause people don't like it."

Never mind Ino's whole rant about how it had to be all but impossible for someone to learn an entire fighting style in a few months and know it well. The body didn't work like that to her.

"Okay, so she's the kid on the playground that gets beat up. Hear me out anyhow, wouldja?"

Reno pursed his lips a little. Actually, he wasn't entirely certain where he was going with this, either.

"That kinda kid, the other students don't gotta like. But if you're a teacher an' you see that perfect learner, out there an' doin' damn fine at everything, are you gonna hold it against 'em?"

"No," she said, very grudgingly. "You'd praise them and tell the other kids to be more like them."

Which, in playgrounds everywhere, only got that kid beaten up more.

"So you see where he's comin' from? He don't see nothin' wrong with her bein' the 'smart kid.' He's the teacher. He's askin' for respect, and he ain't gettin' it, and he's probably more pissed off about the tone you used than he is about you walkin' out on the fight."

Reno took a moment to let that settle before he pressed onward.

"But then there's you. You worked damn hard to get to the point where you're at, and it bugs you that the things you can do, you ain't allowed to. What you got left, this other chick can watch and learn like it ain't nothin', and what you can do is half of what makes you who you are. You don't want nobody else havin' that. Am I right so far?"

She shifted, crossing her legs, and stared out at the preserve.

"Yeah," she said, with a bit of a sigh. "That's 'bout right."

"So what you gotta do," Reno noted, "if you want him to understand? Is to keep your temper, first off. Yellin' just means he's gonna think you're bein' irrational. An' then, you gotta put it in terms that he can understand. It ain't that she can learn. Hell, it ain't even that she can learn fast. It's that she's learnin' things that everybody else has to earn, zoto. Catchin' on for nothin', because that's just how she is, but the stuff you know is stuff that not nobody is supposed to know unless they work damn hard at it. This ain't like havin' a photographic memory and knowin' all the answers on the quiz, so far as you see it. This is like peekin' over at your paper so she can pass the test, 'cause she didn't bother studyin'."

Huh. Maybe Reno wasn't half bad at that metaphor crap, after all.

Ino took a moment to wrap her mind around that.

"Don't think I can explain it without losing my temper in person," she said, a bit sheepishly. "What you say--makes sense, but I'm so mad at him. Cable-san says maybe I ought to write it all out."

Should she, maybe?

"There's a bloodline back home," Ino added, "that can do 'bout what she can do, and it was a good thing if they did it to the enemy 'cause it's the enemy but you don't do that to people on your side 'cause you're supposed to respect them enough to, if you want to learn what they know, you gotta do it the hard way."

"Cable ain't an idiot, from what I heard," Reno noted. "If you gotta write a letter, then do it. An' proofread the hell outta it. If you get hot under the collar while you're lookin' it over, then it'll probably come off the same way to Durden, too. And that won't accomplish nothin'."

Reno's knee was going to bruise, at the rate he was tapping it with his finger.

"It's different if you didn't offer to teach it first, right? Maybe that's why she mentioned how she learns in the first place. So that you know the moves you got might become hers, too. Gives you the chance to back off, if you don't want her knowin' what you spent a lifetime earnin'. You agree to fight, then you're agreein' to teach her. You walk away, like you did, then it sends that message, it's yours, she ain't allowed to have it, too."

"Maybe, but that sounds like giving her way too much credit. She didn't seem to think that I'd have any issues with it at all."

When, obviously, Ino's issues with it had been many.

Write a letter," she repeated, "and kill it 'til it doesn't sound grumpy to me and then send it?"

Ino tugged at her hair.

"...what if he still doesn't get it? I mean, I'm out of club anyway 'till fall," and she wasn't sure if she was eager to go back besides, "but--I don't know. I'm not sorry for having an issue."

"She didn't have to tell you at all," Reno pointed out. "If she was a Turk an' she had that power, she'd have fought you, learned what you could do, and you still wouldn't have no clue about it, would you?"

Reno gave credit only where he felt that credit was due. Even if it did boil down to not having the wits about oneself in order to keep a skill a secret, yes.

"You wanna go back in the fall, Ino?"

"She'd be a crappy Turk," Ino said, irritated by that idea. "Especially if she's too dumb to see why someone might have the teeniest issue with that and take it out on her."

Totally different if you knew they'd have a problem and did it anyway, after all.

"I--" she huffed. "I don't know. I want a place I can fight."

"There ain't nothin' sayin' you can't fight there in the fall, if you play your cards right," Reno noted. "You just gotta kiss ass an' stay reasonable, right?"

Yep. There was the bruise on his knee, right there. And it wasn't like Reno was going to stop prodding at it.

"That don't leave an opening for you to practise your powers, no, but at least it's exercise."

"I'm bad at kissing ass," she informed him, almost lightly. "In case you couldn't tell."

Really, Ino was epically bad at kissing ass.

"That's true, though, I guess 'bout the exercise," Ino admitted. "And 'least it's more interactive than training by myself." Which Ino did a fair bit of anyway. "But it's not nearly so worth it, you know, when I can't practise everything. Well, almost anything. I just want to be able to fight like we did. That was fun and useful."

"Any time you wanna swing around here, lemmie know," Reno offered. "I know, Portalocity'll probably charge you right through the ass, but we got monsters here to beat up, and ruins to smash around if you avoid the mako leaks, and a whole wasteland where you ain't gonna accidentally trip over nobody who don't like what's gotta look like magic bein' thrown around."

Never let it be said that Reno wasn't useful.

"And your monsters give loot," she said, having remembered that. "Bet if I killed enough monsters it'd make up for the portal costs." Eventually.

She swung herself upside down, legs hooked around the branch to keep her from falling, and stretched. "Do you think I ought to write that letter? Explaining my point of view."

"I think writin' it couldn't hurt, so long as you keep it civil, zoto." No, the irony of Reno telling anybody to keep it civil was not lost upon him. "If you wanna read it to someone first, to make sure it sounds good, hell, call me up when you got it written, and I can give it a listen, too."

He couldn't do anything for grammar or wording, no, but he knew wonders about tone. Being a Turk meant that he was two-thirds killer, one-third manipulative bastard, after all.

"Maybe I'll do that," she sighed. "Not that it'll be much of an apology, but I guess an explanation might work almost as well. Least it makes more sense now."

Even if the bratty part of her cried that civil was for wussies.

"Seems like I keep pouring problems in your lap," Ino added ruefully. "Don't mean to or nothing."

"Hey, you're my Rookie. I do this kinda thing for Rookies," Reno replied, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "You should'a seen the time I had with Elena's big sister, yo. Trainin' her was like tryin' to get through to a friggin' brick wall."

Elena's sister had been a special sort of stupid.

"Elena doesn't seem like the type to have a brick wall sort of sister," Ino said idly, adding that to her small pile of 'things she knew about the Other Rookie' and swinging herself back up on the branch. "Kinda neat that they're both Turks though. All in the family."

Ino was fishing, yes.

Oh, and Reno was well aware that Ino was fishing now, yes. he kind of enjoyed playing this little game of give and take with his Rookies. See how well they could guess at what he wasn't quite giving up.

"Were both Turks," he corrected, casually. "Her sister's dead, an' Elena's on leave, zoto."

"Don't much sound like it's a good time to go on leave," she said glibly, glossing over differences between leave and quit and the piddling amount she knew of the rest of it. "And sucks that her sister's dead."

A beat while she contemplated asking how and why and when and decided that was way too obvious.

"You guys totally need better sky in your world," she said, instead.

"You ain't even seen it, yet. It's clearin' up some," Reno noted, glancing out the window.

...

"Still kinda green. But clearin' up some, yo."

"True," she said lightly. "But when has details like seeing something first stopped me from having an opinion?"

Ino was just going to sigh over the idea of a green sky. That was so wrong.

"Eventually I really need to come help you kill monsters," she decided. "Just so I can see your world."

And snoop, but he had to expect that.

Well, of course he expected that. She wouldn't be one of his rookies if she wasn't a dirty little snoop.

"You'll hate it," Reno promised. He was grinning. "I look forward to tossin' you at a Sahagin or somethin'. Those fuckers try an' jump on your head."

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