Edge, Friday Afternoon

[raspberryturk]

Distress calls from Rookies, left, right, and center. That was what Reno came home to, after over a week without phone reception out in the wastes. And now it was the countdown, before one Rookie would get here, with Ifrit only knew what kind of trauma fresh in her head.

Pick up the phone. Dial numbers. He had well over an hour, between the time Ino's portal would arrive to pick her up, and the time it would actually make it into Edge, after all.

"The boss sends me on one mission in the middle of nowhere, Mako, an' the whole universe goes to Hell without me, zoto."

[NFB for distance, as usual. Open for anyone who needs a Reno call or who wants to give one, all calls will sit chronologically before a certain Ninja visitor, yo.]

Comments

[raspberryturk]

"We walk," Reno agreed. See, decisions were easy, this way. "Pick a direction. We got wastelands over there, hungry people over there, a bar that-a-way, an' ruins if we head out an' around the buildin' and keep walkin'."

See? Reno was the best tour guide ever.

"We can stop an' pick up somethin' to eat, while we're out. I ain't been home long enough to go shoppin'. Our menu tonight consists of potatoes, spuds, tubers, an' taters. Best variety in town." A beat. "We can spice it up with beans."

[intraspective]

People were bad, she wasn't comfortable with them right now, so that cut out the bar and the... hungry people were out--what sort of a tour was that, seriously--Ino contemplated the direction the wastelands were in, then the building.

"This way," she said, going to walk around the building. Ruins! "I've got ration bars if we're out too late. Your beans doing well then? What about the peas and radishes?"

Plant talk. She could do plant talk.

[raspberryturk]

"They were all still green when I got home from the job," Reno replied, his hands still in his pockets as he sauntered along behind. "The peas got little flowers on 'em. That's a good thing, right?"

Flowers. In Edge. He kind of felt like he was playing God here, now.

Around the building, there was a road. The road kept the other buildings separated just enough so that they had a particularly jarring view of the place Reno used to call home.

Clearly, the residents of Edge didn't much care for setting up camp in the shadow of something less depressing.

[intraspective]

"Definitely a goo--"

Holy crap. Ino was just going to... stop. And stare.

And stare some more for good measure.

[raspberryturk]

Reno stopped and waited patiently for the shock to settle, yes.

"Welcome to Midgar."

The massive heap of wreckage that would have dwarfed New York City, twice over. Top and bottom. One hell of a sight.

"These tourist attractions don't look half as good as they do in the postcards, yo."

[intraspective]

"No," she said, tearing her gaze away from it. Ruins. That was rather more than ruins to her. "But it's a lot more real when you see it in person."

Ino started walking again. Down that road.

[raspberryturk]

"Kinda hard to deny it's anything but when it's sittin' right there like some big twisted heap of... City."

Yeah, that was a good way to put it.

"Little bigger'n you were expectin'?"

[intraspective]

"Reno," she said, actually looking at the ruins and thoroughly distracted from her issues momentarily, "our cities don't get that big. You could fit, like, at least... two hundred of my village in it, and my village is pretty big."

Two hundred of her home, and this was one city.

[raspberryturk]

"I did say it was huge," Reno mused, lifting a shoulder and starting to walk toward the wreckage again. "We wouldn't cover so much as one single sector on a foot before the end of the day if we ran, yo. There were trains for that kinda junk, back before it all came crashin' down."

[intraspective]

"Yeah," she said faintly, as she followed, "but we're working with different scales of 'huge' here. This isn't huge this is--monstrous."

A frown crossed her face at that, and she forced it away.

[raspberryturk]

Okay. Either monster wasn't a good word, or else Ino was just intimidated by the sheer size of the husk of city in front of them.

Either was good, at this point.

"S'a good way of describin' Midgar, I guess. It was bigger, before it came fallin' down." Casual babble while he lead the way through the streets. "Still got plenty of nasties crawlin' around it, though. Could probably find you one of them houses you been so interested in, if we make it to Sector Six tonight."

[intraspective]

Half her mind was one the giant--city where death lived. Half on taking in the route around them, the sights (such as they were) and just watching.

But part of her, was still dealing. With the reason she was here.

"Not tonight," she said, almost lightly, "I don't think a fight would be a good idea. Though a house is--one thing."

[raspberryturk]

"Not a good night for fightin', then. That's fair. If we run into anything nasty, I'll deal with it, yo."

It would be ridiculously easy. Because that was just how Reno rolled.

"We can come back for smackin' monsters around another time." That attempt at a light tone was worrying, somehow. So, Reno was weaselling in a different branch of conversation. "New kinda missions, back home?"

Okay, not so much with the weaselling.

[intraspective]

Ino didn't answer him immediately, idly kicking a bit of rubble, something, on the side of the road and watching it go flying.

"New missions," she said, eventually. "But, I guess, the ones I was born to do."

[raspberryturk]

"Ah." Reno slowed enough so that he just had to glance sideways to see her. "They not what you expected they'd be?"

[intraspective]

Her eyes flashed, but she still was't looking at him.

"I did the job," she said, voice sharp. "I did it even when there was s-someone who wasn't supposed to be there. Collateral damage."

Nice word for a dead four year old.

"And then, I got out and Asuma-sensei said good and Shikamaru and Chouji were more into bickering over what to grab for dinner before heading home and then I... went back to Fandom."

And fell apart.

[raspberryturk]

Gods, she sounded exactly like some of the hell-bent Rookies that Reno had trained up before.

The dead ones.

Ow.

"You satisfied with the job you did, then?" Casual question, that. Reno was pulling out his smokes. Marlboros, because his other rookie was way too damn nice and she'd sent him a few cartons. The brand name amused them both. "See somethin' you would'a changed next time around?"

[intraspective]

"Lock the door maybe," she said, arms behind her back. "But Kinjo never did, so I didn't because it would have been a break in the pattern. They--never locked the door."

"I don't know if I could be satisfied. E-Either way was a misstep." Ino was just going to ignore that wobble in her voice. Lots of ignoring.

[raspberryturk]

Reno wasn't going to ignore that wobble. He just wasn't going to bring it up, either.

"Somethin' happened that wasn't supposed to?"

Why else would she be kicking herself for not locking the door?

[intraspective]

She twisted a bit of her hair around one finger and tugged sharply at it, the small pain giving her something to focus on.

"Kinjo had a daughter," Ino said tonelessly. "A four year old. Kid came looking for her dad, late at night. Mission said no witnesses. Took her out while wearing her mom's body."

[raspberryturk]

Mental filter: On. Rookie mode. The 'wearing bodies' bit was conveniently bypassed for the sake of focusing on the kid that Ino had to bump off.

"That was part of the job, too," he noted. "Can't really prep for somethin' like that happenin', though."

[intraspective]

She nodded, a bit jerkily.

"But I'm the only one on my team that had any issue with the situation," she said, scowling down at the road. One foot in front of another. Step by step. "Sensei said good."

Ino looked up, at the--sky.

"I c-couldn't stay in Fandom, when I got back. Didn't want to talk and couldn't lie well enough to pretend it was alright." A sigh, her shoulders hitched up like warding off an imaginary blow. "Not good enough." Never going to be good enough at this rate.

[raspberryturk]

Oh, Shiva.

"You looked the kid in the eyes first, didn't you?"

[intraspective]

"Kid thought I was her mom," Ino answered. "And maybe lots of moms don't but Kinjo--seemed a pretty good one."

The downsides of spying on your target. Ow.

[raspberryturk]

"It's harder to get over it if you look 'em in the eyes, first," Reno said. Frowning. Sharing the tricks of the trade, here. "It don't matter if your target figures it out because of it. They're gonna be dead either way, an' they won't be talkin' then."