raspberryturk | Edge, Friday Afternoon

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Edge, Friday Afternoon

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.]

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"Reno!" Romeo said, not tentative at all. "Dost thou know the words to 'Karma Chameleon'?"

Toooootally worth calling somebody saving the world in another dimension about, yep.

Edited 2009-08-08 00:51 (UTC)

"Dost I?"

Oooh, Romeo was drunk. In that happy kinda way that made Reno not understand half the crap that was coming out of his mouth. Reno loved that particular variation on Romeo-drunkenness. It never ceased to give him a grin.

"Ain't it just a bunch'a the title, an' then, 'You come an' go,' or somethin' like that?"

"Aye," Romeo said seriously. "And then something to the effect that loving would be easy if thine colors were like -- something. I mistrust my ears."

"Also," he added, "why wouldst the colors make anything easier?"

Heee. Wouldst.

"Well, if we're talkin' literal chameleons, there's probably some kinda scientific shit explainin' that whole line away," Reno decided, laughing.

Daaamn, did he ever need this conversation.

"Only science I know is mechanical junk," Reno noted. "Sittin' in the cockpit of a chopper'd kinda suck if everything was written out in greyscale, yo."

They could use weird logic to explain away a song like professionals.

"I think the song is not about real lizards," Romeo said doubtfully. "I don't know. It was the last song at karaoke and I realized I knew not what the words meant, so I called thee."

Of course he did. Reno was the best at interpreting '80's songs.

"Isn't there a manual for the chopper? That would be grey."

80s songs from another planet, no less! Clearly, Reno was a professional, after a year and a half on Earth!

Riiight!

"Sure, there's a manual. I don't bother with it, though. I know my chopper in and out, man."

Well, Rufus Shinra's chopper. Which Tseng rented out when he could. Which Reno stole whenever he could get his paws on the keys. Which wasn't often.

Romeo burst into giggles. "I know you know your chopper. Rikku knows it as well, does she not?"

... right then, everything was dirty.

Everything was allowed to be dirty!

"Intimately," Reno replied, smoooothly. Smoooooothly and proudly.

Oh, hell yeah, Reno knew that chopper.

"Damn, man. Every guy should get the chance to fly with their girl like that, yo."

"Someday," Romeo said wistfully. "Though I do rather well with Dojima, earthbound as we mere mortals are."

There was a pause as he stopped to steady himself against a building. "Why did I never learn to fly?"

"Oh, yeah, because there ain't nobody who can learn to pilot a chopper at the ripe old age of nineteen," Reno snorted, clearly amused. "I'll show you sometime, man. We can make, like, a weekend outta it. Choppers are easy, once you know what all the little buttons an' gauges are for, zoto."

"'m not nineteen yet," Romeo reported. "Not for months and months and months."

Three months, so, yes.

"You're old, Reno. Are you sure you can teach me in your dotage?"

"Might be hard. I don't even know what that word means."

Dotage? To dote? Doot? Doobiedoo?

Reno was clearly not yet drunk enough for this conversation. And he had a rookie to be sober for.

"It means you are old and senile."

Look, Romeo remembered the word "you" existed! Give him a cookie!

"Older than I am, at least. And yet you don't know all the words to 'Karma Chameleon.' "

Hooray, use of the singular 'you!'

"I ain't from Earth," Reno reminded him. "Ask me to quote Loveless, an' I could do that, though."

He'd learned it for the sole purpose of reciting it while drunk. Stupid classic Gaian poetry was soooo much better when drunk.

"Well, now I have to," Romeo said solemnly. "What would Loveless be?"

"Poetry," Reno replied, laughing a little and clearing his throat. "'Ripples form on the water's surface, the wandering soul knows no rest.'"

Weird how he could actually recite it straight when he was sober!

"The friggin' thing goes on forever. Somethin' about three friends, an' the gift of the Goddess. Real old-timey stuff that might be right up your alley."

"Email it to me," Romeo decided. "You know I like old-timey stuff."

Really, Romeo just liked words.

"Is there a quest?"

"Or somethin' like it. I think the three friends go different ways, an' one of 'em becomes a hero, or somethin'. I know the words, that don't mean they make any sense to me, yo."

It probably didn't help that nobody had ever found the final act of the poem... play... thing. That'd clear things right up, really.

"One becomes a hero," Romeo repeated. "Do the other two die, or do they just wander of the margins of the page, never to be seen again?"

Edited 2009-08-08 02:59 (UTC)

"Hard to say," Reno noted. "The whole thing ain't there. People write their own endings to it, sure, but without the original, it all gets muddled up an' stops makin' sense."

A pause.

"I bet you could write the end to it. You'd make it all... not shitty."

"I would try to," Romeo said, warming to the subject. "I like happy endings. Not shitty ones where everyone dies and you feel like crap even if you know they had it coming."

"... I've been writing a lot, just stuff to fill the time."

"Oh, yeah?" Reno mulled on that for a moment. "Anything good enough to get published?"

It was weird, the places that Reno's brain went when he was sober. Productive moneymaking suggestions? What?

"I've not tried," Romeo said slowly. "You think I should?"

"You write enough, man," Reno pointed out. "You probably got volumes of books you could put out there. Hell, I'd read it."

He wouldn't understand it. But he'd read it.

"Couldn't hurt to try, right?"

"I call to complain about karaoke and I end with a career goal," Romeo noted. "You're a complicated man, Reno. Thank you."

This was why Reno was his best friend, really.

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raspberryturk - 2009-08-08 04:02 (UTC) - Expand

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