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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"I think he's givin' extra big tips to Titties Lockheart in hopes that she'll notice him," Reno laughed. "It ain't workin'. She's damn hung up over chocobo-hair, yo."

Which was sad, really, because chocobo-hair was an idiot.

"We should tie him up, leave him as a present for her," Elena suggested. "Or else buy him some sort of season pass for the hookers. Maybe a go-round at an upscale one for his birthday."

"Ooooh, one with all her teeth an' her shots an' everything?"

BIG SPENDERS.

"We'll get Tseng to cough up some phone numbers."

Buuuuuuuuuurn.

"I vote you make the call askin' him for the numbers to his whores," Reno laughed. "I wanna see the look on his face when you do, yo."

"Do you know how ego-crushing it is," Elena sighed, "to be turned down in favor of whores?"

No, I do not want your free sexual favors. I would much rather pay those women for theirs.

"You'd have to bribe me something good for that."

"I got peas, radishes, an' beans," Reno laughed. "Or I can promise to keep Mako from pissin' in your bed while you're away. Any of that interest you?"

"If Mako pisses in my bed, I will tell the landlord that you're stealing from him while he's asleep," Elena giggled.

"An' if the landlord tries to evict me, you lose your pad," Reno replied.

Check: Mate.

"He likes me," she insisted. "I could probably crash with him for a while. Without putting out or anything."

"He's probably gay," Reno decided. Because if you could have someone like Elena sharing a room with you and not want her to put out? You had to either be gay, or Tseng-like somehow.

Honestly.

"Orrrrrrrrr maybe he's just a nice guy," she laughed. "They exist. Now and then. Oh, wow, there are some adorable little ones around here. I want to adopt them and mess their hair up and try to get them laid. Which is gonna require some alcohol, let me tell you."

"Good luck gettin' the booze into some of 'em," Reno laughed. "You met Merlin, yet? I got him hammered on dick-in-the-dirts one night at Caritas, zoto. Caught hell from Arthur for it after that."

Something in his voice suggested that it had been totally worth it.

"No, I haven't," she laughed. "Got into a little tiff with Arthur, but that's another story. Everything was different, on the other island."

She chewed her lower lip for a moment, hesitating before she could bring herself to admit the rest.

"I had to talk to Zack," she said.

... Damn that name, anyhow. Reno freaked a little inside every time he heard it.

"Did you, now?"

"He was a vampire," she said nervously. "Cruel and twisted, and still angry that no one came to rescue him. I shot him point-blank and told him that no one came for him because SOLDIERs are disposable anyway."

It had been a good psychological tactic. It had saved her life, or the other-her's life. She would do it again. It still made her flinch.

That was a long, kind of strained silence on the other end of the line, yes.

...

"Well. That ain't good."

Reno: Master of understatement.

"Not really," she agreed. "Now the other Zack is wondering what I meant by it, and I had to tapdance around. Told him I was just pulling shit out of nowhere to upset him."

"Figure the kid's stupid enough to buy that?"

... Well, Reno wouldn't put it past him, anyhow.

"He's not stupid," Elena said carefully. "Optimistic as all hell. Believes in things. I told him the company does shitty things from time to time, but that doesn't make the rest of it not true."

Reno considered that for a moment. He hadn't been there. He couldn't judge what went on in that conversation, what that spike-haired kid took out of it. So, whatever.

"You know... It's a damn shame we can't make damn sure that Zack ain't our Zack, somehow."

Just... you know. Reno musings.

"Rescue him?" Elena said, her voice softer. "If we knew for sure that it would all work out -- with Sephiroth --"

That was what was killing her. The uncertainty. Pulling Zack free of his fate might condemn the world ... or it might not. She was going to let him die for a 'maybe.'

Reno had a small kickline of Rookies panicking at him today. Maybe that was why he was trying to be all... Something.

Maybe being a gardener had just made him soft.

"If it ain't our Zack, maybe we could."

Sure, some other world might get shit for it. Or, on the other hand, maybe things would work out just as well. Better. Something.

Uncertainty sucked.

It really did. You never knew what you might be fucking up. Maybe just by coming to Fandom, that Zack was already different and wouldn't go through all of it. The hell of it was, you couldn't know.

He'd fed her strawberries and bounced at her and she was just going to let him die.

This job sucked some days.

"Going soft on me?" she teased, gently. "I thought that was my line."

"I ain't soft," Reno said, and it was too soft to be a growl, so so much for that. "Just thinkin', you know. Maybe shit would'a gone better if he'd been alive. Less dyin' all around."

Right. You keep telling yourself that, Reno.

"Feels like a second chance to get the mission done. Rescue Zack. An' if Tseng finds out, he ain't gonna let the kid go back to his own world, is he? I mean, clearly there's a good reason for Tseng to never find out. Could fuck everything up. Might not, though. Zack ain't there either way, right? Damn it."

Look, all of his rookies ever had liked Zack. This wasn't about Zack and it wasn't about Tseng. This was about Rosalind and Cissnei and Dinah and Elena and ... so on.

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