raspberryturk | MHA #1, Monday Afternoon

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MHA #1, Monday Afternoon

After a certain conversation after class today, Reno had hurried home, a frown on his lips and a million haphazard thoughts ricocheting around inside his skull that weren't amounting to much more than a whole lot of "Oh, crap."

Things were going to need re-thinking. Lots and lots of serious re-thinking. Now they weren't just trying to steer fate, the Turks were trying to Do The Right Thing in the process.

Now, all Reno had to do was... well... inform the other Turk who had anything to do with this.

And that was why he was picking up his phone and dialing. Shit shit shit.

[Contents of phone call and conversation are NFB, that there was a phone call and that Elena came over for work things is totally cool, though. For the blonde Rookie! No, not that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or... that one, either. Dammit, she knows who she is.]

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Elena gave Reno a particularly dark look at that.

"Was it Cloud?" she asked. "He's been telling some of my friends things. And then I get to answer questions that are nobody's business because an eco-terrorist has a bug up his ass."

"AVALANCHE hypocrisy at its finest," Reno sighed. "You know, I don't know. Ino never told me. I got the feelin' that Zack wouldn't tell her if she went and asked, either. But who else knows?"

Reno was at an impasse. He wanted to kick somebody's ass for this. And it would put his job with the school at risk. He'd spent a lot of the afternoon so far wondering which was higher on his list of priorities, and teaching managed, barely, to win.

"Best I can do while I'm teachin' here is try an' fix the damage, yo. But from what I hear, the puppy ain't doin' too hot. I don't blame him. Knowin' that shit's comin'..." He frowned. "Don't get me wrong. I got no love for Zack. But nobody deserves that."

Elena ran a hand through her hair. "Does it matter who?" she asked. "He's got bits and pieces from all over. The puzzle pieces clicked into place. The only question is, what now. And that, we seem to agree on."

Fix it. Somehow. They had enough information that maybe they could.

"And whether or not we tell Tseng."

"Whether or not you tell Tseng," Reno intoned, and then took another moment's pause for another pull from his cigarette. Mmm, tobacco. He didn't bother to exhale before speaking again, smoke drifting from his mouth like a dragon's breath as he spoke. "He ain't exactly my number one fan right now, zoto."

Elena was so distracted that she forgot to play keep-away with the ferret. Thus earning her a very sad honk.

"You're still not talking?" What. The. Fuck. "Do you want me to smack some sense into him?"

Which was also an excuse for her to go and talk to Tseng, yes. Shhh.

"Eh, if you want," came Reno's dismissive reply through another lungful of smoke. "It ain't just him bein' stubborn, yo. But I can take or leave him right now, it's him that's hurtin' back there."

And Rude. Reno's phone calls to Rude lately usually involved a lot of being complained at, in Rude's special, very monosyllabic way.

Poor Rude.

"I'll see what I can do," she offered. He might act like it wasn't bothering him, but this estrangement couldn't be good for either of them. "... Would you be willing to foot the bill for something that might get him off your back? And a little less bitchy at Rude?"

Elena shook her head. "What if Zack gets stubborn?"

"If it'll get Tseng off my ass, I'll sign my next paycheck over right now," Reno snorted, and then pulled his pack of cigarettes from his pocket again and held it out Elena's way.

He was thoughtful like that. Kind of.

"Stubborn how?"

He was awesome, and Elena needed that cigarette, thanks. She was going to light up and let the nicotine fix calm her down before continuing.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know him well enough. Maybe he thinks it's not our place to interfere, or maybe he doesn't want help from the Turks. If we stop Nibelheim ..."

Then what happened after that? It was an enormous blank slate.

"What if he stops Nibelheim? He's gettin' experience here that he'd never see on Gaia. How does Bahamut compare to that big friggin' lizard people keep talkin' about? If we get enough invasions on the island, you think he'll be able to hold his own against ShinRa's army, next?"

Reno flicked his ash into a coffee mug that had some fluid in it no longer fit for human consumption.

"He knows that shit is gonna get bad. If he thinks it ain't our place, then he's the one damnin' it all, and we tried. And he ain't got no reason not to want our help, Rookie. He was on good terms with the Turks until the end, zoto."

Well, with many of the Turks. Not so much with Reno, who had always been and who always would be an impulsive, territorial bastard.

Edited 2010-08-03 11:21 (UTC)

"We could get through to Tseng, if we had to," Elena mused. "Get information from our Tseng, along the lines of, what would someone have to say for you to know that they knew something personal? Use that to get that Tseng's trust, and tell him what he needs to know."

They could do the same with Reno, except that Reno and Zack were never friends. Zack trusted Tseng, and vice versa.

"Wouldn't be too hard to get in touch with his Tseng," Reno mused, nodding a little. "How long you figure it'll be before ShinRa sends him to the island to check up on him? He don't got an Angeal no more to come on parents' weekend, yo. Someone's gotta."

Oh, no, Reno absolutely hadn't been over-thinking this.

Elena needed a moment to facepalm. And giggle.

"With the ponytail?" she asked. "Can I come? So I can pull it?"

Not that part of her wanted to try her luck at hooking up with younger Tseng. ... Much.

"He'd shoot you in the face," Reno laughed, shaking his head. "But hey, if you wanna risk it, Rookie, who am I to stop you?"

They totally had their priorities straight, here. You could tell.

"I bribed Zack to do it," she said, flushing a little. "It was a joke. I didn't know he'd wait until Tseng was flying the chopper."

So ... about Modeoheim ....

"Flying the chopper, huh?" Reno pursed his lips for a moment while that sank in. "That couldn't've ended well, zoto."

Give him a bit. The timeframe would sink in soon enough.

Wait for it...

Waaaait for it...

"Holy shit! That was your fault?"

"I know," Elena said, facepalming and giggling further. "At least, I mean, that time was? It couldn't have been the other time. Our Zack never went to boarding school. Did he? Did he just get the idea himself? It makes my head hurt!"

"Probably best not to think about it too hard," Reno decided, not quite able to keep himself from laughing. "Maybe that was just one of them things that was just meant to be, yo."

He was pointedly ignoring all of the other things that were probably just meant to be, yes.

"Maybe some things you can't change," she considered.

She hesitated before adding, "My m- ... mother said some things are already changing."

Also known as, 'so, Reno, I met my dead mom.'

"What, the other weekend?" Reno's eyebrow? Going up. "What kinda things?"

And right to the point. Reno didn't waste time on mushy things when he could avoid it.

"With Rosalind," she said. She nearly called her Amelia. Not smart, Elena. "She's writing home, and the other bratty me might even write back. If they start getting along ..."

"Things might go different," Reno agreed. "She woke up sooner than I remember, too, didn't she?"

Couple years of coma. Not so much, for this Rosalind.

Edited 2010-08-03 21:23 (UTC)

"Back home, I'm eight or nine," she nodded. "I'm pretty sure she was still in the coma, back then. And I thought at first maybe she went to boarding school and I just thought it was a coma, but if other-me is getting letters, then ... so much for that."

"Nnnope." Reno was so caring, really. "It didn't get much more coma-like than that, yo. I remember we were all pullin' shifts so that she'd never be alone in her hospital room, yo."

They had been boring as hell. But shit, even Reno had been worried enough to sit through them without complaint.

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MHA #1, Monday Afternoon

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