Junon, Gaia, Thursday Afternoon

[raspberryturk]

Junon, Reno supposed, wasn't half bad. Sure as hell better than Edge, which he couldn't wait to get the hell out of, especially after that weird-assed argument in Tseng's kitchen.

Tseng's ex-kitchen, Reno supposed.

He was sitting in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on one of the city's lower levels, the world's crappiest coffee slowly dissolving a coffee mug in one hand, waiting for somebody in particular. He'd left Edge a little early, dragged a few of the boxes of paperwork along with him so that Rude wouldn't have to haul it all here, and then he'd started to poke around.

Yeah, Junon had suffered a bit since WEAPON's attack. But then, where the hell hadn't?

... Besides Kalm. Lucky, lucky-assed Kalm.

[Open for anyone who might want to call, or who has reason to be in Junon!]

Comments

[intraspective]

Reno had left them with an address. That was good, that meant they didn't have to get a room of their own, and Ino had fussed around there for a while, before Zack shooed her out to go and see Reno and promised he was going to crash out on the floor for awhile.

Truthfully, that bothered her too. Zack had to be tired if he was crashing out like that.

So was she, but it wasn't so much a tired of the body, though that was part of it, and so she found herself walking through Junon, trying to get a feel for what the city had been like, once upon a time, and taking more pictures.

Until, finally, she'd made her way to the restaurant he'd told her to meet him at. Ino fidgeted in the entrance, being here, now, she wasn't sure how to react...

[raspberryturk]

"Rookie!" Reno was on his feet and waving her way the moment he spotted Ino in the doorway. He'd made a point to get a table with room for three, but he really couldn't deny just how thankful he was that she hadn't decided to bring her puppy along for this. "I see you made it, yo."

And damn, did she ever look worse for the wear. To be expected, he supposed, after seeing your whole damn home go up like that.

"Coffee? It tastes like coeurl shit."

Mmm.

[intraspective]

Seeing her home go up, seeing Mideel, Gongaga, Corel...

It had been a very bad holiday, all around. She made her way over to him, promising she'd answer his question with a witty answer to show she was okay, when, no, the part of her that was deeply, horribly upset decided that there was a better way to deal with this.

By flinging her arms around him and trying very hard not to burst into tears.

... Sorry, Reno.

[raspberryturk]

... Well, this was new.

New, but not exactly impossible to fathom. Reno only hesitated a moment before lifting an arm up to pat her on the shoulder. For all that he was a shit-disturber and an all-around pain in the ass, he knew how to handle his Rookies. Especially when they were like this.

"You're hangin' in there," he noted, his voice a few shades gentler than the norm. "You're still standin', yo."

[intraspective]

Ino knew better than to say anything like 'I shouldn't be' and 'why aren't I dead too' because those, at least, had been entirely up to luck.

She'd done nothing to cause the disaster, nothing to be blamed for. Luck, and her father for protecting her.

And now she was clinging and trying not to sniffle too much because somehow, even when all she wanted to do was cry forever it was... too embarrassing, in public. "S-Sorry," she mumbled, "for th-this..."

But she wasn't letting go just yet.

[raspberryturk]

Reno just shrugged. Shrugged, and rubbed gently at her back, and took the sniffling clingy girl thing like a man.

Really, around here? It was nothing that people weren't used to seeing, whether there was a Turk involved or not.

"You're my Rookie, Rookie. S'what I'm here for, yo."

[intraspective]

She nodded and buried her face against him and gave herself the time to just--breathe and try and find some sort of stability again before trying to say anything further.

Not full out crying, but shaking and just clinging and a few tears snuck out anyway.

Eventually, she loosened her grip on him and pulled away slightly. "I..."

[raspberryturk]

"You...?" Reno pursed his lips in thought, and then nodded down at his table. "C'mon, take a seat. Take it easy, yo. They don't got hot chocolate here, but if you don't want to drink the tar, I'm sure they can dig up some tea, yo."

Yes. Tar tea. Welcome to Junon, Ino.

[intraspective]

She sat.

Because sitting sounded at about the perfect speed for her to do right now. And toyed with her hair and tried to figure out how tar and tea worked together and came up with...

More questions than she ever really wanted to think about tea.

"I'm okay," she said, muted and it was so very obviously not true that it was pathetic.

[raspberryturk]

Kinda pathetic. That was fine. Reno handled pathetic well, too.

"Long week? Was kinda expectin' your call to come sooner, yo." He quirked a shadow of a grin at her, sitting and reaching for his coffee mug.

He'd have spiked it by now to hide the taste, but the booze around here amounted to... Corel Ale. Never the same twice, but he suspected that the bottle he'd picked up had been made with carrot scrapings and seaweed, add dirt to taste.

[intraspective]

Long forever.

She hitched her shoulders because it was better than her breath hitching. "Sorry," Ino fumbled, "didn't mean to... take so long."

[raspberryturk]

"Hey, I ain't angry," Reno replied, shaking his head. "You got a lot on your plate, zoto. I been there."

Possibly far more thoroughly than he realized, considering the little Gaia grand tour that was going on.

"Sorry we had to do the meetup in Junon, yo. Didn't know if Rude had enough room on his floor for three of us crashin' in."

And also, Edge: Not a great place to send the Rookie right after her home blew up, Zack or none.

[intraspective]

Ino blinked at him. "You were going to be here anyway, right?"

She was pretty sure she remembered that.

"It made sense."

[intraspective]

A few hours later and feeling a little more rested for all that she’d probably slept maybe an hour all told—nightmares weren’t fun and she’d spent more of the time curled up and just thinking. Sometimes with her eyes closed but that didn’t mean sleep happened.

She yawned, covering her mouth with one hand and studied her tea. It was more hot water than tea really, and it had been stupidly expensive, but it was clean and didn’t gurgle at her and the cups looked like they’d been washed recently.

Ino figured that was worth paying a little extra for, all things considered, as she stared out the window of the little café she’d wandered into after giving up on sleep and finding Reno gone. Zack had still been asleep and she’d wasted a few moments trying to come up with the energy to hate him for his ability to sleep, but had wound up pressing a kiss to his forehead and then walking out quietly.

He should sleep. It wasn’t his fault that she couldn’t.

Ino sipped her hot water and wondered how to waste the next few hours.

[turk_mailman]

Junon. So far as cities went, Junon was... not terrible, though it would probably take his Turks several more months before they would get him to do anything remotely resembling admitting as much.

... Possibly far longer than that, if his difficulty locating a half-decent cup of tea kept up.

Tseng frowned into his cup, squinting a little as he attempted to locate the tea part of this café's tea recipe, and then looked up again, quite intent, Leviathan willing, on finding a table, sitting down, and drinking his headache away with slightly discoloured hot water.

[intraspective]

And wouldn't you know it, but most of the tables were occupied? Apparently this cafe was fairly popular amongst those who could afford it and Junon had more people would could afford it and were willing to pay than Midgar.

There was, however, a table free by the window, right near the blonde girl who was paying more attention to the traffic on the street than what was going on in the place.

[turk_mailman]

Really, there were worse things in life than a window seat, even if the tea was atrocious, and so that was the way that Tseng went, claiming that very seat for himself.

He'd barely gotten the teacup to his mouth before he'd begun people-gazing, studying those around him with an unconcerned air about him that failed completely to match up with the interest that he was taking in his surroundings, or the fact that he was committing everything he saw to memory.

Such as the blonde girl who looked, even in Junon, slightly out of place. A little too tired, a little too distracted. Not local, certainly. And she matched up perfectly with the reports he'd read, in his own attempts to keep an eye on the very Zack that he was afraid he'd run into, here.

"The tea," he said, carefully, speaking in Wutai, "could use some work, don't you think>"

[intraspective]

And Ino's head snapped up. The last time she'd heard that language from that voice, she'd been in the hospital. Her eyes widened, not in fear, but in recognition as she stared at the man, most definitely older, than the one who'd offered her a way to make her own way.

"Well," she said, studying her own tea. "I suppose that depends on if you like tea at all."

Or hot water. She'd heard some people drank it plain.

[turk_mailman]

Ah. So she did know who he was. Fitting, he supposed, for anybody who was as close to Zack as the reports suggested.

"Or hot water," he noted, dryly. "Your boyfriend isn't with you?"

If he was at all hopeful that she'd decided to leave Zack behind, he certainly wasn't letting it show, no. Tseng didn't let much show. Not unless he wanted to.

[intraspective]

Her eyes narrowed contemplatively.

"He's sleeping," she responded cautiously, not sure what Tseng wanted from her. "It's been an eventful while."

And yet, here she was wide awake, far too tired, and drinking hot water barely flavoured.

[turk_mailman]

"So I've heard." Tseng glanced down into his teacup. Even his hot water was going to get cold. He could predict that happening already, and the conversation had only just begun. "And how is he taking to this Junon?"

A pause.

"No, forget I asked that. I imagine he's slept through most of it, thus far."

He almost twitched a smile, there. Zack hadn't gotten his puppy nickname for nothing, after all.

[intraspective]

"Mostly, that's right," she said, agreeably. "I envy him that."

Entirely the truth. Ino was tired.

"He didn't--Junon didn't upset him too much, comparatively."

Compared to Mideel, Gongaga, and North Corel, Junon was doing peachy.

[turk_mailman]

Just one eyebrow. Just twitching upwards. Just slightly.

"Comparatively?"

Reno had mentioned that something had gone South in Yamanaka's home, but details had been... sparing.

[intraspective]

"Comparatively."

That was so useful, wasn't it?

"Junon is healing."

[turk_mailman]

Oh, yes. Terribly useful.

"Junon has had four years to get to this point again," he noted, idly.

Which possibly said a great deal for how badly Midgar was doing four years ago, considering the sorry state of affairs that it was in right now.