Don't Step On The Flowers

It had been another long, hard night. Tseng seemed to be doing everything in his power to drive Reno to the point of cracking since Elena had taken off for Fandom, and Reno couldn't exactly blame him. This time, it had been a run to the outskirts of the makeshift city, under heavy gunfire, to neutralize a group of citizens who had gotten fed up with the poverty. They'd gone out, found themselves some weapons inside the wreckage of the old ShinRa building, and had taken to going door-to-door, shaking people down and waving said guns in their faces until they handed over all of their food.

Not cool.

( In Which Stuff Happens, And Reno Has A Chewy Ear. )

[Open for phone calls or what-have-you.]

Okay, so there'd been that dance last night. And there'd been training with Ghanima, and plenty of drinking, and then Fight Club, and now there was to be even more drinking. Because that was just how Reno rolled.

He'd kind of given up on the two-mouthful drinks that could be purchased from the minibar, and so he'd made a handwavey booze run earlier in the day, and he was now good and stocked up with everything from Absolut to the ingredients to slosh together a Flaming Zombie.

The name seemed fitting. Reno kinda had to, here.

Oh yeah, and there were the partners in crime.

[Come one, come all! The booze is free!]

There were some things that were totally worth getting in trouble with the boss for, Reno decided. Being a grumpy son of a bitch was good for things like getting on Tseng's nerves, teaching the rookie how to run for cover, and also for getting sent on impromptu vacations to other worlds in order to visit the girlfriend.

It had totally been worth it. But, as such things tend to go, this vacation didn't last forever, and soon Reno was hopping another portal back to Edge.

The first thing he did upon getting home was reach for the Everclear that Romeo had sent him. Romeo was still the best buddy ever, and Reno was going to have to find some way to make it up to him. Maybe he'd ship him some porn or something. That was always excellent payback, right?

And then he checked the texts and voicemails that he'd missed lately. Which led to a lot of alternating between laughing and frowning. Killing beans and killing babies were two very different things indeed. But hey, verbal Twitters were amusing, at least.

It wasn't until he went to check on the beans to be certain that they were still alive (they were) and the ferret to make sure that he wasn't dead (he wasn't) that a chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling, hitting Reno solidly on the head and reminding him quite firmly that he wasn't in Spira anymore.

Sigh.

"Home sweet shithole."

[NFB for distance and all, but Reno's open for phone calls, text messages, random letters, and all of that good stuff.]

Rude's couch was lumpy and hard to sleep on.

Rude's couch was lumpy and hard to sleep on, Rude's booze was running low, and the lighting in Rude's living room sucked.

All that, and Reno had more reading material than he could have ever hoped for. And a bean sprout in a plastic cup sitting in some wet paper towel. And a pair of cacti that he hadn't managed to kill yet. And an anxious ferret, attempting to help him either with the booze, or with the reading, whichever Mako happened to be able to reach more easily at the time.

As such things went, after a week and a half back in Edge with no outlet to the real world, it was time for Reno to take a break. He'd written a letter earlier in the week in reply to one that he'd gotten last week Thursday, which was all well and good... but dammit, he needed to hear a voice that didn't belong to a Turk, a member of the WRO, or some random person living on the street corners in Edge.

Spare Gil for the homeless, they'd beg, and he'd toss them a few, just because he had a few to spare. But not without a mumble and a frown.

Yeah. You an' everyone else, yo.

He needed to make some freaking phone calls, or he was going to go out of his mind, damn it.

[NFB for distance, open to anyone who thinks that Reno would have a reason to call them! Or, heck, open to anyone. He's bored, he'll probably just hit buttons until he hears familiar voices, at this point.]

Yep. Nothing like a night out drinking with the boys to celebrate that whole not-being-dead-or-invaded-by-zombies thing to make Reno feel like he would possibly rather be dead again, if only because it would make the room stop attacking his brain from all angles.

Okay, so the Bacardi 151 shots had been a bad idea, after he'd started with Everclear in the first place. Reno was going to just lay there in bed, half-dead for the rest of the-

"FREAKIN' OW."

Reno barely managed to sit up in time to see the gremlin scurry off, and then he barely had time to groan in dim realization before the venom took over.

The hangover that he had been suffering from had left him completely. Not because he had forgotten about it, but because he had given it a dirty look, and it had run away in fear.

That was just how Chuck Norris worked, bitches.

[Oooh so very establishy.]

It had been a long day, and Reno had gotten permission to beat people up for candy, which meant that Deadpool was the coolest adult ever. But, as really cool days tended to go, there was always a time when wee Renos had to retire to their bedrooms again, in order to pull on their pyjamas and get ready for be-

"WEASEL! WEASEL WEASEL WEASEL!!!"

Maybe not get ready for bed so much. There was a time when wee Renos had to harass the poor ferret, instead.

Honk!

[Open room post is open!]

Okay. So it had been a long day. Get back from a cruise, fight with his best buddy at work, feed the weasel, all that good stuff. But Reno wasn't about to call it a day just yet.

Sunburn or no sunburn, sometimes a guy just had to mark his milestones by searing them into raw flesh with needles and ink.

As you do.

He gave his bicep a pat, explained the tattoo he had in mind, and made himself comfortable.

He was going to get so freaking drunk tonight when this was done.

[NFI and NFB for distance. Establishy goodness, natch.]

"--And you don't even smell that bad," Reno said, holding his ferret in his arms. He'd been going on like this since he'd woken up and decided to strike up a friendly rapport with his pet. "Kinda like sour somethin'-or-other or kinda gunky feet or somethin'. I've smelled worse, yo. I mean, like, I smelled worse, Mako. You should'a seen the kinda junk we had to wade through as Turks. And, I mean, Midgar. There was a city that stank. I miss Midgar. And here I am talkin' to you like a nut. You know, I shouldn't even have a pet? I only agreed to gettin' you when Rikku dragged me to the pet shop 'cause I crave some kinda companionship that ain't gonna leave me just because they find out I'm some kinda heartless government tool--"

That was about the point where he furrowed his eyebrows and frowned.

"And you don't care. You're some kinda weasel thing. So why am I tellin' you this?"

Mako blinked up at Reno lazily, and then set his chin down on his lap and attempted to sleep. Snoozing was hard when someone kept trying to strike up a conversation with you, after all.

[Open door is open!]

Dear Square-Enix;

Next time you decide to re-release a movie with thirty extra minutes of footage tacked onto it in order to better clarify the course of events within it, please, try to inform us of this decision before I do a plot based solely on the events of that movie, not several months after the fact.

But wow, the trailer for the extended version of Advent Children is freaking gorgeous.

I'm going to have to wait several months more to see exactly how jossed I am, but it looks like the whole setup with Reno and Rude blowing up the overpass just went up in a fireball on me. Daaang. How's that for the first significant tidbit of information I get handed today?

In other news, I have arrived in Nova Scotia in one piece, and it looks like I'll have stable internet around here, after all. Reno is still on his assignment, but my own availability will not be made of fail as I had been worried it might be.