The Preserve, Late Monday Night

[intraspective]

The preserve, really, ought to have been fully dark considering how late it was, but Ino had brought a few portable lanterns and set them up around the perimeter of the clearing. She wore short sleeves despite the cold, and had her cards on her. Getting the kunai from the locker would’ve been too much hassle with everything else.

In her hands was a scroll and she was idly tossing it from one hand to the other as she waited for Reno. Because that was totally the way you treated quality literature. Of course.

The knapsack she had slung over one low hanging branch contained two other scrolls and she left them where they were for now.

[For the partner-in-crime, please!]

Comments

[raspberryturk]

Reno nodded, leaning back against the tree and reaching for a stick. Something to do with his hands. Snap. Time for a new stick.

"Sometimes, just gettin' it off your chest helps," he agreed. "I got an open ear, if it does ever get to your head, okay?"

[intraspective]

"Okay," she said, ducking her head. "At least you don't go off 'bout my questionable morals and ethics. Even that helps. Most people here do at least a bit."

[raspberryturk]

"I got a feelin' that my morals and ethics are a little bit more questionable than yours, zoto." Snap. Next stick. "Don't worry about it too much. Someone else has an issue with you, you ask 'em how long they'd last on your world while bein' the nice guy, yo."

[intraspective]

"Not very long," she laughed. "And I don't know how my morals match up to yours. You've got more experience in not having them, I've just been taught not to have them."

[raspberryturk]

Reno eyed her for a while, and another stick died a terrible, horrible death.

"You do the job. No matter what." A pause. "Because you're Turks, zoto. Ain't nothin' else matters. Not the people you're roundin' up. Not what happens to 'em after. Don't matter if they live or if they wish they died. You do the fuckin' job."

Reno's morals, in a nutshell.

[intraspective]

Those poor sticks.

"Yeah," Ino said, leaning so far back that she was more laying then sitting on the ground. "Like that. Only--you guys don't start out as Turks, right? Not from the cradle."

[raspberryturk]

"Not most of us. None of us who are still alive, anyhow," Reno agreed, shrugging. "You gotta kinda dig to figure out what you're still doin' it for, sometimes. For me, it was easy enough. But for some of the others, I think it took a little more doin', zoto."

[intraspective]

"Do you regret doing what you do?" Ino wondered, staring up at the sky.

[raspberryturk]

And, at that question, Reno offered a bit of a tired smile.

"If I ever let myself regret it, Ino, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror. Or sleep at night. Or breathe without feelin' bad about it."

[intraspective]

Enough questions then," she said. "So you don't gotta think 'bout any of it."

[raspberryturk]

"I appreciate it, yo." A pause. "Thanks again. I mean, for all the work you been doin' with these scrolls. They're gonna mean a lot, I think, to the people back on Gaia. We just gotta make it work. Make 'em more portable, or user-friendly, or somethin'."

Something.

[intraspective]

"They're not used for things like this back home," she said. "Just weapons and in the middle of battle. Tenten can whip these things out and aim the weapons in them while she's releasing them so that they'll hit the enemy. I can't do that, and I'm not sure she'd have ideas 'bout user friendly--to her, they are, you know?"