Room 504, Monday Evening

[intraspective]

Paperwork was not Ino's very bestest friend ever, no.

Especially when she probably didn't know enough about the subject to fill in all the blanks. This was not stopping her from going through the pile and filling in anything she did know, mind, but it did mean she was gathering a list of questions that Ino was pretty sure the village only wanted so they could totally be insanely nosey.

Did it really matter if he had siblings, after all?

Ino was pretty sure he didn't, anyway, but that wasn't the point.

Once you'd ascertained that, oh hey, no they were not a threat to Konoha and yes were willing to swear on this, Ino was of the opinion that the rest of it was garbage.

This did not stop her from doing it, of course, but it did mean she was muttering to herself about utter idiots who needed a book written for a visitor as she steadily worked her way down the questions. Music was on, the door was half open and Ino was working on her bed.

[Open door, open post!

ETA: The phone call with Reno is chronologically last, plz. The content of the call is NFB!]

Comments

[intraspective]

"Ain't heard much 'bout how it was stopped in the first place. Some guy's imagination don't stop the moon."

[raspberryturk]

"Took some dead chick to stop it," Reno noted. "By castin' the strongest spell that's ever existed on this friggin' planet."

And she wouldn't have gotten the chance to cast it, if it wasn't for Cloud.

Fucksakes.

"Gaia stopped it."

[intraspective]

"Dead chick turns the planet alive?" Ino queried.

Seriously: what?

[raspberryturk]

"Same dead chick cured Geostigma little more'n a year ago," Reno noted. "While the guy who thought he was Zack fought off the same bastard that tried to crush us under a rock. Again."

He was not going to mention that he was buried under a highway at the time. Nope.

"I was kinda buried under a highway overpass at the time."

Damn it!

[intraspective]

"You're like a cockroach," she noted, more focused on the other bit.

"Dead chick does a lot for someone dead."

[raspberryturk]

Reno totally deserved that cockroach comment.

"She does. No friggin' wonder Tseng liked her so damn much."

And Zack. Zack was dating her, for fucksakes. But Reno wasn't going to share that part. Nope.

"She wasn't quite human, yo. Guess that makes all the difference."

[intraspective]

Probably a good idea.

Really.

"Thought your world was mostly monster and human?" she drawled idly. "She some sort of half-breed?"

[raspberryturk]

"Not monster," Reno replied. "Ancient. Last of her race. Looks like she did us a hell of a lot more good dead, zoto."

He meant that in the nicest way.

[intraspective]

"Why? 'Cause you're all still 'round?"

Ino wasn't great at letting up, no.

[raspberryturk]

"That's right, Ino. 'Cause we're all still around, and nobody's chokin' up black goo that used to be their lungs, no more."

Reno wasn't so great at letting up, himself.

[intraspective]

"Ain't my fault your world sucks," she said waspishly. "Ain't my fault I got questions on two fronts now."

[raspberryturk]

"So it's my fault?" Reno's eyebrow twitched upward. Deep breaths. Don't yell at the rookie. "You got questions. Fine. I got answers, an' you'll probably hate 'em all, so it's best you just don't ask."

He needed a smoke. He was now fumbling with his lighter, phone held between his shoulder and his cheek.

[intraspective]

"You think hate'd stop me from asking?" she asked, voice lilting though it wasn't funny at all.

[raspberryturk]

"So ask, then. An' if I can't tell you anyhow, then deal with that. I'm doin' the job. I'm a Turk."

And Turks... they let perfectly good kids go through hell for the rest of their depressingly short lives, if that was what it took.

[intraspective]

"Guy who needs to be Zack," Ino drawled. "What's wrong with the original?"

[raspberryturk]

"Ain't gone through the same absolute genetic fuck-ups that this other guy did," Reno replied. And... it actually wasn't a lie. It omitted a very big truth, but he could say it straight and even, and there wasn't so much as a hint of a fib to it. "Probably for the best he never does. Shit like that ain't good for anyone's head, yo."

... Okay, he went through very similar genetic fuck-uppery. But Zack had been considered a failure.

Technically, so had Cloud. Just, not because he was immune to it.

[intraspective]

"Bad enough when someone is taking the 2nds and 3rds and turnin' 'im from super soldiers to monsters," she noted.

"Genetic fuck ups mean only he can save the world so rest of you just gotta pray? What the hell, Reno?"

[raspberryturk]

"I wasn't prayin'. I was tryin' to kill the motherfucker at the time," Reno sighed. "Look, Rookie. It's complicated. This guy was on the wrong side from the start. It just turned out the wrong side was the right one, an' we were the bastards who were wrong all along, zoto."

He shrugged, didn't care that she couldn't see. Exhaled. Smoke.

"I wasn't prayin'. I was gettin' in the way."

[intraspective]

"So what'd happen if you were on the right side, 'nother time 'round?"

[raspberryturk]

"I won't be." That held another air of finality to it. "I was a Turk, then. Didn't give a shit about nothin' but the job. Only way to get me offa that back then woulda been to kill me. An' now, the stakes are too damn high. I don't care if it ain't even my Gaia. Zack had a bad weekend, and suddenly you wanna risk the end of the fuckin' world."

Snort.

"I can't fuckin' believe it."

Yes. Yes, he understood that those words were going to bite him in the ass someday. He hated saying them, even now. He knew that it wasn't 'nothing' coming up. But for now? For now, nobody knew much of anything, except that right now sucked. That sentence fit, in the reality that was right now.

[intraspective]

"It ain't that Zack had a bad weekend that has got me riled," she hissed, voice taut and almost disturbingly level.

"It 'bout knowing that whatever's going on? Ends in that dead poisonous city you showed me. The one Edge skirts."

Zack was a friend, yes, but he wasn't the only thing here.

"Sue me, for thinkin' maybe there's a different way."

[raspberryturk]

Reno was wavering. Fucksakes, he'd gotten soft over the years. Fandom had done it, maybe. Took him, put him back together, and substituted the broken pieces with squishy bits.

"I ain't bein' like this because I want the world to end up this way, Ino. That'd be real, real damn stupid, zoto. I'm bein' like this because there's no way of knowin' how changin' any of it might make this different. We might think we're doin' the right thing, an' then damn the whole planet."

[intraspective]

"That's a maybe too," she pointed out softly.

[raspberryturk]

Reno shut his eyes and pulled in a long, deliberate drag from his cigarette. He let it sit heavy in his lungs for a moment. Toxic and stinging and comforting. Like Midgar air. Homey.

"Pickin' up the pieces here has been hell," he said, his words a hiss of smoke and regret. "But at least if things go the way we went, we know there'll be pieces to pick up. What's left... that ain't worth gamblin' over."

[intraspective]

"I don't understand," Ino said, honestly. Not nicely, of course, but honestly.

"If there's a chance why shouldn't you take it?"