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

[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?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno frowned. Looked at the ground. Hello, ground.

"Wouldn't know where to start. An' that's assumin' there's a chance. I can't take down Sephiroth. Zack wouldn't be able to, either."

Nibelheim. Packing up the SOLDIER that was bleeding out on the stairway, and the infantryman who was in worse shape still. Shipping them to the mansion, with Hojo. Don't look back, just do the job. Leave the worrying to Tseng. Tseng was the one who damn near wanted to screw the kid anyhow.

"Seems easier from the outside, maybe. Not havin' all the pieces."

[intraspective]

"And no way to get the pieces but to drag them out of you," she said, with some asperity. "So it's not just the clones of Sephiroth? The real thing too?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno sighed and rubbed at his forehead next.

"Real thing was worse than the remnants were. An' I couldn't handle one of them. The real thing... He ain't a bad guy, in Zack's time. He ain't nothin' for the kid to worry about right now. Does him a world of good, for a while."

That was... only kind of lying. More or less.

"Trains him for a bit, since Angeal ain't doin' him any good."

[intraspective]

"Since Angeal is running 'round and Genesis ain't good at all."

No, kidding.

"Remnants are clones?" she checked. "Okay. So he's good for now, but..."

[raspberryturk]

"S'complicated," Reno decided, slipping into the faintest hint of a mumble, now. "He's more'n just good right now. He's a friggin' hero. Sooner or later, he'll snap. And then the son of a bitch is gonna just refuse to stay dead. The remnants ain't clones, nah. They were three pieces of him, just... pieces. Lookin' for their mommy, yoto."

That last sentence was said in the sort of drawl that suggested that Reno would pay to see Rufus shoot their mommy's disembodied head a few more times. Please.

[intraspective]

...

...

Ino was torn between frustration and stress-fuelled hilarity, really. Seriously. Ow.

"Why does he snap?"

[raspberryturk]

This wasn't something that Zack could have any effect on, either way, and so Reno sighed, buried his face in his hand again, and pressed onward. Why the hell not? Ino was treating 'don't tell Zack' like a mission objective, and so it was safe.

And if it wasn't safe, then he would take whatever measures needed to be taken to ensure the safety of Gaia. That went without saying.

"On a mission somewhere, Sephiroth found files on the being we call Jenova," he replied. "Who he's been told his entire life was his mother. Guess he had problems with ShinRa keepin' most of her body in a tube to be experimented on an' used in the SOLDIER project, yoto. Figured that her rightful place wasn't as some kinda science project, an' that instead, the two of 'em should be rulin' the planet together."

Not right in the head by that point, that Sephiroth.

[intraspective]

It was a sucky mission objective but it wasn't like she got any say in her missions, right? So sucky was well... to be dealt with.

Suck it up. And bitch. A lot.

She chewed her bottom lip at that. "Can't say I blame 'im for not wanting her experimented on. Wouldn't want my mom in that situation either, you know?"

[raspberryturk]

"She ain't really his mother," Reno sighed. "She's a blue-skinned freak from outer space that crash-landed on The Planet ages ago, an' has been tryin' to destroy it in one way or another since. I don't know much about the project that Sephiroth came from, but he had a human mother, just like the rest of us, yo. That much, I do know."

Which hinted somewhat at exactly how shitty ShinRa had been, so far as things like 'human rights' went, perhaps.