Room 504, Thursday Evening

[intraspective]

So, once upon a time Ino was pretty sure Romeo had made her promise to tell him about anything crappy happening on the island before someone else did. Which explained the message she left for him.

… Four days late, sure, but she was trying here.

Leaving her door open, Ino was sprawled out on her bed and scribbling into a notebook she'd started working through on Tuesday. Writing down every little thing she could remember about Jenova, what she knew about Jenova from other sources (well, Elena and Reno), and what she could guess about her from—being her for a weekend.

Ino wasn't sure what purpose there was in it, really, except for the fact that—

This way she'd know her new shiny fear as inside and out as she could.

[Open door, open post!]

Comments

[raspberryturk]

Okay, so, here was the thing?

Reno hadn't checked up on his little gaggle of blonde rookies in a while, and Ino's number just happened to be...

Well, last, alphabetically, on his phone. So sue him, he liked scrolling through his contact list and going, 'Nope, nope, nope,' until he settled on one that looked most promising at any one given moment.

... Either way, Ino's phone would be ringing, here.

[intraspective]

With the phone just beside her, it didn't take long for her to pick it up and flip it open.

... It did take her a bit longer to decide if she wanted to answer it, though, once she saw the number.

She picked it up just before it went to her answering machine. "Yo."

[raspberryturk]

"Yo, Rookie!" Yos had to be returned with Yos. It was law. The law of the yo-yo.

... Reno hadn't even busted into the Corel Ale, yet. He was in a good mood, apparently.

"Been a while. Thought I ought'a call an' make sure you're still breathin' or whatever, zoto."

[intraspective]

"A while?"

Colour her honestly confused, there. Ino mentally counted back the days and...

"... Huh. It has been."

Slow Rookie was slow right now, yes.

"Didn't really seem like that long."

[raspberryturk]

"Few weeks, anyhow," Reno agreed, though there was a sort of wary hesitance creeping into his voice, here.

"You, uh, been doin' okay, Rookie?"

She didn't really sound quite like herself, was all.

[intraspective]

"Jen called me a stuck up bitch for tryin' to help her," Ino reported, using that as an excuse for--not being herself while she tried to decide what she wanted to say. "I've been writing my woes out in a notebook."

Which was actually true. Insofar as it went.

[raspberryturk]

"...Must be an interestin' notebook," Reno mused, raising an eyebrow a little. "You never did strike me as the kinda kid to have a hell of a lotta woes over some chick callin' you names, though."

She seemed more like the kind of kid who would have merrily given them the finger after something like that. Or, at the very least, to smack them upside the head if they were being insufferable.

Or something like that.

[intraspective]

"I said I was done with her?" Ino tried, because it was true. Maybe she should have fought more but Ino was tired of it when it came to Jen.

She so wasn't touching the notebook comment.

[raspberryturk]

"That's more like it," Reno replied, grinning a bit into the phone. "So. Here's where I ask what you were tryin' to help her with, 'cause I'm a nosy shit that way, yo."

And, you know, because she'd brought it up and all.

[intraspective]

"She got... into a bit of a rough situation," Ino said, picking her words carefully. "Got hurt in ways she ain't got trainin' to deal with. She's the hero type, you know?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno had to snort at that, yes.

"Difference between bein' a hero type and a hero," Reno mused. "One of the two of 'em actually manages to get the job done, and ain't an idiot about it."

Hero types just tended to be idiots about it, he'd found.

[intraspective]

"She might be a hero one day," Ino was forced to admit. "But she doesn't think things through, you know? And there wasn't a whole lot she could've done to not get hurt in this case--except, not come alone when she knew it would be dangerous."

[raspberryturk]

"Here's where I gotta ask what she was comin' alone after," Reno pointed out. "You're talkin' like you were there, zoto."

'Come alone' and 'go alone' each had slightly different connotations, after all. Reno wasn't exactly a genius when it came to words, but he was a Turk. There were just some points that stood out more than others.

[withoutverona]

Eventually -- look, there'd been an important class, and an even more important nap -- Romeo called Ino back. He'd been okay, but he wasn't sure she had been.

Ring, Ring

[intraspective]

Person! Who was not from Gaia! That was excellent.

(... Sorry, Reno, but.)

Ino sounded a bit chirpier when she picked up this call. "Hiii, you."

[withoutverona]

"H'lo, Ino," Romeo answered, swallowing his gum. (He'd been wanting to smoke again lately. The gum helped him stop.) "You sound happy. What did the island do?"

[intraspective]

"I'm happy 'cause you called and distracted me from unhappy things," she informed him honestly, closing her notebook with a snap. "The island turned people into other people again. It sucked in ways totally unrelated to personal embarrassment levels."

[withoutverona]

Romeo groaned. "Again?" he asked. "'Tis as if it keeps a calendar marked with these holidays of its own. I got a shyster my first spring and a teenage idiot my second. Who did you get?"

He hadn't quite twigged to the 'worse than personal embarrassment' point.

[intraspective]

"An evil alien," she confessed, carefully leaving off anything to do with where this creature had been from. "Of the not-funny and totally scary type."

And Ino wasn't scared easily.

[withoutverona]

Which Romeo knew, yes, which was why he groaned.

"You know it's not truly you," he said, once he was talking again. "It's only the island. That just must be ... I cannot imagine it."

"What did she do?"

[intraspective]

Ino looked down at her notebook and sighed.

"She had--minions, from the other students who'd changed. They... hurt... someone, on her orders."

A tug at her hair. "It sounds almost--stupid, that way? She didn't actually touch that someone. But she was there. And being in her head, knowing how she thought... that makes it very not stupid. Am I making sense?" Plaintively.

[withoutverona]

"Yes, yes." Soothingly. "Not stupid at all. It wasn't your choice, but having that in your mind at all -- it would be horrific."

Haltingly, he asked, "Is the other student all right now?"

[intraspective]

"I could've done garden variety evil," she said, a bit wistfully. "That could've been fun, even--and, they're physically fine," Ino said, rolling over onto her back to stare up at the ceiling. "But they're pretending it didn't happen. Which--is bad. They're not going to talk to me though; I tried. Got called names for wanting to help."

[withoutverona]

Romeo was skipping over the disturbing concept of evil as fun.

"Some people do that," he said. "If something bad happens, they -- pretend it wasn't them, it wasn't real. You can't make someone talk."

[intraspective]

... yeah, well. Ino was--learning, but some things would take longer to change than others.

"Other people are going to talk to them," she said, "the ones who actually hurt them. It's not me guessing there--it's me knowing everyone involved. If," oh, screw it, "she's not thinkin' it were real, it's just going to hurt everyone involved worse."