intraspective | A Secluded Area of the Preserve, Wednesday Evening

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A Secluded Area of the Preserve, Wednesday Evening

When Reno had said they could go out for tea, Ino had kinda figured he'd meant some place like the Perk, or even Caritas if 'tea' meant 'booze' (and knowing Reno, she'd guessed that it might've meant that).

So when she'd wound up in the preserve with him, Ino absolutely, positively, had to be a brat:

"Don't think the trees serve tea, yo."

[For Reno, yoto!]

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"Reno," she asked, "what do you do when there's nothing to--stand on?"

Damn, she asked all the difficult questions, didn't she? He wasn't complaining, of course, and he certainly wouldn't refuse her an answer, but things like this seemed like they were about two inches above his grasp, sometimes.

"When there's nothin' to stand on, I find out what the hell I need in order to build a floor," he decided, shrugging. "This time last year, it was beans."

She chewed her lip--it was going to ache tomorrow at this rate.

"I don't got anything like that but--"

Gaia. Figuring it out.

Ino shook her head.

"You got foundations," Reno replied, twitching a little smile her way. "Trick is gonna be figurin' out what to build on 'em, that's all."

He had faith that she could manage as much.

"My foundations always wind up built of quicksand," she muttered.

"Quicksand's just mud," Reno pointed out. "Try a boat, instead."

No, he wasn't going to let her blow his metaphor up in his face, damn it.

"You ain't stupid, Ino. Make it work."

"Stupid don't have much to do with it." Ino tilted her head back. "I know I ain't stupid. Don't change the fact that I feel like I don't got ground to stand on."

Unless she was with Zack, in which case the world was peculiarly stable, just for her.

That would be a ragged sigh, coming from the redhead. He thunked his head backward against the tree once for good measure, and then he was looking her way again.

"You feel like you wanna keep yourself tied to Konoha now that things ain't so shit-hot there?"

"I don't know," she said helplessly. "I love Konoha but I--I don't know which way is up any more."

Where was 'home'?

"You got anywhere in the universe at your fingertips from here. More than that even, Ino," Reno noted, offering her a twitch of a smile. "I chewed on Spira, on Tokyo an' Verona, before I left school. Shit, I was offered a job with the American Secret Service, once. Just because I headed back to Edge before comin' here don't mean there weren't options. I'm thinkin' you ain't much different, once it all boils down. Trick is findin' out where you wanna go, and then makin' a place for yourself from there, zoto."

“Trick is being useful,” she disagreed. “And that ain’t no trick.”

Did that make sense? To her it did, in a roundabout way.

Reno gave his head a shake, holding up a hand and waving it a little.

"You make a place for yourself, somewhere that you don't just exist, but you fit, an' bein' useful falls into place from there, Rookie. You really got no clue where you wanna go from here, huh?" He eyed her appraisingly for a moment. "Ever think about Edge? Or Junon, I guess, if Tseng ever gets his shit together."

"Ain't thought 'bout nothin' different," she muttered, toying with a her hair. "Always goin' to just--go home an' be badass."

Ino's idea of planning for the future needed some work, yes.

Just a smidgen.

"Back home, huh?" Reno pursed his lips a little, and then shrugged. "No place like it, I can appreciate that. They got work for you there?"

A shrug to match his.

"Dunno," she admitted, though it wasn't quite true. Konoha could always use another shinobi. "Just--driftin' right now, an' Hokage-sama ain't likely to call me for jobs and the moment but it's still..."

Where she'd grown up? Where she'd planned to spend her life?

"Still home," Reno replied, nodding faintly. "Look, Ino, if you need anything to do in the meantime, if they don't got no missions for you right now, I can always take you back to Edge now an' then. Rude's always got space for people to crash in his apartment, zoto. An' the locals can use all the help they can get around there, buildin', fendin' monsters outta their neighborhoods... Productive junk, yeah? You can teach someone smarter'n me how to grow plants in imported soil."

Or whatever arable land they could find around Edge, now. Reno wasn't certain what the place looked like, anymore. He'd been here for months, without looking back.

She frowned, though not at him. At her thoughts.

And poor Rude, getting his place volunteered without a say-so to!

"Maybe," she said, with a tiny smile. "Though that sort of help ain't what it sounded like when you asked if I'd thought 'bout Edge or Junon."

Reno cracked a little grin at that.

"Ain't what I was offerin' when I asked about Edge or Junon," he replied. "But you can't really do Turk work from Konoha, yoto."

"Be a bit of a pain, yeah," Ino conceded. "Nice of you to make the offer--I just... don't know. If my future were a canvas it'd be blank right 'bout now."

So she thought.

"If I were the kinda guy who was good at metaphor, here's where I'd say somethin' witty about paint," Reno decided, smirking faintly. "You got a year left, anyhow. Take it easy, look over your options. A year don't seem like too long if you already been here for a few, but for all you know, it'll all pull together for you just before grad, yo."

She sighed and didn't bother arguing with him about that. Ino didn't really believe it would but that was--something for her to figure out.

"You really mean that offer?" she asked quietly. "If I don't--wanna go back?"

"Wouldn't make it if I didn't mean it," Reno pointed out. "Like I said, Rookie. Much as Tseng's pissed at me right now, I'm his second. I got the authority to bring in new Turks, yo. Especially if he ain't gonna get off his ass an' do it himself, zoto."

She wrinkled her nose up thoughtfully.

"Think I'd get pretty bored of wearin' all black," she said slowly. "But the job... that I wouldn't mind."

It was pretty much tailor made to her, really.

"Hey," Reno snorted, "don't knock the uniforms, yo."

A pause.

"We've had 'em in blue before too, yo."

That made all the difference in the world.

"Still borin'," she said, arching an eyebrow. "Ain't customization allowed?"

This was Ino avoiding her issues again, yeah.

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