Konohagakure no Sato, Saturday Afternoon (Fandom Time) / Feb. 15th (Konoha Time)

[intraspective]

Really, it had been a month and a half now and Ino had to admit that she was—feeling better. Between her father teaching Zack (and water walking had proved to be quite a hilarious thing to watch) and her father teaching her, she was feeling useful and busy without it being anything too taxing.

She hadn’t seen either of her previous teammates, which stung, but Ino stomped down firmly on that as she disentangled her mind from her father’s and ignored his look. It wasn’t the first time she’d avoided… whatever it was he’d wanted to talk about.

And she doubted it would be the last.

“That’s enough for now,” he said, after a moment. “How about you go and get some air?”

It was phrased as a suggestion, but Ino was well used to her father’s orders. With a quick kiss to his cheek, she left the room, went down the long, dark hall and out into the sunshine. It was a lovely day—February, already, which made her head hurt if she thought too hard about the days and how they related to Fandom—but, Ino thought, as she leaned against the balcony and pulled out her phone, hitting speed dial, maybe all that time had been what she’d needed.

And, across universes, her phone call reached…

[For ze raspberried one. Mwahaha. NFB.]

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[intraspective]

"So everyone in ShinRa was evil?" she chided. "The receptionists? The lady in the viewing room? Those who're in the space development department? The janitors? They're all ShinRa too."

[raspberryturk]

"And any one of 'em could'a chosen to quit," Reno sighed. "Any single one of them had the option, knowin' full well they were workin' for a dirty company, zoto."

He shook his head. Bad topic to get on, especially considering who her boyfriend was, so now it was time to steer somewhere different.

"Whatever they're stickin' around for, the job's gone all different now anyhow. There ain't no mako, ain't no great conquest to be a part of. It's just pickin' up the wreckage. Clearin' the bodies away as you find 'em."

Even in Midgar, there were still bodies. Junon was a little better off, in that regard. Midgar had nowhere to bury their dead. Junon had kind of perfected the phrase "burial at sea."

[intraspective]

Ino sighed, biting her lip at the end of it because there was more she could say there, but--what was there to do? He saw things differently than she did.

You could love something that was bad. Take pride in it, still wish and identify yourself as part of it.

Even if it was bad. Awful.

"Nice," she said, very dryly. "But the people left, they're all still the people who once upon a time were loyal. That don't make them bad people for their devotion, Reno."

Even if he painted the world and ShinRa with his need to atone. Not everyone's situation was the same. "ShinRa did a lot of good too," she said, softly. "It's easy to forget that, I bet, but they did. Junon still bein' functional means there's still people who might want to keep on doing good--but under ShinRa's name."

[raspberryturk]

Reno heaved a sigh. Again. Good night for sighing.

"You'd have to see it to get it, Rookie. Midgar's ruins ain't where this mess begins and ends. Junon didn't get the brunt of Meteor, but WEAPON took a huge friggin' chunk outta it. They all got guilt, but it's different guilt. They got survivor's guilt, lookin' at the way their sister city ended up. Still plenty of bodies, sure, but it ain't the same, bein' blown up by a monster the planet made."

Instead of a monster ShinRa made.

[intraspective]

"Ain't goin' to be everyone who thinks the way you do," she said, keeping her voice level. "Turks--they did things that the janitors and the receptionists ain't done. Living might leave guilt but that guilt when you ain't done nothing but go 'bout your life like normal before and after... how does guilt people're expected by rote to feel 'cause they're supposed to feel that hold up to the fact that every day they get up, they breathe, and things get a little better piece by piece."

Ino toyed with her hair.

"Ain't just them that's got to put away their guilt either."

Wallowing was not an attractive look for him.

[raspberryturk]

And yet he did it so well!

Usually under the influence, when there wasn't anyone around to witness it. Rikku was off in Spira, so...

"Maybe they got less to be guilty for," he said, frowning deeply. And then, because he figured it was a word that could temper just about anything, he added, "Whatever."

No, Reno. That one worked better for people from other games.

[intraspective]

"I won't say you don't got things to be guilty for," Ino replied, eyes narrowing. "But what you did and what ShinRa did aren't all one and the same. The janitor ain't got the same situation you do."

And that was when a flicker, barely perceptible, rippled across the sky.

Ino leaned out over the balcony and peered up, squinting.

[raspberryturk]

Reno, unfortunately, couldn't see that flicker. He was blissfully unaware of what was going on over on the other end of the conversation.

"Maybe not," he allowed, but barely. He had his doubts, always would. ShinRa was ShinRa was ShinRa. You couldn't go to work every day and not notice what the company around you was doing. If you stayed with it, you condoned it. That's what his brain sized it up as. After all, they had the option. His way out, until after Meteorfall, was in a coffin. If there were enough pieces left to warrant one. "Funny they don't take it somewhere else, then. Maybe they ain't in it to atone, but why keep the name, if the company's dead, and the President's rumored to be?"

He knew better. Most of the world still didn't.

[intraspective]

"Because," she said, leaning out a bit further, and unaware that already attacks were spreading throughout the village. "They love ShinRa."

But if she sounded a bit distracted, well, forgive her? It was hard to stay focused on this conversation when she was squinting at a bit of smoke in the distance. Had someone's practice gone out of control?

[raspberryturk]

"Weird-assed thing to love," Reno sighed, shaking his head. "But hey, if it makes 'em happy..."

Really, he wasn't one to talk. He had been the guy who nearly blew it with Cloud after Sephiroth's remnants had showed up, suggesting that they re-build the company. That had been one of his less stellar moves.

But then, it had kinda seemed like something to do. The Turks had been glorified babysitters at that point, after all.

[intraspective]

"It--"

Ino's mouth dropped open as a laser of pure chakra ripped through the sky, through the area, and things began to burn with the rumble and crash of falling.

When she recovered her voice next, she wasn't speaking English, but rather had slipped back to her first language as she shrieked what amounted to, "Dad!"

Shrieking was undignified, it was true, but the noise would carry.

[raspberryturk]

And it would send Reno sitting bolt-upright, eyes wide and suddenly alert as though he hadn't been remotely tipsy in the first place.

Turks sobered up fast.

"Ino? The hell was that? Ino?"

He'd heard that crash. And anything that would make her swap to Wutai, or whatever the fuck it was, could not possibly be something small.

[intraspective]

Her dad's mind reached out and tangled with hers and for a long, disconcerting moment Ino was there, holding the phone and listening to Reno demand for an answer, and wasn't there at all as her father's control--superior to hers in so many ways--and their minds spread over the village, which was a trick that Ino had shown him, but his power and reach giving them a greater scope than she had alone and it was a whirlwind meld of confusing thoughts, images.

Attack, it boiled down to, invaders.

And Konoha having been taken completely by surprise. She watched a hundred thousand images pass through her thoughts and couldn't find the words to answer Reno.

[raspberryturk]

Silence. Silence. Silence, save for the sounds of destruction on the other end of the line. It had been years since he'd heard sounds like that. The falling of an overpass- His own fault, and Rude's. The falling of a city.

Also his fault, though far less directly. And then before that still, far more directly.

Silence and a world coming down.

"Rookie!"

[intraspective]

Firm, familiar hands clamped around her shoulders and with the touch their world expanded further. People dying, people falling, people fighting against monsters that were all different-but-same.

Chouji crying over his father, who'd been crushed by a building. Shikamaru being hauled up out of rubble, refusing Sakura's help to heal his obviously broken leg. Shizune, dead. Being lifted by her broken neck and toss dismissively.

And people wanting Naruto to show up.

She blinked, vision fading out as her thoughts became her own. "Concentrate," her father murmured, "don't let the dizziness take you."

Center herself and breathe. And all the while things fell down around them. That led panic to her struggles and made it harder to regain equilibrium. And Reno shouting at her, in a tone she'd never heard from him before. A distant crump of an explosion underscored that.

"Reno," she said, voice high and taut and strange sounding to her own ears. "I've got to go."

She didn't even manage to hang up the phone before the world exploded around her and Ino felt herself pulled tight against her father's body and the phone fell.

Ino didn't even notice when it got stepped on, crushing it, cutting off the line. At that point, Ino didn't notice much of anything other than the fact that the world was ending and she was right in the middle of it.

[raspberryturk]

"Ino!" He'd almost remembered how to breathe again when she'd spoken. She was alive. She was alive.

And then the explosion. And then silence.

Reno didn't even stop himself from screaming her name, then, long and loud and desperate. And when he realized that he'd been cut off, he tried to dial her number again.

Your call could not be completed as dialled. Please hang up and try again...

Always, always, he was left sitting completely out of reach while the world went to hell for the people he'd taken under his wing.