towerofanimus | 'Cause I have other things to fill my time

Entry tags:

'Cause I have other things to fill my time

Characters: [au1]Reno, OPEN!
Setting: See Below
Format: originally prose, but action is fine!
Summary: Reno watches things and gets to work on...stuff.
Warnings: Bits of angst, but nothing as of yet.

-Floor 12-

Reno can be found here watching the worlds die as if he's looking for something to be there. He isn't troubled by the sight so much as intrigued, taking mental notes on each one's end. He's also, vaguely, wondering if any of them was the world of someone he knew.

He missed them; Catpaw and the others, even if he knew they'd probably turn up safely somewhere given enough time. He wondered how Jinx would get along without him, or if he'd simply fall back in to his old habits.

- Floor 15-

In the workroom, Reno's dismantling his EMR to see how it works. He's got a metal pipe and a number of nails nearby as well as some wood and duct tape. Whether he's doing maintenence on the worn weapon or trying to make some sort of crossbreed of an EMR and a nailbat remains to be seen.

He should probably be stopped before he electrocutes himself or something.

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"I don't think that is safe." Suzaku frowned. Even though his placement in the engineering section of the army had been a cover for him being Lancelot's pilot he had managed to pick up some knowledge. Enough to know that this didn't look safe at all.

Reno looked up, one eyebrow raised. "it's not meant to be safe, it's an EMR. I'm trying to build another but with nails in it." he explained. "won't look as pretty but it'll function."

"An EMR?" Suzaku stepped forward for a closer look. Some kind of weapon? He had never seen anything like it before.

"Electro-Mag Rod. A bit of ShinRa's finest leftover from the end of the world." He explained, a note of humor in his voice. "It's basically a cross between a taser and a beatstick."

Suzaku looked at it and nodded, a version of crowd control, to keep people in line. Perhaps not that much use against monsters unless the taser part was incredibly powerful but it would slow them down a bit.

"I see."

Considering Reno was a Turk (even if he didn't work for the company anymore) and had faced down monsters with this very one before he was perfectly at ease with its apparent uselessness.

"Don't go knockin' it, you ever taken a baseball bat to the knees?" he asked casually. "...or seen it happen."

Not a baseball bat no but he had seen enough crowds driven back by force to know that against humans such batons made a dangerous weapon. Of course they were usually larger, and wielded by Knightmare frames. But Suzaku came from a world without monsters, his only experience being those in the tower, they were tougher than humans.

"I am aware of the damage such instruments can cause." His tone was clipped, his posture definitely military, his face set.

Xion had finally tangled her first sewing project to the point where it was pointless to try and work on it anymore. Except that she needed actual material to work with, and she hadn't taken any more than she needed to get started this past time.

Thus she stopped by Floor 15, heading in the direction of the fabric.

That is, until she saw a familiar head of red hair working at a table nearby. Except... there was something different about it too.

"Reno?" she called, taking a few curious steps in his direction, "What are you doing?" Do you look a little different than normal or is it just me...?

Oh, it's Reno even if his hair looks like it hasn't been cut in six months and his goggles are long gone. He offers her a smile though, even if it's not as big as his other self's might be.

"Maintainence mostly, and trying to jerry rig a new one up with what this place has." he replies easily. "You must know the other me, he's Sparky."

He'd never minded kids, even downright liked a good number of them most days. "Need help makin' something Kiddo?"

Xion's eyes widened.

"He didn't tell me there was another him here," she commented. She didn't sound too surprised or unnerved - she'd already seen more than her fair share of duplicates - Riku, Sora... her own. At his question though, she shook her head.

"I'm fine. I... ran out of things for the project I'm working on, so I came here to get some more."

Another EMR dropped down next to his work place, looking quite new and shiny compared to the other worn one he was working on. Then a third one next to it, looking not quite as shiny, but well used and in good repair.

"I modified that one while I was in the hospital after the... after Sector 7. It's got a few new attacks on it." Sparks didn't know if Rusty had the time to do that before he had gotten swiped to the boat he always talked about, but he was willing to share his extra one if the- whatever the hell Rusty was doing didn't work out.

"I always meant to do that." there was a note of amusement at it. "i'm just doing a bit of upkeep on the old girl here." He assured Sparky. "Big bad fight, you know how it goes. That and I'm gonna rig up one like a nailbat if I can figure it out. They're not bad in a pinch."

It was a good day today, he had a project and there'd been people in and out to chat to in passing.

"Oh, yeah. I figured out how to rig it up right in the hospital, then I upgraded it on the road." Plopping down in a chair, he leaned against the table on his elbows, watching. "I was tryin' to make something that could knock Cloud out, but don't tell him that."

A nailbat seemed like an interesting idea, but he wasn't sure if the metal of the EMR could hold up with that. "Why don't ya just weld on a couple of spiked rings on it, 'stead of doing the nails? Shouldn't be hard. They got the tools down here to do either."

Reno frowned a little, "He became that much of a problem, huh?" he asked, "Way Vince told it we didn't exactly try too hard. I kinda... bailed early so I don't have much of a first hand account." He shrugged. "Hell I can't even wrap my head around Rufus being President. Let alone half the rest of it really."

His eyebrows knit together at the mention of the rings. "Nah, rings wouldn't conduct as easily and welding it'd be a pain. Puttin' nails through it and welding them would be easier, like bolts in girders."

His eyes widened a little bit, and he sat up straighter. "You kidding? I'm you, these guys weren't exactly a cakewalk."

Falling silent, he gave a slight shrug. It was obvious he was thinking a bit on what had happened, unsure of what to tell his otherself. Still, he could understand, couldn't he? They were the same person, and these were events from his perspective. "And Vincent is something else, so of course his perception would be skewed. I'm tellin' you, I worked my best, but if ya want more details I can get the book for you.

As far as Rufus was concerned, that kid- he's got more guts than his father and brother put together. He's... actually decent. It was kinda up in the air for a while at the beginning, but he held through with his half of the
bargain. Then he worked like hell to stop the Sephiroth and Meteor crisis."

Sparks had a different opinion, of course. If metal touched metal it would conduct, far as he was concerned, but this was Rusty's project. "It'd just become part of the shaft, but your choice. The shaft isn't the strongest after you punch a few holes in it, speaking from experience, but... sorry, I can't just- just get the nails in there and I'll weld it all down." He flopped down on the table, resting his head on the surface and winced. So maybe just watching a project he saw was doomed to failure was harder than he thought.

"Anyway, I guess it'd be hard thinkin' of him like that, with Rufus being stuck away for years. Shinra died just after the plate drop, like within days. Can't say I was really that sad to see him go." Rusty had made a good argument for the contract being broken during death, and Sparks had died once so far, though he didn't really remember it. There was something there though, with Rufus. Something deeper than the contract. "We owe Rufus our lives though, so if he shows up here, death or no death, I'm going to stick by."

Now there was some slight hesitation in his voice. "Does that surprise you?"

"Vince is just as much a Turk as I am at this point." Reno replied mildly, "Besides in the end we ended up working on the same team."

He smiled a little, trying for reassuring. "It's fine, I know I go on about the folks on the boat but it's because we went through hell together and came out the other side with some new scars and stories to match. You and Rufus and the others did that back on Gaia. Ain't no shame in it, no matter where we end up we're Turks. ShinRa, Gaia or not that doesn't change. Even dying doesn't really change it, just means we can say no to the strangling babies bits and have a life outside of it."

"Eh, it's just you were saying your contract was up, seemed kinda like you were quitting. But I'm really glad to hear ya still feel the same." Awkwardly, he rubbed a hand through the slowly lengthening spikes he still wore sometimes, and he had done so today. "I'm not gonna hold you to it, though."

That reminded him. "I wanted to ask, don't ya miss the spikes? Or goofing off? I mean, yeah, lots of shit has happened, but... come on, ya should come up to the media room sometime, hang out."

"There's a difference between being a Turk and working for the company. It's all about the..." He sighed, he was going about it backwards.

How had Vincent gone and said it.

"You know that when a Turk isn't useful to the company they get taken out back and made a smear. We don't... didn't matter to them as people or to the people on Gaia. To the company we're weapons to point at whatever pisses 'em off the most inside or out of itself. Everyone else we're the godsdamn boogeymen who steal their kids and kill their families or bits of scenery." A halfway angry look crossed his face; it still burned, he'd never truly had time to reconcile with the Sector 7 plate or lived through the rest of things back on their planet. He hadn't known that Tseng had even trusted him until their row after the first time he'd died. "It was an out."

He shrugged, "I dunno, I mean... maybe I outgrew it. Had to go and be Director for a bunch of people who joined us yanno?"

Sparks looked at himself a bit sadly. Being the Director, yeah, he knew that pain, but probably not like Rusty did. He had time to deal with what happened, rest up from his injuries. He had to do something.

"Somehow, I'm beginning to think I got the better end of the deal. You weren't there when Tseng disappeared... that was one of the hardest times I ever had, not knowing what to do or if it was the right thing. But I can say this. That all changed when Rufus took over. We were his Turks. And it sounds like you need a goddamned vacation, so I'm gonna do you a favor. Once you're done with this, we're gonna head up to the media room and blow the heads off some zombies."

He looked at Sparky for a long moment before laughing. "Sparky I lived on a floating buffet and bar that I didn't have to pay a gil for. Soon as we get situated and a group we can trust together then we can relax a bit, Turk's Honor. I'll even dig up a bottle to celebrate."

"Screw that." Sparks was standing now, leaning on the table with that cocky, self assured air of old, pose complete with hand on him. "If you think like that it'll never happen. You can't trust anyone except the kids in this shit hole, just kick back and have some fun. When was the last time? Do ya want to turn out like Tseng?"

"Day I had a suicidal songbird decide my innards would be a good place to attempt to make a nest and then leave out the other side. Big party, even got our weapons back." he replied easily, he knew that stance and look.

"I'd prefer to do things in reverse this time. Be ready for the fight to the death before holding the party. Even if it's just the lot of us from Gaia."

"The last party we had here, there were cookies, and not much else." Reno was rolling his eyes at the other, shaking his head slightly. "How can you just sit there and say that? Mark it, I know you, you're me. You'll be up there eventually with me. 'Sides, I said after you're done with that."

Suddenly, he made a snort and started laughing. "This is like trying to argue with our brother."

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'Cause I have other things to fill my time

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Floor 15!

Re: Floor 15!

Guh sorry for my slowness orz

Floor 15

Re: Floor 15

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