onepassingnight | oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

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oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

The scenery within this new (perhaps not quite) foreign subconscious is a confused jumble, as if its unsuspecting creator cannot quite decide just where to be — a snowy mountainside has burst up from beneath the streets of a staircase city set into the rise of sheer, seaside cliff. The pieces are whole, details sharp and clear on narrow, towering buildings all crammed close together and rocky outcroppings with their blankets of heavy snow (still falling, as it is, in weird pockets only over corresponding ground).

But these little scenes are shattered among each other, shifting constantly, uncertain as the blank, white sky above, which reflects a dull grey in the ocean below. Where these two endless, colorless stretches of space reach to meet on the horizon, they blend seamlessly, as if meeting the edge of this conflicting reality might be as easy as setting sail for the fragile inner boundary of the eggshell shape it almost appears to be locked within.

Bright and cold, the silence falls as heavy as the inclement weather, in each vacuum of space that covers the mountainside, doing its best to muffle the staccato beat of his boots on uneven pavement broken over icy faces of stone and the competing race of his heart, now trying its hardest to burst clear out of his chest. (And in a dream, who's to say it mightn't?) With his rifle hugged tight against his back by its strap, where it beats a solid rap against his shoulder blades, a sharp reprimand for every stumble, a lone soldier in drab blue is fighting a very literal uphill battle.

The uniform he wears obscures all of him but the lower half of the pale, strained expression writ across his face, solemn as he barrels up the insurmountable slope in leaps and bounds, shadows chasing behind as he rounds a street corner onto another craggy patch of open ground. Snow kicks up in misty clouds around his ankles as he stumbles, but doesn't stop, always only one step ahead of his pursuers.

They're monsters, or maybe only the distant memory of a child's imagining of such, solid enough as they crumble up out of the earth in his wake. But they fade to dust as phantoms while he manages still to evade the catch of claws and snapping jaws at the heels of his badly scuffed black boots, the shirttail tucked under his belts. Shameful as it is not to stand and fight, outpacing them is this dream's objective, instead, and he can't seem to stop his feet from moving on, hands scrabbling at each new hold to pull himself higher.

At least not on his own.

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Reno almost has to laugh, in spite of the guy's obvious plight, because that is hilarious. All right, she does laugh a little, but likely not as much as she would have once.

Well, she's not just going to let him die like that, as amusing as this is. He reminds her of the old days, and she might not be nostalgic (which would be stupid, in her opinion), but she's curious.

So she sighs (that guy is hopeless), shakes her head and throws a few pyramids down at the monsters. Her own special technique. They glow in a satisfying way when they encase the monsters. That done, she leaps down herself and starts bashing heads with her rod. Hey, maybe it'll be fun. She's not scared of those things. Her rod makes contact with a pleasant sound.

"Don't worry, kid, the Turks are here." Or one Turk. What's the difference?

The flailing trooper manages to free his leg just as the thing turns even weirder than it was: encased in a bright, translucent pyramid, it seems to have been rendered harmless. He scoots back hastily across the sparsely snow-covered ground, anyway, ignoring the protest in his hurt ankle, as he searches for the source of that attack.

Another strange flash of red catches his attention, and he turns to stare as the Turk (he knows it even before she says a word, by the telltale suit) waltzes into the fray before him. That flippant greeting is actually a side more reassuring than she probably means - but Cloud has plenty of faith in the Turks, even if their department is notoriously shady. (Tseng isn't so bad, at least.)

Staggering to his feet, he pulls the rifle from his back and takes aim at one of the shapeless beasts railing against the inside of is pyramid. "What'd you do to them?"

Damn straight, he should feel better with a Turk on the case. They always get their man. Or monster. Whichever. These monsters don't seem so bad to her, though that could be partly due to her incredible arrogance and belief in her own superiority, which sometimes gets better results in dreams than in real life. She has fun showing off.

Spinning and jabbing her rod with ease, Reno takes her own sweet time turning to Cloud and replying to his question.

"I put a pyramid on them," she says, with the air of someone answering an incredibly stupid question. "It's a thing I do." A multipurpose technique, as it's also great for pranks and at parties. Yet she's not about to reveal the secrets of her pyramids to a lowly trooper. It's Turk stuff. He wouldn't understand.

She executes a twirl that sends another monster staggering on her way to Cloud's position. "So who let you out on your own, huh?"

Well, that's not very helpful - but if Cloud objects to the sparse explanation, it doesn't readily show. There isn't much to see of his opinion but his frown (and that's been there since well before she came along), anyway. Turning away from the apparently quite safely confined creatures in front of him, he starts in on the dazed monsters she's tazed out of the way. At this point blank range, there's no need to worry about accuracy; he aims away and takes out the stragglers in a few short bursts of automatic fire.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he grouses, as another shapeless beast eats lead, and he stops to get another look at one of those sealed off by transparent pyramid.

(Ugh...)

Stare at that too long, and his head's going to start hurting. "I don't think I'm supposed to be on duty, right now."

Being helpful to infantrymen is not in her job description, and she's already been more than helpful enough, in her opinion. The magic of the Turks will remain a jealously ~~and lazily, because she doesn't feel like explaining it~~ guarded secret. Not that anyone would really be surprised by a Turk not answering their question.

She pulls out a gun and blows away a few of the monsters herself. This is pretty good stress relief. She smiles, showing off her marksmanship.

"It's supposed to mean you shouldn't be on your own out here, kid. So where are you supposed to be? Cause it looks like we're in the middle of fucking nowhere right now. Guess we should go find your mom, huh?"

"I don't know." Defensive already, he's practically bristling beneath his visor - but he can't lie and say he has somewhere else to be, when he isn't even really so certain, himself. All he remembers now is running. Not how the day began, or where it's supposed to end, and he's more scared than anything else, by that thought, but anger's an easy place to hide, too.

And beneficial enough, at the moment, with a few stragglers still left to be finished off. He's not a particularly violent person, but catharsis is catharsis - Reno's at least got that much right.

"Thanks for the help-" (I guess.) "But I can take care of myself."

Now that the weird things are mostly dealt with (she thinks, whatever they are), something occurs to her. This guy's voice sounds really familiar. And that tone.

Hmm. No way, it can't be. But if it were, that would be hilarious.

"What's the matter, can't you take a joke?" She laughs. (She hadn't been joking in a nice way, but she's laughing now, and that's what matters!) "Don't be so touchy." At this, she leans in to poke him in the arm, smiling.

"I dunno, it sounds like you could use some help if you don't even know where you're going. Leave it to me." Who better than a Turk to offer help and guidance, isn't that right? "So what's your name?"

He has no response for that, probably can't take a joke, and so merely shrugs away from her unwelcome prodding, instead. Leave me alone pretty much doesn't ever work, so he bites his tongue and takes a few steps away.

Touchy is simply ingrained in his nature - sad fact - and no amount of token attempts to convince himself to mistake bad humor for good will change that. He'd almost rather just be on his own again.

"...Cloud," he admits, supremely reluctant. He doesn't even make a move to shift his helmet out of the way, as he introduces himself, which is more or less a dead giveaway that he doesn't consider himself in on the joke. He'd be just as happy if this Turk didn't remember him, he thinks.

"Cloud," she says, and she tries so hard not to laugh at this. It's little tiny infantry Cloud, who doesn't know her, and this is just great. Such an opportunity for amusement at his expense!

"Hey, where you going, Cloud?" she asks, closing the distance between them again with her superior (definitely superior now) speed. "What's the matter?" She leans in closer, again, with a smile, then slides an arm over his shoulders. They're about the same height. "We both work for Shinra, so we've got to stay together, right? And what if there's more of those things out there?"

As appealing as mini Cloud is, this miserable wasteland isn't. "We should find a town, see if they've got a bar."

"I... Guess." He doesn't want to concede the point, but if she's finally decided to start making sense, what else can he do? Cloud's no more eager to go on ahead alone, at any rate, even with his only potential company in someone who's already managed to make the top three of his worst first impressions on record, to date.

Oddly specific or not, he nods (hesitantly) at her suggestion, too. A bar, food - he hasn't realized until now, but he is kind of hungry. Another point in her favor, however slim. Doing his best to very casually step out of the circle of that far too friendly arm, Cloud looks into the distance instead of her so thoroughly foreboding smile. "There wasn't anything, back the way you came?"

Bad first impression? By saving his ass? What did it even take to make a good first impression on this guy? At least she wasn't dropping part of the plate on the slums or anything. Or trying to kill him in a church.

Some people are never happy.

Example: Cloud.

But Reno keeps being friendly, or appearing to be so. "Yeah, let's go back that way." All the sudden, it is an appealing idea. If she came from there, it's probably the right way to go. She nods in the direction in question, suddenly confident about where they ought to go. "I did see a town over there. Why don't we check it out? Take a break. You could probably use it." If he were another Turk, her manner would likely be sincere--but it isn't a Turk, it's Cloud.

She only saved his ass after endangering it - so even if his unaware assessment is a little unduly harsh, it's not wholly undeserved. Besides. He probably could have gotten out of that scrape on his own, eventually.

The one that wouldn't have started at all if she hadn't been hucking rocks at him, that is.

Perhaps exhaustion has curbed his wariness somewhat, though; he doesn't stray any closer to her, but he does take a step in the right direction, ready to head back in the direction from which she'd come swooping in.

"Were there other people there?" Meek is probably a new look on Cloud, sounding small as he does, for a moment, beneath that obtrusive helmet. It's a reasonable question, though - he hasn't seen anybody but her in who knows how long (a thought that doesn't worry him as much as it would, were he working with any form of conscious logic).

Okay, so maybe the rock hadn't helped, but it had been funny, and he couldn't blame her for the situation his own sorry ass had gotten itself in. Not that she knew what he was thinking, but knowing Cloud, who could even tell?

Sometimes she just had to throw things at people while helping them. It was a perfectly understandable and not at all antisocial impulse. She was the least antisocial of women.

"Only one way to find out," she said. She couldn't really recall, which was weird. "Let's go." She clapped him on the back. "And take that helmet off--fuck, those things look stupid. I feel like I'm talkin to a bug."

Insults aside, Cloud takes the impatient remark as he would an order. It's not as if he's all that fond of his uniform, either, and for a lot of reasons other than the abysmally low rank it denotes. Hooking a thumb under the edge, he lifts the clunky thing off his head, scrubbing his other hand back through (not very) flattened spikes.

After that, he returns to applying the majority of his concentration to tolerating the Turk's presence. It's really too bad she isn't all that antisocial, in Cloud's perfectly humble opinion.

Hitching the strap holding his gun across his back a little more comfortably into place out of habit more than necessity, he casts a first glance around in for his new, unobstructed view. The awkward mishmash of landscape reveals nothing new, and so he follows along obediently without further comment. It's unnerving, anyway, and he wouldn't want to share that with her.

Of course, whether she'd gotten Cloud in trouble or not, the idea that she was to blame wouldn't cross her mind. It's true that she's more antisocial in the "antisocial personality disorder" way. Not that she has an antisocial personality; obviously her personality is the gold standard to which all other personalities should aspire.

She watches the helmet come off. It's Cloud, all right. Spikes and all.

"Glad they got rid of these," says Reno, snatching the helmet away from him with her superior speed, then eying it critically. She turns to study the de-helmeted Cloud. Such a baby face. But there's a look in his eyes that gives her pause. She's seen that kind of look before. As grudgingly tolerant as he might be, he might not have (completely) written her off. He's following her orders dutifully, something that other Cloud would never do. So she can't resist asking him an actual question.

"What're you thinking about?"

He makes a grab for the stolen helmet as she tears it out of his hands, but it's halfhearted, at best. "What?" he blurts out, instead, as confusion over her nonsensical remark overcomes his obvious surprise. Without his visor in the way, he's painfully easy to read - or at least until he ducks her question, expression quite literally hidden behind the fringe of blond hair that falls over his face instead.

"Nothing. I just want to get out of here."

Which is true enough, but quite likely sounds avoidant to anyone but him, anyway. (Okay, well, maybe in retrospect, he hears it, too.) He doesn't have any reason to lie, but she hasn't exactly given him cause to let down his guard, either. It's safer just to maintain what he hopes is (but isn't quite) the suitably neutral facade.

Reno is not about to let the helmet be grabbed back away from her. She frowns at the thing, unusually reflective, because there are a lot of people who have reason to resent Shinra, especially Shinra the way it used to be. Turks included, though many wouldn't realize that fact or why it was true.

So, in a rare nice gesture (which doesn't actually seem nice at all), she throws the helmet away. "You don't need this." Turks have excellent throwing arms, as it turns out, and she manages to chuck the helmet quite a ways.

"Yeah, I don't blame you. This place's a dump." In her own mind, she's already visualizing something better: a city that has a bar with food and booze and isn't this bleak nothing of a place, as if her own mind can impose some kind of Reno-ness upon the bleak landscape. Yes, that would be so many times better than this.

"H-Hey! That's Company property!" And now it's going to come out of his (already meager) paycheck, too, because he can't even see where it landed - and somehow wandering out into that bleak, broken nothingness alone again doesn't exactly appeal. It's probably pretty funny, too, to think of Cloud worrying over destroying (or "losing") Shinra's property, but he wouldn't know, and the look of momentary horror that flashes across his face is perfectly sincere.

Great. This is just going great.

"I'm gonna get written up for that," he sulks, ignoring the weird shift in the landscaping. As a matter of fact, she'll undoubtedly begin to learn, his younger mind is just so terribly impressionable. Enough so that such radio interference - with a certain measure of deliberateness behind it - isn't ineffective.

Yup. Just great.

"Company, shmompany," says Reno, perhaps more juvenile than usual, but maybe Cloud's youth is rubbing off on her--or wait, maybe she is usually rather juvenile. She laughs. The irony isn't lost on her. If only you knew, Cloud. But Reno's happy to be the one who knows more, a state of affairs that suits her just fine. She might not follow the dress code, but she is a typical Turk in some ways.

"Tell em the Turks commandeered it. We needed it for a disguise or something." Get written up? Kid, Reno has been written up so many times, for her complaining about that is about equivalent to a complaint about breathing. And her own paycheck is so much bigger than Cloud's can ever hope to be, so she's hardly likely to empathize on that point.

Unlike Cloud, Reno has never been impressionable, always full of confidence, false or not, always ready to interpret reality her own way. Her initial idea of a town is swelling into a large urban area, city girl that she is. Yes, she's imagining an Edge bar. A cool one, not like Seventh Heaven. One where Turks would hang out. "Quit complaining and let's get something to eat."

Nobody's gonna buy that, but he nods reluctantly, anyway, clearly still flabbergast by her completely dismissive attitude toward their employers. Dissent among the ranks above his own is nothing new to speak of, but Cloud would really like to know whether she's just being flippant or maybe really means it - because he has no intention of openly associating with another potential deserter. His own loyalty may only be contingent upon his hero worship and ultimate desire to become a SOLDIER, himself, but it's strong enough to make him warier.

"I'm not complaining." It's really more of a grouse, and only halfhearted, at that, as he looks around to take in the new scene. This isn't any city he recognizes, but that's no surprise. He wasn't so certain where he was going, to begin with, and he's not any more, now. Her mention of food is a small motivation, but not enough to quell his curiosity entirely.

"Where are we, anyway?"

Reno's loyal to the Turks first, and much more loyal to Shinra than Cloud will ever be, but not that Shinra, the one that would have murdered all the Turks if not for Rufus. She's part of Rufus' Shinra, and that's it. She hasn't forgiven those other assholes for a lot of the shit they pulled. And Reno being Reno, no one's ever expected her to play the part of the model employee, not even back in the old days.

Though from Cloud's standpoint, it surely looks like insubordination.

"Sure, sure. Whatever you say. You're better off without the helmet, anyway. Now everybody gets to see your pretty face." She laughs briefly before sobering.

"Oh, this's Edge," she says, then points. "You can see Midgar over there. Might recognize it." From where they're standing, there's a good view of the ruins that the creatively named Edge stands on the, well, edge of. The twisted wrecks of familiar landmarks loom over the poisonous wasteland of the older city.

He's easy to fluster, and he's always hated the indiscriminate nature of that reaction - but especially so without his helmet. If there's anything that piece of junk is good for, it's for hiding the way he too easily wears his heart on his sleeve; hiding behind his hair and feigning new interest in the city street as he's shamed into silence again by that irritating laugh just doesn't cut it. Hardly the same.

Edge doesn't ring any bells, either, but by now he's decided simply to take everything she says with a grain of salt. (He's sure, somehow already, that that's probably the only way to cope with this new and initially unpleasant kind of person.) The sight of Midgar is another matter.

For a second, he almost thinks- Almost sees the city skyline lying in fractured ruin over the horizon, close enough to run toward and never reach. But then his own memory superimposes easily over the sight, and there are lights and towers and the highways cut through the darker wastes spread out around the base (the slums).

"Oh. Yeah." A new settlement, then, perhaps. He wouldn't have any reason to know about that. "I've only seen it a couple of times."

"Sure." She rolls her eyes. "I bet you've seen it." She laughs, but there's something almost rueful in the sound, as if she's actually reflecting for once. "You'll see a lot of it someday, but you've got a ways to go yet."

And with this cryptic remark, she grins again and plunges ahead, catching sight of a bar (or else her mind conjures one up here in the middle of Cloud's somewhat malleable dream). "Now that's more like it. See, isn't this better than runnin all over nowhere all by yourself?"

She still wants to mess with him, but she's toying with him for now, plotting. And it's true that there are worse dreams, now that she's gotten rid of those stupid monsters and that boring landscape. Leave it to Cloud to have the dumbest dreams of all time.

The weird, aimless commentary is for the moment entirely forgivable, when what it vaguely alludes to lines up well enough with what he wants of his own future. Even without a promotion, being stationed in Midgar would be preferable to Junon - bastion of all things prone to making him barf.

"I guess," is as close to outright acceptance of her philosophy as Reno can possibly hope for, the words thoroughly lacking in enthusiasm and accompanied by a one-shouldered shrug as he surveys the unfamiliar city. There are plenty of bars in Junon, too, and he's about as compelled to visit any of those as this strange new one. Especially with a Turk.

"I should probably get going, though."

"Sorry Cloud," says Reno, with a knowing grin. "I outrank you, and I'm commandeering you. I need some field support." She puts a hand on his shoulder--pad--metal--thing (thank god Turks don't wear that kind of crap).

"You know what happens if you're insubordinate." There's a slightly dangerous edge to her smile. ShinRa's not keen on peons acting up against high-ranking personnel. Like her. Back in the old days, it was a lot worse.

She ushers him into the bar. Inside, it's rather busy, for all that the grey landscape, and then the streets of Edge seemed relatively empty. "C'mon, I'll get us some beers."

oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

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