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Deep in the Preserve, Saturday Afternoon

Really, there were old habits that died hard whenever Reno made his way to the island. For example, for all he liked to pretend that he didn't give a shit about his abilities, that his speed and dexterity and fighting skills were all just natural to him, Reno had developed a habit, in his years around Fandom, of going out and training. A run around the island in no time at all, some crazy gymnastics through the trees. Practicing his form with his stun baton, which was doubly important these days, since he was pretty strictly rationing when he used his materia.

The stuff was a black market commodity these days for a reason.

So, there he was, deep in the woods, beating up on tree trunks. Because how else was he supposed to spend a reunion weekend afternoon, right?

[OOC: Open preserve! Of course!]

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Ino’s old habits went along the same sort of lines, funnily enough, but they weren’t what had driven her out of the room she’d shared with Zack that afternoon.

For a few moments it had felt almost—normal—and then it hadn’t been, and while she didn’t feel good, and hadn’t for… for longer than she was ever going to admit to Zack, she’d been good enough to slip away from the awkwardness. (Running from her problems with Zack? Why yes, indeed.)

Besides, she’d noticed Reno’s mind on the island and it had taken hardly a second to confirm which Reno it was, which meant that, abruptly, Ino had a goal in place for the morning.

Her presence disappeared long, long before she ever hit the preserve and while Reno was still faster and stronger than she was (unless she augmented her own skills with chakra), Ino was the one who’d grown up in trees. She hadn’t lost the knack of being terribly silent in them.

Ino knew better than to stop and watch him practice. He would notice that, someone staring.

Instead, she didn’t think, just acted, and maybe it was a stupid action, to go after him this way, but goddammit he deserved being punched in the face at least once. The most he’d see of her would be blur of extremely long white-blonde hair, a Turk uniform, and most damning of all: blue eyes that had begun to glow.

If Reno had been anywhere but the island, he might have been able to react in time. If he'd been anywhere but here, or, hell, even if he'd been attacked by anybody but Ino, he might have stood a chance at dodging, at least ducking a little to deflect some of the blow.

It was those eyes, framed in that face, that made him stop dead in his tracks and take that blow square in the jaw.

And it was the fact that the next thing he was doing was spitting out a tooth that had him furrow his brow and take a slightly more defensive stance.

He had absolutely had that coming.

He fuckin' knew it. And that's why he wasn't taking a swing back.

"Feel better?"

She'd meant to just land the one blow, to give him the hit that he so richly deserved and then--well, Ino hadn't exactly decided what was to come next; this wasn't her most well thought-out plan. But then he said 'feel better', like it was a joke.

Or maybe it just sounded like it to her ears.

Ino knew she was very nearly the furthest thing from unbiased here, but those words in that voice, just made all her fury bubble up and the next blow she went for was faster, chakra enhancing both speed and strength, as she aimed her knee for his ribs. He didn't need those ribs anyway.

Reno could hear the crack his ribs made before the pain even registered, and now he was moving, not even bothering to say anything else before bringing his baton up toward her with all the speed that had earned him the title, 'the fastest of the Turks.'

And then some. Thank you for that, Lady Ghanima.

That was the hell of it, wasn't it? He knew he deserved the first punch. The first punch, he could forgive. But if Ino was making a second blow, and she was putting enough force behind it to break bone, then she wasn't going to stop. And, as much as he deserved that first swing, there was no way in hell he wasn't going to fight for his life. He'd reached a place where he had something to live for. He'd be damned if he was going to let Ino - even Ino in a Turk uniform - take him away from that.

She got one of her arms up in time to keep that baton from cracking against her skull. It made her arm shake to take the blow, but nothing broke: only because of the chakra she was recklessly wasting.

Ino didn't have the energy to draw this out, had spent too much time being sick to have the stamina to last a long time, and stamina had never been her strongest point in battle anyway. If she wanted to get anything out of this, then she had to stay on the offensive.

(She didn't even know what she wanted out of this.)

He was faster and stronger than she was. He was also in better condition. This was a battle she was probably going to lose.

Her grin was feral as she looked into his eyes for a split second and then--disappeared.

She hadn't really disappeared but, for that tiny portion of a second, she'd erased her presence from his mind. It gave her time enough to land behind him, a log abruptly where she had been. Ino shook her arm out and went for another kick.

Reno had no idea where she had gone. No. Fucking. Idea. And that alone was enough to tip him off that this was bad. So he moved.

No, he moved. Wherever she had gone, he could only assume that she was hoping to catch him off-guard from another direction, and the best way to not get caught where he was standing was simply to not be standing there. So, while Reno didn't quite disappear, he did blur, leaving a black and red streak that had him halfway up a tree and crouched in one of the sturdier branches just in time to realize that he'd made the right choice. That if he'd kept paying attention to what had been in Ino's place a moment before, that would have been another busted rib while he put all of his attention into kicking the shit out of a log.

He spat again, this time just a gob of blood accompanied by a sneer and an unkind word, and launched himself out of the tree toward Ino. Actual Ino. Not the log.

And this time when he swung his baton, he was bringing a Thunder charge into it. Fuck rationing. Ino was clearly out to kill him, here

It would be a nasty surprise for him then when he managed to hit her, since she was off balance, and her arm snapped, since it wasn't chakra enhanced, only for it to be healed a moment after.

Reno was not the only Turk with a marked preference for Thunder. In that, she'd always taken after him.

She went for a low spin kick and, while doing so, pulled out what Ino liked to call her 'Giant Fuck Off Shuriken' but what was actually called the Crystal Cross. Zack had bought it for her years ago.

"Ah, fuck."

There you go, Reno was actually seeing exactly how serious she was willing to make this little dance, now, and was coming to the brilliant realization that, unless she decided to throw some Thunder back his way, she was at a distinct advantage, now. At least... somewhat. That mako glow was unsettling in the worst way, but it hinted at deeper problems than simply being pissed off at him for...

... for doing the job. For being a Turk.

For not telling her everything she needed to know in order to keep Zack from...

Well, he couldn't guess at the moment where Zack was in their timeline, because he was a little preoccupied. But he was damn sure he knew what this was about. He paused for just enough time to nod, once, and then move again, blurring to the left, then to the right, trying to make an opening to get around behind her.

He was fast enough to make her dizzy, fine beads of sweat breaking out across her forehead and she knew, knew this was a bad idea to keep going.

(But what was she fighting for anyway?)

Ino had always been bad at giving up though and, when she lost sight of him--even his mind was a slippery, confusing thing to her, in the moment--she did the thing that made the most sense to her: she lunged forward and ducked, then rolled as quickly as she could to get out of the way of anything that might be coming.

It was a smart move, really. It was the same spirit as what he'd done before, when he wound up in the tree, but with less distance to it. And from where he was standing, now a good several meters behind her, it would have been damn easy to go in at top speed, take his EMR and crack the back of her skull open with it before she could even fully get her balance.

He picked up a stick and threw it at the ground beside her.

That was the hell of it. This was Ino. This was his Rookie. Sure, he'd picked up several over the years, but not one of them had really owned it, around here, the way she had.

And she was sick.

"Get up," he said, his voice as dismissive and bored-sounding as it ever was, but with a bit of a razor edge lurking underneath. "Get up, Rookie. This isn't a fight either of us want to have, zoto."

Ino did want the fight. She did.

It was just too bad that her body was rapidly losing the battle to keep letting her have the fight. The stick didn't hit the ground in one piece--but rather, in three--thanks to her shuriken. Then she got to her feet, knuckles white around her weapon, eyes livid and the wrong colour, the wrong blue.

She got to her feet, but she swayed, once up. It would be terribly easy to kill her.

That didn't really bother her.

"Ah." Reno tilted his head a little, eyes passive, expression neutral, as he took stock of her condition. "So, where you get that hit of mako, Rookie? Bad field trip to the reactor? Go swimming in Mideel?"

His posture was open, that little slouch to his shoulders, a slight lean in his hips. That didn't mean he was any less ready to get the hell out of dodge if he needed to.

"It's killing you, you know. And it's gonna suck way the hell more than anything I could do to you right now, yoto."

There was a moment of... uncertainty... in her expression before it hardened back up again. There was something about a reactor and a bad trip to it but she couldn't remember it. Maybe Rosalind would be able to tell--but Rosalind couldn't.

She couldn't.

It was just her now, just Ino, just Iris, and there was no one she trusted enough to ask any longer.

What had she been fighting for anyway? She didn't let go of her weapon, but she didn't attack either.

"I know," Ino said quietly.

Reno nodded a little. Okay. She had that much, at least. He pulled in a deep breath, swallowed another mouthful of blood rather than letting the stab of pain in his broken rib show on his face. He'd take a potion for that later. Right now, he couldn't afford to look like he was trying to make a move.

"So, put that away," he drawled, nodding to her shuriken. "I'll stop swinging the EMR around, and we can have a chat instead. I'm guessing that'd be more productive than staining the preserve red, yoto."

Great color, red.

"I like red," she muttered rebelliously, though, after another moment where she'd scrutinized him, she did tuck the shuriken away. Being without it left her feeling oddly bereft.

For a little bit, she'd felt productive.

Reno watched her carefully for a moment more. And then he gave a little nod, and retracted the baton, tucking it away up his sleeve where it usually went when he wasn't actively swinging it around.

"I like red, too," he shared. And then, so help him, he wasn't going to stand there awkwardly if he could help it. "You're wearin' that uniform well."

Well, if they stood around awkwardly for long enough she was going to fall over. Just not quite yet.

The look Ino gave him wasn't entirely friendly at that compliment.

She was a bit of a mess, with her loose hair nearly brushing the ground, and the way she was standing like she was going to forget how to at some point, but... well. He was right, the suit did look well on her. She wore it more formally than he did, though in place of a tie, she'd switched it out for a slim length of pink ribbon, tied in a bow.

"Was there ever any doubt that it would?" Because, really, there'd been no other place for her on Gaia. "But thanks."

"I don't make Rookies of people I have doubts about," Reno pointed out, raising an eyebrow just slightly, and then, casually, once again ignoring the stabbing pain in his side, making his way over to her. He'd felt worse. This sucked, but it was no Buster Sword to the guts. "Right now, though, we're gonna push over that log you tried to pull on me and take a seat. Sound good?"

"No," she said flatly. "But I guess we will."

"Atta girl," Reno said, all irreverence and crooked edges and rumpled suits and a lazy drawl all over again as he made his way to the log she'd thrown in front of him and gave it a solid shove. And fuck, he felt that pretty good, too. "Because something tells me - and I got a good sense for these things - that we're overdue for a little chat."

Reno had an amazing gift for understatement.

No, really?

"Oh, now you want to talk?" she said, making her careful way over to the same log. Ino made no move to help him and that was only partly because she was pretty sure she'd fall over if she did.

Ugh. Zack was going to do the fussing thing later, where he pretended he wasn't fussing, and it was the worst.

"You know why I didn't talk before," Reno said flatly, and there was a bit of that edge, creeping back in again as the log fell with a quiet 'whud' into the leaves. "That first swing, you had every friggin' right to, yo. But before anything else, I'm a Turk. I had a job to do."

And The Planet was something a little too precious to gamble with for the sake of what had, once upon a time, looked like a poorly-advised high school crush.

Ino had gone through a number of crushes and relationships (some healthier than others) and, yeah, Zack could've been just another one of them but... well, he hadn't been. Hadn't been, really, the moment she'd turned her back on her world for him. Even if they had fallen apart and were broken now, they still couldn't leave each other alone.

"You think I don't know about doing the job?" she asked, her gaze snapping back to him. "You think I ain't got a better clue 'bout it now, at least, than I did back then? And you know what I remember? I remember you sayin' you'd help, then Cloud showing up, and all that help evaporating and now things're crap and you're just making excuses all over again. I don't want to hear them. I'm out."

It wasn't nearly as impressive as an exit as she wanted, given that when she turned to go, her case of the dizzies turned into something more like full-on vertigo, but still she didn't fall. Ino wasn't going to make it very far this way and she knew it.

Didn't, wasn't, going to stop her from trying.

Yeah, that was Reno, casually sauntering along behind her. Because he was a little shit that way.

"I'm not making excuses. I'm just saying it like it is," he said, simply. "You want excuses, I could come up with plenty that'd hold better than 'I did the job.' But that's the one that matters, zoto."

She and Zack had vanished, fairly abruptly. Whatever help he'd offered had evaporated more when he realized that the reality she'd vanished to had been cut off, that he had no access to it in the first place. But that would have been an excuse, however true it was.

"So, you come lookin' for me just to take out my tooth, or was there more to it than feelin' the need to take a swing, mako-eyes?"

Her breath hissed between her teeth.

Ino could lie, wanted to lie, just like she wanted him to leave her alone to stumble back to the hotel, but he wasn't going to leave and she had nothing to lose from telling the truth.

"The first punch was deliberate," she said, hating the way she felt small. "I don't--I don't know 'bout the rest."

Gods, she hated this. Being weak, she hated. Losing memories, she hated more.

"I don't remember."

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Deep in the Preserve, Saturday Afternoon

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