A Hotel, Somewhere in Tokyo [Early Sunday Morning]
By the time they had arrived last night, it had been a very long day. They had secured a very posh two-bedroom suite at one of the more exclusive hotels by waving Dōjima's credit-card at the front desk clerk, and now the false-dawn of the bright city lights was being threatened by the first rays of the true sun.
Welcome to Tokyo.
Romeo
Romeo had slept restlessly, sounds from the warehouse -- the crack of the shot by his ear, Yurika's sharp scream, the thud of Mrs. Amano slumping to the floor -- invading his dreams.
As dawn broke, he went into the living room of the suites and turned on the TV. He understood next to nothing, but the jumble of Japanese commercials soothed and distracted him somehow.
Reno
Reno wasn't typically a morning person. It was more on principle than anything else, really. If he was off-duty, he'd sleep in. Sleep until noon, sleep until his phone rang calling him off to another job. And if he wasn't sleeping, he'd be drinking or screwing.
But after yesterday, his head was still on-duty, and he was awake well before sunrise, waiting for a report, waiting for fallout. And waiting was better while spent out and about, so eventually, he wandered into the living room. The company there wasn't entirely expected, but he grinned and nodded and waved a bit of a hello to Romeo nevertheless.
"Some weekend, huh?"
Romeo
"And we still have a day to go," Romeo agreed, turning the volume down a little on the TV. "Good morrow, by the way. Usually no one but me is up now."
Reno
"Welcome to witnessin' Reno in Turk-mode. All Turk, all the time." Reno grinned a bit of a wry grin as he leaned over the back of the couch. "I'll sleep in when we get back to Fandom, on days I don't gotta be up for training with Ghanima. Right now, you get to enjoy my sunny morning disposition, yo."
He hesitated a moment, and then sobered up a little before speaking again.
"How you holdin' up?"
Romeo
"All Turk, all the time," Romeo echoed, with a tiny bit of a smile. "I haven't started coffee yet." Which was a good thing, given how poorly he made it.
"I'm ... " he shrugged,a gesture on the edge of a flinch. "Is that, the warehouse, what your job is normally like? People who aren't in control so you have to -- take care of them?"
Reno
"We can hit up a Starbucks out there later or somethin'," Reno mused, not wanting to interrupt the sudden turn into serious conversation by a break for coffee. Some things were just more important than coffee. Which was almost a blasphemous notion at crazy-thirty in the morning, but hell. Whatever.
"Things like that are only part of my job, and they ain't been quite like that in a couple of years and some, zoto. I'd be lyin' if I said it was new, but there's more than just dealin' with the people who aren't in control. There's dealin' with the ones who're totally in control, too. Haven't decided which is worse yet, yo."
Romeo
"Or room service," Romeo agreed as he thought about what Reno was saying. "I'd think they'd both be awful," he said. "The ones in control are evil, the ones not in control are sad. I couldn't do it for more than a day."
It was not the first time he had realized that Yurika was stronger than he was.
Reno
"There were a couple of times when it was just... armies of 'em. People who weren't even livin' in their own heads anymore. Ravens, the first ones were called. The other ones, people called Genesis clones. But they weren't, really. Genesis changed their faces and stole their bodies and made one army into a different one, is all."
Reno shrugged a little.
"It's dirty business. That's the thing about it. Nobody wants to deal with it, but someone's gotta. So you get your Turks and your Hunters, the people who can deal with it for more than a day, gettin' in there and gettin' their hands dirty so the rest of the world can pretend it ain't even goin' on, zoto. And even we have a rough time of it sometimes."
Romeo
Romeo nodded slowly, picturing what Reno was describing. "No, I'd never want to take on an army. I was not born to be a soldier, and I've no illusions about it." The taking of one life was more than enough for his conscience.
"Yurika did well on her examination, didn't she?" he asked quietly, and not without some odd pride.
Reno
Reno's lips quirked into a bit of a grin, and his head bobbed in an easy nod.
"We all got in, we all got out, we're all in one piece, and the threat's been takin' care of. If that ain't a pass, man, I don't know what is."
Romeo
"None of us were hurt, and the mother at least survived," Romeo agreed. "I've no idea what more Juliano could want."
A moment passed. "But I still wish she wouldn't have to do it. Is that odd?"
Reno
"I don't think it is," Reno replied, tapping a finger thoughtfully on the back of the couch. "I mean, it isn't safe work. And it means she's gonna have to close her eyes and go with it from time to time, I think. As much as it's gotta get done, it's not gonna be easy."
A moment more.
"I think that's why she brought us three in particular along, yo. Because she needs the moral support here more'n anything. I don't think she's gonna admit it. But this kinda thing, you just can't do if it means you're gonna be alone, zoto."
Even Reno had his Rude.
Romeo
"She'd never admit it," Romeo shook his head. "She knew about this since before she met any of us, and said nothing until the time came when she had to. She'd pretend she was fine as the very world burned down."
He reached for his cigarettes, offered the pack to Reno out of habit. "I worry about what happens when she's doing this for real. She'll have other Hunters, but ..."
It wouldn't be the same, he knew.
Reno
"She's good." Reno helped himself to one of the offered cigarettes. "Like I said, she got us in there and outta there alive, on her first run of it. The ones that can get right into your head are probably the worst. I'm tryin' to use my imagination and come up with somethin' worse, and I'm fallin' short."
He was patting down his pockets, trying to find his lighter.
"I'm not gonna sugar coat it and say there ain't risk, yo. But if she's the rookie and she's goin' out with more experienced hunters in the future, that's gotta be good for somethin'."
Especially if there were veterans of the whole hunting gig who were half as protective of the rookies as Reno was.
Romeo
Romeo had a lighter; he lit his smoke and tossed it to Reno. "I should ask her about that," he mused. "I don't know what her regular missions will be like. I'm not sure she does. But whoever she's with, there has to be risk to it, or anyone would be able to do it."
Reno
Reno caught the lighter and gave a bit of a salute with it before lighting his own cigarette.
"Like I said, man, Turks and Hunters. Isn't clean work, isn't pretty work, but it's still gotta get done, yo. Considerin' how many people don't wanna do it, I'm willin' to bet that they try damn hard to make sure the ones who will do it come back alive."
Romeo
"I hope you're right," Romeo said, turning something over in his head. "Would it do any good, do you think, for me to offer to be in her world? Just so she has something that's not Hunting."
Reno
Reno went deathly quiet for a moment, his gaze drifting to the ceiling. And then he nodded. A slow, careful, deliberate sort of nod. And he passed Romeo back his lighter.
"Between you and me, man... She's gonna need it, I think. Havin' someone to come home to means that you're gonna try that much harder to make sure you come home, zoto."
Romeo
Romeo exhaled a bit more deeply than was necessary, possibly from relief. "And it's not as though she can claim she'd always need to rescue me. I'll ask when we're home."
Reno
"Hey, you got outta that warehouse just as alive as the rest of us," Reno pointed out, grinning. "And with your hands clean. I don't think she'd have a case if she tried to talk you out of it that way, zoto."
Romeo
Romeo grinned back, proud. "I did my best," he said, as modestly as he could manage. "How are you? I heard part of your fight on my earpiece and it sounded" -- it was hard, here, to think of the word -- "rough."
Reno
"Rough? You figure?" Reno was grinning a little more. "Nah. I get off on that kinda junk, yo. He only hit me a coupla' times, and sure, once was with some kinda filing cabinet from hell, but it coulda' been worse."
He stood and stretched, then bit the cigarette in his teeth and casually cracked his knuckles.
"Kinda' hopin' Doji asks me on another job sometime. Somethin' to keep busy with, yo."
Romeo
"You can go with her anytime," Romeo said, grateful. "I feel better knowing you have her back." Not that Romeo intended to be weak in that department himself, but he couldn't deny that Reno was better at this particular kind of task.
"Did the filing cabinet do any damage?"
Reno
"Threw me around a bit, no big deal," Reno replied with a shrug. "On the scale from baby puppy to silver-haired jerk, that guy was sittin' somewhere around homicidal fuzzy duckling."
He shoved his hands into his pockets and smirked down at Romeo.
"So. How 'bout that coffee?"
Romeo
Romeo was distracted for a moment by his need to picture a homicidal fuzzy ducking -- it came out wearing a Kevlar vest and toting a machine gun -- and snigger. "Coffee," he agreed, frowning a little at the coffeemaker. "Maybe this time I'll even add enough water, and it won't taste like mud laced with caffeine."
He liked to live in hope.
Dōjima
It was still early when Yurika slipped out on to the balcony connecting the adjoining hotel suites, mug of coffee clutched tightly in her hands. She didn't have to be at the STN-J for hours yet, but there was no way she could sleep after everything that had happened yesterday.
Rikku
Something wasn't right. None of it seemed right. Rikku was tired of pacing, trying to turn it over in her head, failing at sleep. So she'd get some fresh air.
She didn't realize the other girl was on the balcony until she stepped onto it.
"Hey," she said, awkwardly.
Dōjima
She jumped at the sound of another voice, body tensing before she realized who it was.
"Ohaiyo," she offered quietly as she slouched back down in her chair. "I've got more coffee back in the room, if you want some." Small talk was good, right? Right.
Rikku
"'M fine," she said, shaking her head. Stay? Leave? Stay? ... Crap. Would probably look weird to leave, like that.
Instead she walked up to the railing and looked out at the city. "I've never been to Japan before."
Dōjima
"Welcome to my home." A small smile flitted across Yurika's face as she gestured out to the skyline. "Roppongi, Shibuya, Ginza, Ebisu, Shinjuku... sometimes I miss all the noise and neon and pollution so much it hurts."
Rikku
Rikku shook her head. "My home's nothing like this," she said. "Little villages and open spaces. Everything's different here, I guess."
She didn't just mean the city, really.
Dōjima
"It started as a little village, once upon a time," Yurika replied. "A fishing village, actually, named Edo."
She blew lightly on her coffee, looking up at the towering buildings around them. "There's still great fish markets here, if you know where to look. It's not all the computerized steel and chrome of Neo-Tokyo."
Rikku
"We were in the desert," Rikku said, trying to picture this metropolis as once being as tiny as Besaid. It didn't fit. "No fish. Just sand. An oasis, here and there."
Still watching the cityscape, so she didn't have to look over. "I think ... I wish I hadn't come with you."
Not to Tokyo. Rome.
Dōjima
Oh.
Yurika's eyes flickered for an instant, and suddenly her coffee was very fascinating.
"Sorry," she replied. "I tried -" to warn you. To give you a way out. "Nevermind. It just wasn't the vacation you'd hoped for."
Rikku
"I didn't understand what you wanted us to do," she said simply. "I didn't realize it would be like that. That we'd be ..."
The skyline was also pretty fascinating.
"I don't feel much like one of the good guys, right now."
Dōjima
"You stopped a mind-controlled woman from hurting any more civilians, without resorting to lethal force. How can you not be a good guy?" Dōjima asked bitterly. "It wasn't that hard to understand. I said we were going to be sent to Hunt a witch, and we did. You guys did a really good job."
Rikku
This time, she did look over. "We almost had to use force. I mean. I think I'd be okay with it, if we had to, because -- she had a gun, she was going to use it, and if we didn't stop her, right then, she was gonna take one of us out. That's ... what happens. It's not pretty but that's how it goes, sometimes. You can't just ... brush it off, but you can't let yourself go crazy over it, either."
"It's ..." She straightened up, considering it. "You said ... it'd be a Hunt. I didn't realize how literal that was gonna be. We tracked them in, we sealed the exits, we took them down. I mean. She was acting like a caged animal. Desperate, and trapped, and scared. Lashing out at everyone. I know, she wasn't herself, it was the little girl. So then ... she ..."
Dōjima
"She was in my mind." Yurika's hands clenched on the mug to keep from shaking any harder. "That psychotic little bitch tore her way into my head, and she was going to use me to kill all of you. Then she'd send me to back to Headquarters and take out as many people as she could before another Hunter took me down. I could feel everything, Rikku. Everything she was thinking while she tried to rip my brain to shreds."
"And she was enjoying it."
Rikku
Rikku's eyebrows drew together. "Your head?" she frowned. "I don't ... understand. Why was she ... why was she doing all of it? How do you know she wasn't just ... I mean, if you've got these Hunters chasing you down and they're supposed to kill you, maybe you're willing to ... go pretty far to stop it. That's --"
She closed her eyes. "What ... would've happened to you? If she did that. And ... that woman, I mean, the one we knocked out, is her head ..."
Did someone controlling your mind leave fingerprints? Scars?
Dōjima
"I was fighting her control, so she would have had to tear out anything of 'Yurika' until I stopped. If I was lucky, I would have ended up a puppet; lights on, no one home," Yurika answered. "If she had managed to surprise me, then she could have locked me into a corner. I would be able to know what was happening, but be unable to stop it. Ava Amano will get both regular and psychic therapy from Headquarters, and they'll help her as much as they can." Assuming the woman's psyche was intact, and there was something to be saved.
"No one knows why a craft-user will go witch, Rikku." Yurika looked over at the other girl, a mix of exhaustion, defiance, and sadness. "Sometimes they get an addiction to the power and will do anything to fill it. Sometimes the power overwhelms them, and they got lost inside. The reasons can vary as much as the craft itself does. That's why we have the Inquisitors, to help discover who can still be brought back, and who's completely lost inside their own egos."
Rikku
Rikku shuddered. "That's ... horrifying," she said, eyes dropping to the balcony floor. "I can't imagine ... watching yourself do terrible things, and ... not able to stop it. What if you hurt someone you loved? That'd be a nightmare."
She was chewing on her lip as she took in the rest of it. Lost inside the addiction. Because I let him taste power, he began to thirst for more.
Seymour.
"I ... knew someone like that once," she said carefully, looking back up. "I think. Not 'knew' like ... he wasn't a friend, or anything. He was ..." She shook her head. "He couldn't stop. He went crazy. By the end, he was trying to destroy the whole world."
Dōjima
"I'm a Seed with basic telepathic defense training. Look at how easily she took her parents, how she almost took me, and just imagine how much damage she could do loose in the human population. That's what the Hunters are there for; they stop those who won't stop themselves."
Yurika took a long drink from her mug, not even caring if she burned her lips at this point. "This is why it's so important for SOLOMON to have me infiltrate the STN-J," she said finally. "If the Orbo can really rob a witch of their powers, if it's safe to use, then it could change everything. Zaizen can't be allowed to play his games, not with something as important as this."
"Was this someone like one of your fiends?" She looked over at Rikku, curious. "I'm still not clear on how magic works in your world, beyond that it's so different from mine."
Rikku
"Maybe it feeds on itself," Rikku said. "Addiction like that. The power of it. I just can't imagine ... using your parents for that. I mean. Bad enough if it's just strangers you don't know, but ... people you love, and care about. Maybe she was just too far gone to care about anyone."
Horrifying to think about.
"This Orbo ... like, they'd just stop working? Her powers, I mean. Then someone would ... well. You'd have to kinda talk her back around to being sane, but that's way easier when she isn't trying to set things on fire with her mind."
She sighed and rested her elbows on the railing. "Magic's ... different," she said finally. "Anyone can learn, but it's ... something you have to sit and learn. You practice and focus and one day, you can do a little bit, and the next, a little more. The spells I know are elements, like, hey, here's some ice. It doesn't sound like much, but against a fire-monster, it's incredible. Powerful mages know some pretty badass spells, but you have to be learning for months, even years, to get there. And it ... it takes something out of you. It's hard to explain. If I sat here and froze your coffee, over and over and over again, I'd stop being able to do it, eventually. I'd need a few hours to recharge."
Dōjima
"We don't know how the Orbo works, or why, that's one of the reasons Headquarters wants the research," Yurika replied. "The STN-J has what they call 'humane' Hunts, with bullets of Orbo instead of metal. But again, we're back to what do you do with a captured witch, and Zaizen's keep vanishing..." She shrugged and shook her head. "Which is why yesterday you got to beat on people, to prove I can handle a deep-cover assignment and lead a team if I have to."
"The idea of a world where anyone can learn magic..." She didn't have to feign the shudder. "If I studied the craft and set my mind to it, I might be able to awaken my own powers. Any Seed could, at least in theory. But I can't even imagine somewhere that magic is encouraged or used openly."
Rikku
"So they ..." Rikku looked over again. "They don't kill the witches, but they don't tell you what they're doing with them, either. They just ... hide them. Wow. That just screams bad news. Doesn't it? They could be locking them all up somewhere and making them do their dirty work."
She lifted a shoulder, easily, for the rest. "It's just another weapon," she explained. "Fire-monsters usually have strong physical defenses, and it'd be hard to cart around enormous chunks of ice, to throw at them. Some of the spells I know are healing -- Yunie's amazing at those. The guy who went crazy, he wasn't ... it wasn't magic he was abusing."
Wow. This was harder to explain than magic, really. "Do you remember that huge dragon we killed? Someone ... called it up. It's called Summoning. Summoners kinda ... deal with the whole barrier, between life and death. They send the dead on, so they don't become fiends, and they pull the Summons from where they are, kinda inbetween. Yunie could call out Bahamut, but ours was ... different. He would roar and jump in front of us and blow things up, and we'd hide behind those big wings of his until it was clear again. He was ... an ally. A friend, kinda. Anyway. Seymour was a Summoner. Except ... it wasn't the Summoning he was hooked on, either. He had this crazy idea that death was freedom, so he was going to liberate people."
There was a very dry look to go with that. "Great guy. Really."
Dōjima
"You had a guy that could call those dragons, and he wanted to kill everyone?" Yurika blinked at Rikku. "Blessed kami, I don't want to even think about how many Hunters it would take to kill him."
Rikku
Rikku sighed. "He'd ... kill, and then use the energy and pyreflies from that to make himself new armor. It took seven of us, and we had to kill him ... three, maybe four times. He wouldn't stay dead. He just got more powerful. He took out hundreds of people. And we got arrested for it, anyway. He was a Maester of Yevon; the rest of it didn't matter."
Dōjima
"There's rumors of a clan of craft users that's mastered death, but Headquarters can't prove anything," Yurika shared, giving her empty coffee a mournful glance. "Which means they're either behaving themselves or have died out, and either way it's not SOLOMON's problem."
Guy that wouldn't stay dead. Yunie. Bits of their drunken party in Mexico clicked together and Yurika almost dropped her mug as she stared at Rikku. "Oh. My. God. THAT'S why you asked if the wedding counted if the groom was dead!"
EW.
Rikku
"Yup," Rikku said sourly. "Warrior monks, lined up with guns, and a kidnapped bride. We crashed in anyway. Got arrested, then they tried to execute us. They sucked at it, we escaped, and then we had to kill Seymour again. That was, like, the second time, I think."
She waved it off. "Yevon. Fun times."
Why was she rambling about ... right.
"I just meant ... this guy was like that. Hooked on his own power, and he ... I mean, his mom asked us to kill him. He couldn't stop. Too crazy, too addicted, too ... something. We did it. It ... wasn't easy, to decide that, except it was, because we knew what would happen if we didn't. And we were right. He came back and ... hundreds of people died."
Dōjima
"Addicted to the power, and it's not that they can't stop, it's that they don't want to." Yurika sighed and leaned on the railing to look out at her city. "I'm not sorry I killed her, for the same reason you aren't sorry you killed Seymour. She was going to do it again and again, and this was the only way I could stop it. And if you put me back in that warehouse, I'd do it again, too."
Rikku
Rikku nodded, breathing in the crisp morning air and sorting out her thoughts.
"So ... what is bugging you?"
Dōjima
"I screwed up," she said bluntly. "If I'd been thinking, I would have realized that something was wrong the moment Tony Amano pulled a gun rather than use telekinesis to throw Reno and I into the nearest wall. I could have gotten all three of you killed."
Rikku
"Or maybe he'd wiped himself out doing Witch-stuff and liked having a gun in his hands," Rikku countered. "Easier to predict, easier to control. It all happened fast. We knew it was dangerous, and we agreed to come anyway. None of us were killed. We're pretty resilient, you know."
Dōjima
"I know you are, and if I was actually supposed to be a Hunter, I wouldn't worry about it as much," Yurika replied. "But I'm SOLOMON's spy first and foremost. I'm supposed to gather the information and make the connections that no one else sees."
"And because I didn't, Tony Amano's dead when he was probably nothing more than his witch-daughter's puppet."
Rikku
Rikku considered that for a few more seconds, before nodding. "Okay. Even if that's true, I mean ... so, you'll know, for next time. You'll watch for it, I mean. For the assignments to be messed-up sideways and remember, hey, wrong weapon, maybe someone else is pulling the strings."
Dōjima
"I made the right choice based on the intelligence that I had," she sighed. "I know that, I do, and we did a damn good job."
"I'm just not sure what I would have done differently if I had had figured it out. I kept thinking about it last night, and, well, I think I would have still ordered Reno to take him out." Yurika made a noise of pure frustration and tugged at her hair. "Which makes me feel like a total shit and a terrible person, but he was too big of a threat not to eliminate."
Rikku
Rikku mulled it over herself. "You could have told him to try for the knockout and not the kill," she said. "But he had a gun, and he was shooting at Reno. We almost had to take out the woman, too, and we knew she was being controlled. But she wouldn't stop firing, and there's no good answer right there."
She peered out at the skyline again. "I think ... when I said that, earlier, that I wish I hadn't come ... it was because I didn't understand what happened, I think. I felt like ... we went, we got some names from a priest, and we hunted them down and killed them. Like his personal hit squad or something, against ... this little girl, who was trapped and scared but hey, he thought she should die. I know that's stupid, it's just ..." She worried her lower lip between her teeth.
Dōjima
"We aren't your Yevonites, Rikku." Yurika looked over and gave her a small half-grin to show she wasn't angry. Just. Tired. "Yeah, there's shitty people everywhere, in every organization, but the majority of SOLOMON is there because they believe. Because they want to do what is right, and protect humanity from those individuals that would use the craft to harm rather than help."
"To be perfectly honest, I'm more afraid of what my family would do if I were to awaken than I am of Headquarters. In the Dōjima clan, those with useful talents tend to 'disappear'. At least with SOLOMON, you know where you stand."
Rikku
"Could SOLOMON keep you safe, from your family?" Rikku asked. "And I ... I get that it's not the same. I'm just used to ... you know. Big, secret kinda organization, that means they're up to something. Too easy for me to think of them as the enemy, stacked up against people."
She flushed. "Okay, uh, this sounds bad, but ... that priest-guy ... kinda didn't help. He kinda ... weirded me out."
Which seemed slightly more tactful than 'he was so very creepy.'
Dōjima
"It's one of the reasons I took Father Juliano's offer in the first place. Not even my father can take on SOLOMON and win."
"He's a manipulative, ruthless bastard, but he's not always that bad," Yurika replied, grinning widely. "Juliano was trying to creep you out, Rikku, to see how I'd react."
Rikku
That got a nervous laugh out of her. "Seriously?" she said. "Okay. Then I'm proud of me for not going off on him. I wanted to, except I thought he'd, like, call in guard people to attack us or something. He kinda has that vibe to him."
Dōjima
"He was probably disappointed you didn't, or maybe relived," Yurika giggled. "He's so used to me being a smartass that meeting all of you might have been a nice change of pace. I behaved myself for once!"
Rikku
Rikku smiled. "So ... you did good, this weekend? I mean. You did what you were supposed to do, we helped, it worked, all of that?"
Dōjima
"If it hadn't worked, we wouldn't be here," she answered, waving an arm at the city. "Instead of the portal dumping us in Japan, it would have returned us to Fandom. I'd still have a job at the STN-J as a regular Hunter, probably, but I wouldn't have SOLOMON's support or the mission."
"Then I'd be stuck there until my father found some other use for me, and I'd be back in the same mess I was trying to get myself out of in the first place. Assuming I didn't loose my mind and run off to join the circus on Spira or something out of sheer spite."
"And Rikku?" Yurika looked over and gave her a lop-sided grin. "Thanks."
Rikku
"We don't have circuses," she said, watching the skyline with a faint smile. "Or much of anything else. Maybe we go tend bar for Tifa, instead."
She glanced at Dōjima again, considering the rest of it and nodding, the smile steady on her lips. "Any time," she promised.
Dōjima
"Are you kidding? As hot as we are, we'd put Tifa out of business in a week," Dōjima teased as she struck a vogue-ish pose.
"Tell you what; I don't have to leave for my meeting down at the STN-J office for another few hours, what do you say we drive-by raid the buffet downstairs, and get some shopping in?" she asked, turning her head to glance back out at buildings around them. It seemed as good a way to repress cope as any. "You'd have a blast in Shibuya."
They'd have to go hit Harajuku. The one place on Earth that Rikku's combination of orange and green and her yellow nail-polish might almost appear normal.
[OOC: As usual, pre-played with the creative team of raspberryturk, the_merriest, and fair_montague. NFI, NFB, OOC A-OK.]
Welcome to Tokyo.
Romeo
Romeo had slept restlessly, sounds from the warehouse -- the crack of the shot by his ear, Yurika's sharp scream, the thud of Mrs. Amano slumping to the floor -- invading his dreams.
As dawn broke, he went into the living room of the suites and turned on the TV. He understood next to nothing, but the jumble of Japanese commercials soothed and distracted him somehow.
Reno
Reno wasn't typically a morning person. It was more on principle than anything else, really. If he was off-duty, he'd sleep in. Sleep until noon, sleep until his phone rang calling him off to another job. And if he wasn't sleeping, he'd be drinking or screwing.
But after yesterday, his head was still on-duty, and he was awake well before sunrise, waiting for a report, waiting for fallout. And waiting was better while spent out and about, so eventually, he wandered into the living room. The company there wasn't entirely expected, but he grinned and nodded and waved a bit of a hello to Romeo nevertheless.
"Some weekend, huh?"
Romeo
"And we still have a day to go," Romeo agreed, turning the volume down a little on the TV. "Good morrow, by the way. Usually no one but me is up now."
Reno
"Welcome to witnessin' Reno in Turk-mode. All Turk, all the time." Reno grinned a bit of a wry grin as he leaned over the back of the couch. "I'll sleep in when we get back to Fandom, on days I don't gotta be up for training with Ghanima. Right now, you get to enjoy my sunny morning disposition, yo."
He hesitated a moment, and then sobered up a little before speaking again.
"How you holdin' up?"
Romeo
"All Turk, all the time," Romeo echoed, with a tiny bit of a smile. "I haven't started coffee yet." Which was a good thing, given how poorly he made it.
"I'm ... " he shrugged,a gesture on the edge of a flinch. "Is that, the warehouse, what your job is normally like? People who aren't in control so you have to -- take care of them?"
Reno
"We can hit up a Starbucks out there later or somethin'," Reno mused, not wanting to interrupt the sudden turn into serious conversation by a break for coffee. Some things were just more important than coffee. Which was almost a blasphemous notion at crazy-thirty in the morning, but hell. Whatever.
"Things like that are only part of my job, and they ain't been quite like that in a couple of years and some, zoto. I'd be lyin' if I said it was new, but there's more than just dealin' with the people who aren't in control. There's dealin' with the ones who're totally in control, too. Haven't decided which is worse yet, yo."
Romeo
"Or room service," Romeo agreed as he thought about what Reno was saying. "I'd think they'd both be awful," he said. "The ones in control are evil, the ones not in control are sad. I couldn't do it for more than a day."
It was not the first time he had realized that Yurika was stronger than he was.
Reno
"There were a couple of times when it was just... armies of 'em. People who weren't even livin' in their own heads anymore. Ravens, the first ones were called. The other ones, people called Genesis clones. But they weren't, really. Genesis changed their faces and stole their bodies and made one army into a different one, is all."
Reno shrugged a little.
"It's dirty business. That's the thing about it. Nobody wants to deal with it, but someone's gotta. So you get your Turks and your Hunters, the people who can deal with it for more than a day, gettin' in there and gettin' their hands dirty so the rest of the world can pretend it ain't even goin' on, zoto. And even we have a rough time of it sometimes."
Romeo
Romeo nodded slowly, picturing what Reno was describing. "No, I'd never want to take on an army. I was not born to be a soldier, and I've no illusions about it." The taking of one life was more than enough for his conscience.
"Yurika did well on her examination, didn't she?" he asked quietly, and not without some odd pride.
Reno
Reno's lips quirked into a bit of a grin, and his head bobbed in an easy nod.
"We all got in, we all got out, we're all in one piece, and the threat's been takin' care of. If that ain't a pass, man, I don't know what is."
Romeo
"None of us were hurt, and the mother at least survived," Romeo agreed. "I've no idea what more Juliano could want."
A moment passed. "But I still wish she wouldn't have to do it. Is that odd?"
Reno
"I don't think it is," Reno replied, tapping a finger thoughtfully on the back of the couch. "I mean, it isn't safe work. And it means she's gonna have to close her eyes and go with it from time to time, I think. As much as it's gotta get done, it's not gonna be easy."
A moment more.
"I think that's why she brought us three in particular along, yo. Because she needs the moral support here more'n anything. I don't think she's gonna admit it. But this kinda thing, you just can't do if it means you're gonna be alone, zoto."
Even Reno had his Rude.
Romeo
"She'd never admit it," Romeo shook his head. "She knew about this since before she met any of us, and said nothing until the time came when she had to. She'd pretend she was fine as the very world burned down."
He reached for his cigarettes, offered the pack to Reno out of habit. "I worry about what happens when she's doing this for real. She'll have other Hunters, but ..."
It wouldn't be the same, he knew.
Reno
"She's good." Reno helped himself to one of the offered cigarettes. "Like I said, she got us in there and outta there alive, on her first run of it. The ones that can get right into your head are probably the worst. I'm tryin' to use my imagination and come up with somethin' worse, and I'm fallin' short."
He was patting down his pockets, trying to find his lighter.
"I'm not gonna sugar coat it and say there ain't risk, yo. But if she's the rookie and she's goin' out with more experienced hunters in the future, that's gotta be good for somethin'."
Especially if there were veterans of the whole hunting gig who were half as protective of the rookies as Reno was.
Romeo
Romeo had a lighter; he lit his smoke and tossed it to Reno. "I should ask her about that," he mused. "I don't know what her regular missions will be like. I'm not sure she does. But whoever she's with, there has to be risk to it, or anyone would be able to do it."
Reno
Reno caught the lighter and gave a bit of a salute with it before lighting his own cigarette.
"Like I said, man, Turks and Hunters. Isn't clean work, isn't pretty work, but it's still gotta get done, yo. Considerin' how many people don't wanna do it, I'm willin' to bet that they try damn hard to make sure the ones who will do it come back alive."
Romeo
"I hope you're right," Romeo said, turning something over in his head. "Would it do any good, do you think, for me to offer to be in her world? Just so she has something that's not Hunting."
Reno
Reno went deathly quiet for a moment, his gaze drifting to the ceiling. And then he nodded. A slow, careful, deliberate sort of nod. And he passed Romeo back his lighter.
"Between you and me, man... She's gonna need it, I think. Havin' someone to come home to means that you're gonna try that much harder to make sure you come home, zoto."
Romeo
Romeo exhaled a bit more deeply than was necessary, possibly from relief. "And it's not as though she can claim she'd always need to rescue me. I'll ask when we're home."
Reno
"Hey, you got outta that warehouse just as alive as the rest of us," Reno pointed out, grinning. "And with your hands clean. I don't think she'd have a case if she tried to talk you out of it that way, zoto."
Romeo
Romeo grinned back, proud. "I did my best," he said, as modestly as he could manage. "How are you? I heard part of your fight on my earpiece and it sounded" -- it was hard, here, to think of the word -- "rough."
Reno
"Rough? You figure?" Reno was grinning a little more. "Nah. I get off on that kinda junk, yo. He only hit me a coupla' times, and sure, once was with some kinda filing cabinet from hell, but it coulda' been worse."
He stood and stretched, then bit the cigarette in his teeth and casually cracked his knuckles.
"Kinda' hopin' Doji asks me on another job sometime. Somethin' to keep busy with, yo."
Romeo
"You can go with her anytime," Romeo said, grateful. "I feel better knowing you have her back." Not that Romeo intended to be weak in that department himself, but he couldn't deny that Reno was better at this particular kind of task.
"Did the filing cabinet do any damage?"
Reno
"Threw me around a bit, no big deal," Reno replied with a shrug. "On the scale from baby puppy to silver-haired jerk, that guy was sittin' somewhere around homicidal fuzzy duckling."
He shoved his hands into his pockets and smirked down at Romeo.
"So. How 'bout that coffee?"
Romeo
Romeo was distracted for a moment by his need to picture a homicidal fuzzy ducking -- it came out wearing a Kevlar vest and toting a machine gun -- and snigger. "Coffee," he agreed, frowning a little at the coffeemaker. "Maybe this time I'll even add enough water, and it won't taste like mud laced with caffeine."
He liked to live in hope.
Dōjima
It was still early when Yurika slipped out on to the balcony connecting the adjoining hotel suites, mug of coffee clutched tightly in her hands. She didn't have to be at the STN-J for hours yet, but there was no way she could sleep after everything that had happened yesterday.
Rikku
Something wasn't right. None of it seemed right. Rikku was tired of pacing, trying to turn it over in her head, failing at sleep. So she'd get some fresh air.
She didn't realize the other girl was on the balcony until she stepped onto it.
"Hey," she said, awkwardly.
Dōjima
She jumped at the sound of another voice, body tensing before she realized who it was.
"Ohaiyo," she offered quietly as she slouched back down in her chair. "I've got more coffee back in the room, if you want some." Small talk was good, right? Right.
Rikku
"'M fine," she said, shaking her head. Stay? Leave? Stay? ... Crap. Would probably look weird to leave, like that.
Instead she walked up to the railing and looked out at the city. "I've never been to Japan before."
Dōjima
"Welcome to my home." A small smile flitted across Yurika's face as she gestured out to the skyline. "Roppongi, Shibuya, Ginza, Ebisu, Shinjuku... sometimes I miss all the noise and neon and pollution so much it hurts."
Rikku
Rikku shook her head. "My home's nothing like this," she said. "Little villages and open spaces. Everything's different here, I guess."
She didn't just mean the city, really.
Dōjima
"It started as a little village, once upon a time," Yurika replied. "A fishing village, actually, named Edo."
She blew lightly on her coffee, looking up at the towering buildings around them. "There's still great fish markets here, if you know where to look. It's not all the computerized steel and chrome of Neo-Tokyo."
Rikku
"We were in the desert," Rikku said, trying to picture this metropolis as once being as tiny as Besaid. It didn't fit. "No fish. Just sand. An oasis, here and there."
Still watching the cityscape, so she didn't have to look over. "I think ... I wish I hadn't come with you."
Not to Tokyo. Rome.
Dōjima
Oh.
Yurika's eyes flickered for an instant, and suddenly her coffee was very fascinating.
"Sorry," she replied. "I tried -" to warn you. To give you a way out. "Nevermind. It just wasn't the vacation you'd hoped for."
Rikku
"I didn't understand what you wanted us to do," she said simply. "I didn't realize it would be like that. That we'd be ..."
The skyline was also pretty fascinating.
"I don't feel much like one of the good guys, right now."
Dōjima
"You stopped a mind-controlled woman from hurting any more civilians, without resorting to lethal force. How can you not be a good guy?" Dōjima asked bitterly. "It wasn't that hard to understand. I said we were going to be sent to Hunt a witch, and we did. You guys did a really good job."
Rikku
This time, she did look over. "We almost had to use force. I mean. I think I'd be okay with it, if we had to, because -- she had a gun, she was going to use it, and if we didn't stop her, right then, she was gonna take one of us out. That's ... what happens. It's not pretty but that's how it goes, sometimes. You can't just ... brush it off, but you can't let yourself go crazy over it, either."
"It's ..." She straightened up, considering it. "You said ... it'd be a Hunt. I didn't realize how literal that was gonna be. We tracked them in, we sealed the exits, we took them down. I mean. She was acting like a caged animal. Desperate, and trapped, and scared. Lashing out at everyone. I know, she wasn't herself, it was the little girl. So then ... she ..."
Dōjima
"She was in my mind." Yurika's hands clenched on the mug to keep from shaking any harder. "That psychotic little bitch tore her way into my head, and she was going to use me to kill all of you. Then she'd send me to back to Headquarters and take out as many people as she could before another Hunter took me down. I could feel everything, Rikku. Everything she was thinking while she tried to rip my brain to shreds."
"And she was enjoying it."
Rikku
Rikku's eyebrows drew together. "Your head?" she frowned. "I don't ... understand. Why was she ... why was she doing all of it? How do you know she wasn't just ... I mean, if you've got these Hunters chasing you down and they're supposed to kill you, maybe you're willing to ... go pretty far to stop it. That's --"
She closed her eyes. "What ... would've happened to you? If she did that. And ... that woman, I mean, the one we knocked out, is her head ..."
Did someone controlling your mind leave fingerprints? Scars?
Dōjima
"I was fighting her control, so she would have had to tear out anything of 'Yurika' until I stopped. If I was lucky, I would have ended up a puppet; lights on, no one home," Yurika answered. "If she had managed to surprise me, then she could have locked me into a corner. I would be able to know what was happening, but be unable to stop it. Ava Amano will get both regular and psychic therapy from Headquarters, and they'll help her as much as they can." Assuming the woman's psyche was intact, and there was something to be saved.
"No one knows why a craft-user will go witch, Rikku." Yurika looked over at the other girl, a mix of exhaustion, defiance, and sadness. "Sometimes they get an addiction to the power and will do anything to fill it. Sometimes the power overwhelms them, and they got lost inside. The reasons can vary as much as the craft itself does. That's why we have the Inquisitors, to help discover who can still be brought back, and who's completely lost inside their own egos."
Rikku
Rikku shuddered. "That's ... horrifying," she said, eyes dropping to the balcony floor. "I can't imagine ... watching yourself do terrible things, and ... not able to stop it. What if you hurt someone you loved? That'd be a nightmare."
She was chewing on her lip as she took in the rest of it. Lost inside the addiction. Because I let him taste power, he began to thirst for more.
Seymour.
"I ... knew someone like that once," she said carefully, looking back up. "I think. Not 'knew' like ... he wasn't a friend, or anything. He was ..." She shook her head. "He couldn't stop. He went crazy. By the end, he was trying to destroy the whole world."
Dōjima
"I'm a Seed with basic telepathic defense training. Look at how easily she took her parents, how she almost took me, and just imagine how much damage she could do loose in the human population. That's what the Hunters are there for; they stop those who won't stop themselves."
Yurika took a long drink from her mug, not even caring if she burned her lips at this point. "This is why it's so important for SOLOMON to have me infiltrate the STN-J," she said finally. "If the Orbo can really rob a witch of their powers, if it's safe to use, then it could change everything. Zaizen can't be allowed to play his games, not with something as important as this."
"Was this someone like one of your fiends?" She looked over at Rikku, curious. "I'm still not clear on how magic works in your world, beyond that it's so different from mine."
Rikku
"Maybe it feeds on itself," Rikku said. "Addiction like that. The power of it. I just can't imagine ... using your parents for that. I mean. Bad enough if it's just strangers you don't know, but ... people you love, and care about. Maybe she was just too far gone to care about anyone."
Horrifying to think about.
"This Orbo ... like, they'd just stop working? Her powers, I mean. Then someone would ... well. You'd have to kinda talk her back around to being sane, but that's way easier when she isn't trying to set things on fire with her mind."
She sighed and rested her elbows on the railing. "Magic's ... different," she said finally. "Anyone can learn, but it's ... something you have to sit and learn. You practice and focus and one day, you can do a little bit, and the next, a little more. The spells I know are elements, like, hey, here's some ice. It doesn't sound like much, but against a fire-monster, it's incredible. Powerful mages know some pretty badass spells, but you have to be learning for months, even years, to get there. And it ... it takes something out of you. It's hard to explain. If I sat here and froze your coffee, over and over and over again, I'd stop being able to do it, eventually. I'd need a few hours to recharge."
Dōjima
"We don't know how the Orbo works, or why, that's one of the reasons Headquarters wants the research," Yurika replied. "The STN-J has what they call 'humane' Hunts, with bullets of Orbo instead of metal. But again, we're back to what do you do with a captured witch, and Zaizen's keep vanishing..." She shrugged and shook her head. "Which is why yesterday you got to beat on people, to prove I can handle a deep-cover assignment and lead a team if I have to."
"The idea of a world where anyone can learn magic..." She didn't have to feign the shudder. "If I studied the craft and set my mind to it, I might be able to awaken my own powers. Any Seed could, at least in theory. But I can't even imagine somewhere that magic is encouraged or used openly."
Rikku
"So they ..." Rikku looked over again. "They don't kill the witches, but they don't tell you what they're doing with them, either. They just ... hide them. Wow. That just screams bad news. Doesn't it? They could be locking them all up somewhere and making them do their dirty work."
She lifted a shoulder, easily, for the rest. "It's just another weapon," she explained. "Fire-monsters usually have strong physical defenses, and it'd be hard to cart around enormous chunks of ice, to throw at them. Some of the spells I know are healing -- Yunie's amazing at those. The guy who went crazy, he wasn't ... it wasn't magic he was abusing."
Wow. This was harder to explain than magic, really. "Do you remember that huge dragon we killed? Someone ... called it up. It's called Summoning. Summoners kinda ... deal with the whole barrier, between life and death. They send the dead on, so they don't become fiends, and they pull the Summons from where they are, kinda inbetween. Yunie could call out Bahamut, but ours was ... different. He would roar and jump in front of us and blow things up, and we'd hide behind those big wings of his until it was clear again. He was ... an ally. A friend, kinda. Anyway. Seymour was a Summoner. Except ... it wasn't the Summoning he was hooked on, either. He had this crazy idea that death was freedom, so he was going to liberate people."
There was a very dry look to go with that. "Great guy. Really."
Dōjima
"You had a guy that could call those dragons, and he wanted to kill everyone?" Yurika blinked at Rikku. "Blessed kami, I don't want to even think about how many Hunters it would take to kill him."
Rikku
Rikku sighed. "He'd ... kill, and then use the energy and pyreflies from that to make himself new armor. It took seven of us, and we had to kill him ... three, maybe four times. He wouldn't stay dead. He just got more powerful. He took out hundreds of people. And we got arrested for it, anyway. He was a Maester of Yevon; the rest of it didn't matter."
Dōjima
"There's rumors of a clan of craft users that's mastered death, but Headquarters can't prove anything," Yurika shared, giving her empty coffee a mournful glance. "Which means they're either behaving themselves or have died out, and either way it's not SOLOMON's problem."
Guy that wouldn't stay dead. Yunie. Bits of their drunken party in Mexico clicked together and Yurika almost dropped her mug as she stared at Rikku. "Oh. My. God. THAT'S why you asked if the wedding counted if the groom was dead!"
EW.
Rikku
"Yup," Rikku said sourly. "Warrior monks, lined up with guns, and a kidnapped bride. We crashed in anyway. Got arrested, then they tried to execute us. They sucked at it, we escaped, and then we had to kill Seymour again. That was, like, the second time, I think."
She waved it off. "Yevon. Fun times."
Why was she rambling about ... right.
"I just meant ... this guy was like that. Hooked on his own power, and he ... I mean, his mom asked us to kill him. He couldn't stop. Too crazy, too addicted, too ... something. We did it. It ... wasn't easy, to decide that, except it was, because we knew what would happen if we didn't. And we were right. He came back and ... hundreds of people died."
Dōjima
"Addicted to the power, and it's not that they can't stop, it's that they don't want to." Yurika sighed and leaned on the railing to look out at her city. "I'm not sorry I killed her, for the same reason you aren't sorry you killed Seymour. She was going to do it again and again, and this was the only way I could stop it. And if you put me back in that warehouse, I'd do it again, too."
Rikku
Rikku nodded, breathing in the crisp morning air and sorting out her thoughts.
"So ... what is bugging you?"
Dōjima
"I screwed up," she said bluntly. "If I'd been thinking, I would have realized that something was wrong the moment Tony Amano pulled a gun rather than use telekinesis to throw Reno and I into the nearest wall. I could have gotten all three of you killed."
Rikku
"Or maybe he'd wiped himself out doing Witch-stuff and liked having a gun in his hands," Rikku countered. "Easier to predict, easier to control. It all happened fast. We knew it was dangerous, and we agreed to come anyway. None of us were killed. We're pretty resilient, you know."
Dōjima
"I know you are, and if I was actually supposed to be a Hunter, I wouldn't worry about it as much," Yurika replied. "But I'm SOLOMON's spy first and foremost. I'm supposed to gather the information and make the connections that no one else sees."
"And because I didn't, Tony Amano's dead when he was probably nothing more than his witch-daughter's puppet."
Rikku
Rikku considered that for a few more seconds, before nodding. "Okay. Even if that's true, I mean ... so, you'll know, for next time. You'll watch for it, I mean. For the assignments to be messed-up sideways and remember, hey, wrong weapon, maybe someone else is pulling the strings."
Dōjima
"I made the right choice based on the intelligence that I had," she sighed. "I know that, I do, and we did a damn good job."
"I'm just not sure what I would have done differently if I had had figured it out. I kept thinking about it last night, and, well, I think I would have still ordered Reno to take him out." Yurika made a noise of pure frustration and tugged at her hair. "Which makes me feel like a total shit and a terrible person, but he was too big of a threat not to eliminate."
Rikku
Rikku mulled it over herself. "You could have told him to try for the knockout and not the kill," she said. "But he had a gun, and he was shooting at Reno. We almost had to take out the woman, too, and we knew she was being controlled. But she wouldn't stop firing, and there's no good answer right there."
She peered out at the skyline again. "I think ... when I said that, earlier, that I wish I hadn't come ... it was because I didn't understand what happened, I think. I felt like ... we went, we got some names from a priest, and we hunted them down and killed them. Like his personal hit squad or something, against ... this little girl, who was trapped and scared but hey, he thought she should die. I know that's stupid, it's just ..." She worried her lower lip between her teeth.
Dōjima
"We aren't your Yevonites, Rikku." Yurika looked over and gave her a small half-grin to show she wasn't angry. Just. Tired. "Yeah, there's shitty people everywhere, in every organization, but the majority of SOLOMON is there because they believe. Because they want to do what is right, and protect humanity from those individuals that would use the craft to harm rather than help."
"To be perfectly honest, I'm more afraid of what my family would do if I were to awaken than I am of Headquarters. In the Dōjima clan, those with useful talents tend to 'disappear'. At least with SOLOMON, you know where you stand."
Rikku
"Could SOLOMON keep you safe, from your family?" Rikku asked. "And I ... I get that it's not the same. I'm just used to ... you know. Big, secret kinda organization, that means they're up to something. Too easy for me to think of them as the enemy, stacked up against people."
She flushed. "Okay, uh, this sounds bad, but ... that priest-guy ... kinda didn't help. He kinda ... weirded me out."
Which seemed slightly more tactful than 'he was so very creepy.'
Dōjima
"It's one of the reasons I took Father Juliano's offer in the first place. Not even my father can take on SOLOMON and win."
"He's a manipulative, ruthless bastard, but he's not always that bad," Yurika replied, grinning widely. "Juliano was trying to creep you out, Rikku, to see how I'd react."
Rikku
That got a nervous laugh out of her. "Seriously?" she said. "Okay. Then I'm proud of me for not going off on him. I wanted to, except I thought he'd, like, call in guard people to attack us or something. He kinda has that vibe to him."
Dōjima
"He was probably disappointed you didn't, or maybe relived," Yurika giggled. "He's so used to me being a smartass that meeting all of you might have been a nice change of pace. I behaved myself for once!"
Rikku
Rikku smiled. "So ... you did good, this weekend? I mean. You did what you were supposed to do, we helped, it worked, all of that?"
Dōjima
"If it hadn't worked, we wouldn't be here," she answered, waving an arm at the city. "Instead of the portal dumping us in Japan, it would have returned us to Fandom. I'd still have a job at the STN-J as a regular Hunter, probably, but I wouldn't have SOLOMON's support or the mission."
"Then I'd be stuck there until my father found some other use for me, and I'd be back in the same mess I was trying to get myself out of in the first place. Assuming I didn't loose my mind and run off to join the circus on Spira or something out of sheer spite."
"And Rikku?" Yurika looked over and gave her a lop-sided grin. "Thanks."
Rikku
"We don't have circuses," she said, watching the skyline with a faint smile. "Or much of anything else. Maybe we go tend bar for Tifa, instead."
She glanced at Dōjima again, considering the rest of it and nodding, the smile steady on her lips. "Any time," she promised.
Dōjima
"Are you kidding? As hot as we are, we'd put Tifa out of business in a week," Dōjima teased as she struck a vogue-ish pose.
"Tell you what; I don't have to leave for my meeting down at the STN-J office for another few hours, what do you say we drive-by raid the buffet downstairs, and get some shopping in?" she asked, turning her head to glance back out at buildings around them. It seemed as good a way to repress cope as any. "You'd have a blast in Shibuya."
They'd have to go hit Harajuku. The one place on Earth that Rikku's combination of orange and green and her yellow nail-polish might almost appear normal.
[OOC: As usual, pre-played with the creative team of raspberryturk, the_merriest, and fair_montague. NFI, NFB, OOC A-OK.]