fandomhigh | Rookiehood 101, Tuesday, Period 4

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rookiehood 101

Rookiehood 101, Tuesday, Period 4

"Yo, Rookies!" Hark, was that the territorial call of the wild Reno in his natural habitat? Oh, it totally was. "Bit of a change of pace for you this week, yo. When this period ends, you're all on a mission, yo. This week, I ain't gonna be the teacher."

He smirked, and then set out on that slow, deliberate saunter of his, walking paces back and forth in front of the class.

"Half of you are. And half of you are gonna be the rookies. All you teachers? It's gonna be your job to look out for the rookies this week. Rookies? It's your job to be... rookies. Make like you don't know nothin'. Give your teacher a rough time, yo. Do whatever it is you figure rookies do."

He nodded at the board, where he'd scrawled out the names of the two groups.

"Today, just pair off, figure out what it is you're gonna be rookies at. You can teach and learn just about anything, but be prepared to tell me next week what it was you did and how it went, yo. Teachers? Word of advice? Just because you got some theoretical kinda power right now don't mean you get to abuse it. If you're gonna tell 'em to run laps around the island, you damn well better be prepared to run 'em too. And you better be better at it. They ain't gonna respect you if you don't come off as competent, yo. They're your rookies, so it's up to you to set an example, here."

He smirked, and then waved his hands at the class.

"Go on, get to it. Don't let me keep you waitin', yo."

[Open!]

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"No," she huffed. "You couldn't anyway. Does that mean you're not even going to try the assignment? Typical Reno, can't be bothered if it takes effort. Who cares if the Rookie's just drowning on her own. Not your problem."

Rookie tantrums did not require logic.

Reno took a moment to just kind of eye her, wondering for a few seconds if maybe this was one of those things he was just supposed to give up and phone Rude over. She was his Rookie, not Reno's. Technically.

And yet.

"Here's where I gotta ask what it is you're drownin' in, yo."

So that he could fix it. Smugly.

"Nothing," Elena said, too quickly. "I'm fine. I've got a handle on this whole Turks thing. Really."

She was doing awesome at it. In that she was going to be the best ever.

After a few moments of awkwardly scuffing the ground, she added, "If you were going to be all 'oooh, look how cool I am' and try to teach me something, what would it be?"

Idle curiosity. Really.

"Good question," Reno agreed, and then he shrugged. "We already know I can drink you under the table, bluff you to friggin' death in any game of cards you can name, piss off the boss better'n anybody, beat any Turk who ever lived in a footrace, fly the chopper without barely stoppin' to look at the controls, and go get drunk in Wutai without gettin' my ass strapped to the face of a mountain."

He smirked at that, yes.

"Pick one? Pick somethin' else. Whatever."

"Can you teach me how to be arrogant and do absolutely nothing and somehow not get fired?" she shot back.

In response to that, Reno just lifted a finger and pointed at her.

"Now don't go insultin' me like that," he scolded. "When I do somethin', I do it damn good, yo. So I'm pretty sure I am fired, half a term after takin' off and not gettin' in touch with Tseng about this yet, yo."

"You're not fired," Elena said, dropping back into herself for this. "He's stubborn, and he can be stupid, but even he's not that dumb. Do you want me to talk to him?"

Reno sighed. Shrugged.

"Don't know," he admitted. "You go talkin' to him, he'll figure I'm bein' chickenshit or somethin', yo. I call him up, though, an' he'll go right outta his way to tell me I ain't no sorta Turk, takin' off right when they need me most."

After the past year, he wasn't entirely convinced that Edge needed him at all, but that wasn't here or there, really.

"He won't think you're chickenshit," she countered. "He'll think you're being stubborn, and he'll wonder why he should cave first, and he'll try to be extra-stubborn to 'win' whatever bullshit dick-measuring contest this is turning into."

"This ain't about bein' better." There was a weird little edge in Reno's voice at that. Something serious that wasn't usually there. "Never was. Not from me, zoto. Maybe it is with him, but I don't want that bullshit. I asked permission, and he accused me of walkin' out on the job. I don't need that. Not after a year in Edge. Not with him suggestin' we ain't accomplished shit in that time."

He was just now starting to put on a little bit of weight, again. Not really enough to be noticeable just yet. But enough to make him feel like he was accomplishing something when he stepped onto the bathroom scale in the morning.

... Something like not starving.

"It's not about better," she said, running a hand through her hair with a sigh. "I know why you came here. But neither one of you is willing to back down right now. You wouldn't just call him and say you're sorry, and he won't, either."

Sometimes, pride was all the Turks had. And that was the real problem.

"And I ain't sorry," Reno pointed out. "I ain't property no more. And I never was Tseng's. If he's so fuckin' scared that we're all gonna up and piss off and never look back, there are better ways to let us know than by callin' us deserters and failures when we ask about maybe takin' a break."

To some degree, this wasn't about stubbornness, either. Reno had spent long enough in Fandom to realize how people ought to be treated, too.

Elena folded her arms. "I doubt he said that," she said. And wasn't it strange to be the one pointing out that someone else was reading too much into Tseng?

"I doubt he's sorry, either. But if you're just going to shout past each other, none of this is going to get resolved."

Reno cleared his throat. He had a memory like a thumbtack when it was something he felt like holding a grudge over.

"'I have no need for an employee who no longer wishes to be one,'" he recited. And then, a moment later, he shook his head. "Decided I was comin' here for booze and smut. Threw that in my face a few times, zoto. He don't know me half as well as he thinks he does, no more."

Reno had been drinking since he'd gotten here, yes. But it wasn't the sort of drinking that Tseng probably assumed it was, acting like an idiot in the bar, dancing on countertops.

"He said he'd have an answer for me the next day, an' never did. So... fuck it. I'll go back when I go back. Probably for Rude. Shit, for you even, Rookie. But not for Tseng. If that's the way he's gonna be, Tseng won't be gettin' dick from me."

So Tseng had been hurtful. Probably because he had been scared. His Turks kept slipping away. So he'd lashed out and convinced himself he didn't need any of them.

Elena wasn't sure who needed a hug more. All of them, possibly.

Elena was also suddenly wondering if this was why he'd been so harsh with her, last year, when she had stumbled into his office and poured out all of her feelings.

What a mess.

"I'm surprised at you," she said, finally. "You're a Turk, Reno. Nobody can take that from you. Not even Tseng. You're not going to let him, are you?"

... maybe appealing to his pride could help, instead of hurt.

That attempt warranted a weird little sideways look. Reno's eyebrows furrowed a bit while he worked that statement over in his mind a few times.

"Didn't let Rufus take it away. Ain't about to let Tseng do the same. But I ain't gonna keep killin' myself for this job, either. That'd just make me a damn fool."

A dead one, at that.

"That's what bein' a Turk is, lately. It's a job. It ain't savin' the world. It ain't chasin' down anybody who done us wrong. It ain't blind subservience and it ain't us bein' somebody. It's us runnin' around doin' chores for the highest bidder. It's a job."

Edited 2010-06-02 00:18 (UTC)

Elena took that in, wondering what to make of it. How she felt.

"I don't think he gets it," she said, finally. "I don't think he understands that the world won't end if he doesn't finish his paperwork. I wonder ..."

She bit her lip, working it out. "I wonder if he convinces himself it would, so he doesn't have to ... think about, what now."

"There's a lot of 'what now.' If he keeps doin' like he's doin', now is gonna pass him by and become then before he even knows what the hell hit him, yoto."

He shrugged.

"He said I wouldn't be easy to replace, but that I could be." And then he shook his head. "I'm willin' to bet he ain't even made the attempt yet. That would mean admittin' that shit's fallin' apart around him and ain't gonna stop until he changes something, yo."

"I think sometimes he'd rather lose everything than admit what's going on around him," she said. "Maybe he doesn't think he can change, so he's stalling. He's so frustrating."

Well, he was.

"Let me talk to him," she offered, again. "Consider it my rookie-duty for the week."

"Talk to him, then," Reno replied, with hardly any hesitation at all. "But do it knowin' that if I go back, I ain't gonna do so on my hands and knees. And that I do got other places to go, if Fandom don't work out."

He shrugged.

"I'd miss you an' Rude," he added, for good measure.

"I don't think you'd be rid of Rude so easily," she countered. "He might stow away in your luggage, next time you leave."

Yes. A very tall bald man would be easy to miss, that way.

"I'm surprised he ain't tried to, yet." Reno smirked. "Or teachin' a class or somethin' here so he can keep an eye on me, yo. He likes to pretend that he can keep me outta trouble."

It was wishful thinking. Possibly on Rude's part. Possibly on Reno's.

"If you were both here," Elena noted, "the island would catch on fire. And there would just be a shot of the two of you running away, while you shouted 'I didn't do it!'"

'Fire' was putting it mildly, all things considered.

"Just fire?"

Hey, Reno totally understood just how much trouble the two of them had the capacity to get into. They had made trouble into a sort of art form, over the years.

"Maybe that's why he hasn't come," she laughed. "Because you two would sink the island inside of two weeks."

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Rookiehood 101, Tuesday, Period 4

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