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Random Reno-Tseng-Rufus drabble; haitus notice
Paranoid parents give me hives, so I'm hiding out in my toilet and writing fic before I leave. :D I love the power of wireless internet.
Looks like I won't/don't have time to write out a full Reno/Tseng/Rufus story (yet), so I'm contenting myself with mashing out a few hundred unconnected words and hoping that inspiration will hit me for this (and the thousand other things I owe various challenges) when I get back home.
I
It became, at some point, distinctly irritating. To the travelled, the untravelled must always seem ignorant: worse, then, that it was Rufus Shinra, who could be hailed as not only ignorant but also ignoble. The man - he'd grown to be a man, one supposed - had come into his own after losing none of his stubborn chamber-pet sense of entitlement. There was a time he'd have done anything, for Rufus; their being kindred spirits, after all, under the firm hand of Rufus' father.
It took far less time for Rufus to ascend than it took Tseng; the apple falls not far from the tree. Youthful anger gave way to adolescent rage gave way to a young man well-honed by the fires of war and social intrigue. There was probably not a selfless bone left in Rufus' body, and it was even more likely that the man didn't care.
II
When had he changed? Maybe the better question would have been when had he not. There were books written on the like: some men become great, some men are born into greatness, so on and so forth. By the time he'd turned 14 the abbreviated world that his father'd presented to him had become too small: there were larger things afoot, and Rufus had inherited his family name in all senses of the word. Some things you just knew, and his father could've hidden him in all the classes, trips and socials that he wanted and that still wouldn't have altered the course of what Rufus had come to call his destiny.
When chance knocked on his door, he took it well in hand. When he'd turned 14, they assigned him his first Turk, and that had only been the beginning.
III
Some guys were meant to do big things in life; they were more or less unable to be anything else. Instinct'd tell them that they couldn't slack off, that they couldn't let their guard down, that disobeying the rules or letting other people walk over them weren't allowed to happen. Tseng was one of those men; Reno could see it and Reno knew it from the outset.
When you were not really interested in going anywhere, your life was a lot easier: you could kick back and watch, as it were, from the sidelines. People running around, kicking other people and backstabbing each other and playing the great big Shinra game. Tseng didn't so much play as he worked: worked his way through it, all the loaded dice and the stacked hands, because Veld'd trained him up to the job, and Tseng couldn't let himself or his mentor down - not after coming here over, what, a few thousand miles of bad terrain and a couple of years just learning how to speak the damn language.
IV
Other people wanted to do big things. There was a difference. Hair's breadth, yeah, especially when it came down to talent and skill, but a difference nonetheless. Tseng probably didn't want to end up where he ended up at the end of all things: between the rock of abandoning Wutai and the hard place of entertaining Shinra. Probably never wanted to become a Director, even if a hundred other people would have cut off their right arm to be where he was. Guy was an unlucky case of right man in the wrong place.
Rufus, on the other hand, was another thing all together. Wrong man in the right place, you might say, if you were brave enough. Hundred percent fucked up ambition, zero percent inhibition. By the time he took over the "Electric Company" his father and his father before him had already done close to everything there was to do: space research? Yeah. Underwater development? Some might say. Weapons engineering? In every possible way - human, machine, monster. Civil expansion? The company might as well be a fucking imperium all on its own. What else was there left to do?
Got to hand it to the guy. Rufus found something to do, all right. Take over the fucking world.
V
When they first met Rufus was barely tall enough to look Tseng in the eye, and Tseng was newly benevolent, having been bestowed the gift of hierarchy. Things had been moving along slowly; the way they'd always moved along, or so it seemed. The Science department had its feuds, Weapons had their small breakthroughs, the Army trained their men. The most interesting thing that happened was SOLDIER; that and the small matter of the War with Wutai.
Small matter, to Shinra. Tseng had been angry, for a while, and then he'd been confused, and then he'd given up thinking about loyalty and loyalties, and gone back to Veld's advice of concentrating on the matter at hand. He shook Rufus' hand and said nothing when he received an enquiring look - the young Shinra stared at the mark on his forehead, the colour of his hair, but said nothing. He invited Tseng to stand at ease, since the Turk'd be doing nothing else but watch him study during the length of his rotation. Tseng shrugged and then they sat and talked about Rufus' work - papers on language and history and what could have happened if Corel hadn't expanded so quickly so soon, or if Kalm's mayor had chosen to open up the township instead of closing it off to potential investment.
It'd almost been a tacit agreement: I'll believe in you if you believe in me. Neither of them reported their friendship to either of their superiors; like all other relations in Shinra, they kept it under the table, secret and safe.
VI
When Reno came to know Rufus he slowly put the picture of things together. Yeah, the kid was smart, real smart - and beginning to turn into a bit of a looker, too. 16 years old and the baby fat had practically fallen off of him. Inspired by you-know-who he'd gone and done the thing with the gyms and the firing ranges and got himself a sort of cat-dog-monster in-bred with senseless dedication and sharp, sharp teeth. Nice.
Rufus didn't look like a kid anymore, that was for sure. Reno'd never been the sort to get assigned babysitting duty, but it came along once every while, and every time it'd be, "Where's Tseng?" Over the years it'd become a little less starry-eyed and a little bit more purposeful, Rufus' voice starting to break and the sharp kind of edge akin to Plate-dwellers everywhere entering his register.
'Not here, kiddo,' Reno would always reply, and watch as Rufus nodded and went off into a corner and kept very quiet the rest of the night.
Flipside, Tseng was very noble about it. Reno knew because Tseng always came into the office so early on the mornings after his sessions with the princeling that he suspected that the man never went home at all. There'd be a tightness around the edges of his eyes, a kind of agony of self-restraint. So noble. Only an Wutainese would have those kinds of considerations. Is he too young, and etcetera. Reno would take advantage of those moments; pull Tseng into a corner, have a quiet screw, everyone feeling better after the end of it. But Tseng's heart wasn't in it, not for a very long while.
VII
One thing immigrants always took some time to learn was that men from Midgar really did have very, very few inhibitions. Morals. Pangs of conscience. Call it whatever you want. The city stank of advancement, but in a lot of ways it was just another post-apocalyptic trash heap of technology: rich were rich and the poor were poor, and everyone just scavenged around on the streets like rats. No such thing as a no-kill zone. No DMZ.
Tseng wasn't an immigrant anymore, per say, but he still had a couple of blind spots, even going in late. That was one man that never expected Veld to go off with his family until the sheer evidence of it stared him in the face. Veld? Defect? The word probably hadn't even been in Tseng's dictionary, even if he'd understood it and seen it happen before. Same thing with Shinra the second. Tseng didn't quite keep his eye on Rufus as the boy grew up - and when he had grown up and got tired of Daddy Dearest's dominion and brought in a tonne of batshit crazy AVALANCHE soldiers and a crapbucket of betrayal with him, all Tseng could do for a moment was stand there like a little idiot and gape.
Then Tseng got really angry, and wasn't that a sight worth seeing.
Mmm, that totally sucked. 8D Hopefully something less pathetic and drabble-like will come when I get back from abroad. Until then, I'll be gone from now till around the 6th of June. Bye bye!
Looks like I won't/don't have time to write out a full Reno/Tseng/Rufus story (yet), so I'm contenting myself with mashing out a few hundred unconnected words and hoping that inspiration will hit me for this (and the thousand other things I owe various challenges) when I get back home.
I
It became, at some point, distinctly irritating. To the travelled, the untravelled must always seem ignorant: worse, then, that it was Rufus Shinra, who could be hailed as not only ignorant but also ignoble. The man - he'd grown to be a man, one supposed - had come into his own after losing none of his stubborn chamber-pet sense of entitlement. There was a time he'd have done anything, for Rufus; their being kindred spirits, after all, under the firm hand of Rufus' father.
It took far less time for Rufus to ascend than it took Tseng; the apple falls not far from the tree. Youthful anger gave way to adolescent rage gave way to a young man well-honed by the fires of war and social intrigue. There was probably not a selfless bone left in Rufus' body, and it was even more likely that the man didn't care.
II
When had he changed? Maybe the better question would have been when had he not. There were books written on the like: some men become great, some men are born into greatness, so on and so forth. By the time he'd turned 14 the abbreviated world that his father'd presented to him had become too small: there were larger things afoot, and Rufus had inherited his family name in all senses of the word. Some things you just knew, and his father could've hidden him in all the classes, trips and socials that he wanted and that still wouldn't have altered the course of what Rufus had come to call his destiny.
When chance knocked on his door, he took it well in hand. When he'd turned 14, they assigned him his first Turk, and that had only been the beginning.
III
Some guys were meant to do big things in life; they were more or less unable to be anything else. Instinct'd tell them that they couldn't slack off, that they couldn't let their guard down, that disobeying the rules or letting other people walk over them weren't allowed to happen. Tseng was one of those men; Reno could see it and Reno knew it from the outset.
When you were not really interested in going anywhere, your life was a lot easier: you could kick back and watch, as it were, from the sidelines. People running around, kicking other people and backstabbing each other and playing the great big Shinra game. Tseng didn't so much play as he worked: worked his way through it, all the loaded dice and the stacked hands, because Veld'd trained him up to the job, and Tseng couldn't let himself or his mentor down - not after coming here over, what, a few thousand miles of bad terrain and a couple of years just learning how to speak the damn language.
IV
Other people wanted to do big things. There was a difference. Hair's breadth, yeah, especially when it came down to talent and skill, but a difference nonetheless. Tseng probably didn't want to end up where he ended up at the end of all things: between the rock of abandoning Wutai and the hard place of entertaining Shinra. Probably never wanted to become a Director, even if a hundred other people would have cut off their right arm to be where he was. Guy was an unlucky case of right man in the wrong place.
Rufus, on the other hand, was another thing all together. Wrong man in the right place, you might say, if you were brave enough. Hundred percent fucked up ambition, zero percent inhibition. By the time he took over the "Electric Company" his father and his father before him had already done close to everything there was to do: space research? Yeah. Underwater development? Some might say. Weapons engineering? In every possible way - human, machine, monster. Civil expansion? The company might as well be a fucking imperium all on its own. What else was there left to do?
Got to hand it to the guy. Rufus found something to do, all right. Take over the fucking world.
V
When they first met Rufus was barely tall enough to look Tseng in the eye, and Tseng was newly benevolent, having been bestowed the gift of hierarchy. Things had been moving along slowly; the way they'd always moved along, or so it seemed. The Science department had its feuds, Weapons had their small breakthroughs, the Army trained their men. The most interesting thing that happened was SOLDIER; that and the small matter of the War with Wutai.
Small matter, to Shinra. Tseng had been angry, for a while, and then he'd been confused, and then he'd given up thinking about loyalty and loyalties, and gone back to Veld's advice of concentrating on the matter at hand. He shook Rufus' hand and said nothing when he received an enquiring look - the young Shinra stared at the mark on his forehead, the colour of his hair, but said nothing. He invited Tseng to stand at ease, since the Turk'd be doing nothing else but watch him study during the length of his rotation. Tseng shrugged and then they sat and talked about Rufus' work - papers on language and history and what could have happened if Corel hadn't expanded so quickly so soon, or if Kalm's mayor had chosen to open up the township instead of closing it off to potential investment.
It'd almost been a tacit agreement: I'll believe in you if you believe in me. Neither of them reported their friendship to either of their superiors; like all other relations in Shinra, they kept it under the table, secret and safe.
VI
When Reno came to know Rufus he slowly put the picture of things together. Yeah, the kid was smart, real smart - and beginning to turn into a bit of a looker, too. 16 years old and the baby fat had practically fallen off of him. Inspired by you-know-who he'd gone and done the thing with the gyms and the firing ranges and got himself a sort of cat-dog-monster in-bred with senseless dedication and sharp, sharp teeth. Nice.
Rufus didn't look like a kid anymore, that was for sure. Reno'd never been the sort to get assigned babysitting duty, but it came along once every while, and every time it'd be, "Where's Tseng?" Over the years it'd become a little less starry-eyed and a little bit more purposeful, Rufus' voice starting to break and the sharp kind of edge akin to Plate-dwellers everywhere entering his register.
'Not here, kiddo,' Reno would always reply, and watch as Rufus nodded and went off into a corner and kept very quiet the rest of the night.
Flipside, Tseng was very noble about it. Reno knew because Tseng always came into the office so early on the mornings after his sessions with the princeling that he suspected that the man never went home at all. There'd be a tightness around the edges of his eyes, a kind of agony of self-restraint. So noble. Only an Wutainese would have those kinds of considerations. Is he too young, and etcetera. Reno would take advantage of those moments; pull Tseng into a corner, have a quiet screw, everyone feeling better after the end of it. But Tseng's heart wasn't in it, not for a very long while.
VII
One thing immigrants always took some time to learn was that men from Midgar really did have very, very few inhibitions. Morals. Pangs of conscience. Call it whatever you want. The city stank of advancement, but in a lot of ways it was just another post-apocalyptic trash heap of technology: rich were rich and the poor were poor, and everyone just scavenged around on the streets like rats. No such thing as a no-kill zone. No DMZ.
Tseng wasn't an immigrant anymore, per say, but he still had a couple of blind spots, even going in late. That was one man that never expected Veld to go off with his family until the sheer evidence of it stared him in the face. Veld? Defect? The word probably hadn't even been in Tseng's dictionary, even if he'd understood it and seen it happen before. Same thing with Shinra the second. Tseng didn't quite keep his eye on Rufus as the boy grew up - and when he had grown up and got tired of Daddy Dearest's dominion and brought in a tonne of batshit crazy AVALANCHE soldiers and a crapbucket of betrayal with him, all Tseng could do for a moment was stand there like a little idiot and gape.
Then Tseng got really angry, and wasn't that a sight worth seeing.
Mmm, that totally sucked. 8D Hopefully something less pathetic and drabble-like will come when I get back from abroad. Until then, I'll be gone from now till around the 6th of June. Bye bye!
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(And that was freaking awesome. Like, my god, awesome. I love your narrator's voice to bits and pieces.)