the hazards of temping
Tseng had long since decided that the direct ideological predecessor to the corporation had been the torture chamber. So far, in the entire length of his employment at Shinra, nothing had happened to disabuse him of this notion.
Particularly not this. "Trainee?" he repeated politely, still half-hoping that perhaps that word had some other meaning in Heidegger's vocabulary that his own did not include. Heidegger smirked in a way that his beard mostly obscured, but that nonetheless shattered Tseng's hopes almost at once.
"That's right. The Turks could stand to expand. Maybe hire somebody who can do his job worth a damn for a change." This with a sneer at Reno, and Tseng let his lips go thin. He couldn't help waiting for the inevitable hammer to fall, too, but Reno just stuck a cigarette between his lips and didn't say a thing. Tseng made a mental note to check for signs of Armageddon the next time he was outside. Lakes of fire and blood might figure big. For his part, Heidegger looked faintly put out, but continued all the same. "Pick whoever you want, but try to stay inside the company. I can get you a list of names from Peace Preservation -- "
"I'm sure that won't be necessary." That was a little more of a cut-off than Heidegger would have liked, but Tseng could think of quite a few bodily functions he'd just as soon perform on what Heidegger would have liked right now. The last crop Heidegger had foisted on him from Peace Preservation was still quite clear in his memory: clever, green, professional, honest corpses.
"If you say so. And you can foster them, show them the ropes, and make a Turk out of them." The huge man rocked back on his heels, looking like they could start telling him how it was the best idea they'd ever heard any time now.
"D'we get seven-fifty an hour and whatever we want outta the fridge, too?" Reno said into his cigarette, shaking out the match he'd been holding to the other end of it. Heidegger purpled.
"Reno," Tseng said, in a quiet, warning tone. "...I believe nine dollars is the going rate."
Reno snorted. "Fucking inflation."
"Sir, it's not that we don't appreciate your attempts to improve the Department of Administrative Research," Tseng said just before Heidegger could get his mouth all the way open. "I'm just not certain that it would be helpful for us to work from the ground up on a new member with no practical combat experience -- "
"Which is why I offered you a list of names from Peace Preservation -- "
"Sir, with all due respect, soldiers from Peace Preservation are experienced in a type of combat that would serve them very poorly as members of the Turks. As I would have thought prior experience had taught us."
Heidegger opened and shut his mouth a few times, and then settled into a sullen scowl. With his single eyebrow it was really a quite horrifying expression. "This comes from upstairs, Tseng, so it's no point giving me shit. Find somebody, and deal with it." He jabbed a bratwurst finger in Reno's direction. "And if that piece of crap smarts off to me one more time, I'm gonna haul him straight through one of my goddamn windows. You see if I don't."
No Armageddon today, apparently, because Reno was already starting to say something -- if it was anything along the lines of 'I'd like to see you try' Tseng would feel obligated to kill Reno himself, and as that was almost certainly what it was, he'd have to shut Reno up before it came out. "Reno," Tseng said, without even looking at him.
The real warning tone. Reno shut up.
"Thank you, sir," Tseng said. You couldn't win them all, but you could always act like you had. "I'll see to it as soon as possible."
And he and Heidegger stared at each other for a minute longer, and then Tseng grabbed Reno's shoulder in a murder grip and dragged him out of the office.
---
She didn't seem to be conscious of how hard she was kneading her purse in her hands; it was a cheap knockoff of one of the tasteful miniatures rich women had been carrying around the upper plate lately, not up to the strain. Tseng hoped for its sake there was nothing breakable in there.
"You're my ten o'clock, then?" he inquired from the door to the inner office, and she jumped off the chair like it had a current run through it. Actually, knowing Reno, that as a literal occurrence wouldn't have surprised him in the slightest.
"Y-yes -- my name is Elena. Sir. You're Mr., ah, Mr. Tseng?" She smoothed her skirt anxiously; the purse continued to suffer. Tseng shut the door behind him.
"Hardly. Tseng is sufficient and far less ridiculous." The girl cringed, and he took the opportunity to size her up. Even smaller than Reno, no muscle tone to speak of -- the mock turtleneck left her arms bare, and they were like twigs. Hair was reasonable. Too much jewelry, but that could be said for Rude. "You can put your things in the desk; the bottom drawer locks. Are you ready to start right away?"
Elena nodded, making a brave try at a smile with her tight glossed lips. She kept talking while she crouched down to stow her purse in the drawer, but it seemed to be calming her. "Yes, sir -- although, I'm sorry, the email wasn't really clear..."
"We'll review your responsibilities, I assure you. What can you do?"
That seemed to balk her, and she stood up again with a slight frown, pushing her hair back behind her ear again. "Um... 98 words per minute, filing, copying... I've been trained on the phone system, although I've never actually -- "
But he was waving his hand, and it stopped her. "That's not really what I had in mind. More to the point -- can you drive?"
"Y-yes..."
"Fly a helicopter? Light plane? Commercial jet? No? A submarine?"
"I -- I'm, I'm sorry, I don't -- "
"Don't be sorry, just be honest. Any training in unarmed combat? Any whatsoever? It doesn't have to be serious. Even a self-defense class, or karate. Materia use? Demolitions?"
By now her eyes had reached a state of horrified hugeness he mostly knew from other contexts. "I thought you needed a secretary," she whispered.
Tseng shrugged. "We probably do. I can't remember the last time anyone answered a phone. But what I chose you for is your record at the firing range, which I might note is the most accurate and the most frequent, by a significant margin, in sub-management ShinRa employees. Congratulations. You're our trainee. Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
"My father lives in Kalm. He goes hunting, in the mountains." She sounded punch-drunk more than anything else now. "They... they keep those?"
"They keep everything." He surveyed her one more time, and then turned and headed for the hallway and the elevator without waiting to see if she would follow. If she wouldn't follow she was already lost. "Come on. I'll take you to the basement and we'll requisition you a weapon."
And he went; and she followed. And that was something.
---
The Turks had, essentially, three rooms to their name. The outer office, which was unmanned but nonetheless required to maintain some veneer of respectability, and did. The inner office, where the three used desks and one heretofore unused desk clustered in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, and which was distinctly unrespectable in appearance, perhaps oweing in large part to the tangle of switchboards and wires on one of the desks (Reno's), the liberal scattering of porn magazines and ashtrays (probably also Reno's), and the sort of obscene topiary garden Reno had spent painstaking months constructing on the unused desk from takeout boxes and paperwork he was supposed to file (why didn't he ever fire Reno again?). The peeling poster from some leading gay porn movie in recent memory with Heidegger's and Palmer's cut-out faces taped over the anonymous mugs of the actors -- and, much more disturbingly and less explicably, another cut-out face from an unflattering candid of the President over the submissive's groin -- probably didn't help, either. And the lounge, which was attached to the other side of the inner office, which was simultaneously the least respectable -- the wetbar, sleazy pimp couches, and mind-bogglingly huge plastic freezer bag of marijuana abandoned by the center table's ashtray were likely culprits -- and the most obviously well-loved. It was relatively clean, at least, and looked good for what it was and for its level of wear. Even the attached kitchenette wouldn't give a health inspector more than one mild aneurysm.
Tseng started by relocating the garden unceremoniously from desk to wastebasket with one long sweep of his arm. "This is your desk," he informed Elena, who was restraining her general air of horror with what he thought was fairly commendable dignity. "The computer works, or it did two years ago. You may want to call IT for an upgrade. Rude?" Rude looked up from desk, or at least Tseng thought he did; it could be he just lifted his head. Well, it all came out to about the same. "This is Elena. She's our trainee. When you get some time, I'd like you to teach her to fly a helicopter, and possibly how to fabricate some explosives."
Rude looked at Elena. Elena, to her credit, looked back at Rude. Rude nodded. So that was all right.
He'd just finished showing her the lounge when Reno came in the door from the outer office, he already had a cigarette in his mouth as he was crossing the threshold from non-smoking area to smoking area, and sometimes Tseng would swear his hands almost blurred when he did that. He could also swear that Reno was actually wearing approximately a third of the jacket of his suit, which had to be a new record. He spared one glance for Elena and snorted. "That the baby?"
"The term is 'trainee,' Reno." Reno snorted again, except this time it lit his cigarette, since he'd blurred again getting his lighter out. He kicked the door shut behind him.
"Elena, this is Reno," Tseng said, turning back to her. "Ignore him." Elena looked startled, then offered a sort of a weak smile, the kind that said she suspected she was being included in a joke she wasn't in on. Well, she'd learn. "Reno, Elena. Don't bite, she hasn't had her shots yet."
Reno wandered into the office, shedding his coat the rest of the way and tossing it wherever it happened to land. That turned out to be Rude's head, which he bore with patience and by wadding it up and throwing it right back at Reno. It bounced off and landed in a heap on the floor, and Reno turned on him with a brief wounded look. "Elena, huh?" He turned back, expressionless. "...Coffee?"
Elena blinked again. "Oh, I... no, thank you."
Reno rolled his eyes. "No. Coffee. Pot's in the kitchen, filters and grounds are in the cabinet. Fucking hell."
"Oh! I-I -- of course, I'll just -- "
Tseng caught her arm before she could get too far toward the lounge. "Elena." Not that his eyes didn't stay fixed on Reno. "Reno is being an asshole. You're a Turk now. Turks don't make coffee for each other. Is that understood?" He thought she nodded, but he didn't bother looking. "I don't think you should take his behavior personally, of course. He resents the creation of the position you're filling, as do I, for that matter. But his taking it out on you is not appropriate, and I think he can make his own damn coffee."
He'd say this for her: she knew when not to say anything. He and Reno kept looking at each other for a minute, and then Reno snorted and tossed his shoulders in half a shrug, and took his wander to its logical conclusion at his desk. Rude, already reabsorbed in whatever he'd been doing, kicked his coat to him.
Tseng turned back to Elena, and was glad to see she looked mostly all right with all this. "You're going to have to learn to deal with a great deal of adversity," he said. "We'll call this a learning experience."
"That's what your mom calls me too," Reno said comfortably, from where he had kicked back with his feet up on the desk. Rude made a small noise that could have indicated any number of things. Tseng chose to transcend and overcome.
"Get some rest," he told Elena instead. "Try some target practice with the Glock. I realize it's heavier than what you're used to, but it will benefit you to become accustomed to a semi-automatic; revolvers mean a lot of reloading, and that'll cause you trouble in a firefight." Elena's face bleached of some more color it didn't really have to lose, but she nodded anyway. "We'll see you on Monday."
He supposed he should have been grateful that Reno waited until the door was entirely closed, let alone held on to his lip a good thirty seconds afterward.
"Cute," he said, finally, when Tseng was sure he couldn't stand it any longer. "Whenever she hits puberty I'll teach her where the tampon goes."
"Is that necessary?"
"Yeah. Fuck. She ever even picked up a fucking gun before? Besides to dust under it?"
"She shoots better than you do, Reno."
"Rude's ass shoots better than I do. What's your point?"
"Just once, can we have a conversation that at no point involves your invoking Rude's ass?"
"That's funny, that's also something I'm sure I said to your mom last night -- "
"Reno, I'm not in the mood. Are you going to give her a hard time, or are you going to help me get her up to speed?"
"Depends. Which one you think's gonna get rid of her faster?"
"Reno -- "
Rude never precisely made a sound, at least not one that could be picked up within the normal human range of hearing. He didn't even move, to Tseng's perceptions at least, and those were better than most. But something in the atmosphere of the room definitely changed, or something on the spiritual plane, and it said Rude was about to say something, and Tseng would have asked a long time ago how he did that if it weren't that he was somehow unanxious to find out. Whatever it was, it was enough to shut both of them up and make them turn to look at him, and wait out the pregnant pause while Rude gathered his thoughts.
"I like her," Rude said finally, in his slow, rumbling voice.
And that was the end of the discussion.