She had been staring at the newspaper page for nearly an hour now, and nothing was appealing to her. Reno slid out the chair beside her and sat down. "Well? Anything?" he asked.
Rydia set her head down on the dining table and started bumping her forehead against it. "Why is this so difficult? I don't know what any of these things are asking!" She was sick of being cooped up in Reno's apartment day in and day out while he worked. Her stay in this strange place had been extended indefinitely since no new portals had appeared – not one rip in time for her to slip back through and away from this polluted city.
He patted her shoulder and wrenched the paper away from her. "Let's see…hmm. Well, most of these kind of things are going to require a resume with your application. Do you have one?"
She looked at him blankly. He seemed to forget more often than not that she wasn't exactly native to the neighborhood. "A what?"
"Resume, curriculum vitae, a listing of your education, skills, previous jobs…" Reno's face fell. "No, I suppose you wouldn't have one, would you?"
She sighed. "Well, how do I get one?"
Reno rose from the seat, grabbing his work computer from the bag near the door. He booted up the strange device, opening up a blank document for his typing. "Alright, first rule of thumb to these things is making sure they know how to reach you. So I'll put down your name and then this address and phone number. Good. Halfway there."
"Halfway?" she inquired with measured skepticism.
He bit his lip. "Well, maybe not halfway. Okay." He poised his fingers over the computer keys. "Education, starting with most recent?"
She stared at him.
"They don't have schools where you come from?"
Rydia leaned her head on her hand with an elbow on the table. Impolite, of course, but Reno was never one to check her on manners. "Not in the way you have schools."
Reno thought for a moment, and then his fingers began typing wildly. She was curious about what he was typing and moved from her seat to stand behind him, peering over his shoulder. "What in the world is a doctorate?"
He waved his hand. "They'll skip over this part. They only care what skills and stuff you bring to the job. I got a college degree, barely mind you, in sociology."
"What is that?"
"How should I know? I drank myself silly for four years and then stumbled in hungover for the Turks exam."
Rydia nodded, letting him type more details in. Whatever it meant, she apparently possessed a university degree in "History of magic and cultures." He'd decided to be cute and write in University of Mysidia, probably remembering the name from one of the stories she'd told him of her home world. He hit the enter key a few times, then added a new heading he titled Job History.
"Alright, job history?"
"I wasn't exactly employed in my vocation. We received some monetary rewards and treasures, but it was shared amongst the group."
"Well, what kind of title do you want?"
"Summoner?"
"That means nothing here," he told her. "Let's say…Summon Materia Tactical Specialist."
"What?"
He typed noisily, making dozens of spelling errors that turned her stomach. "It's the same thing. Anyhow, let's see…" Rydia raised an eyebrow as he added several lines beneath it. He cited her place of employment as Village of Baron, claiming that any place in Midgar looking to hire anyone wouldn't check up on a little town, even though she informed him that Baron was a rather large kingdom.
Responsible for the deployment and management of summon monsters on the battlefield. She couldn't disagree with that one entirely.
Worked as part of a team to recognize and extinguish threats to the company. She couldn't find fault with that either.
He then added a new job. "What were you to that parachute guy?"
"Parachute?"
Reno gestured spastically. "I don't know! The guy with the wife?"
"Oh, Cecil? You mean paladin, not parachute." Rydia was pleased to see that her world was just as confusing to Reno as his world was for her.
"Whatever."
"I was one of several companions to Cecil, why?"
Reno waved her off. "Administrative Assistant."
"What's that mean?"
"You filed papers for him, fetched him his morning coffee, scheduled his meetings."
Rydia laughed at the thought of being a servant for Cecil. "I've never done any of that. Cecil has people to do that."
Reno typed it in anyhow. "I don't think Summon Materia Tactical Specialist is going to really help you get any of those jobs," he informed her, gesturing to the newspaper once more. "Alright, we'll print up a few of these tomorrow, and you can bring them along to interviews."
She felt her stomach drop. "Interviews? Why would I have to interview? I was raised to be a summoner."
"Well," Reno teased her. "You weren't raised to be a Loss Prevention Team Member." His finger pointed to one of the ads.
She pulled the newspaper away and scanned the ad. "What does that mean anyway?"
Reno ran a hand through his scarlet hair, leaning back in his seat. "It's a fancy way of saying you get to beat the crap out of shoplifters."
"I don't think I want that job."
He snatched the paper back. "Yeah, you'd probably zap the hell out of them and get fired your first day. Let's see." His eyes moved quickly over the ads. "Here, I love this place. Let's call them."
"Midgar Pizza and Ribs?"
He nodded and pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. "Imagine the discounts!"
She ripped the phone away and tossed it on the table. "I'm not getting a job serving pizza just so you can eat more than you already do."
"Well, rent's due next week, darling, and I'd hate to have to kick your little green butt out in the street for not pulling your weight around here."
She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You wouldn't dare."
He sighed. "Yeah, it is nice having someone here to clean up all the time."
"I don't do that for you. I do that so I don't have to live in squalor."
Reno grinned, pulling her down into his lap. "You're a handful, you know that?" She nodded in agreement. "Alright, here. What about this one? You can even use me as a reference."
"Be part of the greatest company in the world, bar none," she read. "Are you looking for a dynamic and fast-paced work environment? Shinra Inc. is expanding its building service worker team and wants you to join us. Experience Midgar's greatest company by cleaning our world-class laboratories and offices. We offer excellent benefits, a competitive wage and company stock options. Be a winner, join Shinra Inc. today." She looked up from the newspaper. "Is that just a fancy way of saying servant?"
"Well, janitors aren't servants. You'd get paid, and besides, you don't mind mopping floors do you?"
"Can I see the pizza one again?"
He leaned past her and grabbed his phone from the desk. "Quiet a minute." She watched him dial a number and frowned as he struck up a conversation almost immediately. "Hey Darlo, it's Reno. You guys still hiring? You are? Great, I've got someone for you, a shoo-in. Tomorrow at nine? Sounds great, thanks man."
She slid off his lap. "I need to interview with this man to mop floors?"
Reno nodded. "Formality. Just wait til you deal with the old crones in human resources." He clicked a few things on his computer. "I'm emailing your resume to my buddy. He's on the hiring team for this one, the guy I just talked to."
Rydia sighed. She didn't get a choice at all? But she had a job interview that coming morning and needed sleep. She pulled him away from the computer and to the bedroom, dreading the coming day with every fiber of her being.
--
"So Rydia, where do you see yourself in the next five years?"
The man waited patiently while she gaped at him. What did a question like that have to do with washing windows and taking out the trash? "Uh…"
"You know," he tried helping her. "Goals for your life? Things like that?"
She thought hard. "Well, I've always wanted to open my own school, teach basic magic courses for children."
The man looked at her strangely. "I didn't realize that materia instruction was so difficult."
She turned as red as her boyfriend's hair. "I mean, you know, the um…the theory behind the magic stones…the materia, I mean."
The man wrote a lot of notes on his clipboard while she sat there stunned, her cheeks burning. This was a nightmare. Reno had been so wrong. Whoever he'd talked to on the phone was not the person who was interviewing her. The man had already grilled her about her non-existent doctorate degree and had moved on to her job history when she'd done nothing but mumble something about "Professor" Tellah.
"Okay, Rydia. What drew you in particular to Shinra Inc.?"
She bit her lip. "Well, my boyfriend works here…" That was clearly not the right answer as the man started writing copious notes. "And um…the ad made it sound like Shinra does a lot of good for the world and is uh…a really good place to work."
The man nodded. "Yeah, we provide power for lots of people. Don't listen to what those terrorist groups say, right?"
She smiled, her cheeks hurting with the effort. "Right." She wasn't an idiot – she'd read the charges about Shinra all but raping the planet of energy. And not to mention that Reno was employed to do gods knew what. Whatever it was, he got to carry a gun and an electrified nightstick of all things to do his work.
The questions dragged on, and she stumbled and stuttered over every answer. Not one question came up about washing floors, dusting offices or emptying trash bins. She wanted to keel over and die by the end of it. Finally, mercifully, the man rose from the seat and held out his hand. "Thanks Rydia. We'll let you know."
She shook the man's hand with her sweaty palm and nearly bolted from the room. By the time she got back to Reno's place, she was halfway through a nervous breakdown.
"So, how'd it go?" Reno asked casually, not seeming to notice how she was laying curled up in a ball on his living room floor.
"I'm never doing that ever again. Ever," she insisted.
He knelt down and rubbed her back. "I'm sure you did fine."
"It was awful. All those questions? You didn't tell me it was more like an interrogation than a conversation!"
Reno chuckled. "Aww, don't worry about it. Even if you totally bombed, Darlo owes me a favor. You'll get the job over the best floor scrubber between here and Wutai."
She sat up, sniffling a bit. "That's not really fair, is it?"
"It's the way the world works. It's who you know." He wrapped an arm around her and kissed the crown of her head. "And you just happen to know someone with a lot of pull around Shinra."
The phone on the table rang, and he stood up to go answer it. She listened to him laugh hysterically in lieu of any responses. Finally, he said a quick "Thanks. She'll be in tomorrow," before hanging up.
"What? What did he say?"
Reno grinned. "He said you were by far the worst candidate they'd ever had. He bet me 50 gil that a rabid, possessed chocobo could have done better. But yeah, you report to human resources at 8 tomorrow morning."
"Thank you, Reno," she mumbled quietly, feeling a thousand times worse. She'd be the laughing stock of the Shinra Inc. "Building Service Worker" team, and she hadn't even started yet.
He moved off to the bedroom with a grin. "I didn't want to spoil it, but you'll find out tomorrow officially. Anyhow, I'm having Darlo assign you to be my personal maid. If you think this apartment's gross, you should see the stuff that's growing in my desk drawer. You have a job, I get my office cleaned. Everybody wins."
Reno was already barricading himself in the bedroom as she sent a hail of lightning spells his way.