-Sweet Loyalty-
-A 'Final Fantasy VII' request-
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Before We Begin: This is a request by ravanstrawberry, who asked for her OC Heavyn to be written with Reno. I hope I've done her justice!
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Despite the chilly winds whipping at the exposed skin of all those who walked the streets at three in the afternoon, the 'Little Sugar' bakery was as warm as the ovens that produced the astounding number of freshly-baked sweet foods every day. The owner was a middle-aged man named Eric, and together with his wife Summer and daughter Heavyn managed the bakery and the vast amount of customers that walked through the doors every day. Summer was in charge of serving and managing the profit of the bakery, Eric baked the majority of the food and Heavyn made the decadent sweets that had everyone coming back for more. She sometimes helped with serving, but her passion was in her treats.
"Here you are young man, fresh out of the oven! I hope you enjoy it!"
"Thank you, miss!" The mother paid for the chocolate muffin and left the bakery, her son busy stuffing his face with said muffin and smearing warm chocolate cake all over his mouth. Laughing to herself, Heavyn grabbed a yellow cloth and began wiping the glass protecting the display clean of fingerprints and the odd saliva trail. The bakery had finally fallen into a lull, which meant that the workers could clean it up a bit before it closed for the night.
"Heavyn, come back here for a minute!"
"Coming, Dad!" Throwing the cloth over her shoulder the seventeen-year-old disappeared into the kitchen behind the large bread shelves, where her father shook a whisk at her.
"Did you use the large whisk earlier?" he asked. Heavyn's pointed ears wilted slightly.
"No, Dad. I can't reach it to use it." she replied, her green-grey eyes shining with honesty. Eric smiled at his daughter and flicked his floured hand at her, spraying her face with white dust. Most of it settled in her hair and on her ears, but some of it managed to dust her black T-shirt and make it look slightly older.
"That's alright then, sweetie. Go back and help your mother take out the trash; I can finish up out front." he said. Behind Heavyn, a fluffy canine tail wagged fast as she dashed out of the kitchen and toward the front of the bakery, where Summer was tying up the last of several large black rubbish bags.
"Phew, that should do it," she said, looking up as Heavyn approached, "Excellent, I could use the extra help."
"Sure thing, Mom." said the canine girl, picking up two of the bags and following her mother outside through a side door. A large skip sat nearest the door, and all the bags the women held went straight into it.
"Heavyn, can you take the rest of those bags out to the skip for me please? I need to balance the till." Summer leaned down and kissed her daughter on the crown of her head and ran to the front of the shop, where she promptly opened the register and began to count the Gil inside without touching it. Heavyn shrugged at her mother's antics and picked up two more rubbish bags, trekking outside with them. As she threw the bags inside the skip her ears twitched slightly, the sounds of heavy thumps and grunts filtering through the cold wind.
"I thought this was a nice neighbourhood..." she said to herself, going back inside, "Are there gangs around here?"
"Do you mean in Edge or in this neighbourhood? Because if you mean the first one, then I'd have to say yes." replied Eric, poking his head around the corner into the bakery, "Why do you ask that, Heavyn?"
"Just...thought I heard something..." she replied, picking up more of the bags and going outside to throw them into the skip. The thumping she heard came louder now, the occasional curse or loud yell being thrown in for good measure. Going back inside again, all three flinched as they heard a loud smack outside their bakery, near the skip where Heavyn had been only a few minutes earlier.
"Heavyn, go and see what that is for us." Summer said, indicating the Gil she held in her hands. Her ears drooped a little, Heavyn nodded at her mother and picked up the last two rubbish bags and crept outside throwing the bags into the skip.
"Huh?" Looking over the side of the skip, green-grey eyes noticed the rather large dent in the metal of the large bin, the dent looking human-shaped. Tail wagging a little, the seventeen-year-old tiptoed around the skip to see what had caused the dent when she suddenly gasped.
There was a man lying on the ground behind the bakery, and he looked like he was dead.
"Oh Gaia..." A muffled groan escaped the man in front of her, and Heavyn watched as he slowly pushed himself into a sitting position against the wall of the bakery and let out a breath, bruises, cuts and scrapes littering what she could see of his skin. One of his eyes sported a brilliant black eye, the lids closed shut and deep purple. His bright red hair lay tangled about his shoulders, having escaped the ponytail they were pulled in moments earlier.
"Sorry about that..." he grumbled, letting his head loll to the side, "Bit of a nasty fight, that one."
"Heavyn, who's that?" Eric appeared at the door to the bakery, his eyes looking straight at his daughter. Heavyn pointed to the man.
"That was the smack, Dad; he hit the side of the skip hard enough to put a dent in it." she replied. The man weakly raised a hand to the owner.
"Hey Eric." he said. The baker immediately gave the man his full attention.
"Reno?" he asked.
"You know this man?" Heavyn asked.
"Yes Heavyn, I do. Reno and I often see each other when I'm out collecting orders for the bakery." Reno kept his mouth shut and looked down at his left arm, where a rather nasty gash the length of a bread knife sat on his forearm. He was lucky that the cut wasn't of a vein or an artery, because if that was the case he would've been in real trouble.
Heavyn was the first to snap out of her daze. "Dad, he's bleeding! Let's get him inside so we can treat his wounds." she said, rushing forward and helping the redhead to his feet. Reno leant onto the seventeen-year-old, being careful not to crush her with his body despite his skinny appearance.
"Alright then." Eric held the door open as the two carefully ambled into the bakery and then through a back door into the connected living room of their house. Setting him on the couch, Heavyn dashed off to retrieve their first-aid kit, finding one in the pantry; the larger first-aid kit wasn't in the bathroom where it was normally kept. Returning to the living room, her tail and ears immediately drooped to rest still when her green-grey eyes spotted the item on the couch beside the long rod.
It was his ID badge. Specifically, his Shinra ID badge.
"Shinra..." she hissed, her mouth opening a little to reveal two canine-like incisors, "Devils, the whole lot of them."
"Thanks for your vote of confidence." Reno's voice held a trace of sadness, but he passed it off and took the first-aid kit from her frozen hands, opening it and pulling out some saline, cotton balls and bandages.
"Heavyn, we're leaving now!" called her father from somewhere in the back of the house. Green-grey eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.
"What?" she called back.
"Did you forget your mother and I had that business dinner tonight with a potential permanent delivery?" Eric clicked his tongue, "We've been telling you for weeks."
"Well...no, but I-"
"Then it's settled. See you in a few hours!" The door closed, and Heavyn fought the urge to scream to the heavens.
=^w^=
"Hey princess, want to give me a hand?"
"Give yourself a hand. And where do you get off calling me a princess?"
"You're a pretty girl. Hence the endearment."
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly what someone would look for in a girl." Heavyn reached up to her ears and gave them a gentle tug, emphasising her point to the redhead sitting on the other side of the couch to her. Reno shrugged and snipped the length of bandage dangling from his hand and tucked the end underneath the wrappings, moving his wrist in a circle to check that his hand injury hadn't stretched further. Most of his bruises and cuts had relatively healed, but there were still a few stubborn areas that refused to heal.
Some days he thanked the Lifestream that he had naturally fast healing.
"You have no confidence in yourself," he said, waving off the seventeen-year-old's comment, "You remind me of someone I know." Heavyn stopped glaring holes into the couch and looked up at the Turk, green-grey eyes alight with confusion.
"Were they a victim of Shinra too?" she asked quietly. Reno kept quiet and watched as Heavyn began to rock in her spot slightly, her eyes suddenly glued to her feet.
"They used animal genetics to try and create a superhuman...I'm one of the failed experiments that lived...one of the lucky ones..." Tears gathered in the corners of the girl's eyes as she fought back memories of injections and scalpels breaking her skin and making her bleed, the crimson life force dripping to the pristine white floors with no indication of being stemmed. Reno leaned back in the couch and looked at the canine girl, his ears pricked; did he just hear a THUMP?
"I heard about that project...reminds me of another project they did a few years ago involving the Wutaiian people..." Heavyn looked up at the redhead, who was staring distantly at the wall, "So in answer to your earlier question, yes, the person you remind me of was a victim of Shinra."
"Really?"
Reno nodded. "There are more people than you think who are taken advantage of by the company, but there is only a minority of people like yourself who have seen what happened behind the scenes." He inclined his head to the doorway leading to the hall, "Is your house secure?"
"What do you mean?" CRASH. THUMP. "What was that?"
"Stay here, Heavyn." As the redhead stood up, Heavyn's mood changed from angry to hyperactive-worried, and she grabbed Reno's good hand.
"What are you doing?" she hissed, fangs unconsciously bared, "You don't know what's up there!"
"I'd rather find out up there than have you killed; your father would kill me." Gently taking his hand back, Reno clipped his badge to his belt loop and picked up his EMR, walking through the hallway door and up the stairs quietly. Heavyn stayed still for a few moments before making up her mind to follow the Turk to the back of her house and see what the commotion was.
It was her house; she had rights!
A loud CRASH echoed above her, and she only had a few seconds to step back as a man in black was thrown down the stairs to the upstairs rooms, the redhead appearing moments later with a wild expression on his face.
"Thought I heard something..." he growled, looking at his bandaged hand, "All my work gone to waste..." The man on the floor slowly got to his feet and let his eyes fall on the canine girl, reaching a hand out and grabbing her ankle. Heavyn let out a shriek and used her other foot to kick at the man's face and arm in an effort to get him to let her go, but his grip was too strong. She could feel the skin of her ankle bruising.
Something silver sailed past her eyes, and she looked up at Reno. "That should do it." he said, shouldering his rod. The man's hand suddenly went slack and he slumped against the floor, twitching with the jolt he'd received. Lifting her sore ankle, Heavyn gave it a twist but winced as pain shot through her foot and calf; that grip sure was strong...
"Allow me, princess." Reno's good hand was under her back in seconds and he escorted her back to the couch in the living room, the first-aid kit still open on the coffee table.
"I'm surprised you didn't hear anything," he said as he extracted another roll of bandages, "He was pretty loud."
"When they did their experiments on me they didn't enhance my senses to fit into those of a wolf; I'm still human, I just have extra features," Heavyn replied, mesmerised by his care, "What was that man doing?"
The Turk shrugged. "Looked like a run-of-the-mill theft to me. He was carrying some pretty nice bling on him that didn't exactly look like it belonged to someone like him," The seventeen-year-old giggled, "I've already contacted my boss, and he's sending someone to pick him up."
"So he'll be gone before my parents get home?"
"If that's what it takes to make you feel better about Shinra. How's that?" Reno lifted her foot slightly to show the canine girl the job he'd done on her ankle. He'd strapped it tightly, but not too tight that she'd lose her toes. Heavyn wiggled her toes about a little and nodded at him.
"It feels good. Thank you, Reno." she said. Reno grinned.
"Any time, princess. You just keep off that foot for a while and we'll see how we go." Wincing, the redhead levered himself back onto the couch and began staring at the wall again. Heavyn stared at him for a few moments before opening her mouth.
"Your dad hired me to keep an eye on security at the bakery," Green-grey eyes widened; how did he... "In return I get samplers of your newest creations."
"So that's where they keep disappearing to..." The canine girl stood up, "Did you like the mango pavlova?"
"I'm a sweet tooth; I love 'em all." Giggling, Heavyn dashed as best she could into the kitchen, feeling a whole lot better about herself.
'Maybe I've been holding onto my grudges for too long,' she thought as she pulled various kitchen equipment out of various cupboards, 'Reno saved me from a robber who nearly broke my ankle and he works for Shinra...I guess it's okay to be wrong about some things.'
=^w^=
As Eric and Summer pulled into their driveway, both of them raised an eyebrow at the large truck that pulled away from the curb. Shrugging it off, they let themselves out of the car then into their house, where they spied Heavyn on the floor, her tail wagging and her laughter ringing about the living room. They also spotted Reno on the couch, his hand and arm bandaged and laughing also.
"I take it you two had fun?" asked the baker. Heavyn took a breath and collected herself first.
"Hi Dad, Hi Mom. Yeah, it's been really quiet while you were gone," she replied, "Well, unless you count Reno apprehending a thief and helping me fix my ankle." She held up her bandaged ankle, where both mother and father could see bruises the size of fingerprints poking out over the top of the white cloth.
"Are you alright, Reno?" asked Summer.
"I'm grand, ma'am. Sorry about the truck, but you know some thieves; they just refuse to come quietly." he replied, tipping an invisible hat, "Well, I should get going. Don't want to overstay my welcome." He got to his feet and began heading for the door, but weight on his good hand stopped him.
"Will you come back and say hello every so often?" asked Heavyn, her tail wagging.
Reno petted her on the head. "As often as you want me to. And as often as my boss allows; he secretly likes your banana bread." Heayvn grinned and latched onto the Turk's thin waist in a hug before stepping back to stand beside her parents.
As Reno closed the door behind him, Eric looked at his daughter. "So you know why he was in the area, then?" he asked.
"Yep," replied the canine girl, "but I don't care anymore. It's not the job that makes you who you are, it's who you are when you're doing your job." Fangs bared, Heavyn continued to grin even as she offered around chocolate muffins to her mother and father, ignoring the large smear of chocolate on her own cheek; she really hoped Reno came back soon.
She had a kitchen war to win...
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DISCLAIMER: The disclaimer applies to the characters and settings of the 'Final Fantasy VII' series – SquareEnix – the character of Heavyn – ravanstrawberry – and Heavyn's parents Eric and Summer – me.