DISCLAIMER I:
I do not own this game. I am not affiliated with SquareEnix in any way, and make no money from this production.
DISCLAIMER VII:
I have never played FFVII. What I know comes from countless hours of research. The only direct contact I have had with the game is watching Advent Children; therefore if you find a flaw, tell me. Please. I will have no idea without your help.
A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR:
This fanfic is sponsored by Glidden brand paint. With its wide range of colors and applications it's perfect for adding color to any facet of your life, from break rooms to cockpits. Glidden Gets You Going.
"…Minerva damn it."
A clunk, a flop, and then a distinctly feminine sigh.
"Reno, you really shouldn't—"
"I shouldn't get so worked up? Right? Well la dee frikkin' da for you Elena. You're not the one who had his dreams and hopes dashed against the rocks. Frikkin' a…"
Elena sighed. Her favorite sappy chick flicks didn't contain such bad acting… "I thought your "hopes and dreams" included that Lockheart girl and a jar of cinnamon flavored—"
"Just my dreams. My hopes all rest in that big ole bird on the roof…" He gave another long, breathy sigh and slumped forward over the table, his bangs obscuring the halfhearted glare he was giving his coffee. Elena rolled her eyes.
"Just because the President rejected your idea—"
"My idea?! It was more than an idea! It was a vision! A dream!"
"A pipe dream," Tseng muttered. Reno glared at him.
"It was just a paint job," Rude shrugged. "Let it go."
"Let it go? But I already bought the paint! And I made the stencils too…" He flexed his hands experimentally. They'd been sore all the time since he'd gotten this plan, what with all the drawing he'd had to do, all the painstaking punching and tracing and cutting… all for the President to say, sorry, not this quarter.
"We're in a recession, you know," he'd said prudently. "We have no resources to put toward such… frivolities…"
Reno had done his best not to take the childish route and storm out. Instead, he'd walked calmly out of the room and put his fist through the nearest wall. About a two-meter difference, but it was something.
Lately, with boredom setting in as nobody came up warranting Shin-Ra's action, Reno had become bored. Bored stiff. Bored to tears. And being trapped in the building had been no help: every time he'd complained about being bored, Tseng had given him another serving of paperwork. It had not been a pleasant few weeks, to say the least.
And to occupy his time, he'd taken to working on the company helicopter.
It had taken him a while to learn the thing inside and out, sure—he was okay in the cockpit and not too bad on the engine by the time he'd finished out a few days with the mechanics division. And it was something besides paperwork: it was a living, breathing, moving kind of thing to do, which suited Reno perfectly.
In the space of a week he'd learned the parts of the engine, identified what was up inside there along with it, accidentally opened the coolant's overflow tank and spent the next ten minutes working with his eyes overflowing and a loose bandage wrapped around some nasty burns, exercised a socket wrench, and many other things that pleased him well, because they didn't require much reasoning on the job and sounded very cool to recount.
He'd fixed damage, tuned up, flushed the radiator, changed the oil… a little help and instruction, yeah, but mostly his own blood, sweat and tears. Mainly blood and tears except for that really hot Monday last week. And not only that he'd detailed, washed, vacuumed and scrubbed.
At the end of it all, after it was all nice and sparkly clean, he'd stood back with a nod and a smile… and begun dreaming of the perfect paint job.
Finally, he'd settled on flames (of course) with the logo on each door, a base color of deep cobalt that faded down to indigo and would really bring out the fiery colors. After buying the paint, building the stencil, and carting it all up to Rufus to propose, he'd been quite cleanly and immediately shot down.
And though it made him mad more than anything, made him furious, made him livid, it also stung… deep and far, as if he'd failed in a mission, as if his target had thrown him onto his back and assassinated him. Reno had put his fist through the wall, as stated, and then proceeded to bring his bad mood down to the break room and flop into his chair, wishing his coffee would suddenly burst into flames like a little, white Rufus effigy.
When fire began to lick out of his mug and singe the porcelain, Tseng groaned and dumped his own coffee over Reno's head.
"I hate you sometimes."
"Mmm," Tseng muttered, setting his cup aside and going back to the paperwork he'd brought with him. Reno sighed and stood. This wasn't helping him at all. He wanted to get even , damn it, and he wanted to get even quick.
However, this presented a problem.
He was trying to get even with his boss.
"Maybe I could just push him down the stairs," he mused. "Nah…" Too easy, too conspicuous and too risky. No, he needed a way to get back at Rufus that would allow him to keep his job. Maybe he could poison the coffee?
"Nah," he muttered again, sighing as he left the building and walked out into the rain. Also too risky, and Rufus didn't necessarily deserve to die. He paused on the edge of the street, thinking.
Maybe the best revenge really would be living well? He could sneak in and do the painting at night, and nobody would blame him when they saw how great it looked. Yeah… yeah, that would be perfect!
Reno nodded to himself and turned back on his heel, striding into the building and gathering his equipment, carting it up to the roof and then going back to his desk. For the rest of the day he finished out his paperwork, straightened his office, and generally made himself look like the perfect angel of the building. After all, it couldn't hurt.
That night, he slipped into the building as quietly as he'd ever done in his life, and that was saying something since he usually didn't bother. He left the elevator alone, preferring the stairs, and quickly set up his equipment and paints and got to work, first with the base coat and then with the flames.
A brush application of silver metalflake on the lines where he'd laid thin tape to keep the flames covered in plastic trash bags was the finishing touch; that same metalflake lined the edges of the Shin-Ra logo on each door, just as he'd envisioned. Reno stood back with a grin when he was finished and did the only thing he knew to christen it: he pulled a sparkler from his pocket, walked around to the nose and lit it, marveling at the way the flying sparks reflected in the shiny new paint.
"It's perfect," he whispered. "It's flawless…and I did it!" It was almost enough to make him want to turn a cartwheel and in the end that's what he did; he cartwheeled right off the roof, caught himself, climbed back up, and did it once more before quickly picking up his things and rushing home, diving into bed with a grin still plastered on his face.
"It's perfect," he murmured softly, his eyes only half-open. "It's flawless… and…"
Bleat! Bleat! Bleat!
Reno jumped and sat up, blinking. "…and it took me all night? Crap…"
He sighed and jerked on a new set of clothes, the rushed out the door to work. Arriving just in time he settled down at his desk with a nervous sigh, grabbing his first sheet of paperwork for the day and staring down at it with a grin. Just as he raised his pen, though, the door opened. Reno blinked.
"Do you have a moment?"
"Uh, y-yeah…" He stood as Rufus walked in, Reeve trailing behind him, and faced Reno.
"Sit down, please. Reno, about your proposition yesterday…"
He felt himself break into a cold sweat. Surely this was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare!
"The President came to me about it," Reeve put in. "He said he wondered if he'd been a bit too… quick, in telling you no. And after looking at your schematics I had to agree. We have a little extra in the budget, even with this recession, so he's approved your idea after all and paid for the—"
"I can tell him myself, Reeve." Rufus held out a stack of paperwork. "As soon as you fill all this out, you can get right to work, provided the rest of your duties are cleared for the day. Alright?"
Reno nodded dumbly, taking the paperwork from him and watching as the door swung shut. After a few minutes, he calmly got up and walked out of his office, into the stairwell, and began a fistfight with the wall.
"Reno?"
"Mmmhm."
"Why are you out here? Oh, your hands—they're bleeding! Reno, you should be happy about this! What's the matter with you anyway? Reno, can you hear me? Reno?"
Silence. Elena turned and walked back out. "Sir, he's not moving…"
"Leave him alone," Tseng muttered, not having heard the joyous news. "He's probably just contemplating his revenge."