If one were to stop just outside a certain cozy middle-class home, wrapped tightly between two similar homes on either side and a small yard bespeckled with wildflowers, all covered in a dusting of fresh snow, one would perhaps overhear a series exasperated noises and guttural protestations followed by some paternal phrase such as, "I know you like the cold, but it doesn't like you nearly as much."

And if one were to wait long enough they would inevitably see a duo emerge from the front of the house, briefly exposing a warm interior decked with holly as they passed through the door.

This duo's first half was a teenage girl with her neck smothered in a thick brown-pink scarf and her normal vanilla jacket replaced with a thicker and fluffier version, though she still carried her parasol that she swung around idly as she walked.

The second half was a not quite middle-aged gentleman whose neck was similarly wrapped in a scarf, this one a light grey, his suit was also noticeably thicker than usual, but his cane was quite the same as usual except for a small, adorable charm hanging from the handle which depicted his walking partner with a broad smile on her face and her parasol open behind her.

The man chivalrously opened the wooden gate, which separated their picket fenced in yard from the sidewalk, for the young lady and she gave him a small nod of appreciation as she stepped onto the sidewalk, a slight crunch of snow beneath her vanilla boots. He promptly followed behind her and closed the gate before starting at a lazy pace down the sidewalk, slow enough for his shorter companion to keep in step beside him without undue effort.

Several minutes of walking in companionable silence through the snow-dusted town was broken only by the occasional pedestrian who recognized one of the two walking toward them and quickly jaywalked to the other side of the road, the snow making a frantic crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch! as they did so. The man completely ignored all such events, but occasionally his companion couldn't help but mouthing a Boo! or giving a wink to the petrified pedestrians, which prompted them to quickly unpetrify and scurry across the street.

As a clock tower struck nine somewhere in the surrounding commercial district the pair turned and entered into a corner side bakery whose two large glass display windows, one on either side of the corner, proudly displayed fresh loaves of bread, small baskets of pastries, and a variety of holiday themed cakes below signs that cheerily exclaimed, "From Dough 'til Done, Gourmet Bakery!"

A small brass bell tinkled above the heads of the newly entered pair, the girl also noticed some mistletoe hanging alongside the bell and softly elbowed her walking partner and pantomimed kissing while pointing up at it. The man smirked and tussled the girl's hair, "You might need to get a stepstool for that Neo, or a ladder." She huffed and turned her back to him, though she couldn't help a corner of her mouth from raising into a smirk.

The man stepped up to the unmanned counter and tapped a brass service bell that dinged, while his friend hopped up to sit on one of the several wooden tables. A couple of seconds after the bell was sounded a high-pitched and distinctly young sounding girl shouted, "Coming!" from somewhere behind the swinging door past the counter.

A young faunus girl, certainly no older than seventeen or eighteen, emerged from the swinging door, her fluffy white and brown deer tail the first thing though it. It was followed in short order by the rest of the girl's body, her back still turned to the two as she pulled a serving cart loaded with baskets of muffins through the door. She sighed as she finished pulling the cart through the door and wiped her brow with an oven mitt covered hand before turning to face the man behind the counter. As she traced his figure from his waist, to his chest, and finally his face her expression changed from professional politeness, to concern, and finally to wide eyed, paralyzed fear.

The girl sitting on the table started snickering while the man studied the petrified employee before him, his face a mix between contemplation and amusement, then he turned his head back to look at his partner, "I can't decide, Neo, I want to say something about, 'a deer in the headlights,' but I think it's too easy."

Neo rolled her eyes and smirked while shaking her head as if to say, Nothing is too easy for you, Roman.

Roman turned his head back to the counter to discover the faunus girl had put the serving cart between them and was still staring at him with wide eyes, her whole body shivering slightly. Roman frowned, "Relax, deer, I'm not here for veniso-"

But before he could finish his sentence the girl let out a terrified, "Eep!" and ducked fully behind the cart, she had also grabbed a basket of fresh muffins and held them shakily in front of her face.

Roman stood there for nearly a minute, staring with a frown at the quivering faunus baker, before he sighed and rang the service bell again. This had no immediate effect on the girl, and so after another thirty seconds he rang it again.

After about five more repeats of the Ring the Bell then Wait and Ring Again game, Neo decided that she was quite tired of letting Roman have all the fun, so she casually walked up to the counter and in one fluid motion jumped up and then slid over it. She approached the terrified crouched girl slowly, resisted the temptation to pull on her rapidly shaking little tail, and lowered herself down to eye level with her. A witty observer might have remarked that Neo only had to bend her knees a bit to achieve that eye level.

But Roman was more interested in what Neo was doing than he was in making sly remarks, for now. He made a mental note to jab at her with it later.

The girl, entrenched as she was behind her bulwark of baked goods, didn't notice Neo's closeness until a thin, gleaming blade penetrated the nearest muffin to her and brought it, agonizingly slowly, to the waiting maw of Neo. There it was carefully and thoroughly masticated before Neo made a deliberate show of licking her teeth and lips. The faunus girl watched the whole spectacle, helpless to move her traitorous, fear-shocked body, and then watched in growing dread as the blade was redirected towards her.

Neo made a show of pointing the blade at the helpless girl, then motioned it down toward the basket of muffins as she acted out deciding whether or not to have another, after a few moments of exaggerated deliberation she shook her head and brought the blade back up to point at the girl. The girl couldn't help but stare into the twinkling brown and pink eyes of her tormentor as she repeated her mimed deliberations, this time nodding her head and then licking her teeth, running her tongue deliberately over the sharp points of her canines.

The faunus girl fell back onto her rear and numbly dropped the basket of muffins as her mouth parted to form a loose "o" and her eyes flitted constantly from Neo's eyes to her blade.

It took all Roman had not to smile with pride watching Neo's little display, but as much as he loved tormenting the innocent and defenseless, and he so definitely did, he did want to get home before midday. There was a ham in the oven and he didn't want to risk overcooking it, Neo got very cranky when she didn't get her meat. "That's enough Neo, don't give her a heart attack before we get our order."

Neo didn't acknowledge Roman, but licked her lips and slowly backed off from the girl. She grabbed a basket of muffins as she walked back around the serving cart and then effortlessly cleared the counter once more before returning to sit on her previous table. There she happily started munching on one of her freshly baked treats, innocently swinging her legs, but her eyes never left the baker.

Roman waited a few seconds after Neo had returned to her spot then cleared his throat and rang the service bell again, "I'm here to pick up an order."

As if she had just woken from sleepwalking the faunus girl started and then quickly got to her feet, she looked pleadingly to Roman, her hands clasped in front of her chest and tears starting to spring in her eyes, and spoke in a desperate, almost wailing, manner, "Mr. Torchwick, sir, please, we already paid our protection for this month, I swear, I swear, I swear, I saw my father pay it, please, please don't h-" she stopped suddenly as she noticed Neo pick up another muffin and wink at her before taking what could only be described as a savage bite out of it. The poor baker collapsed to her knees, her head just above the countertop, and started crying, "Please don't let her e-eat me, please, please, p-please…"

She continued like that as Roman sighed, "We're not here to eat you. We're here to pick up an order. You understand that?" The girl just kept crying. "Okay, let me be more clear. I. Am. Here. To. Pick. Up. A. Cake. If. You. Don't. Want. The. Scary. Girl. To. Eat. You. Then. Bring. It. To. Me." It took a moment for his words to register in her mind, but when the path to her not being eaten alive by the deranged muffin munching psychopath was laid out for her she shot to her feet and bolted to the swinging door and into the kitchen, knocking the serving cart over in her mad dash and spilling muffins all over the floor on her side of the counter.

Eyes jumping wildly around the room she tried desperately to remember what the dastardly duo's order was. She didn't remember anything about an order from Roman Torchwick, and she was sure as Dust she'd remember taking an order from one of the most infamous mob bosses in Vale.

Think Bara, think! That girl will kill you! With her long, piercing blade and cold murderous eyes and her sharp pointed teeth that will tearyourskinandfleshoffyourbonesanddevo- NO! Calm down! Calm down! Okay, okay, okay, okay, he mentioned a cake, he said he wanted a cake, what kind of cake? He just said cake. Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake what kind of cake!? Think think thinkthinkthinkthink Dad! He said something about a special order yesterday before he left to see mom in the hospital! But he said it wasn't due for a week! Maybe he misheard him? Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, that must be the order, that must have been it, what was it what was it? Think Bara, please remember! Oh good Dust he didn't say anything about the order, he didn't say anything! No no no no no nonononononononononononononono! The ice cream! He checked the ice cream before he left yesterday! He never checks the ice cream except when someone orders something with ice cream! Roman said cake, cake and ice cream. ICE CREAM CAKE! What flavor? What flavor? Uh, uh, uh, anything at all? Any hint? Neo? He called her Neo! Neapolitan? Her hair is brown and pink! AND HER WHITE COAT! Neapolitan ice cream! Does that make sense? I think so I think so! It's all I've got!

And so Bara, heart racing so violently it must have made a dent into her chest, worked faster than she ever had in her entire life. She thanked the gods, Dust, her ancestors, the stars, and even several fictional deities from comic books she read, when she discovered there was plenty of neapolitan ice cream left and one frozen ice cream cake in the freezer.

With a knife she cut the entire top face of the cake off and carefully removed it by placing a large cooking sheet between it and the rest of the cake, lifting it off very gently. She then cut around the edges of the now exposed ice cream filling, delicately separating the ice cream from the cake. Using a scoop she painstakingly plied all of the mint chocolate ice cream out of its previous home and straight onto the floor.

As soon as the last ounce of mint chocolate was out she also tossed the ice cream scoop she was using onto the floor without a second thought, and she was already scooping neapolitan with a clean scoop. After four huge scoops she had refilled the cake with the appropriate, life-saving, filling, and ever so carefully replaced the top layer of the cake.

Then she ransacked the refrigerator, throwing out various cans and bags of ingredients, even a carton of eggs, as she desperately searched for vanilla frosting. She grasped it so tightly when she found it the lid popped off, but before the lid could even touch the ground she was already shoving the frosting into a frosting bag. With a sufficiently filled bag she approached the butchered cake like it was a lame gazelle and she a hunger-crazed lion. She covered the edges of the cake with frosting, applying it delicately but thickly over the cut marks to try to glue it all back together.

When she had finished the cake must have been nearly a pound heavier with vanilla frosting, but decided that nothing could be done about it. She hastily plopped some whipped cream swirls in two concentric circles, one around the edge and one near the center, and then dashed the whole thing lightly with chocolate and strawberry sprinkles.

She picked the cake up like a newborn baby and delivered it to an order platter, as she covered it with a translucent plastic top to protect it she spared a glance at the clock. All of this had taken her six minutes. It had felt like hours.

She tried to mentally steel herself as she burst through the swinging door, prepared to face whatever sadistic torment the demon girl with heterochromia might have waiting for her. Instead of any number of hellish scenes she imagined awaiting her she found Roman holding a basket of muffins above and away from Neo as she alternated between glaring murderously and pouting like kicked puppy at him.

"It will ruin your appetite, and I have worked too hard on our dinner for you to not even be hungry enough to eat it!" As Roman said that he placed the basket of muffins on the curved handle of his cane and, holding the cane by the straight end, lifted the basket up and placed it on top of a rafter.

Bara expected blades to come out of Neo's eyes instead of her umbrella with the look she had pointed at Roman. Bara nearly collapsed on the spot when Neo shifted her gaze to her. When Neo spotted the cake, however, her adrenaline generating gaze shifted into an eager, whimsical smile.

Now was the moment of truth, "H-here's the neapolitan, ice cream cake, you ordered, sir." She gingerly set the cake down, safe in its container, onto the counter like a holy relic. She stepped on more than a few muffins between the door and the counter.

Roman stooped down to appraise the cake, considering it from several angles, and seemed to consider for a moment whether to open the container and inspect the cake more closely. He was stopped from acting on that thought by a rumbling from behind him, and then the clearly impatient, nonplussed, face of the girl the stomach rumbling belonged to. He looked back to the cake and then shrugged, seemingly satisfied, "How much?"

Bara was gripped by panic for a moment, the idea of cost had completely slipped her mind. She almost told him to take it for free, but then that might let on that she wasn't prepared for them, and then they might kill her! I don't want to be a psycho's dinner!

So instead she blurted the first number that came to her mind, "Fifteen lien!"

Roman stared at her for a moment, then shrugged again and brought out his wallet. Fifteen lien was unceremoniously dropped on the counter before he picked up the cake and started walking toward the exit. Neo fell in line behind him. As the door opened and the small brass bell tinkled, Neo turned around, pointed up at the mistletoe hanging next to the bell and blew Bara a kiss before winking and heading out of the store.

Bara promptly collapsed to her knees and then assumed the fetal position as she cried, wallowing on the muffin covered floor.

Outside the snow was starting to pick up as Roman and Neo made their way home, their scarves billowing out slightly behind them and their breaths making thick clouds of steam. Roman chuckled as he looked down at the cake in his hands and then over to Neo, "Didn't I tell you we wouldn't have to call in an order?"

Neo smiled brightly and nuzzled into Roman's side, he brought an arm around her, resting his hand on her far shoulder. A pedestrian noticed them coming his way and quickly power walked to the other side of the road, his boots making a crunch crunch crunch! on the snow as he crossed the road.