Chapter 11

The Mansion

"Honey, you really should invite your SOLDIER friends down for dinner some time. Hilda is a decent cook, but it's been nearly two weeks! I'm sure they'd want something different now and then."

His mother's voice broke over him like a wave as Cloud sprawled on the large bed. His eyes were closed, just reveling in the feeling of being home. He'd forgotten how much he'd missed it, missed all the little things. His mother's chattering, the smell of her cooking. The mountain air—so much easier to breathe! With a tinge of mako on the breeze. Sharp. Home.

He knew it would be hard to leave, once this mission was done. But he had to. He still had his dream to chase. A promise to keep.

"I can ask." He told her, propping himself up on his arm. The home was much the same as he remembered it, if seeming much smaller after having seen the far larger homes in Midgar and Junon. Most of those had been more than a single room. He liked the homey together-ness of this one. Bedroom, kitchen, and sitting room all at once. Of course, there had once been a much smaller bed in the corner for Cloud, but that had been years ago. "But I don't think it would go over well. Kunsel has been grabbing food and disappearing. As for the others…" he shrugged helplessly

He wouldn't even bother to ask Huwitt, and Green didn't seem to care for Cloud that much. The two other troopers resented being sent to such a "back water town full of country bumpkins" and hated the fact that Cloud was actually enjoying the trip. Kunsel's punishment the first day had cut off the direct mocking, and in doing so had destroyed the only source of entertainment they could find on the trip. Cloud tried to avoid them as much as he could. He spent much of his free evenings with his mother, only returning to the Inn to sleep. Then he had morning training with Kunsel—alone. Green wasn't willing to get up (he had the graveyard shift), and Huwitt had morning watch—before being transferred to guard duty from afternoon to evening.

That was another reason the others disliked him. They seemed to think Kunsel was favoring him, giving him the "easy" afternoon shift. It was more than Cloud actually knew the mountains, and the monsters. And actually being able to see the monsters let him report on their movements. The others weren't good for much other than raising a general alarm, which is all night or dawn would allow them.

Kunsel spent most of his time either training the cadets, or out on the mountainside. Killing monsters was Cloud's guess from the random flashes of light and smoke he'd occasionally see in the distance. Occasionally Kunsel would take all three of them out together to cull the closest nests. Which was really just Kunsel doing all the work and throwing fire around, with the Troopers watching in stunned silence and firing the occasional shot.

"It's just a thought dear. You really should talk to your SOLDIER friend though. I've seen him going in and out of the Mansion. I suppose it is ShinRa property…but it isn't right, I tell ya. Your Grandmum worked there as a housekeeper back when people lived there, years ago. She took me with her a couple times. Creepy place that was. Full of people in white coats who would stare at us until we left…It isn't right. Full of monsters now, it is."

"Of course Mum." He sighed; running a hand through his blonde spikes as he reluctantly swung himself into a sitting position. Honestly he didn't see what was so special about that creepy manor. It had been the subject of many a young person's dare during his childhood, and Cloud had even managed to make himself sneak inside once, making it to the foyer—much further than Hoide who hadn't even made it to the front door before a shadow across the moon cause him to turn back and run. "I'll tell him. Maybe that's what he's doing? Trying to clear out the monsters?"

"Nah, ShinRa doesn't care about those monsters. We've been asking them to take care of it for decades. They just tell us to keep the gate locked, and for some reason the darn things won't leave the building, so I suppose we can count that as a blessing." She stirred her stewpot, the smell wafting through the house and making Cloud's mouth water. His stomach rumbled at the scent and she laughed, "Your appetite is hearty as ever, I see. Don't worry, it'll be done soon."

Kunsel and the mansion forgotten, Cloud settled in to wait for his mother's stew.

x-x-x

Kunsel gasped, drawing back from the cooling red corpse of the monster on the floor of the safe-room. He'd been doing fine. He'd expected something when he opened the safe—ShinRa, especially the Science Department—didn't leave secrets lying about unguarded. He'd checked the mansion out of habit, despite the mayor's assurances that there was nothing to be found there. Nothing? Kunsel had found the place infested with monsters of type he had only vague memories of reading in a bestiary of Hojo's experiments! How he'd gotten access to those files wasn't something he liked to think about. He had his resources.

Still. Kunsel might have just left the mansion with its trapped denizens—he could sense the sustained barrier spell around the place, probably drawing power from the mako reactor—after a quick run through if he hadn't found the letters. Those letters…

Even that one from the Turks…

ShinRa didn't want the mansion cleaned out. That much was certain from the Mayor's insistence that there was nothing of note here. From the barrier he'd sensed, and the arrays of materia he'd found in a corner of the room all the way in the back, it was meant to keep the monsters IN. But why? The safety of the townfolk? If that were the case, then why weren't those machines all over the slums? Only reverse the polarity so it would keep the monsters out.

The letters explained. Kunsel didn't recognize the faded handwriting on the sheet with the clues—the other sheet was typed—but the language…speaking of scientifically altering…

He had wondered why a Mako Reactor had been built in the middle of nowhere, long before the ShinRa No. 46 was even planned. He had wondered why this town had been founded. Why ShinRa would let reactor engineers settle down in such a remote location. Why there was ShinRa owned property.

The town hadn't been built. A lab had. The town had sprung up around it. A cover story, maybe? It would be easier to hide such a facility if there was a quaint, but backwater town surrounding it. No one would ask questions, the first generation paid to keep quiet. To pretend they'd been living there all along. The children wouldn't question it. The lie would become truth so far as the world knew.

The barrier wasn't to protect the town. It was to protect this building from curious thrill seekers. Keep the place infested with monsters, and the town would just write the place off—especially with how rural this place seemed—as cursed. A normal person wouldn't be able to handle all these monsters, especially those pumpkin things, whose breath managed to confuse him until the mako took care of it.

Luckily, Kunsel was a SOLDIER in more than name. He did have mako-injections, even if his physical scores were well below average. His incompatibility with the stuff had been in part why his promotions had needed to be…helped along.

Even that one from the Turks…

He really wanted to just leave. There were some Company secrets even a Turk would be killed over.

But damn it, he couldn't. Not after reading that letter.

He'd been careful—this mystery was on his own time. He'd found one clue per day, piecing together the numbers to a combination for a safe.

And in that safe…He looked down at the monster, the form twitching on the floor. It had once been half purple, half red. He'd killed the purple half. Noticing it shrieked in pain from his fire spells while the red one only laughed. Tickled. Then it had fallen over. Dead.

Or so he thought.

You would have been dead without me, little liesmith.

The voice threaded through his mind, Kunsel shivered at its touch. He turned to the black cat seated on the wooden floor before him, its tail twitching, calmly grooming itself as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"I know." The words were quiet, but his hands were clenched in a white-knuckled grip on his sword. He was a SOLDIER Second Class. But when his magic had become useless…

So had he.

He was fast. He knew how to fight. But when his lighter-than-standard sword merely bounced off the then-completely red and tentacled monster's thick skin…even as common sense claimed it should have been weak to physical attacks…

Kunsel exhaled the breath he'd been holding, his shoulders sagging. The cat sniffed at him, green eyes glittering in the shadowed face. Not even a thank you?

"You do realize you aren't supposed to talk, right?"

He dug through his materia stores—not that it was hard to find what he was looking for, with the thing radiating red light between the other unused materia. He fished the materia—his only summon—out of the pouch. It spilled its light over the dim room, the red of the active magic glittering in the cat's eyes.

"Meow."

"Very funny." Kunsel sighed, eyeing the materia. Nothing he could do about it, short of running out of magic. He had tried that once. He'd cast every spell he had, draining his magic until he'd had nothing left. His summon—having taken the form of a dark-haired man then—had just laughed at him as he passed out. "You know, I could just turn this thing in."

Try it.

Kunsel turned away, rolling the sphere uncomfortably in his palm. There was a threat there. There always was. He popped one of his materia out of his bracer—Fire—and replaced it with the red orb, snapping it into place. He dropped the fire materia into his pouch with the others, before pulling out a small cap, glassy green over silver metal. It fit snugly over the summon materia, cutting off the light and disguising it as a common magic materia. It wouldn't hold up under close inspection, but he didn't need the attention a constantly activated summon materia would cause. He never willingly used it. ShinRa didn't even know he had it. But it did have a tendency to save his life when he needed it to. And the spell wouldn't end until the thing got bored and banished itself.

Consider me a…scholar. This world is unreachable without a contract. I'm…curious.

The purr echoed in Kunsel's mind. He tried to ignore it. He picked himself off the ground, patting his uniform in an attempt to dislodge the dust and broken splinters of wood that clung to him from his fall. The…cat was watching the corpse of the monster curiously as it began to dissolve, red mist rising and curling from its edges as it returned—reluctantly—to the lifestream. Monsters always seemed reluctant.

Kunsel grabbed his sword—luckily it was still in one piece—and clipped it into his harness, striding past the monster toward the wide-open safe. He picked through the contents, absently pocketing the red materia glinting in its bowels. He was definitely not going to keep that one. He had trouble enough with his little monster. Of course, Kunsel had realized long ago that it wasn't a normal summon. Not by a long shot. Normal summons didn't speak. Not even Zack's did, and the silver-haired humanoid was the closest thing to an Independent summon like his own that he had ever heard of.

He considered the silvery weapon shoved in the back, a hand-gun of sorts. He touched it hesitantly, feeling the familiar shape of it in his palm. It felt…both strange, and familiar. It had been so long since his fire-arm training. He'd almost forgotten how it felt to hold a gun.

It seemed to be an older model, but Kunsel recognized it as one of the standard issue side-arms for a Turk. Perhaps the note was true. The chance of someone surviving this long—the mansion had been abandoned for at least twenty years—was unlikely. But Kunsel had pressed on because he wanted to know. He owed it to whomever the nameless Turk had been.

Are you going to continue to stare at the weapon all day, or are you going to notice the key right in front of you?

Finding the lock would be for another day. He slipped the weapon into his harness and snatched the key from under the nose of the curious cat, which was pawing at it lazily. He needed something to distract himself from that monster he'd fought. From the twisting feeling of dread he always got from this mansion. Besides—he still hadn't found the entrance to the underground lab yet. He was still confident in his conclusion—he'd found marked beakers stashed haphazardly in the kitchen, not to mention some papers left scattered around—but finding the entrance would need more time than the short amount left until sunset. After sunset…well, he didn't much fancy wandering around with even more of the monsters coming out to play.

"How long are you going to hang around?"

The cat yawned and stretched, Until I get bored.

"I'm going up the mountain. Will you keep your end of the bargain?"

Of course. A lazy flick of the tail, and the cat shifted, becoming much smaller, spreading ink-black wings and launching itself into the air, landing lightly on Kunsel's shoulder. Those unnerving green eyes continued to watch him. So long as you remember yours.

He strode out of the room, the weight of the bird on his shoulder hardly noticeable. It took flight the moment he left the building, Kunsel watched it circling lazily far above him, a black speck against a red sky. He didn't know what to make of the creature. He knew what it had claimed, that day six years ago, when a newly enhanced Third Class had found a materia he had never reported.

A god.

He'd never thought about summon materia. Or where they came from before that. Old legends claimed they had once been gods, and Kunsel had wanted dearly to spend some time at Cosmo Canyon to check out their records on those same legends and stories, but the mission timetables hadn't allowed for that. This was the first time he'd been sent to the Western Continent in years. His real work was in Midgar.

He'd tried to ask about it. About why it was capable of speech. Everything. But the summon would just laugh. Laugh, and occasionally lie.

Karmic payback. That wasn't the summon. It was his own thought that snarked at him, For all the lies you tell to others.

Kunsel shook off the thought. It was his job. He pulled out his PHS and sent a quick message to Cloud. He felt a little bad about it. He'd been planning on taking Cloud up the slopes tomorrow…but it wouldn't hurt to check tonight.

x-x-x

A/N: And here is our third summon. I won't actually give his name for a few chapters. He's…not necessarily from a specific fandom…but he's heavily based on one, personality wise. There's a decently large hint in this chapter—let me know if anyone has a guess?

This chapter is a little shorter, but it's because I split it in half. The second half is in Chapter 12 of course. Hope ya'll enjoyed it, and I'll see you next week! The chapter will be A Mother's Gift.

…and no, I don't mean Jenova :P Don't worry, we have a little bit before she starts popping up.