3

Of all the places in which to be locked away, and in a coffin no less, I could have never thought of a better one than this mansion. It is quite befitting of such a man as myself. It is so old… so quiet. The building in itself, I noticed this when I first came in, and although you were right beside me I could not have told you… but it felt… alone. The house in itself, the darkness, the soft light playing on the floor, the silence, I felt it. The house was so terribly alone, and no amount of monsters could have helped in that. It felt like that house wanted to be lived in… like it wanted company. And of course, the funny thing about that is it got some, didn't it?

For thirty years this old house has had me living inside it, locked away in a wood and metal box, never allowed to forget my own loneliness, as it never forgot its. Are we forever destined to be alone?

When the Gelnika landed Vincent went to the room furnished for passengers in order to retrieve his Turks. When he entered, he saw that Lucrecia was soundly asleep between Tsang and Rachael, which gave Vincent a great feeling of relief. She knows better than to fall asleep next to that urchin. Vincent smiled in spite of himself. Brilliant woman.

He looked at his Turks, still sound asleep, and said, in a voice no louder than he normally spoke. "Protocol 6." At once Tsang's eyes snapped open and he walked towards Vincent. Rachael, however, remained motionless. Seeing this, Tsang's eyes went wide, and looked back at Vincent silently pleading with Vincent to notice inadequacy in Rachael's performance as a Turk. Vincent merely smiled at Tsang. "Rachael although you may not want to wake up I gave you an order."

"Yeah yeah Vince, you know I'm awake, that makes you brilliant or something, right?"

"That makes me a commander, simple as that. Come, we have things to do."

Rachael stood, annoyed, and proceeded to yawn and stretch simultaneously. Vincent walked out of the room, silently, followed by the still-scowling Tsang.

The Gelnika had landed outside of Nibelheim, and the Shinra troops were unloading the Gelnika and bringing the cargo to the large mansion on the outer edge of the town. Vincent looked at the mansion, walking beside a large crate carried by several troops, and smiled. That mansion… dark, foreboding, excluded, and owned by Shinra. Sounds like me…Vincent sighed.

He noticed, though, as he passed by the center of town, which happened to be a well, that all the troops were leaving the crates outside the mansion. What the hell are they doing?

"Commander?" Vincent asked as he, Tsang, and Rachael walked up the stone pathway through the crate-filled lawn, "Why is none of this going inside?"

"Orders from Professor Gast, sir. He said that the Turks were to clean out the house."

"Excuse me?" momentarily thinking of mops and brooms.

"Professor Gast informs us that there is a monster infestation within the mansion, but we have been inside and all parts of the mansion are furnished and monster free, so I am not entirely sure why I was given the order that I was given."

"But you carried it out, since you are not paid to think. Very good then, I will wait for the Professor." The soldier was taken aback and stalked away, angrily barking orders at his subordinates. Rachael looked at Vincent with a face full of disbelief, but Vincent shook his head. "Rachael they're trained to be used to the abuse. They expect it. Don't go soft on them, you are a Turk."

Rachael frowned and Vincent let it pass. So we're here to be exterminators. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

The sun had been setting for some time before Professor Gast, Hojo, and Lucrecia, could be seen walking toward the mansion. The troops were scattered among the forest of crates, laughing and joking amongst themselves while waiting for the three scientists to emerge.

When they arrived at the mansion, Rachel was sitting atop one of the crates, dangling her legs for the strange amusement of someone who had been horribly bored far more than she wanted to. Tsang looked no more excited, as he was slumped against the wall with eyes half closed. Vincent was the only seemingly attentive one, who was standing with his hands behind his back, hair behind him as well.

"Oh, hello Vincent. How long have you been waiting here?" Professor Gast said, making Tsang quickly stand up and alert and making Rachael gracefully jump off the crate and land behind Vincent.

"We left the Gelnika when the ship landed," Vincent replied calmly.

"The troops tell me that was more than three hours ago."

"Oh?" Vincent responded, very calmly holding back the rage of Tsang and Rachael at their mistreatment.

Professor Gast seemed flustered, as if he had sensed undetectable malice in Vincent's reply. "Well… let's begin. There is a monster infestation in this mansion that you need to clean out."

The troops tell Me, that you are going senile. Early, too. "Where is this infestation? Does it manifest itself in a particular portion of the house?" Vincent asked innocently.

"Yes, in fact, it does," Professor Gast said, opening the door to a very spacious room

The room was immense and eerily empty, lit from three massive windows on the other end of the room and on the second floor. Two carpeted semicircle staircases on either side of the room met at a platform which had a few stairs leading up to the hallway directly beneath the set of windows. The windows, and all the other windows in the mansion, were covered in a beautifully designed thin metal latticework, so that when the sun was shining through them, as the setting sun was not doing, One could clearly see the designs in the light the windows shed on the floor. The walls were white, or at least, they had the intention of being white. The dust and grime and filth seemed to have other ideas for the walls, making them a musty sort of white-gray-brown. A wrought iron chandelier hung above their heads, and the floors and the molding were of a dark wood, though it was undeterminable what color they really were, as everything in the house was dark.

Despite the beauty the house possessed, something else filled the mansion like air: the essence of age. The immense weight and sense of ancientness could be felt by every person in the room. No one's lived here for years…

"This is the Shinra mansion," said Professor Gast, cool and calm. "Built before electric lights, unfortunately, so we have to rely on candles for this part of the mansion." He turned around and locked eyes with Vincent. "But there is, of course, more than meets the eye here." Vincent raised his eyebrow, but at once Professor Gast turned around and walked up the right semicircle stair, and the Turks closely followed him, who were followed by the remaining two people in white lab coats.

Professor Gast ascended the stairs, turned right, walked a dozen steps, then turned right again into a side room, and left into an office. All the people in the room save the professor were confused, which was, to him, amusing. "Mister Ouritsu? I would like you to punch that column over there," the professor said, pointing to an enormous stone column in one corner of the room.

Tsang looked at Professor Gast in slight shock in part because he had known Tsang's surname, and also because Tsang had just been ordered to punch a wall. For a moment Tsang paused, but no more than a moment. "Yes sir," Tsang replied, his voice shaky. Quickly he walked over to the column and examined it briefly. Then he squeezed his eyes shut. He punched and… the fake panel went the way its hinges directed it to without the slightest incident. Vincent could barely hear the almost inaudible whisper of "thank god."

"Down there is where the infestation resides, so down there is where I require you three to go. There is one particular monster that is causing us trouble, and the rest will be simple enough to take care of on a case-to-case basis. Therefore, Vincent, I want you to take your Turks, eliminate the threat, and report back here when finished. Understood?"

All three Turks nodded in unison, and one by one they walked through the place where the fake panel stood. The column was obviously larger than was apparent when looked at from back inside the room, as it contained a tall, spiral, wooden staircase which the Turks followed down to the secret basement.

The emerged into a roughly made passageway, with dirt walls, ceiling, and floor, which was lit, although dimly, by the immense light filtering in through the column they had just come from. Wooden buttresses were sporadically placed along the passageway, and the Turks waked down until they found a large alcove to the left. A pair of enormous yellow, luminous eyes stared at them, and then, shortly after, another pair opened.

Rachael at once drew identical pistols from two holsters behind her back, Tsang rolled up his right sleeve, exposing an armband that had in it materia, and, now the orbs of materia began to glow, sensing their use would be needed soon. Vincent remained motionless, leaving the rifle, which was hanging in a holster, its barrel going past Vincent's knee, Untouched.

"Hello?" Vincent asked, calmly, as the monster snarled and started towards them. At once Rachael fires six shots at one of the pairs of eyes, but this only enraged the creature more. "Five left," at once Rachael, Tsang, and Vincent took five large steps backwards to their left, back into the passageway, just in time to dodge an enormous bolt of lightning that seemingly came from the monster.

When the monster emerged into the light, so as to chase the feigned retreat of the Turks, Vincent saw that the thing did indeed have two heads, his skin was gray and brown on it's chest, with some strange mutations on its arms.

"Wonderful," Vincent heard Tsang mutter.

Oh Tsang how right you are. "Tsang, reflect. Rachael once he has cast reflect I want you to fire at its legs."

"But…" Rachael began, and in that moment a crystal of ice formed around her left arm and shattered in an instant, slicing up her suit and her skin. "F***!"

"Just do what I say!" Vincent roared, and immediately Tsang muttered something, while his feet were surrounded by green light. It took a moment, and then all the Turks were shielded in pale, translucent, yellow-green shells. While this occurred Vincent drew his rifle and darted over to the monster and dodged his massive, deformed arm coming down to crush him, Rachael began firing at the thing's feet while Vincent, possessing an eloquence unmatched with so long of a rifle, jumped, kicked the monster square in the back with both feet, used the force to push himself backwards, and in midair he held his rifle so that the end of the barrel was no more than an inch away from the left head and pulled the trigger.

Blood, skin, bone, and brain splattered everywhere, and the monster screamed in utter pain. The bullet whizzed by in-between Tsang and Rachael, where Vincent had been standing only a moment before. The black blood squirted profusely from where a head had once been and during  its screams of pain, three separate bolts of lighting roared from the monster towards the Turks, but as soon as the lightning bolts hit the yellow-green shells, they surrounded the shells and then, in unison, went straight back to the monster, who howled as he was fried to a crisp.

Vincent landed, cat-like, and brushed the hair out of his eyes. "Perfection, is what I demand of you. Absolute perfection. Never before has the Turk regimen been so hard, and I doubt if those that will take my place will be so hard, assuming it's neither of you two. I demand perfection. Tsang you hesitated, which means that Rachael now is bleeding," Vincent said, walking over the smoking and blackened corpse of the monster they had just defeated. "And Rachael, you questioned me, which should never happen as long as I am around. Is this understood?"

Both of the other Turks nodded. "Regenerencia," Vincent whispered, touching Rachael's bleeding arm. At once the wounds began to quickly heal themselves. "Tsang, had you waited like that with a real soldier, she would have been dead. Our armor is a bit stronger, though." Tsang looked at the ground. "All and all you did well, and I feel you both know that. But you must know your mistakes before you can rejoice in your successes. Now come, let us inform the Professor he has nothing to worry about."

"Vincent?" Rachael murmured, the last of her wounds closing, "what about that door at the end of the hallway?"

Vincent turned around and saw, indeed, a door at the end of the hallway, but calmly dismissed it. "That wasn't part of our mission, though if the Professor instructs us to go down there we will. Initiative is one thing, disobeying orders is another, alright?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go, then."