3. Strain

Three Turks and one scientist had gathered around the square table in the manor's kitchen. A single bulb dangled from a yellow shade, casting down a golden glow upon them, and the greasy smell of fried sausage permeated the air. Under different circumstances it might have had a cozy charm. Instead Rude caught himself peering into the shadowy nooks of the room.

Mentally cursing his rampant imagination, Rude steered his attention to their lunch. He eyed Reno, who was carving off thick slabs of goat cheese and heaping them on top of his potatoes. Reno's idea of cuisine definitely favored quantity over quality.

"That Gubbins is a bit of a weird one, ain't she?" he announced. "You notice how she talks about this place?"

"You mean how the house likes this or does that?" Cissnei asked once she'd swallowed her mouthful, then smiled at Rude. "Wow, Rude, these sausages are great."

He responded with a nod. It was hardly the best lunch he'd ever prepared, but considering what he had to work with, the result was adequate.

"Yeah," Reno said. "It's the creepiest frickin' thing. She ain't the only one, neither. That inn had some real wackos hangin' out inside. Tried to spook us by sayin' this place is hungry."

"Well, it can't be hungrier than me. Pass the cheese, will you?"

Rude sighed and leaned back as Reno's arm shot across his plate toward Cissnei, cheese in hand.

"I bet they try to freak out anyone who ain't from around here with bullshit like that," he said as he shoveled cheese and potato onto his fork. "They must've pissed their pants with glee when they heard we'd showed up to check the place out."

"Not everyone is as much of a shit as you are, Red. I think a lot of the locals are genuinely scared of this house. The girls I talked to certainly were."

Rude couldn't help but feel impressed. Most of Reno's teetering tower of food actually made it into his maw.

"Yeah?" he got out through the food. "What'd they have to say 'bout it?"

"That's just it. They didn't. They just clammed up and gave each other these wide-eyed looks."

Reno's brow creased as he stared up at the ceiling in thought, chewing.

"Didn't one of them come up here to fix the place up for us, tho'?"

Cissnei shrugged. "Guess she's more scared of Gubbins."

"Hah. Can't blame her for that, yo."

He gulped down his monster of a mouthful, then looked over at Rayleigh.

"You're bein' awfully quiet there, Professor Science Lady. Worked out any theories about the place yet?"

She looked up from her plate. She was the only one who hadn't sullied his cooking with mountains of cheese, Rude noted.

"Local folklore is not the science department's concern. I'll focus on what's hidden on the bookshelves of this place, thank you." She returned her attention to her lunch. "Speaking of," she added as an afterthought, "I've found documents in an old local dialect and need to concentrate on them in peace. I do not want to be disturbed today."

"Hey, maybe Rude could help ya out. You might not believe it by just lookin' at him, but rumor has it he's quite a... cunning linguist."

Cissnei averted her face in a sudden coughing fit. Rude balled his hands into fists to keep from reaching across the table and slapping his idiot of a partner upside the head. If only he could smother him with silence.

The look that Rayleigh leveled at Reno reminded Rude of Tseng.

"No need, Mr. Turk. I like to be prepared, so I made sure to bring equipment for every conceivable situation."

"Oh, I see," he said with a devious grin. "Well, keep it in mind, tho', in case you run out of batteri–ow! What the hell, Ciss?" Reno scowled at her, rubbing his shin under the table.

"A filter, Reno," she said. "Find one. Use it."

He shot her a dirty look, but to Rude's surprise he stayed quiet and began chopping up his sausage instead.

"So, Professor," Cissnei began with an apologetic smile. "How long before the science labs at HQ are repaired? AVALANCHE must have caused a lot of damage if you need facilities outside HQ."

"The team is still assessing the full extent of the damage. And to be precise, most of it was caused by the test subjects AVALANCHE released, not the terrorists themselves." Rayleigh paused, and shrugged. "Or perhaps even the military sent in to contain the situation."

"Nah, weren't the military," Reno piped up as he decorated a slab of bread with his cut-up sausage. "We Turks had to do cleanup. Send a SOLDIER into a lab full of pricey tech and you're gonna end up with a billion-gil crater. Those guys do more damage than the monsters they're sent in to hunt."

He wasn't looking at Cissnei, but she looked at him. Faint as it was, Rude could tell the smile on her face had changed.

"And what would you know about SOLDIER conduct and discipline?"

"I know it wasn't enough to stop a bunch of 'em from –"

Rude cleared his throat. A professor from the science department would not have the clearance for messy SOLDIER business. Thankfully, Reno took his cue and shut up. Rayleigh looked from one Turk to another, her eyebrow cocked.

"Anyway," Reno said, "those beasties from your lab were the ones that–"

A loud thump made him flinch; they all flinched, and stared up as a series of rapid knocks pattered across the ceiling and halfway down the wall behind the sink. Reno twisted in his seat to stare at the wall behind him.

"The hell was that?"

"Nothing to worry about," said Rayleigh with a dismissive wave of her fork and returned her attention to her lunch.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes." She didn't even look up from her plate. "It's an old house, one that's been empty for a long while. It's bound to be a little noisy. Floors settling as the temperature changes, pipes banging, maybe even vermin scuttling around in the walls..."

Reno was still eyeing the wall with a suspicious squint.

"I didn't hear any weird noises like that last night."

"Consider yourself lucky, then. The north wing must be noisier than the one with your bedrooms. My room is almost directly above the kitchen, and I heard quite a few taps and knocks."

Reno turned to frown at Rayleigh instead.

"You didn't think to call one of us? It's our job to check out weird noises at night, y'know. It's pretty much the whole damn reason we're here, yo."

"There was no cause for alarm. Just the sounds of a settling house, nothing more."

"How about you let us be the judge of that, yeah? Call us next time you hear something weird."

"Very well." If there was such a thing as a verbal eye roll, Rude mused, the professor had perfected it.

Reno gathered up the sausage slices that had flown off his bread and rolled across the table. With his reconstructed sandwich balanced in one hand, he got up and headed for the door to the foyer.

"I'm gonna call Gubbins, tell her to come over," he announced, digging around his jacket pocket with his free hand. "If anyone knows what noises this creepshow of a house makes when it's 'settling', it oughta be her. About time she gives us the full tour."

The moment the door closed behind him, the room seemed a little duller, the air a little thinner – and easier to breathe. Rude felt his shoulders unknit as a companionable silence fell, disturbed only by the quiet clink of cutlery. His partner's chatter usually passed over him like a summer breeze, but his senses were still on edge after the ballroom incident. When he picked up every soft sigh and every creak of a chair, Reno's voice was like a blaring siren.

Rayleigh dabbed her lips with a napkin.

"Thank you," she said. "I'll be–"

She jumped as the kitchen door slammed open. In burst Reno, waving his PHS in the air.

"Holy shit, guys, check this out!"

Rude winced. Biting down on his irritation, he got up. So did Cissnei, and together they gathered around Reno. The screen showed a picture of him; tongue poking out, one hand holding his PHS, the other raised with his fingers making a V. Behind him Rude could make out the stairs and the mezzanine of the foyer.

"I took a pic of that old mirror that's by the front doors," Reno explained, a touch breathless. "Just for shits and giggles. Didn't expect to catch this, though."

Cissnei sucked in a breath and leaned in closer.

"Whoa. That almost looks like... you."

"Ha ha, very funny," Reno said, rolling his eyes. "Don't you guys see it?"

Rude supposed that explained the poor quality of the shot; the white plume of the flash filled most of the screen, and the picture was oddly fuzzy in places. The mirror's wooden frame was visible on the right-hand side, and it jogged Rude's memory. He remembered a tall mirror with a frame like that, right by the entrance to one of the towers which flanked the front doors.

What he couldn't spot was a reason for Reno's enthusiasm. Rude glanced at Cissnei, who shrugged. Reno huffed and pointed to the middle right of the picture, next to his head.

"Right there, see? It's a frickin' face."

And then Rude could see it, on the staircase bannister. Two round spots, like the holes of a skull. The dark smudge of a mouth, stretched down toward the frame, open in a silent scream. It was just a smudge on the lens or a trick of the light, it had to be – but the more he stared at it, the harder it was to look away.

"Huh," Cissnei mumbled and squinted at the screen. "It does kind of look like a face."

Reno grinned and zoomed in on the face until it filled the whole screen. Stretched out and pixelated, it looked even less human.

Rude was suddenly very aware of the door at their backs, and the corridor that led straight to the mirror. The knowledge tingled at the back of his head, until he had to step aside and shift around so the door was within his view.

"That mirror's pretty creepy, ain't it?" Reno asked. "Think something's inside? Hey! Maybe it's some kind of freaky summon!"

"I highly doubt it."

All three of them looked up at Rayleigh, who had come up in front of Reno. She was peeking at the picture over the top of his PHS.

"Of course you do," he muttered, then raised his voice. "Which part?"

She arched an eyebrow.

"All of it."

"C'mon, look at it!" Reno held out his phone toward her to show her the picture the right way up. "You don't think that looks like a face?"

"I suppose it does–"

"Ha!"

"...but that's hardly proof of anything," she continued without pause, her tone a fraction sharper. "From the day we're born, we're conditioned to recognize and react to the faces of those around us. Our brains are practically programmed to seek out faces... or anything that appears to be a face. All it takes to catch our eye are two dots and a line." As she spoke, she pointed out each smudge on the screen.

Reno flipped the phone around and frowned at the screen.

"Yeah? Well, those dots and lines didn't just show up outta nowhere, yo."

"It's an antique mirror, made before modern manufacturing techniques," she explained as she stepped in beside them. "The glass is bound to have imperfections. Tiny bubbles, waves in the surface, that sort of thing. Those can reflect the light in unexpected ways and look like smudges in a photo."

She grabbed the top of the PHS and tilted it back, leaning in closer to peer at the screen over her glasses.

"Could also be a handprint," she continued. "The glass covers a thin layer of silver, and fingers leave residue that reacts with silver over time. Someone could have touched the glass before the silver was applied, for example."

Rude watched her with growing curiosity. She was talking faster, and becoming more and more animated by the second.

"If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the 'eyes' are the tips of the index and middle fingers – and the 'mouth' is the thumb laid down flat like this." She held up her right hand, three fingers raised to match the positions of the smudges.

With a groan, Reno tugged his PHS out of her hand.

"You sure know how to take the fun outta things," he grumbled as he slipped it into his jacket.

She kept her eyes on him as she straightened up and pushed her glasses back in place.

"Perhaps I find the search for correct answers to be more fun than idle superstition, Mr. Turk."

"That's pretty much what I said, ain't it?" he shot back with a grin.

Rayleigh pursed her lips.

"I'll be in my room. Don't disturb me unless it's an emergency."

Reno watched her go with an unreadable expression. Once the door swung shut behind her, he shrugged and turned back to his fellow Turks.

"Right, so. Gubbins will come by in an hour. In the meantime, we can check out what's outside the house. Go over the gate and wall, figure out spots for cameras, that sorta thing. I'm thinkin' one of us stays indoors with the Prof while the other two scope out the garden. Ciss, feel like babysittin' today?"

"This afternoon, sure," she said with a shrug. "I'd like to spend a few hours in town tonight, though. The townsfolk might let something useful slip between the spooky stories."

Reno shuddered.

"Better you than me. All right, see you in a few."

On the way outside, Rude slowed as he passed the mirror in the foyer. It was taller than him. A bit wider, too. The wooden frame was stained with age, and dust had built up in every crevice of its intricate pattern of fronds and leaves. His reflection was cloudy in places, scratched in others. He found Reno's "face" near the frame on the right-hand side, precisely where it had been in the photo. From this angle, though, it didn't look like a face so much as a mere alignment of smudges beneath the glass.

Rude huffed. Typical Reno; making a lot of noise about nothing just to see who might come running.

The front yard was as still as a grave. The manor had been built in a hollow in the mountain, sheltered by rocky cliffs on three sides, but Rude still found it odd not to sense even the slightest breeze. Tucked away into the cliffs like this, the shadows were already creeping up on the manor despite the early afternoon sun.

Why would anyone decide to build a manor here?

"Let's be smart about this," Reno said. "You check the perimeter wall, I check the cliffs around the back. Keep an eye on the house, too. See if you can spot anythin' on the outside that could be makin' spooky noises."

They split up at the southern point of the property, where the wall met the mountainside. The wall itself – eight feet tall and built solidly from stone – passed muster, but Rude identified a number of vulnerabilities. A few large spruces had grown too near the wall, both inside the property and out; hardly pleasant to climb, but far from impossible. A rocky outcropping came a little too close for comfort. A crack in the ground may have compromised the wall's stability.

As the north end of the wall came into view, Rude found that Reno had already finished his half of the perimeter. He was lounging against the wall with a lit cigarette.

"Yo, Rude!" Reno waved him over. "Come here for a sec."

Rude picked up his pace. As he arrived, he raised his eyebrows in a question.

"Look up there." Reno pointed up toward the house with the two fingers that held his cigarette. "Notice anythin'?"

Rude could see both the front and the north side of the building. From this vantage point, it was clear that the north wing was of a slightly different style than the rest of the building. It was topped by a single gable while the south wing was split into two, and the facade's pale plaster had a more yellowish hue. A later addition to the manor, perhaps.

That didn't seem relevant to the task at hand, though, nor the sort of detail that Reno would find interesting enough to remark upon. Rude looked back at him and shrugged his shoulders.

"C'mon, buddy," Reno drawled, "ain't you s'posed to be learnin' how to fly?"

With a small frown, Rude gave the manor another once-over. What did flying have to do with anything? He could feel his patience dwindling, and the faint, crooked smile on Reno's face didn't exactly inspire trust. Was he just wasting Rude's time with another fake ghost in a mirror?

A feeble screech drew his attention to the closest gable. At the top of it, a stylized chocobo in blackened iron perched proudly on top of an arrow. It jerked halfway around its pivot with a series of short metallic groans. He followed the roofline and counted two more, barely visible against the gray rock of the mountain that rose up behind the house. As he watched them, the first one squealed again.

"The weathervanes. Only one is moving."

"Yeah, the one that's lower than the others. And down here..." Reno raised his cigarette and held it upright in front of his face. The wisp of smoke wafted upward until it thinned into nothing, even as the weathervane screeched above. He scowled up at it, then huffed and brought the cigarette to his lips.

"These fuckin' winds. I just can't figure 'em out," he said, puffing out smoke with his words. "Good thing I didn't have to put the chopper down here, huh?"

Rude stared at the facade beneath the offending weathervane, trying to pinpoint the rooms underneath. As far as he could tell, it wasn't far from the master suite the professor had occupied.

The weathervane moved again, its rusty cries echoing off the mountains.

"Weird," Rude said.

"That's all you got to say 'bout it?" Reno's laugh was more like a wheeze in his throat. "Why waste a sentence when a single word will do, huh?"

"Quite."

That got him another snigger.

"But yeah, weird. Wind is weird. House is weird." He looked over one shoulder, then the other. "Yard is weird. Ever seen trees like this before? They're, like... full of knots. What's up with that?"

Unlike the spruces on the other side of the property, these trees were squat and stubby. Rude studied their gnarled trunks and bare branches and wondered what kind of trees they were. The wizened clump of them near the house could have been the remnants of an orchard. Pepio nuts, maybe, or lasan nuts. Maybe fruit, like mandarins... or maybe not. Nibelheim's climate was hardly suitable for Costan crops.

Rude shrugged.

"I was watching 'em before, when I was tryin' to get a feel for the winds," Reno added, then lowered his voice. "You see a branch sway now and then. Not all of 'em, just the one branch at a time. Like these fuckers are wavin' at ya."

Rude leveled a stare at him. Reno met it with a sincere look on his face.

Too sincere.

"You're fucking with me."

Several seconds crept by as they watched each other. Then Reno chuckled and raised his cigarette for a drag.

"Yeah, okay, I am. You bought it, tho', just for a lil' bit. Admit it, buddy."

Rude scoffed and squared his shoulders. Reno's face split into a shit-eating grin.

"Oh man, you did!" he crowed. "You totally bought it!"

"Asshole."

"Aw, don't take it too hard, big guy. Stayin' in a place like this for too long messes with your head. I mean, just look at it." He threw out his arm in a wide arc. "Everythin' about this place is creepy as fuck, man. Hell, everythin' about this damn town creeps me out."

Rude grunted his agreement. As he scanned the trees by the house, he couldn't help but wonder why anyone would even plant trees in a place like this. Did they get any sun at all? He couldn't see a single sign of life among them, yet their roots must have clawed their way into the blackened soil at some point.

"Speakin' of..." With a dry chuckle, Reno nodded toward the gate. "Looks like Gubbins has arrived."

A skeletal figure in oversized overalls was marching up the path toward the house. Rude was reminded of the scarecrows that had loomed out in the sunflower fields by his uncle's property. Her twitching gait was exactly what his terrified young mind had pictured as Teo fed him tales of flesh-eating straw things coming for him through the crops.

"C'mon." Reno flicked his smoke to the ground. "Let's get this over with, yo."

As Reno sauntered off, Rude paused to grind out the stub with his heel, taking a moment to shake off the mental images of twiggy, grasping fingers. Reno was right. This place was getting to him. Reno, too, for that matter. Him and his spooky faces and the rest of his bullshit.

Rude straightened up and squared his shoulders. Then he froze. On the tree closest to him, a single branch was slowly swaying back and forth.

As Mrs. Gubbins led them on a tour of the house, Rude was content to tail them like a shadow and let Reno do the talking. He felt a growing knot in his gut as she brought them to the ballroom again, and through the twisty back corridors of the first floor. Her explanation for the banging they'd heard in the kitchen was offhand and brisk: water pipes, vibrating against their brackets as the heating kicked in. In each dusty room she pointed out noisy hinges or creaky floorboards or shutters that tended to come loose in the wind, until Rude was convinced there was not a single quiet corner to be found in the whole manor.

The tour came to an early end on the second floor, as they were heading rearward from the north wing. Reno flicked a light switch, only to jump back with a curse as a burst of sparks rained down from the ceiling light above him.

"The electrics are a little... short-tempered down this end of the house." Mrs. Gubbins tapped her bottom lip with a bony finger as she stared up at the lamp. "I would've gotten somebody to fix them, but you Shinra types are so finicky about who gets to poke around inside."

"You could've warned me, yo!"

After a quick scowl, he picked his way along the lightless corridor and peeked into the next room. Rude could barely make out Reno's black suit against the dark. He heard the clicks of another switch, but nothing happened.

"Looks like the power went out." Reno's voice echoed in the darkness that lay beyond him.

"It's probably only dead in this part of the house," said Mrs. Gubbins. "The back of this wing is on its own breaker."

"What's in there?"

"More of what you've seen on this floor, really. A few lounges, a couple of bedrooms... A dining hall, I believe."

"Eh, doesn't sound too interestin'." Reno turned around and headed back. "Hojo can deal with it if he needs 'em."

Rude had no complaints. The dust had been making his eyes itch for a good fifteen minutes, and was beginning to tickle his throat.

As they headed downstairs, Cissnei joined them in the foyer.

"I'd say my shift is over by now," she said once Mrs. Gubbins had left.

Reno shrugged. "Fine by me. What time is it, anyway?"

Rude reached into his jacket to bring out his PHS.

It wasn't there.

He paused, then patted down his other pockets. Narrowing his eyes, he looked over at Reno.

"Did you steal my PHS?"

Reno snorted. "You lose your damn phone and that's the first thing you ask? Thanks, man. That's real nice."

"Did you?"

"Why would I wanna dig through your pockets? No challenge in that. Not even candy, yo." He grinned and pulled out his PHS. "Hang on, I'll give you a call."

He flipped it open and thumbed a few keys. Once the call had connected he glanced around, as if that might improve his hearing. Rude stared vacantly at a crack on the second step of the stairs, trying to think of likely places to look as he listened. The list was daunting. They afternoon had taken them all over the manor, inside and out.

Cissnei looked over her shoulder and tilted her head.

"I hear something."

Beckoning them to follow, she led the way into the corridor behind her. Rude kept his ears pricked, but it wasn't until they got nearer to the kitchen that he picked up on it too. It had the rhythm of his ringtone, but it wasn't the same sound. They could hear it clearer as soon as Cissnei opened the door, but still the sound was off. Every ring was accompanied by a grating, metallic rattle.

"Down there, sounds like." She pointed at a pair of cupboard doors to the right of the sink.

The desire to run came over Rude. It caught him by complete surprise. His gut reaction was always to fight; not to flee.

His eyes darted across the other door on the opposite wall, the sink, the countertop, over and under the wooden table. Nothing seemed amiss, yet his unease grew more insistent by the second.

"Go on then." Reno's voice was quieter than usual. "It's your PHS."

Rude forced his legs to move toward the cupboard, forced himself to crouch down. He licked his lips, but his tongue felt dry, dry as the dust over everything in this damned house. He cracked the doors open for a peek. He opened them wider; an inch, then another. A large pot on the bottom shelf gave off a rhythmic hollow rattle.

Slowly, carefully, he reached in and lifted the lid. Inside was his PHS, vibrating tinnily against the pot with one last ring.

"Now that's real weird." Reno craned his neck over Rude's shoulder to peek into the cupboard. "Maybe you left it there when you were cookin' up lunch?"

It wasn't impossible. Rude just didn't have any memory of taking out his PHS in the kitchen. In fact, he had no memory of using it at all since the ballroom, and he certainly hadn't cooked in that pot. There was something surreal about the whole scene, a dissonance Rude struggled to resolve. As he picked up the device he had to tell himself that it was really there, that it was his, because it didn't feel like either. How could he have lost it there? And when?

Maybe that was it. Maybe he was, indeed, losing it.

"Well, now that that mystery is solved," Cissnei said, "I'll be off."

"I'll go with you." Not that Rude was particularly keen on the idea of an evening among Nibelheim's locals. He just had to get out of there. Get out, get away.

Cissnei paused in doorway, her eyebrows raised. Then she smiled.

"Sure. No problem. I'll just go change first."

Reno watched her leave. There was an odd look in his eyes, but it receded as soon as she was out of view. He turned back to Rude and leaned in closer.

"You sure you wanna head into town? I could head out instead, y'know, give you a couple of hours to get to know..." He smirked and glanced up toward the ceiling.

Rude felt his jaw tighten.

"I'm sure."

"All right, all right. Suit yourself, yo."

He strode out of the kitchen, leaving Reno behind. In the foyer, he took up position by the doors to wait for Cissnei.

He soon regretted it. The back of his neck wouldn't stop prickling. Whenever he glanced over his shoulder he saw the old mirror. He couldn't see the reflection; it was tilted very slightly toward the hallway that led to the kitchen.

He couldn't wait to get out of here.

The stairs creaked. Cissnei was on her way down, dressed in jeans and a short green jacket. It hung open, showing a top with some printed design. The narrow strip he glimpsed of it wasn't enough to make out what it was.

"Ready?" she asked with a sunny smile.

Rude nodded and grabbed the door handle.

"All right, kids, have fun." Reno strolled in from the kitchen hallway, hands deep in his pockets. "Got your phones?"

He grinned at Rude. Rude ground his teeth and yanked the door open.

"Hey, Ciss," Reno added. "I might need ya to watch the Prof tomorrow, too. That cool with ya?"

"Sure," she said, smiling. "No problem."

He didn't acknowledge her straight away. His forehead creased as he studied her.

"You okay, Ciss?"

"Sure. This isn't exactly where I'd choose to go on vacation, but other than that... I'm fine."

Reno gave her another long look.

"You sure about that? You've been awfully... cheerful today."

"What, would you rather have my bitch face?" Her smile was still there, sweet as ever.

"C'mon, Ciss," he huffed. "I just want you to be you."

"And what makes you think this isn't me?"

Reno's frown deepened, inched toward bewilderment.

"I know you."

Slowly, her smile changed.

"You knew me two years ago."

She left. Reno stared after her, and kept staring after she had disappeared through the front doors.

Rude reached up to adjust his tie. Reno glanced up at him.

"See ya later," he mumbled.

He stalked off toward the stairs without looking back.

"So," Cissnei began as they descended the steps into Nibelheim, "my guess is that you're not actually interested in spending an evening with a bunch of teenage girls."

Rude blinked. He'd just assumed that whether they were together or not, they'd spend the evening at the town's only watering hole. It was so easy to forget that she was still, technically, a teenager.

"Just want a quiet drink."

"Quiet, huh?" She chuckled. "I hear you. Enjoy your evening."

He nodded, and with a smile she skipped off across the square. She was out of sight before Rude had reached the water tower.

Only a couple of houses right by the village gate still basked in the glow of the waning sun. The pub was one of them. As Rude moved from shadow into light, he wondered if the place even had a name. All he could make out from the worn sign was the word "inn" in capital letters.

The amount of chatter that came pouring out when he opened the door surprised him. The pub wasn't full, just busier than he had expected; more than half of the small, round tables were occupied, and a couple of patrons were filling up space at the bar counter. The barkeep eyed him warily, but took his order without complaint.

Someone behind him said something he couldn't make out, that was met with a chorus of chuckles. No matter how many times Rude told himself it was nothing to do with him, he felt his shoulders tighten. When it happened again, he glanced back at the small group seated around the table behind him. He recognized the speaker as one of the old coots he and Reno had met on the first day.

Someone bumped into Rude's back. He caught himself with a hand on the counter and twisted his body around to stare at the offender.

"Whoopsh," slurred a man with a gaunt, ruddy face – the second half of the old coot duo. "Sorry 'bout that."

Rude let out a sharp breath and returned to his drink. The first sip was lukewarm and far too sour. Maybe he should have stayed at the manor after all. He could at least have had the sense to find a quiet table.

He still could, at least until he'd finished his shitty ale. Rude raised his head to look around.

The old-timer swayed back into Rude's field of view and gave him a grin.

"You're one of them Shinra suits, eh?"

He huffed beer fumes into Rude's face with every word. Rude drew back and leveled a firm stare at him, which was usually enough to deter attempts at small talk. This man, though, was too drunk, too foolhardy or just too stupid to notice.

"Ayup, thought you was. We had one of yer kind here before."

Rude withdrew into his drink and took a gulp. They were probably talking about Cissnei, he mused, or had mistaken the Turk uniform for a business suit. As far as he knew, Reno hadn't left the manor.

The man clambered onto the stool next to Rude, then looked him over with bleary eyes. His gray hair stuck out in thin, uneven tufts. Judging from the damp stain down the front of his shirt, he'd spilled his beer on himself when he knocked into Rude.

"Ayup," he said, nodding sluggishly. "Must be some twenty years back by now."

As Rude looked up in surprise, the man's friend mumbled something unintelligible behind them. The old man raised his eyebrows.

"Thirty, huh? Damn. Time sure flies up here in the mountains."

Thirty years was way before Rude's time. It was way before the time of any of the other Turks, too, except maybe for Veld. Had the Turks even existed back then? The Shinra Company had been a world power for decades, but Rude didn't know its early history.

"Not much for talking, that feller," the man continued. "Seemed harmless enough, though."

Rude sighed, and decided to bite.

"Who was he?"

"Oh, it was some long, funny name... Started with a double-you... or a vee, maybe? Vaughan? Nah, that ain't right. Maybe it was a B." The man squinted at the ceiling for a while. "Naw. Ain't happening. Was thirty years ago, y'know."

With a non-committal grunt, Rude returned to his drink. At this point he was willing to bet these guys were just trying to get a rise out of him.

"Jordy here knows what happened to him, though. Don't ya, Jordy?"

Jordy nodded and proceeded to blather for almost a minute straight. Rude couldn't even tell where one word ended and another began; it had to be the local language which had all but gone extinct since Shinra rolled into Nibelheim. Once his unfathomable story had wound to a close, Rude gave him a blank look and shrugged.

The coots shared a glance before the other one spoke up.

"He says the house ate him."

With a tired sigh, Rude took a long gulp of his beer.

"Naw, it's true! They say them scientists up there," the man leaned closer and lowered his voice to stage whisper, "made the house come alive."

He stared intently at Rude with wide bloodshot eyes, holding his breath. Then he erupted in raucous laughter, sprinkling the side of Rude's face with spittle. His pals joined in. Rude did not.

"Ayup," the guy chortled, "ol' Phemie's the only one who can keep that place in check. Tough as dragon hide, that one. You best stay on her good side now... or she'll feed the house with the lot of ya."

That set off another hooting round of laughter. With a quiet groan, Rude drained his glass and got up. Cissnei could handle the locals. He'd had enough bullshit for one day.

A/N:

Just FYI, the incident with AVALANCHE that's mentioned over lunch is a canon event from Before Crisis, dealing with the pre-OG incarnation of AVALANCHE. (Also, if you haven't heard of Rayleigh before, she's a very minor character from BC canon.)