Chapter 6: Mister Bugenhagen Builds His Dream House

Johann has been loyal to too many things for the past fifty years of his life, since he dared venture into the caverns below Cosmo Canyon where the rocks are more alive than the people who inhabit them. When he came out at the age of forty one, his legs had stiffened, he could breathe again, and he felt old—far too old for forty one. The Elders of the Canyon told him Gi Nattack had put the curse of age on him; he will always feel it, and he will never die until he reaches at least a century of age.

Johann did not put much stock in at first, but he just kept getting older.

At fifteen, Johann began work in the Coal Mines in Reit village. The rock didn't crush him, and he made it through school, got promoted to a desk job in Nibelheim at Nibelectric, and sat there, walls pressuring him, for seventy years, exempting his stints in Cosmo Canyon: his trip below ground, his weekend classes, his summer lectures.

You could say Johann has spent his life in a cave.

Johannes Bugenhagen's house in Nibelheim had mostly wooden furniture. His favorite chair was walnut ladder, his bed creaked of splintering slats. The oak of his cane ate into his knuckle bones. The prize adornment of his living quarters, the cherry wood desk, had turned burgundy by age and pen scratches. A stack of letters sat on the lower left corner of Johann's desk, wrapped in tinsel string since winter, when he received his last letter from his great grandson serving in the Wildlands invasive infantry.

When it was cold in Nibelheim, Bugenhagen lit the furnace, holding his cane in his fist as he stooped over pine logs. Creosote in his stack pipe built up over the winter months. Over the past four years, he had students from Cosmo Canyon clean it out in the spring for twenty percent of their tuition. Before that, Johann's granddaughter had done the work for him.

The pantry never had anything worth a damn anymore. When was the last time a neighbor had felt sorry for him? Probably before he had made a hat for Mrs. Kempf from her Parsley Potato Salad.

Pickled Heg and onions tasted like kissing the snake itself-or a whiskered human spitting venom. Johann did not miss women so much as he missed missing women. He did not mind the taste.

Johann could not bring himself to have his dinner at his desk, so he ate it, standing up, in the kitchen and put on the slippers and gown his wife had made for him thirty years ago. It had holes, and the mattress chafed his skin, but he told himself he could not justify the expense of a new one.

When he awoke in the mornings, the stove had invariably flickered out. His desk hadn't burned to ash from the creosote. The letters were pristine, wrapped together in the bow his joints had objected.

The one thing he had always had for ninety years the war had gobbled up. Bhatti replaced it with her visions. For more than seventy five years of loyalty, Lizveta Palmer would not hold his pensions in ransom over the secret that would power the globe. Johann had no intention of leaving her.

As such, just three days after Johann Bugenhagen turned ninety one, when Jonathan Shinra began sending emissaries—even arriving once himself—begging Johann to join Shinra Manufacturing Works and leave Nibelectric for handsome amounts in Sno, Johann refused to budge. What use does an old man have for money—for another country? None.

Jonathan Shinra understood something of old men. Johann expected his next offer to be different.

A boy his great grandson's age and a titan of a man from Reit village chewed up by the Wildlands and spit out by his own people—a traitor-sat in his office. The boy swiveled the dusky hint of a blond mustache and the heavyweight brushed hair from his face and hunched over, glancing sideways as if he expected the people of Nibelheim to storm the small office building of Nibelectric and prod him with pitchforks.

Johann ran a brittle finger over the rim of his coffee, picked it up, and took a sip.

"I told Mister Shinra I'm not interested in a job at his company."

The boy snorted. "It's a good thing I'm not here to offer you one, then, isn't it?"

"Ho, aren't you? What are you doing in my office? Should I have someone find you a boat back North? I believe the loading dock is a ways in Costa."

The young man folded his hands as if he were a veteran in these types of confrontations. Johann had to bite his lip to avoid laughing.

"Shinra Manufacturing Works has procured a large parcel of land in Nibelheim. We're here to expand."

Johann slid forward in his chair as if to get up and totter to the door to show them out. "Then I best not keep you gentlemen in my office. You have important work to do that doesn't concern me."

The boy looked over at his companion, who appeared to suddenly find Johann's coffee cup fascinating. Johann must admit that the mug fashioned of fired clay with a likeness of his mustache scrawled around its waist stood out as one of his favorite affects, made for him by his grandson. The boy cleared his throat, and the large man nearly bolted from his seat.

"Sorry, Simon. I was just noticing—you don't have much, do you, Old Man?"

Simon—the boy's name, Johann supposed—clenched his lips. "Excuse me, Mister Rolfe?"

"He doesn't have much in terms of decorations. I thought, if I was gonna' build this guy a Mansion, he'd have some covetous way about him. You know, a hoarder. Likes—things."

Johann found himself stumped for the first instance in a long line of instances which comprised his old age. He could have sworn he had just heard Paer Rolfe, the traitor of Gold Nation, suggest that he had arrived in Nibelheim to build Johannes Bugenhagen a house.

Simon's left eyebrow ticked. His teeth clacked together in a sharp, single motion. "Mister Rolfe, would you mind gathering some takeout for our hotel? I think it would be best if—"

Paer Rolfe snorted. He brushed off his trousers and stood. "I get it," he said. "I'll see you back there. It was good to meet you, Old Man."

As Paer Rolfe stumbled from his office, he put pressure down on Johann's shoulder—a light tap. His version of a handshake for someone who hadn't earned one, no doubt. At the moment, Johann did not much fancy shaking the hand of the man who turned the front against the natives in The Wildlands.

It was only personal.

The door clicked shut. That left the unpleasant task of removing Simon Shinra from Johann's office.

The boy resumed his seat, crossing his legs and bowing low over his folded hands. He looked tired, an affectation which Johann found rather irritating. What did a boy his age have to be tired about?

"I apologize for…"

For a moment, the beginning of remorse hung in the office, taking up more space than the notebooks stacked neatly on the shelf, the metal desk rocking on a sawed off front leg. Then words fell, false and flat.

"Well, I'm not really sorry." Simon laughed. The smile that spread across his face removed the stuffy pretense of the business man he wasn't. His upper lip ceased to twitch. His hands found the armrests on his plaid guest chair. "To be honest, Doctor Bugenhagen, I can't apologize for Mister Rolfe, because he's right. I have no idea what we're doing here."

Johann took another sip from his coffee mug.

"My old man is very stubborn and extremely foolish. He thinks he might persuade you to join Shinra Manufacturing Works by moving a branch out here. Somehow, he thinks you'll find our operations more persuasive if you see them in action. I don't think—persuasion has anything to do with your refusal to join my father's company."

Bugenhagen let his spectacles fall down the bridge of his nose. "But he isn't just setting up another branch of Shinra Manufacturing Works here, is he? He's setting it up with me in mind."

Johann could see how a man like Jonathan Shinra, convinced he could get whatever he wanted, might create a department without a head and assume Johann would step in. He could see him forcing Paer Rolfe and his son upon an old man like hounds sniffing out a dream job. Too bad Johann didn't have one.

Simon scratched his chin. "He thinks Mister Rolfe has some kind of power to gauge what people need. I think he has the social understanding of a ten year old streaker—him and my father."

"Hm, what about you, then?"

Simon chuckled. He leaned over Johann's desk and brushed off a thin layer of dust covering a stack of papers marked for burning. Then he picked up a yellow sheet with an integral scratched on the bottom left corner. He rolled the sheet up, needing something to do with his hands, no doubt.

"That's the stupidest part of the entire thing," Simon said. "If there's a chance this will work—that my old man isn't wrong—I want to be the one that does it for him. I don't want him to make things besides weapons or get too ambitious. It won't work. If he wanted to start a company around energy, he should have.

"I'm not even sure I believe you have some magical formula or secret knowledge to power the world. After all, if you did, why wouldn't you have used it? And if you did, and have no intention of using it, how would my old man learn about it? If this falls into his lap, though, I want to put it there for him. I want my father's approval. I want to make sure you like Paer Rolfe, even though I can't stand him myself."

"Why should I like the man whose aid of the natives in the Wildlands may have resulted in my great grandson's death?"

"Because that's not it."

"What isn't?"

"That isn't the reason you haven't given up your secret, so it isn't important. I don't think you care about what Paer Rolfe did. You didn't so much a glare at him the entire time he was in your office."

That was all Simon wanted, then, to see how Johann would react to Rolfe's presence. He never intended for Rolfe to stay in the meeting at all. Johann almost cursed himself for not having considered this point sooner.

"There is something you care about, though," Simon said. "That's why we're here—to figure out what that is and build it for you. If, at the end, you prefer to honor your contract with Nibelectric, I won't be surprised."

When Johann did not move to take another sip from his coffee, Simon stood abruptly and walked to the door, taking long strides that prevented Johann from feigning any attempt to show him out.

"I will be seeing you around, Doctor Bugenhagen."

As Simon paused at the door, Johann truly looked at him for the first time—not just the ghost fluff of a mustache, but the boy himself. He was short, no doubt, but so was Johann. His perfect part in the center of his head sent two leafs of hair silting over his ears. He looked well fed, not soft, but he had wide shoulders, broad back muscles. If the rest of him did not appear limp and privileged, Johann would guess he worked out with weights on his shoulders.

Johann nodded to him curtly and frowned. "I don't doubt it, Boy. Nothing I do will change the way the ice has frozen over up North, will it?"

When Simon closed the door, Johann allowed himself a small chuckle into his coffee. He didn't much like young men who thought they could fool him.

At least Jonathan's boy didn't seem to be one of them.

Paer hardly recognized Gold Nation when they arrived by ferry in Harborton, but not much at all had changed. Harborton still smelt of the fish guts thrashed into basins under card tables. The shoulders of roads still peppered by sacks of fertilizer. Men still passed pennies through their coat sleeves instead of shaking hands. Yet when people looked at him, they knew him—not Paer Rolfe, but a giant man still wearing Pheonix feathers around his neck, still smelling faintly of madroon, and still speckled orange from the roughage of Wildlands. Icicle's dark days had not sapped the stains on his skin completely.

When a man in a tweed jacket stamped his passport and read his name, he spat in Paer's face. Paer did not respond except to tug his own sleeve to wipe the saliva off his cheek.

Others did not outright attack Paer, but they suspected who he was or at least where he had come from by his refusal to remove the string of feathers from his neck and his general stature. Word of the traitor, he found, had spread through letters from the Wildlands to Gold. He kept his shaking hand tucked in his pockets and walked through town with his head bowed.

Catherine, who had arranged to accompany them, appeared to find the entire charade entertaining. She whispered his name out the side of her mouth to insight crowds, leaving heel marks in the dirt and tossing her clanging bag of firearm parts—who carried such things through the street? Seriously—over her shoulder.

When they stopped in the hotel in Harborton—complete with turndown service and a smoking room—Catherine left a bouquet of pink Dahlias on his pillow. A lipstick mark emblazoned the index card tucked between the stems.

They did not stay long in Harborton, but Paer did not take this news in with relief. Regardless of where they traveled, anyone who had a hello for him would also have a bucket of ice water to slip down the back of his shirt—and that's being charitable.

One of the only actual physical changes to Gold Nation that Paer could use to explain his unease came yellow, feathered, and strapped to a rickshaw. Paer knew it as a rickshaw, but the driver called this one a cab, and he rode upon a chocobo instead of pulling it himself.

It was just as well, seeing as Paer could not imagine riding a man-powered rickshaw all the way to Nibelheim, and he remembered the birds of the Wildlands having enough strength and stamina to climb the mountains between the Wutai encampment and the land surrounding Fort Condor. Before he left, some of the soldiers had started catching them and using them to cross the terrain and gather intel. Since the fall of the Kjatas, the mountain range became safer to cross, and the chocobos made short work of the distance.

Simon had asked Paer if he wanted to stop in Reit Village on the way to Nibelheim. Catherine said she would be fascinated to see the village where Paer grew up.

Paer had told them he would rather make good time to Nibelheim. But it did not matter, really. People knew him in Nibelheim about as well as they knew him in Reit. As soon as the three of them arrived, Catherine checked them into the hotel on the far left side of town. Randy, the Innkeeper, knew Paer's family. Reit village popped out ranchers and hunters. Paer's father would bring Battery Caps and Valron wings for trade with the coal miners.

When Randy glowered over the counter, Catherine Drake squeezed his hand and leaned forward so that Randy could see the Shinra badge hanging at her neckline. "Would you happen to have a room without those ghastly fake trees? I have a condition. They give me hives." She batted her lashes.

Randy's distaste didn't go away, but he did not object.

Paer thought it would be easier, then he thought it would be harder. When he had observed the reaction to his name off the ferry in Harborton, he had been surprised. It should not have surprised him. He should have suspected that every man and woman in Gold would treat him like a pariah, but he had not, and it stung. Immediately following the altercation, however, he glanced down alleyways, burrowed into his seat in the cab, and expected, at any moment, for a group of Gold citizens to flock from the shadows and blow him apart with fire materia.

They eventually arrived in Nibelheim, where people knew Paer, knew the Rolfes, and the Innkeeper did nothing but glower at him. Paer would prefer it if they attacked him. At least then they could arrest him, put him through his inevitable trial, and finish the dance.

After they dropped their bags, Simon took Paer, paraded him in front of Johannes Bugenhagen—at which point Paer began to wonder if he had been brought to Gold as some sort of tribute, rather than as an architect.

When Simon sent him to get "takeout" and reconvene with Catherine at the hotel, Paer felt certain that the marketplace represented the first and last place he wanted to visit. If anyone would try to roll him, it would be there, in the runaround by the well, where Nibelheim's denizens sold homecooking practically fried on the rocks there in the summer. Enough Gold Nation soldiers crawled the streets, enough parents who had lost their children—if he rushed in with his head up and didn't invite at least a rain of arrows, he should consider himself invincible.

Paer did not make it to the marketplace.

He heard the snapping of the stick outside the front entrance to the Nibelectric office building, nearly masked by the clicking of the deadlatch on the door. He did not have time to react before a miner's boot connected with his shin, the butt of a pickaxe found his gut, and something heavy found the back of his neck.

Paer's reflexes had him doubled and clutching his stomach while the imprint of the heavy object rang through the back of neck and up into his skull like Capparwire vines lit on fire. Another hit—this time connecting with the burning back of his head—sent him to the ground. Then the miner's boot was digging into one of his kidney's, and he couldn't breathe.

Light had faded to the sienna of sunset, and Paer craned his neck to make out the shapes of his assailants. He did not recognize either of the three men beyond grief, outrage, and gritted teeth. The one with the pickaxe left the bladed edge of the head hovering over Paer's eye. Paer tried to find purchase in the paved dirt, but the miner's boot fell down on the bridge of his knuckles.

"What the hell are you doing here, Rolfe?" The grunge in the voice made Paer taste gravel—or maybe that was just the dirt he ate when he fell.

"No place else to go."

With one man standing on his back, talking felt like peeling apart his ribcage.

The blade of the pickaxe left its perch above Paer's eye. The chain of the Shinra badge around Paer's neck tightened, then snapped.

"These Shinra have a lot of nerve, thinking some flimsy card stock's gonna' keep you safe. You better clear out of here before the Mayor figures out the man who killed his kid's around. And take off these goddamn—"

Paer felt the strain of the cord of Pheonix feathers around his neck, bucked against the pain in his hand, and shoved hard against the pair of feet on his back. The man standing there gave a yelp and toppled over, but Paer did not make it to his feet before the handle of the pickaxe found its way across his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

He would definitely feel it in the morning.

Catherine had wanted to follow Paer and Simon to Nibelheim as a means of betting against Tuesti, Gast, and their pet Ancient. She felt like she was racing them, and maybe Tuesti had a foot in the door, and all Simon had was an old man with a fake secret, but his was the only game in town.

She had not, however, predicted the amount of distaste she would have for this continent.

Gold Nation would not shine if Catherine took a lump of wax to it. Of course, if she did that, the wax would find its way under her nails, and she didn't quite fancy—

Nibelheim. It had its share of dirt and dirt-coverd things, men with dirty faces, muddy boots dragging dirt over filthy foyers. The men in Harborton smelled of fish. The men in Nibelheim smelled of dirt and coal. She swore the Sun did not even come out because the dirt had covered the sky.

Grittles powered by coal hissed, but the mud on the surfaces masked the smell of happily sizzling grease. Catherine looked away from smokey faces, kept her head high, tried not to let her heels get bogged down by dirt.

Under the well that marked the center of Nibelheim, Catherine found a weapon's stand. A knives stand, more specifically. Catherine, more often than not, found herself attracted to the burgeoning field of firepower, but she could appreciate a decent blade, concealed at the hip, poised over the throat of a fat man wearing red.

Especially a stiletto.

Catherine ran her index finger over a double-edge blade nearly as thin as the aforementioned appendage. She inspected the leather strap around the hilt and wondered how it might look hung about her neck, the blade tucked under her bra, between her breasts.

"That's a stiletto," the man behind the card table said, "V-42. Seven and a half inches."

So maybe seven and a half inches was a little too long to tuck into her bra.

Catherine's attention snapped to the vendor and away from the knife for a small second. Quite young, she noted. He sported a trimmed beard and mustache. His cracked leather jacket had a kerchief hanging sloppily from his pocket, stained yellow. Not very clean; she did not fancy touching him any time soon.

"How much?"

The man raised a brow. "A purchase from a Shinra liaison? Isn't that a little…?"

He had a curious, quiet way of speaking. His accent cleaved every word with more than one syllable. Surely he did not hail from Nibel. He could not be a trader from a nearby village either. Almost everyone in Gold had that same, smooth speech that made Catherine feel as if they spat smoke clouds into her ears.

"Who said I was buying it?" Catherine licked her lips.

The man leaned over the table and smashed his thumb over the hilt of the blade. "Your eyes did."

Catherine's fingers retreated to her mouth to cover her laughter. "Of course they did. Marvelous. Very well, what's the price?"

The vendor eyed her badge—no name, just the elegant Shinra rhombus on white card stock hanging from a beaded chain.

"I'm not sure the price in Sno…"

Catherine waved his concerns away. "Not to worry. I have Phyrrus." She reached into her bag—no longer bulky and full of gun cylinders and springs—and pulled out a stack of thick, round coins. Phyrrus always had a too-slick feel, like running her hand through Jonathan Shinra's groomed and trimmed beard.

The stack clanged onto the table, and Catherine gestured to the vendor to suggest that he should help himself. He took three—sixty Phyrrus. Catherine thought the blade was worth at least eighty.

"Where do you make these?" Catherine snatched the stiletto from the table before the vendor could change his mind. She ran her finger along one of the bladed edges with just enough pressure to feel it tear the first layer of skin. Steel was cold, clean—not at all like the man who sold it.

"The woods."

"Indeed?" Catherine fingered her lapel. Her eyes flickered once more to the man's face. He appeared bored and impassive. One transaction, completed, meant the end of their conversation. "I suppose you wouldn't take me to meet the craftsmen?"

"You suppose correctly."

Catherine dug the blade further into her index finger, drawing blood. She did her best to avoid narrowing her eyes. "I could have you followed."

At this, Catherine managed to evoke the first true expression from the man. His lips curled, and he leaned even further across the table. "I am sure, Doctor Drake, you wouldn't succeed."

For a moment, she smelled pine, some sort of berry, dare she say urine,and then nothing. She looked down at the table, where her stack of coins remained, and noticed that two more were missing.

"The price went up?"

"Consider it payment for information."

At that moment, a rough finger prodded Catherine's lower back. She craned her neck to glare at the woman behind her, carrying a satchel full of brown cheese and corn bread. Her fingers were covered in dirt, and Catherine had a mind to demand she pay to have her suit cleaned.

"Excuse me, Miss, but I've been waiting to look at the buck knives."

Catherine felt the man pressing the greasy stack of Phyrrhus back into her hand and closing her fingers. She took a moment to look back at him.

"Yes, Doctor, please make room for other customers."

She dropped the coins in her bag. Then she snatched the knife from the table and hung the leather strap from the chain on her Shinra badge. Catherine made sure the vendor saw it before she stalked off in search of a tall tree or a ledge on the well behind which she could seek cover.

It was a declaration of war, whether the man behind the card table saw it that way or not.

Most men of Paer's irascible nature had learned to take a beating at a young age. Then, of course, he had never been good at defensive training. Most significantly, he had lived inside a mountain where large men—many of whom never wore shirts because their muscles would bust through them—sometimes felt the urge to pummel or interrogate him under suspicions of treachery. Paer wouldn't say he was comfortable with spitting up blood, but he supposed he was about as close to it as one could get.

When Johann rolled out of bed the next day, hobbling out the front door, and leaning heavily on his cane, he found a notice posted on the front of his apartment summoning him to the mayor's office at ten in the morning. Someone could have told him about that. He would be fifteen minutes late. Certainly, they did not expect old men who did next to nothing in their offices all day to be ready to go to work on time?

In either case, Johann, no regard for the pressing nature of the summons, managed to limp his way over to the mayor's home. It was not the most grandiose of homes, but it had a floor over almost every building in the city except the Inn.

Mayor Lockheart had three children: one boy who had died in the war about the same time Johann lost his great grandson, yet another boy, and a girl who spent most of their time running around the market, knocking over barrels of turnips, and generally annoying all easily ruffled old men. Their screeching never ended, and he found them as spoiled as cabbage in May.

Or perhaps he just despised children, having none left in the world to call his own.

He found them out front, digging divets with chipped spades and recovering them for no clear purpose beyond messing the walk. His cane sunk into one of them, and the girl squealed with joy, tossing her hair behind her head.

"What are you doing here, Doctor Bugenhagen?" the boy asked, elbowing his sister in the side.

"Mayor Lockheart summoned me."

"Weird, what do you have to do with the traitor?"

"The traitor?"

"Yeah, they're talking about what to do with him. Pop's real mad. I 'member. He said 'Iffn' Paer Rolfe ever found Nibelheim, I'd take glee executing him myself,' but the Shinra types say he has mutiny."

"Mutiny?"

"Carla, he said ammunity."

"Immunity," Johann corrected absently, massaging his mustache. "He has immunity as a liaison from Icicle."

"I's pretty sure Pop said mutiny."

"I'm sure he did at one point or another." Johann sighed. Why should the Mayor bother to involve him in this? He would rather wash his hands of the entire mess, go to his office, scribble equations, and feel miserable. Instead, he had to interrupt his routine, straining his legs at the Mayor's home, and speaking to children possessed by Hades.

Inside the foyer, Mayor Lockhart's wife had decorated the walk with a red, floral-printed rug, paintings of Azaleas, and enough mahogany to choke a woodpecker. The secretary had a pressed rose in her collar, and she directed Johann down a hallway on the right. She had the nerve to suggest he need an escort.

Who needed a stiff, hollow headed escort, when one could have a stiff, hollow pummeled cane?

As Johann neared the mahogany door with a plaque which read "Mayor Lockhart," he heard Simon Shinra's patient voice. The voice of a boy who thinks he's at least eighty seven.

Johann caught himself smiling. Then he scowled to cover it.

"I'm sorry, Mayor Lockhart, that you feel we have insulted you. Icicle Inn does not dare betray the trust you have forged between—"

"You can stop your simpering, Boy. We know all about the ambassador Jonathan Shinra sent to Wutai."

"You have to understand that our company wants to keep a neutral reputation. They requested information on our products, so we sent a liaison. Nothing more. I'm afraid, however, that this matter has nothing at all to do with Mister Rolfe, who—"

"My boy is dead because of him!"

Johann felt the following silence would represent his best moment to enter. He cleared his throat and rapped upon the door to Mayor Lockhart's office. When no one responded, Johann decided it best to let himself in. One of the only positive things about being old was that he could use his age as an excuse for being where he didn't belong. "Oh, excuse me, I couldn't quite hear the shouting, I thought I would just let myself in." That kind of thing.

Unlike the hallway, Mayor Lockhart's office had a green theme. Green wallpaper. Pictures of conifers. A pickaxe mounted on the wall, green paint splattered from the hilt onto the head to indicate that Mayor Lockhart had likely had it painted for his office after its assembly.

Simon Shinra's smile nearly covered his hint of a mustache, while Mayor Lockhart's temple throbbed. The man tried to keep the lines of his smile straight, but the hint of an angry frown caused the right corner to droop.

"Hello, Doctor Bugenhagen," Simon said. "It's good to see you again."

Then he mouthed 'I'm so sorry' and leaned back in a green puff chair, tilting a glass of water.

Mayor Lockhart forced his hands in his pockets. "Can I get you something to drink, Doctor Bugenhagen. Coffee?"

"No, thank you, I'm sure I'll wake up on my own soon. I'm old, not deaf. Continue discussing your problem."

"Paer Rolfe was beaten out front of Nibelectric last night," Simon said before The Mayor could begin shouting again. "Several of his ribs were broken, he acquired a fairly severe concussion, and I came to the Mayor last night to discuss implementing some security measures. He hasn't been—accommodating."

The Mayor snorted.

Johann could not deny Mayor Lockhart's right to be outraged. According to reports from The Wildlands, Paer Rolfe's defection came inexplicably and unexpectedly. His joining of some sort of tribe which worshiped some sort of bird compromised the integrity of the Base of Operations which he had constructed and allowed him to steal valuable weapons and supplies for an enemy. Under normal circumstances, Johann doubted he would even have a trial before an execution.

But now Paer Rolfe belonged to Shinra. For all intents and purposes, so did the entire nation of Gold.

While Rolfe's defection had strengthened the native element, Gold continued to emerge victorious in almost every encounter against the forces of Wutai and Mideel: the main opponent of the war. The Drake weapons made that possible. They said men could use materia found over the years and collected by wealthy men as oddities to command the elements themselves against enemies, to make nearly dead men leap from the infirmary and walk again.

If the people of Nibelheim killed a Shinra liaison, the relationship which made Gold stronger than it ever was before might suffer.

"Where is Mister Rolfe now?" Johann squeezed his cane and scanned the room for an empty chair. This could be a taxing conversation.

"Nibelheim Hospice," Simon said.

"Well, then, I'm sure a nurse with a syringe of morphine has already ended the matter for us."

"He's under Doctor Drake's watch."

Johann raised a brow. "Doctor Catherine Drake, you say? I suppose she has a brightly colored name tag and everything. Well, if there's one person in the world who might save Paer Rolfe from an assassin, it's her."

He wondered if that was the very reason Jonathan Shinra had sent Doctor Drake to Nibelheim.

"Well, what can an old man like me do for you? Bore you with my experiences? I'm sure you'll disregard them."

Mayor Lockhart sighed. "Simon Shinra claims he and his group have come to our lovely town to build you a house."

Johann pursed his lips. He looked from Mayor Lockhart's pulsing temple to Simon's sincere, pandering face.

"I know I turned down coffee, but is it too early for brandy?" Johann mumbled.

"Excuse me?" Simon asked. "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch that."

"That's what they tell me." Johann cleared his throat. "They're here to build me a giant house."

"That's what they—tell you." The Mayor sat down at his desk and crossed his legs.

"My old man purchased a plot of land, Mister Mayor, as you know." Simon folded his hands in his sleeves. "He desires to expand into Gold Nation, not least so that we can continue our mutually beneficial partnership. A partnership with Nibelectric would also be a very integral part of it."

"You're trying to poach Doctor Bugenhagen," Mayor Lockhart said. "I've heard."

"Not in this case. We're just here to give him a gift so as—"

"What does this have to do with Paer Rolfe?"

"My father would like him to build it for us, as well as the new Shinra branch. After all, you can say many things about Paer Rolfe, but that he is a bad architect, well. I don't think anyone would say that."

"There are many good architects in Gold Nation," Mayor Lockhart said. "Many I would prefer, many that would not insult my people."

"But Doctor Bugenhagen insists—"

Johann laughed. Long, low, loudly, gripping his cane and nearly falling forward. "I insisted, did I? To think, Boy, I was actually considering liking you."

"You mean to say you didn't request Paer Rolfe?" Mayor Lockhart demanded.

Simon's eyes widened. All his false years dropped, and his lower jaw sagged. "You told us that it had to be him."

Johann cleared his throat. "I said nothing of the sort."

Simon stood, leaned forward, and gripped the glass of water so hard Johann thought he heard it creak. "You said only Paer Rolfe—"

"It doesn't matter what Doctor Bugenhagen did or did not insist upon," The mayor said, pursing his lips.

Simon glared at Johann. He could not possibly have expected Johann to agree to his insane scheme. Even then, he over-estimated Johann's worth to this town. It puzzled him that, after all his calm honesty in the office the day before, a lie and the life of a man he professed no interest in could unnerve him so.

Boys will be puzzles.

"The best way to resolve this issue so as to uphold law would be for Paer Rolfe to complete his assignment for Shinra Manufacturing Works," Lockhart continued, unperturbed, as if he required an outburst from someone else to notice how childishly he had been behaving. "After that, I think we can work something out. We'll allow him protection here, including armed guards, if we can agree that, once his assignment is complete, Paer Rolfe remains in Nibelheim and faces a trial for his crimes against Gold Nation."

The armed guard, Johann supposed, would exist in name only, as he doubted anyone in Nibel would willingly serve.

"Paer Rolfe is on retainer at Shinra." Simon's nostrils flared. "That isn't going to work."

"Boy," Johann grumbled, "this is the best deal you're going to get."

"Fine," Simon snapped. Then he crossed his arms. Johann remembered when his two year olds would do that. "You have a deal. Paer Rolfe builds the Nibelheim branch of Shinra Manufacturing Works, and you can burn him."

Then Simon forced himself from the green desk chair, slammed the glass of sloshing water on Mayor Lockhart's desk, and stalked from the office.

Lockhart licked his lips. "They send Paer Rolfe, they negotiate contracts with Wutai, but perhaps the most insulting thing Jonathan Shinra has done so far is send a fifteen year old boy to represent him."

Johann coughed. "Have you met Jonathan Shinra?" He preferred Simon so far.

"Did you really ask for Rolfe as architect?"

"They didn't consult me about this one way or the other."

"Like I said, it doesn't matter." Mayor Lockhart opened a file on his desk. He lifted a mahogany pen. The green decals on its side matched the painting of a conifer mounted behind the Mayor's chair. "The fact that people might believe it for a moment is damning enough."

Cloves. Paer smelled them and knew he was in an infirmary of some kind. They practically filled the air ducts with those things in Junon—at least, that's why he reasoned the air always felt so heavy.

When he breathed, snapped parts of his ribcage bit his lungs. His skull throbbed. His fingers had to be broken. At least he could blame the tearing on the cloves.

Paer tried to tilt his head and hissed. The pain jolted all down his spine like steel clothespins on his vertebrae.

"You're awake. Marvelous."

Venturing a peek out his left eye, Paer spotted Catherine Drake, wearing her red suit jacket, her legs crossed, hands folded on her lap over a pistol, and her hair twisted up like crullers. Catherine sat on a black stool by his bed. When she smiled, things seemed to hurt a little less.

Then he tried to smile back, and that ruined everything.

"You see, I would call the nurse over, but she's been looking daggers at you all day. Luckily, I brought my Carridge." Catherine stroked the barrel of her pistol. "So she doesn't get close enough."

"Painkillers?" The irony of the jab through his ribs when he asked for relief didn't go unnoticed.

"I'm afraid I don't think that's the best idea until the meeting is over."

"Meeting?"

Paer's eyes wandered as well as they could without moving his head and causing himself more pain. Brick walls held up the wooden slats of the roof. Nibelheim buildings were either made from mud or stone: two things the locals could find in abundance. From his scope of vision, he estimated that twenty beds filled the single room he recovered in—probably the only room in the building. He spotted a patient across from him with gauze covering his eyes. Deliberate, he suspected. The only moron who wouldn't attack him was a blind one.

"The meeting between Simon and the Mayor to decide whether or not you should be killed." Catherine reached her hand to wipe the hair from Paer's eyes. Her hands, despite calluses, long nails, chill, and her words felt remarkably gentle.

"Great. Well, what's the point? Might as well let the nurse at me."

Catherine frowned. "That attitude is horrid. And here I was, just about to tell you of the magnificent discovery I'd made in the Well Market today."

"Well Market?" Paer wished he had thought of it first, but he wasn't going to admit it.

Catherine batted her hand at him. "Oh, you know, the Market around the well. I think I've found assassins."

Paer sighed and added that to the mounting list of gestures he could not make with broken ribs. From the few conversations he had had with Catherine, it seemed likely that pressing her wouldn't force her to make sense.

Her hand snuck in front of Paer's vision, and she snapped twice. "Excuse me, I'm talking to you."

"'Course," Paer said. "I was paying attention. Just waiting for you to keep going."

"Well, the details can wait." She stood from her stool so she could lean over him. Paer smelled the perfume she always wore to cover the smell of gunpowder. As far he could tell, she bathed in both. It left a stated charm that made her relatable. He didn't fit in society, and she didn't know how to do so. "Let's just say I'm awaiting your recovery so you can take me there."

Her hands fluttered to his, folded in gauze at his stomach. Paer gritted his teeth against the urge to cry out. "Don't you want to see them, Mister Rolfe? The men who live in the forest and worship Hades."

Paer had heard about the tribe of men who lived in the forests of Gold Nation. Thirty years before he was born, there was a rumor that they were trained assassins of the previous Monarchy. When the last king was deposed, the Aristocracy ordered all men who worshipped Hades hunted down and murdered; the forests near Costa del Sol burned in rashes of flame until the once green land became a parched plane.

"They're dead."

"Well, so are you, isn't that so? You're a dead man. That's what the meeting is about."

Paer had little he could say to that. He let his aching jaw hang and looked away from her.

The fingers snapped in Paer's face again. Catherine's thin fingers gripped his jaw and forced him to look at her. She had leaned even further over his bed so that he could smell her breath as well as her perfume. Rhubarb. She ate it raw and with gusto.

"What makes you so sure ya know where they are?" Paer asked.

"Ah." Catherine's eyes gained a new luster as she fumbled under the lapels of her suit. At length, she pulled out her Shinra badge, and Paer saw a seven inch knife dangling on a chain from the cord. He would ask her how she managed to hide that under her suit, but thought it best not to learn too much about how the minds of pretty women worked. They tended to be unsavory places.

"And?" he asked.

"He was selling these." Her finger ran to the hilt. A leather hilt had four marbles set. Three evenly spaced at the edges and center of the quillion, and the fourth at the base of the hilt. "You see the four orange lamps, yes? It was on all of his merchandise."

Paer chewed the inside of his cheek. "There can be no question." He did his best not to sound sarcastic. It never boded well to openly sass Catherine. She would clack off in a huff. In this situation, that could prove fatal for him.

She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Mister Rolfe, you're too easily convinced. There's more."

Paer felt a pang in his shoulder blade when he began to lift his arm to scratch behind his head. Old habits die hard.

"You see, the vendor was very rude to me, so I hid behind the well and thought to spy on him. He was very guarded about where he was from. With good reason, of course. So I sat and watched"—here Catherine crouched beside Paer's bed for a moment to illustrate her hiding position—"over the side of the well. In an hour or so, a couple others appeared, and they both had small parcels. One of them put his down near me, and when they were busy with customers I scurried over and wedged my nose inside. It had a long red robe in it. You know the kinds with the hoods that used to be in all the old drawings of Hades? The man at the stand had a parcel just like it, and I'll bet you anything they all had robes like that inside."

Still not convinced, Paer tried to feign interest. "Well, that's amazing, isn't it? I thought for sure they'd all died out."

"I never believed it." Catherine dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Why would a forest fire destroy men who could sneak into the bed chambers of the most celebrated Costa royals? We must meet them, Mister Rolfe. They are in the forest, I wager. Up in the mountains, perhaps. They certainly looked filthy enough."

"I promise I'll take you, Katie." Paer tried to give her a reassuring pat. Raising his arm as high as he could without biting off his bottom lip. "As long as the Mayor doesn't kill me first."

Catherine's excitement wilted for a moment. She found a seat at the edge of Paer's bed and looked away from him. "That would be unfortunate, wouldn't it?"

For the first time, Paer took a moment to really think about being executed in Nibelheim. He had thought about the shame, being afraid someone might jump him, but not about actually dying. It seemed different from how he had imagined the possibility of dying on the Wildlands. More civilized, somehow. You take a man and say "This is for what you did to everyone in this city," then you shoot him or chop off his head or something of the sort. It's clean and easy. No one cries but the young ones who don't understand fair's fair.

Paer didn't much like civilized.

"I'm sure Simon won't let anything happen." Catherine sighed. "If there's one thing Shinra has here, it's power. You're one of us now."

Even in Wildlands before he defected, Paer had not been 'one of' anything. He wasn't a soldier, just a man with blueprints and a lot of muscle. Paer got the same sense from Shinra Manufacturing Works. Everyone seemed to have the capability to do one thing, and that made for little comraderie. Simon hardly spoke on the ferry to Harborton.

But he had a contract. Paer had a small sense of what that meant, and he had apparently underestimated its power.

"I came here to avoid death. I didn't want people from Gold to bite it, and I couldn't stand it if Abner croaked. So I guess I took the first job without thinking and roll for it. Hardly seems fair, does it?"

"It might help"—Catherine had swiveled back around; her index finger found its way to the cord of Phoenix feathers still tied around Paer's neck—"if you took this off."

"It wouldn't help at all, and you know it."

"It provokes them." Catherine sighed and fluffed ringlets of her hair with her free hand. "Are you so loyal to those birds?"

"Don't think that's it." Paer admitted he had no reason to have reacted when the miners who attacked him had reached for his lanyard of Phoenix feathers. He felt a great amount of loyalty to the last bird, but he doubted it could sense one way or the other whether he kept wearing its plumage—if it cared in the first place, which he doubted.

"Even the Hades men take off their robes in town."

Paer chuckled and coughed from the pain. "I guess that makes them a might smarter than me, yeah?"

Catherine leaned away from Paer so she could swing one of her stilettoed feet onto the bed beside Paer's head. She stretched her fingers from the knee to the ankle, leaving her nose a few inches from her bare lower thigh. When she caught Paer sneaking a glance out the corner of his eyes, she grinned.

"That was never the question, Mister Rolfe."

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