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It's a little spacey, but it exists

Dagger fumbled around with the inside of the piano, finding something stuck to the strings. Rufus allowed her to do all the examining, more highly focused on the tonberry and making sure it never drew near. Instead, it waddled its way back to the girl with the pink hair, who picked it up as if it were some sort of play thing. The blonde watched her carefully as she stood, making her way toward the fireplace. Anyone who interacted with a murderous beast like it was a stuffed toy certainly couldn’t be trusted in any way.

Not that Rufus trusted a soul within this mansion.

Convinced, for the moment, that they were out of harm’s way from a tiny beast’s stabbing knife, Rufus instead began to turn his attention back to the piano. However, he barely got a glimpse at the shining, strange device attached to the keys before something happened. It was all too quick. A slam of something heavy, the rattling of chords, a scream. Rufus stepped back from the piano on instinct, his eyes wide and darting toward the source, his hand thrust into his coat with his fingers wrapped around the handle of his weapon.

Just as soon as it happened, it was over. There was nothing but the unpleasant ring of mismatched notes rebounding off of the walls. Rufus could barely notice it over the beat of his own heart thrumming within his ears. Blue eyes turned to the source -- and an unpleasant, confused knot twisted within his gut.

Slumped on the piano was the very man he’d seen dead less than an hour prior to this … foolish errand they’d been tasked with.

The clink of metal shoes came down the hall, before Vincent Valentine returned with a harsh question of what happened. What, indeed. The former Turk’s red gaze held on Rufus, and the Shinra held it back in equal time, his eyebrows furrowing.

After taking a glance to the ceiling -- no, that was still in once piece, Rufus looked back to Vincent, his eyes cold, his heart finally finding that familiar sinus rhythm, “Any guess of yours would be as good as our own.”

He watched silently as Dagger and Vincent began to examine the corpse of Jules de Lune. It wasn’t the man’s dead body that had stunned him, he’d seen plenty of corpses. It was that it had come from nowhere. Appeared out of thin air and dropped to the ground. Someone was toying with them, with a magic that Rufus couldn’t understand. It was something he detested about this world. It didn’t make the same logical sense as his own.

A chill crept up his spine, wrapping around the ache at the base of his neck. Lumina’s words suddenly made more sense … Their bodies were clues. Jules de Lune’s body had been a clue, before it was mysteriously healed of its wounds. Rufus recalled the man’s injuries; the oozing stab wound, the cauterized flesh eaten by magic.

He felt his foot ease backwards one step. Then another. Rufus turned and began walking out of the room, suddenly feeling stifled. He knew that Vincent had directed a question at him, as well as the others, but Rufus had no information to give him. He didn’t see anything. There was nothing, and then there was a corpse. He was woefully unprepared to deal with magical slayings without a real team to investigate … And what was in it for him? Now, not much at all. All the secrets he’d wanted were lost in the dead man’s mind, or hidden around the mansion.

As Rufus marched onward, unsure of his direction, a strange room caught his attention. Every other room in the mansion had been fairly dim or unwelcoming, cold. Yet, a light was streaming into the hall that was warm and somewhat inviting. Yellow, like fresh sunlight. Curious, the blonde rolled his aching shoulder, and glanced into the doorway to see what lied within.

Oh, it was much worse from that angle. Yellow of all shapes and forms assaulted his vision. Rufus squinted, bringing an arm up to temporarily shield him from the suddenly dazzling display. Everything was a bright, sunshine yellow, from the walls to the floor, the decor to the very crown molding.

And seated within the room was a familiar man. One of the mercenaries that had been standing in the room with Jules de Lune when they all entered. The man that was supposed to protect the manor.

“A little early to rest, don’t you think?” Rufus felt the frustration nip at his tongue. If there was one thing he hated more than anything in the world, it was waste. Wasted resources. Wasted time. Failure. Inadequacy. The blonde refused to hold back his mirth as he crossed his arms at the failure of the mercenary before him, “You certainly can’t be tired. You didn't even perform your job.”

The body of Jules de Lune is unresponsive. It is, after all, a corpse. There is nothing more that he can give, however, the force of his fall has done something strange to the piano keys. One is stuck and thrust into a downwards position. While forced down like this, a wire glints in the space behind it, reflecting the dim firelight. Inside the piano, one of the devices has been struck by the hammer. A light glows red from this struck device. The other three remain unstruck and unlit.

There is a strange sense of magic in the air. A dark magic. It lingers like a miasma. Something isn’t right.

Rowan Castillo is a dark man. He’s dressed almost entirely in leather -- both for style and protection, and he sprawled on the too-yellow couch, one arm casually hanging over the back. In his free hand, he holds a pipe. It smolders idly, filling the room with a thick and bitter taste.

He doesn’t look up as Rufus enters. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the window and the courtyard beyond it. The courtyard’s statue rises as a shadow beyond the half-foggy glass. A great stone serpent is curled above the fountain’s dry pools.

Castillo takes a long drag of his pipe. ”Not my job,” he says, ”To keep the bastard alive.”

He lets the words hang there before he groans and leans his head back on the edge of the couch. ”It’ll be a trip getting paid,” he admits.

Another silence. His head lulls in a kind of drug-induced stupor. ”But I did my job just fine.”

Adjacent Locations:

Bathroom: You find an open-spaced, tiled bathroom with a basin sink and a claw-footed bathtub. The sink is still slightly wet.

Dining Room: A grand dining room table stretches out from end to end over a rug woven with diamond patterns. Sixteen chairs are pushed in along both edges. Two couches sit along the windows alcove and there are cabinets full of china along the eastern and western walls. Though the room is spotless, several china sets are missing. The table has very recently been cleaned. It still shines with cleaner and polish.

Game Room: Eight sets of armor stand vigil over the game room. They appear to have once been used in the Provo army, but they haven’t been used in some time. On one end is a fireplace, still hot with embers. Balls are scattered on the billiards table. The cards are placed around the game table in four hands. The remaining card deck has been scattered across the floor.

Yellow Lounge: The yellow lounge lives up to its name. Everywhere, there is a blinding yellow. The walls, the rug, the daisy flowers. Seated at one of the couches is Rowan Castillo, the mercenary hired to guard the manor.

Map Position: Click Here

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Rufus does not like this man

The mercenary didn’t even bother lifting his head to acknowledge Rufus’s presence -- nor that he’d said anything. The young Shinra felt his feathers ruffled by the man’s ignorance and rude nature, but kept his biting remarks at bay. Clearly, the type of man before him was not one to show any real respect to anyone, or anything.

That, and he didn’t seem entirely sober.

Despite the room’s decor near blinding him, Rufus finally crossed the threshold and approached Castillo. Not too close, enough of a distance to be able to leap back if need be in case the man suddenly rose, but close enough to observe the little things. The mercenary’s breathing pattern. The smell of whatever he was smoking in his pipe. Blue eyes glanced toward the window Castillo had looked out of, but Rufus considered nothing out there to be of any real use.

Castillo’s words were … interesting. Rufus raised a curious eyebrow. It almost seemed like the man was admitting guilt to what happened to Jules de Lune. Or, at least, that he may have played a part in it. No, no, that was simply what Rufus wanted to hear. To find a culprit. Castillo could have had some other purpose that he was hired for. Something else to guard, or steal, or do.

Indeed, it was hard to get paid by a dead man.

“I’d hardly say any act performed here tonight was done 'fine',” Rufus let the words slip from his tongue, in an attempt to carefully corner the mercenary and glean more information from his drug-addled state, “Unless your job was to stand around uselessly and then get high once chaos erupted.”

Perhaps it was that simple. Castillo was nothing but a red herring.

Either way, Rufus felt much more comfortable interrogating a suspicious character than poking around hidden objects to satisfy his curiosity. After all, he knew firsthand how dangerous the most well-laid traps could be.