In early Monarchber 2079, the Fiends For Hire received a rather unusual request from a real estate agency. However, it went largely ignored for some time since they were still dealing with the aftermath of the Power Station. Turns out, trying to help approximately 70 people of varying backgrounds, ambitions, and mental states wasn’t a quick process.
It had been much easier during the first round of member and resident recruitment over a year ago. That had been a comparable number, but everyone there had the same destination in mind. To add to the complexity, the CP Representative overseeing the country where the Power Station resided had decided to get involved. They sent a few social service workers along with a few trained psychiatrists.
This was both helpful and a burden in a number of ways. The social services department managed to convince a few more who were initially hesitant to return to their families. However, they laid the pressure on a bit too thick for some who were quite resistant, to the point that the Fiends For Hire eventually had to step in and throw them out of the compound.
The psychiatrists were a bit more useful. They took a lot of the burden off of Farian to the point that he could merely oversee the mental health progress while focusing on their physical condition. Through their combined efforts, each one of the refugees had reached a healthy state both physically and mentally within a month to the point that they could live regular lives. Whether those lives were thriving and fulfilling was still yet to be seen and would take a lot more work.
In the end, the Fiends For Hire ended up with 7 new members: 2 Fiends and 5 Lessers. Then of the remaining 30 or so adults, 18 became residents, and the rest moved on to different horizons. Still, it was honestly more than the group was expecting to stay. They had only built a new level on their barracks for the members and another onto the apartments for the residents.
But now they’d need to build an entirely new residential building, meaning some would have to double-up in the meantime. They didn’t really seem to mind, though—infinitely better than their previous accommodations. But, the organization wanted to get it ready for them quickly, so they even resorted to using outside contractors to assist Mallea and Nathym with the construction.
While that was quite a lot of adults to manage, there were just as many children. In the end, 36 wound up enrolling in their boarding school program with ages varying from four at the youngest up to eighteen. The two Lessers who had previously been commuting to Hedgehind every day decided to enroll as well now that they had peers—and really didn’t want to commute anymore.
Senli and Crucion were also enrolled since neither had finished their compulsory education. Some jokingly argued that Drim and Phon should join as well, since they’d never had school lives, but they were only met with annoyed stares and honorary diplomas from Constead South High School thrown at their heads.
With the two already enlisted students, Bray and Mazie, it brought the grand total of enrolled students to 42. Mazie had also tantrumed until she convinced Bray to let the two of them move into the dorms as well, wanting to share the same experience as all the other children—though she ultimately claimed it was so one of the refugees could have their apartment.
While the school had been built to handle this many students, it still presented a problem with staffing. Vank and Hazzle wouldn’t be able to run a second cafeteria at the dorm. And now that Crucion was attending classes, it took away his time that he could be cleaning along with any other duties, so they’d need additional janitorial and facilities staff as well.
After much deliberation and investigation, they actually ended up coming to an agreement with the nearest prison. Drim and Phon did a combing of their inmates, looking for those who either deeply regretted the crimes they committed or were falsely imprisoned.
Those that didn’t qualify for traditional parole or probation were offered a work-release program similar to the one Andi had. For those who were actually innocent, they hired lawyers to reopen their cases. But in the meantime, they were allowed out of prison to work at the Fiends For Hire compound.
As for teaching, since it was too much for Andi to handle by herself, they assigned three new staff, leaving the math and sciences to her. Ipucco became the history and language teacher while also taking on the role of the school’s headmaster.
One of their new Lesser residents had been a physical trainer, so they took over gym class and any courses pertaining to health. Lastly, one of their recent college graduates became a teaching assistant to earn credit towards obtaining their license. He had originally been planning to become an engineer, but had been inspired by Andi and her dedication towards teaching them that he changed his career path. A crush might have played a part too.
But with all that finally taken care of, back to the strange request. After their initial request got ignored for a few days, the real estate agency submitted it again, twice. The next day they submitted it four times, and then eight, sixteen—doubling it every single day.
It got to a point that they mentioned they’d also sent the request to Above, and that if they didn’t hear back soon, they’d be forced to lobby the Red Eyes Gang for help. Apparently, a piece of property they were trying to sell was haunted. However, the property was only haunted for Lessers and Fiends. Humans didn’t notice anything besides the innate eeriness of the place, so they required one of the specialized groups to assist them.
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After that last threat, Deborah finally had to intervene and bring it directly to the generals for action. Anyone asking the Red Eyes Gang for assistance was a worst case scenario. And while they didn’t like their hands being forced, the Fiends For Hire would rather alter their own plans to accommodate them than have those fools play with fire.
So as soon as the four Greaters were all available, they headed out to this so-called haunted mansion. Rusa also joined them because of the nature of the hauntings. However, since she was in her last days of life, Drim went ahead and triggered a rebirth.
She was born as a new girl, but since they didn’t have time to wait for her to grow up, Drim did it for her, bringing her to around the same age as the rest of them. Before one of the previous rebirths, they’d tested this out to find the implications of forced growth—planning to just recycle their life anew if the experiment was a failure.
They did find that Feyjrusa’s personality was severely affected by this process in the sense that they didn’t actually get a new one. Instead, that life became an amalgamation, a rough average of all their past lives. After Drim aged them up as well, they became unable to use their Curse for a few hours—processing all the information of their past lives that would normally be relegated to their early days of existence.
The reason Rusa tagged along was because the agency claimed that Fiends and Lessers saw the dead at this mansion. Specifically, they saw and were attacked by those that they killed to become Fiends. Rusa wanted the chance to finally meet her mother, even if it was a hostile spirit version of her. From the rumors she’d heard, it didn’t seem like it’d be that far off from real life.
So their mission was to infiltrate this mansion, find the source of the hauntings, and hopefully get rid of it. Many other mercenary groups had tried, and many more were sneaking in to witness the hauntings even if they didn’t qualify. The real estate agency wanted this resolved as quickly as possible since it was currently an unsellable property.
The mansion in question was actually an estate of a former governor planted by the Drazahs. However, Drim and Phon would have long lost any claim to ownership of it due to military reparations and relinquishment of territory from the losing party.
Of course, Drim had asked his mother if she had any insight on the hauntings, but nothing came to mind. They’d also consulted Ipucco, a history buff, and one of their new Fiends who was into all things occult and spooky, but neither had a decent explanation. That could only mean two things. Either she was somehow involved, which Eleen doubted, saying it didn’t match her usual machinations, or this was the work of a Fiend.
“Did we really have to come on the Cosdamn spookiest day we’ve had in years!” Kada looked up at the foreboding sky as they stood outside the gate of the estate. It was gray and thundering, almost as dark as night despite being midday. The wind was howling, as if a great storm was on the horizon, but the forecast didn’t show even a drop of rain. It seemed Cosmos just wanted to mess with them.
“Whatever, let’s just get this over with,” Xard sighed, not looking forward to the idea of what was to come. “Then we can just fly The Tourist over the clouds and back into the sunshine on the way home.”
“Does it creep anyone else out that we’re obviously not the first ones here,” Rusa gestured to the wide open gate.
“Well, just going by the nearby feelings I’m getting, we’re not alone,” Drim looked ahead, down the drive towards the mansion.
Phon did a quick scan, “Ugh… Yeah, we’re not alone. It’s them again.” She didn’t elaborate before starting her march into the property, and the others followed suit.
When the group was just a few feet away from the front doors, they burst open, and Above strolled out. Well, it wasn’t anything so casual. They hurried outside, but they were haggard to the point that they were practically crawling on their feet.
Lieu was being dragged by Creti and Kalter, barely upright with his arms wrapped around them. He’d clearly been shot several times in his chest and arms, indigo blood pouring down his front. The wounds looked nonlethal, but he was in a bad way.
When Xard rushed over to help, Kalter scowled at him, kept walking, and growled, “We don’t need your help.”
Alk stumbled out of the mansion after them a moment later, not looking the best herself. She shuffled over to Kada, and to everyone’s surprise, she wrapped her arms around the unsuspecting girl and hugged her tight.
“Uhm, buh, guh…” Kada couldn’t quite form an entire sentence. Her whole body was fidgeting and she was keeping her arms up in panic.
“Just… let me have this,” Alk hugged tighter as she buried her face. Kada finally reciprocated and they shared a touching but confusing embrace. A few seconds later, Alk finally broke off and warned them, “Be careful in there. We took it too lightly, and it was too much for us.” She then hustled to catch up with her friends.
“Hey, uhh…” Drim called after them briefly, holding out his hand, but his words trailed off.
“What’s up?” Phon seemed to be the only one to catch the weird moment.
“It’s just, uhh, Creti. Her…” Drim paused again for a second, “Well, it can wait. They have more important things to worry about at the moment.”
“So how are we going to do this?” Rusa questioned once they’d regrouped. “The rumor is that the hauntings won’t happen if we stick together, so I guess we need to split apart. There are two floors, an attic, and a basement. Someone should also patrol the grounds.”
“Sounds reasonable. That evenly splits us,” Drim agreed to the suggestion.
“I can’t believe we’re skipping right to the part of the horror movie that gets us all killed!” Kada moaned before they headed inside.