Chapter Text
Kunsel enjoys knowing things.
There’s no such thing as too much information. Instead, new information cracks what he already knows, and then fills in those cracks seamlessly, creating an entirely different image and understanding.
Kunsel knows he will never be physically strong enough to make SOLDIER First Class and doesn’t really care all that much about being promoted, so he makes himself content with Second Class, haggling with anyone and everyone from executives he runs into while riding the lifts to lowly cadets in the Shinra infantry. It’s fun.
Everyone has a story and everyone’s stories help fill in the ever-expanding picture of the Shinra Electic Power Company.
Working for Shinra was inevitable for Kunsel. His parents had been part of the first wave of people that had moved from Junon to Midgar back when Midgar was still being constructed as the new Shinra Headquarters.
They now live in a wonderful three-storey house in the centre of Heartilly Hill in Sector Three. Kunsel’s own flat is one MMTS stop over on the blue line in Downtown Sector Three — not that he spends all that much time there.
The Shinra Building has anything and everything one would need to live: A cafeteria that’s free for any and all Shinra employees and a swanky coffee shop outside of the Recreational Facility on Floor 63. It has the Shinra Combat Simulator which is continuously updated with the latest information on monsters from a variety of places around Gaia, but most specifically Wutai and Midgar. It has several separate gyms for varying levels of the military, a stocked parking garage, entertainment centres stocked with books, films, and television series on demand, laundry service, courier service, two spas, rest and relaxation rooms, and even small, single beds for staying overnight.
It makes sense that Kunsel practically lives there. Occasionally he takes the blue line back to his flat, but more often he heads to Heartilly Hill to see his parents before returning to Sector Zero and the Shinra Building. It saves him money and while he doesn’t necessarily think that it’s good for his life to be so tied to the company itself, he’s not the only one and it’s not all that bad either.
Kunsel knows that SOLDIER Director Lazard Deusericus was President Shinra’s illegitimate son. Director Deusericus is now dead after an ill-fated experiment and Kunsel knows that too, although he’s light on the details. Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth were somehow involved.
Kunsel knows that Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth were all byproducts of a dual experiment from Doctor Hollander, and Professors Hojo, and Faremis, the latter of whom disappeared after a massive fight with Hojo and reinvented himself as Professor Gast, taking his first name rather than his last.
Professor Gast was last seen at Cosmo Canyon, but Kunsel has heard rumours that Shinra disposed of him so he couldn’t give away any of Shinra’s military secrets. He knows that if Professor Gast was assassinated, it was Professor Hojo who gave the order.
Kunsel knows that Professor Hojo continues his own human experiments with full approval from President Shinra himself. From this, he also knows that Doctor Hollander lied to Genesis about a cure for his condition.
A girl and her mother once lived in the Shinra Building as Professor Hojo’s science specimens. Kunsel doesn’t know who they were, but he’s seen the chalk and paint sketches on the walls of the room that used to be their home. He also doesn’t know if they managed to get out alive or if Professor Hojo killed them, or worse.
Kunsel knows that Director Scarlet swapped Director Palmer’s butter for lard and he drank lard tea for a week, but that’s not a secret because Director Scarlet cackled about it for months. He doesn’t know if Director Palmer could even tell the difference.
Kunsel knows that Rufus Shinra himself funded AVALANCHE, just like Director Deusericus laundered money from Shinra itself to team up with Doctor Hollander. He wonders if Rufus Shinra knows how his actions paralleled Director Deusericus’ in a funny way that makes him laugh to himself when he compares the two men with the information he has.
Tseng is more loyal to Rufus Shinra than he is to President Shinra. Kunsel files this information in his mind with specific care and keeps as close an eye on the Turks as he possibly can.
Kunsel knows that Mayor Domino is a member of AVALANCHE and spies on all of the executives. The Mayor is obvious but the President assumes — somewhat correctly in Kunsel’s opinion — that the Mayor doesn’t have enough pull to deal any significant blow to the company so he allows the Mayor to do whatever he wants while rotting slowly in the Corporate Archives. Kunsel thinks that Director Tuesti might also be a member, but that’s an assumption based on how Director Tuesti looks tired and nervous all of the time.
Director Tuesti rarely leaves his office to go home and doesn’t talk to anyone outside his own department. He has a robot cat that he uses to spy on the rest of Shinra and Kunsel doesn’t know why he would do this if he wasn’t a part of AVALANCHE.
Kunsel knows that the increased monster activity around Midgar has to do with the mako reactors. He heard one of Professor Hojo’s interns mumbling about it in the lift on their way back up to The Drum.
Kunsel knows all of these things and doesn’t tell any of them to Zack, even though Zack is his closest friend.
Zack tells him everything and whenever Zack is lying to him, Kunsel always knows because Zack is a notoriously bad liar — Zack smiles too widely and tugs on his ears when he’s lying and does it infrequently enough that Kunsel can always tell.
When Zack disappears along with cadet Cloud Strife after a reported reactor incident in Nibelheim, Kunsel thinks that maybe he should have told Zack a few of his secrets.
Kunsel knows that Zack isn’t dead, no matter what Shinra tells him.
***
“It’s fine!”
“Just let me fix it, I promise it won’t take long and then you can take this back up to the plate,” Kunsel says. Exasperation creeps into his voice. He’s quickly losing patience.
Aerith Gainsborough glares at him and stomps her foot into the ground wincing at how hard the concrete is under a small layer of dirt in Evergreen Park. “I told you, it’s fine. I have a basket that I can use.”
“But Zack said—“
“Zack says a lot of things.” Aerith interrupts him and reaches over to pluck the last of the yellow lilies that he’d begun to offload from the back of her cart. The cart itself is listing hopelessly to one side, with the back axle touching the ground and a wheel completely shattered. He wonders if Aerith tried to drag it through the Sector Five junkyard.
Kunsel tries to ignore the fact that Aerith mentioned Zack in the present tense, but it sticks in his mind: Aerith doesn’t believe Zack is dead either.
“I probably shouldn’t have let Oates and the others use it for a ride, but they’ve been so good lately and they had finished all of their homework,” Aerith says as Kunsel turns his attention back to her.
“You let some kids use it on a joyride?” Kunsel asks.
“No,” Aerith says, wagging her finger in the air playfully. “I took them on the joyride.”
Kunsel sighs. “Great. That doesn’t explain why you won’t let me fix it though.”
Aerith shrugs and continues to move her flowers from the cart into a large wicker basket she carries in the crook of her elbow. She looks up at the sky and shivers. The Sector Six Undercity is one of the few places below plateside where you can see the sky and not the massive sun lamps that loom over every undercity sector.
Kunsel knows that the destroyed plate above Sector Six has something to do with the Turks and AVALANCHE, but hasn’t been able to fill in all of the pieces yet.
“Sometimes,” Aerith says. She trails off for a moment as she places the last yellow lilies carefully into her basket. “You can’t fix what’s broken and you have to move forward.”
“Aerith?”
Kunsel turns to see another, admittedly beautiful, woman walking into the park. She waves a hand tentatively at both of them, and Kunsel can’t help but notice that she’s wearing a worn leather fighting glove encrusted with several materia.
“Tifa!” Aerith’s face bursts with a dazzling smile. “I was just about to head over to Seventh Heaven. These flowers are yours.”
“Oh good. Cloud’s up again but we won’t know for how long, so if you wanted to talk to him, now’s your chance,” the woman, Tifa, says as she walks up to them, smiling gently at Aerith. Her face falls a bit as she stops in front of them. “Especially since tonight will be…busy.”
“Wait, Cloud? Cloud Strife?”
Tifa looks surprised at Kunsel’s outburst, but Aerith instantly looks away from him.
“Do you know him?” Tifa asks. She wearily steps back from Kunsel and takes a naturally defensive stance.
“He’s alive!?” Kunsel steps forward towards Tifa who takes another step back and raises her fists in front of her chest. “Was he with anyone? A tall guy with dark hair?”
Tifa looks helplessly at Aerith, who shrugs and smiles.
“It’s fine, Tifa. He’s a friend. Zack’s friend.”
Tifa doesn’t look convinced, but she slowly nods.
Zack is alive.
Kunsel blinks furiously and shudders, suddenly aware that tears are streaming down his face from underneath his mask.
“You knew,” he turns and accuses Aerith.
To her credit, Aerith looks extremely guilty.
“I’m sorry, Kunsel,” Aerith says. “I was going to tell you once they’d recovered a bit more. They just got here yesterday.”
“Oh, Zack thinks he’s recovered,” Tifa says with a small smirk. “He’s already taken on nearly every mercenary job available in Sector Seven and…” She stops herself from saying anything else and turns her attention to Kunsel. “Are you okay?”
Kunsel sinks down slowly to the ground, leaning against Aerith’s broken cart. He looks up into the cloudless sky at the edge of Sector Six.
There are many things that Kunsel doesn’t know.
But now he knows that he was right about Zack because Zack is alive.