One Night in Osaka

"YOU ASSHOLE!" Alessia slammed her hand against the wall, just to the left of his head. "I *am* a Master Mage! I've bled for and damn well earned that rank, more than you could ever possibly know, and I am NOT SLOPPY! I saved your damn life, I healed you, and I'd like you to fucking acknowledge it, you ungrateful little novice!"

"Oh, is that all I am? A little novice? A poor little weakling you can lord it over? A little puppy you can throw to the curb the second you get bored, Lady Devonshire?"

"I SAVED YOUR LIFE!"

"YOU DAMN NEAR BROKE ME IN HALF! Or did some *other* mage come along and throw me into that wall, when all I wanted to do was please you? YOU SHOT ME, and 'I'd like you to fucking acknowledge it', Master Mage!" Tears were running down his cheeks, she noticed with some corner of her awareness, but her temper was far too gone to dwell on it.

"FINE!" She grabbed his shirt collar. "When I cast the kinetic-cannon spell THAT SAVED YOUR LIFE, it got overclocked. I don't know how, I don't know why! The shot was wider than it should've been, and you got clipped by the edge of it! And if you'll bloody recall, I HEALED YOU AFTER! The last thing I wanted was for you to get hurt! I'M SORRY, ALRIGHT!? Is that want you wanted to hear?"

He reached up and pulled her hand from his collar, as he glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the insensate mugger. He looked back to her, his eyes angry through a haze of tears, his entire body shaking. "Thank you for stopping that guy before he stabbed me. Thank you for fixing my shoulder after you dislocated it. Thank you for admitting that it was your mistake that made that happen." He moved around her, heading back towards the plastic crates where they'd been standing before everything had fallen apart. "Thank you," he said with a painful grunt as he knelt down to retrieve his fallen wallet, "for making me feel like I'd finally done something right with my life for once, before you fucking shot me." He looked down at the discarded condom wrapper on the ground, and kicked it aside. "Thank you for catching me, back on the bridge. Thank you for teaching me how to make sparkly little lights." He looked up and locked eyes with her. "And thank you for screaming my name as you came on my face. I'll cherish that." He swallowed, his eyes unblinking. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"You utter fucking worm." Alessia could feel her own tears starting.

"Oh, I'm a worm, alright. Been hearing that, and worse, for years. But at least I'm not a snob who demands deference from someone she's just kicked in the teeth." He wiped at his eyes, and looked down at his hand as if noticing his tears for the first time. "Goddamnit," he muttered.

Alessia stepped up to him and steeled herself, both inside and out. "Thank you for making this easier. Goodbye, Donovan."

"Goodb—GAH!" Donovan hissed, clutching at his shoulder again, his eyes shut in concentration. "Fuck, this hurts."

As she watched him lean back against the wall, his face twisted in pain, she heard her voice break. "It really does," she said as her tears finally fell. She traced two more healing sigils in the air, one to numb the pain further, and another to reinforce the healing process. Again, the spells settled around his shoulder, wrapping around him like a sheet before the light faded away.

As his neck and shoulders visibly relaxed, Alessia stepped back, and tried to bring her voice back under control. "It's the least I can do."

He looked back up, his eyes red. "Thank you. And I'm sorry."

She couldn't help but let out a choked laugh. "FINALLY. Some gratitude. Go home, Donovan. This was never going to work anyway. Just... go."

Letting go of his shoulder, he looked into her eyes one last time, and managed that damned beautiful smile again, if only for a moment. "Yeah. But I'm glad we tried, at least, even for all my mistakes."

"OUR mistakes." She wiped away another tear.

Donovan managed a half-shrug with his good shoulder, wincing as he did so. "Good night, Alessia. I'm gone." And with that, he turned and walked back towards the neon streets of Dotonbori, leaving her alone in the narrow backstreet.

...Almost alone. As she hugged herself in the sweltering night, a minute later she heard her unknown assailant stagger to his feet behind her, groaning in pain. Her eyes flashed open, and a storm of crimson strands erupted from her fingertips. Wrapping them around the disoriented mugger like coils upon coils of rope, she swung her hand wide, and he flew through the air to slam into the same wall she'd inexplicably catapulted Donovan into earlier. And just like Donovan, the man's arm lurched out of its shoulder socket with a sickening sound. He would've screamed aloud, except that Alessia held his jaw shut with another coil of red light. She held him there against that wall, a foot off the ground.

Another gesture, another string of gravity-light, and the man's own knife flew across the alley and embedded itself in the concrete wall, point first, right next to his throat. He let out another muffled scream, his eyes filled with fear and pleading.

"I want you to know something," she said, glad that Lady Ebisu's "gift of gab" was no doubt conveying every intended meaning to her words into something he'd understand. "I could kill you, right here, right now. And no one would ever know. Your body would NEVER be found. Do you understand?" She released the clamp around his jaw.

The young man in a dirty white t-shirt and close-shaved hair nodded frantically, the gesture drawing Alessia's eye to a puckered scar along his right cheek and jawline. "I believe you, I'm sorry, please please don't kill me. Please..."

"What's your name?" She gave him a brittle grin. "I'm Alessia."

"Y...Yuto."

"I'd say I'm pleased to meet you, Yuto, but that would make me a liar, because you ruined something very, very special. Are you in a gang, Yuto? Do you have friends who sometimes pick pockets, steal things, threaten people, those sorts of rude things?" His eyes were wide with terror now, and she found she rather liked that.

"Yes. YES! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I'll quit, I'll stop, I promise! Please don't kill me! I'll do anything!"

Alessia shook her head. "Oh, Yuto, that's not what I want, not at all. I *want* you to go back to your gang. TONIGHT. And I want you to give them a message for me. A very detailed message, so it's important that you pay close attention. Do you understand?"

"I'm listening! I promise!"

"I know you are. So let's begin." Alessia's gravity-threads pulled the knife out of the wall, and waved the blade in front of his face, back and forth like a floating metronome. "I'm going to be in Osaka for another day or so. You tell your gang that if they see me, a woman with a blonde streak? That they should run the other way and not even think of trying anything with me. But even more to the point. Do you remember that handsome man who was giving it to me so nicely until you interrupted? Do you?"

Yuto swallowed and nodded.

"His name is Donovan. He's American. Your friends can recognize him by all the little love bites I made on the left side of his neck, in case you think all us gaijin look alike, or something equally rude." She tightened her gravity-light's grip around Yuto for a brief moment, and his breath rushed out of him in a painful gasp. "Tell your friends that if any further harm comes to anyone who looks like him before he leaves Osaka, that I will know. And I will find you. And I will hurt you. Now... tell me his name again, so that I know you paid attention."

"D-Donovan. I'll pass word. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. No one will bother him, I swear it!"

"I know you're sorry, Yuto. I know you are." She snapped her fingers, and Yuto's knife suddenly dissolved into a pile of rust and splinters, drawing a horrified squeal from him. "I'm glad you're paying attention. Now get out of my sight, and find your friends. NOW." She released him completely, and as soon as his feet hit ground, he ran as if all of Hell was at his back.

Daphne Alessia Astin Devonshire walked over to a certain plastic crate, gripped its edge for a moment, and then dropped to the ground as she wept for a very, very long time.

***

CHAPTER SEVEN: DONOVAN -- WELL WE ALL FALL IN LOVE, BUT WE DISREGARD THE DANGER

Donovan stepped out of the taxi and faced his hotel, a small green light dancing around his fingertips. The tears had finally stopped flowing halfway through the cab ride, and the driver had been kind enough to not press him for details, other than to offer a polite hope that things would improve for him.

He guided the conjured light to swirl in figure-eights, trying to concentrate on anything except the image of Alessia's face, when he almost walked right into the bellhop from earlier that night. "Shit. I'm sorry, Shibata-san. I wasn't paying attention."

The taller man shook his head. "Nothing to apologize for, sir. I was also inattentive, I should have moved out of your way. Welcome back to our establishment, sir." As Shibata finished, his eyes flickered down to Donovan's hand, and a quick look of surprise flashed across the bellhop's face.

Donovan couldn't help but smile as he held up his hand, and the light the orbited it. "So you can see this?"

Shibata hesitated, but eventually nodded. "I can, sir. I'm not a Mage like yourself, I only have a minor sensitivity. I can..." He glanced around, making sure no one else was standing nearby before continuing in a quieter tone. "I can see Resonance effects, and spirits, but I cannot cast."

Donovan wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. If anything, the heat and humidity was getting worse. "Just how common is Resonance-sensitivity around here?"

"Not as much as it used to be, sir. One moment, allow me to assist you." Shibata stepped over to a small cabinet against the hotel wall by his podium, and unlocked it to reveal several umbrellas and other various items inside. He grabbed a packet, and handed it to Donovan with both hands and a small bow. "Please accept this handkerchief, sir. It'll help with the heat."

Donovan opened the packet, and found a soft cloth in a cream and red checker-board pattern, with the hotel's logo in one corner. He dabbed at his forehead with it, and smiled. "That does help, thank you again, Shibata-san. It's the little things, you know?"

Shibata lifted his cap, and patted his greying temples with his own handkerchief. "Indeed sir. May I ask you a question, sir? If I'm intruding, please accept my apologies."

"You're fine, ask away."

"Are... are you alright, sir? You look to have had a difficult night."

Donovan looked up from rubbing at his eyes, and saw genuine human concern rather than corporate faux-sincerity on Shibata's face. "I... I don't know if I should laugh or cry in answer to that, Shibata. Honestly."

"If I may, sir." The bellhop gestured to a nearby bench. "I know you said you are traveling alone. I can't leave my station, but if you'd like to sit and talk, I can listen while I'm here, if you don't have anyone else to talk to right now."

Donovan took a deep breath. Who else could he talk to about this? It was early morning back in America, so calling his brother was probably a bad idea — and it's not like Felix was a Mage, so if Donovan tried to tell him the whole story, Felix would probably think his older brother had gone insane. "You know what? Yeah." He sat down, and wiped at his face again. "Let's do that. Thank you."

Over the next half hour, pausing here and there to allow Shibata to attend to a few other guests coming in and out that night, Donovan laid out what he figured was a rough outline of the evening's events, leaving out the particulars of his pact with Lady Ebisu, his first lesson in sigils, and the more prurient details of what exactly he'd done with Alessia in that back street.

"...But even after everything else, I still feel bad about turning down Megumi's offer of a drink," Donovan said as he nursed a bottled water that Shibata had handed him. "But if I hadn't, then I probably never wouldn't have run into Alessia, and wouldn't have been awakened, or activated, or whatever the term is for becoming a new Mage. Or formed a Pact with Lady Ebisu. But then I also wouldn't have nearly gotten stabbed in an alleyway, and blasted into a wall." He took a long pull from the bottle, absently rubbing at his surprisingly painless shoulder. "Or been an even bigger ass to Alessia than I was to Megumi. God, what a mess."

"If it's any consolation," Shibata said as he stood by the bench, sipping his own water, "I do know Megumi, since I'm a regular at Koi-Koi. She's a nice young woman, and I feel safe saying that she wouldn't take what you did personally." He gave a small shrug, and another sip. "From what it sounds like, you were very polite to her. I'm sure she understood that you weren't feeling well."

"Not feeling well." Donovan rubbed at his brow. "That's an understatement. It's like tonight's been moment after moment of my skull getting cracked open, and all these horrors fly out of it like Pandora's Box, gibbering and screaming and flailing. Maybe I didn't hurt Megumi, if you're right, but I definitely hurt Alessia. I was..." He made a hissing sound, as if touching something uncomfortably hot. "I was so ANGRY. I'd trusted her, fallen for her, felt safe in her arms... and the *instant* something went wrong, I threw all that trust right into the sewer. God, she must hate me right now. I feel like I pulled a knife on her myself, verbally — I've never said anything like that to anyone. Not even my goddamn parents."

He looked back up at Shibata, who was standing there looking uncertain. Donovan scratched at the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry, I'm unloading way too much here. If I get started down *that* road, I'll be here screaming all night. You don't deserve that."

Shibata shrugged. "Deserving or not, I appreciate that it's a painful topic for you, and you have my sympathies. My father and I also don't get along."

"Sorry to hear that." Donovan held his hands out, palms up. "Do *you* want to talk about it? I mean, I don't know if I can help, but I'd feel like an ass just taking here, and not doing any giving back."

Shibata took off his bellhop hat, looking at it with a small frown. "Well, it's a short story. He's a painter, a very skilled one... and I am not. But as his only son, he expected me to carry on his work, calling me his 'legacy'. But I just don't have the eye for it, no matter how much I practiced, and nothing was ever good enough for him. So I quit painting altogether, tired of feeling like I'd failed him, thinking I could make him proud through other ways. But that only upset him even more." He put the hat back on. "I haven't spoken to him in over twenty years. He's got a gallery showing soon in Tokyo, and his secretary even sent me an invitation, but I'd rather not go."

Donovan frowned. "I honestly wish I could say something hopeful, like 'Maybe one day he'll understand you', but I really don't know if people can change like that."

"People CAN change. And it happens all the time." Shibata adjusted his hat's brim. "Trust me on that. I've seen it." He turned to look right at Donovan, his gaze firm. "The problem is that it works both ways. People can change for the better, which is hard work, but can be done. Or they can allow themselves to slip and change for the worse, which is easy, painful, and from what I've seen... intoxicating." He took a deep breath. "There's something seductive about self-destruction, Donovan. People demolish themselves by word and deed, every moment of every day."

Donovan digested that in silence, taking another long drink. "There's an expression — I don't know if there's a similar phrase in Japanese," he said eventually, "that if all you have is a hammer, that every problem looks like a nail. I feel like I rammed a giant rusted nail right into my own neck tonight, because sometimes it seems like all I know how to do is to be afraid."

Shibata craned his head to one side, and allowed himself a smile. "You've certainly got the marks on your neck to show for it."

Reaching up to touch the side of his throat, Donovan shivered at the fresh memory of Alessia kissing, licking, sucking passionately on that spot. "I need to make this right. I need to apologize." He raised the bottle for one last gulp of cool water.

Shibata raised an eyebrow. "Even though she blasted you? Even though you said you don't think you'll ever see her again?"

"I know I won't. But I have her email, at least." Donovan shrugged. "It's the right thing to do. She deserves better than to have it end like this."

The bellhop inclined his head. "I sincerely hope that you're right about that, Donovan-san. But if nothing else, I would strongly urge you to sleep on it. Any emails you send to her tonight might be deleted without ever being opened." There was a loud chime from Shibata's pocket, and he patted his hip with a sheepish expression. "Sorry, I'll check that later. But yes, I suspect rest will do everyone involved some good. This Alessia...Devonshire, you said? You have both had a very long night already, after all."

"So very, very true, Shibata-san. I'm exhausted. But thank you again, for listening. It did help." He stood up, and bowed. "Domo arigato gozaimashita."

"Do itashimashite, Donovan-san." Shibata bowed low, and pulled his phone out of his pocket. "Since you're turning in for the night, please excuse me, I should attend to some pressing business. But I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay at our establishment, and feel free to call upon me again, if I can help."

Donovan gave a tired wave, and headed through the automatic door. He paused halfway through the foyer, and glanced back to see Shibata already deep in conversation with someone on his phone, gesturing urgently. Bowing his head with thankful intent in Shibata's direction one last time, even though the bellhop didn't see it, Donovan made his way through the lobby, and within minutes was collapsed and asleep in his very comfortable bed.

***

CHAPTER EIGHT: ALESSIA -- IN RESTLESS DREAMS I WALKED ALONE

Resting her head against the back of the taxicab's very comfortable upholstery, Alessia closed her eyes and tried to think about something else, *anything* else, other than Donovan Pierce, and was failing utterly.

Much to her relief, her phone rang in the middle of her third involuntary review of the evening so far. Glancing down at the screen, she tapped the "accept call" icon on her phone, and brought it up to her ear. "I thought I told you not to wait up, Mother."

"You did, but it had been hours since you even so much as texted, so I got a little worried. How is everything going?"

Alessia inhaled sharply, unsure of how to answer.

After a moment of silence, her Mother continued on. "Oh dear, that's a pause worth a thousand words, and I expect half of 'em aren't fit for polite conversation. Are you alright?"

The young woman bit her lip. She glanced up to look at the back of the cab driver's head, and mentally commanded her translation gift from Lady Ebisu to shut off for the time being, and lowered her voice to a whisper. "No. No, I'm not. I'm safe, but... no, tonight ended in almost the worst way possible, and all I want is to lie down and forget it happened. I'm in a taxi now, I'll be back in ten minutes or so."

"Would you like me to meet you downstairs in the lobby? Maybe a stiff drink at the hotel bar would help. Do they still do that 'Karaoke' stuff around here?"

Alessia snorted aloud at that. "Lobby, yes, drink, no, karaoke, GAEA PRESERVE US, not on your life. Just... walk with me back to the room, I'd rather not be alone with my own thoughts right now."

"Oh my." Alessia heard her mother's voice shift a bit, losing it's usual jocular tone. "One of THOSE sort of nights. I love you, Alessia, and I'll be there for you. I'm heading down to the lobby right now, and I want you to stay on the phone with me until you see my face, alright?"