A small-time Therapist heard knocking on his door, he was expecting his next client to enter the room. *Knock!*
"Come on in, mister, uhhh, sSss... Howard?"
Said the Life counselor called out in reply.
Mr.Howard walked in but the one man last expected, he was the last person on his mind at the moment, though he certainly knew of him.
The therapist, Navin Dutta, jumped out of his chair after realizing who he really was, filled with shock and antipathy, he was genuinely lost on whay should be his next actions or words.
"What are you doing here?" He asked Josue Detayvern, "why are you here, are you going to kill me?" He asked Josue. The therapist was a coward with fear and hatred on his mind while still on the floor.
"Get up, Sir, I'm here as a regular client, I have absolutely no power in this place, if I did something to you then I'd turn myself in the same as I would across seas." Josue told him, "If you don't want me here, just tell me to leave and I'll go somewhere else, no problem." Josue stated.
Navin kept his eyes on him, as he struggled to get up still heavily afraid of him, he hesitated to say any words until he managed to get all the way on his feet and decided because of a quote he believes in and spreads.
Navin Dutta looked at Josue with uncertainty, wondering if he were real or not, "The streets outside are filled with folks that don't particularly like you very much, how did you slip by without causing some sort of noise?" Navin asked genuinely confused and scared STILL.
"Don't worry about that, if you can ignore all the information you've heard, anyone has rumoured to you about me, I'd really like your help on something, I'm going through." Josue replied.
Navin did a bit of a take around the room as he was genuinely baffled, "What would the great Josue need help with from an authentic failure like me?" Navin asked him.
"I have an eye for seeing the real McCoy of things, you know?" Josue answered him, "There's a guy troubling me, connected to my past, in spite of grave warnings, I was hoping I'd be strong enough to handle him when it came time but he visited me and reality hit. Soon I'll have to come face to face with him without him showing me any more leniency." Josue finished.
"Did you wrong this guy somehow?" Navin asked with care, "One could argue from a special point of view?" Josue answered him.
"What do you mean by 'grave warnings'?" Who is he to you?" Navin asked in an attempt to get Josue to think, "I'm still searching for a clue." Josue replied.
Josue took a seat on the classic long chair then once he got comfortable on it, he laid down.
"I usually give folks a fixed amount of time, but you know what? Go on, however, long you want." Navin told him, "Good, because I need to talk to someone for one who has no care for Generil, Seyort and Alyi, I need a fresh and brand new perspective in order to save them soon." Josue told him.
"Start wherever you want." Navin told him. Josue got more comfortably in the chair and began retelling his story.
-
On a hot day in Nicollet, France, 1700
"Ambroise, when are you going to deliver on the promise that you made to me?" Genevieve entered the room yelling with frustration in her mind. Her french in her frustration was still exquisite.
Ambroise gave the thought of that promise a long sigh, annoyed seemingly by her but it was something else that bothered him too, "I'm dealing with business here." Ambroise answered her in a bored and calm tone. The man's head however, buried deeply into strange books.
"Yet, you promised me this year!"
She complained irritably.
"I promised a lot of folks I'd do things this year, I can only do so much as a man." Ambroise said in a worried tone. Genevieve gave Ambroise a look that he could never refuse her for anything while she gave him it. As reluctant at first, he gave in and made good on it.
"Fine, this one I guess I can keep."
Said Ambroise though reluctantly.
Ambroise got out of his chair, laid down his book and followed Genevieve to their room.
"Oh, Ambroise, Ambroise!"
Yelled Genevieve as she ran up to him excited and full of positivity, "I went to the hospital, I'm pregnant with our first baby!" She yelled with even more intense excitement, she danced around Ambroise with a big smile on her face, as Ambroise was a well hardened business man, he refused to dance.
Ambroise was just as excited as his wife for their kid, someone to pass down his fortune to and take care of Genevieve if his activities were to go wrong in the future.
-
"Haven't you heard the grim news of Ambroise's death, my lady?" The manor butler asked in a dire tone, "WHAAAT?!" Genevieve shrieked once she heard the appalling news brought to her by Ambroise's butler.
Genevieve was 4 months pregnant by the time she heard the news, her heart rate fluctuated in off-beat patterns and her sight became dim and struggled with how to respond to this grim news.
"Well, how did Ambroise die?!"
Genevieve asked, although unsure if she wanted to know, "Do you honestly want to know, I can hear what you really want in your voice, his death was a gruesome one, madame." The butler answered back.
The two sat in silence while she stared at a self portrait of Ambroise, he kept hung up in his office, where the two are speaking now.
Ambroise was a quiet man but there were of course things he had to release his hate about, she refused to attend his funeral as he had an unexplained resentment for them, one way to honor him was ignore it.
She spent the day of his funeral doing what he loved doing during his free time, cleaning the swords in his decorative sword collection.
Ambroise had a strange affinity and love for swords, she just couldn't explain why he had it, herself.
One sword in particular, she knew he had a weird love for, it was a sword disguised as a cane. A red handle, Nimble blade.
She had cleaned all 124 swords, reminding herself of who he was, reminiscing on their past, crying tears of sorrow and passion.
She could use her tears as the cleanser.
She took over his fortune and hid away in his mansion, but the last remaining months of her pregnancy was hell for her. She became the richest woman in France thanks to Ambroise's death and fortune yet she felt like the loneliest woman in France, despite the assistance of her husband's loyal workers.
When she had Ambroise Jr, as she'd come to name him, she began to cheer up a bit.
Sometime after she had Ambroise Jr, she took the infant to his father's sword room, his most beloved room and said out loud "Where are you honey? Our dream came true, your dream came true, we had a boy to pass our fortune to, err, your family's fortune to..." yet the atmosphere in the room became depressing when she heard silence answer back, and Jr began wailing. She realized she needed baby holding lessons then.
Years later...
"No, you stupid wench, you eat your own vegetables!" Ambroise Jr yelled at his mother as he threw the food away, "I WANT Ambroise's JEROHBEREE!" Ambroise Jr demanded the workers who sat around the dinner table.
Pierre gilbert turned his head and looked at Genevieve, he nodded his head with disgust and disapproval, Genevieve nodded feeling guilty.
"GAAAH! YOU GUYS ARE THE WORST IDIOTS I'VE EVER SEEN!" Ambroise Jr yelled before he walked with haste up to his room.
Genevieve sighed as she slammed and rested her head on the dining room table and pondered, pondered many, many things about many, many things.
"That boy has got a rough attitude, miss." Pierre said freely as he looked at her with one eye open, "I just don't know what to do, Pierre.. If Ambroise was here, he could straighten the boy out, but that horrible thing... took him away, WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN ME?!" Genevieve came out with, emotionally confused about her life and choices now.
"Ambroise indeed was brazen but quiet and always thought first, but he's gone, so what are you going to do in his absence, Mrs.Detayvern?" Pierre stated and asked Genevieve, "You are his mother, you are his guardian and you took over his father's company to keep his legacy going, how shall you fit him to do the same when the time comes if you're broken, for impeccable reasoning however STILL?" Pierre asked her.
Genevieve laid her head down again and as she didn't know, in her mind, there were only two things she could do.
Allow him to grow up and take the bumpy road he's taking or toughen up and try to guide him to the straight and narrow road, she and his father would have wanted.
Her tears are only given an ending to when she hears Pierre ask her a dire question.
"Do you know why you are sad, Mrs.Detayvern?" Pierre asked with anger, her tears are stopped but Genevieve can't give an answer, she stares with glossy eyes, closely into Pierre's eyes, "It's because all you do is mourn a man who wouldn't want to be mourned, he'd want you to Forget!" Pierre angrily yelled as he got frustrated with Genevieve's constant victim-like attitude.
Genevieve gasped and looked at her knees when Pierre helped her remember, Ambroise hated death, he hated the idea of death, thoughts about such.. the word, death… he'd want her to live on, forgetting she ever knew him, to not let his death bring her misery. She just couldn't bring herself to do any of that, not even her love for him, her love for him was the reason she couldn't instead of motivation.
Genevieve is forced out of her thoughts as she heard Pierre's voice mumbling on, "The boy is just picking up your ways, because of Ambroise's death, you are in a state of constant reaction to what he hated, except while he hated death you've gained a fear of it forcing you to keep the young man locked up forever so he won't match Ambroise's fate, he needs social interaction with other kids, perhaps!" Pierre opined in a frustrated tone with his employer.
"By the lord, you are correct Pierre!" Genevieve shouted out with an idea, "We'll adopt a brother for Ambroise Jr, Pierre!" Genevieve shouted with excitement.
Genevieve knew she had enough money to buy A.J many friends, yet thinking from her own perspective, she wouldn't want her parents buying false friends for her, she decided that she wouldn't choose to commit such a deceitful act on her own son.
Genevieve and Pierre traveled around the large city of Nicollet, France, searching for a son that would fit the family nicely.
Orphanage after orphanage, the two searched long and hard, taking in every aspect of Ambroise Jr's personality, a son that would fit the family and act as a great brother to her son, a best friend he found.
The search came to an end because Genevieve couldn't decide on the son to adopt, she couldn't find the right son in any of the children she's seen by that point, none of them truly matched his personality and her judgment was tangled.
Genevieve and Pierre returned to the mansion, downhearted and gloomy, then there he was, their perfect son only they didn't know it yet at all because he was holding a large butcher knife to the true son of the house's neck with the most idiotic face he remembers himself ever having.
-
"Hang on, I don't normally interrupt my clients but how old are you?!" Navin asked terrified and at sixes and sevens, "assuming, of course, you're the one holding the knife somehow!" Navin finished feeling the same.
Josue looked down while thinking, "I am the one holding the knife, and I was nine at the time, but now I'm ____ years old." Josue answered him with confidence.
"Amazing, you look no older than in your forties though, you'll have to tell me your secret on youth some time." Navin told him.
-
What's coming up is what I lived so I can go further into detail now.
"Stand back or else I'll kill him!" I screamed from the very, very top of my lungs, sweat was pouring down my face and like I said before, it was the most stupid face I can remember and I have an amazing memory.
A.J was an ordinary kid, of course, so against a bigger one like myself, he couldn't do anything and he was taught better than to try to fight someone with a knife back.
Ah yes, the butler, the butler, Mr.Pierre as I know him as, was a master in softening folks with his words if he wanted to.
Mr.Pierre held his hands up and as he moved slowly towards a mirror on the wall, I still don't know why it was there.
He held it, and pointed it at my face.
From the distance between us, I swear he had to be a magician.
"Look at yourself, look in the mirror at how handsome and innocent you are young man, while you can because if you cross the line you're about to cross, your reflection is going to look hideous and sinful the next time you look in one." Mr.Pierre said to me.
Something with me and that line really connected and it made sense to me, does even more now that I fully understand it.
I dropped the butcher knife and ran, fearing for my life because of the band of thieves that forced me to go in and do it and the manor security that had just woken up, they called themselves, "The Desufnoc" but I basically never saw them again.
The police of Nicollet had arrived sometime later but the darndest thing happened, when I was about to be taken in for questioning by the police, Genevieve, my mother she.... dropped all charges though I came to take his life.
I explained to her how I came to take his life away, but she refused to send me away.
"Do you have parents?" She asked me, I answered her with a simple No, "is whoever put you up to this parenting you?" She asked me again, and I answered NO again.
They actually were, but she was dedicated or Perhaps she felt obligated to change me for the better, I just didn't know that at the time either.
It took about a good year for A.J to forgive me for doing that to him and some more time until we got along with one another.
By the time we were 17, we were inseparable brothers, oftenly, I was called his sidekick by the other kids and other friends we made because I was the quiet, less social one of the duo.
However, seventeen is when things started going downhill and though my life was changed for the better, my life changed for a newer purpose.
See, Genevieve would always tell A.J and I stories of his father, Ambroise Detayvern.
-
One night, A.J and I had a sort of had what would be called a double date now happening and one of them were like Ambroise, she had an affinity except for canes she told us, so, A.J came up with this idea to impress her with his father's cane, "The cane of the grasping constellation" Genevieve always called it, because Ambroise had always called it that too.
We entered his office to check if it was still in its place, and it was, perfectly and neatly.
"OoooOoOooOo!" A.J noised but he was looking a little too hypnotized by it, I got a bit creeped out.
While he was checking out the cane, something made me curious about if anything was still in the drawers or not. I was raised by thieves until I was nine so curiosity was something on my mind.
All of them were empty until I got to one, it had two large books in it, ancient looking books dating back from who knows when, but their condition never seemed too bad.
There was also a note inside of one of the books, it had read: "If I go missing, place blame on my competitor, Adrien alleyes." In simple and direct words.
I took the note to A.J and asked him if he knew who "Adrien alleyes" were, he knew exactly who he was and details about him I didn't think he'd know. He was set to inherit all of our fortune, I'm assuming Genevieve told him about him.
"We need to bring this note to law enforcement!" A.J screamed out, I couldn't agree more.
Halfway down the hall, we smelled fire and coughed on smoke while we smelled something was cooking. I ran for the weird books in the open drawer while he ran to grab the cane. Both of us almost immediately ran up to Genevieve's room, our mother's room, she was asleep.
We made it up to her but she was already dead in her bed, looking back on it, it was a more recent death than I thought.
A.J broke out in tears but I, heartlessly tried to keep a steady mind, A.J refused to leave her, no matter how much I urged him and tried to revive his appetite for life, because I knew Genevieve better than he ever did...
A.J couldn't see what his own mother would've wanted then, "You disgusting goofy bastard!" he called me because I didn't mourn her death right away, stayed behind and possibly would've been murdered.
A.J was always a bit physically weaker and smaller than I was, I grabbed him with all my strength and ran with all my speed.
We both ran and escaped with our lives but when we made it out, A.J began to beat me with his father's, Ambroise's cane, he beat me and beat me because he wanted to stay in there, he told me before he knocked me out, that before my arrival, he wanted a better relationship with Genevieve, with his mother, with mom.
When I woke up, the police hadn't shown up yet so I just left like he did, then I mourned her for months and months until I opened one of the books we found in his father's drawer.
Then my life changed, became uncertain, I read a note I wasn't expecting in one of Ambroise's books, on a bookmark he left.
What was in the books gave me power and I-i did what he noted down in my own little way and well, you know.
In the time of my mourning, almost every day, I went to mine and A.J's favorite spot to relax, meet friends and girls, but even though he had better memory than I had, memory that should've helped him remember that we agreed to meet there whenever one of us was sad, he never showed up but without a doubt, we were both beyond the definition of sad.
-
"I'm trying to help, trying to pay attention but, again, something keeps taking my attention, do you mean that you became a wizard?" Navin Dutta asked, hoping for him to admit that he was joking.
"No, the power that the content in these books gave, it felt a little bit more powerful. What I can do can be explained while magic can't be explained." Josue answered him, as his genuine answer.
"Good. Magic isn't real and should never be ever, Otherwise..." Navin replied, shaken up a little bit relieved.
"I believe Mr.Dutta that quite some decades ago, there was a vigilante delivering justice to THIS CITY, your city, always in the papers with the inhuman ability to bend the rules and manipulate smoke, maybe even turn into it, so, what sciences do you know that's capable of giving that to someone? Until it has a natural explanation then is it magic." Josue questioned... "And keep in mind, I have one of the most advanced facilities for the purpose of scientific study in the world and nobody there can replicate what he was capable of, in even the slightest. He seemed like a standard up guy." Josue replied to his ignorant statement.
Navin Dutta couldn't give an answer nor even reply back, he realized how little he knew of the world, he had to soak it all in and think to himself for a moment.
"Alright, you got one on me, let's just get back to your story if there's any left."
Navin said to change subjects but he was genuinely invested in this case.
"That was all I wanted to tell, if I told my entire life story, I'm afraid you'd lose your life from excessive astonishment or excessive dullness, the combat, the politics, the betrayal." Josue replied maybe overexaggerating a little bit about his life.
"Have you ever thought about making a book or documentary?" Navin asked, "I haven't, I'm usually too busy to enjoy anything but work but my work is what I enjoy so there's no need to enjoy anything else." Josue answered him.
Navin Dutta looked attentively at Josue, trying to use his experience as a Life counselor to see his true self, he couldn't.
"Why did you really come here, I'm sure you have plenty of folk back in Generil that does my job on a level worthier than my own, from what I read in the news, you only get the best quality and the finest of things." Navin replied.
Josue looked back as attentive as he looked.
Navin checked his watch.
"There's a noticeable difference between "The finest" and "The best quality" of objects, weapons, tools, but most importantly, people." Josue told him, "Especially in the case of people, the finest and the best quality are different, I've come to learn that." Josue finished.
"Did you come here for advice or to teach, sir?" Navin asked rhetorically, "That bit of life story was nice and could help me give you better and more effective advice, but tell me your problem now." Navin asked in a hurry.
"Okay, let me put it simply, that story should help you alot, Ambroise had a special associate who had visited me the other day with quite a threat up his sleeve, the threat included consequences for everyone I'm in charge of meaning the three cities, so what should I do?" Josue had asked, this was his question he came for...
Navin couldn't keep still like when Josue first arrived, he began shaking, vibrating some and Josue noticed, but Navin took a moment to process everything he's been told including asked, AKA Josue's question.
"Well, hark back to Genevieve's stories about Ambroise and think about what Ambroise would do, there must be a piece of Ambroise you remember from the stories that can teach you how to handle this "associate" of his and save everyone that this guy got the balls to threaten. If he's this guy's primary goal, He's the key to yours, to stop him surely." Navin gave that advice to him, with the finest intentions, the finest thoughts.
Josue checked his own watch, while he thought about it for a moment, "You may be onto something, and don't worry about your co-workers Mr.dutta, they won't harass you any longer, trust me." Josue appreciated his counseling, listening but now it's time they truly got even, Josue kept his promise.
This experience has changed Navin Dutta's life in a way he wasn't expecting that day, in the largest way he's ever been changed, in the most eccentric way he thought anyone could be changed, his opinions, his life choices, his win and loses.