Sally
Appearing much younger than her age, with Western European features, brown hair, and brown eyes, Sally Davies looked up from her notes to meet the gaze of the abnormally handsome young man across from her. “So, correct me if I’m wrong, but the things you think we should talk about in future sessions are as follows: your mother abandoning your family when you were a baby; your father dying in a car accident when you were a child; your experiences in foster care with your sister; the only major romantic relationship in your life being with a woman whose intention from the beginning was to steal from you; a reasonable sense of paranoia from lots of governments and companies stealing your intellectual property; you almost causing World War III by releasing all the private documents of everyone who stole from you; you accidentally contributing to the death of your ex girlfriend; you committing suicide by blowing up the US Capitol with about a thousand people inside to stop World War III from happening, which apparently actually worked; you slaughtering several hundred Earthling souls in a monster tutorial; you teaming up with your ex girlfriend in said monster tutorial and then turning yourself into an incubus and her into a succubus, while also starting a master servant relationship; you killing quite a few people in a war to take over the planet you ended up on; you effectively torturing your future best friend when you barely knew him to try and confirm the emotions of your ex girlfriend; you being tortured in a hyper realistic soul world by an elf, who you later forgave, and are now working with; people around you not trusting you to handle social situations; the loss of a parental figure in your combat instructor; you taking things too far in taking revenge for the death of your combat instructor, killing over 36 billion people in order to use their souls to kill the true murderer, who was too powerful for you to kill in any other way with your power at the time; your desire at the time to commit suicide because you thought you were evil; you still believing you are evil; the worst thing you’ve ever done being something the universe has rewarded you for many times over; the fact your mother had you with the intention of killing you off in an absolutely brutal way; your mother brutally killing your sister and unborn niece; the pressure from needing to achieve several near-impossible results to revive your sister; and how, because you are an incubus, women keep becoming attracted to you, which, in your words, is annoying.
“Am I missing anything?”
“Yes.” Aalam Alvaro, the Heavenly Spark Soul King, nodded. “How everyone on Earth’s lives depend on me, and the pressure that results from that.”
Sally looked down and added that last bit to her notes, her mind reeling, but out loud she calmly said, “You are what in my field we call a difficult case. What do you think about increasing our session count to far, far more than two a year?”
But then she looked up and realized the young man, the boss of Earth and the master of her husband, had disappeared, presumably before she started talking—maybe teleporting away.
* * *
“So, how does that make you feel?” Sally looked up from the notes she’d been taking to look at the large man with the indigo reptilian eyes.
“Impotent.” Isaiah Gale opened and closed his hands into fists a few times. “There was nothing I could do. There’s almost always nothing I can do.”
“Do you think your need to feel like you are in control might have something to do with your upbringing?”
Isaiah’s aura showed confusion for a few seconds, then surprise. “Oh, maybe. I was used by the Gale Clan and wanted to belong. So, now that I do belong somewhere, I’m afraid I’ll be abandoned if I stop being useful.”
“We should go into that more in the future.” Sally marked down a reminder in her notes. “But there are some things we should probably touch on first. Have you been able to properly grieve yet?”
Isaiah’s aura showed confusion again and he started to frown. “What do you mean?”
“You lost a loved one and a child. Have you taken time to just be sad?”
“There’s no time. I have to train so it doesn’t happen again.” Isaiah almost growled out the last words and Sally decided to try a slightly different tactic.
“Has your training since their deaths been efficient?”
Isaiah just stared at her for several seconds, and then a feeling of defeat entered into his aura. “No.”
“Good.”
Isaiah’s eyes narrowed and his aura showed anger, just what Sally had expected. “What do you mean?”
“That’s not a bad thing, Isaiah.” Though she had expected his rage, it still took most of Sally’s control to stay calm in front of the angry powerhouse in front of her, only the knowledge he wouldn’t actually attack keeping her from just running out the door. “It means you cared.
“Out of everyone, you’re the hardest hit by this. And it’s okay for things to not be good for a while.”
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“But I need to be stronger.” Isaiah opened and closed his hands a few more times and Sally took a few seconds to think about what to say next.
“Why do you think Ms. Li is having everyone undergo therapy sessions?”
Isaiah’s aura changed, like he suddenly realized something. “I don’t know.”
“Well, my husband said that at higher ranks knowing yourself becomes incredibly important. I don’t know the specifics, and I gather it is something that is normally hidden from people at our rank, but I imagine learning how to handle your own grief is a good step in the right direction.”
“Hmm.” The dragon man looked thoughtful for several seconds. “I just asked Mila and she confirmed your guess.
“I need to allow myself to feel the emotions, even if I know it’s going to hurt?”
Isaiah was looking at her with reluctance obvious in his expression and aura, but Sally just nodded. “That is what I would recommend.”
Tears started to form in the man’s reptilian eyes, causing him to blink in a way that was not at all human, reminding Sally of the alien from Will Smith’s first scene in Men In Black. Then he seemed to mostly talk to himself. “Maybe I’ll do some of the activities I’ve been avoiding, the ones we used to do together.”
“Or you could do them with a friend.”
“Oh. Right.” A bit more life entered into Isaiah’s voice. “Aalam is probably feeling a lot of the same emotions. And he really likes those things.”
The large man moved from where he was sitting and gave Sally an unexpected hug. “Thanks, Ms. Davies. This was very helpful.”
* * *
“Well, that’s time.” Li Mila rose from her seat and headed toward the door to the office. “Thanks for your time today, Sally. I’ll see you in half a year.”
“Yeah.” Sally smiled, but then, as the door closed behind Mila, she realized she’d only asked the woman one question about her childhood and had not even received an answer.
The woman had shifted the topic to Francis and 90s action films, topics Sally loved, and the rest of their time had been spent talking about things of only consequence to Sally and not her patient.
She’d been played.
“Damn.”
* * *
Francis
Looking at his wife’s angry expression as she got into bed, Francis asked, “Is there something I should be worried about?”
“No. Probably not.” Sally was speaking in the way she usually did when she didn’t want to talk about something, but her aura showed she very much did, and, as he expected, it didn’t take long for her to break down and turn to him. “Why have you always said you like Mr. Li?”
“He’s very efficient at his job and is the only person I interact with on a regular basis who likes to maintain formality.”
“I was just reading up on Li Mila after our session, and that man is a monster. He’s basically Nicholas Cage’s character from Kickass, only so much more messed up. He didn’t just teach his granddaughter how to kill, but how to manipulate everyone around her.
“And do you know that, as a teenager, she was sent to pleasure and then kill warlords in Africa?”
Francis thought about how to answer the question, to which the answer was yes, and decided to just not say anything, which resulted in his wife glaring at him.
“I asked her one question about her childhood, Francis, and she started to completely play me. We spent our entire session talking about you and 90s action films, not anything of actual importance to her life. I don’t know if she cared about what I was saying, was trying to gather information, or if she was just avoiding the topic. And, if she was avoiding the topic, there are several possible reasons why and I have no idea which one is correct.”
“She is in general extremely hard to read.” Francis couldn’t think of anything more constructive to say.
Then there was a pause in the conversation as his wife continued to glare at him, so he decided to ask a different question. “What about Isaiah Gale and the Heavenly Spark Soul King?”
Sally frowned a bit and turned away from him, lying back on her pillow and looking up at the ceiling. “Isaiah is a very sweet individual. He’s had a whole lot of trauma in his life and it has made him care about others more than he cares about himself. Try not to call him Mr. Gale though. From what I understand, the Gale clan raised him with the intent of sacrificing him for a bloodline curse, and he should probably consider changing his last name.
“As for Aalam, well, he’s seriously messed up.”
Francis sat up and looked at his wife with an expression of fear. “Should I be worried?”
“No.” Sally shook her head. “At least I don’t think so. Take away all the superlatives about his berserker uniqueness and he’s basically a recovering alcoholic who is deeply regretful of the actions he’s taken in his life while drunk. And it sounds like through magic mumbo jumbo he has the berserking part pretty much under control, so there shouldn’t be another mass murder event.”
Sally turned to look at him, smiling sadly. “Look at me. I’m saying mass murder event like it’s something normal.”
“Thirty six billion people. Gone in a matter of hours due to a war.” Francis looked up at the ceiling as well. “I’ve been reading intelligence reports about the universe and that’s not at all abnormal. Hell, at least in this case the deaths were swift.”
Francis took a deep breath. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“For one, you should stop referring to him as the Heavenly Spark Soul King.” Sally reached out under the covers and held his hand. “His name is Aalam, Francis, and, after meeting him, I’m much more reassured about your role as president of Earth.
“He’s a high functioning autistic with deep-seated and well founded abandonment issues. But the latter, probably due to the former, is less of a problem with allowing him to trust people, and more of a problem with his own level of confidence.
“It seems he’s been getting help from some superpower named Joma—”
“The Alchemist of the Deep Woods, a well connected A rank alchemist and Mr. Alvaro’s former teacher,” Francis provided.
“But he still doesn’t trust himself. I kind of gather from talking with Isaiah that Aalam might be the most talented cultivator in the universe—though I do take that with a grain of salt given the source—”
“You shouldn’t. All signs point towards that being the case.”
“Okay then.” This time it was Sally’s turn to take a deep breath. “Well, he has a lot of confidence and self worth issues, and seeing as he’s tried to commit suicide twice, one time successfully, he doesn’t have good coping mechanisms.”
Sally paused for a second. “On a side note, were you aware his blowing up the Capitol effectively saved over a billion lives?”
“Yes.” Francis nodded, that fact still one of the most amazing he’d ever learned. “Yes, I was.”
Sally looked up at the ceiling again. “Well, suffice it to say he doesn’t have anywhere near the level of confidence you would expect.
“As for being a high functioning autistic, well, I kind of like that in the person who has true actual say in everything our force does in the future. He has no desire to lead, and likely never will, but you can see his influence in the policies his sister and Ms. Li have implemented, so he’s likely at least half the reason life on Earth has been so good over the last couple decades.”