Been a little too long since I uploaded last. I'll drop the next one sooner. Anyway...

The poker table at the center of the stuff backroom was gone. There was now a chair, and Tokugawa was tied to it. The poker crowd screamed at him. They threw cigarettes and glass from broken bottles at him. They nudged him with the butt of their Kalashnikov's. They spat at him. They hated him. But Anno—at the inner edge of the crowd—shouted, and it stopped.

"Everyone see the body? Good. That's right. Koichi's dead. One of us dies every day. That's how it is in the mob. But Koichi wasn't just one of us. Koichi was us. Koichi was our spirit." Anno slapped a fist on his chest. "Koichi was our soul." Anno, and every man in the room, beat their chest. "Koichi was our honor."

Tokugawa mumbled something.

Anno picked up a piece of glass. "What was that?"

"Please…"

"What was that?"

"Please… Please, don't kill me…"

"Please, he says." The crowd roared. "Please don't kill me? Please don't kill me after I fucked your niece? Please don't kill me after I—" spitting in his eye – "shot your best friend in the fucking face? Riddle me this, magic man: what the fuck was that?" Anno picked up another piece of glass. "Well, magic man?"

"I can't say."

Anno forced the glass into his mouth. "Wrong answer." Right hook. Broken glass. "Tough riddle, huh?" Tokugawa's head rolled on his shoulder. Anno grabbed his hair and held his head straight. "Spit that in my face, I dare you. I fucking dare you."

Tokugawa parted his lips and dribbled glass and blood. "It…"

"Pathetic."

"It was magecraft…"

The crowd laughed. Anno didn't. "What was that?" leaning in close, "Whaddya say?"

In no more than a whisper, Tokugawa said, "Magecraft."

"No shit?" Anno pulled up a chair in front of Tokugawa and sat. "Prove it."

"I can't."

Anno stood and hit him again. Blood splattered out of Tokugawa's mouth. "You probably don't know how these things work. But, usually, you don't say, I can't, I won't, or I don't at a time like this." He sat back down, rubbing his knuckles.

Tokugawa's head lolled on his head. He screamed, but it was gargled and full of blood; some of the gang members laugh. "I can't, I can't…"

Anno raised a hand again, but stopped. "Why. Not."

"They'll kill me."

"Who?"

"The Mage's Association."

A pause, then the room burst into laughter. Anno hit Tokugawa again; tears down his face, blood down his chin. "The Mage's Association? What? Do you guys discuss what kind of hats you can pull rabbits out of?" The guys all laughed. "Pull a rabbit out of a hat."

"That's not what we do."

"You know what I mean," he said in a threat.

"I can't like this."

"Sure, you can't." But Anno motioned, and someone cut Tokugawa's hands loose. Another five men put the barrel of their rifles to his head. "One move, and we'll do to you what you did to Koichi a few hundred times."

Tokugawa lifted one of his hands, shaking. The air buzzed, his hair lifted, and a red flower—made of pure light—appeared in the air. Static arced from it onto Anno's face, who stared, wide-eyed, at the thaumaturgy. The men in the room made noises of amazement, raising their firearms, pulling the hammers back, fingers easing on the triggers.

"Don't." Anno raised a hand. "This is real fucking magic." He pointed at Tokugawa. "You're going to teach me it."

"I will," he sobbed. "I will, I will."

"But what?"

"What?" Tokugawa looked up, eyes glossy.

"You've got that sound in your voice. Like you're not done talking. So, what," Anno spat. "Talk."

Tokugawa nodded softly, trying to keep his bleeding mouth still. "I will teach you, this I promise, but you must protect me."

"From the Wizard's Club."

"Mage's Association."

"Pardon me," Anno said, "and, no, I've never wanted to hit anyone whose corrected me." Tokugawa was quiet; Anno shook his head and sighed. "You're a coward. You know that, right?"

"I prefer self-preserving—"

"I prefer self-preserving," Anno mimicked in a high and whiny tone, "shut the fuck up. I'm making a point here. Listen up, men." He grabbed a revolver from one of his men. "There's a thing about cowards. Most people don't think cowards will ever raise a fist to you, but most cowards aren't afraid of hurting, they're afraid of getting hurt. When it comes down to it, a coward will hurt you before anyone else. Because they think it'll stop you from hurting them. That's the common coward, and you, Mr. Tokugawa, are a common coward."

Anno popped the chamber on the revolver, held one bullet in, and dumped the rest out. The clinked and dinked at his feet; he spun the barrel, flicked his wrist, and the chamber snapped back into place. "Magic, no magic; you killed one of my boys, and I can't put my interests above my boys." He looked around the room, at his men watching in wonder. "Whaddya say—leave it to a roll of the die, yeah?"

His men cheered; he pointed the gun at Tokugawa's head. "I'll make it quick." Tokugawa started screaming and thrashing. Anno pulled the trigger: click. He pointed at his groin: click. Then his left arm—click—his right—click, then his knee—

A burst of smoke and blood, Tokugawa's knee was blown in by a .45. The crowd erupted into laughter and cheering; Tokugawa struggled to breathe through the pain, and his hand, tied behind the back of the chair, sputtered magic.

Anno tossed the gun aside, and shook his head. "Fix em up," he said to a group of his men. "Have the older guys watch him. They're more superstitious… er, afraid of magic, I guess. Less willing to make a deal with him." A hand reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette. "Have the polygraph ready when he wakes up." He put it in his lips and lit it. "I need a smoke."

Tokugawa rolled his head on his shoulders and groaned. He tried to touch his broken nose, but his wrists were tied to the arms of a wheelchair. He looked down, at the dull pain in his knee under the skirt of a hospital gown, but he was blindfolded. There was an erratic ticking; it felt like his heartbeat.

"You up?" Anno asked from behind a desk. They were in his office: a humble room of mahogany tones with a desk covered in dirty dishes and paperwork, a shelf full of pictures of Anno and his family, and a large pane glass window overlooking a concrete wharf. It was dark but for a red neon sign buzzing: 'PARADISE.' "Try to keep your head still," he said, tapping the soot off the end of his cigarette onto a glass cigar ashtray. His wrist was slack, and smoke rolled off the cigarette, split with red light. He moved a medical needle, full of a white syrupy liquid, out of the line of smoke. "Don't knock the electrodes off."

Wires attached to pads ran from Tokugawa's head to a small, buzzing box in front of Anno. Affixed to the box was a paper, on which a needle ticked and jumped and bounced around the bottom, creating seismographic valleys and hills in blue ink, turned violet in the red light.

"Sorry, but it's a dud," Anno said, playing with the knobs and dials on the reader. "Lucky we had a wheel chair lying around. Bunch of junk lying around here. Need to clean some of it out, really…" He looked through the floor to the garage, thinking of another thing to do.

"Why…" Tokugawa could barely whisper; it returned Anno's attention to him. "Why me…"

"Got a bit out of hand, didn't it? You fucked my niece, I attacked you, you killed Koichi, I blew your knee out, you survive, I take you hostage. Out of hand." Anno pinched the cigarette with his lips and took a puff. "But here we are, eh? It's shit, I know, but think of it as being suddenly and securely employed against your will."

"That's slavery…"

"Yeah. But if you do a good job—if you're a good teacher and you really teach me… ugh, magic—yeah, well, we'll treat you as one of our own."

Fat tears rolled down the professor's cheeks.

"Oh, sure, oh, sure—cry." Anno smashed his cigarette into the tray, splattering embers over papers full of obliterated lines. "I tell you I'm going to treat you nice, and you cry. Nicer than that job as a professor ever would, and you cry."

"Wh... what have I done," Tokugawa gasped. The man holding a gun his head nudged him, and he groaned. "It hurts, it hurts so bad—"

"Now, I have some questions—"

"It hurts so bad. Please, make it stop…"

Anno slammed his hand on the desk, and the pictures, the papers, and the legs of Tokugawa's chair jolted. "SHUT THE FUCK UP." He ripped Tokugawa's blindfold off. It fluttered to the side of the office. "You answer my questions—" morphine dropped onto a part of the desk Tokugawa could see— "you get the morphine. Got it?"

Tokugawa's head rolled in a half-nod. "Got it."

Anno sat back in his big leather desk chair. "Good." Anno's eyes were on Tokugawa, not the polygraph; the professor looked so scared, there wasn't a need for it. "Before we get to it, it's in your best interest to be useful. Otherwise—" He flicked the upright stub of his smushed cigarette off the table. It landed butt-down. Smoke still leaked out. "You know. It's over."

"I understand, sir."

"Don't call me sir. You're pathetic enough." Anno looked down at a messy bullet-point list. "First off: is this magic of yours really magic?"

"Yes," he said stably.

"Great. Can you teach me magic?"

Tokugawa hesitated.

"Can you teach me magic," Anno demanded.

"Yes," Tokugawa said tragically.

"Well, what."

"What?"

"Don't what me." Anno's eyes rolled then fell hard back onto the professor. "What."

Tokugawa's eyes sat bleakly on his face. Slowly, his lips moved, "There are complications."

"What kind of complications?"

"To be a mage, you must be born with a mage's organ: Magic Circuits. If I were to transplant my Circuits into you, your body might reject them—like it would a kidney or heart transplant—and you'd die."

"Lucky for you, if I die in the transplant, you die in the transplant."

An incredulous scoff in the back of Tokugawa's throat. "Don't you have something to live for?" he weakly asked, head shivering disapproval, "Is power all you care about?"

"No, but it gets the job done," Anno said. His eyes darted once to a picture of him, Akira's parents, and her. A second time, to a picture of him and Akira's father. A third time to a picture just of Akira. "I've got people to provide for."

"And you'd leave them behind? There are other ways to protect your family without putting your life at risk."

A sneer, and he shook his head. He tapped his fingers on the desk, looking dissatisfied, chewing what he was going to say like steak gristle. Some words left his mouth before he spoke then said the rest. "You do your 'other ways' for your people, I'll do my ways for mine. You keep your family fed? You keep your neighborhood safe? You make your community happy? Won't tell you to do a fucking thing, really."

"Okay…"

"So you say shazam, or I go kerblam." He raised a fingergun and fired it at Tokugawa's head. The gunman behind Tokugawa stifled a laugh. Tokugawa didn't. "What? That wasn't funny?" Anno asked, astonished. "Do I not amuse you? No, I'm being a cock. Just teach me what you do and we'll get along.

"Okay… Of course… I'll teach you, I'll teach you…"

Anno grunted in approval and shifted in the leather of his chair. "So. You have something that lets you… do magic, and you'd have to give it to me if I want to do magic."

Tokugawa nodded, the back of his head rubbing against the barrel of the pistol behind it. "It's called a Crest. It's a symbol, on a mage's body, made of all the spells he's learned throughout his life. It's passed on through a family for generations, and…" At the thought of losing it, his eyes filled with tears again. "…it a mage's most valuable treasure."

Anno chewed on the inside of his cheek for a minute and a half. "There any other way?"

Tokugawa looked cautiously at Anno. "I don't believe so. Unless you're from a mage family and have long dormant Circuits."

"Are you sure about that." Said as a threat.

"Yes, but we'll do the transplant. We'll do the transplant," the professor stuttered.

"Just like an organ transplant, huh?" Anno turned off the polygraph. "What determines compatibility?"

"Character."

Leaning back, he ran a thumb over the scar on his lip. "You and I are nothing alike." The needle durdled to a stop and the room was so quiet, they could hear the smoke rolling. Anno got up and stomped the cigarette dead. Then nothing in the room made sound. He looked down at his foot and put his hands in his pockets. "Take him out of here." A short jerk of his head towards the desk. "Get the morphine."

Tokugawa grabbed the needle. "Thank you…"

The gunman wheeled him out of the room, as Anno went to the neon sign and stared into the red light. It deepened the lines in his face and gash in his lip. The black of his eyes soaked up all the light they got and reflected nothing.