ooc → HISTORY
Mikale Reed was born to a pretty normal American family. He had a father and mother and no siblings. The three of them lived in an apartment in the middle of the city. His father changed jobs frequently while Mikale was growing up, constantly being promoted, fired, or quitting. His mother worked as a secretary and kept a stable job throughout his childhood. Their family life could have been pretty normal.
But it wasn't normal. Like so many other characters in Game of Fate, Mikale suffered. His father became stressed as the years wore on and began taking it out on his family in the form of abusive behavior. The situation began to spiral out of control but Mikale and his mother kept quiet. His mother was ashamed and still loved her husband too much to get him in trouble. She discouraged Mikale from speaking up about the abuse because she was afraid of having the man she loved arrested. With no one there to tell him that his family life was wrong, Mikale came to accept it.
But despite his mother's faith that it would stop, the abuse continued for most of Mikale's childhood. He began to misbehave in school and would steal the other kids' food on days when his family forget to provide for him. His classmates generally disliked him and he had a hard time keeping friends. Even when he did have friends he did his best to keep them at a distance. Teachers tried to help and would often drag him to school counseling sessions or hold parent-teacher conferences, but Mikale kept his promise to his mother and never mentioned his problems. After a few conferences Mikale realized they put his dad in a bad mood and started behaving again, solely to avoid giving his father more reasons to be angry and to avoid giving her mother more reasons to be ashamed of her family. Aside from that, he did very little to change the situation.
When Mikale was eight he met someone who inspired a change. Samantha Kuroneko was a girl just barely younger than him. Up until then Mikale had carefully kept friends at a distance but Samantha forcefully broke his barrier and shoved her friendship on him. Mikale learned that she attended his elementary school and began to spend more time with her. Samantha was a cheerful and happy person who shared lots of kindness with him, all things that Mikale had otherwise been starved of. Through Samantha's influence his attitude began to change and she helped him to make more friends. Mikale was happy to let her lead the way and be her shadow. Samantha and him met in the summer time but by his September birthday he was spending time with her family, frequently invited over for dinner and weekend playdates. It was the first time that Mikale saw what a normal family was like. At home, the abuse began to subside just enough; Mikale's new happiness seemed to have a positive affect on his family.
Then Samantha moved to Japan. Rather suddenly. Nine year old Mikale was left alone with his abusive dad and submissive mother again. He started misbehaving again, as a form of protest against Samantha being gone, and the cracks in his familylife began to show again. A few months later his mother was diagnoised with a terrible illness. The details mostly went over Mikale's head but regardless she ended up hospitalized for a long time. His father started seeing other women in the meantime and would sometimes forget to come to the apartment or would return with another woman. Mikale did all he could to not have to be in the apartment and would often go out and just wander around until he got tired.
It was on one of this wanders that Mikale met Marron Dystini. She was an agent for Fate Dystini, who had pinned Mikale as a means for relocating Samantha Kuroneko. The Kuronekos had changed their daughter's name and skillfully erased all means of connecting their old life in the States to their new life Abroad. Mikale didn't realize it, but Samantha had as much of a crush on him as he had on her which had resulted in a strong emotional bond between them. A bond that, with some help with magic, could be used to trace Samantha. Marron helped awaken Mikale's magic, claiming he could fix his family life with it, and Fate used him to track the now Satou Kuroneko. From there, ten year old Satou Kuroneko was introduced to magic and her terrible fate was set into motion.
Mikale also set a terrible fate for himself into motion. Just as Marron and Fate were looking for Satou, Mikale decided that he would use his magic to find her too. To do that, he needed to set things straight with his family-- for his mother's sake, as he would be leaving her behind. That meant getting rid of his dad and getting money for his mom. He confronted his dad and fought back with his new magic, which successfully scared his father out of the apartment. From there, Mikale began using his magic to perform commission based jobs around town. Some of them were innocent, like delivery routes, and others were a bit more dark, like psychic bullying or causing physical harm. For an eleven year old he made a good amount of money doing these things, especially as he got more involved with the secret magic community and could accept more dangerous, but higher paying, jobs.
Predictably, it didn't last. His father wanted the apartment back and his rambles about his crazy son caught the attention of witch hunters. Mikale was attacked one night while still alone in the apartment. Much to his surprise, he was rescued by the MASQ. Vinita Godono herself approached him and decided to not only teach him to use magic more effectively as his teacher (just as she would be to Satou and Masume) but also adopted him. Mikale Reed was able to abandon his old name and live as Mikale Godono. His father could no longer locate him. His mother, he was promised, would be cared for.
Mikale's goal was still to relocate Samantha, but he was now being dragged into Vinita's goals as well. At first, this just meant working for the MASQ. Mikale already had a reputation with the darker side of the magic community as a good gun for hire and Vinita took advantage of that. He was essentially a spy for the MASQ and gathered information for them. He was given a title and allowed to work for the MASQ as well, which also gave him more access to his magic. Mikale gladly accepted both resources in his never ending quest to find the girl that, as he now realized, he was crushing on.
The price of Mikale's magic and the price of Satou Kuroneko's magic clashed in a terrible way, terrible enough to doom his efforts. The price of Satou's magic was the memory of her, which made it nearly impossible to track down "Satou Kuroneko". Even if Mikale did find her there was the price of his magic to worry about; Mikale's price would prevent him from ever finding "Samantha", who was the most important person in the world to him. This meant that even if he was standing right next to her he would never recognize her.
He did end up standing next to her. Numerous times. When he was 13 Vinita gave him a new job. She wanted him to shadow the girl named Satou Kuroneko and alert Vinita if she ever seemed dangerous. If she did then Mikale had to make the call of either restraining or killing her. Since he wanted to live in Japan and look for Samantha it worked out; he now had an excuse to wander around. Ironically, the girl he was looking for was always right in front of him.
As Satou and Masume started their title contest Mikale kept at his job. He was supposed to try not to draw their attention to himself but was forced out of hiding when the two girls wandered into a dangerous situation. Though it wasn't in his job description to protect her, Mikale started feeling a drive to protect the girl he'd been stalking. The end result of his clumsy attempt to protect her left Satou convinced that Mikale was her enemy.
Which wasn't enough to discourage him. Mikale had found teasing Satou and being at her side for that short amount of time to be honestly fun. Since Vinita had no objections, he began to show up more frequently. Sometimes fighting her but usually offering her advice. As the sisters came to meet Touka Takamachi and pursue the task of rescuing her, Satou and Mikale finally made amends and decided they were friends.
A short-lived pact, since befriending Touka Takamachi put Vinita further on edge. Touka was a mana well and made the danger posed by Satou's existence even worse. Within a few weeks Vinita had become so paranoid about the way things were unfolding that she changed Mikale's job from stalking to murder. He accepted, not wanting to lose the resources that he needed to find Samantha (irony).
He continues to attack the sisters throughout the Title Competition and makes himself the first and only person that Satou actively dislikes. Mid-competition Satou realizes that he is her childhood friend and begins trying to befriend him again, but she never mentions what she has remembered to him. As the competition comes to a close her befriending efforts begin to get to him and he notices more and more similarities between Satou and Samantha. In the finale, where Satou is put in a life or death situation to buy time for Masume's escape, Mikale steps in to protect her. If he had not decided to step in then she would have probably died.
And so ends the first half of the series. Satou is forgotten by society, with Mikale as one of the few exceptions. When he learns that people have forgotten her and he's remembered it dawns on him that he must really care about her. But he doesn't recognize these feelings as being love right away, instead trying to stay loyal to Samantha's memory.