Boy and Girl were not difficult to shop for.

Girl enjoyed dolls so he purchased a doll for her. Boy loved animals so he purchased an animal for her. Not a real one, of course, but a bit of plastic molded in China and shipped to whatever country it was that he was in. They spoke Dutch, here, which he could get by in. He learned quickly. Language learning was necessary, now, because his work took him all over the world. When he ruled it, when he could rest, then the rest of the world would speak Japanese.

A simplified version, of course.

No need to torment the world with the endless, truly endless, lessons on the kanji that he had been subjected to. He could recognize over fifty thousand of them last he checked, though only about three thousand or so of them were actually in his daily use. Maybe even less due to the sheer amount of time he spent outside of the country.

He needed to get back to Japan.

An irrational feeling. People were alike all over. Here, there, anywhere they were all the same. Small, so very small, and weak but assured of their own superiority due to their sheer numbers. The gift of esp was not a common one at all and could not be made common, either. Another batch had been lost. Those Awakening Chambers were still abysmal failures. Even if the person crammed into one of them could awaken some sort of long neglected power they held they often times did not even survive the awakening process. Such a pity. It was a shame to lose potential manpower like that.

But it had to be done.

All good things came from suffering. There was no greater teacher than suffering. In order to awaken one must have been put through the sort of pain that left one wishing for, begging for, death. It didn't bother him, their cries and plies, and it never had. He wasn't the one in pain so why should it have mattered? Besides, it wasn't as though he went around forcing people into those awakening chambers. They wanted the gift of esp, they knew what they were getting into, and they knew that death was an option.

Now that was something that he understood, wanting something so badly that you would die for it.

It was not a hyperbole when he said it, even to himself, that he would die to become the ruler of this world. He would have. If only for a second, if he could only rule for a second, then he would have gladly perished at the end of that second knowing that for a second, just a second, all had been right with the world. This world was backwards, upside down, and he needed to be the one to correct it. Not just for himself but for his children as well.

Daughter like dolls with a lot of hair. He'd get her one.

He found himself in a toy store, a proper toy store, not the overstimulating plastic menagerie that Masami purchased the children's toys from. Plastic things mass produced and owned by anyone. Common things for common people. His children were anything but common, ordinary, they were extraordinary. Or at least Daughter was. Yes, Girl had progressed far beyond he ever could have hoped. Power with the most rudimentary amount of control. More than she had when he had found her. Power was nothing at all without control, he had known this to be true for his entire life, and it was a lesson that he passed down to his child.

There. That was a lovely doll.

A European looking thing. Blonde hair down to it's feet and strikingly blue eyes. It was dressed in the sort of folk costume that was native to this area complete with small wooden shoes. Son and Daughter would have loved wooden shoes but he knew that he would not have loved the migraine that would come with giving the children wooden shoes. They had enough noise makers as it was. How Masami could have stood to listen to that racket day in and day out was beyond his understanding. She was such a patient woman, his wife.

He would not come home empty handed.

He had come to this country in search of another child and found nothing. There had been word of a child, orphaned and possessed, which could have meant that the child was in the same boat as Daughter had been. This child had not been possessed at all, merely quite mad, so Suzuki had to pass. He would have so liked to have brought home another child…not that he liked children, no, but Masami did. Masami liked children and he liked securing the next generation.

There were so few of them.

He would have thought that he would have had another child to buy toys for by now. Masami refused to have another, she did not refuse him but she did refuse to reproduce, so he looked to the various orphan prisons that the world had. There were so many orphan prisons but none of them had born fruit. He had even looked to Seasoning City again, perhaps another esper child had been born and relinquished, but nothing. That city had produced him and daughter and it seemed as though it were done, for now, creating esper children.

He had Son and Daughter and that would have to be enough for now.

Daughter would like this doll. He knew that he could have had someone do this for him, there was no shortage of people willing to serve him, but this was something that he preferred to do himself. He knew what he wanted his children to have. Not the cheap, mass produced, plastic junk that they preferred but something one of a kind, like her.

Daughter really was a priceless gem that had been pulled from a pot of dirt. He had done his research into her bloodline. Nothing. Nothing of interest going back several generations on both sides. Just like him. Nothing. Daughter even had a biological brother, he had discovered, and the boy was completely normal. He'd had the family followed for weeks but the boy didn't even have an aura let alone anything close to what Daughter had. Such a pity, the children had been asking for another sibling. Son wanted a brother, Girl wanted a sister, but Masami had been very adamant that the baby factory was closed until further notice.

He didn't understand her one bit.

She enjoyed being a mother, she had said so many times, and if the children tired her too badly he could always bring in someone to help. Female espers were rare but he was sure that he could find one and persuade her to work for the family. He could even just bring in some of the cultists. They worshipped him, they were right to do it, so of course they would worship his children. Well Daughter, anyway, he wouldn't so much as mention Son until he displayed something. Anything. It didn't even have to be at Daughter's level. At this point Suzuki would have been willing to accept literally anything, any evidence that his son was in fact his son and there hadn't been some terrible mix up at the hospital Masami insisted on giving birth at even though he could have figured out how to help her. People had been giving birth since there was a human race, he could have helped her through it, but she insisted on going to a hospital.

His son was his son.

The boy looked just like him and he knew that Masami would have never been unfaithful. Son was his son and that was all there was to it. Esp was part genetics, part fate, and part the choices that one made in life, it seemed. Stress, fear, rage, these emotions triggered it. Daughter hadn't had much of a life before becoming his…maybe he had been too easy on son.

There. Animals carved from wood. Perfect.

He had to get Son a gift too or he'd put up a fuss.

Daughter would love her gift.