Ratatouille was not a breakfast food.

But he was not about to argue with the children on what they could and could not eat. It had vegetables, something they hadn't eaten in a very long time, and anyway they seemed to enjoy it. Well they enjoyed saying it's name, anyway.

"Rat-ta-too-ey"

"Ra-da-too-ing."

They had been going back and forth like that for the entire meal. Honestly it was starting to become grating. He so wished that he hadn't sat down to this meal with his children. They didn't need him there with them while they ate, they weren't toddlers, but he had nor shared a meal with his children in a very long time.

And now he remembered why.

"There are over a hundred thousand words in the French language. Choose another one." said Suzuki as the children proceeded to laugh over the name of what they were eating….and he continued to not understand why. Children were such strange creatures sometimes. They operated on a form of reason and login that he had long forgotten. At least they weren't moping around about Masami anymore.

At least now they both understood that they were never to mention their mother again.

"But that's the only one we know." Said Son. Daughter nodded in agreement. Suzuki made a mental note to find someone to teach them French in that case. He really needed to get on with educating them in some capacity. It was just so much easier, and quieter, to leave them at Disney Land all day. That was why they were staying in Paris, now, even though it was slightly inconvenient. France was a big country but nowhere as big as China or the U.S….which may have been their next stop over. He had no idea. All he knew was that he was jet lagged, hungry, and his children were about to drive him to drink. Not that he had anything against drinking, if he tried to ban alcohol when he took over the world there would be no doubt that his rule would be a short one, he just did not like himself drinking. He needed to always maintain control for his own good and the good of those around him.

But he really needed a drink.

"Well then you'll just have to learn others." Said Suzuki

"We're going to school here?" asked Daughter. He saw her aura. The thought of returning to school was making her anxious. He had no idea why. He had been under the impression that she enjoyed going to school and that she took great pride in her scholastic achievements.

"I don't want to go to school." Said Son. That reaction was more in line with what Suzuki knew about that child. He would have much preferred to be underfoot all day, running and jumping and getting into everything, but it was past the beginning of the new school term back in Japan…and of course he would educate his children…..

"Dad, how can we go to school here? We don't know anybody and we don't speak the language." Said Daughter. Yes, valid concerns, but only if he had been planning on letting them attend school in this country. That would not have been a good move at all. First of all his children were not going to mingle with everyone else's, no way, and second of all they were nomads now. No sense in going through all the work of sending his two very foreign children to a local school and then having to move again in a few days to a few weeks.

"I'd have someone come here and teach you and your brother. Think of it like a school with only two people and that other person there with you at all times would be your brother." Said Suzuki. They still got frightened if they were separated. He'd have to break them of that when they got older. Son could, if he ever truly awakened, handle some business for him. Things that required attention but not necessarily his attention. Daughter could….she would stay by his side. Always.

An irrational feeling.

Daughter would not leave him. Well he had thought that Masami would never leave him too….he exorcises that emotion once again. He cannot risk losing Daughter. She was truly irreplaceable in ways that Masami never was. She was, at the end of the day, just a woman. A normal woman. There were women everywhere and if he wanted to he could have one. He could have two. He could have had a woman for every day of the week…he just didn't want to. He just didn't have the time. Yes, the time, to replace his wife….and he should have been on that. She was a hell of a lot easier to replace than his Daughter. Even his own biological daughter, and he needed to get in that too and sooner rather than later, would most likely never come close to her natural skill…if his son was anything to go off of.

He had a lot of things to do.

And not a lot of inclination to do them.

And that could be a real problem down the line. He was at war with himself. At war with the things that he knew that he had to do and the things that he just….he just got sentimental about. Masami. There was a raw, open, gaping wound where she had been. She was gone, now, and the rational thing to do would have been to have found another woman. The rational thing to do would have been to get back to the business of having more children, something that he had been wanting to do since Son was born. The rational thing to do would have been to just…move on….because she had left him, betrayed him, and therefore she was not worth even one millionth of the…the everything….that he gave her. His thoughts, his emotions, his pain….all of it. She was not worth it and no matter how many times he told himself that….

It still hurt.

And that emotion would not allow itself to be exorcised.

"…..different grades. How would that work?" asked Son. Suzuki backtracked for a bit. Right, the children had been debating the logistics of such an arrangement. They were his children, that was for sure, or they had at least been raised by him. Daughter was somehow just like him and nothing like him at the same time. Son was nothing like him and nothing like his mother, too. He wondered how much of it was nature and how much of it was nurture. He'd have to get someone on that.

"Grades are only useful for organizing large groups of children. Since it is only you two you're free to learn at your own pace. It's more efficient that way." said Suzuki. The thought of his children going to school with the others, with normal children, is not something that he wants to contemplate. They were already far too used to being near the other children, the normal children. He so wished that he could have given them a world where they wouldn't have been forced to deal with normal people….but at least he could give them that now. There may not have been any other children but they were surrounded by espers, at least here….and the awakened counted….sort of.

"Yes, dad." Said Daughter. She went back to picking at her breakfast, which really was more like her dinner. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Jet lag. How he loathed jet lag. The children seemed to be coping better than he was, even, though they were smaller than he was and their age made them much more adaptable.

"Why is it only us? Why can't we go to school with the other kids? And why can't we play with the other kids?" asked Son. Daughter was shushing him. She understood why. Maybe it had to do with her age, or maybe her gender, he had heard that girls were more mature than boys.

"Sho, stop it. You know why." said Daughter. He patted her on the head with his powers. He had seen Masami give the children affection like that before. Well with her hands…and she's always had such beautiful hands…and he needs to stop thinking of Masami.

"Because we're espers and they're not." Said Son. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. Daughter reached over with her hand and pushed his plate closer to him.

"Sho, come on. You have to eat. Come on, it's really good." Said Daughter. She was very good at taking care of her younger brother. She was very nurturing, like her namesake. Shigeko. The kanji for nurturing child. He wondered what he would have called her if he had been the one to name her. He had thought of it, renaming her, but at two years old changing her given name would only serve to confuse her more than she had been when he adopted her.

"I'm not hungry." Said Son, his arms still crossed. Suzuki wondered if he legitimately didn't want to eat or if this was some attempt at being contrary. Son could be so contrary sometimes and for no reason at all.

"Come on, it's good." Said Daughter. She picked up his fork with her powers and attempted to feed him. He tried to bat the fork away with his hand.

"No." said Son

"Please? It's good. Even I'm eating some." Said Daughter

"So?" said Son

"So what?" said Daughter

"So what if you're eating. I'm not you. Just because you're hungry doesn't mean that I am." Said Son. He made sense, of course, though he knew that Daughter would not relent. Women liked to feed you. They could not rest easy until they thought that you had eaten enough for three people. Masami had been like that. When they had first been married she had called him every single day, when he had been abroad, and she had always and without fail asked him how he had been eating. His late mother had been the same, too, from what he could matter. It must have been a female trait. They were so confusing, women, and he wondered when Son would figure out that there was no arguing with women when they decided that you needed to eat. Maybe he'd figure it out when he found his own most perfect person and married her…and then she left him….

And he needed to come off of this.

Because there was no use ruminating on Masami being gone. She was gone and she was not coming back. He was still searching for her…sort of. He knew that he needed to look for her. He knew that he needed to find her, even if she had betrayed him by leaving, he knew that he still needed to look for her…though what he would do when he found her he had no idea.

Hold her tight and never let her go.

Tell her to get out of his sight forever.

Or something like that.

"I just meant that it was good, that's all. Because I'm eating it so it must be ok to eat." Said Daughter. They were getting close to becoming quarrelsome. Well Son was quarrelsome and Daughter was just trying to eat her breakfast/dinner. He was too tired for this. He wondered if it would be better or worse to kick Son out of the table so he and Daughter could have a pleasant meal.

"You'll eat anything. Back in China you ate even pork blood soup. I don't know how you could eat something so gross." Said Son

"It was good…and I only ate it because I recognized the character for pork…and it didn't taste gross…and it's not so weird, right?" said Daughter

"Almost two billion Chinese people can't be wrong." Said Suzuki with a shrug. That hadn't been a fun night. Well these dinners were never fun, he didn't like the business side of things and he didn't much like sycophants either, and he also didn't like bringing his children places. Well Daughter had done well. She had eaten her food and sat quietly. Son on the other hand…well he hadn't been that bad. Not as bad as he could have been. He mostly just sat down at the table with Daughter and drew furiously. He wished Son would have slowed down, his drawings had been very good and could have been even better if he had taken his time….though perhaps the violent imagery should have been something worrying.

"I think that it was gross." Said Son

"I didn't make you eat any. Besides, you liked your chicken thing so it doesn't even matter." Said Daughter. He should have left them that night, he really should have, but he had wanted…at least Daughter there. She had a very calming presence. He had maybe wanted Son there, too, or rather the idea he had of Son…

He wanted a worthy successor. He got Son.

But there was still time for Son, maybe, he was only six years old. Come December he would be seven. Then eight and nine and so on and so forth. One day he would wake up and his son would be a man. He would be a man and he would be ready to inherit the world….and he would be worthy. One way or another his son would be worthy. He would grow up to be a man worthy of the world Suzuki would create.

Though right now he was not a man worthy of ruling the world, no, he was a very contrary and annoying little boy.

"I just said that I didn't want any more." Said Son

"But you barely ate." Said Daughter. She looked between him and her brother, now. Suzuki didn't care either way. If he was hungry later then he was hungry later. That was his own problem. Children could be so strange, so irrational, sometimes.

"If your brother wants to starve then let him starve." Said Suzuki. They'd eat later, anyway. They always stuffed themselves with everything dep fried and covered in powdered sugar that they could get their little hands on. It made sense that they, or at least Daughter, would eat such calorically dense foods…though he did wish that they would make an effort to eat healthier. That was important that they eat vegetables. Masami had always been on them all to eat more vegetables…and she was a master of cooking them. Even when she would work broccoli into his omelets…even then it was good….

He thought of something other than Masami.

"Sho, please eat. If you don't eat right now then you'll be hungry later. You get kind of upset when you get hungry and I want us to have fun today. There's a Disney Land in Paris and it'll be fun. We haven't been to that one yet. I bet that there's a lot of dark rides and scary rides and-" said Daughter

"And it'll be just like the one in Shanghai and the one in Hong Kong." Said Son

"No, this one will be different because we're in Europe. That's different from China and Japan." Said Daughter

"People are alike all over." Said Suzuki. Maybe he should have just let her figure it out on her own. He had been all over the world over and over again and while people had their idiosyncrasies they were, at their core, alike.

"Really?" asked Daughter

"They're all normal people, aren't they?" said Son. Well there was a first time for everything. Son had not only said something that made sense but he agreed with his father too. Maybe it was a sign of the apocalypse. Suzuki glanced out the townhouse window. Nope, no rain of fire, just a sun that he had not been expecting to see. Goddamned jet lag…..

"I guess….but that's ok. We still have each other…and it would make me happy if you ate. Please? I bet the rats who made this worked very hard." Said Daughter. Then she laughed, and Son laughed, and Suzuki felt like there was some joke that he was not aware of. He never compared regular people to vermin…and it didn't seem like the sort of thing that Daughter would say…because she was such a sweet girl. Masami had always said that she was a sweet girl. It was not like her to be….like that….and it was unlike Son to laugh at something like that, either….

They were still laughing.

And Son was eating.

And Suzuki did not get it.

"Daughter. Explain what you just said." Said Suzuki. He could see her aura. She seemed startled. She did not show it, much, but she had been startled. Her plate even jumped. Son was eyeing him wearily…and he had no idea why. Sometimes he got the feeling that the children were frightened of him. He didn't have the faintest idea of why. He was very good to them. He got them whatever they wanted and made very few demands upon their time. He disciplined them, of course, but they were children and they needed discipline.

"About rats cooking food?" asked Son. Suzuki nodded. The entire thought was absurd….but not in a funny sort of way. More of a 'what in the world' sort of way. Rats cooking food….how would that even work? They had no thumbs….and also they didn't have that kind of intelligence to them. They were intelligent creatures but as far as he knew rats could not cook. Or maybe they could. Maybe they really had tiny little cities under their very feet. Maybe they slept in matchbox beds and used spools of thread as coffee tables. Or maybe it was just the little people who lived inside the walls. Maybe the walls here were filled with borrowers and-

And he was spending far too much time with the children. Their media was seeping into his mind.

"Do you mean you want to explain why it's funny?" asked Daughter. She said that like it was obvious what they were laughing at. Not that it bothered him, being left out of the joke, it didn't bother him at all. He didn't care. Curiosity. That was all.

"If you would be so kind, Daughter." Said Suzuki

"Ok, so there's this movie called Ratatouille about this French rat named Remi and he liked to cook but he can't because he's a rat so…." Said Daughter. She proceeded to tell him, in great detail, the story of the rat with the amazing sense of smell that wanted nothing more than to be a rat. Son chimed in, too, with his interpretation of the most absurd and disturbing plot that Suzuki had ever heard. Just the thought of something as small and weak as a rat controlling a human being like a mech…and also the thought of rats being intelligent enough to run a restaurant….

Disturbing.

This did not disturb the children, no, they enjoyed this immensely. That was why they had asked, over and over again, for Ratatouille when they heard that they were going to France. Well then….that was…that was something. Something…something that was something. Children….just when he thought that he understood his children they went and threw him a curveball like that. He wondered how Masami dealt with this sort of thing for all these years…

Well she had always read to them. Her stories never came from whole cloth.

He'd have to start telling them stories again.