Look what I can do.

Suzuki had been hearing those five words nonstop since Son had woken up. Fukuda had put him under after the…events….of his awakening. Suzuki had known, of course, that his Son was going to wake up. Why wouldn't he? He was going to wake up because he had not been terribly hurt. Fukuda had healed him. Therefore there was no reason for Suzuki to have spent the entire trip to their new temporary accommodations staring at his Son and just…watching him. He had been on the receiving end of one of Fukuda's healing comas once, truly it had been horrific, but he had been under for some time. He knew that Son was not going to die.

Look what I can do.

Son had said that when he woke up. Suzuki had been asleep in his own temporary bed in his own temporary room in this temporary house. A place in the middle of nowhere. A place where there weren't people around for miles. A cheap prefab that would not have been missed if Daughter woke up in the same state she had passed out in. But she hadn't woken up in that state. She hadn't woken up in any state. She had simply trailed into his bedroom after Son and asked where they were. She had been normal. Her mood had been ordinary. Son had been extraordinary.

Look what I can do.

That was what he said. Then he raised the bed Suzuki had been sleeping on high off the ground. He hadn't been steady, he hadn't been even, but he had managed more in that instant than he had in eight years of life. Daughter had been able to do more than that as a two year old…but Son was not Daughter. Son was his own person…and he was finally the person that he should have been all along. He had been so happy. His aura had been so bright. Daughter's had been bright too…but because she had been happy. Why she had been happy Suzuki did not know. Didn't she know that she had a rival now?

Look what I can do.

Son had dropped him, eventually, and it had been Daughter who caught it. She had been so happy for her brother even though it made no sense whatsoever. She had a rival now. She had a brother, well she had always had a brother, but now she had a brother who could have overshadowed her. Who could have eclipsed her. She didn't even seem to care. She was just…happy for her brother. She said so many times. It made no sense. Suzuki had never been cursed with a sibling but he knew that if he had a sibling he would not have been happy if said sibling developed psychic powers.

Look what I can do.

Daughter had said that to him. That had been one of the first things she had ever said to him. He had brought her home and she had been…weary…of the strangers surrounding her and calling themselves her family. She had been slow-ish to adjust. She took to her brother first, then her mother, and then finally to him. She had been two years old and said those five words and then made the entire dinner table float up to the ceiling. He had been so proud of her. So impressed by her.

Impressive.

That was the only word which had come to mind. Impressive. Son had genuinely impressed him. There had been worry, some of it, that then entire thing had been for nothing. That he had risked Son's life for nothing. That Son had risked his life for nothing. Fukuda was getting to him. Son had made his own choice. Son could have asked to stop at any time and Suzuki would have indulged him. His Son had stuck it out, gone the distance, and reached his full potential.

Impressive.

The whole thing had been impressive. That an eight year old boy had managed to live through something that killed grown men regularly. That was impressive. The scars on Son's body were also impressive. A record of his victory over himself. He had won. He had his powers and he had lived through the awakening process and now he was finally the person who he had always been meant to be. The person who Suzuki knew that his Son had always been meant to be. There was an element of pride there, maybe, in the fact that his Son had been eclipsed by his Daughter. Not even his Daughter. The child of two nobodies from nowhere. He may have come from the same nowhere, Seasoning City was pretty much nowhere in the grand scheme of things, but he was not nobody. He was somebody. He had always been somebody. Therefore his Son should have been somebody….and he was.

Impressive.

The amount of progress that he had made in these few weeks had been impressive. Son had managed to go from, pre awakening, having to be literally spitting mad in order to move even something as light as a cup across the room…and towards his sister's head….to being able to rip trees out of the ground….and onto his sister. Son at least realized that their rivalry was still alive and well. Well it was one-sided….still. No matter what Son learned how to do it was something that Daughter had been able to do since she was a toddler. Son was finally awakened but Daughter…she was a prodigy.

Impressive.

Daughter had been impressive since the moment he learned of her existence. She had apparently spent her early years terrorizing her biological parents until they sent her to a child prison, orphanage, which she had then terrorized…other people's words. He really could not imagine Daughter terrorizing anyone...of her free will. Of her own free will, when she was acting under her own free will, she was actually not a very willful child at all. Usually. She had her moments…like the Eighth Division. That had been…

Impressive.

The Awakening lab was two stories underground and she had managed to take the roof off of the place. She had managed to make an entire division of Claw uninhabitable. She had managed to kill seventeen people on accident. Fifteen more than he had…damn Fukuda….bringing up the past. Fukuda had been quite impressive as well. There was a time and place to impress him, to try to, and that had not been it. That had not been the time or the place. He had people who ran their mouths, a certain sardonic chlorokinetic of indeterminate gender game to mind, and Fukuda was not one of them. Suzuki hadn't been lying when he said that he was ready to murder the man. He hadn't just crossed a line, he had dropped a bomb on it, and that was something worthy of death….but it would also have been something stupid, an idiotic action, killing Fukuda. Killing the only healer. That would have been….stupid. Even though Fukuda had no right to talk about what happened to his parents…or to tell him how to raise his children. He was a good father. He was doing what was best for them. Son had been the one to agree to everything in the first place and Daughter…she should have obeyed him. She should not have gone anywhere near the lab…

But she had.

But what was done was done. Like that song she was always singing said, the past was in the past, and all of that. He maybe should have punished her…but psychological trauma was something that Fukuda could not heal. She was just a child and the shame of losing control and making things VERY difficult for her father would have had some sort of adverse affect on her. He did not need her to change. He liked her just the way she was. She was his favorite child after all. No matter what Son could do, how impressive he got, he was still a very annoying little boy. Actually he was even more annoying, now, because he had powers.

But he was still impressive.

And this whole thing….it may have made Son more annoying than he had ever been before…and it may have caused more work than he could ever remember having in his life….but it had been worth it. Ultimately it had been worth it to unlock Son's full potential…and seeing just what Daughter could do. The upper limits of her power. What she could do if she truly lost control…and he wished that he could have just told her what she had done. That way she could have learned from her mistakes just as he had.

But Fukuda was better when it came to interpersonal skills.

Suzuki didn't much see the value of them, not when he was the most powerful being on Earth, so it was ok to admit that Fukuda was better at that sort of thing than he was. Even when they had been young he had been the one to handle…everything. Everything when it came to other people. When it came to establishing Claw. Back when it had just been the two of them in his bedroom sitting down on the floor and planning out how he would rule the world. Fukuda had seen his vision and had submitted immediately. That had been their relationship for all of these years. Thirty of them, almost, together. Fukuda…he had been out of line but…but he was better with people. Not that Suzuki would ever let him get away with it again. Telling him how to raise his children or bringing up the ancient past. Fukuda would pay…next time.

He had enough to deal with right now.

He had more than enough to deal with right now.

He had been gone for sixteen hours. Too long. The children had been alone all day. He wondered what they would have done to the house in his absence. He didn't much care about this house. This was just another Claw house. When he vacated it some other esper would move in. Probably the international division. That Joseph was trying to climb the ranks…he'd have to keep a look out. The last thing he needed was another upstart trying something stupid. What he needed was someone to enforce his authority when he was away. Daughter would be good for that…when she got older. Son had other things to do, well he would have when he got older. Son could be the one running around the entire world doing…not everything Suzuki did…but a good amount of what he was doing. Yes, that would be Son's role…

But not now.

Now he was an eight year old boy. He was eight and Daughter was almost nine, their birthdays were very close together, and they didn't have anything to do besides the work of growing up. He wondered what complaints their tutors would have for him this time. He wondered what new, creative way, they had discovered to destroy his house. He wondered what would be waiting for him when he entered the house.

"Look what I can do!" said Son. Suzuki hadn't even slipped his shoes off when Son's voice rang through the house. There was some movie playing in the background…and he knew this one. The children were watching the one about the princess with the very long hair. Daughter's choice. She still hadn't shaken her obsession with European royalty. They needed to get back to Japan. They needed to get back to civilization. They needed to…but he couldn't.

He had too much to do.

And it had nothing at all to do with the fact that Masami was still in Japan…maybe. He had no idea where she was, she could have been living in a tree in the Amazon for all he knew, but he just…he figured that she was still in Japan but that had nothing to do with the fact that he hadn't set foot in Japan since she had betrayed him. No, he was just much too busy. He was much too busy to head back to Japan and rest. He had too much to do.

He was exhausted.

"Dad, come and see!" shouted Son. Suzuki rubbed his eyes and cracked his neck. The Eighth Division hadn't been the most important of all of the divisions but it still served a very important purpose. It also housed and trained all the newly Awakened. It also awakened a lot of the Awakened. Fixing this, reassigning everyone, looking over years upon years upon years worth of data….it was a lot. Plus they were playing catchup from the holidays. Their cultural traditions were important….even though they also made more work, the holidays did, because everyone had to play catchup.

"Dad, can you please come here? Sho wants to show you something." Said Daughter. He smiled. She did not shout, no, she simply projected her voice. She asked him nicely, too. Yes. He did not want her to change. It was better that he said nothing to her. He could not stand to lose her. If there was some way to preserve her as she was for the rest of eternity he would have. To keep her at eight and a half. To keep her from turning into someone else, from changing, then he would have. But there was no way to stop time.

He had already looked into a time machine. The science did not add up.

"I'm coming." Said Suzuki. He did not shout, no, he projected his voice enough that the children heard him. He had no reason to shout at them…at least he hoped that he hadn't. He didn't care what they did to the house, it was just four walls and a roof, but if Son injured Daughter again so help him God-

No children.

Auras but no children. He looked around the room. The television was playing…he liked this part, the animation on the lanterns was beautiful, but there were no children. He could have understood Son's absence. This was the part of the movie where the main characters realized that they had feelings for each other. Not something that Suzuki himself would have enjoyed as an eight year old boy…and not something that he much enjoyed now. This was more of Daughter's thing. He wondered if she was interested in anyone yet. He wondered if she was at that age yet. He wondered where she would even have met anyone. The children only had each other, they were in the middle of nowhere, and as far as they knew they were blood siblings. They weren't of course, but Suzuki would rather have not started a pattern of inbreeding for the future generations of Suzukis. No, that was what had killed off the royals of Europe. The children were probably too young for that, anyway, considering the fact that they were still young enough to play hide and seek.

A game which he was the undisputed king of.

As a child he had been the king of hide and seek. Back when the other children had still played with him, of course, but that had ended around the time when they began getting too old for that…or they realized that there was no beating him. He had always used his powers and did not consider it a form of cheating. No, there was nothing wrong with using the powers that fate had blessed him with. Even if it was to sit on the ceiling.

He looked up.

There they were.

"If you two really wanted to hide from me then you would have made more of an effort to hide your auras. I knew you two were in this room the whole time." Said Suzuki. The children were having a picnic on the ceiling, it seemed. There was a blanket, an everything pizza, a bottle of some kind of cola, and a jug of milk.

There was also a fair bit of milk and cola on the floor.

"We weren't trying to hide. You just couldn't find us." Said Daughter. She was smiling. He could see her eye teeth. She was truly happy. When she smiled so her eye teeth were visible then she was truly happy. Masami had been the same way. Her truly happy smile, her everything was right with the world smile, showed her eye teeth. She had other smiles. The tight one she used for pictures. The open mouthed smile combined with a laugh that she did when she was also truly happy…but a much different sort of happy that he should not have been thinking about while he was in the same room as his children.

That he should not have been thinking about end of discussion.

"Which is the same thing, you know." Said Son. He held a glass of cola in his hand. It did not pour out. That was Daughter's doing. It seemed that she was suspending the liquid and the pizza in the air while Son did the rest of the work. Impressive.

"If you think so, Sho." said Daughter. It really was an impressive feet for both of them. Daughter's hair may have been trying to reach the floor, and she was sitting on her dress to keep it in place…and Son was also wearing a dress for some reason….not that Suzuki felt like creating some sort of a gender complex by enforcing clothing rules, but the fact that Son had managed to suspend himself and his sister to the ceiling was quiet impressive for someone who had only had his full powers for a few weeks.

"I don't think so, I know so." Said Son. His control wavered just a bit but Daughter picked up the slack. Of course she would not have seen their relationship as something of a rivalry. She was Masami's Daughter in practice if not by blood. She was a born nurturer. She had been taking such good care of Son, filled Masami's shoes so well, that Suzuki was truly impressed. Of course she would have seen Son not as her rival but as her companion, friend, and the person who she had been tasked to care for. She really was a prodigy at everything she set her mind to.

"I'm impressed by the both of you." Said Suzuki. He really was. If he thought that ripping a tree out of the ground, and it was still there and turning quite brown as well, was impressive Son had outdone himself. Power was nothing without control after all and Son was displaying more of it than Suzuki had thought possible. He had been expecting something closer to a younger version of Daughter, raw power and little control, and he had been pleasantly surprised by this turn of events.

"But mostly me, right dad? Because I'm the one doing all the work?" asked Son. Suzuki had to think about it for a moment. Which child was he more proud of? Son was showing exceptional power and control but Daughter was also showing exceptional control…and he knew just what was lurking beneath her surface….so it was a tough call to make.

"I'm a bit more proud of you Son for your display of power and control but I'm also proud of you as well, Daughter, for assisting your brother." Said Suzuki. He could see both of their auras…and Daughter was really smiling now. He could see her bottom row of teeth as well. He'd have to talk to her about displays of unbridled emotion….later. it felt nice, being smiled at by her, or just seeing her smile…even though it made no sense. His happiness should not have been dependent on the happiness of another. That was not how it worked. The only thing that mattered was whether or not he was happy. Damn everyone else and their feelings…

It was hard to think that way about Daughter.

Maybe because she was so much like Masami in so many ways. The way she cared for others. The way she clung to him even though she had no reason to. She was almost nine years old, mostly independent, and she did not need to hold his hand whenever their plane took off or stay up until all hours awaiting his return or to crawl into bed with him at night because she said that she felt lonely…she was so like her mother.

She was going to make someone very happy someday.

And if the esper she chose as her most perfect person ever tried to leave her Suzuki would hunt him to the ends of the Earth and murder him personally with his own two hands…in front of an audience…in a stadium….and also there would be fire….and then afterwards he would have his body strung up as an example to any other man who dared to try and betray his Daughter.

Yes. That was a good plan.

"See? Dad's happy with us both." Said Daughter. Son's control wavered completely but Daughter took up the slack. She didn't miss a beat. The liquid didn't even spill from their cups. Son sat there with his arms crossed and a glare plastered to his face.

"Whatever." Said Son

"Sho-" said Daughter

"Can I take this stupid dress off now?" asked Son. Suzuki wondered why he was wearing it in the first place. Son had never worn Daughter's clothes before, in fact he seemed to believe that he was the authority on what was and was not gender appropriate, and the sight of Son in a dress…it worried him.

He needed grandchildren.

Ones from his bloodline. Son needed to meet a woman, preferably an esper but Suzuki was realistic, and he needed to have at least one child. Preferably more than one. No more than ten, more than that would most certainly create a crisis of succession, and also drive everyone in the world insane. Son was the one to inherit the earth and then his son would inherit it and so on and so forth. Maybe one of Son's children could marry one of Daughter's, that would be ideal, but that was thinking too far ahead. Neither child had even entered puberty yet. No, right now he would deal with the most immediate concern he had for the next generation.

Son was wearing a dress.

Which could have meant nothing and it could have meant something. Hopefully nothing. A dress was just cloth after all. Just cloth that had been fashioned without leg partitions. Like a robe or a yukata. This wasn't a robe or a yukata however, this was a facsimile of a ball gown, purple and sparkling with sequins and glitter…and Suzuki knew how obstinate Son was. How contrary. If Suzuki told him to go and get into his own clothes then he would have probably worn that thing until it fell apart.

Suzuki's mind was turning too fast.

He had asked to take it off. That meant that it had not been his idea, it had been Daughter's and she did have a tendency to dress him up in her clothes…well she had when she had been younger…probably because she was starved for female company. The world did not have enough female espers in it. He really should have made more…Masami hadn't wanted any more children…but she was gone now…but he couldn't because…because…because of reasons that had nothing to do with Masami.

He didn't have the time.

Yes, that was it, he just didn't have the time to meet a woman and see if he was compatible with her and then sleep with her…even though it had been longer than at any other point in his adult life…and then have a child and then raise that child and then spend every second of his life watching her because, apparently, he was in a positon where anyone could betray him….

He just did not have the time to give Daughter a little sister.

"Ok…thank you for playing with me today, Sho. I had a lot of fun. Tomorrow can be your day." Said Daughter

"Whatever. It was the least I could do after I….but I told you in plain Japanese not to touch my tree!" said Son. Suzuki puzzled over that statement while Son tore off the dress he was wearing, he was wearing his own clothes under it which relieved Suzuki more than wanted to admit to himself, and he found nothing that he could think of, besides the dying pine tree in the corner, that could match up with what Son and Daughter had apparently had a conflict about.

A dress hit him on the head.

He tossed it off. Well then, that was that, and now he could do take his dinner in his office…and do more work….the same work that he had been doing all day…except now he had children to distract him….to distract him with the inevitable quarrel that would brew between them….so really he had no chance of getting anything done…and he had been working for the past sixteen hours…and he was hungry….

He walked up the wall and joined his children on the ceiling.

They stared at him as he sat down beside them. He took a piece of pizza, with plenty of toppings as God had intended, and took a bite while they stared at him gob smacked.

"Dad, you're eating with us? Thank you, we appreciate this a lot. We missed you." Said Daughter. She was drowned out, however, by Son's exclamations. Apparently he thought his father was 'so cool' and that walking up a wall was 'the most awesome thing ever' and that Suzuki 'totally had to teach him that'.

He would, of course, because this was a good skill to have. Wall walking. He supposed that the children had just picked themselves up and flown to the ceiling. That was well and good but it took much more control to walk up a wall than to throw one's self onto the ceiling. Power was nothing without control. Yes, he would teach the children this technique as soon as he had the time.

And he knew just what his Son would say when he mastered it.

Look what I can do.