"Higher!"

Sho was flying!

He knew how to make himself fly. That was easy. Well mostly. He couldn't make himself fly this high, well maybe he could, he had never tried. Why would he ever have had to try when he had someone who could throw him so high in the air that he could see over the houses? Over the tree? He was up so high that he could see the way that the Earth was round. Like being in a plane. Maybe he was up that high. Maybe he would end up bumping his head on an airplane?

That would have been so cool!

"Sure thing Little Suzuki!" said Shibata. This was the greatest job ever! Suzuki had been mad at his son for some reason, the kid hadn't been that loud but Suzuki had a famously short temper, but Shibata could help the little guy. Poor kid had been sad all day, Shibata could always tell when it came to the little people, but he knew how to cheer them up.

Plus Little Suzuki was an esper so it wouldn't be another Wee World situation.

Shibata was not terribly afraid of what would happen if Little Suzuki were to go too high. Espers were made of tougher stuff than normal people so it stood to reason that esper kids would have been made of tougher stuff than normal kids. It stood to logical reason. Also Suzuki's kids were probably tougher than other esper kids on account of who their father was.

"Don't kill Suzuki's kid. He might not take it too well." Said Minegishi. There were periods of activity and periods of inactivity. This was one of those periods of inactivity for them. They had no idea that there would have been so much hanging out involved in this job. If they knew, when they had agreed to teach Mob how to use her plant powers that they would have ended up spending an inordinate amount of time just hanging around doing nothing…they may have reconsidered.

Or not since the kid was good company.

They didn't even have to throw her into the air over and over again. Nothing about that looked fun. Now sitting in a fort made out of plant life and reading, that was fun. Mob was good company. Even now. She was sitting there gripping her book so hard that her knuckles had turned white. Minegishi was tempted to tell her that worrying wouldn't save her brother if Shibata were to drop him. She had the power to catch him. Minegishi had never personally seen the upper limits of her power but she had destroyed the entire Eighth Division. Catching her little brother should have been easy.

Though if Mob were to 'accidentally' allow herself to become an only child Minegishi would have totally understood.

"You don't think that he's going to drop Sho…do you?" asked Mob. She was worried. She had put herself under a barrier, it had just happened she hadn't set out to do that, and she could feel the grass underneath her trying to grow. It was a nice evening, good for building forts, and that was what she and Sho had been planning on doing. She felt bad about getting him in trouble earlier. She should have just agreed with him. If she had just agreed with him then dad would not have gotten mad. Dad hadn't hit Sho, which was good, he just said mean things…which was not good. Not as bad as if he had hit Sho but still not very good at all. Maybe Mob shouldn't have come to work with dad. Sho always seemed to be at least a little upset with her when they were together. It had felt like that for a while now but these days it seemed to be getting worse. Maybe it would be better when they weren't the same age anymore. They weren't twins like Shibata had thought, that was wrong, they were just the same age for part of the year. Sho would maybe be less mad at her when she was older again. That way he would be less upset that dad had left her in charge.

"God willing." Muttered Minegishi. They didn't want the kid dead. They had done a lot of messed up shit in their lifetime but wishing death on kids was not something that they did. They never wished death or harm on kids and they never hurt them either. So they didn't want Sho dead just…quieter. Less…himself. More like his sister. Not like his father, no, the world did not need two of Suzuki. It could barely handle the one it had.

"Huh?" asked Mob. That had sounded like Minegishi had wanted Sho to get dropped…but that would not have been a very nice thing to want at all. Mob must have misheard or misinterpreted or something. There was no way that Minegishi would have wanted Sho to fall because then he would have been hurt and that would have just been the very worst thing ever.

Even if Sho had taken the milk from her lunch and drank it right in front of her even though he hated whole milk.

But that had been her fault for arguing with him…and it didn't matter anyway because she was Suzuki Shigeko and since her dad ran Claw she got to have unlimited things from the cafeteria and vending machines. The Awakened got her whatever she wanted and they even opened her milk for her too. They would have fed her, too, and they had offered but that seemed like it would have been weird. She was almost ten, too old to be fed, and much too old to be upset about having her milk stolen.

"God willing that he doesn't get dropped." Said Minegishi. They were not going to upset Mob like that. It wouldn't have done anyone any good whatsoever. Also Mob was pretty much the only person in the world that they could tolerate. Shibata was annoying, which was why he got on so well with Suzuki's son, and Shimazaki had been insufferable lately. They would have liked to have been alone but the kid wanted to hang out and they had developed a soft spot for her.

"Oh, ok. I figured that was what you meant. You wouldn't want Sho to get hurt. Nobody would. He's the best little brother ever." Said Mob. Sometimes she felt like she was telling herself that…but he was the best little brother ever so of course she would tell herself that. It was important to only speak the truth to yourself, dad had said so, like how he told himself all the time that he was going to take over the world. Because he said it, that he was going to take over the world, then it would happen.

So if she said that Sho was the best little brother ever then he was the best little brother ever.

"Well since I'm an only child then I'll have to take your word for it." Said Minegishi not looking up. They wondered when Mob would snap and make herself an only child. It would either be that or the Suzuki kids would wind up estranged in their adult lives. Maybe they'd come back together on the occasion of the death of their father and then reconnect through the clever use of flashbacks from each other their points of view cleverly showing how they had become estranged but also how they could come together again.

Heh.

This was a decent book. Could have been better, could have been worse, could have been more middle of the road than it already was. At least it wasn't another one of the endless volumes of Galaxy Express 999 that Mob, for some reason, kept on reading over and over again even though Minegishi got the feeling that it was a total slough for her.

At least it had been for Minegishi when they had been a kid. That was an important lesson, just because something was old didn't mean that it was good.

"Now hold me upside down and then throw me!" shouted Sho. Mob pulled her barrier in closer and winced. She was happy that dad was inside. That way he couldn't see how upset she was getting. He hated it when she showed her feelings. Especially when her feelings made her powers act up. Like now with her barrier.

She tried to dissipate it.

"….I think that I might end up an only child soon." Said Mob. Now Sho was being throw and he was upside down…and he was very close to the tree. She used her powers to make the branches grow in a different direction, one less likely to injure Sho. She did not want him to get hurt even though she knew that Fukuda was only a phone call away. She got the feeling that Fukuda didn't much want to be bothered, sometimes, because he never offered to stay or spend time with her and Sho anymore…and also he always called her Miss Suzuki. Maybe he was just calling her that because she was getting older, though, and not because he didn't like her anymore…even though he acted like he didn't like her anymore….

"I'll get you a really nice sympathy card." Said Minegishi. They looked up from their reading. Well then…that was not safe at all. See, they knew Shibata wouldn't last. Even if that was Suzuki's least favorite kid the loss of his only son would be felt. There was just something about men and their sons. Like it was some big accomplishment to have made a kid with a penis. Like the family name being carried on was the most important thing in the world.

Minegishi doubted that these would be the last Suzuki's.

"….you think that Sho's going to die? Because if you think so then maybe I should…maybe I should make him stop….because I don't want Sho to die. I already lost my…it's already just me, Sho, and dad. If Sho dies then it'll just be me and dad…I mean I love dad but I love Sho too…" said Mob. Sho dying would have been worse than mom leaving. At least Mob was mostly sure that her mom was still alive. It had been three years since she had last seen her mom but…but mom would not have died. Only old people died in their sleep and stuff…but there could have been an accident or mom could have gotten sick…because she was just a normal person. She didn't have to worry about dad dying from being sick.

She just had to worry about people trying to kill him.

He needed two whole bodyguards because people were always trying to kill him. People had tried to kill him so many times that he had even said that the attempts on his life were becoming tiresome. That was way too many times…well once was too many…but people should not have been trying to kill her dad in the first place. She loved him so much and she just…she didn't want him to die. Then she and Sho would have been orphans. Even if mom was still alive she would have still been gone, not there to take care of her and Sho, and then they would have had to live in an orphanage….because dad would have been dead…and then Sho could have died too…and then maybe everyone would pass on super fast too so she wouldn't even have time to say goodbye….

Mob didn't want to think about mom dying or Sho dying or anyone she loved dying…also if Sho were to die right there in front of her then…then she would regret their stupid fight for the rest of her life and into her afterlife too.

"You're Suzuki Shigeko, aren't you? If you want him to put your brother down then tell him to put your brother down." Said Minegishi. They were not going to tell Mob the story of how Shibata had been discovered by Claw…or what had happened at Wee World. Yeah, Mob was already on the cusp of freaking out. That would not have been good for anyone.

Though it would have been exciting.

But maybe too exciting. There was good excitement and bad excitement. That was the difference between them and Shimazaki. They were not an agent of chaos. They may have been chronically bored, kind of an asshole, and a lover of many of life's less than legal vices but they were not an agent of chaos. Chaos for the sake of chaos, acting without thinking things through, did not appeal to them at all. The best thing to do was just to sit and wait and think things through.

Which was why Mob would never know what happened at Wee World or the Pet Palace or any other stories that Shibata had drunkenly stuttered out the other night at the top of his lungs.

"Yes….I'm Suzuki Shigeko." Said Mob. She didn't like her name. Suzuki Shigeko. She didn't like the way it felt…even though you couldn't feel words. She knew that she was being ridiculous in thinking that her name was a dreadfully heavy thing…but it was. It meant that she was the Daughter of the king of the whole world. It meant that her entire life had been planned out from the day she had been born. It meant that one day she would help to rule the world even if she couldn't inherit it. It meant that…it meant that…

It also meant that she had the power to boss adults around.

She could tell the Awakened what to do but that was normal. The lowest level of Awakened could be bossed around by everyone in Claw. There were levels to them from the not awakened yet to the barely awakened to the awakened soldiers and…and there was a whole color system that Mob hadn't even fully learned yet. Rank had to do with what department and division they served, too, which made the whole thing even more complicated. She had asked dad, before, why he had made such a complicated system. He had just said that it didn't matter if the system was complicated because he was already the boss of everyone.

And so was she.

But she didn't want to be the boss of everyone. She hated being bossy. Dad made her be bossy to everyone. Sho was always mad at her because she was bossy but she couldn't help it if dad left her in charge. She never asked to be in charge but Sho didn't care. He knew that she hated being bossy but he didn't care. He still got mad at her for being bossy. He accused her of being bossy all the time, not just when she was telling him to take a bath or do his homeschool work or to brush his teeth or put his stuff away. He was always telling her that she was bossy. Even today when she had told him that hamster were too little to even be able to strike the keys on a piano let alone play complicated music…and they couldn't read music either because they were animals…and maybe she should not have said anything because it had made Sho mad. It had made him get mad and call her bossy and then dad got mad at Sho and then Sho had…

Sho had been upset earlier…but he was better now…even if he was doing something super dangerous.

Mob didn't want to make him unhappy but she also didn't want to end up becoming an only child. She didn't want to be all alone with dad and she didn't want any sympathy cards either even though Minegishi said that they would get her a nice one. Probably from a bookstore. She and Minegishi went to a lot of bookstores and they had very fancy cards there…but Mob didn't want any sympathy cards at all anyway.

She just wanted her little brother to be safe.

That was why she left her plant fort, crossed the yard, and went to talk to Shibata. To tell him nicely not to toss her little brother quite so hard and quite so high. She shook a little bit, partially because it was cold out and her Elsa dress was not the warmest and partially because Shibata was the biggest person that she had ever seen in her entire life…and she had seen a lot of people over the years in her travels.

She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was Mob. She could do this.

"Higher! Higher! I want to hit my head on an airplane!" said Sho. This was the coolest! The wind in his face, the bugs in his teeth, and not a care in the world! Not even about how mad dad had gotten at him. He didn't know what he had done wrong. Big sis started it. She was the one who had said that you couldn't teach a hamster to play the piano.

When you could and someone on YouTube had.

But she said that hamsters weren't as smart as that. She said that they were too small, too, to play piano. She said that in the video that they'd seen the notes that the hamsters played didn't have anything to do with the keys. She didn't know. She didn't play piano. Neither of them played any instruments so she could not tell him how hamsters could play the piano.

She was not the boss of what was and was not possible in the world.

Even though she thought she was. That was why she had come over. He had seen her when gravity pulled him back down to the Earth. He could have defied gravity, it would have been easy, a lot easier than defying his big sis. She had dad on her side and while she had no real power dad had all the power. It was like how the Divisions worked. The division leaders thought that they had power but dad was the absolute power of Claw. He was also the absolute power of the family…

And he could be very scary sometimes.

"Um….excuse me." Said Mob. She wanted to try and sound like dad. She didn't like talking like him, it was mean, but it made people listen to her. She knew that she had to make herself heard, dad had told her that, but it was hard sometimes. All of the times.

"Hey there Little Princess. You want a turn?" asked Shibata. He caught Little Suzuki at the last second. That would have been bad….but he couldn't help it. She was just so adorable! And not in the weird way like some people liked to imply about him. He just liked cute things, that was all, and these were the cutest kids in the whole world in his opinion. He had never seen a half Japanese ginger kid before…or a half Japanese kid who looked totally Japanese. These kids were so cute and he just wanted to hug them and squeeze them and never let them go!

But he wouldn't because he did not want to get fired.

He put Little Suzuki down and got down to the kids' level. The girl's aura looked all freaked out. He knew that he had that effect on people. He'd had that problem for his entire life. He had been a freakishly huge almost twenty pound baby and he had been a freakishly huge kid and now he was a freakishly huge adult. He was a huge adult and these were such tiny kids and he was not going to freak them out.

Then he would have been off babysitting duty and he did not want to get knocked off of babysitting duty.

"No thank you. I was just wondering if you could throw my brother a little more gently and a little less…high up in the air?" asked Mob. She tried to speak with confidence like dad had said. She was Suzuki Shigeko and the name was heavy…but she had to be strong enough to carry it. She had to be strong like dad had always told her to be. She had to be Suzuki Shigeko, not Mob, even though she would have rather been Mob.

"Why do you always have to be so bossy all the time!?" said Sho. Shibata was holding him back by his shirt. He wasn't going to try and push her again…and he could have gotten out of his shirt easily…and also he could have used his powers anyway so there was no point in holding him back. Big sis had been right, before, when she'd had her barrier up…even though she hadn't needed to put up a barrier because he wasn't going to do anything to hurt her.

"Whoa, calm down little guy. Your big sister is just looking out for you. Don't worry Little Princess, I won't let anything happen to your little brother." Said Shibata. He wished that it had been socially acceptable to take pictures of other people's kids because these kids were just so cute! Especially Suzuki's daughter. She always wore those costumes. He had never once seen her in real clothes. Either princess costumes or the most adorable little kimonos…

So adorable!

"Ok…thank you. I'm just going to go back to reading now. Have fun Sho." said Mob. She bowed and then went, quickly, back to Minegishi. She didn't much like Shibata throwing Sho up and down in the air and, also, she didn't much like being called Princess. She was not a princess. She was not a Little Princess or even little. She was almost ten, which was not little, and she was not a Princess either. She was dressed up like Elsa and Elsa was a queen so calling her little queen would have been better.

But she didn't want to be called that either.

She just wanted to be called Mob. Mob was just….Mob. She knew that people had been teasing her when they had given her that nickname. She knew that, even back in preschool, people had been mean to her. She also knew that because of her real name she should not have let them call her that. She knew that the name, her real name, was heavy because there was something to it. The weight of expectations and power and…and stuff that she did not want. She wished that she could have just been Mob but she knew that she couldn't have been. She was still just Suzuki Shigeko…but at least she wasn't a princess…even if her dad was going to be the king of the entire world.

"You're bossy, Shigeko!" shouted Sho as he was thrown a lot lower, and softer, than before. He didn't understand her one bit. She knew that he could make himself fly and also put up a barrier. She knew that Fukuda was super close and would not have let anything happen to him. She knew all of those things but she still bossed him around. Sometimes he got the feeling that she liked being bossy, telling him what to do, and stuff. Dad certainly liked being bossy and she was dad's kid after all…

And so was he.

He had been a jerk when he said that. He should have been nicer. Maybe the worst parts of dad had been divided between them. She got the bossy parts and he got the jerk parts. Maybe that was just the way it worked. Maybe they had gotten the bad parts of mom, too, even though he couldn't even remember anything bad about his mom.

Well she had left.

He wondered if one day big sis would leave him too…or maybe he would be the one to leave. Maybe he would leave one day and…and he didn't even know what. He was Sho and he had to run the world when he grew up. Since the entire world was his then there was no place for him to run away too. Even if hopped in a plane and flew away he would still be on the Earth and it would have been his Earth to run so, really, it would have been like running away to his backyard or something. Not that he planned on running away…and not because he had nowhere to go, either. He knew that he couldn't leave big sis because…because then she would have been sad and…and so would he.

He had no idea if dad would have been sad.

Dad ran away all the time. Well he left all the time, which was different, but he never did stay in once place for too often. Because of work. It was his world anyway. The world didn't realize it yet but it was dad's so maybe it didn't matter where he went. He wasn't like mom. If they woke up tomorrow and he was gone it wouldn't have been because he had ran away. Dad would never do that to them, anyway. That just wasn't who dad was. He had his kids and because they were his he was never going to let them go. Like how the world was his and he was never going to let it go.

He said that the world was his because he had decided a long time ago that he would rule it.

Because he had the audacity to say it, he said, it must have been true. Sho didn't know if he wanted the world, if he could be bossy enough to run it, and the thought of running the world was both exciting and scary in a lot of ways…ways that he knew that dad would not have liked him thinking of. Ways that made him wish that he could fly this high and this fast. Ways that made him wish that the world wasn't his, wouldn't be his when he grew up, because then there would be nowhere to go. He would be stuck. Was that why mom had run away? Had she felt stuck and trapped by dad bossing her around all the time? Was that how she felt now?

He had no idea.

But he knew that he did like flying, its freedom…so maybe mom would have liked it too.