Mob was not a Ladyship.

First of all ladies were grown women and she was not a grown woman, she was a ten year old girl, so she should not have been called a lady. Second of all she knew, well she figured, that the ship part didn't have to do with actual boats but whenever she heard the word Ladyship she thought of a pink boat with glitter and stuff…which was weird. Third of all she had told him time and time again that she did not want to be called her Ladyship!

How hard was that to understand?

She was not a Ladyship or a President or a sama. She was Mob. She was Shigeko. She was Suzuki. She was Suzuki Shigeko if someone wanted to call her by her full name. She was not the boss…well she was the boss…but not the permanent boss. She didn't want to be the permanent boss. She barely wanted to be the temporary boss.

She wanted to go home and take care of baby Mukai.

She wished that she could have brought them to work with her but Minegishi said that bringing a helpless baby to Claw was dangerous. Dad had a lot of enemies and a little baby was just a sitting duck. Also she wouldn't have been able to get any work done when Mukai was crying or needed to be fed or changed or played with or needed her movie rewound to the part where the Horned King used the Black Cauldron to create the army of the dead…and why Mukai liked that movie Mob would never be able to understand…but she did understand that dad's office was no place for a baby.

She could go home whenever she wanted to, though.

If Sho needed her he would text her and then she would have Shimazaki bring her home and she could deal with whatever went wrong. Last time it had been because Mukai threw up and some of it got into Sho's mouth and he was freaking out. Before that it had been because Mukai needed to be changed. Sho didn't want to change her and neither did Minegishi. That was a Mob job and she was happy to do it because otherwise Mukai would get a diaper rash.

She, like most people, was totally helpless.

"Someone's at the door." Said Mob. She wasn't telling Shimazaki to get it, she was just stating a fact. She felt someone at the door. People almost never visited that unless it was something important. People visited her all the time. Maybe it was because she had said that she would be there if anyone wanted to talk.

She had mostly said that to be nice.

She wanted people to feel better and also, at the time, she had been ok with talking to them…a little bit. She liked meeting new people and all of that but the stuff that they came to her with…she didn't want to use the word 'tiresome' but that was the only word that fit. She didn't understand why they couldn't just settle stuff by themselves like adults. They were all adults. She and Sho were the only kids in Claw. They should have known not to fight with each other or bite each other or pee in buckets…the tech support people took War Craft VERY seriously…they all still should have known better!

Conceal, don't feel. Power is nothing without control.

There was a shift in the energy around her. Another glass of cola colored liquid appeared before her. She would have thanked Shimazaki, he was annoying but he could also sort of be helpful, but then she blinked and he was at the door talking to some people.

Red auras. Awakened. Hopefully not something crazy again.

Those guys could be kind of…not smart. Not smart at all. Like how she had to show them how to use the alternate character colors and outfits in Smash Brothers. They kept on getting confused over who was who, even though the player names were by the characters, and then they would get into fights. Over Smash Brothers of all things. She showed them how to fix it and then she told them that if they couldn't get along then there would be no more Wii allowed in the breakroom and they would have to only play at their own houses….and she also regretted saying that they could get a Wii for the breakroom…but she didn't say anything about that.

Or about the bad words that they used or player names.

"Your Ladyship? Some Awakened are here to see you. Want me to tell them to get lost?" Said Shimazaki. He could feel her glaring at him. Good. She wasn't as passive as she seemed. He liked that. Having to spend all his time trailing after a passive person was boring. She wasn't going to do anything about his constant button pushing, he knew she wouldn't, but it was still fun to listen to her aura shriek.

"Send them in please…and stop calling me that. Call me Suzuki or Shigeko or Suzuki Shigeko or Mob. Just not Ladyship…I'm not a lady and I'm not a ship." Said Mob

"Whatever you say, Suzuki-sama." Said Shimazaki. He knew that he was for sure going to catch hell for this later. Toshi was going to be so pissed at him for messing with their best friend/surrogate kid even though they claimed to hate kids. This was just too much fun. He was going to have as much fun with this as he could for as long as he possibly could. Afterwards, when Suzuki came back from wherever he fucked off to, he could go back to being bored.

Pushing Suzuki's buttons was not nearly as fun as pushing his daughter's buttons.

He was so…boring. For a man as powerful as he was, and as weird as he was, he was also so boring. His aura had this monotonous scream to it and his various habits would have put out him right at home in a retirement community. He was forty three for God's sake! Not eighty three! Shimazaki had been following powerful men around since he had been a kid. They all had their vices and their vices were fun. Sex, drugs, drinking, women, men, pachinko….none of that for Suzuki. His biggest vice was reading manga when he thought that nobody was paying attention. Well he had this terrible habit of muttering to himself while he read.

Actually Shimazaki kind of missed that. He had no idea if the Galaxy Express ever did end up making it to it's last stop.

But most of Suzuki was just…boring. No vices aside from manga, copious amounts of ketchup on foods which did not require it, jerking off really loudly at two in the morning to some woman named Masami, and possibly making that screaming little vomit machine named Mukai Suzuki was possibly the most dull boss that Shimazaki had ever worked for. Sometimes he was so bored following Suzuki around that he was ready to go back to the yakuza….and he had quit in a pretty spectacular way…as much as one could quit the yakuza…

Thank heaven for little girls.

"I told you not to call me that either…" muttered Mob. She took a drink from her glass and tried to look happy. She was tired. She was somehow more tired than she would have been if she had just been taking care of Mukai all day. At least Mukai took naps. The work of running Claw never, ever, EVER stopped. Like now. There were two Awakened in front of her, bright red uniforms so they were the newest sort of Awakened, and they looked like they had been fighting.

Wasn't that just wonderful?

"Miss Suzuki-" said one of the Awakened. The other one elbowed him in the ribs. Mob hoped that they didn't start fighting right there in her office. Why were there so many people at Claw who liked to fight? Claw was not about fighting…well there was a lot of fighting in Claw…but they were about brining people together not beating them up!

She took another sip of her drink.

"I think she's a Ladyship." Said the first Awakened. Mob was going to start having them wear nametags. She didn't know if it was polite to ask them their names since she was their boss and also she knew that she had been them before. It might have been awkward to ask them their names at this point.

"Wait! Maybe she's a highness." Said the Awakened. Mob took another sip of her drink and found it empty….great. She hated how tired and grumpy she was. She had been up all night with Mukai, Shibata had squeezed her too hard and it upset her stomach so there was a lot of throwing up and crying, and then she had to break up two fights and judge a chair jousting match before lunch…and then during lunch she had to help grease up someone's arm with butter from the lunchroom because he had gotten his arm stuck in the vending machine…and then she had to have a big teleconference, which was a fancy name for video call, with the heads of all the Divisions and THEN she had to talk to the newly formed squad of elite multinational people….that Joseph guy asked a lot of questions but it was ok because he just wanted to please dad, and THEN she had to get back to answering a week's worth of back emails…and all of this was in addition to having to teleport back home to change Mukai's diapers…and she had been going to the bathroom a lot more than usual lately….and also she still had to figure out how washing clothes worked.

She needed a nap…and another drink.

"I'm not a highness. Please just call me Suzuki-san." Said Mob. She wanted to put her head down but that would have been rude. She knew why dad was so grumpy all of the time now. People were so…they needed a lot of things. She was ok with Sho and Mukai needing a lot of things because they were little but everyone at Claw was old enough to not need…quite so many things….

"Ok. Suzuki-sama, we need your help." Said the Awakened. One of them had black hair and the other had brown hair. She wondered if it would have been rude to think of them as only their hair colors. She wondered why it mattered if she was rude in her own head. She wondered if there was anyone who could hear her thoughts. Well if they could hear her thoughts then she was very sorry for all of those bad words she had almost said in her head a few times earlier that day.

"She said that she's a-" said the brown haired Awakened. Mob shook her head. She was not going to start that up again. How did dad deal with this? Well by being mean to people…but she just did not have it in her to be mean. She hadn't gotten those genes from dad. She had gotten her nice genes from mom…but not the ones that also made you want to run away from home. No matter how bad things got, not that this wasn't all something that she could handle just fine on her own, she was not going to run away from home…or go on any extra long and extra secret missions either.

She was just fine at her…at DAD'S desk.

"What happened? You guys don't need help with the Wii again, do you? Because I'm very busy and also you guys should be working and not playing Wii." Said Mob

"We-we aren't here about that…but Satoshi won't stop spamming-" said the black haired Awakened

"She doesn't care about that!" said the brown haired Awakened.

"I do care. Spamming is not cool and you should tell Satoshi that I said that. If that's all then you guys can get back to work." Said Mob. Well at least that hadn't taken long and they had come to her with a legitimate problem too. You were not supposed to just spam moves like that because it made the game not fun for the other players. She and Sho had agreed on that rule back when they had lived in the Castle.

"It-it isn't about the spamming. Um…you see the thing is that the cafeteria, which we love by the way thank you letting us plan our own menu we're very grateful-" said the brown haired Awakened

"Extremely grateful! We used to only have one entrée and two sides but now we have a whole sides bar and-" said the black haired Awakened

"The point is that the cafeteria ran out of cookies again and the guys downstairs are upset…please don't hurt us!" said the brown haired Awakened before he went down into a kotow. The other one went right down with him. Mob was….confused. Why did they think that she was going to hurt them over cookies? Granted she would have wanted one, they were the most perfect cookies in all of Claw, but she was not going to start punished people over cookies.

Or at all.

She thought, at first, that they just thought that because she was called Suzuki and dad was called Suzuki that she would be as quick to punish them as dad had been. Well she was not going to punish them at all. She hadn't punished anyone herself or ordered anyone's punishments since she started filling in for dad. She was dad's Daughter, not his clone, and she didn't have to do things the way he did…even though he would be so mad when she came back and saw how nice she had been to everyone….

Good. At least he would have been back.

She wanted dad to come back so she could go home and get back to something close to her normal life. It was hard being the mom and the dad. She understood, sort of, why Sho was always accusing her of trying to be mom. She had been doing mom's job for so long…and now she had to do dad's…and it was a lot to do…but she would do it….even though it made her tired…and also she would be punished for not punishing people…and they were so used to being punished that they threw themselves on the ground in apology just because the cafeteria had run out of cookies…

She had thought, anyway, that it had been because they were so used to dad.

Then she saw how Shimazaki was doing that thing that he did with his aura when he was trying to look scary. She hated it when he scared people for fun like that. There was nothing fun at all about making another person feel bad. If anything he should have felt bad about wanting other people to feel bad.

Not that she was going to say anything to him now. Right now she had to deal with this.

"Please tell the people downstairs that fighting isn't ok and that the cafeteria people have my permission to order more cookies. About…um….I don't know. Enough so that people can have ten cookies a day! Yes, we have money in the budget for that. Go and tell them what I said." Said Mob. There. She could make choices on her own. Dad would have told them that they were tiresome and to get out of his sight before he got upset and beat them up.

She was not dad.

She was thanked with smiles, dad was never thanked with smiles, and the Awakened looked happy as they left her office…as they left her DAD'S office. This was not her office, Claw was not hers, and she was just keeping things together until dad came back. That was why she had only raised his chair up and not gotten herself a more comfortable one.

This was dad's office. She was not dad. She was just wearing the costume.

She leaned back and closed her eyes after they were well and truly gone. Sometimes the Awakened came running back just so that they could be in her aura for a little longer or to hear her voice or to just be in her presence…and that sort of weird…but you had to be sort of weird to work in Claw, she figured.

The energy around her shifted.

Speaking of weird.

"You know that you can just tell them to fuck off, right?" asked Shimazaki as he refilled her drink for her. She was already more fun than Suzuki. She was only ten and she already had some vices to her. In a few short years they could have some real fun together. Not now, though, because she was only like ten or something. Still, she had so much potential, she just needed someone to help her bring that potential out.

"Thank you for the drink and you know that I don't say mean things like that." Said Mob. If there was anyone she wanted to tell to F-word off, she didn't like to even think of the shortened form of the word, it would have been him. He was sitting on the edge of her desk again. He liked to sit there. She didn't know why. It couldn't have been comfortable…and also he must have known that she didn't like him in her space.

She had no idea why Minegishi like him so much.

"Well maybe you should. You know your dad never dealt with this kind of bullshit, right?" asked Shimazaki. She was way too passive. She was too passive and if she grew up to be passive then she wouldn't be any fun. Sure Suzuki swore up down, left right, sideways, and slightly to the left that his son was going to inherit the throne of the world or whatever but even he could 'see' that this girl was the brains of the Suzuki family. He knew that he would end up guarding her once her dad got too old and her brother went off the deep end somewhere in his late teens/early twenties and he was not going to guard someone passive and boring.

"Dad is a totally different person from me. He has his way of doing things and I have my way of doing things. Now please get off my…dad's…desk." Said Mob. She went back to work. A bunch of people were asking her approval for things…and even more were asking about dad….and a lot more wanted to be in her aura for some reason….she didn't understand what was so special about her aura…and she had enough to deal with without him being in her space and being annoying.

"Aww, but I like it here. It makes me feel tall." Said Shimazaki. Everyone had a line and he would find hers. Then he could push it and push it and push it until it couldn't be pushed anymore. That was the best was to get her to be less passive. Not less passive in the way that made her destroy the Eighth Division but less passive as in able to be something other than boring.

It was the boring sort of chaos now.

Chair jousting wasn't funny anymore. Fist fights weren't funny anymore. Nothing they were doing, the Awakened, was even the least bit entertaining anymore. It was such a pity…and he had no one to blame but himself. He had been the one to push those morons too far too fast and now he had nobody to blame for his own boredom.

"You're already tall." Said Mob. She could feel his aura on hers. He was watching her in the way that only he could watch her. She didn't know what there was about her to stare at…or why he had to sit on her desk…or why he had to sit so close to her.

"You think I'm tall?" asked Shimazaki. Hmm…not even a hiccup to her aura. Well she was Suzuki's kid after all…and still just a kid, too. Damn. Even Toshi's aura hiccupped when he dropped his voice like that. Not that he thought of her in the same way he thought of Toshi, nobody could ever be Toshi, and also she was just a kid. Too young. Not too young to plant the seeds of why he should have been kept around, besides how awesome he was, but too young to do something about it. In like five or four or three years maybe but not now.

"You're taller than me, now please get off of my desk." Said Mob. She saw him reach for her drink. He did that sometimes, drink right after she did, like he was a kid or something. Sho did that when he wanted to claim all the soda in the house even though opening all of those sodas just meant that they all went flat faster.

She would never understand boys.

Most of the Awakened were boys and they did the same sort of stuff. The fighting, mostly, and the annoying each other for no reason. She wondered why people paired up and got married and had babies if this was just the way that boys were. Or maybe they just married boys like dad. She could never picture dad acting like a kid even when he had been a kid. She just sort of imagined him as being born in his suit and sitting down at his desk, only it was baby sized, and getting right to work. She had always thought, before, that she never wanted to marry a boy like dad because he wasn't nice.

Now she knew that she might not have even wanted to be married if this was how most boys were like.

She was in love with a boy. She didn't know him at all, she only knew his name and that he was an esper, but when she thought about him her heart went doki-doki like the sticker…and she also knew that her heart should not have been going doki-doki for someone she was never going to see again. Imagining him like one of the Awakened, all loud and messy and fighty and stuff like a little brother, put a stop to that…and she didn't know how to feel about that. She liked it when her heart went doki-doki but she also…also felt sort of…not good about it. She wanted to be kissed again, not a just for fun kiss like adults had but a true love's kiss, and she knew that it probably wasn't going to happen. She didn't know any boys…well she knew boys but they were all annoying….

Like now.

He was doing the tug of war thing for her drink now. She was going to ask Minegishi later on what they saw in him. If he made their heart go doki-doki and if so why. He wasn't nice, he always dressed the same each and every day, he could be very rude and obnoxious, and also he was a drink and also sometimes food stealer. Minegishi could have done so much better. If they had wanted to be with someone then they could have had someone nice who didn't steal drinks and food and sit on desks and just be…tiresome.

He was so tiresome.

"You painted your nails." Said Shimazaki as he ran the pad of his finger over the smooth expanse of her nails. Huh. Nothing. Not a flare or a hiccup in her aura. Her breathing, heart rate, and body temperature were still the same. Huh. Well now this was just a personal challenge for him. She may have been ten but she was also going to someday grow up to be the most powerful woman in the whole world.

That is if Suzuki's crazy plans ever bore fruit.

"Yes, they're pink but you don't know what pink is so you should just stop being annoying and also let go of my drink. If you want a drink then you can go over there and pour your own." said Mob

"You're sharing with me?" asked Shimazaki

"Well if you want a drink badly enough to steal mine from me then yes." said Mob. Thankfully he got a clue and poured himself a drink. Also thankfully he sat down on dad's office couch. He put his feet up, his shoes were on the couch but she was too tired to get into it with him about that, and pulled out his phone.

He didn't ask, he just put music on.

She didn't mind. She actually like watching him use his phone. It was interesting. He had to say everything that he wanted it to do. That was kind of neat. She had always wondered about that. She wondered why so much of the music he liked was in English. This was a nice song. It was cheery and the people sounded British, which was a different English than she spoke and was actually sort of hard to understand, but she didn't complain.

He was quiet. That was what mattered.

She went back to work. Things went a lot faster when she just said yes. She could have the finance people fix the budget later. If people wanted raises and more staff and better break rooms and a swimming pool in every division then they could have it. Dad could sort it out when he came back. In fact this was even more reason for him to come back. There was a lot of stuff that he had to get sorted out and he had better hurry before she messed something else up.

Dad needed to hurry back.

She wanted to go back to her brother and pretend sister. She didn't want to sit in dad's office and deal with everything. She wanted to play with her dolls and play with baby Mukai and play with Sho and just…play. This was hard. Being an adult was hard. Wearing this costume was hard. She didn't understand why dad wore a tie. She had been wearing this ribbon all day and it was pulling at her neck. She wanted to get back into her Elsa dress.

It felt like less of a costume.

And playing with her dolls felt like less of a game. That was what this felt like. It was like when she and Shi would play house only back then, when they had been very small, she had done the mom things and he had done the dad things. There hadn't been a lot to do so he also played the dog and the baby. Well now they had a baby, no dog though, and she was being both mom and dad…and she was doing fine and she was handling this and…and everything was fine and…and at least Shimazaki was being quiet.

Until he wasn't.

"Mind if I smoke?" asked Shimazaki. He was bored, mostly, and also Toshi wouldn't let him smoke in or around the house even though they smoked too. Well not lately, not tobacco lately, but they had been more of a smoker when they'd met all those years ago. Toshi had been a nervous chain smoker even if they wouldn't admit it. He wondered if they had passed that on to the kid, too.

She was already a budding alcoholic and stoner thanks to Toshi after all.

"Can I have some too?" asked Mob. She had liked it before when they smoked. It made her feel all silly and happy…and also hungry and tired…but also silly and happy. She hadn't felt silly and happy in so long…and the drinking did help but…but it also made her tired and also she thought about sad things, too, when she drank.

Not that she had any plans of stopping anytime soon.

"Yeah, but you aren't going to like it. This isn't one of Toshi's." said Shimazaki. He knew that he could have crossed the room normally but he liked the way her aura yelped when he teleported right there onto her desk. He knew that she hated it when he sat on her desk like this. That was why he did it.

"You don't know what I will and will not like…and also why is this different from the one Minegishi shared with me?" asked Mob. She put emphasis on Minegishi. That was their name. That was what they wanted to be called. Shimazaki didn't just get to call people whatever he wanted to. That was not how it worked.

"This one won't get you high." Said Shimazaki as he shook a cigarette out of his carton. He stuck it between his teeth, he really needed to stop biting the filters it was a bad habit, and lit it.

"High?" asked Mob

"Yeah, that's what we were back on your birthday. Well stoned, actually, which is well past the point of being high. High is the fun part where you think that everything is hilarious and you want to bouncy off the walls, which is always fun by the way, but stoned is more of when you're ready to pass out and also the auditory hallucinations start…well they do for me, anyway. I don't know about sighted people." Said Shimazaki. Honestly. Toshi needed to stop doing things in half measures. He had no idea why they were so obsessed with not ruining the kid's life. They only saw her as the kid that she was now and not the future adult that she would be. Hopefully the kind that would be fun to party around the world with. Besides, it wasn't like they were giving her anything serious. Just enough to keep her from growing up to be as joyless and uptight as her father.

"Oh….I liked that a lot. The way I felt. What's the point of this, then, if it doesn't make you feel good like that?" asked Mob. She didn't know why dad kept on saying that smoking and drinking were bad habits. Maybe because they made you feel good and dad hated things that felt good. He hated feeling good so much that he slept in his suit instead of pajamas. Well Mob was not dad. She liked to feel good and she liked things that made her feel good.

She was her own person…and if dad didn't want her to be her own person then he should have hurried back and stopped her.

"This is mostly just because I'm bored. It's something to do with my hands. Also it keeps you from getting hungry and gives you energy. Causes cancer, though, so don't go overboard. See? This will ruin your life if you go overboard with it. I don't know what Toshi's always freaking out about. So you drink, who cares? And so got stoned with us, who the fuck cares? Toshi can be such a hypocrite sometimes." Said Shimazaki as he passed her a cigarette. He debated lighting hers with the end of his but decided against that. Too much too soon.

He wanted to find where her lines were, not send them all the way of the Eighth Division.

"Minegishi is not a hypocrite. I don't know what that word means but I know that they aren't that…and also they like to be called Minegishi. Why do you keep on calling them Toshi, anyway?" asked Mob. She held that cigarette in her hand and watched it burn for a moment. This one was a lot more cylindrical than the one she shared with Minegishi on her birthday…and it smelled different, too. Not bad but just…different.

"Toshi is Toshi to me because I know them well enough for them to be Toshi to me. Same reason it's weird for me to call you Mob. I don't know you that well. I would love to get to know you better, in three or four years, but not now. And to answer your original question Toshi is a total hypocrite, that word means someone who won't practice what they preach, because they bitch and moan about not wanting to ruin your life when I know for a fact that they've been drinking since they were seven, smoking cigarettes since they were eight, and doing a whole shit ton more stuff that you can't even comprehend before they hit middle school. I, on the other hand, am not a hypocrite. If I do it then I don't see why you shouldn't either. Life is to live and all of that shit." Said Shimazaki. He had no idea how much Toshi had told her, how much of the sad, sad, tale of Minegishi Toshiki she knew, but he figured that she could get the watered down version of it. He cut out the double parenticide, the weird sex, and the harder drugs which he had no plans of introducing her to. Yeah, that was responsible of him.

She was going to be so much fun when she got older.

"Oh. I didn't know those things about them…I guess that you really are a closer friend than me…" said Mob. Friends did not keep secrets. Minegishi knew everything about her so why didn't she know everything about them? Wasn't friendship supposed to be a two way street? What made HIM of all people a closer friend than her? She was nice and never called them Toshi and always got lost when they told her to get lost and took an interest in their interests and all of those other things that a good friend was supposed to do. How had Shimazaki of all people beaten her?

"Stop being all depressed, it's boring and I can't stand boring people. I'm a better friend to Toshi because I've known them longer and we are closer, way closer, than you can even comprehend at your age." Said Shimazaki. Nope. He was not dealing a mopey, broody, Suzuki. Too close to her father and he was done dealing with her father.

He passed her drink into her other hand. She took a sip. Good.

"Oh. You mean how they kiss you for fun sometimes. I'm not dumb, you know, I can comprehend kissing." Said Mob. She could, sometimes, get a clue. Well that was fine then. She didn't want to be the sort of friends who kissed with Minegishi anyway…and not just because they were older than she was and also she couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl. She just didn't think that she could kiss someone just for fun. Kisses were for love. Hugs and stuff were for fun.

"Well you just know everything, don't you?" asked Shimazaki. He ashed into an empty Starbucks cup. She did the same. She was mimicking him, the way she clutched the filter between her teeth and not her lips, and the way she held her cigarettes between two fingers too. Good. He was being a good influence on her.

Toshi would have kicked his ass if they had been there now.

"No, I don't know everything. Like why you would want to smoke this kind when you could be all silly and happy and stuff…high, I mean. These don't make you feel like that. They smell nice and they are making me less tired but they don't make me feel like that." Said Mob

"If you want to smoke with Toshi just beg them. They have a soft spot for you, they'll smoke you up. That's really good shit, too, you know. Toshi's been refining that since before they even knew me. It's not then yet, though, they're trying to make something that you can just pluck from the ground and smoke but that's been a dud so far." Said Shimazaki

"I thought that smoking came from plants." Said Mob

"It does. All smokeables, well the ones that you're allowed to have anyway, come from plants. You've just got to dry them and let them cure for a while or you end up with a pile of crap." Said Shimazaki. Yup. This was going to be one fun future lord and master of the world. He was such a good influence on her. Unlike Toshi he knew where to draw the lines. Smoking and drinking and acid and molly and maybe coke were ok. Anything harder was going to send her to either rehab or the morgue. You had to be careful what vices you got a ten year old into. Toshi was just overcautious. He knew better how not to ruin her life.

"Oh….I didn't know that." Said Mob. He may have been obnoxious, and he may have cursed too much, and he may have been annoying too but he was a wealth of information. There were more things that you could smoke to feel better? And drink too, maybe? More things that could tell her powers to calm down? More things to make her powers be under control and her bad feelings, too?

She loved being an adult…well almost an adult. A kidult.

"Well, Suzuki, what you don't know could fill a warehouse." Said Shimazaki. He ashed on her head just to mess with her. She put up a barrier. He could feel her glaring at him. She didn't do anything besides glare, though. If she had been her father he would have been dead.

"I guess…and don't ash on my head. Also…um…there's more stuff like this?" asked Mob. She didn't know why dad was always telling her to stuff her powers and feelings down if there were things that could help with that. Maybe he just didn't want her taking the easy way out. Like how mom had taught her and Sho how to tie shoes even though they made slip ons and shoes with Velcro.

"Suzuki, your Ladyship….I think that you and I are going to get along just fine." Said Shimazaki

"We will if you stop calling me a Ladyship. Call me either Shigeko or Suzuki, or Suzuki Shigeko or Mob. Not President Suzuki or Ladyship or anything like that." Said Mob. She wanted to get along with him, she wanted them to be friends, but she also wanted him to be less annoying…and she wasn't sure if that was possible.

"Alright then, Mob, you and I are going to get along just fine." Said Shimazaki. He ashed on her head, again, just because he could. She told him to, in no uncertain terms, knock that off and to get off of her desk. Good. There were some of that passivity. She was going to be so much fun when she got older. Hell, she was fun now, but things would be much better when she was old enough to keep up with him.

God, he hoped that Suzuki never came back. He would much rather work for her Ladyship, Miss Suzuki, than President Suzuki.

At least she was fun.