He had delivered a little girl into the viper's nest.
This was awesome.
"What kind of game is Suzuki playing sending us his daughter?" Some high ranking member of some Chinese yakuza, or whatever they were called over there, family had said that. He had said it in Mandarin thinking that neither he nor Suzuki, Miss Suzuki, could understand him. He didn't let on, of course, that he spoke near perfect Mandarin and neither did she.
Perfect.
This whole thing was just perfect. He knew that the smart thing, the responsible thing, would have been to tell Suzuki to put this off until her dad came back from parts unknown. He knew that as the only member of the Ultimate Four, his little pet name for him and Toshi and Shibata and Suzuki's daughter, with any experience in this sort of underworld stuff he should have had the foresight to know that sending these idiots a little girl instead of Suzuki himself was a bad idea.
He knew that they would take it as an insult. That was why told her that this was a good idea.
"This is an insult. How anyone could be so arrogant….we should just leave. Leave and take our business elsewhere." More Mandarin. So rude. Suzuki, Miss Suzuki, was always accusing him of being rude but at least he always spoke Japanese to her. Honestly. These morons. She was a real stickler for politeness just like her father. These morons were making a big mistake.
And he was not.
He knew what these types of people did to little girls. Hell, he knew what their business was. She didn't know, he was smart enough not to tell her just how filthy her father's hands were, and he was smart enough not to leave her alone. If worse came to worse then he could just teleport away from her. He doubted that they would turn this esper over to Claw.
Nasty business these people were in. Just nasty.
"We'll do business with someone else. It's a big province. We'll move through some other area."
"Leave and get back to work. Why are we even wasting time on this child? It's an insult."
"A child with a blind bodyguard. What is Suzuki even trying to tell us here?"
"Let's just leave already….leave and burn his business to the ground. He forgets that he needs us more than we need him." He saw her aura. A spike of curiosity. Not good. She did not need to be poking around in that area. He wasn't as heartless or as messed up as Toshi thought he was. Nobody needed to know that their dad was involved with people stealers. That was what he had called them his whole life. Even his own father had warned him about people in that nasty business and he had been known as the Shogun's Decapitator back when he had been known as anything other than dead.
Nobody needed to know the terrible truth about their dad at her age.
He 'saw' that her cigarette was burnt to low. He could smell it getting down to the filter. She needed another one. To her credit she was doing what he had told her to do. Just sit there and wait until someone addressed her in Japanese. At that point she could say whatever she wanted to. Right now she had to sit there and watch and listen and sip her drink, poured by him of course, and smoke her cigarette and just look like an innocent little girl.
And not the monster that she was.
Well maybe that was too strong a word for her. She was a nice kid when he got down to it. A little high strung but she was a Suzuki….and the fact that she was a Suzuki was what made 'monster' an applicable word to her in the first place. She was and was not a monster. She was a sweet kid who cared about the people around her and did cute things and all of that but her aura also screamed just as loud as her father's, she was just as powerful as her father, and she had destroyed the Eighth Division on her own.
She had a body count more impressive than his had been at the tender age of ten.
He replaced her cigarette and lit it for her. He could see, sort of, the body language of the people around them. Not shock at the smoking and drinking ten year old, no there were worse things in the world and these guys were responsible for them, but instead annoyance. This was an insult. There was no other way to take this as anything other than an insult.
And yet nobody tried to do anything about it.
He hadn't had anything fun to do in days. The Awakened and their nonsense could only do so much for him. Toshi was being cold and distant too, even for them, because they had this crazy idea in their head that he was planning on sleeping with Suzuki's daughter. Of course he wasn't, she was way too young right now, and yeah he was planning on it at some point in the future but he didn't get why Toshi even cared. Obviously he wouldn't make her to anything that she didn't want to do and obviously he would wait until she was old enough that it wouldn't be whatever it was that Toshi was imagining now.
He just did not understand them sometimes.
He heard the clink of glass against the coffee table. He heard the shuffling of feet. These idiots were just going to walk out? That was it? He could smell gunpowder on them. He knew that they were armed even without smelling the gunpowder, recently fired guns, on them. It was just common sense that one did not just walk into these meetings unarmed. He would have thought that the worst that society had to offer would have done SOMETHING interesting.
The world had, at some point, become boring.
And he did not have a pathological fear of boredom. He just couldn't stand to be bored, that was all, and it was also understandable. The world had a lot to offer and life was too short to sit around not taking it in. Things like attempted kidnappings or gun fights or listening to a bunch of hardened underworld types try and do business negotiations with a ten year old girl. Hell, he was about to trip someone just to get some excitement in his life. If he had wanted to be bored he could have just advised her to stay at HQ and deal with the nonsense the Awakened kept on coming up with. Even stealing people's cookies right off of their trays would have been more fun than sitting here and listening to people carrying on in Mandarin.
He was legitimately going to die of boredom if something didn't happen soon.
"We're not here to play, little girl, and tell the pathetic excuse of a man you call 'father' that if he's going to insult us like this this then our partnership is hereby dissolved." Japanese now. The mother tongue. Such a weird phrase. Honestly it brought to mind a million and one filthy scenarios that he was trying his best not to get lost in. He needed a drink. His mind was going a mile a minute again. He needed to stay present in the moment, now, because it looked like there was shit that needed stirring. That was it? He put her in mortal danger for that?
The universe hated him today.
"Don't call me little girl. That's not my name. It's Suzuki. Suzuki-san. That's what you'll call me." Oh. My, my, my what have we here? That was a rarely heard tone from her. Her aura was a tangle of barely contained screams. He could, if he focused on her, see the muscles near her eyes contracting. Well someone was pissed off.
Finally. Things were getting interesting.
He could hear the electric hum above him. He could feel her power in the air. Control was not her forte, hence the childhood alcoholism, but he'd purposely not given her that much to drink that day. Her tolerance was better than what it had been when he met her but he did not need her stumbling around and passing out. Thank God he had been teaching her about moderation and spacing out her drinks. Toshi had been giving her tiny capfuls and expecting her to learn moderation that way. Honesty. They could be so dumb for a smart person.
Thank God that Suzuki's daughter had someone in her life who had her best interests at heart.
"Also don't ever talk about my father like that. He's a great man and he would have been here if he could have been. I told you that when you came in." Well now someone was well and truly angry. Huh. A side so rarely seen of her…and for good reason. The normal people around her were getting scared. Elevated breathing and heart rates. The smell of fresh sweat in the air. Adrenaline in there, too, enough of it for him to smell at his distance.
Which wasn't surprising considering that the room was trying to upend it's self.
"You said that you wanted to meet with Suzuki the head of Claw. Well with my father away that's me. Whatever you wanted to discuss with my father you can discuss with me. I'm right here." Uncontrolled telekinesis. Well, barely controlled telekinesis, anyway, was terrifying. He didn't show it, of course, how much she scared him sometimes. Not her as a person but what she was.
She was to him what an esper was to a normal person.
There was no shame in being beaten by the best. That was why he never took it to heart just how thoroughly the boss had kicked his ass all of those years ago. That was also why he was not ashamed to say that he was bested, too, by this little girl. Out classed. She was the second most powerful being in the world after all, he was right to be a little bit afraid of her.
Just a little.
"And say whatever you have to say in Japanese. I speak Mandarin too but you didn't know that. It's rude to purposely exclude someone by speaking a language that you think that they don't understand and I don't like rude people." There was one of her lines. He had been trying to find them since he took up the post as her bodyguard, cigarette lighter, drink pourer, and future drug dealer God willing. She was a bigger stickler for politeness than Suzuki was…which was weird because she was much more fun in every other area of life. Genetics were weird like that, he supposed, but what did he know? He wasn't anybody's father….he hoped.
If he did have a kid out there he hoped to whatever God existed that it wasn't half the monster that Suzuki's kids were.
Those guys were about to piss themselves. Suzuki really needed to take a page out of his Daughter's book. The guy kept his power under lock and key, well he tried to, but really these little freak outs would have served him well. It would have reminded the people around him who they served. Suzuki was the most powerful man on Earth but he so rarely showed it. So buttoned up all the time. His kid on the other hand…
This.
This was how you got things done! Not lengthy boring meetings! Show people how terrifying you could be without ever trying. God, he wished that these morons had been espers. If they had been espers then they would have actually been pissing themselves. They would have been able to hear, well see because they were sighted and all of that, her aura and they would have known that nobody was supposed to have an aura like that let alone a kid. So far they were just afraid because stuff was floating and her powers filled the room so that activated the good old fight or flight instincts that they should have been listening to instead of trying to be brave. They were used to stuff floating and other insignificant phenomena.
They brought a lot of future Awakened into Claw after all and the best Awakened came from people who already had something close to gifts to begin with.
"Fine. If you want to talk to my dad, if really have to, then you can wait for him to come back but whatever deal you had with him keeps going until he talks to you. Ok?" She stood up, now, and put her drink on the table. He decided to finish it. No use letting good cognac go to waste. Well any more of a waste than giving it to a ten year old girl.
Though he did feel bad about taking it from her since she needed it more than he did.
"I'm getting back to work. Good bye." Well that was his cue. He put his hand on her shoulder and in an instant they were back to her office. Suzuki's office….her office. Yeah, without Suzuki in it his office went to his oldest kid. Well it should have gone to his firstborn son but that kid…Claw wouldn't last a day under that kid. He wasn't exactly leadership material after all.
Not like his sister.
That was good. That was way good. Interesting. Finally, something happened! Well he would have preferred a gunfight or an attempted kidnapping or something like that but, hey, watching people almost piss themselves because a ten year old girl put them in their places…that was pretty damn interesting. Funny.
Entertaining.
"You can let go of me now." She said. He waited five seconds before he let go of her. He couldn't help it. Messing with her was just…fun. Especially when she was pissed off like this. He had no idea that she could have been this fun. He needed to piss her off more often. Not now, though, because her aura was still trying to fill the room. She was fun to rile up, to piss off, but he did not want this place to go the way of the Eighth Division.
He liked being alive, thank you very much.
He popped over to the rapidly dwindling supply of very fancy alcohol that Suzuki just let sit on those shelves for years and years. Such a waste. He poured her a cup of something that she was still way too young to appreciate. Or maybe not because she had been going through this stuff like water. Yeah, she was a little girl of wealth and taste or whatever.
"Here, you need this more than I do." He said as he put her drink in front of her. He decided to stay there sitting on the edge of her desk. She hated this, she knew that she hated it, and he knew that riling her up right now wasn't the best thing to be doing…
He couldn't resist.
He didn't try and take her drink from her again, though, because this was not the time to touch her. He knew that if he were to touch her that his barrier would fall. She was trying to contain her aura, her power, and it was…not the best thing to listen to. The drink was helping, though, and the lit cigarette in her other hand. Suzuki was going to be so pissed if he ever came back. His own daughter smoking in his office, drinking his expensive for show liquor, and telling off his underworld associates….
Hilarious.
It would be hilarious when Suzuki came back and saw what became of his precious organization. When he came in and saw the chaos that came from his absence. That would teach him to fuck off to parts unknown and leave a kid in charge…though he still wasn't sure what would have been better. Him never coming back and his kid being in charge or him coming back and seeing what his kid had done.
Both would be entertaining…though he wouldn't mind working for her for a little while longer.
"Thank you." She said. He watched her take a sip. He let his aura settle on hers as her settled down. The little muscle groups that she wasn't even aware of. The way her breathing changed. She really was fascinating even in these little ways. Of course those little ways weren't anything, not really, not when there were so many big ways she could have been fascinating.
Entertaining.
"That was pretty great, Suzuki, what you did back there." he said. He knew that she liked to be called Mob. He didn't get it. He knew what a Mob character was, a background character, but he didn't know why she would apply that to herself. He was used to tuning people out, their auras, and she was one of the few people who was impossible to tune out. She was something special but for some reason she just…didn't want to be who she was.
So weird.
He had known, since the beginning, that he was different. Well it was kind of hard not to know that he was different. His parents had not been happy to have a blind son and they were not shy about voicing their opinions. Hell, dad had done more than voice his opinions….he had learned to put up a barrier real quick. Other people couldn't do that. Other people couldn't 'see' in the way that he could. For his entire life he had never had problems getting around. He could get around by 'seeing' with his powers and he hadn't even realized what he had been doing. The teleportation and stuff had come later.
He hadn't always liked being different but he had never hated it to the point of wanting to be a Mob character. Much too dull.
"No it wasn't. I was mean." She said.
"No, you were great." He said. This kid…what was with this kid? He had never been like that when he had been a kid. So…nice….all the time. Not that real sort of niceness that Toshi had inside of them deep down. No, she did more of the display of niceness that people. Like it wasn't just something inside of her. Why did she want people to think that she was nice? Well it was advantageous to her, for people to think that she was nothing but a sweet little girl, but then why keep it up in private when it was just the two of them?
There were so many layers to unwrap when it came to her. He loved it.
"I was not! Sorry just….I'm sorry. About yelling at you and also…because of how I was before. I just…I almost lost control. Please don't tell my dad." She said. He knew how she felt. Claw was the place to go when your parents were pieces of shit and there were very few bigger pieces of shit than Suzuki. Well Shimazaki's own father….but then again his father had never abandoned him with his illegitimate kid. Dad at least had the good sense to keep those kids away from his main family.
Eh, not a contest that he wanted to get into with her. Who the hell wanted to win the world's worst childhood contest? There wasn't anything worth winning there, not even one of those crappy cereal box prizes.
"Don't apologize for that. So you almost lost control? Big deal. You had a room full of grown men about to piss themselves in fear. Do you have any idea how entertaining that was? God, I was so fucking bored-" he said
"Is that all you care about? Not being bored?" she asked. He flicked her on the head. Not hard enough to hurt her, just enough to annoy her. She was annoyed now, not angry, she was fun to annoy but terrifying to truly anger. She was calmer now, thank God, calm enough not to send him flying for flicking her over the head.
"What else matters? The way I see it is that we're just all here living our lives trying not to be bored. That's the point of it all. We work so we have money to do things to keep ourselves occupied, to keep ourselves moving, because the alternative is just sitting around and waiting to die. So, yes, boredom has no appeal to me." He said. She was thinking, now, he could tell. Good.
"Being a good person matters more than not being bored. We're supposed to be here to help each other out and stuff. People need other people and we all need to be good to one another. That's why I feel bad about what I did…and you don't believe that which is why you are the way you are." She said.
"Oh? And what way would that be?" he asked. He knew that she didn't like him, not that much, and he was curious as to what she would possibly say to him on the subject of not liking him. Not liking 'the way he was'. He had no idea that she could ever be like that, so honest about how she felt, and he liked it. She was like an onion with all of her layer but also much more pleasant to peel apart. To unwrap. So maybe she was more like a present then. Not that he had ever gotten the appeal of wrapping presents. Sure the paper felt nice to the touch but the basic point had always been lost on him.
She felt nice.
Her aura did, anyway. She wasn't angry now. No pain to her at all. Now it was more like standing under a warming lamp, or under the sunlight at high noon. He could understand why so many people wanted to be in her aura. In her presence. There was something to her, to the barely controlled power, to the aura that could so easily hurt if she let it. Being near her was pleasant, like a warm afternoon, and also exciting like walking across a ledge. A tall ledge like the one at the dam. He had done that when he was her age, teased death, and he had won.
He wondered if he would win with her.
"Just…the way you are. The way you're always trying to annoy people. The way that you can't sit still. The way that you only care about yourself and how you feel. Just…that's what I meant. I care about people and you only care about yourself and not being bored. That's all." she said
"I care about people. I don't go around shouting it for the world to hear but I do care about people. I care about Toshi, you know, or maybe you don't. I do care about them as much as I can care about someone." He said. He wasn't incapable of caring for another human being. He just…cared about himself, too. You only had yourself at the end of everything. People could be fun, they could come into your life and upend everything but in a good way, or they could hurt you in ways that you never could imagine. He had learned this basic truth about the world early on. That didn't mean that he had given up on caring for other people.
He had just shortened his list, that was all.
She cared for everyone. That was what her problem was. She poured too much of herself around and ended up spreading herself too thin. That was why she was always so tired. She tried to do everything to please everyone and it just left her exhausted. He could tell. Her breathing, her heartrate, her aura, her posture, all of the aches and pains that she wasn't even aware of…all of it. He wondered when she would just tell everyone to fuck off already.
Not likely to be happening any time soon.
"If you care about Minegishi then why do you fight with them sometimes? And annoy them?" she asked.
"Because, Mob, it may have escaped your notice but I am something of an asshole. That's just who I am. Just like how you are something of a people pleaser. That's the word for it, you know, the way you just try and make everyone around you happy all the time even when you know you're killing yourself. You think that people need other people, and yeah that's how our society runs and shit, but people also need themselves. At the end of the day the only person that you'll be left with is yourself." He said
"I don't think I can think like that." She said after a while. He flicked her over the head again, well he would have if she had not put up a barrier, and he could have…no. He could not have gotten through that barrier. He was reminded, then, that he was sitting there having a philosophical conversation with the most powerful being on the planet. She could have crushed him like a bug but she wouldn't. She had power, all the power, and she wouldn't do anything with it. She wouldn't do a damn thing to hurt him just like she hadn't done a damn thing to hurt those assholes back there. Just like she would never do a damn thing about…anything! Not without someone to show her that there was a better life than being a nice little people pleasing doormat for eternity. Even now she wasn't going to tell him to get the fuck away from her. He was in her space, he knew that he was in her space, and he knew that she did not like him in her space.
But she wasn't going to do anything about it.
Her brother was a little demon child. The most stubborn and headstrong kid that Shimazaki had ever met. Her father was planning on declaring war on the entire world. Her mother…well he knew nothing at all about her mother but he assumed that she must have been a formidable woman to put up with Suzuki for however many years they were together. This girl…how had she come from the Suzuki family? How had Suzuki made someone like her? How was that even genetically possible? He could not see Suzuki putting up with this. No, Suzuki would have kicked his ass if he had ever thought about getting this close.
He could have kissed her if he wanted to.
Not that he was going to. She was ten. Gross. Stupid, too, because he would get nothing out of it. In three or four years maybe but not now. He could have done it, though, just to mess with him…but then Toshi would have been mad at him. That would have sucked. It always sucked when Toshi was mad at him. The ideas they got in their head sometimes. The craziest of ideas. She was a kid, obviously he wasn't going to mess around with her, he was just planting the idea in her head that it was an option when she stopped being a kid. She would grow up, as people tended to do, and he was not going to be cast aside when she did. He was not going to be left behind in the inevitable regime change.
Also she was going to be the most powerful woman on the planet. That could have been fun.
"You're staring at me." She said
"You know that I physically can't." he said. He knew exactly what she meant but it was fun to mess with her like this. There. She was annoyed. He hear her dig her feet into the rug. He saw her shoulders tense. She was making a point to look away from him, now. He could see her fingers moving and he could hear the click and clack of her keyboard. He reached over and flipped a piece of her hair. She pulled it away from him with her powers.
"You know what I meant. Your aura was focused on mine." She said. How she could even feel something so small as his aura against hers he could not understand. Not when she was as loud as she was, her aura, and not when she was making such an active effort at avoiding him.
"Well I was thinking about you." He said
"About me? Why?" she asked. She had stopped working now. He had her attention. He had the attention of the most powerful esper on the planet…well the second most powerful…but Suzuki had fucked off to parts unknown. So she was, as of now, the most powerful being on Earth….and he had her full attention. What should he say…what outcome did he even want?
Not her anger, no, that would not have been good for anyone…especially not him.
More conversation? Maybe….but he had already seen her annoyed. She was annoyed now and as entertaining as it was he knew that the novelty would wear off soon and then he would just end up bored again. Well that is if he even could be bored of her. She was so much fun to annoy…and fluster. Yeah. He hadn't flustered her in a while. That could be fun.
"I was just thinking of how easy it would be for me to lean over and kiss you right now." He said. Yup. She was flustered. She had put up a barrier and now she was turned away from him. She was warm now, he could feel it from his distance, and she was shaking a little too.
This was a good outcome…for him, anyway.
"You want to kiss me? Why? I'm ten." She said. Now that was a very good reason not to kiss her and also why he would not be kissing her right now. But she didn't know that. God, he was going to pay for this later. Toshi would not like this one bit but they would forgive him. He'd throw himself to their mercy later. Right now there was fun to be hard.
"Because you can be really fascinating when you want to be. Like back there with those morons. You can be fascinating and brilliant and I would love to get to know you better." He said. She was holding her hair down. Her aura was freaking out again. Flustered was a good look on her.
"You don't have to kiss me to get to know me. If you want me to be your friend then I'll be your friend but I don't want to kiss you." She said
"I didn't mean right now. You're ten, like you said, and there wouldn't be any point to it. Besides, Toshi would kill me." He said. That was the truth and one that would put her mind at ease. Not that he would actually do anything…but she didn't know that.
"Even if I was older I wouldn't want to kiss you. Minegishi kisses you. Why would I want to hurt my friend like that? That isn't nice and I'm not like that…and also even if I was older I still wouldn't like you like that. I mean you can be a nice person sometimes but also you can be…like this." she said
"Yeah, well, that's what you love about me." He said
"I don't. I really don't. Now please get off of my desk and let me work." She said. He obliged her. She had gone from flustered to annoyed and he had already seen her annoyed. That wasn't new or fun. He'd leave her be for now. He'd had his fun with her and she'd had enough of him. Not totally, of course, he knew not to push her to the point where she wanted nothing to do with him at all.
Because that would not have been good for him.
She was a little girl but she wouldn't be forever. She would grow up and he had no intention of being cast aside when she did. He had to think about the future and what kind of future he wanted for himself. Something a hell of a lot less dull than following Suzuki around would have been great. She'd be fun, his daughter, in a few years. When she stopped being quite so little. She when got more fun to fluster. She would never be dull, Suzuki Shigeko, and he loved that about her. He'd spent too many years of his life bored, he wouldn't spend another second of his life like that, and she was many things but none of them were boring.
She was a little girl in the vipers' nest after all. What could be boring about that?