Sagami Tsuchiya was raising President Suzuki's Daughter.

She wasn't stupid. She may have led a somewhat sheltered life, she had grown up in her family's dojo, but she was no moron. She knew that this was not some random orphan that had been left on Claw's doorstep. What kind of a fool did Fukuda take her for? She knew what this was even before she set eyes on Mukai.

How many espers in the world had red hair, blue eyes, and were close personal friends of the only healer in all of Claw.

She played along, of course, because obviously this was not the sort of thing that she was going to be screaming from the rooftops. She was raising President Suzuki's illegitimate Daughter. Whatever. She had no problem with that. She was happy to do what she could to help. That was why she had joined this organization, to help people.

And herself.

She had been recruited into Claw with promises of a better world. A world where people like her wouldn't have to hide. She was promised power, wealth, prosperity for her dojo and her family, and the chance to meet others in the world like her. She had bought the whole better world spiel hook, line, and sinker. It wasn't a bad job, not really, and they really did help people. This was where they Awakened people, made them into artificial espers, amongst other things. The process was long and dangerous but, yeah, these were adults that were volunteering for the procedure. They read the fine print, signed the papers, and knew what it was that they were agreeing to…and those rumors about an Awakened Child were bullshit. No kid could have survived that.

And no parent would put their kid through that.

Tsuchiya had only been a mother for a little over a month, felt like a year, and she knew that anyone who even though about putting Mukai through something like that would be dead the minute they even so much as harmed a hair on her little red head. This was her daughter, her responsibility, and she was not letting anything happen to her. Even if Suzuki himself came knocking on her door making all kinds of crazy demands…

But he wouldn't be.

This was one of those hush-hush things. Nobody knew about this baby and she wasn't about to go spouting off about Suzuki's private womanizing. At least she assumed that Mukai was the result of womanizing. She knew what powerful men were like. Whatever. She didn't care where Mukai came from and she didn't care to speculate about her boss and some unnamed woman. Not his wife…wherever she was. He was married. He always wore that wedding ring and he had two kids already. One of which was downright freaky and made her glad that she worked in the lowest ranked of all the divisions. She had seen the kid's message to all of Claw…and it had not been reassuring.

No wonder this was such a successful cult.

She had no problem with other people worshipping the Suzuki's as living Gods or whatever, people's private beliefs were theirs alone, but she was not one of the devout. He wasn't a God. If a God decided to come down to Earth it wouldn't have been in the body of Suzuki Touichirou. Sure he fought well but there was more to life than fighting….or maybe not. Maybe she just didn't like the man. He was an annoying micromanager who really needed to learn how to speak to people. Also she got the feeling that even though he had beaten her he had been holding back. It didn't matter if he won, his victory was hollow if he pulled his punches, and she knew a lot about hollow victories.

It was nice to be in a place where she didn't have to pull her punches.

Not that she had that many occasions to fight. Pretty much all of her time these days went to Mukai. Feeding her, getting up in the night with her, changing her, making sure that she didn't accidentally kill herself…she couldn't even walk yet but she still found new and exciting ways to almost kill herself…like the time she managed to almost swallow her own sock. Whatever. There was nothing that Tsuchiya couldn't handle.

Even Suzuki's son.

"Here. I thought you might like regular better." Said Tsuchiya. He had spent yesterday with her and now he was back again. At least he had given her enough time to pick up some regular soda for him…though in her defense she had not been expecting company. That healer had just showed up at her door with the kid and said that he would be visiting for the next few days. At least she didn't have to put him up, just let him hang out with Mukai, but she would have liked some warning.

But she wasn't going to keep the kid away from his little sister.

"Thanks." Said Suzuki's son. He was playing with Mukai now, making her toys float, and she wasn't going to say anything unless he tried making her float. That would have been dangerous. This was…not entirely safe…but she wasn't a helicopter parent. Besides, he was keeping her entertained. That gave her some free time for once.

Time to train.

She wasn't too wearing of leaving him alone with the baby. She would just be in the next room after all. She left him his soda, far away from Mukai, and went to her room to hit her punching bag a few times. Normally, without the super qigong, because she did not feel like smashing it to smithereens. The noise would scare Mukai and then she would have a frightened baby on her hands and she did not want to have a frightened baby on her hands.

Especially not a frightened esper baby.

Mukai had an aura. That meant that she had, or would have, powers. The kid had powers, and the aura of a grown adult, so that was probably what was in Mukai's future. She wanted to put that future off for as long as possible. She loved Mukai, she did, but she didn't know how she would deal with a baby who had full adult powers. She had no idea what the mother's power set had been but she did know that Suzuki was the most powerful of all espers.

And she was raising his Daughter.

She would do her best to teach Mukai what she could, and the thousands of years of qigong technique that had been passed down through her family for generations, but when it came to the things that she had seen President Suzuki do…she was at a loss. She would do what she could with what she knew but…well…the future worried her just a bit. It wasn't like President Suzuki would be around to teach his daughter anything. It wasn't like he was even any kind of a father to his own kids. His daughter couldn't have been older than twelve, and that was Tsuchiya being generous, but he had left the whole of Claw to her…and his son was even younger but he had just let him come to Seasoning City with the inspection team…

Yeah, no, that man did not need to be a part of Mukai's life.

She hit a little harder than necessary. She knew not to think ill of her boss, there was a real 1984 vibe around here, but she did not think that his kid should have been in the Seventh Division of all places. This was not the place for children. They made Awakened here and no kid should ever have had to see that. A lot of people didn't make it through the process and the ones that did came out…wrong.

This was not the place for children.

And neither was her room while she was practicing. She knew that she shouldn't have let Mukai out of her sight but she was safe with her big brother. The kid had amazing control and he was as powerful as a grown man. Mukai would be fine. Besides, she should have had a relationship with one of her siblings. Tsuchiya wondered where the girl was. Probably running Claw. She'd heard that the girl was second only to the President himself and when he finally bit the dust she'd inherit everything.

Good. They could use some more women in power.

Still, though, it would have been good for Mukai to know her older sister. She seemed to be having fun with her brother. She heard a lot of laughing, baby laughs, and she was glad. Even if she didn't much like having kid dropped down onto her when she already had a baby. She let herself listen to Mukai laughing. So that was what it was like to have a sibling. It sounded like fun.

Lots of laughter.

"Hey! What'd you do that for?" and then crying. Tsuchiya….she hadn't liked the sound of that. Yelling at Mukai…this was just a kid and she reminded herself that this was just a kid. Fukuda had told her that sometimes he could get upset, prone to tantrums, and she had told the kid that if he felt like throwing a tantrum then he could go and throw it somewhere else. She was not dealing with that and she was not having her baby thinking that behavior like that was ok.

Because it just wasn't.

"What are you yelling about in here?" asked Tsuchiya. The kid had scooted away from Mukai, like he was afraid of her, and he was holding a ruined sketchbook….and immediately Tsuchiya knew what had gone wrong. Right. He had left his soda way too close to Mukai and she kicked it over, as she tended to do, and now the kid's sketchbook was ruined…and also there was a purple stain on her rug…and Mukai was crying….

Lovely.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" shouted the kid. Tsuchiya paid him no mind. She had a crying baby to deal with. The crying kid would come later. She had no idea what he was carrying on about, anyway, it was just a stain on the rug. He had spilled soda, not toxic waste, so he had no reason to be carrying on like spilling soda on the rug was a capital offense.

"Kid, pipe down. If you feel so bad then get some paper towels from the kitchen and-" said Tsuchiya as she bounced Mukai up and down. She was fine, just startled, but she was calming down…or at least she would have been calmed down already if her older brother hadn't been carrying on like Tsuchiya didn't even know what.

"I didn't mean to yell at her! I didn't! it just happened!" said the kid. Tsuchiya sighed. He was being annoying but she supposed that this was good practice for the future. This was just how kids were. She had overreacted plenty of times when she had been a kid….and she had done much worse than spill a little bit of soda on the rug. At least the kid hadn't punched down a wall or anything like that. That would have been difficult to explain to Ishiguro.

"Kid, calm down. She's fine. She's more freaked out, now, that you won't knock it off." Said Tsuchiya. She was not going to lose her temper. Her mother had never once lost her temper with her. She had been upset plenty of times, Tsuchiya hadn't exactly been an angel growing up, but she had never just started shouting or carrying on. So she would be the same towards her own child and the one that was sitting in the corner freaking himself out over nothing.

"I'm a terrible big brother…and now she's going to be scared of me for the rest of her life and she won't want to know me and she'll be right not to know me-" said the kid. Tsuchiya stared at him as she bounced Mukai up and down. She had been right. As soon as his screaming had stopped then his baby sister's crying had stopped. But now he looked like he was going to cry.

What?

When she pictured President Suzuki's son she didn't picture…this. A scared little boy. Honestly this was the first time she had ever seen the kid up close. He may have looked like the spitting image of his father, apparently the man had some very dominant genes, he acted like…like a scared little kid. She could not see the President as some scared little kid. Actually she had always imagined some sort of Benjamin Button scenario there…but that was neither here nor there.

That kid should not have been that scared.

Fukuda had said something about him having a lot of emotional problems. She was a Scar in the Seventh Division, she knew a thing or two about dealing with emotional problems, but she had insofar been dealing with the emotional problems of adults. This was not an adult. This was a very sad little boy. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do for a very sad little boy. She was used to delusions of grandeur, persecution complexes, inferiority complexes, and whatever the hell was wrong with the Awakened. This was….new…

But she was a mom now and dealing with things like this was what moms did.

"I suck and she thinks that I suck and she's never going to want to be near me and then if she does stay near me then I'm going to end up being a complete and total jerk to her and the whole thing is going to suck and…and I don't know why I suck so much…" said the kid. Tsuchiya knocked some of Mukai's stuffed toys, the only kind she couldn't accidentally kill herself with, off the couch. They had ended up making a much louder sound than she thought that they would have….oh….that creepy doll had been in the pile…but at least that knocked the kid out of…whatever that had been.

"Come here. She wants you to come and hang out. She misses her big brother." Said Tsuchiya. She patted the couch and tried to look as friendly as she could. She knew how intimidating she could be, and it had served her well in the past, but now intimidating was the last thing that she wanted to be. The kid looked at her like…like he was afraid of something…but then he very slowly made his way over to the couch.

She put Mukai in his arms.

"No, take her back. She's scared of me. I yelled at her and now she's scared and she thinks that I don't like her and she thinks that I don't care about her and she thinks that I don't want to be her brother and she thinks that I'm going to be mean to her and she wants me to get away from her and she knows that I'm the worst big brother in the history of people having big brothers." Said the kid. That….did not sound like something a healthy person would say. That also didn't look like how a healthy person would sit. He had his knees drawn up to his chest and he was sitting so far off to the side that it was like he was afraid. He had his hands under his knees and he was rocking back and forth a little bit…

That did not seem at all like a healthy little boy.

So this was what her coworkers had been like as kids. Yeah, yeah, she could definitely see a young Sakurai there. He was always happy to share his tale of woe with whoever would sit through it. She wondered what this kid's tale of woe was like. She wondered what could have happened in this kid's life to make him act like this. He was the son of the most powerful man in the world. He probably got whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. He obviously didn't have to deal with school or other kid problems…but obviously something was going on with him.

You never knew what went on behind closed doors.

She decided to give him some space. She decided not to reach over and pat him on the shoulder or something like that. Some little bit of human contact to show him that he was not alone and he didn't have to go through these feelings all on his own. Something like that. He wasn't a baby so she couldn't just pick him up and rock him…and the actual baby was doing fine. She was sitting on the couch between them now. He had put her down the minute she had been placed in his arms.

Like he had been afraid of her…or afraid for her…

"She's not afraid of you. See? She's tugging on your shirt trying to get your attention. You just scared her, that's all, but she's fine now. She's a little over five months old, she's got the memory of a goldfish. She's probably more worried about why you're so freaked out than about being yelled at." Said Tsuchiya. Maybe too blunt for a kid but she was still figuring it out. She was used to talking to someone who had just now started responding to her own name. Older kids…she had never dealt with a kid his age before…but she was figuring it out.

And this kid needed someone even if it was someone who was just figuring it out.

"I…I still got mad at her. She kicked my soda down and ruined my sketchbook…and I got mad at her. I'm a bad person. I'm a bad little brother. I'm a bad little brother and a bad big brother and…and I suck. I suck and she knows that I suck and-" said the kid

"Nope. Not that word. You're not going to use that word around my baby." Said Tsuchiya. She had, at some point, turned into her mom. She knew that there were worse words, she had used them, but she also knew that she did not need Mukai's first word to be 'sucks'.

"….it's not a bad word." Said the kid. He was wiping his eyes now and his feet were off of her couch. Good. Whatever that was had passed…or was starting to pass…thank God. She didn't know how she would have dealt with it if he had just kept on carrying on. She hoped that Mukai didn't have these problems when she got older.

"Well it's not something that I want her saying…and it's not something that you should be saying about yourself, either. You lost your temper, it happens, but you were smart enough to remove yourself from the situation when you lost control and you're sorry about it. So stop beating yourself up and start playing with your sister." Said Tsuchiya. Direct seemed to be best with kids. She had read that they didn't have the capacity for nuance. She hoped that she wasn't being too direct. She had no idea what she would had ended up doing if he had started carrying on again.

Poor kid.

"But I got mad at her…." said the kid

"So? Everyone gets mad. It's part of being human. It's not like you did anything. Well, ok, you yelled but you're, what, ten?" asked Tsuchiya

"Nine and a half." Said the kid. He seemed a little annoyed, even, that she would think of him as nine.

"Yeah, you're nine and a half. You acted like a nine and a half year old, ok? Now stop freaking out and play with her. She wants to play, that's what the tugging mean." Said Tsuchiya

"I know what the tugging means…and thanks. For being so nice to me." Said the kid. Tsuchiya had no idea what she was being thanked for. She hadn't even been that nice to him. Still, though, she was glad that she could help in whatever way that she could with…whatever that was. What was happening in that kid's life to make him react like that? To make him talk about himself like that? She didn't know.

She wasn't the one raising Suzuki's son, just his Daughter, and there was nothing she could do for the kid.