When things broke you took them to tech support.

That was the point of having tech support people. They fixed broken electronics and stuff. So, really, it made sense for Mob to take Sho's broken DS to tech support to get fixed.

"It's not broken though. I just forgot to charge it last night and the battery died." Said Sho. They had been playing together when Sho's DS suddenly died. The light had turned yellow and then red but neither of them had brought their chargers. So, well, it seemed that the battery had died and that was why the DS died.

But what did Mob know? She didn't work in tech support.

"We don't know that for sure. We're not tech support people." Said Mob. She handed Sho her DS to keep him occupied. This was another one of those days where they hung out at work with dad. Sho needed to be kept occupied because otherwise he built forts and ran around and stuff. Dad didn't like that and Sho was her responsibility.

So she was responsible for making sure that his DS wasn't broken.

"We do too know that for sure. We've been playing videogames for our entire lives. We can tell when our stuff is and is not out of charge." Said Sho

"Here, just play my DS until I come back. You said, before, that your battery was dying sooner than normal. Maybe it's broken. I don't know, you know, none of us know. So I should go and tell someone who knows. Right now." Said Mob. Sho took her DS and shook his head.

"You just want to see Hatori, don't you?" asked Sho. Mob turned red and pulled her braids down before they could start to float away. She glanced over at dad. He was still working. Well he was doing something at his laptop and she figured that it was work. Sometimes he read things but she was not supposed to be nosy and see what he was reading.

"Sho! I-I am...um…just going to…to see if your DS is broken or not. He might not even be in the tech support room." Said Mob

"You know he will be. Those guys lock themselves in all day. They don't even come out to go to the bathroom. I heard that they just pee in bottles." Said Sho. Mob scrunched up her nose. No way was that true. Who would pee in a bottle? And what if you missed? Or you forgot which bottle was what?

Boys came up with the most ridiculous, gross, and ridiculously gross things sometimes.

"Sho's, that ridiculous and disgusting. People don't pee in bottles." Said Mob

"Yes they do. Well boys can. We're just lucky like that." Said Sho

"That's so gross! Why would anybody do that?" asked Mob

"Because we can and you can't." said Sho

"Sho, please don't ever pee in bottles for as long as you live. We have a perfectly good bathroom. Use it." Said Mob. She stuck out her tongue a little. Sometimes she wished that she had a little sister instead of a little brother. Like not that she wished that Sho had never been born, she could never wish that, but instead that he had been born a girl so the idea of peeing in a bottle was not one that could ever cross his mind. Because it was gross. And wrong. And also probably against some kind of rule…not that she could ever imagine a scenario where 'don't pee in bottles' ever came up to where someone had to make a rule about it.

Boys were so weird sometimes.

"Daughter, go and get yours brother's game fixed. Son…that's disgusting. Never talk about that again." said dad. He didn't even look up from what he was doing. That was good. It meant that he wasn't mad. It was always a toss up about whether or not he'd be mad at them…well mostly Sho. He hardly ever got mad at her these days.

She was still going to hurry back though.

She was still going to hurry back because she didn't want to leave dad and Sho alone for too long. She should have taken Sho with her, it was good to have him walk sometimes to get his extra energy out, but she also didn't like how he teased her about liking Hatori. About how weird she got when she was around him. She couldn't help it, being weird around him, it just sort of happened.

He was just so…him.

She still didn't know much about him but she did know that she liked him…for some reason. She didn't know. She had heard that you didn't need a reason to like someone but she had also heard that love at first sight wasn't real. Mom had said that she had liked dad the first time that she saw him but they didn't get married right away. Dad had never said anything about how he felt when he met mom. Minegishi just said that love was a crock of…words that Mob was not going to use…but that was just how Minegishi felt…Mob was her own person with her own feelings.

A lot of them.

She didn't know why she felt the way she felt. She only knew that she felt like this. She felt all doki doki when she thought about him and her stomach felt all fizzy and it was just…a good feeling and a bad one at the same time. The feeling made her feel all hot and cold all over and she just didn't get it. She'd liked people before but not like this. Maybe that meant that she liked him a lot…or something. She didn't know. She didn't even know him. Not his favorite food or color or movie or anything. She knew that he looked nice…and he wore very nice sweaters…

But looking nice and wearing nice sweaters was not the basis of a good relationship.

She didn't know what, exactly, the basis for a good relationship was but she knew that it had to come from more than thinking the other person looked nice. Not that she had ever seen a good relationship before. Mom and dad had been married and made her and Sho but mom also ran away and dad declared her to be a traitor so that relationship could not have been very good at all. Also when they had been together dad still went away for a long time and that probably made her sad. Mob had only been away from Sho for a few days but those had been so hard on her. The time that dad ran away from home and left her with baby Mukai and Sho had been hard, too.

Poor mom.

Mom and dad had never done any of that couple stuff that Mob had seen and read about. They had never held hands or kissed where Mob could see. Dad never told mom that she loved him and mom…well at some point she stopped telling dad that she loved him, too. At some point they had stopped hanging out together where Mob could see….and stuff. Mob didn't want to be with someone who was like that to her.

She did want to be with someone.

It just seemed so…perfect. Having someone in your life who looked at you and didn't just think of what you could do for them. Someone who loved you for exactly who you were and not the plan they had for you later on. Someone who was there for you no matter what. Someone who would chase you to the airport or parachute from the sky or wrestle an alligator just to tell you that they loved you. Someone who was nice to you all the time, not just some of the time, and someone who you always wanted to be with because they were so nice. Plus all of the kissing and stuff…Mob really liked the kissing and stuff…

She had only been kissed once in her life and that had been the best, well in the top ten, moments of her life.

She was never going to see him again though, the boy she kissed, even though she wanted to. She had kept her promise, she would never forget him, but he was out there in the world and he was better off without her anyway. If she ever found him again then he would have gotten captured again and nobody would listen to her when she said that he wasn't an orphan and that they had to give him back to his mom and dad. Nobody ever listened to her about anything. So, really, he was better off without her. She still liked him but not as much as she did when she had been nine. She couldn't be in love with someone who she was never going to see again. That wasn't how love worked.

Though she couldn't be in love with someone she didn't know, either.

Not that this was love or anything. Love came later, Minegishi said, after the part where you liked someone. When you first started to like someone you spent time with them and went on dates with them and stuff to figure out if there was anything there. Dates were a lot of work, though, and Minegishi said that they didn't bother with that stuff. They either liked someone or they didn't and when they did like someone they kissed them and when they didn't like someone they didn't kiss them.

Adults could be complicated like that.

But Mob was not an adult, she was a kid, and she had no idea if she even liked…well she knew that she liked him…but she had no idea if she would like him after she got to know him…or even if she would ever get to know him. He was older than her, a whole nine years older, and he might not have liked her. She didn't know. Adults could like kids like that. Everyone seemed to think that Shimazaki liked her like that…even though she kept on saying how that was not at all true…so maybe in that case…

Mob decided not to think about that anymore.

Dad would beat up anyone who he thought liked her. He had said, before, that she wasn't allowed to like anyone until she turned thirteen because that was the age that he had first started liking people. That was just not fair in the least bit. She was her own person. She was Suzuki Shigeko. He was Suzuki Touichirou. They were different people entirely and as different people they were leading different lives. Her feelings were different from his and his feelings were different from hers. They were different people entirely and as different people he could not just tell her that she had to wait until she was thirteen to fall in love and he could not just go around beating up people who he thought were in love with her.

Well actually he could because he was dad and he could and would do whatever he wanted.

She wasn't going to talk to him about this stuff. There was no changing his mind and she was not going to change her mind so it was best that they just not talk about this stuff at all. Mob didn't even know if Hatori liked her back or if she even liked him….well she knew that she liked him….but if she would ever like him if she got to know him better. She didn't even know if she would ever even get to know him better. She had walked down the halls and across the building over to where the tech support people were and she was just standing outside of the door holding Sho's DS and she knew that she had to knock and come in…

But she couldn't.

She was too nervous. She could barely even raise her hand up to knock on the door. She…she needed to, though. She felt the DS in her hand. It might have been broken and then Sho would have had no DS to play with and that would have just been the worst and she could not let that happen to her little brother so of course she was going to knock on the door and wait for it to open and then she was going to walk through the door and say hi and then get this fixed and…stuff.

That was what she was going to do.

She knocked on the door because that was the polite thing to do. She knocked and then waited…and waited….and waited. She knew that there were people on the other side of the door, she could see their auras, and she knew that they must have been able to see her aura too. She thought about just going in….dad had said before that knocking was ridiculous and that as his Daughter she could go everywhere in Claw but the boy's bathroom. Well she could go there too but she had to make all the boys leave too. She didn't much want to go in the boy's bathroom, she doubted that it could have been that much different from the girl's bathroom, but she did want to go into the tech support room.

She opened the door.

Oh. There were people in there. They just all had headphones in and were playing videogames…which was not something that they were supposed to do but she wasn't going to tell on them. She did things that she wasn't supposed to do all the time too. So long as nobody was getting hurt, she decided, her policy on people breaking the rules would be to keep it to herself. Nobody ever got hurt from playing videogames…unless you sat too close to Sho when he got mad….but nobody was mad here.

They were all too far in the zone.

Tech support people were not Awakened. Well some of them came from the Awakened, not the lower uniforms though, but a lot of them were just espers who also knew tech stuff. Also some techopaths, which could control technology to some degree. Mob couldn't do that but some people could. Nobody was as good as Hatori though. It said so in his file…which Mob had to read so make up the birthday lists and not because she had been sneaking and spying and stuff. She had read his file because she had needed to know when his birthday was and that was how she found out that he was a prodigy like she was. He just only had one power, he couldn't even put up a barrier, but he was very good at what he did.

Also he was good at playing videogames it seemed.

It wasn't any game like she had played before. It looked sort of like one of those games where you had a bunch of guys and they all took turns attacking. She didn't really like those sorts of games and neither did Sho. Too slow, he said, and the only fighting game that she liked was Smash Brothers but even then she only played when Sho wanted to. Virtual pet games were the best but that was just her opinion. Hatori looked like he was having fun and that could have been a fun game and she would have to get the name of that game from him and then they would have something to talk about and then-

"Oh, Suzuki-sama. What's up?" Said Hatori. He leaned back in his chair and…and he was looking at her…and she had been staring at him for a very long time…

She held her hair down.

"My-my brother's DS is broken…can you fix it?" asked Mob. She practically shoved Sho's DS into his hands. She needed to calm down and stop being nervous. He had on a sweater with a tabby cat today. That was the second best kind of cat ever. That meant that he liked cats…and she liked cats…and that was a thing that they had in common…so now they had a thing in common!

"This DS isn't broken, the battery is just dead." Said Hatori. He didn't even have to do anything to it. He just had to hold it and he could tell. That was so cool! He was so cool. He was so cool and he was so tall even though he was sitting down she could still tell that he was tall and the light was hitting his glasses and his glasses were so cool and he had crumbs on the front of him and she thought that even the crumbs on the front of his sweater were cool and he was cool and-

-and she needed to talk now because he had talked to her.

"My brother thought so too but then I thought that it might have been broken so I thought that you guys would know how to fix it since you guys know about tech stuff and this is tech stuff and we couldn't tell to see if it was just out of battery because we both forgot our chargers because we were in a hurry this morning because we both accidentally slept in because we were watching movies and-and-and that's what happened. How are you?" asked Mob. Right. Air. She needed to put air back in her lungs now. She need to breath and stop talking because she had said too many words and now he thought that she was stupid or something.

"I'm fine, been better, been worse. Next time bring your charger so you don't have to come all the way down here." Said Hatori. She couldn't tell how he felt. His aura was so…different. It was all around him in the walls and the computers and also in her phone and she had no idea if he was annoyed or not and she knew that she should just go because there was no way a guy like him would notice a girl like her anyway and even if he did dad would probably beat him up and-

"You know what? You seem kind of freaked out about this and you are, technically, my boss I guess so here." Said Hatori. Mob wondered what he meant but she didn't ask. She didn't have a chance to ask. As soon as he finished talking the little light on Sho's DS went back to green and it turned its self back on. Hatori turned it off and closed it.

"Don't tell anyone I can do that or they'll never leave me alone." Said Hatori. He handed the DS back to her. It took her brain a minute to get the message to her hand that it was time to move and stuff. She reached out and took it from his hand…and then his fingers touched her fingers…

And every single computer in that room, the monitors anyway, flashed on and off again.

People did not like that. There was yelling and cursing and someone started sobbing….and Mob just felt terrible. Hatori cursed, too, but his computer went back to normal before everyone else's. His game was still going but his character had died….and it was Mob's fault. She wasn't a technopath, she couldn't control technology, but she could mess with electricity. That was why she sometimes accidentally messed with the lights and TV and stuff…and now she had messed with the whole tech room…and she had lost control of her powers…

She had never been this embarrassed in her life. Not since the time when she was seven and accidentally tucked her skirt into the waistband of her underwear and walked around like that on accident.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry…but thank you!" said Mob. She bowed and then ran out of the room. She ran down the halls and up the stairs and then down the stairs again when she realized that she had taken the wrong stairs and then she went down the right halls and up the right stairs until she got to where she was supposed to be. She was out of breath when she got back to dad's office but she didn't care. She had to get back as soon as she could. She had to get out of there.

She was so embarrassed.

"Here you go." Gasped out Mob as she handed Sho his DS. She sat down on the floor next to him and tried to catch her breath. Her bottle of milk, not the special kind even though she really could have used the special kind right about then, was dropped into her lap.

"Was it really that urgent, Daughter?" asked dad. Mob nodded and drank her milk. Yes. There was nothing in the world more urgent than getting back up to dad's office where she had no chance at all of doing something stupid to embarrass herself.

"Yeah it was! It works again! Thanks, big sis!" said Sho. Mob smiled. She was glad that he was happy. That was what mattered the most, Sho being happy, and not her being so embarrassed that she wanted to crawl into a hole and never come back out.

How could she have lost control like that?

And in front of him, too. Now he probably thought that she was so dumb. Now he probably thought that she was just a little kid who couldn't control her powers and now he probably wanted nothing to do with her and now they would probably never be friends and get together and…well they would probably never end up getting together anyway but still. Now he probably didn't even like her or want to be around her or any of that. He was probably so annoyed by her and stuff now. She wanted…she eyed the fancy bottles of things that she wasn't allowed to have.

She needed a drink.

That would have cleared her head. Her aura was being weird and she knew that dad would notice and comment on it and maybe even be upset with her and the thought of dad getting upset with her was making her all upset and she didn't want to be upset but she also didn't want dad to catch her doing things that she was not supposed to do…but she was also so stressed….she felt the vape pen in her pocket. That was not as good as smoking but she didn't have any more cigarettes and Shimazaki was out on assignment, which might have just been dad trying to get rid of him because he had been extra annoying that day, so she couldn't even borrow one from him even though she had promised Minegishi that she wouldn't smoke anymore…but she needed it. Or a turn at Shimazaki's vape pen. He had the best ones.

She needed something to help her calm down.

Regular milk wasn't helping and she couldn't do any of her regular things that helped so…so she just had to…to ride this out. She had to calm down on her own…and she wasn't the best at that. She had never been the best at that even when she had been little and hadn't started drinking and all of that other stuff. She had to calm down, though, because she was setting a terrible example for her little brother.

Sho.

She needed to think of Sho. He was so happy now that his DS was fixed. She had made him that happy. She thought about him and how happy she had made him and how nothing mattered but the fact that his DS was fixed…and she felt better. Sho was who mattered. Not her. Sho. And he was happy and she had made him happy. That was what she had set out to do.

His DS had been broken and she'd gotten it fixed. When something broke you took fixed it. There.