She never responded.

The emails still went somewhere. He knew that they went somewhere because when he sent them they never returned to sender. He liked to think that there as someone on the other end reading these emails. That was all that he had left, emails. He had stopped calling long ago. The burner that she had been using had been disconnected and she never told him her new number. It would have been too dangerous for him to know. Hell, even this was dangerous.

Thank God the tech department was down there giving themselves arthritis instead of doing their jobs.

Fukuda knew that he should have stopped with all the emails. He knew that he should have just accepted that she was gone. She was gone from his life, from everyone's life, and he should have just accepted that. Out of everyone involved he should have accepted that. He was the only one who knew what became of her after all.

Somewhat.

As of their last check in she had found some part time work as an English tutor. He had no idea where she was living or what agency she was working for or, well, anything. She was fine, though, he knew that she was fine. At least as of their last check in years ago she had been fine. He had no idea if she was still working as a tutor or if she had gone back to working with animals like she liked. She could have done something else. She had gone to university for biology. He didn't know what a person could do with a degree in biology but he hoped that she was doing well. He hoped that wherever she was in the world she was doing well.

He was not doing so well.

Late summer was hard. Dealing with it. With what happened. With what he had done. He couldn't help but feel responsible for the part that he had played in all of this. The part that he had played in ruining Sho's life. He should have worked harder to get Sho to Masami. He had never anticipated how close Suzuki would keep his son. He could have other children. Hell, he had a five…maybe six...month old daughter that he had abandoned. Why couldn't he had gotten on that sooner and gotten a boy? Then Fukuda could have brought Sho back to his mother.

Back where he belonged.

He was not Sho's mother. He wasn't Sho's father either. He was just the person who was trying his best with what he had. He tried to reassure him and keep him safe but…but it was hard. It was hard when his father was treating him like the gum on the bottom of his shoe and hard when his sister was carrying on like she was a grown woman…and with her father's blessing too! Fukuda knew what she and the others got up to. He knew that he had smelled liquor on her numerous times. She was trying to cover it up with the smell of bubble gum but he could tell that she was still going at it. The smaller bottles that he had stuck behind the decorative ones were gone.

Suzuki wasn't planning on doing anything about that it seemed.

Part of him couldn't fault her for…that. She was ten, her father was giving her no guidance, and her only friends were a bunch of degenerates. He had no power over her, though, he couldn't do a damn thing to stop her. She knew that he couldn't. She had even said it, before, that nobody outranked her but her father. She thought that she could do whatever she wanted and…and part of him could not fault her. Suzuki hadn't raised her so much as left her in the care of murderers, drug addicts, and Fukuda didn't even want to say. He should have done more for her…but he had Sho to look out for. Shigeko…she was more Suzuki's child than Sho or his actual sister ever would be. He was not going through that again. Any of it. Any of the bullshit that Suzuki had put him through all of these years.

He was not going to go through that again.

So he tried his best to be there for Sho. Sho needed him. He had no one. At least Shigeko had murders and drug addicts and the dregs of society. Well-adjusted people did not willingly join Claw and they certainly wouldn't willingly spend time around Suzuki. At least Sho didn't spend much time with them. At least he knew, mostly, to stay away from those degenerates…even if it was because he had an adorable but age inappropriate crush on one of them…and Fukuda was not looking forward to the talk that he was going to have to give in the future…or Suzuki's reaction to the fact that he most likely was not getting grandkids from his blood son…

Good.

He would be there for Sho in this and all of the journeys he would have in his life. He would be there as best as he could. There was another away mission coming up. Not for him, no Suzuki liked to keep him close, but Ootski was going on the mission to New Zealand…and Sho might like it. He liked Australia, mostly tormenting the kangaroos, and he liked Ootski…and Fukuda trusted Ootski. He would have to recommend Sho for that mission…but he would have to suggest it just right…because Suzuki was always very erratic and irrational around late summer. The man was insane at the best of times but during late summer the wheels off the crazy train came off.

Poor Sho.

Having to deal with that. At least Fukuda was doing what he could. He'd woken up twice not to find Sho in his bed….which had not been fun because Sho kicked in his sleep….but also that had been good. It was always good to get Sho out of that house. At least his father's attention was focused on Shigeko now. Good. They were two of a kind, her and him, and the more they left Sho alone the better.

He wasn't putting that in the email.

'The kids miss you. Shigeko is becoming more and more like her father every day. Sho is becoming more and more like you every day. It's uncanny, the both of them, but I know that they'll be alright in the end.' Nope. He deleted that. Too many lies. He had no idea if the kids were going to be alright. Well Shigeko wasn't alright. The drinking and the smoking and the fact that she occasionally smelled like marijuana of all things, Fukuda had been to university he knew full well what marijuana smelled like, and also the fact that she was just…different. Masami would not have been able to recognize her own daughter. Sure she still looked the same, he was amazed that they made those dress up costumes in her size and also that she would want to wear them considering how much of a hurry she had gotten herself in to grow up, but she was not the same.

She was just like her father.

An alert popped up on his laptop. Oh. Another internal memo from Shigeko…why Suzuki let her abuse the memos like this Fukuda would never understand. He didn't know why he opened it. He knew what it was going to be. More nonsense from her. She was trying to build her own cult of personality it seemed. She had learned from the best after all. There were some differences. Both she and her father wanted people to be in awe of their powers but where he ruled through fear she ruled through love. She seemed to be trying her best to win people over with kindness and empty but pleasant statements. Also through giving people whatever they wanted….goddamned chair jousting tournaments….

'Hi everyone! This is just a reminder to always separate your recycling. That way someone else doesn't have to do it later. Tomoko and Hiroshi are getting tired of having to stick their hands in the garbage cans to separate everything out. Also please use gloves if you're going to be doing gross work. Also please stop blowing up the gloves like balloons. That's a waste of glove and I know you guys don't want to be wasteful. That's all it was nice talking to you. Also happy birthday to the following people at Tokyo HQ. Kaname Hideo….'Fukuda stopped reading.

Suzuki really needed to do something about this.

She was getting the Awakened and lower level espers on her side. He didn't know what she had planned but she was undermining her father's power base. Either that or she was just ten. But he couldn't think like that. He had underestimated Suzuki for years. It had taken until their last year of high school to realize that Suzuki had been serious about his plans for world domination. He was not making the mistake of underestimating another Suzuki…

Even if she wasn't a Suzuki at all.

She was a Kageyama. She was Shigeko Kagyeama. She was born to Kageyama Hana and Kageyama Ichimaro in the Seasoning City General Hospital on May 25th. She was not Suzuki's daughter in the way that it counted…and that was what made it even more terrifying. She was just as powerful as Suzuki and she was just like him in every way…well most ways. He had never known Suzuki to enjoy drinking and smoking and whatever the female equivalent of womanizing was. She was just like him though down to whatever personality disorder, and he had taken two semesters of psychology he knew that Suzuki had some sort of personality disorder, they shared. He so wanted to believe the best in her…

But he had believed the best of Suzuki and look at where that had gotten him.

Forty three and working to take over the world. Vice President Fukuda Tadashi. That had been his title back when they'd still been in the fort in the woods. That had been who he was supposed to be now. He had turned the title down once the First Division had been founded and it looked like this thing was actually going to get off the ground. Now he mostly just healed idiots and did administrative stuff that Suzuki either didn't feel like doing but also didn't trust his daughter with.

Yet.

He wondered what Masami would think of him once this daft little plan of Suzuki's finally bore fruit. When he was lord and master of the world and Shigeko was his right hand. When Sho inherited the world after his father simply because he was born male and his father wasn't about to go and make another son…hopefully. Masami would hate him if she didn't hate him now. Maybe that was why she never responded to his emails. Maybe she knew that he had failed her and she hated him and she didn't love him…well she had never said that she loved him…but he knew that she did. She loved him and she…she was the love of his life…and this was not at all how he planned on his life going.

Nobody planned on being forty three with non-wife or kids, no legal work history, and an accessory to what must have been literally all the crimes at this point.

He closed his email. He would start on this another day. Right now he had so much to do. Papers to push. Shoes to lick. Another day at Tokyo HQ…God, he hated Tokyo HQ. For one thing it was overcrowded. Shigeko in a bid for everyone's approval simply approved every single transfer request…and guess where everyone wanted to go. Tokyo, Seoul, Sidney, New York, basically far away from all of the outposts in the middle of nowhere….which led to a massive staffing crisis that they were going to be sorting out come New Year…and that was in addition to everything else that she had approved of. The food budget was a mess, payroll was still freaking out, and also there were thirty six holiday parties in the works….some of which now had important backers, cultists, and investors on the RSVP list so off course those couldn't be called off…and also every third Tuesday of the month was bring your pet to work day…that would go over real well

"Damn it, Shigeko." Muttered Fukuda as he looked over the mess that was the internal Claw calendar. She had made a mess of epic proportions and Suzuki didn't even bat an eye. Meanwhile his own son needs some closure on the subject of his mother but that would be far too much to deal with. No, this was fine. Let the drunken ten year old girl run the largest world domination cult in the world. Yeah. Just run off and leave your drunken ten year old future usurper in charge…

Another alert.

'Hi everyone! I missed a birthday! Today is Michaelson Joseph's birthday! He's turning thirty today and he works in the foreigner squad. He likes smoking, hockey, being a mercenary, blue M&M's, and low sodium seaweed crackers. Let's all wish him a happy birthday!'

"Damn it, Shigeko." Muttered Fukuda. Now that he had checked his inbox he was right back in his email…and it would have been so easy to switch over to the tab with his personal email…and then he would have had to get back to composing his letter to Masami…and he had no clue what to say! What was he supposed to tell her? Her son was a ball of rage and her daughter smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and was her father in a princess costume? Was he supposed to tell her that he had failed in every single promise that he had made her? Was he supposed to tell her that it was good that she had gotten on with her life because obviously there was nothing for her here? That she was better off without him? That he would follow Suzuki until the day one of the countless assassination plots worked out and then it wouldn't even matter because without missing a beat his daughter would fill right in for him? That same daughter who he had, in some ways, failed on a level that he had never even had a chance of failing Sho?

"Damn it, Shigeko…" said Fukuda. Apparently he had summoned her. Like Shimazaki if you said her name enough times she would appear. Something the two of them had in common. The basis of a good future relationship. Heh. Maybe she would drive her father into an early grave when she announced, probably around thirteen or fourteen when she finally hit puberty and her rebellious phase, that she was going to marry the bastard and have his probably terrible kids and whatever else Suzuki was afraid of his little girl getting up to.

Oh God…teen years…

Fukuda's face and aura betrayed nothing as Shigeko entered his office. She was trying hard at being cute again. She was in one of her princess dresses, the blue one, and had her cat ears headband on again. She acted like she was twenty, dressed like she was five, but in reality was ten. Masami would have been so proud…

"Something you need, Miss Suzuki?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki-san, never sama, because even Suzuki himself was not sama to him. Still, though, best to be polite. She may have been a child but she was not a child in the same sense as Sho was a child. She was a child in the sense that even Suzuki must have been a child at some point.

"Do you have any broken electronics? If you do I can take them down to the tech support room for you." Said Shigeko. He kept his face and aura impassive while he took apart what she said. What was she doing down there? Nothing but a bunch of pasty faced weirdos giving themselves arthritis playing videogames and watching pornography, some people were not as subtle as they thought they were, on company time. Not that he was going to stop them. He had better things to do than go into that den of sin, corruption, and a general stench of not washing and using body spray to cover up the smell of not washing.

Well-adjusted people did not voluntarily join Claw.

"I'm afraid I don't. Everything's in working order around here." Said Fukuda

"Are you sure? Your computer is making a weird noise…that might be something you want to get looked at….and um….maybe your phone needs fixing….and you don't even know it yet because you don't work in tech support." Said Shigeko. She really wanted to go to the tech support room….why? It stank in there, the company was not friendly, and also it was not the place for little girls. He wished that she had been Sho. If this had been Sho he could have just kept him in his office for the rest of the day. Sho was out, though, he'd been full of angry energy so Suzuki had him taken to a park.

Hopefully he would come back in once piece this time.

He so wished that it had been Sho there in front of him instead of Shigeko. She was…he didn't like to be in her presence for too long. She was too unnerving. He could never figure out what her end goal was. The other day he had seen her hopping along on the floor for some reason…and the day before that she had been trailing after some esper talking about nonsense….some powerful esper he could not recall the name of….

Wait. Was she trying to make another 'friend'?

She was collecting powerful espers. He didn't know why. To usurp her father when she got old enough? To have someone to hang out with? To not feel so alone in the fact that she had immeasurable power? He didn't know. All he knew was that he knew not to take things by their surface appearance when it came to Shigeko. He had made that mistake too many times already when it came to Suzuki.

"That's just the fan and my phone is working just fine. Just got it last week, actually, so everything here is in working order. You can try payroll. They've got plenty of computers in there, some of them might be having problems." said Fukuda. He so wished that she could get going back to whatever it was that she was doing. But not. It seemed like she was going to stick around for quite a while. He's wistful for a moment. He remembers her half a lifetime ago. When she had clung to his leg and asked that he stay, that he play dolls with her, that he watch Frozen with her, that he read her that Hello Kitty book just one more time….

Those days were over now.

"What kind of phone did you get?" asked Shigeko

"What?" asked Fukuda. He was, momentarily, taken aback. Why did she care?

"You said that you got a new phone. What kind is it? I have a new phone too since Sho threw my old one into the road and a car ran it over. It's ok, though, because I keep all of my pictures in the cloud. See? It's an iphone like before but I might get another one. Hatori says that iphones are trash phones and that the only good phone maker is Samsung. Did you get a Samsung? And a case? I have a new case too. See? It's Elsa. My last one was a cat but I got bored of that." Said Shigeko. She had come right up to his desk and she was showing him her new phone…why? This was something that he would have expected from Sho. In fact this was something that Sho had done back when he'd gotten his new phone….because he also threw his in the road and a car ran over it…

He needed to supervise Sho better.

"That's nice. I'm glad you got a new phone. I've got an iphone too. See?" asked Fukuda as he fished his own phone out of his pocket. It was easier if he thought of her as Sho and not Suzuki. Suzuki never got excited about anything…unless obsessive Suzuki was back…and why they had needed to spend the night outside of the manga store just to get some special edition Galaxy Express that only he and like three other people would even want was beyond him…

Those were the days.

"That's funny….you said iphone too and that sounded like iphone two…but that's not a two. We have the same one except for our cases are different. Yours is black and mine is Elsa." Said Shigeko. Fukuda nodded. He didn't like having her this close. Her aura…it could be painful. Too much. Too bright. Bright as her father's. Bright enough that she could have taken down this whole division is she had wanted to…

That had not been her fault.

That's the one thing that had not been her fault. The Eighth Division was his fault and his alone. He hadn't been able to save Sho. He hadn't been able to stop Suzuki. He had just let Sho be put through that…and then Shigeko saw and lost control…and for a moment he had been sure that he would die and go to hell where he belonged for letting that happen to Masami's son….

But he was alive and he was there.

"It's a very nice phone and a very nice case. Is there anything else you need, Miss Suzuki? I have a lot on my plate and I'm sure that you do as well. Those little birthday biographies don't write themselves." Said Fukuda. Getting back to work usually got him dismissed by Suzuki…but once again it seemed as though she was going to stick around for quite a while. Her aura turned inwards. Her braids started to float before she pulled them back down with her hands. He stayed just as impassive as normal.

"Fukuda…why don't you like me anymore?" asked Shigeko. Fukuda momentarily lost control of both his face and his aura. He had never expected that question from her. She…she picked up on that? How? He'd been getting steadily more and more resentful of Suzuki for decades and he never gave even the slightest indication that he noticed. His daughter on the other hand…well not his daughter. Not really. The child that he'd adopted. Yes. She wasn't from Suzuki…she was different…

And she had picked up on what he really thought of her.

"Of course I like you. Why would you think otherwise?" asked Fukuda. He needed to play this like he was totally clueless. Like he was totally faultless. Make her doubt herself. She had always doubted herself as a child. Good. She may not have outgrown that like she had outgrown everything else that had made her Masami's Daughter.

"Because you're just….different. When you talk to me it's different from when I was little. Also you call me Suzuki-san but you call Sho by his given name…and also you never play with me anymore." Said Shigeko. So she wasn't as dense as the man who was raising her. Well Fukuda wasn't dense either. He isn't going to tell her that he's unhappy with the person she's become. He isn't going to tell her that it's hard to play dolls with a ten year old when he's seen her drink and smoke and flirt with a man three times her age. He doesn't tell her that those times are long gone and he just…he can't anymore.

He's got more sense than that.

"You outrank me. You rank directly under your father which is above me and since we work together I have to show you proper respect. Also you're getting older now, you're practically a young woman, and I'm not going to treat a young woman like a five year old. That would be socially inappropriate." Said Fukuda. She chewed on it. He could tell. Suzuki made the exact same face when he chewed on something.

And the same face when he accepted something, too.

"Ok…that makes sense. It was nice talking to you. I'll just go and see if the people in payroll have broken electronics they need fixed. Good bye, Fukuda." Said Shigeko. Fukuda watched her walk out his door. He watched her aura as it disappeared down the hall. Well not exactly disappeared, no, just mixed with the sea of auras that was Claw.

He let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he'd been holding.

What WAS that? How could she have picked up on that? He…he had no idea what he was supposed to do about that. Suzuki was dangerous but he was also, for lack of a better word, socially impaired. He had no social skills to speak of and if women weren't attracted to that for some reason Sho and Mukai would never have existed. This was…she was more socially savvy than her father…and she knew that he didn't like her…and this could have been so bad. The future…the future looks grim. She will rule the world one day and when that regime change happened…he needed to make sure that he survived it…

He had no idea what would happen in the future.

He was going to think about that later. Right now he…he had midsummer to think about. To worry about. Midsummer and Masami and his email and….and how he had failed her and…and a lot of things…

Fukuda never did finish up that email.