Suzuki Shigeko seemed like a pretty lonely kid.

Hatori would have been too if he had been in her sparkly blue shoes. She didn't seem to have any other kids to play with aside from her brother. That had to have been lonely. Hatori may have been an only child but he'd at least gone to school and had friends and stuff. That kid was either with her brother or an adult or on her own when he saw her. She didn't go to any kind of school, probably, and didn't do normal kid stuff like go to the park or play dolls with other little girls or whatever. Hatori felt bad for her, he really did.

So he let her hang out with him sometimes.

She never stayed long. Not long enough to be annoying, anyway. She eventually got bored and wandered away. She did that a lot, wandered around, and for some reason she always ended up crossing paths with her. She talked to him for a little bit before running off to do little kid things. That was fine. It wasn't like he was about to tell his little girl of a boss to go and find some other little girls to hang out with and stuff. No. That would have been stupid and Hatori Nozomu was not stupid. He was a lot of things but not stupid.

Also he was not an asshole.

"….so then my brother said that he was going to stay up all night even though I try to put him to bed around nine and he ate a whole thing of coffee ice cream and…." Suzuki-san had run into him again. Contrary to popular belief he did, sometimes, leave the tech support room. Mostly to get food or make sure that his blood kept on circulating properly and all of that stuff. He always somehow managed to run into her. Like now. He had been trying to eat lunch, it was breakfast for lunch day….again, and also maybe get caught up in this one game he had started a while ago, when she came and sat down next to him.

And he said 'hi'.

And then she started giving him the update about her life. He was half listening. He always half listened. He nodded sometimes and said 'uh-huh' and 'no way' and 'really' until she got bored and wandered off somewhere else. He was a nice guy like that. Other people would have told her to get lost a while ago but he wasn't that kind of person. People around here sucked enough without him adding to it. Also this was just a kid. If she had been older…but she still would have been his boss and he wasn't going to tell his boss to get lost…but if she were one of the Awakened or something. Yeah, then he would have told her to get lost. Those guys were all permanent kids or something…or just really messed up. He didn't know.

He'd rather deal with her than most of the other people around here anyway.

"….jumped from my bed to his bed because he ate too much caffeine and also he was sad because a bird pecked his head because he tried to take her babies but not in a mean way and then….." said wasn't eating. She was just sitting there and talking to him. He wondered why she kept on talking to him out of everyone else. She was just a kid. She said that she was ten but she looked younger….but then again he knew jack shit about kids….so maybe she just hung out with him because he was closer to her age than anyone else besides her little brother…who from her stories seemed like kind of an asshole. Yeah, she probably just kept on coming up to him because he was the closest person to her age around that wasn't related to her. He knew that feeling. He had been an only child before he had been an orphan. You took what you got and you made do.

"Uh-huh. Really?" asked Hatori. He checked his phone. She'd get bored soon. He was curious as to what it was that she got up to during the day. Well besides making the daily birthday list and reminding people not to act like little kids. Where did she go after this? What was there even for a ten year old to do? He knew that she took over after he dad went missing, Hatori had lost the betting pool on that one since he turned up alive, and he knew that she had been the one to make all of these sweeping reforms…

But what was she up to now?

The other guys in the tech room thought that Suzuki was sending her there to spy on them or whatever. He had no idea how people could be so stupid. If Suzuki knew what they really got up in there he would just come down on his own and start kicking some ass, not send his kid. No, she was coming down there on her own. She was just a poor, lonely kid.

"Yes. That really happened. All of that really happened. Um….did anything interesting happen to you since yesterday?" asked Suzuki-sama. Hatori shrugged. Nothing had happened to him that he could tell her about. She was ten, and a girl, and he was not about to tell a ten year old girl what he got up to in his spare time. What was he supposed to say? I was up until four in the morning doxing some asshole I met online and also other such things that ten year old girls aren't supposed to know about.

"Oh. Well maybe something interesting will happen to you tomorrow. Or even later today. Today my friend and I are going to Starbucks. Do you like Starbucks? That's the place with the coffee and the cakes and the mermaid with two tails and I don't know why she has two tails or why they're up by her head but that's the place that I'm talking about." Said Suzuki-sama. Hatori covered his mouth so she couldn't see him laughing. He was not about to tell her what that picture had been cropped down from…and also the truly ridiculous world of Starbucks rule thirty four. Because she was ten and that would have been wrong. Even more wrong than the stuff he did for a living.

"Starbucks is ok. Should you be drinking coffee though? It stunts your growth." Said Hatori. Also it made you hyper…and he would believe that this kid regularly drank coffee. It would account for her various inconsistencies. Sometimes she said five words to him before she ran away to go to ten year old stuff and sometimes she went on these long monologues that went nowhere….and then she ran away. Kids could be so weird sometimes. Well this was Claw. She was actually one of the more normal people there.

"I don't know if I should but I do. I don't think that my growth is stunted. My dad says that I'm normal sized. You're tall, though, so you probably think that I'm short. You're…you're really tall." Said Suzuki-sama. She laughed a little at the end. Well of course she thought that he was tall. He was nineteen and she was ten. Everyone was probably tall compared to her.

"I'm short as all else. You're just ten, you think everyone's tall." Said Hatori

"You're taller than me though so I think that you're tall. Well I mean you're not as tall as my dad…or Fukuda…or Shimazaki….and nobody is as tall as Shibata….and also you're taller than Minegishi…" said Suzuki-sama. Hatori perked up at the mention of that one particular person. Minegishi Toshiki. One of the boss' favorites. He had, maybe, done some digging around after their meeting. Just for some background knowledge, that was all. Just so that he didn't make an idiot out of himself at their next meeting….which there would be since Suzuki-sama was Minegishi's friend and Suzuki-sama hung around him sometimes.

This time he'd be ready.

She had literally no social media presence. Nothing. Not even Yelp reviews. That made it hard to figure her out but he had done some more digging. He knew plenty about her, she was twenty seven years old, had joined Claw back when she was twenty one, born in Kyoto, raised in a group home from ten to fifteen, legally emancipated at fifteen, former florist, blood type AB negative, had power over all plant life, and was apparently very unpleasant to work with. The only positive work reviews she had were from Shimazaki Ryou…which knowing what that guy was like might have just been jokes considering that nobody else had anything good to say about her. Those were just internal Claw things, work things, and they could only tell him so much. He wanted to know what she was like outside of work.

Because she really had it going on.

He knew that she was a hell of a lot older than he was but then again so was literally anyone who wasn't named Suzuki. Maybe he had a shot. Maybe he didn't. Well you wasted all the shots you didn't take or whatever. He was going to take his shot and he was not going to miss it. Seriously. He had to. The only other girl at this HQ was ten and he was not a lollicon. A lot of people around here were, seriously had nobody heard of incognito mode, but he was not one of them.

Even though it was going to look like that if he kept on hanging out with a ten year old girl.

"What's Minegishi up to these days?" asked Hatori. He needed data and since Minegishi had decided that the internet was not for her he was going to have to get it the old fashioned way. From talkative little kids.

"Um…lots of stuff. They're kind of upset because Shibata used up all the hot water this morning and then they had to go home and shower in the middle of the day and they hate doing that because it throws their whole clothes rotation off. They don't like extra work but they can't just put on the day clothes that they had been wearing back on because that wouldn't be sanitary. Also they're happy, too, because some of their plants that they grow, which I'm not allowed to touch, are done and now Shimazaki will get off of their back. Also they're happy because we're going to Starbucks. They've been busy and they like to relax at Starbucks because it's not Claw. They like to get away from Claw sometimes and also they like Starbucks because the coffee is just as mediocre in Japan as it is in every other country. That means not very good. I don't know what they mean about good coffee and bad coffee since it all tastes bitter to me. I don't put in sugar because Minegishi says that sugar is poison…even though I've seen them drink a whole two liter of orange soda in under a minute and not even get sick once." Said Suzuki-sama before she paused for air.

He'd have to get her something nice if this thing panned out.

If it worked out between him and Minegishi he was showing her how to get unlimited free games on the app store or something. Some of those princess dress up games that they were always advertising. Yeah, those seemed like something she would be into. Just as a gesture of thanks, of course, because he was walking a fine line between nice guy and potential creep talking to her like this. The last thing he wanted was for people to think he was a creep. He didn't know what President Suzuki did to guys who creeped on his ten year old Daughter but he felt like it was worse than what he did to people who played videogames on company time and also looked through his, very boring, search history.

Seriously. With all the sick shit people were into here the worst thing he did was read manga online and Google the weirdest, not in the good way, shit.

And no, people could not swim in gelatin.

"So you guys hang out a lot, huh?" asked Hatori

"Yes. Um…we hang out a lot or maybe the normal amount. I think that it all depends on what you think of as a lot. I don't think that it's a lot but my brother does because we don't play together as much as we used to and also my dad thinks so too but he's been hanging out with me a lot…well more than usually which I think is a lot. Not that I don't like hanging out with my dad because I do. He's…my dad." Said Suzuki-sama. He wasn't about to go and voice his opinions of her dad. He liked having a job and a place to live and also being alive.

"You don't have a lot of friends, do you? I mean if you spend most of your time hanging out with either family or adults." Said Hatori

"I don't…but I have a few friends and a best friend, too." Said Suzuki-sama

"I take it Minegishi's your best friend, then?" said Haotria. Suzuki-sama nodded.

"Yes. They're my best friend. We hang out together all the time. They don't seem like they would be fun because they say mean things to people a lot of the time and also people can't tell when they're happy or not but they really are a lot of fun to be around. Like there was this one time when we went to Starbucks in Sidney and….." Said Suzuki-sama. He wondered how that worked, being best friends with someone almost twice your age, but he didn't say anything. The poor kid was obviously lonely. Hatori hoped that they caught that esper kid that he was supposed to be helping look for. Then Suzuki-sama could have herself a little friend to hang out with.

"….which I didn't think was that bad at all but I didn't say anything and then…." Suzuki-sama had some set of lungs. Well it made sense, she was Suzuki's kid after all, and that man certainly loved to give unnecessarily long speeches. Not that she looked a thing like her dad. Suzuki didn't look Japanese and she was so clearly Japanese. Her brother looked like Suzuki though. Maybe she just looked like her mom…whoever that was. There was actually nothing at all in any of the Claw databases about either of Suzuki's kids.

Weird.

Not that he had been looking too closely. He had mostly just been curious about who would actually want anything to do with Suzuki. He was…well Hatori hadn't exactly gotten up close and personal with the man but he had the personality of a moldy piece of white bread. Who would want that? What girl would ever want to…well the money and the power, probably. Still, even if Hatori had been a girl he would have stayed away from Suzuki.

The man was a certifiable asshole…but he was also the asshole that signed everyone's checks.

"And…um….I've to go. I can feel Minegishi's aura and…um….bye! Happy breakfast for lunch day!" said Suzuki-sama. Hatori could feel it too. He'd never anyone with an aura like his before. One that travelled through things, in his case circuitry and in her case plant life, and he wanted to talk to her about it…and about a million other things. Not now, though, because he had to prepare mentally. He hadn't impressed her the last time they'd met. That was because he hadn't had time to think, to prepare what he was going to say.

He would do better next time.

There would probably be a next time. He sort of knew her, which was good, and he was in good with Suzuki-sama too and that would work in his favor. Yeah, he had this. This was going to work out well. Hopefully very well. Yeah, he had a shot. He had a shot and he had to have confidence and all of that shit that girls loved. He just had to figure out how to get closer to her to where he could actually talk to her and stuff. Maybe he should have gone with Suzuki-sama, she was a pretty lonely kid and it looked like she wanted to make friends with him or something. Or not because then he would have looked like the kind of guy that went out of his way to hang out with ten year old girls and there was not a single person in the world who would find that in any way, shape, or form attractive.

He needed a plan.

He'd come up with one. He already knew, thanks to Suzuki-sama, a little more about the mysterious Minegishi Toshiki. He liked what he heard. He was curious about the gender neutral conjugation, though, he'd have to ask about that later. Next time Suzuki-sama ran into him. Yeah, she'd be a wealth of information. She liked to talk and she liked to talk to him, for some reason, and maybe he would actually start listening now. Yeah, this would work out. He'd see her again ask her a few more questions maybe show her how to get some free games, play a little….what did kids her age like? Minecraft? Mario? Whatever she liked. He'd play whatever she liked with her and take note of what she said…in the least creepy way possible, of course, and he could not stress that enough. He was not weird. He was just going to keep on hanging out with a ten year old…which wouldn't be that weird…because she did seem like she could always use more friends.

She was a pretty lonely kid, after all.