Hatori had been about ready to go home three countries ago.
Moving around was more fun when there were other people to move with. He liked Suzuki and all but it was just…suffocating…being his best friend sometimes. Maybe because Hatori was also his only friend. Hatori was now Fukuda because Fukuda had decided to run off to parts unknown, otherwise known as Seoul, and until Fukuda ever decided to come back from what Hatori assumed was couch surfing Hatori was going to be Fukuda for the foreseeable future.
Which was going to be very long if everything went well.
Hatori liked Suzuki, he was actually a pretty alright guy when you got to know him, but Hatori wasn't about to spend the rest of his life following Suzuki around and being his best friend. Nope. He did not have…however long Suzuki planned on living for….to deal with his angry moping. That was the word for it, angry moping, though Minegishi probably would have had a better one. Shimazaki probably would have had some long string of curses. Sho would have imitated him since he worshipped the ground Shimazaki walked on. Mob would have told Sho to knock it off. Shibata would have just gone off and made them something good…like pancakes…or crepes…or that thing where he pounded a chicken flat and filled it with garlic butter…or maybe he would make homemade poptarts…
Pretty much anything would have been better than eating ketchup bread out of a cupcake tin…and he didn't care what Suzuki liked but he was never eating that again. Ever.
And he was not going to put himself, again, in the position where Suzuki made him dinner. He didn't think that it counted as a meal if it was just bread and ketchup…but he wasn't going to fight Suzuki on that. Suzuki…well he didn't like to be argued with…but it was possible to argue with him. Hatori was close enough to him, a good enough friend to him, that he could argue with Suzuki sometimes. Not for real, like friends did, like best friends did…
He was ok with being Suzuki's friend…but best friend…well that was a whole other thing.
Hatori had never had a best friend before. Well he hadn't ever had that many friends in his life. There had been kids he played with sometimes when he'd been little….but then it had been a whole lot of nothing until he made friends with Mob. Then he got a shit ton of friends and a new life which mostly consisted of hanging out, playing games, hiding money, and occasionally ruining someone's life…though if people didn't want their lives ruined then they shouldn't have pissed Suzuki off, they shouldn't have gone against Claw, and they shouldn't have been doing weird shit on the internet. That had been his life for years…and then Suzuki texted him one day and told him to pack…and now they'd been alone together for almost two months….
Two very long months.
Hatori…liked being liked. He liked having someone who wanted him around, someone who needed him, and someone who trusted him…and also gave him way more power than he had ever thought that he would have had in his life. Power he was using for good. Suzuki tortured people, beat the shit out of them, left them to die, an generally was a fan of inflicting pain onto people who pissed him off. Hatori would have thought that he was a sadist if it hadn't been for his search history...he really missed his wife...and the wife missing thing might have contribute to the fact that since she had left Suzuki had dug more traitor holes than ever before and filled them with mice and broken glass and shrimp cola for some reason. Well Hatori used his newfound power over others not to torture them but to…well to torture them…but not with torture. Which was better? Dying in a hole or getting sand dumped inside of your uniform? Obviously the sand thing…and it was funnier too. Hatori was doing good. Mob, if she knew about the traitor hole thing, would have been happy that Hatori had found an alternative. She couldn't know, though ,because she wasn't ready to know about that stuff…and also she was Mob. She was made out of strawberry milk and sunshine or whatever. She was away too young to know about what really happened in Claw….actually she'd probably never be old enough.
She…didn't take things well, bad things like that, but that wasn't her fault. Not with a dad like hers.
"What the hell…." Said Suzuki as he stared at the screen in front of him like it had pissed in his ketchup or something. Hatori couldn't believe it either. He had just beaten Suzuki's high score, well high score for that day, without even using his powers.
The student surpassed the master…and Hatori would have gloated if the master didn't look like he was about to kill everyone in Osaka just so that there would be no witnesses to Hatori's victory.
"Wow boss, I've never heard you curse before." Said Hatori. Wow. He had made Suzuki Touichirou, bastion of clean speech that he was, curse. Amazing. He should have been recording this. Maybe then the next time Suzuki decided to get all upset over the way Hatori spoke he could just say 'ha! You're a hypocrite' and then Suzuki would probably slap him over the head and get all huffy for the rest the day.
Or kill him, that was always an option too. It wasn't like he couldn't make another best friend…or find his old one.
"And you never will again. Now stop cheating and move over." Said Suzuki as he pushed Hatori away from the Space Invaders cabinet, a real cabinet not the old style ones where you had to hunch over and kill your back to play. Hatori had planned for that, Suzuki was always rubbing his back and complaining about it too. Hatori had planned for a lot of things.
Pretty much for everything.
This place, for one thing, was the perfect date spot. Not for him, not unless he REALLY felt like replacing Fukuda, no. This was for Suzuki and that girl he was always texting with. Sakata Shiori. She was pretty in a milfy sort of way, nice to Suzuki even though he'd totally ghosted her after they hooked up, and she could stand to be in Suzuki's presence for more than was strictly necessary. She was perfect. She liked Suzuki, Suzuki liked her, and maybe having a girlfriend or at least getting laid would get him out of this weird…mopey…thing that he was stuck in. Then maybe he could make peace with his kids and then everything could go back to normal and Hatori could go home already.
Or to wherever the group was right now.
"I wasn't cheating. Maybe you're just getting slow in your old age." Said Hatori. He smiled when he said it, nice and big so Suzuki would pick up that he was kidding. Suzuki mostly read auras and Hatori's was hard to read, especially in a place like this. He could feel himself spread around into all of these retro arcade cabinets. He could have declared himself the all-time champion on the universe on all of these machines if he had wanted to…but he didn't. Suzuki didn't like cheating and Hatori needed to keep him here and happy until his girlfriend showed up and they had a meet cute like in one of those movies Mob and Minegishi watched all the time. Then Suzuki would forget his wife, get laid, go back to his kids, say that he was sorry, stop being so weird about women, and then everything would go back to what passed for normal around here.
See? Hatori wasn't a baby after all now as he? He was perfectly capable of getting shit done.
"I'm forty five, that's hardly old." Said Suzuki without looking over from what he was doing.
"I was kidding." Said Hatori. How a guy who was so smart could be so dense he would never know. Suzuki just…didn't get it sometimes. He was clueless as hell, even worse than Mob, and Mob…well she at least had an excuse, she was a kid, and also he would never hold what happened against her. He was just going to let this fade into an embarrassing memory to be brought up while they decorated Christmas cookies or something….if he even made it back to everyone in time for Christmas….of course he would.
He knew Suzuki. This was going to work out. It had to.
"Oh. Well don't…and also remember that with age comes experience…and also remember that this was easier when I was younger and these machines were newer." Said Suzuki
"What's that got to do with it?" asked Hatori
"It was easier to see what was happening. Obviously the screen has degraded or something." Said Suzuki
"Are you sure that you don't just need glasses?" asked Hatori
"No. I've had perfect vision for my entire life. I do not need glasses." Said Suzuki
"Uh-huh, then why are you squinting right now?" asked Hatori
"Because…pixels are terrible. If this game had been in vectors then it would have been much easier to play." Said Suzuki
"Vectors? Gross." Said Hatori
"You honestly think that? I've seen you biting your toenails and you honestly think-" said Suzuki
"Hey, you do the same thing." Said Hatori
"…how do you know that?" asked Suzuki
"Because I've seen you do it, and anyway I didn't mean gross like that. I meant gross like ugly. Vectors suck. It's just lines in one color. At least you can get a lot of different colors out of pixels." Said Hatori
"What is your generation's obsession with colors and graphics? It wouldn't harm you to just take this as a test of skill and not a form of entertainment." Said Suzuki
"Well maybe it's because we have the tech to have more than one color at a time." Said Hatori
"Young people." Said Suzuki
"Old people." Said Hatori
"I am not old." Said Suzuki. He actually sounded a little bit pissed off there. Hatori…maybe needed to stop poking at the age thing. He wasn't old, well not old-old, he was more like…dad old. Like all the other guys here. This was a bar on the first floor and a retro arcade on the second. So pretty much just a bunch of guy's Suzuki's age. Hatori was, again. The youngest person in the room….so maybe Suzuki wasn't old. Maybe Hatori was just too young.
He was sick of being the youngest…and maybe Suzuki was sick of being the oldest.
"Fine, middle aged people then." Said Hatori with a wave of his hand. Suzuki watched him out of the corner of his eye…and then died. He forgot to move his ship and a stray missile blew him up. He hadn't even gotten close to Hatori's high score. This victory felt…like a victory….but of course Hatori was going to handle this with all the mature grace that he always did.
"Say nothing." Said Suzuki
"Nothing." Said Hatori. There was a flash of Suzuki's aura. Hatori was glad that they hadn't gotten drinks, Suzuki didn't drink and he had this thing against Hatori drinking. If they had been drinking then their drinks would have tipped over like everyone else's did. God, well someone was a sore loser.
"What did I just say?" asked Hatori
"You said to say nothing so that's what I did. I said nothing." Said Hatori
"I…can see how you misinterpreted what I've said. I apologize. I hadn't spoken as precisely as I should have." Said Suzuki. He was looking at Hatori now, really looking at him, and he actually looked spry. Hatori couldn't believe that just a couple of years ago he'd been scared of this guy. He actually seemed nice there. Well he was nice...kind of like hos a sour bomb was sweet. You just had to get through all the sour to get to the sweet, just like you had to hang out with Suzuki one on one for YEARS before he started talking to you like a person.
Not that Hatori minded.
It was always good to have someone on his side….and it was always good to have a friend. He'd never had many and he wasn't about to go and complain just because his….best? His best friend was kind of an asshole most of the time. He…well he liked where they were right now. Suzuki was kind of an asshole but he also kind of wasn't. He needed to keep them at this level of friendship…for reasons. All kinds of reasons. Reasons like…well…Hatori did not want to end up like Fukuda! He didn't want to end up a jaded asshole who had it in for Mob of all people…and also…also he didn't want to move into that kind of friendship territory with Suzuki…
Suzuki made out with his best friends and thought that it was normal. Hatori…did not need that in his life right now.
"I'm fine. You want to go and play…asteroids? Since you love vectors graphics and all." said Hatori
"I didn't say that you loved them I said that they were the easiest to see…and Asteroids isn't that good. It takes too long to get a feel for controlling the ship and two player isn't easy either." Said Suzuki
"There's two player Asteroids?" asked Hatori
"Yes, of course. One person steers and the other person shoots. I'm good at both but Tadashi is good at neither….I think that you would be good at steering. You see well…better than I do…but that's just because you wear glasses…which I do not need. If I needed glasses then I would have needed them…and I don't." said Suzuki. Hatori ignored the glasses thing and focused on the whole Fukuda's given name thing. He didn't want to be in that category…and Suzuki was feeling nostalgic….and Hatori didn't want him to feel that kind of nostalgic. Not the making out behind the arcade nostalgic that he got the feeling Suzuki was thinking about….
Hatori…was happy that Suzuki considered him a friend…but he could have spent a nice long life not knowing about what Fukuda and Suzuki got up to when they were young and Hatori, thankfully, hadn't been born yet.
"What are your top ten vector games?" asked Hatori. That was a good way to redirect him. Suzuki needed to be nudged in a new direction just so long and he didn't know that he was being steered. It wasn't that hard, though, it wasn't like Hatori had to be a master manipulator or anything. He just had to know Suzuki. He liked videogames, he liked lists, and he liked debating Hatori about why his taste was the most superior taste in the world and that Hatori knew nothing about anything.
"Ten is too many. Shorten the list to five." Said Suzuki
"Fine, what are your top five?" asked Hatori
"Tempest, Lunar Lander, Asteroids, Cube Quest, and both Star Wars games." Said Suzuki with a shrug. There. He was off the nostalgia train…well the one he didn't need to be on when he was with Hatori, and now he was back to discussing what they discussed best. This should hold them until his girlfriend showed up.
Where in the hell was this woman.
This wasn't too far from her HQ, people had to have told her that they were in town, and she didn't have anything else to do today. Hatori had checked her schedule. She didn't have anything down for after work, a few people had matched with her but he fixed that before she even noticed, and just to be safe he'd added tonight's episodes of Love on a Bus and Love Bus to her DVR. He'd also changed the delivery dates on some Amazon packages so she didn't have an excuse to run off. Nope. She was going to go out with Suzuki and then things were going to get back to normal around here.
As normal as things could be in Claw.
"I can't believe Asteroids was on your list. I thought you hated it." Said Hatori
"I don't hate it, it's just not my first choice. It's not fun playing two player-" said Suzuki
"It's not meant to be a two player game." Said Hatori
"Don't interrupt me…and anything can be a two player game if you try hard enough." Said Suzuki
"Not everything." Said Hatori
"Don't contradict me…and yes, everything. As long as there's more than one button anything can be a two player game." Said Suzuki
"What about…um….claw machines?" asked Hatori as his eyes danced around the room. It was getting kind of crowded in here now as the after work crowd shuffled in. Suzuki hated crowds. A few people was ok but more than that and he would try and leave. There weren't a lot of people over by the claw machines…and that could keep them busy if neither of them used their powers. Also Suzuki might win something that he could give to his girlfriend. Hatori had never had a girlfriend before, the closest he had ever come was having a ten year old get a crush on him that he HAD NOT returned, but he had played a lot of dating sims and seen a lot of movies.
Tasteful movies.
Girls loved it when you won them things. They squealed and jumped up and down and kissed you and stuff. Also they liked it when you bought them things, too, and Suzuki had more money than God so just so long as this girl could look past his weirdness then everything would work out. He needed this to work out for both of them. Hatori needed to go home, get back to everyone, and Suzuki…well he needed to get laid.
With someone other than Fukuda…not that Suzuki had ever told him about…that…happening…but he wouldn't have put that past those two horny, closeted, weirdos.
"Those only have one button." Said Suzuki
"Yeah…ok. But sometimes…well they have two…" said Hatori. He had to figure out how to get Suzuki to go over there…and how he was going to make Suzuki think that this was his idea. Suzuki liked it when Hatori followed his lead, he was the president of Claw after all, and Hatori…well he didn't want to know what Suzuki did to people who manipulated him.
"Hatori…do you want to try the claw machine?" asked Suzuki
"Well if you want to." said Hatori. Well that was easy. Right. Suzuki liked him…and thought he was a kid. Suzuki actually did have feelings, and sometimes they came out when he talked. He was like Mob, or maybe it made more sense to say that Mob got it from him. Suzuki was a hard guy to read. You really had to spend a lot of time with him to hear all the little tones….
And right now he was using the same tone that dad had used when Hatori wanted to do something ridiculous.
"I don't, actually, so you can go and play on your own. I'm ready to go home." Said Suzuki. No, no, no! This was not happening. Hatori had put in way to much work for this to end now. He had brought them here, timed the whole thing down to the second…minute...hour….he'd put thought in it! All kinds of thought! Thought and manipulation and…and…and subterfuge and…and…and come hell or complete system death he was going to get Suzuki laid!
And then he was going to start putting this kind of work into his own love life….or just hi regular life….who was he kidding? He was going to play videogames with Suzuki and maybe Serizawa for twelve hours a day.
"Wait!" said Hatori. He reached over and almost grabbed Suzuki's hand. He put up a barrier between them. Hatori banged his hand on an invisible wall…damn it. That was going to hurt tomorrow…but he could worry about it tomorrow. He had a mission…well something that really needed doing.
"For what?" asked Suzuki
"Wait for…um….us to win something?" asked Hatori
"Play on your own. It's a one player game like you just said." Said Suzuki
"But….uh…..we could make it two player, like you said." Said Hatori
"Well I would prefer not to." Said Suzuki. He turned around…and that time Hatori managed to make physical contact with him. Suzuki looked down and shook Hatori's hand off of his sleeve. He glared. He Hatori…well he knew that he wasn't going to die and that was what mattered. Suzuki beat his friends up, told you personal stories that you never wanted to hear, and also tried to spoon them…but he didn't kill his friends…and they were friends.
"What?" asked Suzuki
"Um….I'm scared to be here on my own?" asked Hatori. Suzuki liked being the most powerful person in the world. If he thought that Hatori needed him to keep him safe well then that was good for his ego…and Suzuki Touichirou was mostly ego.
"Then come back with me. I admit that the growing crowd is…disconcerting….so why not just come home with me?" asked Suzuki
"Because I really want to win something?" asked Hatori. He sounded like a kid there…and that was the point .Suzuki though that he was a kid so he had might as well play it up…even though it felt gross. He wasn't a kid, he was a grown man, but…well no matter where he went or what he did he would always be the youngest…well next to the actual kids. Maybe it would be better when the actual kids grew up.
Of course it wouldn't matter if the actual kids grew up if Suzuki was avoiding them and dragging Hatori all over the world with him.
"You are such a child sometimes. Fine, come on. I'll just-" said Suzuki
"Without cheating….because its more…honest. Yeah, it's more honest that way." said Hatori. Suzuki raised an eyebrow…and Hatori did not so much as smile even though it looked like there was a caterpillar trying to crawl up his face.
"Since when do you care about honesty?" asked Suzuki
"Since you accused me of cheating at Space Invaders." Said Hatori. He held eye contact with Suzuki. Suzuki sighed and shook his head.
"You know, sometimes you're more of a child than my actual children…come on. Let's go and win you something so we can go home." Said Suzuki. Hatori waited until Suzuki's back was turned to smile…and maybe do a hard earned fist pump. This was going great…more than great. He felt an aura getting close. He didn't know that aura…he pulled out his phone as he walked. He closed his eyes and looked in the security cameras…yup. There she was. The future Missus Suzuki…or whatever they felt like doing. Hatori didn't care where their relationship went, just that he went home when Suzuki got out of whatever mopey mess he'd gotten into.
This was great.
Well…it might not have been great. First of all Suzuki, even without telekinesis, was good at the claw machine. Like, really good. Like, good enough that Hatori had to make him lose. He tried to be subtle…and maybe he didn't have to be. He could feel where Suzuki's aura was focused. He was shifting in place a lot and his eyes were darting around. He was nervous….what was he so nervous about? He had three kids and this girl liked him….he would never understand Suzuki even if they were best friends for the next thirty years…or however long Suzuki planned on living for.
Hopefully he would live a long and happy life with his girlfriend and not Hatori.
"Hey, you almost had it there. If we try again-" said Hatori
"You try. I have to go. I have to-" said Suzuki. The floor shook under his feet. Hatori…well he didn't want to die in a building collapse…but he also had no idea when he would have a chance like this. He needed to fix Suzuki, and now, before he ended up like Fukuda…and he couldn't think of anything worse than ending up like Fukuda.
Well dying in a heap…no….being Fukuda was worse.
Apparently being Suzuki's friend for a long time turned you into…that. It made you a jerk, the kin of jerk that treated Mob like….the way he treated Mob…. Hatori was not going to become that…and also the making out. He did not need to wake up one day to Suzuki being all 'Hatori, I'm going to kiss you in the most heterosexual way possible' or however the weird kisses that Suzuki and Fukuda shared together.
Well now Suzuki had someone else to be as heterosexual as possible with.
"Touichirou?" asked the answer to all of Hatori's prayers. There, behind them, was Sakata Shiori. Suzuki was very still. Maybe he thought that she was a t-rex or something. Maybe he thought that if he was very still she wouldn't be able to see him. Well it wouldn't be able to work if he didn't stop his aura from flaring…and if he didn't stop messing with the electricity. Everything in the room went off and then on again…and that hadn't been good for anyone. Suzuki was tense as hell and…and maybe this hadn't been the best idea….
Maybe he kind of…needed to test if he could fit between arcade cabinets….or claw machines…or the air ducts…and this place did have pretty nice bathrooms….
Nope. He was not a kid and he couldn't do that…right now. Later. He could freak out when he got back to the house. Right now he needed to keep Suzuki from freaking out. Hatori grabbed him by the arm and turned him around. Another best friend privileged. Anyone else would have been dead the minute they made contact with Suzuki. All Suzuki did was shrug his hand off.
But he did turn around.
"Shiori…Sakata-san I mean….hello. What brings you here?" asked Suzuki. For as much shit as he gave Hatori Suzuki was acting like the young one. He was shaking and sweating…and his voice even broke there. Hatori wished that he had a camera…well he did have a camera, he had every camera, and…well this needed to be recorded for future generations…or maybe just so Hatori had something to laugh at later.
"What brings me here? What brings you here?" asked Sakata
"I…said that Hatori wanted to go to this arcade. This is Hatori. He wanted to be here…and now were here…and now we can leave-" said Suzuki
"Or you guys can hang out! I mean…I um….I'm going to the bathroom…I mean to get a drink! And I can get you guys something too." Said Hatori. There. He'd give them time to work out how she got here and then he'd get Suzuki drunk….yeah. He'd be home in no time.
"I don't drink and neither should-" said Suzuki
"Get me a lemon sour, actually make it two." Said Sakata. Hatori felt something shove him…that was Suzuki. He was red and his aura was all over the place…and maybe getting him drunk…wasn't the best thing. Maybe this was that 'thinking things through' thing that people were always going on about…why did an arcade also have to be a bar? Why did…he wasn't going to question it and he wasn't going to question himself. Suzuki always said that once you decided on something then you had to make it happen. Self-doubt was the worst thing and if you were confident then you could do anything….and Hatori…well he was inclined to believe the guy who was going to take over the world.
"You heard her, go...but only get water for yourself. You know that you can't handle your liquor." Said Suzuki. Hatori tried his best to bite his tongue and tell Suzuki that he was a grown man and he could drink if he felt like it. He was not going to get into it now. Once he got back home then he could do whatever he wanted….well everyone thought that he was a kid there too…but at least…he'd worry about that later.
Right now he had a job to do.
He left when he was told to leave. He didn't need to be there and listen to Suzuki recount the last time Hatori had been drunk…he could still kind of hear…well he was not going to tell Suzuki's girlfriend that he had been on mushrooms, not drunk, last Halloween. He didn't need to scare her off. He needed to keep her here, with Suzuki, and if that meant putting up with endless embarrassing stories or whatever then that was what it was going to be. He'd put up with just about anything at this point.
Anything to go home.