Everyone went back to the Earth from whence they came.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and flesh to Earth. Bodies made for really good fertilizer. All meat did, of course, but human bodies especially. Minegishi didn't know why. They weren't a botanist, they were just chlorokinetic. They controlled plants, they didn't understand them. They didn't have to. Plants were just tools, just a means to an end….

Violent means to a violent end.

"Shut up." Muttered Minegishi. They were crushing the flowers. They knew that they were crushing the flowers. They had no plans to stop crushing the flowers. Stopping crushing the flowers would have involved them getting up…and they did not want to get up. They were going to stay in this spot until the earth reclaimed them. Maybe they would grow into another tree…heh….

A Minegishi family reunion.

They never did find the bodies. The neighbors to the left had sworn up and down that they'd heard screams. The neighbors to the right had said the same. The police had nothing else to go on. Just screams in the night and two missing people. That had been almost a decade ago. Twenty….almost twenty one. It had been nine years since it happened…nine years since they did what had to be done. Nine years since Minegishi Eizo and Anri disappeared. Nine years since this house was sealed up and abandoned. Nine years since Minegishi had been home.

Family reunion time.

"I'm going to crush you on purpose if you don't shut up." Said Minegishi as they rolled over. They could feel the flowers protesting as they dug their back into the ground. Good. That would teach them to talk…no. The flowers could talk to them…that was alright now. They weren't crazy. There wasn't a single person alive who had the balls to tell them that they were crazy. They weren't crazy and….and they had made their point.

They weren't crazy.

They hated that word. Crazy. You're a crazy little girl, Toshiki, and crazy little girls have to sleep outside. Crazy little girls don't get dinner. Crazy little girls don't get to sleep at all. Crazy little girls don't get to eat at all. You can come back inside when you're done being crazy. You can eat when you're done being crazy. What's wrong with you? Why did you have to be like this? Why can't you be normal? You need the crazy knocked out of you. You need to pay for what you put this family through. You're crazy. You're a mistake. You should have been aborted. We should have left you at the hospital. What did we do to deserve this?

A hell of a lot of things.

"Shut up and let me sleep…and that goes for the two of you, too." Said Minegishi. They kicked the two trees at their legs. An Ume tree and a peach tree. Both were in season at the same time, actually both were ever bearing. Some of their best work if they did say so themselves. The first every bearing trees that they had ever made. Not an easy feat at all, not without a hell of a lot of nutrients, and possibly a human soul. They had never managed to do this with anything other than a still living human body, not without taking everything they had and then some, so they assumed that a human soul was necessary. Maybe an animal soul would have worked too but they were not in the business of killing animals. No, that was a sign of sociopathy and they were not a sociopath…or maybe it was a sign of psychopathy….but they weren't a psychopath either. What they were was…stupid. They were stupid and selfish and, yes, a burden onto anyone who they'd ever come into contact with. They were ok with that…well they had been…before everything got to be too much. Before there were all of these…people…around them…and all of those people wanted everything that they were and everything that they had…and they had nothing and they were nothing. They were nothing at all.

They were plant food.

If they had wanted to commit suicide then they knew how. They could have stepped in front of a train or filled their pockets with rocks and walked out into the ocean…hell, they could have just eaten seven pounds of apple seeds and died of cyanide poisoning. They weren't trying to commit suicide, though, they were just trying to…to stop already….to make it all stop….

But it never stopped.

Story of their life. No matter what shit show they were trapped in there was no way in hell to make any of it stop. There was no way to make the gnawing pain in their stomach stop or the empty feeling inside…no way to warm up…no way to cool down…no way to do anything. They were stuck, trapped, and even if they managed to get out they always came back. They did something to ruin what they had because that was what they were. They were a ruiner. They ruined their own life and the lives of others…and they just wanted to…to make it stop already….

Too late to go back to sleep.

The sun was hitting them right across the eyes. It had moved, specifically, to fuck with them. Wake up, Minegishi, it said. Get up off the ground and shake off the dirt. Maybe find something to eat and then after that you can go into the house and see if the water is still running. You need a shower, baths are dangerous, and then you need to change clothes too. Maybe you should go and see about heading back over to Mob. She's probably worried. Ryou too, he doesn't deal well with things like this, and he needs you to ground him before he does something stupid. You shouldn't just leave everyone even if you did fuck everything up. That's what you did, you know, what you do best. You're not just good at controlling plants and keeping a bed warm, no, you're good at ruining lives, too. You sure as fuck ruined Mob's, didn't you? You turned an eight year old girl into a twelve year old stoner and budding alcoholic. Are you happy with yourself? Are you please? Did you want to do this? Did you-

Shut. Up.

They banged their head against the ground in an effort to shake the thoughts out. It didn't work. Their head was still full of these thoughts…thoughts about…well pretty much everything that they had ever done wrong in their life. Like a highlight reel…or a lowlight reel. Mob…Ryou….Jun….anyone and everyone they'd fucked over. They reached into their bag and felt around…empty flask…empty pill bottle….not good. They were shaking a little…or a lot. That was never a good sign. At this point they would have just tracked down a healer…or weaned themselves off of all the shit they put in their body…but weaning was out of the question since they were out of just about everything….and seeking out that pathetic excuse for a man was out of the question since Mob had banished him. Just about the only proactive thing that she had ever done in her life. That was Minegishi's fault. When you numbed yourself to the world then the world stopped mattering. Nothing mattered. You just slept and ate and ate and slept until you stopped eating and you were only sleeping…

But that was out of the question now.

They needed to get up. They needed to re-up. Their hands were shaking…the rest of their body would follow suit. Seizures were never fun. They'd had three in their life, one when they were sixteen, one when they were twenty one, and one when they were twenty three. Withdrawal was a bitch…always had been and always would be…and that was why they had learned to count their pills and measure their drinks….but all of that had fallen by the wayside…

Of course they had fucked Mob's life up. Look at what they had done with their own.

"Damn it…." Said Minegishi. They ran a hand through their hair…and felt something crawling. They let whatever it was crawl onto their hand fully before they pulled their hand from their hair. That was…a beetle. A normal garden beetle. Well this had been their garden. No matter how many times mom and dad pulled it up or burnt it down or even salted the earth this would always be their garden. They could see the ghosts of it, the imprint, the survivors. Those leaves over there were sweet potatoes…and in the corner was the last of the dandelion patch….and right there above their head was where they had tried their hand at growing opium. That shit was a pain to process but when they figured it out…well life got a hell of a lot more bearable. They had still been hungry and tired…but it stopped bothering them at least. No more worries…for a time. About clothes or food or the next thing that they would do wrong. Just…them…out here in the middle of the night making life more bearable.

They ate the beetle.

Bitter. Unpleasant. Crunchy. Food. There was nothing wrong with eating bugs. They had never been disgusted, not since they had read that magazine with the article about the people who ate fried crickets. The library had always been a good source of knowledge. Which bugs were good to eat, which plants were poisonous, that smoking opium was a thing….they wondered if that library was still there. They weren't about to check, though, and not because they didn't feel like getting up and walking around.

Suzuki was here.

He was that big patch of red out on the horizon. He had something to do with the power outages, maybe, and the earth tremors. Something was going down, maybe something that they were needed for, maybe they were a defector at this point. Maybe there were people coming to drag them away to rot in a traitor hole or something. Maybe this was the end of Minegishi Toshiki. Maybe this was how it all ended…

Or maybe they were just being dramatic.

Suzuki was off on his own bullshit. Mob had made herself perfectly clear, she didn't want to deal with her dad and his shit anymore. The second most proactive thing that she had ever done in her life. She was growing up…and some of that was Minegishi's fault. Well not the growing up part, that was time's fault, but the way that she was growing up. She was like….Minegishi was not going to EVER have kids. Ryou wanted them, he had practically gotten down on his hands and knees and begged them for a kid, but it wasn't going to happen. If Mob was any indication of their parental abilities then, yeah, any hypothetical kid that they conceived was better off in a medical waste bin than with them as a parent. Mob…she could have been…something other than the second coming of Minegishi. She could have been…well….her life as going to be shit no matter what since she had both won and lost the genetic lottery. She was the second most powerful esper in the world…but she was born into one of the worst families she could have been born in.

There were different kinds of terrible.

There was always something worse. Life always got worse…and worse in different ways. Sure when they had gotten out of this…this house…they had gotten three square meals a day. They'd had a bed to sleep in every single night. They'd been able to shower whenever they needed to….in a room with twenty other people. Twenty other terrible people….not enough food…clothes that never fit right….a building that was just….another four walls and a roof. A place to warehouse them until they hit the age of majority and then got kicked out on their ass like every other little lost orphan….not that they had been an orphan…a true orphan….well they were an orphan now…

And they had gotten two new fruit trees from it.

Not that they would eat the fruit. They wondered if it counted as a form of cannibalism, eating fruit from a tree that was made from dead people, and they wondered if they ever should have cared. This was good food…they had come to a point in their life when they could throw away good food. They were exactly where they had always wanted to be….they laughed. A little….and then a lot….and then even more than a lot. They didn't know the exact word for it. More words would come to them later….they hadn't read anything in a while….they didn't feel like reading. They didn't feel like doing anything other than sitting there, on the ground, eating beetles like they were five years old again…or six…seven…eight…nine…ten….whatever age they had been when they had stopped this…completely. When their life had gotten 'better'. When things had become a hell of a lot better….they were living the best life….the best life for them…

The life that they had always wanted.

They were powerful. Nobody fucked with them, they fucked with others. They had food, clean clothes, money, and….and love. They had people who loved them. Hell, they had a boyfriend of all things…a real boyfriend…not an older guy who felt like fucking someone who went looking for love in the worst way possible. Who mistook everything that they had to give, and everything that they were given, for love…they had a person who loved them…and they had another person who loved them…but in a totally different way….someone small who looked up to them…someone who cared about them…someone who…who…

Someone who came looking for them.

They put their hand to the ground. They could feel….well they could feel a whole lot of Suzuki. He was bright…they had never seen him this bright before. Maybe someone was going to die. Maybe that day he had always been talking about had come. Maybe they were missing Suzuki's hostile takeover of the world. They kept their hand to the ground. They could feel…another Suzuki. The grass, the flowers, the roots….they were talking about something…something big. Suzuki…but not the Suzuki that they had been feeling. Mob? Mob…no. That wasn't…she…she didn't know where they were. She knew that they were from Osaka but….but she knew that she was better off without them. She had better friends than Minegishi, friends that looked after her, and a better parental figure than Minegishi had ever been. Mob should have been off having the time of her life at Disneyland or…or Sanrio…or maybe that little amusement park that had been there when Minegishi had been a kid. The one that they'd gone on a group home trip to. The one where they had gotten tetanus on the Ferris wheel and food poisoning from what they had assumed had once been a sandwich. Mob…Mob had access to planes. She could have been literally anywhere else in the world…

So what in the hell was she doing here?

Minegishi closed their eyes and rolled over onto their side. They reached out with their powers and made the grass grow tall around them. The tall grass was dangerous, mom and dad had warned them about it back when they had been a person worth caring about. The tall grass had mice…it had rats…it had snakes…it had murders. Well Minegishi wasn't afraid of mice and rats and snakes…but mom and dad had been right about the murderers in the tall grass. They kicked the trees again, one for mom and one for dad. Any more would have been too much. They were long gone from this world, of course, their spirits had passed into the trees almost instantly. They wondered if mom and dad could have been counted as being truly dead…these were ever bearing trees after all. Maybe they were in that in between state, between life and death, like flowers in a vase…or a Christmas tree…or Minegishi themselves.

Waiting.

Waiting to live, waiting to die, waiting for an absolution that might never come. Minegishi at least had autonomy in their waiting, they had earned that. They had suffered for years and years and years to earn that….and what had they done with it? What had they done with all of their hard earned autonomy? Come back to the one place that they swore to themselves that they would never return to. They had a whole world open to them and yet, for some reason, they had come HERE of all places. Heh. Mob and them were two of a kind, now weren't they? Mob had come here too…for her dad…if they were even feeling Mob. Their hand tremored in the grass. They might have just been imagining things. They might have just given themselves brain damage, finally, or maybe they were even dying. Maybe this was just what their brain had to do before….it all happened…not that they wanted anything to happen…they just wanted….they wanted to sleep….

But that was not an option.

An aura…a familiar one…and it was getting close. They heard the rusty gate swinging opened. They heard a twig snap. They heard footsteps, light ones, but hurried. They tucked themselves deeper into the tall grass. Mob was there…and maybe if she couldn't find them then she would go away and live her life. She finally had some autonomy in her life, she needed to use it for something other than chasing after the person who….who had ruined her life. Minegishi curled up into a ball. Defensive…though they had no idea what they were being so defensive about. Their bracelet got caught in the grass.

They pulled it out.

Which, in retrospect, hadn't been the best idea. The charm on the end, their half of the best friend heart, jingled as it hit their wrist. They stayed perfectly still…but even without the noise Mob would have known that they were there. Their aura was touching ever single living plant within their old backyard. They were probably as bright as Suzuki right now. Mob…she should have been going after her own father, telling him off, or at least making him beg her forgiveness. She should have been literally anywhere else….literally anywhere than standing right beside Minegishi….looking down on them. They opened their eyes and looked up. Mob looked back down.

"Hi."