This new batch of Awakened wasn't going to be much use.

"Put your qi into it." said Tsuchiya as she made her rounds through the group. Nothing. Individually they were all weak. Together they could have been something formidable…if they could even work together. Two of them were already poking each other….great. President Suzuki said that he needed at least five hundred, preferably a thousand, Awakened soldiers to take and keep Seasoning City. She was lucky to get one out of this batch.

Great.

"You want me to whip them into shape? I have an actual whip." Said Sakurai as he recursed his sword. He got the feeling that he was going to need it. This latest batch left a lot to be desired. Most batches of Awakened did. He wondered why President Suzuki even bothered with them anymore. It made more sense to just find children from orphanages and then work from there. it wasn't as though this place could possibly be any worse.

"Is it cursed?" asked Tsuchiya. Well that certainly got their attention. She wouldn't be actually whipping them into shape with a whip, that would have been cruel, but she was going to put the fear of God into them. Or maybe just the fear of President Suzuki.

"It can be." Said Sakurai

"I'll put a pin in that….you all heard me, right? Either shape up or you'll be shaped up!" said Tsuchiya. The threat instantly got them all back in line, especially the two pokers back there. She didn't much like using threats. She used to, back before Mukai, back before she knew better. Positive reinforcement worked better but she didn't have that option. Her hands were tied. President Suzuki gave his orders to Ishiguro and Ishiguro bent over backwards to make them happen. Which meant, of course, that everyone else had to do the bending over backwards.

The joys of being a Scar again.

She had never really given much thought to her station before. She had just been happy to be in a place where she could make a real difference in the world. That was what she had been promised, anyway. Join Claw and make the world a better place for all of esper kind. Join Claw and you won't have to hide in the shadows anymore. Join Claw and have the freedom to do whatever you want. Go where you want to go, do what you want to do. It was possible, of course, if you made it into the highest of the upper echelons. The most inner of inner circles…

It was overrated.

President Suzuki's inner circle. It wasn't much of anything aside from a lot of boredom and one never ending today. President Suzuki himself….he wasn't even that interesting of a man. He was powerful, but that didn't compensate for the fact that he was…himself. Otherworldly in some ways, when he stared at you, but annoying in others. Like when he let Mukai take him on an odyssey to Busan or wherever else it was that he let her take him to. He could be downright illogical when it came to his children….it had been interesting to pull the curtain back on the man, to see what he was really like.

But now there wasn't any more curtain left to pull.

He was a bad father, a big dork, and occasionally just incredibly….unnerving. He had the strangest priorities and even stranger relationships with people. The strangest thing of all was that he had found not one, not two, but three women to put up with him and all if his….whatever it was that a person could call it. The world was a strange place and Tsuchiya had seen enough of it. The boredom was one thing but the constant stress of moving…packing and unpacking…getting Mukai accumulated to another country and time zone….it was just so much….

It wasn't worth it.

Being a Scar didn't come with as much respect but it was more rewarding. Even if she did have to deal with Ishiguro on a daily basis it was still worth it. She at least always had something to do even if that something was to train the Awakened. There was no way she was getting a single Awakened soldier out of these people let alone five hundred. There was no way to squeeze blood from a stone, not unless you cut your own hand, and Tsuchiya didn't want to do that. She was just going to have to face the music later on…even though none of this was her fault.

An artificial esper and a natural esper were like night and day.

It was like the difference between the Suzuki family and everyone else. The Suzuki's…they should not have existed. Nobody should have had access to as much qi as President Suzuki and his children…and yes, she was counting Mukai. She was getting better at harnessing her qi now, she could open the refrigerator on her own now, but she shouldn't have been able to harness anything at her age. At least not substantially. When Tsuchiya had been three she had been strong, an unusually good at climbing, but she hadn't been able to move things without touching them…maybe her aversion was just to telekinesis.

She was largely a close range fighter after all.

The Suzuki's were all telekinetic. There was no way to win a fight against someone with that powerset. Not unless they were weak. Most telekinetic espers, the awakening lab made a lot of them, could barely bend a spoon. President Suzuki had been able to lift her, on the day they fought, literally without lifting a finger. Shigeko was the same. Tsuchiya had seen her lift entire rooms without even trying, just because she'd lost something, or because she lost control. Sho…he was the weakest out of the four of them if you didn't count Mukai. He was strong but he never used it. No, he only threw physical tantrums.

She thanked God for the small miracles.

It was hard enough to corral the Awakened, sometimes, and they barely could do anything. President Suzuki had left her to take care of his only son….and it was hard. Sho didn't have to listen to her. She imagined that Sho outranked her as the heir to all of this even though, unlike Shigeko, he wasn't on any official Claw….anything. Shigeko actually did rank, she was just below President Suzuki, but Sho…it didn't make a lot of sense, since he was the son after all, but it also made all the sense. President Suzuki REALLY did not like him. At all. She didn't know why. Sho was a very nice boy when you got to know him….but President Suzuki wasn't a very nice man at all….

So that must have been it.

He was good to his daughters, until they got too old, but terrible to his sons….it wasn't her place to offer up her opinions on his parenting….but if she was still around next Christmas Santa might leave a parenting book in his stocking. She didn't know how he could have done quite as badly as he had with all resources they had at their disposal. It had never been easier to raise a child but here he was going his own way. Even Hiroshi had cracked opened a couple of books since they had gotten together and he wasn't even a father.

Not yet.

She wasn't going to try until the insurrection was over and things were stable. That was the endgame, taking over the world, but she knew that holding the world would be even more work than conquering it. She knew that they would be running around for years to come…years and years. She didn't want to bring a child into that kind of instability. Once they reached that future, the one that President Suzuki had been making speeches about since before she joined, then she could give Mukai a sibling. Another sibling. One that didn't share blood with her…what even was the word for it? When you were adopted and you had a full blood sibling?

She'd ask Minegishi if she ran into them.

They had been much more pleasant these days. Everyone had. Even Sho the little tantrum machine that he was…even he'd been better. She attributed it to being away from President Suzuki. The ma was like a blackhole. He took everything good from you and left the parts of you that you hated. She had turned into such a bitch…her eyes dart from side to side. Right, she had to watch her mouth….she had been thinking….and Mukai wasn't even around. No, she was with Sho right now. He was the babysitter today and, generally, he was a good one. Generally. For all she knew they could have been drawing on the walls right now or jumping on the furniture…swinging from the ceiling…drinking directly from the taps….flooding the bathroom to make a swimming pool again….

She checked the time.

Two things stood out to her. The first of which being just how late it had gotten and the second of which being all the missed calls flashing across her phone's screen. She couldn't even see Mukai's face anymore she had so many…and these were just the one's she'd had enough reception to get. All from Shigeko. There was a picture message too…she walked over to the corner and opened it….

Oh.

"Look at this cat? I'm looking…." Muttered Tsuchiya. There was a picture of an orange cat on the screen. It looked kind of…unhappy. She scrolled down. Underneath was a very long explanation about everything cat related. What it meant when they flattened their ears and swished their tails…what the orange pattern meant…why that particular cat was of interest. That was what Sho would have looked like as a cat. She could kind of see it…in the pictures that were clear….

Shigeko really needed to get her fingers off of the lens.

Tsuchiya could hardly see…wait, no, those weren't Shigeko's hands. Some of these pictures were downright terrible. Hands on the lens, everything out of focus, everything smeared and blurred….Shigeko hadn't taken those pictures. Some of those were pictures of Shigeko and the cat. So then who had…she kept scrolling. Some of these pictures hadn't been delivered, even after the renovations this place still had terrible signal, but some of them had…including what looked like an accidentally selfie….

Of Shimazaki.

That was…she liked Shimazaki as a person. Somewhat. He clearly had some problems with substance abuse and impulse control, which might have come from the substance abuse, and he could be a very annoying man but she trusted him. Mostly. She knew what he had done…well he had done a lot of things…but that was the life that he'd been living before Claw. She had read his file and she just couldn't merge the man she'd read about there with the man that she had spent the past year or so living in close quarters with. The man who actually had decent tase in music, the man who was more lonely than anything, the man who actually would have made a good father if things had been different in his life. Sure he could be annoying, childish, and downright malicious but this was Claw, she had worked with worse. At least he didn't curse people.

Shigeko was fine.

Shimazaki didn't actually have feelings for her, he was just really clingy with her, that was all. They were just good friends. He had never had any kids of his own so he made do with President Suzuki's. She wasn't worried about Shigeko. It was pointless to worry about her. She didn't respond well to it, being told what to do, especially now. She was a teenager now and she was going through a lot. She was right at the beginning of her rebellious phase and of course it would look different, rebellion, from someone who had nothing to rebel against. Someone who could do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to do it without limits…

Shigeko was fine.

Shimazaki cared about her and she imagined that, at this point, he knew what he was doing. Tsuchiya would have, if she had been Shigeko's mother, picked her up and carried her away. Gotten it through her head that she was doing damage to herself, that this was not the way to live, and that she had an entire lifetime ahead of her for…all of that…but Shigeko wasn't her daughter, Mukai was, and Mukai…well she was the only one of the Suzuki children she got a say in. The only one of the Suzuki children that she could save from the worst of their father.

Mukai was her responsibility.

Tsuchiya checked the time again…the cafeteria would be opening soon. Shigeko had added brunch to their meal schedule. It was mostly just left overs from breakfast and a few sandwiches…plenty of jello though. Everyone liked jello…and she had been riding the Awakened pretty hard today. They looked tired. She had been trying to push their qi beyond the limits of what was metaphysically possible….they deserved a break. She had been trying to squeeze blood from a stone all day. She deserved a break too.

Just for brunch.

"Ok people, I think you've earned a rest. Head down to the cafeteria and get something to eat. We'll meet back here in half an hour." Said Tsuchiya

"Make that forty five minutes. Koyama has something he says he needs to talk to me about. Knowing him it could be nothing or the end could be nigh." Said Sakurai

"This is Claw, the end is always nigh…but alright. That's forty five minutes, people. Those of you who forgot how to tell time stick close to those that do and please, for the love of God, eat the jello. Food is for eating, not throwing, and never put it in your eyes or ears." Said Tsuchiya. She got a series of groans in response….it was sad, really, what the Awakening process did to you. A lot of people just…broke….under it. They broke apart mentally and put themselves back together…but they lost some of the pieces. That was her theory, anyway, as to why they wound up the way they did. She had heard, too, that in an effort to protect themselves mentally their minds went back to a place where they were safer.

That meant getting younger.

More immature. Immature like Mukai…maybe a little more mature than her. They were like little kids, not toddlers. She didn't know what she would have done if she'd had to deal with a room full of hungry, grumpy toddlers. She could barely deal with the one she had. Another case for waiting. She knew Hiroshi wanted to have a child of his own, and she wanted one of her own…one that looked like her, and being the older sister and not the baby of the family anymore would definitely have done Mukai some good….but now was not the time. She didn't need to be chasing after a toddler and nursing an infant at the same time. Five years….or ten. She was still young, she was only twenty seven, she had time…and the world being what it was it was best to wait. Her life being what it was right now it was best to wait.

She would enjoy the child she had for a little while longer.

She really was a good girl. Smart, too. Friendly. When her father wasn't ruining her she was a good kid. President Suzuki…well she couldn't fully blame him. She knew that he was from a different time. People did things different back when he'd been a kid….and he was from the second baby boom. That whole generation was weird. She had learned about it back in sociology class in university. Their parents, the ones from the first baby boom, grew up in postwar austerity so they spoiled their kids but also beat them because that was just how childrearing was at the time…and she remembered Hatori saying something about President Suzuki's father hitting him with a shinai….

That was enough to mess anyone up.

So it wasn't his fault…but it was his responsibility. He should have made more of an effort to be a better father than his own father had been. Tsuchiya made an effort, every single day, to be a better mother than her mother was…and a better father than her father was, since she'd had to be both mother and father to Mukai for so many years. She did the best she could. She gave Mukai the freedom to explore who she was as a person but within limits. Like not taking her on random trips to Busan just because she had heard the word somewhere….and not letting her throw her toys at people just because she was frustrated….

And not letting her eat chocolate bars for lunch.

The first thing Tsuchiya saw when she opened the door was a chocolate wrapper and a series of tiny handprints on the walls. She groaned and followed them. That chocolate bar was supposed to be for desert. She had even written, in simple hiragana since she knew how Sho's reading skills were, right on the front of the wrapper that those chocolate bars were for dessert. But there they were, tiny chocolate handprints…

And there was the little chocolate girl.

"Mama!" shouted Mukai through a mouthful of chocolate. She smile and got up from where she had been keeping vigil over Sho. He was passed out on the couch, his coat over his face, and a sketchbook on his chest. He had been keeping vampire time lately. She had no idea where he went at night but she did know that there was nothing that she could do. That was not her son. She was supposed to keep him alive, she did her best to homeschool him, but at the end of the day she had no way of keeping him in his room at night….

The Suzuki family could make anyone feel powerless.

"Mukai, what did you do to yourself?" asked Tsuchiya. She approached slowly, moving too fast would only put Mukai on the defensive, and that was the last thing she needed right now. She was going to have to give Mukai a bath and then a proper lunch…well there went her forty five minute lunch break…but that was what parenting was. Putting the child first…even if she was hungry.

"I have chocolate!" said Mukai as she held out her half eaten and mysteriously wet chocolate bar. Tsuchiya nodded and reached for it.

"I see. Can I have some?" asked Tsuchiya

"No! it's mine! Sho said!" said Mukai as she held the chocolate bar to her chest. Tsuchiya took a deep breath. In for four and out for four. Sho was twelve, he had been more concerned with being a good big brother than he had been with making sure that Mukai didn't spoil her lunch. He hadn't been thinking about that…or the mess…or how hard it was going to be to get chocolate out of that pink dress…this was alright. She could do this.

In for four. Out for four.

"Mukai, not so loud. You're going to wake Sho up." Said Tsuchiya. She pressed her finger to her lips. Mukai nodded and then did the same. There was only one hand protecting the chocolate right now…she could have snatched it away…but that would have just made Mukai scream. If she screamed then Sho would have woken up and he was always so grumpy when he was tired…and he needed all the sleep he could get, too, since he had been playing in the woods or whatever again all night…

Tsuchiya was going to have to finesse this.

"Sho's sleepy, Mama. He's a sleepy…over there." whispered Mukai

"I know, Mukai, I know…Sho's very sleepy. We have to go to the other room so he get all the sleep he needs. Then when he gets he'll play with you." Said Tsuchiya

"We go to the park?" asked Mukai

"The park…" said Tsuchiya. She bit back a 'no'. She didn't like Sho taking Mukai into town like that. It wasn't safe. There were rouge espers there, some of them powerful, and also just the normal assortment of crazies that you'd find in any city. She didn't…it wasn't that she didn't think that Sho could defend himself and Mukai if he needed to…but she didn't want it to come to that. She didn't know…she was becoming her parents. When she had been a child her world hadn't extended that far past the temple gates…she wanted more for Mukai. She had let Mukai have more. She'd travelled the world…so the park….it was something that Tsuchiya was going to have to think about. Right now she had to get Mukai and all of this cleaned up. She didn't want to leave it to Hiroshi when he got back, he had enough to do as it was. She'd take care of this and then…and then she would see how she felt. How Mukai felt. How Sho felt.

How everyone felt.

"We go to the park now, Mama? Right now?" asked Mukai

"We…might go. Maybe, first we need to get you cleaned up." Said Tsuchiya. Mukai shook her head.

"No Mama, no bath, not today. You take a bath, you smell bad. Sho take a bath, Sho smell bad. I don't smell bad. No bath for me." Said Mukai. She said it with a finality that she must have learned from her father. President Suzuki had this way of saying things where there was so much seriousness and weight to them that there was no chance that it wasn't going to happen. He put that weight and finality into everything from world domination to deciding that he was going to have an omelet for breakfast. Maybe it was genetic…

Or maybe Mukai had been spending entirely too much time with her father.

"Well how about we take a bath together, a bubble bath? How does that sound?" whispered Tsuchiya. Mukai's eyes lit up….as did her aura. Brighter, now, than it had ever been before. She was getting older, growing into her powers….her powers were growing with her. She could have been as strong as Sho one day, or even Shigeko, and that day….that day was still a while away. Right now she was three and Tsuchiya…she could still pick her up if she needed to.

"Yes! Bath with Mama! Bath with Sho!" shouted Mukai

"Big Sis…not today….it's not…bath day…." Muttered Sho as he turned around. Tsuchiya catch his sketchbook before it hit the ground…oh. That was a vey nice picture. The entire page was covered in a half finished picture of some other little boy…or maybe what Shigeko would have looked like as a little boy. She wasn't sure, she closed his sketchbook for him. That wasn't for her to see, if Sho had wanted her to see what he had drawn then he would have shown her.

"Sho can't take a bath with us, Mukai, it's not bath day for him…and he's a boy. Now why don't you go pick out a bubble potion for us? How does that sound?" asked Tsuchiya. Mukai immediately shrieked, threw her chocolate bar onto the ground, and ran away. Sho muttered something else and kicked out in his sleep. Tsuchiya got up and covered him better with his jacket….the poor little guy. He had done it to himself, of course, nobody had told him to play in the woods all night…but he was only twelve. He was just a kid and he had no idea what was best for him….

That was what she was for.

She wasn't his mother or his father…but she did care about him. She cared about all of the Suzuki kids, there was just only so much that she could do. For now this would have to be enough. She couldn't help Shigeko, she couldn't do more than tuck Sho in, and Mukai…she was going to be able to do less and less for Mukai as the years went on…but that was alright. That was just how it went. She loved her daughter, she loved all of the Suzuki kids, and she would be there for them in any way that she could.

They were easier, after all, to deal with than the Awakened…even at the best of time she would have preferred a room full of actual children to the Awakened…especially this latest batch of them.