Hatori had never worn a suit before.

He liked it. Well not the act of wearing it, of course. Hell no. The collar of this shirt was way too stiff and the buttons on his cuffs were keeping his wrists prisoner and this jacket was anything but comfortable. He had no idea how Suzuki could have worn this thing day in and day out for the past twenty years. Maybe it wasn't the act of wearing it. Maybe he liked wearing it for the same reason Hatori did. Because of the way people looked at you when you wore a suit.

They looked at you like you meant business.

Which Hatori did, of course, though nobody ever looked at him like he did. No, people always looked at him like he was a little kid. Like he was just this little kid underfoot and getting in the adult's way. Whenever he was away from Suzuki he went from being the guy on the right, the guy who could have had you sent to a traitor hole just because he didn't like you, to that weird kid who followed Suzuki around everywhere. Well nobody was looking at him like that now, no, and Suzuki was nowhere to be seen. He and Fukuda had their own mission going on….one that Hatori hadn't asked about. Knowing those two it could have been another firefight or they could have just gone off someone to make out. Hatori didn't need any details. He had enough to remember as it was.

This mission could not fail.

There were billions of yen on the line here. He had no idea how much that was in whatever these people called their money, but it was a lot for Claw, and Claw needed it. Suzuki had said, a bunch of times now, that this was the end game. They were nearly done gathering enough funds and manpower for the insurrection. Within a year or two... within a year or two, it would all be over. No more running around all over the world, no more hacking into banks and businesses, no more of these life-threatening missions. Once they taken over the world, he could get back to doing what he did best, playing video games in his room with Serizawa, and occasionally coming out for another cold energy drink. He'd heard that they were coming out with electric purple, and he was curious what flavor that would be, and he hoped he would live that long... long enough to taste it.

There were a lot of men with guns here.

He knew what it looked like when someone had a gun holster to themselves under their clothes, and right now he was surrounded by security guards, gangsters, and maybe just gun enthusiasts. He didn't know. He didn't feel like asking anyone. He didn't have the time, either. He, the fabricator, in the bodyguard with the fan...h was going to remember people's names when he wasn't so stressed... had a mission.

Walk in and take what we need.

Those were his orders. He had to walk in like he was supposed to be there, get to the servers, and then rob them blind. Money, information, people's search histories…all of it was going to be Claw's in five minutes. That was a generous estimate, too. He….he had to walk faster….

A hand on his shoulder.

The body guard. He looked less imposing than most people, if that had been Shimazaki Hatori would have fainted right there on the spot, but his eyes meant business. Don't run. Blend in. Nobody else was running so Hatori….he had no excuse to be running…he forced himself to walk slowly towards the elevator. He just had to get to the server room, that was it. He hated doing these things in person. Most of the time he just used his phone…but he wasn't the only technopath in the world. Technically it all came under telekinesis but that was Touichirou level nerddom. There were other people like him, that was it, and they had studied those people and learned to block his aura from their systems. Sort of like a curse room but around an entire network.

Well fuck those guys, then, for making him do all of this extra work.

He decided to get pissed off, it was preferable to being scared. Touichirou trusted him with this and Hatori wasn't going to let him down. He was going to walk through this lobby, into the elevator, and then he was going to commit enough industrial espionage that the government would spring him from prison, implant a bomb in his guts, and lock him in a box for the rest of his life for….and there was the fear, again. To be a government esper….Hatori had only heard stories about those guys. The way they spent twenty three hours of the day in a plain white padded room, the way they put shock collars around your neck to keep you from using your powers, they way they put bombs inside of you to keep you from escaping, the way they chained you to the wall and beat you with sacks of frozen oranges, they way they chopped up the dead to feed the living-

Ok, maybe that last one and possibly the one before it, had just been people making shit up…but still!

He wasn't going to get caught. If he thought about it hard enough then it would be true. Like how Touichirou, when he had been a kid, had decided that he was going to take over the world and now here they were. Here he was…about to get into an elevator to the server room of a building that he had no business being in….

He straightened his suit.

He was supposed to be here. He forced that thought louder and louder in his mind until he couldn't think of anything else. He was supposed to be here, he was not a kid, and he had this. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of bottle caps. He made sure, as he did that, to run the video feed on the camera in a ten second loop. He didn't know who was watching this feed….he didn't feel another technopath…but he had no idea what another technopath felt like. He had never felt himself…ok, he didn't need to faint but he didn't need to start laughing either…he had never felt another esper with his powerset….so really he could have been walking into some kind of trap or…

He handed the fabricator the bottle caps.

It was a cool power, really. Another kind of telekinesis only this guy could move atoms themselves around. Victoria had no idea how his powers actually worked, something to do with electricity, but he knew for a fact that he couldn't rearrange atoms. If he could have then all the water in the world would have been energy drink, preferably blue, but red would be good too. Also, he would have fabricated himself up a better suit. This thing was way too big, way too heavy, and way too tight... and there was no one here to look at him like he was someone now. He could see the guy behind his reflection, the body God with the fan, in the mirrored wall in front of him. He looked bored, not Touichirou. Bored, to each row always looked bored even though he never really was...this guy was just plain bored. Like he was thinking 'why did I have to get stuck with the kid' and 'why couldn't I have been assigned somewhere more fun' or 'Now I want to trade places with Shimazaki since he at least gets to follow one of the actual kids around'….the last one was terrifying. Shimazaki right next to him ready to abandon him or fuck with him or-

A piece of plastic was shoved into his hands.

There. A keycard with a magnetic strip. He ran it through the scanner and forced it to accept….it was thinking…was he being fought!? Was he…ok, it was done thinking. He had this. The elevator was moving now. He patted his other pockets. They were full of flash drives, He would have preferred an entirely separate hard drive, but that would have been harder to carry around. This would do it. The ride in the elevator was a short and silent one, he liked it. He had no idea what he would have talked to these people about, he didn't trust himself to be able to hold up a coherent conversation right now. He couldn't fuck this mission up, that was the main thought in his head, he had to execute this perfectly. There were no do overs, not in Claw, not in any part of life. Touichirou was going to be so pissed at him if he fucked this up... and also he didn't want to go to Esper prison!

The best outcome would have been the enemy finding him and disposing of him quickly and painlessly.

No! The best outcome would have been everyone's, but mostly his, continued survival. The best scenario was one in which he made it out of this with his life, all of his limbs, and his relationship with Touichirou….with Suzuki. He could not fuck this up…the doors were opening. The server room…a hand on his shoulder.

Right, this was not the time to run.

He tricked the cameras, another loop but this time of the empty room, and then he walked quickly. He shouldn't have been running in these shoes, they had no treads. He had no idea how Suzuki walked around like this all day. He had no idea how Suzuki did this all day. These missions…well his life was mostly meetings but…but three times now they'd been in massive explosions together. People kept on trying bombs. They didn't work but people still tried…the only reason Hatori had survived those missions was because he had been right there with Suzuki and Fukuda…he eyed the paper fan guy. He had no idea how Suzuki did this, how he just…put his life in people's hands like this. He was a powerful esper but he was still just a normal guy. He got old, his hair was turning white, and he bled. He got hurt. He put his life, everything, into Fukuda's hands when they went on missions…

And all Fukuda did was fuck him over.

Hatori felt a little better. Paper fan guy and the fabricator….Otsuki and Higashio! Ok, now he remembered. Otsuki and Higashio were strangers to him, pretty much, and he had never fucked them over that he could remember so they had no reason to fuck him over. This was…this was working. This whole thing had gone off without a hitch and….and Suzuki wasn't going to be pissed at him! Also no esper jail for him! This was…this was going to work out.

It did work out.

Really the whole thing had been simple. He just copied the data that he needed, that was useful, and then Higashio turned the servers into….refrigerators? Hatori wondered what that was all about. He had no idea how disguise Powers worked, but he felt like refrigerators were maybe not the best thing right now... wasn't in a component thing? Or a mass thing? He didn't know and he didn't have time to ask. They had to get out of there. At any second an alarm was going to sound or a wall was going to be kicked down or the room would fill with poison gas and then it would be over. They didn't even have time to take in their work. Immediately they began to walk, not run, to the elevator. Otsuki kept his hand on Hatori's shoulder the entire time just to make sure he didn't take off like Sho on bath day….

Hatori wasn't a little kid anymore.

That would have been a total Sho move, running off like that, and that was fine…for Sho. He was an actual kid. He was a kid and so was Mob…well she didn't act like it but she was…and Mukai was obviously a kid since she was only three years old…ok! There were three Suzuki kids, three kids around that Suzuki had so happened to make, and none of them were him. He was an actual adult and…and he wished that people would have acted like it. That they would have acted like he was an adult and treated him like one and…and he didn't need someone to hold on to him! He knew not to run through the lobby…he was an adult…

…and it was about time people started treating him like it.

And looking at him like it, too. People in Claw, not random lobby people. People he knew needed to look at him like these strangers were looking at him right now. People in Claw needed to look at him like he belonged, like he deserved some basic respect, that he was more than Suzuki's weird tagalong kid…he needed people to look at him like he was…like he was someone other than Hatori Nozomo…

Maybe after this mission they would.

Maybe word would spread far and wide…maybe he could spread the word through Claw's network…well that would have just looked like he was lying…or maybe there was a way to slip in news of his success without it looking like a brag or a lie…Mob would have known, she was always posting things…and not just on Claw's network. Not just in Claw's internal forums….another feeling, another fear, carried him through the lobby and out the door. Fear. Not fear for himself, no, Fear for her. Yeah...she was the one he had to worry about. Of course his mission went off without a hitch, Suzuki wouldn't have given him something that he couldn't do. Of course he hadn't fucked that up…it was easier to worry about himself but better to worry about someone else…not that he was only worried about her because he didn't want to think about how close he had come to certain death and possible imprisonment in a government torture lab…

He was legitimately worried about Mob.

He was so worried, in fact, that he did almost run to the get away point. Otsuki, in the end, had to legitimately hold him back. He was so worried that the first thing he did when he got in the car was take out his phone and, after reporting back to Suzuki of course, going into his snapchat and checking on Mob. She had been pretty active on there lately, posting snaps so fast he couldn't keep up with deleting them, and…and what he had seen had been worrying.

A lot more worrying than the prospect of going to esper jail.

Mob had, apparently, gone to the beach…with Shimazaki. She was also staying in a pretty fancy hotel…with Shimazaki. She had also been partying a lot…with Shimazaki. Hatori didn't really get a say in what Mob did with her personal life, it wasn't like he was in charge of her in any way, but if he did then he would have told her that Shimazaki was not the guy to spend time with. He would have had to go into certain things that Shimazaki had been VERY open about in his file and Hatori…he didn't know if he could have talked about that kind of thing with Mob. She was a lot like a little sister to him, true, but even if Hatori had been born into a family with ten sisters he never would have talked to them about…anything related to that. He didn't want to have to be the guy who explained to Mob what guys wanted from her, would want from her now, how she…yeah, no, he was not having the 'your changing body' talk with Mob. Ever. She was getting older and now guys were going to look at her and think about doing terrible stuff to her. He wasn't going to talk to her about that, it wasn't his place, and…and it would have been a weird conversation.

'Hey Mob, you know guys? Like pretty much every single guy in your life? Every single guy to have ever lived? Well here's what they think about doing to girls and you're a girl now so watch out.'

So, yeah, not going to happen. Minegishi or Tsuchiya or even Shiori could explain it to Mob. Someone who wasn't him. No, the best he could do was delete things that she posted that might have looked…not so good. She posted a lot of things with her and Shimazaki in them….Hatori didn't like how touchy feely Shimazaki was with her, he never had and he never would. He deleted things with Shimazaki, things where she wasn't dressed all the way….she was maybe too old to wear t-shirts as dresses but he wasn't going to say anything, things where she clearly gave away her location, and things where she was clearly fucked up on something.

Like that.

"Hi everyone! Hi, I can't see you but you can see me! I have a new headband and I saw a cat and I like cats and cats are the best! I'm so pretty and I'm a cat and I know cats and every cat has three names and my names are-" Hatori cut it off as fast as he could. Otsuki and Higashio were staring at him now. He didn't blame them. He didn't know what he would have done either, if he had been in their place, and he had just heard his friend/sort of little sister/technical boss….

Hearing her was better than seeing her.

Mob had looked like…well not well. She'd had bags under her eyes and her hair was messed up, which was weird because she normally took such good care of herself, and even her clothes had been all….not matching? Whatever the fashion word for that was. He didn't know about fashion, or about getting fucked up, but he knew that something was up with her. She was…she had always liked that kind of thing, ever since he'd met her, but she had never gone that hard before and…and it might have been because she was getting older. Like a rebellious phase or something….or maybe she just really liked to party and it had nothing to do with anything but the love of partying? Or maybe Shimazaki was just being a terrible influence on her…

He'd been there too.

He'd been spinning her around like a ballerina and…and he liked to do things like that. It didn't mean…it didn't have to mean anything. It could have been nothing and…and Mob knew better. Right? Well she didn't know anything about guys or…or things like that but…Shimazaki wasn't stupid enough to try anything with her. Suzuki would have killed him. He had killed people for less. He would have…if he believed Hatori. He had a weird thing when it came to Mob. He thought that just because she looked grown up, barely….not that Hatori had ever noticed, she was all grown up. She wasn't. She still spun around and wore cat ears and sang songs from really confusing musicals about whatever the hell jellicle cats were….Mob was still a kid and…and she didn't know what she was doing and…and Hatori had no idea if there was even something to warn her about. If he was wrong then everything would just be awkward….and also Suzuki would be pissed at him for making him worry about nothing…and Suzuki wouldn't kill Shimazaki since Mob would have just hated him for that….so Hatori had nothing that he could do….

Wait! He could do something!

He could at least keep Mob safe online. There were more fucked up guys out there than Shimazaki, Hatori knew, and Mob was way too trusting. She was way too…too everything. She shouldn't have even been on the internet. If Hatori hadn't needed to internet to function he would have completely shut the whole thing off until Mob found other things to do with her time. He couldn't delete the whole internet but could delete every single scrap of Mob being fucked up from it….

There was a lot to delete.

Suzuki…he was going to tell Suzuki. Not about Mob being fucked up, he didn't care about that, but that he was worried. He'd have to figure out how to phrase it in a way that got through to Suzuki. That got him to think that Mob was a kid and not a short adult that really liked doing kid stuff. She was the kid here, not him. She was the kid her and he was the adult and he was the one who had to take care of her. That was what separated the kids from the adults. It wasn't what you wore or how you were treated, it was how you acted….

Though the clothes did help.