Nobody had ever said that parenting was easy…though Tsuchiya was pretty sure that it wasn't supposed to be this difficult.

"Mukai, bath time." Said Tsuchiya as she stood over her daughter. Mukai didn't even look at her, she was completely transfixed by the TV. Someone had put that show on for her again. Her eyes crossed the room until they fell on Hiroshi. He was hard at work in his chair knitting what was either the world's biggest sweater or the world's smallest tarp.

Tsuchiya sighed.

"Mukai, I know that you can hear me." said Tsuchiya. She steadied her qi. She could feel it pooling around her. She was not going to lose her temper. Control was everything…she could hear her parent's voices in her head. They sounded significantly calmer than they had ever been in life, though she may have been misremembering, or maybe she was remembering correctly and she had actually deserved it when they got harsh with her.

Not that she would ever be harsh towards Mukai…even if she was being ignored…and even if she had dumped an entire bag of chips onto her lap.

"I don't want to take a bath tonight." Said Mukai with a dismissive wave of her hand…a familiar one.

"Well then you shouldn't have dumped an entire bag of Cheetos onto your lap." Said Tsuchiya with a sigh. That got Mukai to look at her. She held eye contact but made no move to get up.

"They're Doritos." Said Mukai

"I don't care what they are, you shouldn't even be snacking this late let alone on that junk." Said Tsuchiya

"She was hungry…sorry. She was hungry and we had Doritos, I mean they're Hatori's but I have no idea when he's coming back, and she just looked up at me with those big blue eyes and…and I couldn't bear to disappoint her." said Hiroshi. Tsuchiya, if her control hadn't been what it was, would have let exactly what she was feeling show. She would have let her qi pool around her, into her arms, and she would have done something drastic too like tipping Hiroshi out of that chair-

-that was not the way to treat people. She knew that.

"Can you at least ask me before you feed her? She's going to be up all night now." said Tsuchiya

"There's no caffeine in-" said Hiroshi

"Reflux." Said Tsuchiya as she crouched down and began to put the chips back in their bag. Not the most sanitary option but it wasn't like she was going to be eating these, or letting Mukai finish these off either. These were going to the back of the highest cabinet shelf in the kitchen. She didn't care what the others did, she just had to look after her daughter. Somebody had to.

In the real way.

"Mama, stop stealing from me!" said Mukai as she tried to sweep the chips back onto her lap. Tsuchiya didn't stop no matter how much Mukai whined. The whining wasn't going to work. She wasn't going to do what her parents had done and punish it but she wasn't going to give in…that was progress, right? She honestly wasn't sure. She had assumed, when she had first been given Mukai, that it would get easier once she got out of the infant phase…and then the baby phase…and then the terrible twos…and then she turned into a three-nager. The fours didn't seem like they were going to be much better.

It didn't look like it was going to get easier but Tsuchiya wasn't going to give up.

"I'm not stealing from you, I'm-" said Tsuchiya

"Maybe if you balanced it out by giving her a piece of fruit to would be more…well, balanced? I mean I bet if you catch Minegishi before they turn in for the night they'll make you something. Mob definitely will, if she's still up." said Hiroshi

"I don't want fruit! Not now, later, tomorrow maybe…or the next day." Said Mukai, sticking out her tongue. Tsuchiya swept the last of the chips into the bag and shook her head.

"That's not going to help the reflux, alright? You don't need to help, I have this." Said Tsuchiya

"I was just thinking-" said Hiroshi

"I'm her mother, I have this." Said Tsuchiya, an edge to her voice that she wished she hadn't had to put there. She and Hiroshi had been doing…not well…but not terribly either. They had stopped fighting and she wasn't looking forward to starting that up again. She had to be the one in control here. He didn't mean to undermine her, she knew that he didn't, they both just wanted what was best for Mukai. The only problem was their differing vision of what was best for her. Hiroshi wasn't her father, he had no say in how she was being raised, and Tsuchiya didn't want to have to come out and say it.

That was one of those things that would have been difficult to take back.

She felt a tug at the bag in her hands. Mukai was reaching out with her powers. Her aura was glowing red, faintly, but more than she had been able to achieved just a month ago. She was growing up, getting stronger, getting to be more and more like the rest of her family. More and more like her brother and sister. More and more like her father…

That wasn't a good thing.

"Mama, come on, I'm hungry! I'm really fucking-" said Mukai

"You can't say-" said Hiroshi

"Talk to me after your bath and then we can see about a snack." Said Tsuchiya, locking eyes with Hiroshi. She was trying, again, to see if ignoring it would make it go away. She had just picked it up from Sho, mostly, and there was nothing that she could do about it. If she didn't say a thing then Mukai would stop looking for attention. The tugging on the chip bag stopped and Mukia's aura dimmed to almost nothing.

Almost.

Her aura was still there. She was getting to the age where Tsuchiya was going to have to start teaching her how to control her qi. Tsuchiya had been meditating for hours at her age…though the minute her parents had taken their eyes off of her the meditation had quickly turned into playtime. Ok, so maybe having someone meditate for hours at that age was too much but there had to be some way to at least get her started. She was more powerful than Tsuchiya had been at her age, and it was obvious that she wasn't just an early bloomer, she had met the rest of the President's children after all. There was something in the blood that was just…difficult to control. Too much for one person to control. Even her father had trouble controlling it at times.

Tsuchiya had no idea if her mother, her birth mother, had suffered from a similar affliction.

That was something that she didn't like to think about, where Mukai had come from, how someone could have just gotten rid of her like an unwanted hamster, but it was something that was going to come up as she got older. There was something hereditary about powers, it seemed, when two espers had a baby. If hair color and eye color could be passed down then so could powers…and temperaments.

For better or for worse.

"You promise, Mama?" asked Mukai. She was smiling now, looking every bit the adorable toddler that she was, but Tsuchiya knew as well as anyone else that she could turn stormy in an instant. All of her siblings could. Sho lashed out, Shigeko broke down, and they got it from their father. He did a combination of both. She had always thought of the President as a cold man, an emotionless man even, but that was before she had gotten to know him…gotten to spend time with him. The man was a living earthquake. Anything was enough to set his fault lines off. Mukai was the same way. At any time she could lose it…more so than Tsuchiya ever remembered losing it at her age. The TV she watched didn't help her in any way at all.

Tsuchiya turned the TV off.

"Yes, I promise you that we'll TALK after your bath. Ok?" asked Tsuchiya

"After my bath, just one bath, only that bath…and one more episode. Just one more episode, only that episode, and the end of this episode. But just one." Said Mukai, holding up one finger. Hiroshi opened his mouth like he was going to say something but, wisely, closed it and got back to his knitting. Tsuchiya shook her head.

"No more episodes. It's late and you need to start winding down for bed." Said Tsuchiya. Mukai, predictably, got upset. She was used to this. As bad as it was getting now…well, she was still used to it.

"But Mama! After my bath-" said Mukai

"You mean after my bath." Said Minegishi as they came down the stairs. They had a robe on over their pajamas and some kind of mask on their face…

"Didn't you just come out of the bath?" asked Tsuchiya, trying not to groan. She knew why they soaked in the tub for as long as they did, and she didn't wish that on her worst enemies, but they couldn't just monopolize the bathroom for one week out of the month like that. There were other people in this house and they also needed to bathe every once in a while.

"No, that was Ryou." Said Minegishi as they came to the bottom of the stairs. They crossed their arms. The spider plant hanging from the ceiling crept away from them. They glared at it. Tsuchiya half expected it to wither. Hiroshi certainly did. His chair groaned as he shrank back into it. His face was red and the knitting needles in his hands bent. She couldn't tell if he was angry with them or scared of them. She would have believed either. She knew what she had heard, Shimazaki and Minegishi together, and it had been so upsetting that she'd spent she didn't even know how long in her room centering herself. Minegishi was Shigeko's best friend and yet they thought that it was a good idea to-

-they were an adult and their life was their own.

"But I know I heard you-" said Tsuchiya

"That was Ryou." Said Minegishi. Tsuchiya had heard the both of them but thought better than to bring it up. Whatever they were getting up to with him was none of her business…even though, really, she had no idea why anyone would take him back after what he had done to Shigeko…with…to…

The whole situation was something that never should have happened, no matter how Shigeko felt about it, or what she thought she felt about it.

"Alright, alright, that was Shimazaki…but do you really have to take a bath right now? I was going to get Mukai in the tub-" said Tsuchiya

"Yes." Said Minegishi before they started walking towards the kitchen. Tsuchiya followed them, rolling the bag of chips closed as she walked. Minegishi paid her no mind, they just went to the fridge and pulled out two beers. Tsuchiya knew better than to assume that one of those was for her. She didn't say anything, she just got a chip clip from the junk drawer. She heard the sound of a can opening. Minegishi was staring at their phone and sipping their beer like they didn't have a care in the world.

"I thought you had an urgent bath to take." Said Tsuchiya as she hid the chips in the highest shelf of the cabinet. She heard the TV turning back on….damn it, Hiroshi….

"In a minute. I have to settle this first." Said Minegishi

"Can't you just wait a minute? I mean if it's a work thing then it's probably going to take all night. It's been pure chaos lately." Said Tsuchiya. Minegishi snorted.

"If you think that this is chaos then I'm not going to regale you with tales of the first time Suzuki left Mob in charge." Said Minegishi

"I remember." Said Tsuchiya

"You weren't in Tokyo." Said Minegishi. Tsuchiya couldn't argue with that. The Seventh Division had been mostly insulted from the reverberations of the first power shift. They had mostly been watching the fire burn from the safety of their base, grateful that they weren't in Tokyo at the mercy of a ten year old, although Ishiguro wasn't always much better.

"Can I pleas just-" said Tsuchiya

"Use Mob's bathtub. I'm busy, I have a lot to deal with…to settle, right now." Minegishi

"Are you alright?" asked Tsuchiya. She didn't exactly consider Minegishi to be her best friend, or even a friend, but she knew that they went through a lot. She was still human after all, of course she cared at least a little bit about the person she had been living with for the past two years.

"Fine. Just dealing with this…fucking housing shortage…" muttered Minegishi

"We're still running low on housing?" asked Tsuchiya

"Yes and no. The barracks suck, I'm not going to argue with him about that, but it can't be any worse than staying here with me and Ryou. How he can still be as jealous as he is at this point, and after what he did…I can't deal with this right now. I need a bath." Said Minegishi as they put their phone in their robe pocket and started to walk away. Tsuchiya knew when to stop talking. Minegishi's private affairs were just that, private, even when they were arguing about them with their boyfriend…ex-boyfriend…all night.

It didn't look like she was going to be getting the bathroom anytime soon.

She knew that this was a fight that she had no hope of winning. She decided to just make the best of this. Shigeko's home was always opened to her and Mukai. Of course trying to give Mukai a bath there would come with it's own host of challenges. Shigeko and Sho were just as bad as Hiroshi when it came to spoiling Mukai. They'd spend the whole bath giving her toys to play with, telling Tsuchiya not to wash her hair since she hated it, bringing her in the bath snacks and feeding her even though there were so many things wrong with that…but there was nothing that she could do about those kids. They weren't her kids.

They were the president's.

Mukai was his too but at least Tsuchiya had some ability to raise her as she saw fit…some was not enough. She was going to do the best with what she had. If all she was going to do was wish and hope then she was going to spend her life wishing and hoping her life away. There were times in life when you had to go where the river took you and right now the river was taking her next door. So she went where it took her.

It wasn't a long journey.

It, however, had been an arduous one. Mukai hadn't been in the mood to be moved. She had a show to watch after all. Tsuchiya hadn't been happy with her last favorite show, the thing with all the princesses, but at least there hadn't been any death game scenario happening. Just a lot of friendship and half hour long advertisements for dolls that Mukai 'needed or she would die a death over there'. As brainless as that last show had been this one…this one was worrying. She had no idea how much of temperament was passed down but she didn't want to reinforce anything in the blood that wasn't…good.

The world did not need another President Suzuki.

Apparently he had been something of a nerd as a child, from what she had been able to gather from the second hand stories she'd been told. He liked videogames and science fiction, collecting laserdiscs and building secrets forts, normal kid things. Also, apparently, he'd been a violent little monster and if Fukuda hadn't had healing powers he would have been dead several times over. She didn't know how that had developed in him, if had been his upbringing or his genes or the time period in society that he'd grown up in, so she didn't want to take any risks when it came to Mukai.

She was already so much like him.

"No! Mama, I don't want a bath! And I don't want to play with Shigeko! She makes me play Frozen and Frozen is boring! If you don't put me down then I'm going to play marbles with you! Over there!" said Mukai as she struggled in Tsuchiya's arms. She ignored the blatant threat on her life and opened the door. Shigeko never locked it. That couldn't have been safe…

For whoever was stupid enough to try and break in.

She felt Shigeko's aura hit her like an ocean wave at high tide. Sho was there, too, but as usual his aura was eclipsed by his sister's. That was going to be Mukai, maybe, in a few years…but that was neither here nor there. Right now she just had to get through today. Once she got through today then she could get through tomorrow and the next day and the next day…and the next day…

And before she knew it Mukai was going to be the kids' age and the kids would be all grown up.

"Hello? Is anyone home? I just need to give Mukai a bath! I'll be in and out!" said Tsuchiya as she slipped her shoes off in the genkan. Mukai kicked hers off in the fight to get free. She may have been determined but Tsuchiya was still bigger and stronger. She carried Mukai through the house. The sound of gunshots could be heard coming down the stairs, and the sound of running water could be heard coming from the kitchen…she decided to take her chances with the kitchen.

It turned out to be the right choice.

"Here, you have to really get the food off before you put them in the dishwasher, otherwise it gets this really gross water at the bottom when it's done." Said Shigeko as she handed Serizawa a dish with her powers. They were side by side at the kitchen sink, shoulder to shoulder really. It was…she decided to go with adorable. The matching aprons, the way she was using her most responsible voice, Serizawa's deference to her. She had to think it was adorable, otherwise she would end up thinking about what in Serizawa and Shigeko's lives had led them to this scene.

She had her hands full with Mukai

"Thank you, Miss Suzuki. I'm sorry, Miss Suzuki, I'll do better next time." Said Serizawa

"If you soak them for a while then the food just slides right off." Said Tsuchiya as she bounced Mukai on her hip like a baby. Shigeko and Serizawa turned around. The dishes kept on cleaning themselves. Tsuchiya had been living with Shigeko for years now but her precise control never stopped being amazing.

"Tsuchiya! Sorry, I didn't hear you come in. We've been busy here…um…do you want to help?" asked Shigeko, eyeing Mukai as she struggled. Tsuchiya had gotten better at reading her. She wanted to say something…but she knew better. At least someone around here was learning not to undermine her when it came to Mukai.

"I-I can do them all and you can rest. I mean I think that I finally have it, I mean I understand…but I might mess up…but if I mess something up then I'll fix it!" said Serizawa. His aura was showing, his qi began to turn stormy, but before anything could go wrong Shigeko took his hand and smoothed the storm down to nearly nothing. Her control was the best out of all of the Suzuki's…mostly. She didn't explode as often but when she did…Tsuchiya didn't want to think about what had happened the last time she exploded.

"You won't mess up, and if you did I wouldn't be mad at you. I could never be mad at you." said Shigeko

"I'll help if you need me to but I really just came here to see if I could use your bathtub? Mukai needs a bath and this isn't one of those nights that we can skip." Said Tsuchiya. Shigeko nodded and let go of Serizawa's hand. He immediately got back to work, pulling plated from the air and nearly dropping them. Shigeko caught them as they slipped through his fingers. She had her back to him. There were displays of power and then there was that. That was more than power, that was control, and it was hope, too.

Mukai's aura was showing again, her qi was pooling outside of her body.

"No baths! I don't want to play Frozen with you! I want to watch marbles!" said Mukai

"We don't have to play and…and I really wish you wouldn't watch that show. You can use my bath bombs, though, if you want to. I know how you like them." said Shigeko. Mukai stopped struggling and her qi started to steady.

"Bath bombs and bubble bars?" asked Mukai. Shigeko nodded.

"Alright, if you want…but please don't waste them like last time. Dolls don't need to take baths, not like that." Said Shigeko

"Dolls don't need to take baths but I do! See? I need a bath right now!" asked Mukai, holding out her orange-stained hands.

"I can see." Said Shigeko, nodding. Mukai waved her hands back and forth in front of her face. Tsuchiya didn't say a word. She was just grateful that Mukai was finally listening.

"So I get your bath bombs and you bubble bars….and bubble bath? And shampoo bars? And glitter lotion?" asked Mukai. Tsuchiya kept on smiling even though the thought of having to clean glitter out of the bedding filled her with more dread than any part of her job ever had.

"Yes, if you want to…but please don't waste them." said Shigeko

"Ok, I'm going to waste everything! Come on, Mama, come on!" shouted Mukai as she tugged on Tsuchiya's shirt. There was another bust of purple that was quickly smoothed down by pink and blue. The red of Mukai was completely eclipsed.

"Thank you." said Tsuchiya as she carried Mukai away. She didn't trust Mukai to run, not yet, there was still the chance that she could change her mind or that something would distract her. She was only four after all…oh God, she was only four…

Tsuchiya could do this.

Mukai was going to get older, bigger, and stronger. The future would hold…Tsuchiya had no idea what the future would hold for her. She was her father's daughter and all that it entailed but she was also Tsuchiya's daughter. Not by blood but through raising. She was the only one really, actually, putting the work in to raising Mukai…the long, thankless, work…

She knew what she had signed up for.

She loved Mukai, she loved being her mother, and she was going to do her best with what she had. She just had to get through another day, and another, and another. Each day Mukai would get a little older and each day Mukai would get a little stronger. There was always the chance that she would take after her father…more so than she already did…but she could always take after her sister, or her brother, or her mother, or herself. She was still just a kid, just a four year old, and there were so many years ahead of them…so many days….but she was just going to get through this one day.

That was all she could do, take it one day at a time. It wasn't easy in any way but someone had to do it and that someone had to be her…with some help.