Sho should have come up with a better plan than this.
Or maybe any kind of plan. He had to save Big sis, that much was obvious, but he had no idea how to. He knew how to exorcise spirits, he knew how to fight, and he knew how to make a strategic retreat too if he had to. He just didn't know HOW he was going to do any of those things. Fights were easy, getting to the fights was hard.
Especially if you had to walk.
"Ok, now we just have to…uh…figure out where we are! Yeah, that's it." Said Sho. There, part of the plan. Now he just had to come up with all of the other parts and they'd be great. They had to figure out where they were and how far away it was from where Big Sis was…this would have been so much easier if Hatori had been able to find her phone, or if they'd had a car, or if Shimazaki could teleport far enough…hell! It would even have been easier if Shibata had been there to carry all of them on his back.
A cold wind blew past him.
He pulled his coat close around himself. It was too cold, too dark, and too…gross? Something gross came with the wind. Something…not right. Like the time when he had microwaved that plastic plate that wasn't microwave safe but worse. Maybe the time when Big Sis had forgotten a glass of milk under her bed for a week…or even worse than that….he didn't have time to figure out what the gross thing was! He had to get the fuck out of here!
"That could be helpful." Said Minegishi as they pointed to the large freestanding map on the platform. When they found Mob they were going to talk to her about leaving her phone on, and listening, and not taking what few years they had left off of their lifespan. When. Not if. They were going to find her…even though this thing had worked it's way through every medium and esper that Claw had thrown at it…
This was Mob they were talking about.
Mob was the second most powerful being on Earth. She was fine. She was…she was stupid but she was fine. She had to be fine. She….they told themselves, as they walked over to the map, that she was fine. The told themselves that she was fine as they pretended to have any idea what they were looking at. They even put on as close to a brave face as they could when the others decided to take a look, too, despite the fact that they knew Ryou couldn't read.
The jury was still out on Hatori.
"How the hell is there no reception out here?" asked Hatori as he tried to read the map in front of him. It was…something. It kind of made sense, maybe, if he turned his head sideways…he felt Minegishi looking at him.
He quickly went back to normal.
"What? I'm twenty two, I don't even think that I can read an actual map." Said Hatori
"There's no hope for you." said Minegishi
"Hey, I think that this is where my Dad left me to die." Said Shimazaki as he took in the familiar smelling air. Woods, nature, all of that. Familiar woods though. He didn't know why this brought him any kind of comfort but it did. Maybe he was just really fucked up, or maybe it was one of those things that he wasn't supposed to question. He decided not to question it and just go with it.
That was how he had lived most of his life up to this point and it had worked out just fine.
"Why do you sound so….happy…about that?" asked Hatori, taking a step away from him. He looked around. A train station in the middle of the woods. Yeah. This wasn't spooky at all. He was fine. The only thing he had to be afraid of was the thing that had been killing espers left and right. Also Shimazaki…
Yeah, he was more afraid of Shimazaki than anything.
"Do you really want to start pulling at these threads?" asked Minegishi. Hatori quickly shook his head 'no'. Good, at least someone here had sense. They leaned in and studied the map. No signal this far out, not WIFI on this platform, and they were getting nothing from the plant life. People had just been here but they were long gone now. More people lived down the road…which wasn't helpful as the road forked.
They had the address, they could work from there.
They studied the map. Cities were so much easier for this sort of thing. Everything was numbered, first of all, and second of all there was some kind of reason to the streets. Here there were just public roads and then what were marked as private roads. Apparently this was where rich people went to get away. They should have come up with a plan, a better plan than show up and start turning spirits into plant food. They had been spoiled over the years. Claw may have been run by idiots and overgrown children but those idiots and overgrown children at least handled the logistics of getting from point 'A' to point 'fight' and then back again….God….
They checked their phone. No bars.
"So detective Toshi, what's the plan?" asked Shimazaki as he leaned down over their shoulder. They shrugged, hitting him in the chin.
"I'm still figuring that out." Said Minegishi
"You don't have to figure anything out! I'm the leader and I'll decide what the plan is!" said Sho. Everyone was looking at him, now…he really should have thought of a plan. It shouldn't have been this hard. He and Fukuda had been planning for years on how they were going to take Dad down but he couldn't figure out how to get to Big Sis? Well, Fukuda was kind of better at planning, he was technically Dad's right hand man after all, and he was the one who put their whole 'stop Dad' team together…but Sho didn't need Fukuda and he certainly didn't wish that Fukuda had been there with them!
He had this.
"We need to….to…" said Sho. Everyone was still looking at him. Even Shimazaki was facing him. He could feel his aura…not that Sho cared or anything like that. Auras were just auras. Whenever you were near another esper you could feel one, that was just how it went. Unless you were by someone like Dad or Big Sis, of course. Their auras were so big that you could barely feel your own let alone…
Hey!
"Ok, here's what we need to do. We're going to start going down the road until we can feel Big Sis's aura. Her aura is really big and bright, like Dad's, so it's not easy to miss. After we find her aura then we'll be able to find her and then we save her and we all go home and have dinner." Said Sho. He nodded to himself at the end. There. Now that was a good plan…and Minegishi had no reason to look at him like that!
"On foot? In the dark? At night?" asked Minegishi
"Nobody's going to fuck with us." Said Sho
"No, but we don't have a healer so if one of us trips and breaks an ankle it's going to be kind of difficult to participate in whatever this mission is going to turn into." Said Minegishi
"Want me to send for Fukuda? I mean it'll be a while, the next train isn't for hours." Said Hatori
"Hours? We don't have hours!" shouted Sho
"Then what should we do, oh fearless leader?" asked Minegishi. Sarcasm was, apparently, as lost on him as it usually was on Mob. He actually started to think. Minegishi hoped that he didn't end up getting himself upset, he may have been a brat but they were going to need him if they were going to take down that thing Matsuo had been chasing, or more realistically if they were going to buy themselves enough time to escape with Mob…
Minegishi didn't normally speak to or associate with Suzuki in any way but they were giving serious consideration to telling him to do his own goddamned dirty work for once in his life.
"Then…uh…" said Sho. Right, he didn't think of that. Maybe they should have brought Fukuda. Sure he didn't like Big Sis, and he was an even grumpier old man than Dad was, but he still would have been useful. More useful than Hatori, anyway. There wasn't any internet out here and the highest tech thing around were the vending machines he was stealing from…he should have put together a better team. Minegishi was a bitch-bastard but they could control plants and the woods was made of plants. Shimazaki was a pretty good fighter, too, and teleporter…hey!
"Then we'll have Shimazaki teleport us around until we find her!" said Sho. He thought that it was a good idea, at least. Hatori, on the other hand, looked like he had something to say…asshole. Or maybe he just felt like dropping all of his snacks.
"What?!" gasped Hatori as he dropped all of the loot he'd collected…at least the soda was probably so old it had lost it's fizz…damn it! First he misses dinner and now he has to have Shimazaki teleport him around!
"Yes, what?" asked Minegishi as they picked up a can of soda…from the first Frozen movie. Quickly put it back down. Death by soda wasn't on their list of ways they planned on going.
"Soda? Beer? Canned milk?" asked Shimazaki as he picked the can up…hmm…it felt shook up. No way was he drinking this. He passed it over to Hatori.
"It's soda…but that's not the point! Shimazaki is NOT teleporting me anywhere! I don't trust him! For all I know he's going to drop me in the ocean or leave me on top of a mountain or-or-or-" said Hatori, his hands shaking so badly that he dropped the can Shimazaki was handing to him. It was probably for the best, he knew now never to eat or drink anything Shimazaki personally handed to him, though maybe getting poisoned or dosed or whatever Shimazaki had planned would have been better than going along with all of this. He loved Mob, she was pretty much his little sister, but he knew when he was useful and when he was useless.
And yes, right now in this situation, he was pretty useless.
"I would never do that. We're nowhere near the ocean and I don't think I could make it to the mountains from here either." Said Shimazaki
"Don't try." Said Minegishi
"I wasn't going to. I know that if I do something to him then Suzuki is going to do something to me, maybe not kill me but there are worse things, and I kind of like not being maimed or seriously injured. So yeah, not going to teleport him off to parts unknown where he'll never be seen or heard from again." Said Shimazaki
"Well then you'll leave me for dead in the woods and-" said Hatori
"You can't die in these woods. Believe me, I know." said Shimazaki. It felt right, getting Hatori all riled up. More like a normal night and less like the kind of night where he was off to save Mob from what could have been certain death…he tried not to remember that thing. He forced the memory out of his head. He needed…he needed something, anything, to send it to the back corners of his mind where it belonged along with old phone numbers, how to play chopsticks on the piano, and that god awful gum jingle that used to come on the radio all the time when he had been a kid.
"He's not going to leave you for dead, we need you for…uh…snacks, and stuff. I guess…hey! We're getting sidetracked, here!" said Sho
"No, you're getting sidetracked. I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to find Mob, and Serizawa if we can recover him….God, why did Mob had to give the whole extraction team time off?" muttered Minegishi
"Because she's great…and I mean that in a platonic way." Said Shimazaki
"Don't you start." Said Minegishi dangerously. He was on thin ice and he knew it. They didn't need this right now. They were barely keeping it together as it was.
"Even I want to hit you right now." said Hatori. He wasn't going to do it, of course, because he wanted to live to see his next birthday. Shimazaki deserved it, though. He didn't care what everyone had decided, this wasn't the kind of thing that you forgot.
"I'd like to see you try. Not a threat, by the way, I'm honestly curious. Can you even land a hit? I always figured you were more of a 'logistics' guy." Said Shimazaki
"I-" said Hatori
"Nobody's hitting anyone! Why the hell do you guys have to fight all the time?! This is serious! We need to figure something out." Said Sho. He could see his aura. Even if Big Sis had been near with as mad as he was right now he wouldn't have been able to see her aura through his even if she had been standing right next to him. He was breathing heavy. He needed to calm down…he needed to just stop it and…and he needed to be better than he was!
A hand was on his shoulder.
"You already came up with half a plan. Feeling around for Mob's aura is a pretty good idea. We just need to figure out something that's faster than going on foot. I can teleport us around but even I get tired and, trust me on this, you want me at one hundred percent if we're going to go up against that evil spirit." Said Shimazaki as he put his hand on Sho's shoulder. Poor kid. He must have been taking this worse than the rest of them. Mob was his sister, and the only blood family he had that actually liked him not counting Mukai. Without Mob he'd have no one to take care of him and all the other shit that she did…and Shimazaki knew better than anyone what it was like to lose someone who took care of you and all that other mom shit.
"Well I don't know what's faster than walking, ok? I mean I can fly but then if I do that for too long I'll be too tired to fight, especially if I carry other people." Said Sho
"I could, possibly, make some kind of plant based conveyance system for us…but then we run into the same problem. I'll be completely out of commission, especially since we all missed dinner." Said Minegishi
"I found food." Said Hatori in a tone that was in no way a whine.
"From this decade?" asked Minegishi
"Junk food doesn't go bad." said Sho
"That solves our food problem, it's not ideal but it'll do, but right now we need to figure out which once of us is going to be out of commission for this thing. We've only got four people and only three of them can actually do anything in a fight." Said Minegishi
"I agree." Said Hatori quickly.
"So we've got to figure out who to sacrifice? Fuck…it's like that movie where the mom has to pick which one of her kids has to wear the other kid's skin…" muttered Sho. This was going to be hard. Minegishi was his first choice but even if they made a plant car it would still have been slower than teleporting…but even if teleporting worked best Shimazaki was his best fighter! And there was no way that Sho was trying to fly with this many people. He had never practiced with this many people before and…and he didn't know if he could do it!
This sucked! This sucked dick! And not in a good way!
"Yeah, that's not something that we should be looking into to." Said Minegishi sarcastically.
"Who…who's making these movies?" asked Hatori. As his big brother, adopted but still, did he have some kind of obligation to keep Sho from watching fucked up shit? Or had he already seen so much fucked up shit that it didn't even matter at this point?
"I don't know, people, I guess? Studios…or….hey! We can worry about movies on the next movie night! Right now we need to figure out a plan. I mean unless one of you guys has a car that I don't know about." Said Sho, rolling his eyes. Minegishi wasn't the only person who could be sarcastic. They looked at him and rolled their eyes right back. Shimazaki's aura jumped to them, then around, and then back to himself.
"There's a parking lot on the other side of the platform. I don't know how to drive, legally anyway, but I do know how hotwire a car." Said Shimazaki. He mostly remembered how to do this. It had been a while…but he could figure it out. This was for Mob. For her he would do just about anything…he felt Toshi breathing beside him. Just about anything platonic. Things had just started being alright with Toshi again, after all.
"Shimazaki, you're a genius! Alright, now we have a plan! So…let's go and do the thing!" said Sho before he started running to the other side of the platform. He wasn't scared to run across the tracks, there weren't any trains coming anyway, and even if there was he would have just stopped it with his powers. Nothing was getting between him and Big Sis.
And maybe Serizawa, too, he was alright…but he was mostly trying to save Big Sis.
He was coming! He was on his way…mostly. There were only three cars parked there. He had no idea how they would all…but he only needed the one. Right, Shibata had stayed behind. Sho really should have made him come with, he was useful, and Fukuda too…alright, next time he would put together a better team! Right now he had cars to steal!
He didn't think that it mattered that much.
He felt the air shift around him and then, suddenly, Shimazaki was beside him tugging his coat up over his head. Sho pushed his arms away and put his coat back where it belonged. Shimazaki was even laughing at him…Sho didn't know why he had ever liked him. He was always messing with people like this, which was funny, but Sho was also people. He didn't know why Big Sis liked him either…well he kind of did…not that he was ever going to ask her about any details.
Not even when he saved her. When. Not if.
"You do know that I can teleport, right?" laughed Shimazaki as he felt Sho's flustered aura pushing against his. He sounded kind of like a kazoo right now, like the time he had stolen one for Mukai and let her wake up the whole house…and yes, that had been funny even if no one agreed with him. Mob would have agreed with him if she had been there. Maybe he'd do it again just to feel her smile.
Platonically.
"No time. Running was faster, see? I got here first." Said Sho
"I had to make two trips." Said Shimazaki as he motioned towards Hatori. He was breathing really heavily and hunched over. Maybe he was having some kind of a breakdown...wait, no, maybe that wasn't a good thing. Normally it would have been hilarious but right now they needed all the help they could get.
Even if that help was mostly useless.
"I could have…have walked…" gasped out Hatori as he tried to catch his breath. He wanted to run, he needed to run. There was a road right there, and woods, and train tracks too. Everything inside of him was telling him that he needed to get the hell away from Shimazaki. How did he deal with that? The feeling of the world falling apart under your feet, falling into nothingness, and then the world coming right back? No wonder he was so fucked up.
"You should have made one, we don't have a lot of time here! We have to save Big Sis and…and I think that I might be the only one who even cares-" said Sho
"Watch it." Said Minegishi
"You watch it! Big Sis is in danger and we've wasted enough time and we might be out of time and-and-and we don't have unlimited time!" said Sho
"Sorry, sorry, I didn't know that we were on a time limit." Said Shimazaki, raising his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. He wasn't actually sorry but nobody liked it when Sho got pissed off besides him.
"Stop being sorry and start helping me pick out a car!" said Sho
"Do you even know anything about cars?" asked Minegishi as they kicked the wheel of the car beside them. If it came down to it they could try. They had no idea what they were doing but they could still try. They were the only one who could, after all.
"I know they go fast, now help me pick one." Said Sho. He really didn't know. Usually cars were just sent…but he could figure this out. If he couldn't figure out how to pick out a car then how was he supposed to figure out how to save Big Sis? Or the world? If he couldn't even save one person then how could he figure out how to save everyone? He couldn't…he was going to fuck everything up…he was going to lose…he was going to…going to…
He was going to pick out a goddamned car and stop being such a fucking baby!
"Wait…does anyone here know how to drive?" asked Hatori as he finally caught his breath. The thought of sitting in a car with someone who couldn't drive…or one of them, actually, nearly sent him back to that scary place. He needed to get out of here. Somewhere where he could be safe, somewhere where nobody was going to come in and bother him….somewhere small and safe like a closet or a bedroom or a bathroom.
The bathrooms were on the other side of the platform.
"Nope." Said Minegishi
"I'm thirteen." Said Sho
"I could always try, though this feels like one of those new cars that can drive it's self." Said Shimazaki as he ran his hands along the smooth body. There was a lot in here, a lot more than in normal cars, and it felt like this was one of those cars with the doors that opened weirdly too. He tried the door. Locked. Well, whatever, that wasn't going to stop him.
"Hey, yeah. It feels like a smart car." Said Hatori as he touched it. He could feel himself being pulled into it, his powers. It felt like it was drawing him in and he decided that he was going to let it. It felt better than holding onto his useless phone, anyway. This was connected to the rest of the world…he was collected to the rest of the world.
He may not have been a fighter but he wasn't useless, either. At least now he could help Mob out in his own way.
"Good, good, we found a car. Now let's go!" said Sho as he tried the door…and of course it was locked. Right, people locked their cars. He was too used to Claw cars. They were never locked, at least not for him…huh. This was the first time in his life he'd ever been in a non-Claw car…
Weird.
It felt weird sitting in the passenger seat. It felt even weirder with Hatori in the driver seat. It made sense, though. He was techno-kinetic and this was a smart car. Sho didn't really see why cars needed to be smart, he'd seen a lot of movies, he knew what happened when robots got smart. The kinds of movies that Big Sis didn't like…she'd pick the next movie whenever they had another movie night. Hell, she could pick the movie whenever there was a movie to pick! She could be the President of the Big TV if she wanted to be!
He didn't care just so long as he had her back.
The drive felt both short and long. He expanded his aura as far as it would go, trying to pick hers up. She had to have been near. She had to have been alive. Her aura was there because she was there and he hadn't wasted so much time moping around and feeling sorry for himself that he had wasted precious time and now she was dead somewhere and-
-and she was fine.
"Ok, we need to think up some kind of battle plan. This thing was strong enough to freak Shimazaki out and he's the best fighter in all of Claw! Which makes him the best fighter in the world since we've collected all the best espers in the world and…yeah! We need to figure out how we're going to beat this thing!" said Sho. He needed to make them feel better, that was it. He felt fine. He wasn't worried or scared or anything like that. He was…he was fine.
They were the ones who were freaking out.
"We're actually going to fight this thing?" gulped Hatori. The car swerved. He screamed and grabbed the wheel. He hadn't signed up to fight anyone! This was the best that he could do…and this was already too much. The closest he had ever come to driving was playing games at the arcade. This was…not that different. Aside from the fact that it was a real car and if anything went wrong they'd all die a fiery and painful death. He was the only thing between everyone and death…he was going to die!
"Hey!" shouted Minegishi as they swerved again. They didn't want to drive. They didn't know how to drive, not even from videogames. They had no interest in learning right now or ever. They had no interest in anything to do with getting from point A to point B…but even they could have done better than that. They leaned into Ryou. He felt safe…well of course he did, if they did happen to swerve off the road and roll over or hit a tree or something Ryou was pretty much the only person that would make it out of this thing alive.
And of course they'd save him, too, in return if it ever came to that…if it came to that when they got to what was sure to be the fight of their life.
"Watch the fucking road! Even I can do better than that!" said Shimazaki as he put an arm around Toshi. He may have been able to reach out with his other arm and save Sho, and Hatori too if he had time, but Toshi was definitely getting saved if something went wrong. They couldn't put up a barrier. At least Sho could do that. Toshi was so small in his arms and so fragile and just…he didn't know what he would have done without Toshi in his life.
And no, having them haunting him as a spirit wasn't the same!
"Do you want to try! Because we can switch if you want to!" shouted Hatori as Sho reached over and grabbed the wheel from him.
"You drive, I steer, everyone else try not to freak out. We need to be all…all not freaked out right now! We can't fight this thing if we're too busy fighting with each other." Said Sho as he steered. Next time he was driving. Even if he wasn't techno-kinetic he still couldn't have done any worse than Hatori was right now. And he called himself his brother. He wasn't brave enough to be a Suzuki. Sho didn't know what Dad saw in him.
"We're not." Said Minegishi
"I have ears, I can hear you guys freaking out back there." Said Sho
"No, I mean we're not going to fight that thing. This is going to purely be an extraction mission." Said Minegishi
"But that thing hurt, or his hurting, or…it's got Big Sis!" shouted Sho
"Please stop yelling…" muttered Hatori, shaking his head.
"I'm not going to stop yelling! That thing-" said Sho
"That thing beat every single medium and regular esper your father threw at it. Now it has your sister. This isn't TV, Sho, we can't just combine all of our powers or use the power of friendship or whatever other stupid thing is going through your mind right now." said Minegishi
"….I'm not being stupid." Said Sho. He hadn't been planning on combining all of their powers or something like that but…but they could beat that thing, or they could try. Otherwise it could have hurt Big Sis again, or worse, Little Sis. He had to keep his sisters safe. He had to keep the world safe. If he couldn't do this then…then…
Then how in the hell was he supposed to save the fucking world?
"Alright, fine, you're being reckless then." Said Minegishi
"I'm not being…Shimazaki! You love my sister, right?" asked Sho
"No! We are not getting into that mess again." Said Minegishi
"I was asking Shimazaki." Said Sho. He looked up and glared at them through the rearview mirror. They glared right back. The car swerved a little…fuck! He was even worse at this than Hatori!
"I'm not pissing Toshi off." said Shimazaki. He did love Mob, he probably always would, but he knew how Toshi felt about that. He didn't get it. Mob was Mob, it wasn't like he hadn't been telling people for years that he was going to end up into her in a few years, and anyway she was Mob. What wasn't there to love about her? He was, for once, going to keep his mouth shut. Toshi didn't need this right now and he didn't need to make things any worse between him and Toshi, not when things were finally starting to get a little better between them.
"Well…fine! But just thing about it. That thing has my sister and even if we save her it's still going to be out there waiting to hurt her again or Mukai or…or anyone else it comes across!" said Sho
"I know what it can do, it's a really….really fucked up thing, but I have no interest in going up against it again. I'm with Toshi, let's just get in, get out, and live for another fifty or sixty years." Said Shimazaki. Sho sighed. Shimazaki had a point…a good one. If he did end up dying fighting this thing then he wasn't going to be able to save the world…but if he let it get away then…then how could he even trust himself to finish his mission and stop Dad? And save the world?
He couldn't.
"Fine. Whatever…Hatori, you steer. I need to save my strength for the fight…extraction mission." Said Sho as he let go of the wheel. Hatori screamed and grabbed the wheel even though they didn't even swerve or hit anything. Sho should have been the one driving. Hatori sucked…everyone sucked…but maybe Sho sucked the most since he was the leader.
The leader was supposed to lead.
The leader was supposed to be the one in charge, in control, and he was the one who was supposed to…he was supposed to win. He wasn't just the leader, he was the good guy, and the good guy was always supposed to win…or maybe that was just in movies. Not in life. Maybe he would lose. If he couldn't even win this fight then…then…then…then he wasn't going to beat Dad…
Or maybe he could.
Maybe he just needed a plan! A better plan! Minegishi was right, even with all of their powers combined there was no way to beat something that strong. If it was stronger than Big Sis then that meant that it was as strong as Dad. You couldn't just put a bunch of people together and combine their powers like stacking powerups in a game. You needed one really strong person…so maybe he and Fukuda had been going at it the wrong way. Maybe instead of a bunch of not so strong people they needed one that was really strong…not as strong as Dad but strong…but Big Sis loved Dad…but Dad wasn't the one saving her, Sho was, and it wasn't like Dad would ever have lifted a finger for any of them…so maybe this would be the thing to get Big Sis on his side!
Sho smiled. He wasn't going to fail, not at this or at anything. He'd just needed a better plan, that was all, and now he had one.
A much better plan.