AN: I had to completely rewrite this chapter three times because what I had originally was such an incoherent wall of text that it was not salvageable. I would say, it's fairly okay, sorta. I hope I do it justice.

Well, the show must go on. Thanks to everyone for the encouraging words. It makes me write all that much faster. Better strike while the iron is hot before I abandon this fic like I did all the other fics.

Chapter 6 - Search

Calm down, Kusuo told himself. Everything is fine. It's Kuusuke. Kuusuke always took care of himself. Nothing happened. He's probably up to one of his tricks again.

Kusuo took a moment to remind himself all the stupid crap Kuusuke put him through. The endless impromptu competitions. The lies about the first generation limiters. Trickery involving Kusuo's friends the elderly. Weird pleasurable reactions to the idea of winning against a psychic. The convoluted schemes with robots like Warp, the full-body armor, and human androids. The many experiments with explosives that would've killed a person. The long periods of radio silence when Kuusuke was away in the UK. The sincere disregard for the general good of humanity in favor of the personal wishes of a little brother.

Probably won't hurt to check on him.

At the risk of becoming permanently cross-eyed, he activated clairvoyance again.

Smoke. A lot of smoke. Black, pitchy, flaked with white embers. Endless smoke, rain, and darkness; nothing distinctive enough for him to grab hold of as to a location for teleportation.

Kusuo stamped down his normal assumption for the worse. His psychic powers were indifferent to human interpretation and that had lead to misunderstandings. The one winter day where Kusuo thought something terrible would befall his friends Nendo and Kaido came to mind. Were they in danger? barely.

In this case, Kuusuke might be having a grand ol' time testing a new energy weapon and just incinerated something. That would had easily explained the smoke and embers.

I just need to find him, and make sure.

Kusuo teleported to the last place he knew where Kuusuke resided. The lab.


Kusuo teleported just outside the lab. He stared at the edifice for a few minutes, taking in details provided by his x-ray vision, assessing the situation simultaneously with his general telepathy, and allowing time for his teleportation ability to recharge.

The lab location was isolated so that there was no one around for at least a kilometer radius. The only souls were the few sleeping forest animals and fish in the streams. Combined with the early morning time, that constant background hum of thoughts filtering through Kusuo's mind was blissfully absent. Kusuo did not hear his older's brother's thoughts. Maybe Kuusuke wore the telepathy canceler to sleep?

The lab building itself and the surrounding area was quiet. All the lights were out. The holes in the wall that came from the cat tank's energy discharge were patched. New trees were planted where they were wiped out so now there were rows of low laying areas fanning out of from the test bunker.

From having been there during that embarrassing match, Kusuo knew that most of the building was dedicated to lab space, testing bunker and a small area in the center to living area. X-ray vision had already told him that there were no other movements in the lab and test bunker area. Logics said that he was to find someone, he would have to locate the living area.

There.

The residential quarter was distinct from other areas. It was the only location with a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Most of it was obscured by the monitoring equipment covering every open area on the walls. The teleportation recharge time was over and Kusuo teleported to his brother's bedroom.

This was the first time Kusuo had been to his older brother's personal living space in recent times. Like a modern work environment, the lights and air conditioning turned on automatically upon sensing movement.

I'm not an intruder...?

Strange. Kuusuke should have utilized some sort of state-of-the-art security system. Kusuo had expected some sort of drone and an announcer over the loudspeaker of his presence.

Never mind that. Kusuo was here to find him.

The bed was made. The small kitchen was cleaned. The fridge was devoid of food. X-ray vision indicated that behind nearly all the walls were hidden push-to-open drawers containing an uncountable number of trinkets, tools, and tiny spare parts. Behind the drawers and directly behind most other walls were massive computers and data servers. Vacuum and cleaning robots, initiated by the presence of a person, slowly paced along, making very faint whirring noise as it cleaned. The place had an air of someone who had packed up for an extended leave.

The work desk was clean too. The stationaries and laptops were put away in drawers. The accessories like keyboard, headsets, mouse, were also in their drawers. All monitors were off. The only thing that was left out was the telepathy canceler.

I should be able to find him by thought alone...unless...

No. No need to contemplate that possibility now. Find the asshole first, deck him for making the little brother worry, then ask questions later.

On a whim, Kusuo took off a glove and touched the telepathy canceler.

The last memory on this particular object was immediately prior to the presentation of the psychic erasing limiter, nothing afterwards. So it seemed that Kuusuke had not worn the telepathy canceler for quite a while or that this area had been undistrubed since then.

What about the bed? No. The covers and sheets not been used in a while either and Kuusuke really did use the bed for just sleeping. There were no sexual acts typical of males their age which somehow did not surprise Kusuo.

In some ways, Kusuo knew he resembled his older brother closely in many aspects. Both were immuned to human physical beauty and deceitful lies. Both achieved feats that normal people could not ever hope to dreams of. Both had the ability to know what people were thinking at all times. Both had murderous thoughts when even slightly irritated. Both seemed unmoved by biological urges that should have been common. Even intelligence wise, Kusuo knew he could get close to Kuusuke's intellect, if the effort was put in.

Those similarities would have explained why they had such a hard time getting along. Both were too competitive and headstrong.

Kusuo rubbed his eyes. He had used his X-ray vision to the fullest extent here. No one was here. No hidden skeletons. No odd temperature differentials. No unusual pacement of stuff in the odd places. This was a dead end.

Kusuo needed to regroup and think this through. He teleported back to the house.


Back home again, Kusuo took a moment to sink in his desk chair and think.

He was up against Kuusuke here, not some normal human. If Kuusuke wanted not to be found, it would take extraordinary measures even for someone like Kusuo. Simple teleportation to location or detection of thoughts by telepathy was unlikely to work. This would be tricky.

At that same time, Kusuo noted the smartphone on his desk and made a face.

How about just call him instead? Idiot, Kusuo berated himself.

Kusuo had to go get a smartphone back when he thought his power was permanently sealed and thought that his psychic powers would no longer work. At that time, Kuusuke distributed smartphones to everyone in the family. Kusuo had rolled his eyes, since he suspected that was just another way for Kuusuke to creep on him but took it anyways. It was not like the Saiki family had a lot of money and he doubted that his parents had budgeted a phone for their younger son.

There were only a few numbers programmed into the phone. Kusuo did not make a habit of sharing the number outside of the family. Not even the classmates at school knew he had a personal number. He heard plenty enough through telepathy, he did not need to hear it through a phone too. Worse, he would have to suffer the indignity of actually speaking with his mouth.

He dialed Kuusuke's number.

It rang, and rang, and rang. Then it picked up.

"Ah, it's my adorable little brother actually calling me!" came Kuusuke's cooing singsong voice from the phone.

Upon hearing that overly cheerful voice, Kusuo was about to remove his limiter and send a psychic blast at Kuusuke for making Kusuo be even worried about that annoying masochist.

"-But I'm not here. Leave a message after the beep."

Kusuo stared at the phone for five seconds and resisted the urge to throw the phone into outer space. What did he expect? Someone to actually pick up? Refused to be deterred, he hung up and called again.

Pick up. Pick up. Pick up Kusuo repeated the word in his mind. Each time, he heard his brother's annoying customized voice message. Each time, his sense of urgency and irritation deepened.

Still no answer. Kusuo sent a very rare text with the words -Where are you?-

But Kusuo had another trick up his sleeves. He teleported downstairs where his mother's phone was charging on an end table in the living room.

Kuusuke was a mama's boy. He would never ignore mom's calls.

Kusuo quickly cracked her phone unlock PIN and went to the call feature.

The call history came up first.

There was one call in the morning to Kuusuke, sometime around seven in the morning. Kuusuke did not pick up.

Afterward, there were several calls to different people in the neighborhood association. It seemed that Mrs. Kaido and Mrs. Nendo were close to mom as they had several calls together. There was a call to Mrs. Kuboyasu. There were also calls to dad, no doubt to cheer him on during the workday.

Lastly, several calls late in the day and evening time to Kuusuke and no answer. These were likely calls to tell Kuusuke about grandpa's situation.

Curious, Kusuo checked the text message information.

Mom had also sent Kuusuke several text messages. She sent pictures, random links to tricks to prevent the seasonal flu, stupid internet videos, all of which Kuusuke provided the standard low effort response of "likes," "thumbs up," and "smiley face." Some of these were relatively late responses, but no more than 12 hours.

The earliest text message to Kuusuke from yesterday was soon after the morning call.

-Can you check on Ku-chan? He isn't feeling well.-

Somehow, the message hurt. Did Kusuo not take good care enough himself well enough that his mother had to ask Kuusuke for help? He had always tried hard to not cause problems for his mom.

The next few messages were details about grandpa's condition. All of it, one-sided text messages and no response.

The sinking feeling kept on growing. Kusuo called from mom's phone.

Same thing. The phone rang, and rang, and rang before going to voicemail. The recorded message was customized. "Mama. I'll call you back soon. No need to leave a message."

Never before did Kusuo wished that the overly large TV in the living room would suddenly turn on and see that pale visage of his fair-haired brother. He would not even mind the automatic impulse to make the TV explode when he saw that face.

Another dead end. So vexing...next option.

He briefly considered asking Aiura again as a possibility due to her reliable ability to locate items, but immediately dismissed the idea. Of his friends at school, only Teruhashi and Toritsuka had true extended interaction with his older brother. Both of those meetings resulted in only in trouble.

Kaido and Nendo had met Kuusuke too back in London. Since one was an idiot and the other lacked social awareness, neither understood the true masterful manipulator Kuusuke really was. To them, Kuusuke was just some wacko who sent them airplane tickets and say strange things to make them uncomfortable. No. It was best if no one else gets involved.

Besides, he already owed a major favor to Aiura for earlier. He was not looking forward to the collection on that favor.

Kusuo made a face at the idea the next possible, most likely to succeed, solution.

Thoughtography. He hated having to use thoughtography, the ability to transfer an image onto paper.

The most obvious use was thoughtography was to transmit images of his imagination onto paper. This was useful when he had to fill out worksheets quickly. Or, if he wanted to, to finish a test within a minute. Generally, not a very useful skill outside of filling out a bunch of workbooks, so to convince Kaido's mom that he and Nendo were a couple of smart kids that Kaido should be allowed to be associated with.

The second use was to transfer the image of an item in the world as if a real physical camera was pointing at the scene. This aspect of thoughtography was useful in locating objects, but it was fickle.

First, the ability required complete focus for one minute for one image development, without being distracted at all. That was hard to do typically, not when he was constantly distracted by his telepathy.

Second, the "locating" ability was as tangential benefit based on background imagery surrounding the object, not the thing to be located first. Which led to the third issue.

A minimum number of three pictures was needed to even see the relevant item he was looking for clearly the first time. So when added to the recovery period to interpret an image, often distorted slightly because it was not a perfect image transcription, that would easily be ten minutes to fifteen minutes to look for something that was lost. This was assuming that the item to be located was something nearby.

He was trying to find a person, this time, not a dog, a baseball, or just trying to put together some sort of passable artwork. He did not have the luxury of time for this ability to be unreliable. It needed to work absolutely the first time.

The solution would have to be aggressive and creative. It took Kusuo a few minutes to think of an appropriate method.

After teleporting back to his room, Kusuo quickly found a ream of 500 sheets of paper stacked in the corner of a bookshelf. He ripped the outer wax paper packaging and placed it on the desk.

Taking care to gently remove one of the two limiters in his head, slipped it into a small box for safekeeping, and put the box in a pocket. With one limiter out, certain ability recharge times were reduced significantly. The issue of his strength is magnified significantly as well, but the other limiter should keep him from accidentally doing too much damage. He would need thoughtography development restrictions to be reduced in this exercise.

Kusuo stood in the middle of the room and levitated with his legs crossed, one hand out. Calling the ability with a mental voice command, Kusuo's eyes glowed a brilliant white. With telekinesis, the sheets of paper, one by one, flew from the paper stack and briefly brushed by a finger, before spreading out as if being hung to dry in a dark room, creating a layered vault of paper around him.

All in all, it took about 5 minutes to process all 500 sheets of paper. The simultaneous development of the pictures themselves took another 5 minutes.

Next Kusuo sorted the images by relevancy. As expected, images of his friends were scattered though out, as well as his parents and grandparents. Unexpectedly were also images of curry and random deserts. Those images went to a separate pile.

But none of Kuusuke's person. Most of the expected related images were of smoke and embers. Some had some architectural features in the background, which were important clues.

Activating telepathy again, all the images that were part of the location effort was cut up into confetti and balled up into thousands of little colored dots, reordered and spread out in the middle of his room to create a three-dimensional image of the location detailed enough for his mind to grab hold on to for teleportation.

Kusuo had his answer. It was an office building fairly far away.

Cambridge.


The scene was chaos. Firetrucks, police cars, emergency management vehicles crowded and blocked off the streets. Lights shone like a perverted Christmas light display. There was a large, seven-story office glass-lined building that was engulfed in white-hot flames. Bystanders and evacuees standing around, watching from across the street. A large plume of black pitchy smoke drifted into the stratosphere.

Kusuo teleported to the scene, directly to the front entrance of the building. It was raining hard, quickly soaking through his clothes. The combination of the plume and the weather caused the generation of lightning. The heat from the flames caused a general windstorm. He looked up and saw the building's name, "Psi Industries."

"Excuse me, Sir!...with pink hair, in the pajamas. You're not supposed to be here! You'll get hurt," a firefighter yelled. "You need to get back across the street!"

Kusuo did not turn, busy listening to the voices picked up by his telepathy and allowing x-ray vision to penetrate the building.

It seemed that a fire had broken out about a couple of hours ago.

The witnesses and bystanders all recalled a sudden breaking of all the windows of the building before being engulfed in flames. Firefighters were on the scene within minutes. Since it was raining heavily already, the firefighters thought that with some firefighting foam spray, the flame should be easily reduced and taken care of.

Not so. The fire burned without abating. Whatever caused this fire appeared to have some sort of unlimited fuel source. The emergency workers just shut off the natural gas line already so that possibility was eliminated.

The only good thing was that the fire had started after regular working hours and that the building was almost empty when the fire started. As far as the emergency workers knew, almost everyone made it out.

Almost.

Kusuo clenched his fist to keep from reacting. He was reminded of his crime drama and novels that he liked the read. Assume nothing until he had proof.

Kusuo stared at the fire again. Judging by the color of the flame, the x-ray vision of the structural supports in the building, and his general pyrokinesis, this fire was not natural at all. Instead of the typical 250 to 500 degrees Celsius of ordinary fire, this fire had an average temperature of molten rock, well over 1,000 degrees Celsius.

At this temperature, even Kusuo had to be careful.

Putting the fire out was out of the question. There were too many people around and it would require an exercise of an ability that Kusuo had not a lot of practice with. He already had gotten the attention of a firefighter. He was not about to get the attention of the bystanders. He would need to be in the fire.

"Hey you! Are you even listening to me? Get away from there! It's dangerous" the fireman from earlier was still yelling at him. "Why are you trying to go in? Wait...where did you go?"

Kusuo teleported into the lobby of the building.

So hot.

Kusuo raised his arms and squinted his eyes. The heat was so intense that his clothes dried immediately upon teleportation to an area of the building that had already burnt out. The flames were so bright that it would have blinded a normal person.

It was a good thing that he had to remove a limiter because he doubted that his regular cryokinesis could keep up under normal circumstances. Plus, with only one limiter in, the teleportation recharge time reduced to seconds, and x-ray vision required far less time to penetrate the various layers of the building.

Now that he was inside the building, he noted a very particular cool spot. Only on the second floor, was a spot right around 70 degrees Celsius. Something in the shape of a person. That had to be what he was looking for.

It was a small room, full of books. This had to be the old fashioned library of whatever company this was. Scattered on the floor were handwritten blue journals and next to the journals was a shape and figure that looked to be a gray statue of Kuusuke, in his usual characteristic lab coat, laying down, face up.

Kusuo looked away for a brief moment, tamping down on the thudding in his chest.

This might not even be who he thinks. This could be another one of Kuusuke's sick jokes. Granted, Kuusuke had yet to burn down a building this large to prove a point, but it was not out of the realm of possibility.

Mustering the courage to look again, Kusuo looked to the shape on the floor. His heart immediately began to pound when he realized what he was seeing.

This was not a statue. This was ash. There were no muscle, bone, internal organs. It was a solid mass of ash of varying density that seemed to match the internal densities of a human being, preserved in the shape of his older brother. There was no time to burn off the soft tissues, leaving a skeleton. No, whatever had happened, the heat had been so intense that the physical body, bone included, turned into a delicate matrix of ash.

Not all was lost, yet. Kusuo teleported again, spanning the short distance between the standing and kneeling on top of the journals, next to the ash form. Hovering a hand so close to very faintly touching the figure's head, he summoned the ability that his father requested of him far too many times.

Restoration.

The gray ash slowly began to fade and skin color was revealed. The effect was very much like rewinding the burning edge of a piece of paper to reveal the original sheet. This ability also took a lot more power this time. He was not simply returning the body state to what it was 24 hours prior, but converting matter from a state of unorganized, non-living carbon atoms to active cellular life. He was not even sure if it would work.

Kusuo felt a sense of relief when he saw his older brother's face appearing again. It was confirmation that this was indeed Kuusuke. Never had he felt so glad to see that messy mop of dusty blonde hair, now at shoulder length, and that overly pale face. The eyes were closed, as if sleeping. He even felt the need to hug this annoying sibling, followed by a punch in the face, of course.

Kusuo lifted the hand, feeling the need to rub his face due to how suddenly tired he felt. It had been an overly long day. Now even more so that he had expanded so much psychic powers in such a short period of time. The adrenaline that he kept him awake so far had finally begun to diminish. He felt that he was at the finish line of a terrible trial.

As soon as the hand was lifted away from Kuusuke's form, the body began to disintegrate. This time, instead of turning back into a delicate matrix of ash, the form turned into embers that vaporized and disappeared into the air.

Within seconds, there was not even a speck of ash left.

Kusuo knelt there, staring at the space where Kuusuke's form formerly occupied, not sure how to react. He tried to summon a coherent thought, to explain how impossible this was, but could not. He felt frozen in place, dumbstruck. It was like those the few times that he had time traveled, and figured out that the future had somehow been destroyed or that the butterfly effect had resulted in a future he did not want. Unlike those times, though, he felt completely paralyzed as unfamiliar sympathetic bodily response threatened to take over his being.

He could only think back to the one solution he must take when backed into a corner.

Turn back time!

Immediately, the temperature in the building seemed to cool and the world seemed to groan. The journals on the ground seemed to fly back onto the shelf. The darken charred ceiling tiles began to lighten. The effect seemed extremely slow somehow, like something was not working.

The space where Kuusuke's form previously occupied though, remained absent, as if the turn-back time ability was voided in the space-time where Kuusuke's form previously existed.

No! The powers overlapped too closely! Kusuo realized the oversight. This isn't going to work!

The unfamiliar physical sympathetic response he felt earlier back home manifested again with a vengeance. His entire body throbbed. His nerves were wounded so tight he thought he was going to break in two. His heart was beating so loudly, so rapidly that he thought it was going to stop.

This is not happening. This is not a reality. This is just a nightmare. I'm going to wake up soon.

At that same moment, the room was beginning to catch on fire. The building groaned again as the structural steel, weakened from the intense, prolonged fire, began to buckle. The telecommunication equipment from the roof began crashing down. The scorching heat, hot enough to harm an all-powerful psychic, began to encroach on Kusuo, causing him unfamiliar physical pain, reminding him of the reality of a very present physical hazard.

Almost mindlessly, Kusuo teleported again, this time, back home.


The results of this last teleportation effort were messy. The journals, the pits of charred commercial carpet, a toasted office plant, and half burnt ceiling tile all were teleported back home with him. As a consequence, his desk, some of his book collections were apported back to the office fire.

Kusuo was worse for wear. Bits of his pajamas were burnt. There were dirt and soot on his hands and cheeks. He sat crouched on the bed, shaking hard. His expression was pained.

In his memory, he could only recall one event that felt familiar to this one. He recalled his parent's feelings back in fifth grade, when he was just beginning to understand that there was a point of no return. The brush of his parents despairing thoughts when they thought their baby boy was dying.

Whatever this was had to be many times worse.

He tried clairvoyance again and again. Wishing and hoping to see that familiar nasty smirk or a mop of messy unkept hair.

Nothing. Not even the smoke and embers. It was confirmation.

Kusuo buried his face in his hands. He finally got it. The precognitive images throughout the day made obvious sense now.

Those were our shared memories and some of his own.

The childhood toys. The rock-paper-scissors. Evidence of daily life growing up together. The broken furniture from his nighttime bed psyching. Kuusuke sharing esoteric books and writing entire books full of proofs in his constructions of the limiters and the rather grotesque requirement for pins to penetrate through the skull and into the frontal lobe of Kusuo's head. The fistfights. Kuusuke's own chaotic, complex, incredibly violent unfiltered thoughts in pursuit of winning a one-sided competition. The endless formulas as part of Kuusuke's job.

Kusuo hugged his knees and he felt unfamiliar, uncontrollable sensation wash over in his entire body, which caused him to tighten his arms. Unrecognizable noises emitted from his throat and chest.

He ignored his bodily reactions as he came to another terrible conclusion.

His psychic powers were not malfunctioning at all. In particular, his precognition ability was working perfectly this entire time. The danger to his person was very real.

That protective assurance that his older brother had provided and represented all these years as the indisputable creator of the limiters and his near-equal was gone.

If Kusuo ever run into trouble again with his psychic powers, there would be no one who can help him.