Mind Games - Chapter 47

The apartment Endeavor was providing for Himiko was in good condition, especially for a student's situation, but fairly basic. It was what I'd have called a 'studio apartment' back in the states and had a bit more of an American vibe to it than the – frankly claustrophobic – layouts of most traditionally Japanese structures.

That said, it was the type of place that you were meant to spend as little time as possible in.

A futon bed you could roll up and put away for sleeping, a small television, a kitchenette tucked away to one side, a standard Japanese toilet that had more electronic components than most calculators, and a bathroom that doubled as a laundry space. Nowhere to entertain visitors, but the building was meant for quiet professionals and not the kind of place a raucous party would be at all welcome.

Himiko had spent a day decorating and personalizing the space, setting up various bits and bobs to show that someone lived there and was occupying the space. There was a set of dishes sitting in the drying rack, spare uniforms hanging up on a cheap laundry stand, various personal hygiene items that appeared half-used, and a set of pictures strategically placed around the small apartment. Even the lights were on hidden timers attached to a small microcomputer that would simulate the random activity of someone moving about the rooms during the hours Himiko was supposed to be 'home.'

She'd done all of that, of course, to disguise the fact that she barely even used the place.

Instead, she and I both used our Home much more often.

The beds were just more comfortable.

Also, the bathrooms were so large you could park a small car in them, if you were so inclined.

Oh, and instead of having to subsist on prepackaged meals and convenience store produce, the fresh ingredients that appeared in the Home's pantry and didn't cost anything to procure were always of significantly higher quality.

Actually... there were about a dozen other parts of the Home that were just better. As serviceable as the apartment the agency had booked Himiko was, it just wasn't up to the standard that we'd both become used to over the past few months. Even before we'd enlarged the Apartment to the Home, the former had provided higher-quality amenities than anything but the most top-end residences out in the rest of the world.

So while keeping an identifiable apartment for Himiko was a bit of a chore, it was also absolutely necessary. Given that she and I were both employed by a top-level hero agency, not having a legal mailing address was the kind of red flag that got HPSC internal affairs involved at the very least. Adding onto that Himiko's status as a minor, it would entirely be possible for the Japanese wing of child protective services to be called up, which would be doubly-bad due to the fact that they'd almost certainly put her back with her family instead of allowing her to continue 'living on the streets' for lack of evidence otherwise.

But there were benefits, too.

Especially when it came to not involving her family in any sleeping arrangements.

“Hitoshi is staying tonight, yay!” Himiko cheered as she bounced around the room energetically. “Oh-oh, what should I cook? Curry? Udon? No, wait – my husband likes American food, hmm... Fried chicken? But it's not Christmas...”

I chuckled as I sat down my school bag and began peeling off my costume. The outer layer could use a wash tonight, which meant the toolbelt and hidden compartments needed to come off. “You know Americans don't just eat fried chicken at Christmas, right? They do it all the time.”

“Really? So weird...” Himiko pursed her lips, a blank expression settling over most of her face as she relaxed. “Does Hitoshi want that, then?”

I hummed, then shook my head. “No thank you, wife-”

The blond girl almost melted at the form of address.

“-actually, I think Mexican might be good tonight. Or at least tex-mex. Haven't had that in a while,” I continued, nodding slowly before turning back to my woman. “At least, as long as you don't mind something spicy?”

“Spicy? Like wasabi?” Himiko asked, cocking her head.

“Different kind of burn, but similar,” I nodded. “It's a low-effort meal, something good to fix after a long day at school or work. You can do chicken, beef, or fish and make tacos or burritos out of them. Maybe another time I'll see about teaching you how to make tamales or empanadas. Mmm... maybe meat pies, too, although that's more cajun than anything else.”

“Hitoshi wants beef, then,” Himiko nodded to herself. She kept a running list of my preferences, so I didn't really need to ask how she knew. “I want fish.”

She was looking for a nod of approval, so I gave her one.

I didn't want her to require it to move forward with making her preferred kind of dinner, but... baby steps. “The recipe I know calls for tilapia, which is... I think you'd know it as izumidai? That, and your choice of red onions, red cabbage, guacamole, and limes. You can substitute more familiar things if you'd prefer, but... the sauce is pretty mild, so is the seasoning. It's got a little bit of a kick to it, so it'll be good to see if you like this type of thing.”

Himiko nodded slowly, taking it all in. “And Hitoshi's?”

“Ground beef and grated Mexican cheese with higher-end salsa. You can oven-warm the tortillas if you want,” I replied, removing my under layer and stretching out muscles I hadn't used much that day.

“Hitoshi needs vegetables,” Himiko stated firmly, crossing her arms and narrowing her gaze at me.

I sighed.

A lifetime ago, my father loved to make jokes about how my mother wouldn't let him die because she forced him to take blood pressure medication and eat something that wasn't meat and potatoes. I'd inherited at least some of that, it appeared.

“There's vegetables in the salsa, I swear,” I replied tiredly. “But if you really want to, throw some corn, beans, and finely-diced onions in the ground beef when you fry it up.”

Himiko pursed her lips again, but nodded and turned away to start dinner – or at least get a full recipe off the internet. She preferred not having all of the pieces handed to her, by me at least. Cooking was primarily her job, though I helped, and she liked being able to sketch out recipes herself when called upon.

It was either that or I'd have to buy the expansion to Faerie Feast and then decide to trust my sociopathic significant other with a declared interest in finding cute girls to join my harem with the ability to cook literally addictive food.

Despite everything, I wasn't quite that stupid.

“I'm going to take a shower, then I'll be in my office,” I spoke aloud. “I'll leave my laundry out.”

“I'll have the butler take care of it!” Himiko chirped back.

The topography of the Home was... strange, even stranger than the apartment had been, really. But, it was what I'd signed up for. The hallway was a straight line that felt like a spiral, the rooms were at impossible angles to each other, aligned so that they should be occupying overlapping sections of space and leaving the entire structure feeling both cramped and strangely large. I think it had something to do with how you always needed to walk more than you thought you did to get anywhere, artificially inflating the distance between two points.

My shower was quick and uneventful, but very much needed. When I came out, a set of traditional house-clothes were laid out for me. Most likely it was Himiko that had swapped them, then. Her stealth was getting better, which was a terrifying thing to behold.

My 'office' was on the far corner of the property, isolated on the secondary story of the Home... even though there weren't any stairs.

I entered into a small cutaway of a larger room, the rest of the space taken up by rows of servers that increased the data throughput for the Home and gave me some serious extra muscle in the event I needed to hack into something or crunch some numbers.

Currently, they were plotting out a map using the information I'd gathered from various sources.

Some were as simple as copying publicly-available databases.

Some... well, see the aforementioned note about hacking.

“Okay, running through everything...” I muttered as I dropped into my sinfully comfortable office chair and leaned back with a sigh. My eyes ghosted over the screens as I brought up my ongoing projects. “Garaki is nowhere to be found, that's just great.”

I hadn't expected it to be all that easy, mind you, but I'd hoped to turn up a few clues simply by knowing what to look for. Instead, it appeared that the man had taken his operations entirely off-grid or had somehow tapped into a power supply that didn't register on the national systems responsible for monitoring such things.

“So... I'm a mad scientist,” I began slowly, staring at the screen and letting my eyes unfocus as I thought through the matter. “My options are an illegal power tap, masking my energy needs with official legal ones, or securing my own energy source. I've ruled out the first one, the second one is still possible, but I'm leaning more towards the third...”

Which wasn't good.

Energy independence opened up a lot of territory to check, even just within Japan. A lot of otherwise-inaccessible mountains and islands could be reached via Nomu-teleportation. It was going to be a pain in the ass checking all of the defunct military bases from the Dark Age, to say nothing of the private bunkers the upper class had built to try and ride out the apocalypse.

“Theory-crafting,” I stated, rubbing at my chin idly. “Energy sources. Everything needs power, where do I get it if I'm a mad scientist on the cutting edge of crazy bullshit? Renewables are good, but most of them have downtime. That can be off-set with batteries. If he's on an island, he might have a tidal generator. There are a number of spots out there where you can put a geothermal tap, too.”

Something felt wrong about that, though.

I grunted, realizing my mistake. It was nice, stable power. The fix was too sane, too normal, too mundane for a man like Garaki.

“Nuclear?” I hummed, then shook my head. Nuclear reactors, when you got down to it, were pretty simply beasts. Even the 'new' thorium-salt ones this world had developed a hundred years ago when the national grids of various countries had fragmented. Add onto that, Japan still had a bit of a taboo about nuclear material...

No, Garaki wouldn't go for that. Still too pedestrian.

“He might have one of them for a backup supply,” I settled, nodding to myself, “but he'll want something more impressive for everyday use. Something capable of handling surging power draw for when he wants to shock something to life like Dr. Franken... stein...”

I paused.

Could it be that simple?

I leaned forward and tapped into the national database of missing persons, a thankfully public resource... and a regrettably large one. My fingers danced as I hit the search macro and slammed in all of the variations I could think of for 'person with an electrical quirk reported missing.'

Then I tagged the files, exported them, and shoved them into an excel file with a script to take the dates and graph them.

Then I sighed and leaned back.

“Well, shit... that's not good,” I admitted, looking at the spike in the data. Right around the time Garaki had evacuated his lair. Several cases in the months before, several in the months afterward. I reached up and rubbed at my eyes. “Very-not-fucking-good.”

There was the outside chance of data ghosts, of course. A mirage presenting me with what I wanted to see rather than what was actually there. I'd need to run through the data manually and make sure the script was running properly, then look at where the people had been picked up from and how they'd gone missing. Some of them might have circumstances that contraindicated Garaki being involved.

Just out of personal curiosity, I did check Kaminari Denki and, at a guess, it seemed he'd dodged the bullet by being a bit too young. His quirk wouldn't have been quite developed enough to meet what I think Garaki's standards were.

“Moving forward, then,” I muttered, my focus locking in as my fingers hit the keyboard. “There are people who aren't going to be on the national register. Migrant/refugee communities, visa holders visiting the country, trafficking victims – the usual suspects for vulnerable and invisible people. I need lists, so back to the forums. Set the parameters for the bots, but not just electrical quirks, I want them all. Anyone who might have disappeared, that's a potential Nomu.”

Thankfully, there were publicly-available resources for this kind of thing. Even in infamously-xenophobic Japan, there were private outreach programs designed to help people integrate with society and provide help for the disadvantaged.

They had lists, too.

And there were less-than-legal ones as well. Blacklists that employers passed around which prominently featured the poor and immigrants on them. Those weren't easy to acquire, but they weren't all that difficult, either. Unsecured corporate emails were like that.

Anything to keep my thoughts from-

“Husband, dinner is served,” Himiko stated, cracking the door.

My fingers stopped, then I hit a few more keys. The various processes I'd set in motion started to compile and chew through the hundreds of thousands of names, locations, occupations, and yet more that I'd given it. That done, I rose from my seat and opened the door fully.

Himiko gave me a disappointed-sad mask that didn't reach her eyes. She still wasn't quite comfortable with completely dropping her borrowed expressions when we were alone. Baby steps. “You work too much.”

I snorted and smirked. “Always more to do and school's actually eating up more time than usual, these days.”

Himiko cocked her head and nodded. “It's more fun than junior high was, I guess. My classmates are...”

Her face spasmed slightly.

I reached down to take her hand in mine.

“You can call them annoying, you know?” I pressed quietly as we began to move towards the dining room.

“It's not cute to call people that,” Himiko muttered. “They're just... too loud, too... too... friendly.”

I hummed, avoiding chuckling at her plight. It wouldn't do to make light of her situation. “Introduce me to them during lunch tomorrow. I'll try to mediate things a little bit, see if I can't get them to give you a little space.”

A bit of tension flowed out of her shoulders. “Thank you, Dear.”

I squeezed her hand in mine. “You're welcome, Dear.”

Taking the wall up to the dining room, I sighed as the aromas of spicy food hit, then blinked as I noticed Himiko shaking her head and snorting rapidly. I felt one edge of my lips slowly crawl upwards. “You don't like spice?”

“It smells strong,” Himiko whined, reaching out and taking a napkin to cover her nose.

I snorted myself, pressing my lips together as I shook with amusement.

“You're bee~ing meeeaaan,” my woman groaned quietly, looking away from me with a pout. “It's Hitoshi's stupid salsa that's the worst! Ugh!”

“Well, I appreciate the trouble you went through for me,” I grinned slyly, taking in the artfully-arranged soft tacos and spiced ground beef, beans, and corn mixture. “And we don't have to have it often. If I want a burrito I can just heat up a frozen one-”

“No!” Himiko jerked forward, her red-tinged eyes intent on me. “I'll make Husband's stupid spicy food because it's what he likes and I'm a good wife!”

I hummed, matching her fierce golden gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Alright, but in exchange I want to make you at least one meal a week. It can be lunch or dinner, your choice, and you can pick whatever you want.”

Himiko hesitated a moment, then met my gaze again and accurately assessed that I wouldn't budge on the issue. “Sashimi and sushi.”

“I can do that,” I nodded. “Give me a little warning as to when you want it. Remember we'll be going back to the agency next week to take up our usual shifts again.”

Himiko nodded, taking a bite of her fish taco and stopping short, then taking several more bites in quick succession. “Mhm... yummy!”

I grinned and nodded, slathering on salsa as I folded up a burrito and raised it to my mouth. “It is, yes.”

The rest of the meal passed with only short exchanges of pleasantries and slight updates on various subjects we were taking at UA. Here and there, agency work would come up and the latest rumors would get passed around. Eventually, though, the food was mostly-gone and what little remained consigned to leftover containers in the fridge.

Then, as Himiko was moving to her room, I reached out to take hold of her arm.

Golden eyes blinked up at me. “Husband?”

“Take your bath, then come to my room,” I paused, letting that sink in. “You have no need to return to your parents home anymore and they have no right to lay claim on you anymore. I'll be waiting.”

Himiko's eyes slowly widened, her smile bursting forth wide enough that it showed the full danger of her sharp maw, “I'll be just a moment!”

“Take your time,” I assured her, leaning in for a slow kiss that left her putty in my arms, “but not too much, okay?”

Himiko giggled and bounced off as I released my grip.

I sighed happily and rolled my shoulders as I headed to clean myself up a little bit. The shower had definitely helped, but dinner had been finger foods and I'd rather my mouth not have too much heat when I used it for... other things. Which meant I had an appointment with a toothbrush, dental floss, and mouthwash.

Himiko took longer than I did, allowing me a bit of time to simply sit and relax on my bed, taking in the dim lights and the silence.

It was a rare luxury, those few moments to myself that weren't engulfed in work.

Sadly, overwork was a byproduct of my quest not to allow myself time to destroy the economic system of Japan by declaring war on their largest bank.

Give Endeavor time. Give the system time to work. It'd be too obvious if you went after them. You're a student, Hitoshi. Be a student, go to classes. Nezu's almost certainly found out about it by now... let them cook.

I was trying, but the temptation was growing.

The urge to burn a sizable portion of the system down.

“Another month,” I vowed to myself. “If they don't make progress in another month, I take action. Three months is long enough to see something happen. Even if she's not out by then, something should be happening.”

In the meantime, I would continue moving in the shadows.

Corporate cutouts, shell companies, accruing contacts and people who could act on my behalf, individuals who would leap at the chance to get ahead in life, online advocates for financial advice...

Right now, they were listening skeptically to a complete unknown, but with each accurate prediction, my [Star_Watcher] account grew in its following. A dozen other sock-puppets parroting the insightful advice magnifying it further.

It would take a miracle to get my mother out of prison, I knew.

Of course, I also knew that miracles took a lot of prep work.

And a lot of money. A truly incredible amount of money, all of it stolen and laundered through a dozen countries and held in foreign accounts until the time grew right. Miracles also usually needed blackmail, too, say... the type that you could get from an aging yakuza lord and all of his personal files before the police managed to seize them. Or the files of a major drug cartel operating a distribution hub in Tokyo. Or perhaps even a few dozen illegally-hacked high-profile emails.

Yes, I'd needed them to collect the lists for my current project tracking down Garaki, but as long as I had one foot in the door, I might as well pick up more actionable intelligence.

And, of course, miracles needed massive amounts of computational power and the insight into the mechanics of fate itself to properly put into place.

Miracles, as it turned out, were a lot of hard fucking work.

Probably why they were so rare.

Then, my bedroom door opened, and I pushed my conspiracies away with the ease of long practice. Himiko stood there, backlit against the hallway light, wearing a high-cut yukata that stopped at her mid-thigh. It was blood red with golden sakura blossoms artfully glimmering in the half-light.

“Husband...” Himiko whispered, a jittery tension running through her body.

Am I doing this right? Is this what he wants? Will he get rid of me if I'm not good enough?

Old worries that she usually kept buried, bubbling to the surface now.

I smiled at her, “Come to bed, Himiko.”

She released an almost imperceptible sigh, sliding the door closed behind her as she approached the bed. A subtle motion from me had her sitting in my lap a moment later, holding her close. One hand reached up and guided her into another kiss, slow and gentle.

Passion would come later, reassurance was needed right now.

And, like with most things for Himiko, words meant little to her. Action meant much more.

“I love you,” I whispered, pulling away from her slightly, but pushing into her with my quirk.

Himiko locked up in my arms, the hissing squeal of a teakettle erupting from her as her face went as red as her yukata.

Well, okay... words still meant something to her, I suppose.

Certain specific words.

I took advantage of her being off-kilter to fall back onto the bed while simultaneously spinning us. That left me on top of her, pinned by my arms at her sides, and her body pressed into the voluminous bedding below her.

Her eyes were wide, dilated, and her face slack as she panted for breath.

I knew well enough what she wanted not to press her for answers.

Parts of me that had once been the millennia-old sidereal turned in concert with the much younger psychic, feeling out threads of pleasure and potential reactions. Here, within my domain, my powers could be leveraged as they should be and I had essence to burn. Was it more than a little silly to use my bootleg reality warper powers in order to give my girlfriend/wife a good first time?

Yes. Yes, it was.

Was I still going to do it?

Oh, absolutely.

Himiko moaned, screamed, and called my name loud enough that, were it not for her thighs acting as ear protection, I might have gone deaf. In the end, I pinned her to the bed, railed her hard enough that the bed bounced a foot in the air, and left her gasping and glassy-eyed as we cuddled in the warm afterglow.

“Mmm... love my husband,” she whispered dreamily.

“Love you too, wife,” I hummed in reply.

~~~

This one was hard to write, for some reason. Not really sure why, it just dragged on.

Anyway... mostly just some domestic stuff with Himiko and Hitoshi after school.

Trying to get back to more of Hitoshi's off-the-books shenanigans, so we'll be seeing less of the school crowd for a bit. They won't be completely absent, but definitely fading into the background for a bit.

In the meantime... well, Hitoshi's got a few plans cooking.

Next update will likely be more Butler Boy.