Summary: The first other psychic that Kusuo met was not Toritsuka, but his brother Kuusuke. Based off certain theories that came from watching the anime. A story of the family dynamics within the Saiki family and how Kusuo became the normal-craving teenager we came to know him.

AN: The basis of this story used to be 5 paragraphs long to explain certain things in the anime. But no one has time for that.

In short, after viewing several episodes with Kuusuke, I've come to the conclusion that there's a high possibility that Kuusuke himself has some psychic powers, and not just the feats that he was able to accomplish through his intelligence. This was hinted strongly in Episode 6 of Awakened when Kusuo was supposed to have his powers completely sealed. Kusuo demanded Kuusuke to provide an explanation of why certain strange things were happening to which Kuusuke reminded Kusuo to actually use a mouth to speak. But Kusuo reminded his brother that "You're used to wearing a telepathy canceler. So you can hear me." to which Kuusuke responded with "You're right. I can."

On with the show.

"Italics" communication thoughts.

Also, Ani = a respectful, formal reference to an older brother. Due to their strained relationship and Kusuo's generally reserved and polite nature, Ani is generally how Kusuo typically refers to Kuusuke in this fic. This story is generally written from Kusuo's perspective.

Also, looking for a beta since I just realized that there was a lot of bad spelling in this thing.

Title: The Creation of Limiters

Chapter 1 – Sleep

BOOM!

Kurumi was startled out of sleep, her heart immediately pound. She jumped up immediately, scanning the room to check for a robber, an intruder, or a bomber. Fortunately, it wasn't things strewn about or valuables missing. But it did look like the new pole lamp she bought for the room was completely mangled, twisted into several knots. The TV in the room was also in pieces, along with several photographs.

Upon seeing the knotted pole lamp and the broken possessions, she immediately knew what happened. This was just her youngest boy having a nighttime accident again.

She got up, steps more even. With her husband, Kuniharu, out of town on business, she felt it was necessary to be hyper-vigilant about the children. What if a robber, a murderer or a kidnapper tried to take her children? Her children were precocious, and people might decide to steal them for government experiments.

Take her oldest son, Kuusuke, for example. Kuusuke was the perfect eldest son that any family would be overjoyed to have. Kuusuke learned everything early, fast, and well. Kuusuke was the star pupil at his elementary school, always testing number 1 in classes, in national exams, nearly unbeatable in athletics, and artwork universally praised. Kuusuke gotten into all the top tiered schools easily because of how high he scored on all aptitude tests and all of them came with scholarships and stipends. Because the ease of his accomplishments, Kuusuke was always boasting about how it was like going to school with a bunch of monkeys in one breath and telling mom how he wanted pork chops for dinner in the next breath.

Kurumi, being a rather hands-off mom who only wanted her children to feel loved and accepted, would sometime gently correct Kuusuke in the matters of pride and politeness, telling him that he probably should not say those words out loud. Otherwise, she indulged him. He could be a cripple, retarded, blind, missing legs. It did not matter. Kuusuke was the very first result of her love for Kuniharu and she would love that little boy even if he was a useless pudding on the floor.

Her younger son, Kusuo, was just a little more precocious than Kuusuke. For one, Kusuo did everything even better than Kuusuke, learning thing earlier, faster and perfectly. He talked fourteen days earlier. He ran his first errand at one-years old. He drew photo realistically by two years old. He always seemed to know what people were thinking. But that was not so different than her overly talented eldest son. Kuusuke almost always knew what people were thinking also.

To be honest, Kurumi had a selfish reason to have a second child. She loved Kuusuke so much that she could not bear the thought of her baby being alone if something happened to her and Kuniharu.

Having no one to fall back on was a scary and lonely reality. Both her and Kuniharu were the only child from their respective families. They both agreed on the point of family. Sure, they received much more support from devoted parents and the parental support is much needed in this ever more competitive society to just get by. At the same time, they also came to the realization that family was not something money can buy. It was a good thing that she found Kuniharu to be a devoted boyfriend, husband and father. Not everyone could so lucky. So, despite the financial strain in their young family, they decided to try and succeeded in having a second child.

Kurumi was so glad to have Kusuo. He was such an adorable baby! With the most unique deep pink, almost magenta colored hair and eyes. He ran errands, helped her with house chores at times, listens and do her requests, and always stayed out of trouble. He was caring and kind, once he was past his terrible 2 through kindergarten period. He was her sweetest and most lovable, dour baby boy.

Speaking of her baby boy, she was now outside the boys' share room. Because of the Saiki family's limited income, the Saikis could not afford a house large enough to have separate rooms for the boys. Kurumi turned the door knob as quietly as possible and peeked in.

It was an adorable scene. Kuusuke, her 10-year old, was sitting up on the sleeping futon, reading one of those foreign language young adult novels by the light of a small book light. Her youngest, Kusuo, the 8-year old, was sleeping right next Kuusuke. His face was turned away from Kurumi, but it did look like the little brother was snuggling next to the older brother. She could clearly see that they were holding hands.

Kurumi smiled, as much as the boys fight during the day, going about their rock-paper-scissor game, a card game, sometime devolving into fist fights that Kusuo always wins, they were depending on each other just as she had hoped. It would be a foundational relationship that would help both in the future.

The only thing that detracted from the scene were the broken bookshelves and table lamp. It seemed that whatever accident Kusuo had caused had affected other parts of the house. Hopefully, her cookware was okay. But it did not matter. Kusuo would go about restoring them during the day.

Kuusuke noticed her immediately. He did not even move his eyes from the book, but held a finger to his lips, but gave an "o.k." sign at the end. Whatever it was, Kuusuke seemed to have everything under control.

"Good night, Ku-kun," said Kurumi, waving her son bye before returning to bed.

Kusuo always knew that he was second best. His parents made it clear enough when he was born; that he was only slightly less cute than mom and dad. He always knew that he was created for that older playmate who could not bear a competitive loss. This knowledge was not something that he had ever put in words. He knew instinctively that he was truly, purposefully, number two and it rubbed at him.

That might be the reason why he did not even pretend to be normal when playing with the number one, Kuusuke. No pretending to lose in rock-paper-scissors like he did in school. Perfect grade against perfect grade. Fist fight against fist fight. Besides, Kuusuke seemed immune to certain things that Kusuo could do. Petrification did not work. Telepathy was a two-way street. X-ray worked sometimes. Mind control was useless. Punches that would had clearly crushed houses seemed to only bruise Kuusuke.

Even now, Kusuo felt the extent of his second best-ness.

For weeks now, he could barely sleep.

Sounds, voices, speeches, cries, screams, from their surrounding apartment buildings kept on filtering in. Endless worrying about mortgage, child care, missing a TV show, relationships, getting the next drug high, working, retiring, testing. It was an endless assault and sleepiness seemed to amplify those sounds, imagines and feelings.

He had heard them for a long time, ever since he could remember. Most of time, those voices were this constant buzz in the background that he could ignore or listen to. It took some focus but it was not overwhelming.

But as he had gotten older, he noticed that his powers were growing ever increasingly annoying. Alongside that growth was a growth in sensitivity. He had accidentally lifted a skyscraper. Unintentionally or intentionally wiped out a country. He had to be careful about things like sitting down or he would unintentionally break a chair.

He must had hit a small growth spurt weeks ago because these noises had gotten so much louder and became overtly intrusive and affecting his inner emotions, no matter how hard he tried to look the other way. It took all his focus to keep his thoughts steady and that was simply exhausting.

And knowing that Ani was sleeping without a worry in the world irked him to no end.

Kusuo had seen Ani's thoughts and knew that Ani also heard the cacophony of their neighbors just as loudly. But Ani never seemed bothered by the incessant chatter at all. Even when something very bad was happening and they could have done something, Ani seemed perfectly fine to simply mind his own business. Ani had a worldview that looked down upon these bags of muscles and skeleton and seemed unbothered by human tragedy. A trip through Ani's head would definitely shut the voices.

But Kusuo refused to asked Ani for help. That evil playmate of his only thought of beating him at a game or reckless world domination and destruction. There was no way he was going to admit that he want or need help from such a meanie.

"Shut it there," came Ani's mental voice, piercing through the dizzying and nausea inducing images and sounds. Ani almost always spoke with words during the day. But right now, at night, when they had to be quiet so they do not disturb the adults, Ani simply think of things and fully expected Kusuo to hear him. "You're thinking so loud that you woke me up."

"You know I can't just shut it off like you,"sent Kusuo through gritted teeth. Man, he was tired and he just want to sleep.

"That's not true. What you have is an untrained mind," Ani said, unsympathetically.

The words were upsetting. Kusuo suddenly thought of punching his brother into next week. He could not put his frustration on anyone else since they would just break, and breaking people and things tend to upset their parents. But he was so tired that he did not even want to move. Instead, he thought about going to the moon and just sit there for a while.

Of course, Ani knew what he wanted to do. Ani always did. "No. You can't go. You woke mom up with that racket. She's coming to check on us. And if you go now, you might get yourself into a time loop. Who knows how destructive you can be then?"

Ani was right. What a jerk of an older brother. Wasn't the older sibling supposed to help and protect the younger sibling? Ani never had problems with kicking people while they're down. Kusuo knew that he could not depend on his older brother to ever help him.

"O ye of little faith!" was Kusuo's only warning before he felt Ani's hand snuck under the futon covers and grabbed his hand.

Kusuo hated touching or being touched by another live being. Touching meant activating psychometry and it meant experiencing the thoughts and feelings of others and things. The act could be extremely overwhelming and shocking to the point that he would lose his sense of self. He made it a point not to ever directly touch people or even things and wore super thin matted gloves to hide the fact. He also tried to wear long sleeves as much as possible, unless it was out of season to the point that he stood out, precisely to prevent accidental psychometry.

But psychometry with Ani was different.

Ani had thoughts. A lot of it. Ani's thoughts were well organized, neatly packaged, mildly amused, psychotically chilling and abstractedly complex.

But Ani had little to no feelings.

The moment their hands connect, all those intrusive thoughts, more importantly, intense feelings, of their neighbors quiet down to an insignificant background hum. Kusuo saw Ani's thought pattern of a barren landscape, sporadic ideas, mostly of science and math, going about their own recombination. There was a ball of raw emotion the distance where Ani cornered the inner voices of the lesser creatures. Right now, there was a murder occurring somewhere on the edge of town. But Ani simply viewed the wretched screams as a woman's life force ebbed away with less interest than watching paint dry. Even Ani's desire to beat Kusuo in a competition was barely notable.

It was finally quiet.

The door to their room opened. It was mom.

Good ol' mom. Kusuo detected, from her, boundless affection, concern and love for them. In her mind, her children were the most beautiful, perfect creatures who could do no wrong and she must protect them from the outside. Her love was so strong that even Ani would sometime spontaneously do things to please her.

They had at least shared that. They shared mutual desires to keep mom happy.

She seemed satisfied after seeing what she wanted to see in her boys. The door was very quietly closed with a click.

"God, she is dumb," Ani thought to himself, which inevitably filtered down to Kusuo. It was the simple truth. As much as he loved mom and dad, they were the exact people that scammers loved to victimize. Fixing their parents' problems was simple, but it was annoying from time to time. "And, no, Kusuo. I'm not insulting her. I still love mom. Go back to sleep. Here. I'll read your favorite. Mechanica."

Ah. Yes. Mechanica. A book of classical motion and proof. Appropriately esoteric subject that mildly engaged their intellect without having to deliberately dumb their thinking.

Kuusuke flipped to the pages where he last left off and started reading. "Leonhardi Euleri, . Methodus inveniendi traiectorias reciprocas algebraicas. Qum temporis..."

Kusuo relaxed, mind listening to his brother's voice and feelings, or lack thereof. He was so tired that he did not even care at this point that they had an unspoken vendetta against each other. He was glad for the relief of silence and the subsequent return of his own thoughts finally coming back to him.

A brief moment later, there was no more thought.

Kusuo finally fell asleep. Judging by the moments and breathing, Kusuo's mind had quickly cycled through rapid-eye-movement sleep, which was when Kusuo was at his most dangerous, to non-rapid-eye-movement sleep. A gentle brush of Kusuo's surface thoughts revealed nothing. Fast asleep.

With Kusuo finally asleep, Kuusuke sat crouched, thinking. He really should do something.

Ever since end of second grade, Kusuo had problem sleeping and things were starting to get out of hand. Kusuo even lost his restraint on his psychic powers and destroyed a classroom because something as insignificant as pity for a classmate who was bullied. If this continued, things were bound to become problematic. They already had to move because of Kusuo's mishap there.

Kuusuke went back to reading Mechanica, careful to keep holding his younger brother's hand in order to preserve the psychometry. He would have to figure something out about this soon. He did not need to be a precog to know that this trend of uncontrolled power, was left unchecked, things were going to end badly. This was particularly true due to his sweet little brother's overly sensitive, kind, gentle, dramatic and sweet nature.

And Kuusuke was confident that he could do something about it.

AN: Let me know what you think.