#but the things that Arataka shares of Hanazawa to Mob and vice versa they start to wonder if those impressions were all wrong

[daisyachain]

Thinking about ageswap Hanazawa. The idea is that without Reigen as a neutral sounding board, Mob grows up more repressed with a shorter fuse and less of a nonviolent conviction. Presumably Mob and Teru still meet at some point. Mob tries to talk it out but instead of the situation going to near-murder, Mob fights back before the knives come out. Teru being Teru would fight to the bitter end, forcing Mob to beat the hell out of him. The school doesn’t get destroyed and Mob feels bad. He doesn’t, however, have a breakdown over it. He’s just miffed.

Teru has learned nothing other than ‘don’t challenge Mob’ and stops trying to do anything at all so as not to catch his attention (Mob doesn’t care, he just feels uncomfortable about his presence). He drops out of alpha bitching and just becomes the bottom-of-the-barrel slacker getting straight 75%s and maybe psychiching his way into a part-time job where he doesn’t actually have to do work. He drifts to adulthood doing exactly the bare minimum in everything and looking over his shoulder for the ominous Mob.

Meanwhile on the other side, meeting is just another awkward and bad thing in Mob’s life rather than a traumatizing shock to his entire concept of being. Mob trudges along barely passing his classes and afraid of himself—he doesn’t want to burden his parents and he doesn’t know what to do—and snaps more often and cheats to get a good grade sometimes and feels bad about it each time. He meets other psychics in due time as he and Ritsu evict the Claw operatives that come after them in short order.

Mob VS Toichiro still happens with a lot more collateral damage since most of Claw’s organization is still intact—except it’s ageswap, instead of an indomitable foe Toichiro is the spoiled brat son of checked-out but ultimately neutral Shou, who made a cult for himself because he was bored. Teru must help out with that at some point and they make uneasy eye contact before proceeding to Not Think About It. Psychics become persona non grata after that public emergence and Mob goes through high school anonymous and self-hating while Ritsu gets a lot more resentful of literally everyone else.

Ritsu ends up in some high-performance job, Mob takes something steady, quiet, not glamorous. Teru continues on skimming cash out of people’s sofas (think the Harvest arc in Part 4) and living off of his nebulously rich and possibly dead parents’ saving accounts. They avoid each other and avoid thinking about each other fastidiously while being unable to forget about the other psychic in town. Mob’s only contact at this point is with his blood relations.

And then—! Precocious elementary schooler Reigen catches him using his powers for his menial janitorial job at school (or some such) and insists he teach him. From there he gets wayyyy overexcited and, a few months after Mob starts ‘teaching’ him (trying to get rid of him), Arataka goes around looking for other psychics (calling out random people). A couple of years later, he happens across Teru and accuses him of being a psychic, which Teru misinterprets as Arataka actually sensing his powers. Hilarity ensues as Teru (natural teacher) independently tries to take Arataka as his minion because he’s desperate for attention while Mob starts to realize that this other psychic his little tutoring student Arataka is talking about is real and is the guy he’s been avoiding for 10+ years. Oops.

Which brings us to: ageswap terumob should be the two of them awkwardly co-mentoring Arataka. Because they’re reluctant to talk, Teru remains under the impression that Arataka has psychic powers and is just not using them as a Mob-imposed challenge. Mob is starting to open up a bit and really, really wants to have any sort of friend, but he’s scared that Teru will be a bad influence. Arataka just likes to hang out with the cool older adults (losers) to forget about how unpopular he is. Teru is terrified of Mob but wants to insinuate himself into his life all the more now that he has an excuse to get the patronage of the most powerful man alive (school janitor Mob). What could go wrong!