#ritsu on the other hand i see as having a good amount of power (under serizawa level but not far) but with a lack of skill

[gumy-shark]

perhaps one day i will post all my insane little thoughts about shou and ritsu and strength (and skill vs power). but not right now it’s been too long since i’ve rewatched the claw arcs or confession arc

[thousand-winters]

You know what I find really, really funny?

You know how Reigen drops his "oh, I don't think anybody would like me if they saw the real me" on Serizawa (that definitely was not on his job's description)? Obviously there's a whole thing there with how he sees himself but how in the end he stops lying to Mob and confesses the truth to him.

And then... he kinda just stops there.

In the spin-off he doesn't tell the truth to Tome until he thinks he has no other choice because she's putting herself in danger by working under the wrong assumption that he's a psychic, and while doing so, he asks her not to tell Serizawa. He was honest with Mob, but that was with him and only him. His default mode is still lying and hiding.

And the thing is obviously these people he has surrounded himself with, purposefully or accidentally, don't like him because they think he's an esper —at this point I don't think he's fooling even half of them, frankly—, or even because of his whole... energetic, over the top persona. They like him because of the kind of person he is, whether he's keeping his whole salesman attitude or whether he's a bit quieter and less self-assured.

Now, it's kinda easy to see why he would think he has to keep that up, initially he presented himself to Mob as this wise mentor figure, half of the other people he knows are kids for which he feels the responsibility to be a reliable adult figure, and then there are cases like Serizawa and the ex-Scars who do hold him in high regard and see him with a certain degree of admiration, all of that sort of tied with his fake psychic status.

And so it's very amusing to me that the one person who could show him VERY clearly that people care about him regardless of all of that is... Ritsu.

Because here's the thing, he was jealous of Reigen to some degree since he was someone Mob could confide in, unlike Ritsu due to the distance that had formed between them after the incident. And I think part of his irritation with Reigen was definitely that he was so evidently (to him anyway) a fraud, so that put Ritsu pre-awakening of his powers and Reigen at the same level and yet... Mob always went to Reigen for advice and guidance. It's very understandable for him to have been annoyed considering that.

Through the story it's more than evident that Ritsu is very, very aware that Reigen is a fraud, and though he's open with his distaste, at some point it feels a bit more like a normal kind of distaste. Reigen might have his morals and principles as a fraud, but he's one nonetheless, plus his personality doesn't mesh particularly well with Ritsu, and quite honestly? If I were 13yo and had to interact with someone like Reigen, I think I would be feeling a good amount of second hand embarrassment that ends up in annoyance.

But Ritsu doesn't really hate Reigen. He's comically annoyed by him, sure, but it's more than obvious he doesn't hate him.

When push comes to shove, he never wishes any actual ill will toward Reigen, he helps pull him away from Ishiguro in 7th Division Arc, for example, and when he goes to face Toichiro to help Mob, Ritsu is the one showing visible concern for what's going on when they see the explosion and the fire from down below, with his little "Reigen-san..." (as a sidenote, I love how the English dub does this with the "please, be okay").

My favorite example of this by far is Separation Arc, because Ritsu has genuine reasons to be pissed at Reigen this time around, if he sort of gathered that he mistreated Mob, and yet what he does is... he watches the press conference. It isn't even because of Mob, he's not sitting down with him or even watching with his parents or anything, it's just him, he had to have made the active choice to watch. And he could be vindictive and it would be such a reasonable posture to take because, again, Reigen was a goddamn jerk to his brother and the situation snowballed from there, but he isn't, he's visibly concerned for him.

That is NOT a boy who doesn't care, much less one who hates Reigen.

And it's so funny to me that the one person who could show Reigen all of those fears he has about that side of him he hates being a deal breaker for the people around him is also the one who makes faces at the idea of going to stay over at his apartment.

[kekisu]

TOP 5 CHARAS AND 5 REASONS WHY YOU LIKE THEM GO GO GO

AHHHH OKAY OKAY. I LITERALLY LIT UP WHEN I SAW THIS IN MY INBOX YOU HAVE NOOOO IDEA THANK YOU SO MUCH ah okay. i hope its ok if i leave it to just one or two of my fav things about them though cause NFHBGDF I DONT WANT THIS TO BE MILES LONG i hope you understand!!!!!

1. LIGHT YAGAMI

now. i dont think anybodys surprised. MFKSKFMFMHNGJN honestly, though i dont care about death note much at all anymore, hes like gum stuck to my shoe and i just cannot get him off no matter what i do. i tell myself that i dont give a fuck about anything in death note until i see him on my dash and i go apeshit. hes completely changed me and how i approach analyzing complex characters. i think hes the first character that ive ever actually cared about in that sense? the sense where i look into every detail about him i mean. its really just so fun...

my absolute favorite thing about him... i really love how funny he is. this isnt to say hes a humorous guy im saying hes funny as in he makes such stupid decisions and its hilarious to see him struggle so hard constantly. the entire ending of death note is fucking insane it sends me into laughing fits every time. theres so many funny moments in death note despite it being considered a psychological horror animanga because of him being a genuine fucking idiot 24/7. hes supposed to be a genius but he truly does lack so much self awareness sometimes.

if you wanna know more of my thoughts in depth, i have an analysis of him here that you can check out :) ID LOVE FEEDBACK ON IT so if you disagree with me or have questions etc feel free to shoot an ask and ill try to answer!!!!!

2. GORO AKECHI

god... hes perfect. he and light are on the same level of favoritism for me, dont let the numbers fool you. hes hands down my absolute favorite in persona 5 and it blows my mind knowing that the majority of the fandom feels the exact opposite or are torn over him ITS ALMOST FRUSTRATING because its mostly due to the amount of misinformation/mischaracterization spread about him!!!! but no he just happens to be the best written character in that piece of shit of a game! MFDKDHNGJJ AND PERSONA FANS CANT COMPREHEND GOOD WRITING

my favorite thing about him.. i love how hes written. and i know this sounds really basic and predictable, but its the truth i just really love his growth as a character, especially in royals third semester when he gets a chance to properly shine and oh my god! did he shine! hes literally so perfect in 3rd sem

theres just something so captivating about an angry teenager who truly thinks of his life as worthless and doesnt bother making bonds with others because of it who suddenly finds himself questioning his choices of self isolation when he finally meets a group of people he can resonate with and feel seen by. a group of people who are willing to reach out and listen to him despite his past mistakes. theres just something so perfect about seeing that same angry teenager want to take his life into his own hands and strive to grow... that same angry teenager who didnt value his own life start to see meaning in things because of bonds...

i love goro so so much he makes me so emotional if it isnt obvious enough NGFHGDGBDFH I THINK ABOUT HIM A LOT. i think about him healing so much.

(btw im working on an analysis for him atm thats similar to lights so! stay tuned for that dropping when its done in like a million years NFHFBGFHDBGHF)

3. AKIRA KURUSU

DAMN 2 PERSONA 5 CHARACTERS IN A ROW

OKAY SO i know Technically akira is supposed to be a blank slate silent protagonist but let me tell you THATS SO FAR FROM WHAT HE ACTUALLY IS. IM NEVER FORGIVING ATLUS FOR TRYING TO SHOVE HIM INTO THE SILENT PROTAG BOX AND NOT LETTING HIM BE HIS OWN CHARACTER! BECAUSE HE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE AMAZINGGGGG ugh sorryfor caps im so fuckng mad MKDFKMGMHMGMG

it really does get on my nerves how because of atlus trying to make him a silent protag, the majority of the p5 fandom sees him as that. blank slate. nothing. when in reality he very much has a ton of spunk and id argue that hes his own character entirely if you just look a little deeper past the surface Like... its not even that hard to see personality in him. beneath the mask is literally his theme song, have you Not seen the lyrics to that? HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THE ENTIRE THEME OF THE GAME? this little dude is so traumatized and angry at those who wronged him (aka the justice system! shitty adults!) and people have the nerve to say hes the worst persona protagonist? lmfao

my favorite thing about akira is how he looks like a cat and how cocky and annoying he can be.. he is such a jokester hes the absolute dumbest. i enjoy this silly guy. *holds him under the armpits like a longcat*

4. SHIGEO KAGEYAMA

ahhh mob. he makes me do this -> :)

mp100, of course, changed my fucking life. mp100 is the reason i am the way i am and though all the characters are incredibly relatable and memorable and i cherish them so dearly, i, like most people, cherish mob the absolute most. seriously his strength really is incredible and though hes just a fictional character he is so inspiring and i wish to carry as much gentleness in my heart as he does.

im so so proud of him on his development he started off so.. i wouldnt say he was weak, but i would say that he lacked experience. he lived in his own little bubble not knowing what the world was like and throughout the story he grew to learn so much.. he learned to make such. mature decisions at such a young age. hes so so wise. hes so powerful not only because of his psychic powers but because of his compassion for others. he can befriend even the worst of people...

my favorite thing about him is his determination to become the best version of himself he can be. and also his relationship with ritsu (not me, i mean ritsu kageyama <3) i always gravitate towards siblings in fiction because im an only child and well <3 i dont experience that. so i like projecting onto them GHBFBBHFG they care so much for each other.. sniffle sniffle

5. RYO ASUKA

ok im going to be real even though im into devilman i dont have much of a reason to enjoy him this much. i just think hes hilarious and really cool and his satan form gives me gender envy. i love it when he commits random easily avoidable acts of violence for no reason at all its just because he wants to. and thats just fine. i think he can kill people and get away with it because hes ryo asuka. gay rights

[serenlyss]

Shou Week Day 1

It’s 1:30am for me which means it’s officially Shou Week! I’m so excited to share the stuff I’ve prepared for this week, Shou is one of my favorite characters in the fandom to write and I’m hype to see all the appreciation for him this week. So far I’ve done two prompts with the intention of writing more, but school is busy so who knows. Anyway even if I only post the two, I hope you enjoy my contributions. Today’s prompts was Action / Destruction. I’ll also be posting these on my AO3 account all under one work, so if you prefer to read there you can find my anthology here. Thanks!

@shousuzukiweek

---

His ears are ringing. He’s not sure where he is or how he got here, but he can feel hard rock stabbing into his back and he smells ruin on the air, like melted plaster and hot asphalt and concrete dust. It’s acrid, and the odor of it burns the inside of his nose with its acidity. At his side, his hand twitches, raising meekly upward to cover his mouth and nose in hopes of dulling the sensations. When it comes away red with his own blood, he expects to feel some kind of urgency, a desire to patch himself up to keep from getting any worse, but he finds that he’s too sore and battered to make much of an effort. He sucks in a breath that tastes like copper and ash, and his hand falls back to his side.

How did he get here, anyway? His mind is spinning faster than the storm clouds overhead, thick and foreboding and colored dark red, like the wine his father would pour for important guests when they’d visit his house growing up.

Shou blinks, and for a moment, his thoughts clear. Right. His father. His mission. He thinks he must have hit his head pretty hard to have forgotten something as important as this. He braces his hands on the shattered ground beneath him and pushes, hard, but he can barely manage to lift himself an inch before his strength fails him. He winces, letting out an involuntary and rather pathetic whimper, and resigns himself to laying still for a moment longer.

Everything is quiet. He remembers now, the way he’d stood in front of his father and been brutally beaten into the dust beneath his heel. He’s not in the tower anymore, though; in fact, he finds himself looking up at it, now, at the center of the maelstrom of decapitated skyscrapers and psychic power.

Ritsu’s brother had saved him, twice. Once at the top of the tower, when he’d interrupted his fight with his father, and again when he’d warned them all to run, to get as far away as possible before his father went off like a bomb and leveled the whole city. They’d tried to do as he’d asked, but, well, it’s obvious to him now that they’d only made it so far.

He wonders, briefly, where Ritsu is. Had he doubled back to help his brother? Had he managed to find a safe place, somewhere to wait out the explosion? He’s smart like that, able to think quickly on his feet. Shou wouldn’t be surprised if that ended up being the case. Or maybe he’d also been caught up in the blast, carried off his feet and buried in a pile of rubble somewhere not too far away.

After a few long seconds of radio silence, Shou makes another attempt to sit up, this time with some success. Black spots dance in his peripheral vision, like television static, and clear only minimally as he looks around to see where he is and what’s going on.

The stormclouds overhead are dissipating, slowly, breaking up to let the blackness of the night sky in. Faintly, Shou can spot stars blinking through the gloominess, through the clouds of dust and piles of rubble. It’s too dark to see much else, but when he looks around, he sees other people stirring, familiar faces mixed with strangers. Ritsu’s brother is not among them, nor is his father.

“Shou.” A voice drags him out of his thoughts, broken off by a thick and exhausted cough. When he turns toward its source, he finds himself staring up at Ritsu. His friend’s hoodie is missing an entire sleeve, and he’s caked from head to toe in concrete dust and blood, but he’s standing, barely. “Are you alright?” he asks, voice hoarse from exertion and from breathing in the thick, ashy air. He holds out a hand, an offer to help.

Shou swallows thickly before attempting to speak, his voice coming out similarly wrecked. “More or less,” he manages, lifting one sore, bloodied hand to accept Ritsu’s offer.

Ritsu pulls him to his feet with some effort, only letting go of his hand once he’s certain that Shou is steady on his feet. His gaze is tinted with the mildest hint of concern, and Shou takes a small amount of amusement in the little tells he’s begun to pick up. He’s certain that Ritsu’s concern runs much deeper than the surface suggests.

“Well, we should probably go track down my old man and your brother,” he says, deflecting Ritsu’s attention away from him. There are still things left to do. “Are you good to finish this thing out?”

Ritsu blinks, eyebrows quirking up ever-so-slightly, and then he gives a nod of affirmation. “Of course,” he replies simply, and takes a step toward the carnage ahead, “let’s go dig them out.”

[suckerforsaikik]

Hypothetically, HYPOTHETICALLY, if someone were to write a Saiki Kusou no Psi nan crossover with assassination classroom. In your opinion, what would be the funniest, clever or most mysterious way to integrate him into class 3-E? (Assuming you've read/watched the series that is).

(this took way too long because i ended up binging the whole series for ‘research’)

Summary: Saiki tries to hide his psychic powers from the assassination classroom when he finds himself in their world.

Saiki needed to stop getting himself into these situations. He didn’t know which gods felt the need to torment him like they did, but an angry letter of complaint to their office wasn’t enough to make up for what happened.

It started as soon as he woke up. Approximately 0.0076 seconds after he got out of his bed, Saiki had noticed something wasn’t right.His limiter had fallen out during his sleep, and was now partially under the pillow. His bed and the better chunk of his room were submerged in sand, which went on for miles. Using his clairvoyance, Saiki still couldn’t see any people for a good 50 kilometres. He had found himself in the middle of the desert.

“Yare yare, I must’ve teleported.”

He then had tried teleporting to his house, but he couldn’t find it. He went through the whole neighbourhood, but his dad and mom didn’t seem to… exist? He even checked the whole country, But popping up all over Japan attracted the attention of a few parties.

And that eventually ended up with him here, With a government agent prattling on about whatever threat the world faced. After revealing his telekinesis on a surveillance camera (thankfully they never found out about his teleportation), the government of Japan had noticed him, and had immediately dragged him to a secret government bunker, talking about how they knew he had special powers. Not that he was listening. Instead, he was worrying over what had happened to everyone he know. The latest theory he had come up with was he had hopped a dimension. It only happened once before, and ended with him running from powerful espers from the 7th division of Claw. He soon realized it would take a day to get back to his normal dimension when he was trying to get back, so that was probably the minimum amount of time he’d have to spend here.

“What a cliche trope”  Saiki sighed. “I’ll just have to play along, I guess”

“-the reward is 30 billion yen to kill that yellow monster. Will you do it?” The annoying side character agent, who introduced himself as Shiro, finished.

Saiki rolled his eyes. Even if he’d rather spend the day taking advantage of this universe’s coffee jelly, he knew he couldn’t escape the plot. If he tried running, he would just get dragged back into it for some stupid reason, or he’d be pulled into another, more ridiculous, story. It was the only thing that could beat him.

A nod confirmed his alliance.

“Excellent! I’ll get you prepared.” Saiki’s mind-reading abilities told him Shiro wasn’t the most mentally stable, but he figured he’d have a few episodes before Shiro went full crazy.

“Time to get you enrolled in the assassination classroom.”

—

(Somewhere in a sketchy government facility)

A bloodstained report smacked onto the desk of the prime minister.

“We have intel.” the spy who had delivered the file spoke, with his toque shading his eyes, and you could only see his dark pupils drilling down into your head.

“What’s it aboot?” The prime minister’s eyes had seen his fair share of wars, they were dark and unbreakable like a beaver’s den. He pulled the files toward him, examining the files with the intensity of as if they were tickets to a professional hockey game.

“The Japanese have been keeping secrets from us, sir. They have been hosting a dangerous octopus creature, who says they’ll destroy the Earth next March.”

“Those bastards.” The prime minister stood up from his desk, causing his chair to scrape the floor as it moved away from him.

“When I’m done with them, I’ll show them no mercy.” He furrowed his brows. “I’d bet a toonie they thought we couldn’t help because we’re a ‘peaceful’ country. I’ll show them… when we BLOW UP THAT MONSTER OURSELVES!!”

“How do you plan to accomplish that, sir?”

“Heat seeking missiles. We aim it right at the students so that damn octopus can’t escape, then we bomb the whole thing with anti-teacher pellets.”

“Sorry for doubting your plan, sir.”

“Sorry for making you doubt my plan.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.”

—

“I hear we’re getting another student transfer, Kayano!” Nagisa stopped to chat with his fellow student on the way to their mountain school.

“Do you think they’ll be normal this time?” Kayana said.

“Doubtful” Itona appeared. “The only transfer students we have are freaks. I had tentacles, Ritsu’s an assassination machine, and Karma has too many problems to be ‘normal’.” he listed the transfer students’ ‘quirks’ on his fingers.

“You might want to stop insulting me,” behind Itona, Karma stood. He smirked, then said “But I wouldn’t disagree.”

Everyone made their way to class, where KoroSensei was waiting.

“Hello class.” He tittered. “ The new transfer student comes today, and he has ALREADY challenged me to a fight, so we’re moving quite fast. Ooh, telekinesis? How intriguing!”

After staring at the note intently, KoroSensei held it up, showing japanese kanas spelling out the time and place for meeting, along with the students known powers.

“Now please be patient, everyone. The student should arrive right–”

The door to the classroom blew open. Shiro stepped into the scene, with Saiki a few seconds behind him, yet already regretting it.

“Hi.” Saiki said.

Stepping into the classroom, The minds of the students told Saiki about the previous fights of different rivals of Korosensei. All of them had failed, obviously. They tried to kill him, got beaten badly, then learned the value of friendship and working together. It seemed that was what was expected of him as a transfer. Saiki could at least help speed the process up.

‘Alright,’ he thought, ‘ I guess I have to do it.’

He held up his hands in surrender.

“Oh no. You are too strong, I can see it now. There is no way I can beat you. I’m so sorry, Shiro, I guess I’m giving up.” He walked off to the empty seat in the corner of the classroom, right next to a window. He smirked. A few more hours and he’d be out of this classroom .

“W-What?!” Shiro sputtered, stepping closer to Saiki with an intent to murder, “You’re supposed to fight. Get up and KILL HIM!!” he reached to grab Saiki’s shoulder’s before Korosensei’s tentacles pulled him away.

“You’re not allowed to hurt any of my students, Shiro.” Korosensei said, smiling. “Please excuse yourself from this classroom.”

Shiro left, albeit slowly. Saiki’s recently created plan was going well.

As Korosensei started the lesson, a student with flashy red hair (‘Karma Akabane’ Saiki noticed) leaned over to talk to him from the other desk.

“So, I heard you had telekinesis.” Karma face was two inches from Saiki. Saiki couldn’t really deny his powers here. He nodded.

“Interesting!” His face was now just an inch away. “Can I have an example?”

Yare yare. Saiki waved his hands, and a spoon flew into his hand from a nearby lunchbox. Letting go of it so it could float on its own, the metal spoon bent before Karma’s widening eyes. He let out a gasp,  making everyone turn to see the spoon that was levitating thanks to a certain psychic’s powers. Now he had an audience.

“Wow! I guess it’s true. How much power do you have?  Can you lift a car? A train? Could you fix the moon?”

“Why would I need to-” Shoot. That was close to revealing himself as an outsider. His telepathy showed him the broken crescent moon that all the class was thinking about. Could he fix it? He would have to take out his limiter and turn it back seven years, though it wouldn’t be hard theoretically. But if he said yes, that would mean they would ask him to fix it. It also wouldn’t make sense to how he could fix a whole moon and not defeat a yellow octopus man. Lying was the better option here. “I mean, no, Nothing bigger than spoons.”

“Um, okay.” The whole class was staring at him now. He could tell they were suspicious. He just had to switch the subject, and then they would forget.

“So what are those weird pink balls on your head?”

Shoot. He had forgotten to telepathically suggest they were hairpins. Being the center of attention was too dangerous.

“They’re my hairpins.” Everyone seemed to accept that, thank the gods.

“Wow! Can I pull them out and see them?” one classmate reached for his head.

“No.”

Yare yare. He might not survive today.

—

As Saiki was being tortured by the students of 3-E, Korosensei was sitting read The Great Gatsby. Even when he was thoroughly enjoying his book, his nose caught the faint smell of chemicals. Normally this wouldn’t be the biggest issue, but the chemicals were a fuel-oxidizer mixture, they were up in the air, and they were coming closer at a rate too fast to be a plane. Missiles, then. He could smell out the steam of infrared electricity, so they were heat-seeking missiles, specifically. Why would anyone send heat-seeking missiles to him? He didn’t produce that much heat, so the missile would more likely go to actual people like-

The children.

They were aiming for the schoolchildren, to keep him here. Korosensei couldn’t smell it now, but he bet there was also an anti-sensei missile searing through the sky towards him.

How could he solve this? He needed to stop the missiles, firstly. Should he tell the students? No, that would only worry them about problem with an obvious solution.

He flew off from his desk in the classroom. At Mach 20, disabling the missiles would be easier than stopping them physically with his lack of strength. Then he would have to bury them in the ocean, or maybe space. Speeding up to the closest missile, he noticed a Canadian flag design on its side.

“Canada, hmm? It’s always the quiet ones.”

He tried to open up the hatch to the missiles wires, but his tentacles burst as he touched the metal plating.

“Anti-sensei plating.” that made it harder. He could go back and grab his napkin to hold it, but he couldn’t navigate the wire system accurately with such a huge handicap. The only option was to evacuate the students and hopefully get out of the missiles range.

He flew back to the classroom, where a certain psychic was sitting.

Of course, Saiki knew about the missiles. With a quick check using clairvoyance, he counted 3 in total. Heading straight for them at about Mach 15. There was enough explosives to decimate the whole mountain. Korosensei may try and save all his students, but there were only 20 seconds left. He wouldn’t make it.

Korosensei quickly shoved his students out the door of the classroom.  He talked quickly as he persuaded them out of the building, but he was too agitated to fully explain the situation. Now there were 15 seconds. The missiles could be seen before Saiki and rest of the students were all outdoors. Everyone immediately realized what KoroSensei had been trying to do, and started to sprint, but no one here was fast enough to escape except Korosensei, and he would not abandon his students. 10 seconds. They seemed to realize the couldn’t outrun their death, so they just stood, motionless, wondering what would happen next. Less than 5 seconds left.

—

Saiki knew he had to do it. They would question it, and ask him why he hadn’t used his powers. But even if he hated confrontation, and talking, and socializing, that wouldn’t matter if they were dead. His rule of not interfering would be broken, but he could make an exception. No matter what excuse he made to himself, he knew he wouldn’t run away.

Two seconds left.

Saiki calmly stepped forwards to the missiles, putting himself in front of all his classmates. His hands stretched out before him. Like they were frozen in time, all three missiles slowed to a stop, five feet away from the students they were to kill.

But that was only a temporary solution. Taking out his limiter, Saiki set the missiles to seven years in the past. Plates of metal materialized to take their place, and fell to the grass. The clattered onto the ground unceremoniously

No one spoke.

“Wow.” Karma was the first to break the silence, “One question. How?”

“I’m uh… not from around here.” Saiki fiddled with his hands too much to be normal. He’d rather get hit by a missile than be asked awkward questions in front of a crowd.

“You’re American??!”

“No, that’s-” Why was everyone so stupid? “A bit farther than that.”

“You’re an alien!!”

“No…(Yare yare) well, close enough.”

“So why?” Nagisa asked. He seemed to have completely recovered from the shock of certain death, and now stood in his usual pose. Not cocky or reserved, but unfazed.

“Why what?”

“Why would you lie?”

“Because then you’d ask me to kill KoroSensei,” This much talking and honesty was getting uncomfortable. He might end up teleporting away from his problems.

“You can?”

Korosensei had gotten over the attempted bombing of his students and his regular smile was now imprinted on his face. “Now now, class, I’m sure he wouldn’t be able to,” he coughed. “So you aren’t remaining to study with our class?”

“No, I have 20 hours left in this universe”

“So you’re staying with us until then.”

“I was going to go and grab some coffee jelly from-”

“Great! We can teach you some assassination moves!”

They started to forcefully drag Saiki up the mountain, back into the classroom.

“So Saiki,” Karma said, in a cheery tone, “Can you fix the moon?”

“Yes, I’m powerful enough to.”

“Will you fix it, please?”

“No.”

[stubbornjerk]

MOBNHA/SIMEFALL FAQ

(This list is updated as of 19 May, 2019. Other questions may be added in the future)

What’s this? An MP100/BNHA crossover? Interesting! Has (insert MP100 canon event) happened yet?

It is tagged that this AU has done nothing past Mogami's arc. Here’s a more detailed outline of the fic timeline though.

Will (x event) happen eventually though?

Well! I suppose we'll see! The story isn't done yet, you see, so I hope you'll tune in and see for yourself.

Endgame pairings?

Terumob! A lot of characters have crushes on Shigeo, so if you spot them, good on you. Other pairings like Tododeku, Kiribaku, and Ritshou will be hinted at but will not be considered an actual thing unless otherwise addressed by characters while speaking to Shigeo or assumed by Shigeo himself. 

Oblivious narrators, y'know?

Will Shigeo get to 100% or ???% percent?

Guess we'll see! Seriously though, my update schedule is every three days, you can wait and see, reader. It's all I ask.

Please continue writing/updating/ Never stop!

I don't plan on stopping, dude, you can stop telling me to do something I'll do anyway. Please. I’d appreciate it.

Will Claw/(obscure MP100 or BNHA character) show up here?

We'll see!

Will Dimple possess Shigeo in the future?

Why? Like, why are you waiting for an opportunity for Shigeo to just check out and Dimple to go "It's free real estate" on Shigeo's unoccupied body. Just curious. Dimple himself is very against having to do it under any circumstance, dude.

In all seriousness though, read on and you’ll see.

Will you reach the end of the anime/manga?

I'm starting college in a few weeks, dude, I'm not gonna put myself through that much misery.

ESP/Psychic powers aren't a Quirk? What are they then?

In BNHA canon, being Quirkless is an allegory for being disabled/handicapped. In SIMEFALL, that is true as well. Having ESP in this verse, by this definition, means that one has an invisible disability/handicap. Shigeo, Teruki, Ritsu, and Shou are natural ESPers who have difficulty controlling and regulating their powers since they have no well of knowledge like Quirk-users have, but Quirk-users do not acknowledge this because they seem like they're not Quirkless.

That being said, they are and will remain psychic powers, not Quirks, because Quirks have physical limitations and ESP only has mental limitations. No amount of training will or can increase one's energy wells. It only grows as they grow emotionally mature.

Wait, Shigeo called who/they called Shigeo what, now?

Here’s the whole list of names he calls people and what people call him from Chapter 11 onwards:

A list of things I’ve changed in BNHA canon might be posted here as well, if people ask for it. I’ll have it on hand, but I won’t show it unless necessary.

No one asked for this but  here are some references:

[ghostly-flame]

Re-Established (pt. 2)

It had been a couple more days since the night they figured she had gone missing. It brought unease to everyone, growing moreso as the school started to acknowledge their missing student and began putting safety precautions up. Her face was posted around the school, with bulky letters underneath that read 'missing'. Students all around talked about the sudden loss of one of their peers, even going to the five boys to see if they were okay. When the news covered missing children, it was agonizing to see her face as one of them.

It was pure hell.

The stress of losing her partially subsided after so long. It gave everyone a chance to think clearly, as they hadn't been able to come up with an idea since it was announced she was missing. They spent more time together, trying to see if there were any leads online. Reigen even came in to help try and research for her, but nothing turned up. All she was was another face to the world.

"Is there anything we can do?" Ritsu asked after sitting in the silent room for so long. "No internet leads, no further reports on her, its like she's been forgotten." Shou answered, bending his pencil until it snapped in half.

"Then how about you look at it from another perspective?" Serizawa asked as he and Reigen walked in the older Kageyama's room with chai tea for them.

"What do you mean?" Teru asked, taking a drink of the warm beverage.

"I wish we thought of this sooner, I guess it's just been so long since we really had to use them... But we're espers. We should look from the perspective of one. I'm sure if we try hard enough, we can use our powers to find her!"

"While the optimism is nice, I tried," Takenaka spoke up tiredly, "her voice has gone silent. There's no way we can find her with these abilities." He looked to his hands and shook his head, then covered his face again. "Well, maybe. But I've worked alongside Shimazaki for years. He probably forgot about it himself in the midst of losing..." Serizawa went quiet as he remembered it was still a touchy situation. With a shake of the head, he and Reigen shared a glance.

"You boys try to relax. Its not good to be so stressed at your age." Reigen explained.

"Easier said than done," Ritsu snapped back.

"We'll go talk to them and see how things are."

The couple left the house and began the walk down the street. They talked about the situation at hand and possible reasons behind the girl's disappearance, but nothing pieced together or even made sense for that matter.

Eventually reaching the house, Reigen knocked on the door and opened it. Looking around, the house was still in fair shape. They entered the home and glanced around.

"Minegishi? Shimazaki?" Serizawa called out as he walked ahead of Reigen. He went into the hall and looked at the doors, opening each one to look into the room as he hadn't really done much visiting to their house. But, after reaching the last door in the hall, he opened it and saw the couple in bed. They were awake, but didn't do much except lay there. Trash was collected on the floor, and the blankets were strung across the floors. It broke his heart to see the ones he was close with, so distraught.

"Hey, how're you feeling?" He asked, stepping over to the two. Their skin was paler than usual, like they hadn't moved from the bed since that day. But, as he received no response, the male let out a soft sigh and leaned over to Shimazaki. Grabbing his arm gently, he pulled him to sit up before bringing Minegishi up.

"You guys can't give up on her!" He exclaimed, voice raising as he spoke. They both jolted at his sudden yelling. "Your daughter needs you two! So get up, I have an idea that could possibly help us." He stated, then walked over to their closet. He pulled out clean clothes and tossed them to the two before going out to the living room and taking a seat. He glanced over to see Reigen looking at him with somewhat surprised.

After a few minutes, the two males came out of their room and looked to the other couple on the couch. Once they were ready, the four began their trek back to Shigeo and Ritsu's house.

"We've worked together for so long. I know what you guys are capable of. I wish I thought of this sooner, but Shimazaki," Serizawa began as he glanced to the male, "you've got quite the strong ability. Did you forget about it?" He glanced to the male, who held a surprised look as he was addressed. For a moment, he was confused as to what he meant. Then he felt the realization hit, as well as an undeniable amount of guilt as he realized exactly how long it took.

"Mind's Eye..." He muttered under his breath. Minegishi looked at him for a moment, then understood what he meant. "Its... Been awhile since we've really needed our powers. I usually just use mine to restock the plants," he rubbed the back of his neck and looked to his feet as he walked along. "It's reasonable to forget about your powers, considering you don't use them in your daily lives like some," Reigen reasoned as they got back to the Kageyama household. Once they walked inside, they saw the boys all about, doing their own thing.

"Alright, so here's my plan," Serizawa began as they were all gathered back into the living room.

"If we can all put our powers together, maybe we can amplify Shimazaki's ability to seek out other espers. I'm not saying it'll work, but so far, its all we've got. She could be in Seasoning City, but we wouldn't know."

"Then why can't I hear her?!" Takenaka stated, staring at the man. "If she's in the city, then I should be able to hear her!" He was having a difficult time trying to keep it together, but he was exhausted. Without her voice rambling nonsense at the late hours of the night, he couldn't help but feel uneasy at night.

"There might be something that's blocking your telepathy. I don't know if it's true or not, but I've seen espers who can block things out with their powers. Which is why we should try to amplify Shimazaki's powers. He's already strong enough as is, so we might have a chance. It's better than nothing," as the man explained the situation, the teen shook his head and sat back. He took a breath to settle his nerves, then slowly nodded with a sigh.

"Alright, let's give it a shot."

"You show quite resistance for someone who's easy to influence." Muto's voice sounded out through what she was being shown. She blinked a few times and shook her head before opening her eyed snd finding herself back in the empty room. The lights made her head ache, as she was used to little to no lighting in the room.

Squinting a bit, Cookie pressed back against the chair and let out a shaky sigh. The pain in her chest still hadn't gone away, but she wasn't worried for the most part. As she noticed her flames didn't grow far past the size of a match, she figured there was something that blocked out her powers. She tried to use her powers all throughout the night, but the barrier never let up, so she just kept at it with her small flames. Her telekinetic ability wasn't strong enough to go against the metal bindings, so she wasn't at any sort of advantage.

"Quiet, hm?" He brought her out of her thoughts. She let out a low sound and took a deep breath.

"It won't be long before you're part of us, girl." The voice rang through her mind, bringing a whole new spur of horrible thoughts. Her eyes shot open as she tried to focus her vision. Everything was so blurry, but she could faintly make out the man walking out of the room. As soon as the door slammed shut, she felt tears start to well up in her eyes as she thought about what she'd be like had she actually been apart of their organization. The thoughts mixed with the impossible idea of hurting her friends only made the pain increase more, leaving her to start sobbing as she sat there.

She was doing all she could to keep herself sane, from the visions that plagued her mind. It was hard, but she kept thinking of her loved ones. She tried to calm down but her happy thoughts were starting to be replaced with more horrifying visions, causing more tears to run down her cheeks as she kept muttering 'no' under her breath.

"Can you see anything?"

Shimazaki glanced around. It was dark all around, but the glowing auras coming from the espers around him were all he could see. Rubbing his face, he shook his head as he looked around further. Distant auras were around, showing that there were many espers around. After so long with the girl, he could distinguish her aura from any other, no matter how similar the colors were. However, his sliver of hope was slowly starting to shatter as he couldn't find that lavender glow anywhere.

"Try harder, it's only showing in close range," he told the group. Two hands became six as he felt the strength of his power grow. It wasn't something he was used to, but if it could help them find the missing part of their family, he was more willing to do anything possible.

He shook his head again and looked out. There was a huge flurry of auras in the distance.

"Do you see it?" Shigeo's voice asked next to him.

"I do. Do you think...." He trailed off as dread chilled him to the bone. The man swallowed hard as he closed his eyes snapping out of it. As soon as he felt their hands move away from his arms, he turned his head to the other three adults and let out a deep breath he had been holding.

"I don't think it's gonna be easy to get her back," he told them.

"Why, what did you two see?" Minegishi asked, feeling hope that Ryou had found her.

"Its... Hard to tell exactly, but there were so many auras." Shigeo explained.

"And in the middle of all that, I could see hers."

"You don't think..."

"It could be a possibility because we never got word from a handful of their whereabouts."

"What are you guys talking about?" Reigen asked, placing his hands on his hips. "Claw might be still going, even without Touchiro running it." Minegishi stated. "Why would that happen?" Ritsu pondered.

"Well, when you have devotion and loyalty to someone, you'd do what you can. Or maybe they're trying to re-establish it for themselves," Serizawa answered as he gripped the cuffs of his suit tightly.

"Then we need a plan,"

"Easy, I'll teleport in there and get out." Shimazaki claimed. "That won't be easy, or safe. There was something happening in the middle of her aura, I don't know what it was, but it's not safe." Shigeo told him after grabbing his arm, "I think we should find the place and see what's going on before we make any moves." There was silence amongst the group befoee the man sighed.

"Alright, but we need to hurry."

"Two of us can go around that area and figure out what's surrounding it. Then we'll come back and make a plan and carry out as soon as possible." Minegishi explained, then looked to his husband. "We don't know where it is, so either you or kid have to go and bring someone with you as backup."

"I'll go with Mob," Reigen offered, then walked over and placed a hand on the kid's shoulder. "We have an investigation around that area, anyways. So we'll go! Just like old times, right, Mob?" He looked to the boy who has grown much taller over the years.

"Right."

Later that night, everyone waited at their separate homes, although packed to go to Shimazaki and Minegishi's house once they got word that the two were on their way home.

"So, do you see anything?" Reigen asked as he walked down the sidewalk with the boy. Shigeo looked around, then noticed a building. Although it looked like a normal apartment complex, he could tell there was something off with it. Pulling his hood further over his head, he stopped and faced the building. He lifted his hand used a small amount of power to see if thats all that it was. But, it showed him that there was some sort of barrier that blocked his abilities from even leaving his hand. Putting his hand back in his pocket, he looked to Reigen again and nodded towards the building.

"That's it. Let's head back." He explained shortly. The man nodded in agreement after glancing at the building. "We'll finish walking down the street and turn the corner," Reigen spoke up. As the other agreed to it, they continued their walk to avoid any suspicious activity. Once they rounded the block, the man called a taxi to get them back home.

"There's a barrier that's blocking powers," Mob explained once everyone was gathered at the house. "So, we might not be able to rely on our powers for this. I did notice an alley next to the building, so there may be a way in. Other than that, we may have to call for backup. I know just who to call," the boy excused himself and walked out of the room, going through the hall and to another room so he could talk better.

"Whatever plan we come up with, I want to be able to kick someone's ass." Shimazaki stated, leaning back against the couch. "I think we all want to do that, Shima." Minegishi explained, grabbing his hand and holding it tightly. "Whoever was behind all this, especially them." He clenched his free hand into a fist as Mob walked back into the room.

"They'll be here early in the morning, my backup." He spoke up to the rest of the group. "Then in meantime, we should try to get rest. Won't be any good to fight if we're tired." Reigen claimed before walking off to the hall. He came back with pillows and blankets, handing them to the kids, then to Serizawa. The couple of the household agreed and retreated to their room to get rest for the events that'd be happening the following day.

Although, after a couple of hours, sleep was impossible for Shigeo. He tossed and turned on the pallet made on the floor. Eventually, he sat up and pulled his blanket and pillow into his arms. Getting to his feet, the boy walked to the hall and down a few doors to the girl's room. He hesitated for a moment, then turned the doorknob and opened the door to the room. To his surprise, he saw Takenaka sitting on the floor with his back pressed up to Cookie's bed. Though, when he heard the door open, he jumped and looked to who was there.

"Oh, hey." He mumbled, feeling himself relax almost immediately. "Can't sleep either?" Shigeo asked, walking over and sitting next to him.

"Of course not. How can I?"

"I feel the same. It's so hard to sleep, knowing something bad is happening. Makes you wanna run out and go help now..."

"Definitely."

The two sat there and talked for awhile, before Shou, Teru, and Ritsu came in with the same reasons. They all tried to feel better with funny stories, but the negative feelings were still there.

"She still has this shirt?!" Ritsu pulled out a shirt from the girl's closet. Turning around, he showed them it had been his favorite Spider-Man shirt from middle school. The group of boys started to laugh at the idea, then came over and joined him in digging through her clothes, finding things that previously belonged to them when they were younger and much more smaller.

"Hey, here's her pride jacket." Shou pulled the multi-colored varsity jacket and showed the rest of the group. "Hey, I brought mine too." Teru gasped, taking the clothing from the other. "I think we all did? Me and Nii-san did, definitely." Ritsu glanced to the others and they had agreed.

"Then let's show some pride and wear them tomorrow." Takenaka stated with a small smile. They all agreed and pulled their jackets out of their bags, laying them all on the bed.

After awhile of talking, the five boys managed to fall asleep with hope in their hearts to save their missing friend. They made a pallet with their blankets and slept close together, anticipating the events that would come the next morning.

[mustdang-100]

Snowflakes & Such

This was my @mp100secretsanta2017 gift for @lovigal, who requested holiday-esque goodness with Serizawa, Ritsu & Mob. I’m reposting here so that there’s a version with a read-more. I hope you enjoy!!

“One last stop!” Serizawa said eagerly, eyes running down his neatly checked-off list of holiday cookie recipients. Reigen tried not to sigh with relief, brushing at the snowflakes that had settled on his coat and checking the heavy gray sky anxiously.

“Ah, good. If this stuff keeps falling we might have to worry about train delays.”

For the first holiday season in years in which Serizawa was neither trapped by the fear of his own powers nor a member of a terrorist organization, he’d apparently decided to fully embrace every festive tradition he could get his hands on. Last week he’d enlisted Mob in helping him decorate Spirits & Such with paper snowflakes of various geometric designs, dangling them from the ceiling tiles by paper clips stolen from Reigen’s desk. Serizawa had illuminated their artworks with ropes of tiny white lights that he strung through the office. And most recently, he’d flexed his burgeoning cooking skills and baked enough cookies to hand-deliver some to everyone he knew in Spice City.

Reigen had never been particularly interested in the holiday season before now, always regarding it with more annoyance than pleasure. Yet Serizawa’s joyous enthusiasm was infectious, and Reigen found himself offering to join the cookie-delivering spree just to continue basking in the glow of Serizawa’s delight.

However, Serizawa had made a surprising number of friends and acquaintances in the short amount of time since he’d left Claw; Reigen hadn’t realized quite how many houses they’d be visiting. Confronted with house after house of “Happy Holidays!” by strangers who welcomed Serizawa and then peered at him with polite uncertainty, Reigen was very ready to turn in for the day. The steadily-increasing snowfall made him all the more eager to return home to lonely but familiar solitude.

He peered over Serizawa’s burly shoulder, trying to see where they were going next.

“Who’s the lucky recipient of the last plate?”

“Kageyama-kun’s family!” Serizawa was practically buzzing with excitement. “I saved the best batch for them, they’re hardly burnt at all.”  

Reigen brightened; finally, someone he knew. He picked up his pace, not only eager for the chance to see Mob, but also for the excuse to see him at home, double check that everything was going okay for him there. Reigen didn’t see Mob’s family very often, and Mob’s little brother in particular had always viewed him with suspicion. Reigen welcomed any opportunity to correct this impression.

An unpleasant thought struck him at this, and he glanced at Serizawa uneasily.  

“Ah…crap. I probably should have brought something for them, too.”

Serizawa beamed. “Don’t worry Reigen-san; I put both our names on the gift tag!”

Reigen was taken aback, but squinted at the tag pasted to the red cellophane-wrapped paper plate. Sure enough, both their names were there in Serizawa’s clear, careful writing.

“Oh.” Words failed Reigen at the kindhearted gesture. “Thanks, Serizawa.”

Serizawa grinned wider, shaking the fresh snow from his curls. “No problem!”

They continued down the peaceful street in the direction of the Kageyama’s house, footsteps crunching in the snow. Fat flakes drifted all around them, muffling sound, blurring the landscape and lending it a strange sense of isolation, like they were the only two people in the world.

Reigen grinned at Serizawa, feeling suddenly a little giddy. “You ever catch snowflakes on your tongue as a kid?”

Serizawa’s eyes rounded. “No! I never spent much time outside, even as a kid. Other kids thought I was weird – I hid a lot.”

Reigen’s heart panged at that, but he froze the grin to his face, holding the pains of Serizawa’s past at bay and eager to help him make up for any lost time.

“You want to try it now?”

“Doesn’t that seem a little, you know, immature?”

“Serizawa, you spent two days last week doing arts and crafts to hang in the office.”

“That was to help bring in business!” Serizawa protested. “I heard customers love those kinds of gimmicks.”

“Ok, sure. Of course. Still, no one’s watching now, eh? No reason not to be a little silly? Here, I’ll try it first.” Reigen closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide, waiting for the soft, cold sensation of a snowflake on his tongue.

Instead, a well-packed clump of snow smacked him square in the face.

Reigen rocked back at the impact, sputtering and choking at the snow that filled his eyes and mouth.

“What the–!?”

He swiped at his snow-covered face and glared out at his surroundings, searching for the culprit. Serizawa held a glove-clad hand clasped over his mouth in shock, but was clearly trying not to laugh. Reigen followed his line of sight, turning around just in time to see a spiky black head duck behind a mound of snow.

A second head poked up from another snow mound a few meters away, one sporting a very familiar bowl-cut that peeked out from under a woolen winter hat.

It seemed they had arrived at the Kageyama’s neighborhood.

“Ritsu, I don’t know if that was very nice. Shishou wasn’t expecting it.” Mob blinked, trying to free the snowflakes that clung to his lashes as he looked up at Reigen. “Hi Shishou, what are you doing here?”

Ritsu’s head slowly rose back up over the top of his own snow fort, just enough for his eyes to peek over. They regarded Reigen with a predatory gleam, and Reigen would have bet money that another snowball was being held out of sight just below. Reigen pasted on a smile and shuffled a bit closer to Serizawa, just in case.

“No, no, Mob. It’s fine,” he said, wiping the last of the snow from his face. “We just dropped by to bring your family some treats, didn’t mean to interrupt your epic snow battle.”

Serizawa stepped forward, clutching the cookie plate, looking back and forth between the two forts with eyes bright with interest.

“Were you having a snowball fight? Like on TV?”

Mob nodded, and tossed a snowball in demonstration. It flew about two meters before landing on the snow-covered lawn, breaking into pieces with a soft psh.

Mob contemplated the location it had fallen, as though trying to understand where he’d gone wrong. Ritsu finally abandoned his post and stood up straight behind his snow fort. He walked to his brother, squeezing a snowball between his hands as he packed it tighter.

“I told you Nii-san, I think you’ll do better if you aim high up. Then your snowballs will at least go farther.” Ritsu tossed his snowball up and towards their own house in demonstration. It flew high, traveling much farther than Mob’s had. Mob nodded seriously, taking his brother’s advice as absolute fact.

Reigen saw an opportunity, and jumped on it before he could second-guess himself.

“Ritsu’s right, Mob. Here, let me show you my special technique for throwing snowballs–”

Ritsu whipped toward him, eyes narrowing.

“Oh, interesting. You want to try teaching my brother something else you know nothing about.”

“Hey, now,” Reigen said, hands flying up in a placating gesture. “I just think that, with my advanced knowledge of both natural and paranatural physics, I–”

Ritsu’s second snowball hit him in the face.

Reigen spluttered loudly and indignantly, but he didn’t miss the quickly-smothered guffaw from his left. He also saw, as soon as he’d cleared enough of the snow to see, a spark of humor in Mob’s face, the likes of which he hadn’t seen in weeks - not since Dimple’s abrupt and mysterious disappearance.

A new idea formed swiftly. Reigen wanted to encourage this light-hearted mood of Mob’s, and if Serizawa’s attitude towards holiday activities thus far proved anything, he would have an absolute blast having a snowball fight.

Reigen glared huffily down at Ritsu, who was looking smug.

“Oho, I see how it is. Young Ritsu, I do believe that was a challenge.” Reigen drew himself up to his full height. “What do you say–myself and Mob versus you and Serizawa for a snowball fight the likes of which you’ve never in your young life encountered? Unless, of course, you’re too timid?”

Fire flashed in Ritsu’s eyes. “I think that’s the most intelligent idea you’ve had yet, Reigen-san,” Ritsu said, too calmly. “Nii-san and I would love to participate.”

“Excellent. Um, and no psychic powers allowed,” Reigen added hastily, eyeing Ritsu’s expression. “With my skills, it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of you.”

Mob wandered bemusedly to Reigen’s side, clearly keen to join whatever Ritsu wanted to do. However, Serizawa hesitated.

“Reigen-san, you’re sure this isn’t too childish? What if a prospective client sees?”

“Come now, Serizawa, snowball fights are winter holiday tradition!” Reigen said firmly. “We must defend our honor! And we can’t disappoint the boys, can we?”

“Oh,” Serizawa said, his expression clearing as he nodded solemnly. “You’re right. I will do my best, Reigen-san.”

***

Reigen had miscalculated.

“Run, Mob! Run!” Reigen panted, legs flying as fast as they would go as he pelted down the Kageyama’s street. Mob ran beside him, panting a little but otherwise seeming far less concerned than Reigen thought was warranted. Of course, that might be because the barrage of snowballs being flung their way all seemed to be aimed at him.

He chanced a quick look behind him. Ritsu was only a dozen or so meters back, Serizawa keeping pace right beside him. They both had snowballs in hand and equally-determined looks on their faces.

Serizawa’s enthusiasm plus Ritsu’s teenage vindictiveness were, it seemed, a devastating combination. A snowball hit the street with a more solid sound than Reigen thought a snowball had any right to make, barely missing his own churning feet.

“Serizawa, you know this suit isn’t meant for running!”

“Then stop running and defend your honor, Reigen-san!”

Reigen managed to dig up more speed.

The Kageyama’s house rose before them; at some point, they must have turned back around. As if on cue, Mrs. Kageyama opened the door just as he was racing up to it.

“Ah, hello!” Reigen huffed as he darted in close to the doorway, too close for Ritsu and Serizawa to risk the civilian casualty. Mob followed, and Serizawa and Ritsu joined them a few feet from the doorway, both looking pleased as punch, snowballs mysteriously vanished.

“We… just came… to drop off… some cookies!” Reigen continued, between breaths. Serizawa nodded earnestly, the picture of a generous visitor, as the plate of cookies dropped into his hands from the air above them. Mrs. Kageyama didn’t bat an eye, clearly accustomed to random psychic phenomena occurring in her house.

“Oh, how kind of you!” She smiled warmly at the group of them. “I know how much Shigeo looks up to you, Reigen-san, and Serizawa-san, he’s told us so much about you! I was just about to call the kids in for dinner, but there’s plenty if the two of you’d like to join us?”

“Oh! I, uh,” Reigen was at a loss for words for the second time that night at this offer. He found himself looking to Serizawa, whose broad grin had reappeared.

“We’d love to, thank you!” Serizawa said, taking Reigen’s look as an invitation to accept for the both of them.

Reigen found himself ushered in with the rest of the group, and before he knew it was seated at the kitchen table with the entire family. No probing looks on this visit; instead, Mrs. Kageyama cheerily questioned him about his business while Mr. Kageyama added more rice to his plate. Serizawa had managed to draw Mob into a conversation about his athletic club, complimenting him on his speed that day. Even Ritsu, who’d been studying his brother’s minutely-cheered expression, passed Reigen his silverware with something that was almost a smile.

Reigen started when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He twisted to see Serizawa offering him a chocolate-chip cookie, edges only a little too dark.

“Thanks for coming with me today, Reigen-san. I–I can’t express my gratitude enough, on top of how you’ve helped me, giving me a job, and helping me with school and with getting used to interacting with other people…Especially,” he swallowed uncertainly. “Especially since I got the feeling you didn’t care much for the holidays…”

“Oh…it’s no problem Serizawa! Happy to help, of course!” Reigen took the cookie, waving a hand airily as Serizawa beamed at him before turning back to rejoin his conversation with Mr. Kageyama. Reigen bit into the cookie, munching contemplatively. Not half bad, he thought, relaxing into the conversation and company, his concerns about the train schedule forgotten despite the snow softly piling up outside.

[mp100secretsanta2017-blog]

Snowflakes & Such

From: Mustdang (mustdang-100.tumblr.com)

To: Lovi (lovigal.tumblr.com)

Message: Hello and very happy holidays Lovi! Here is a gift fic for you; it was great fun to write and I hope you enjoy!

“One last stop!” Serizawa said eagerly, eyes running down his neatly checked-off list of holiday cookie recipients. Reigen tried not to sigh with relief, brushing at the snowflakes that had settled on his coat and checking the heavy gray sky anxiously.

“Ah, good. If this stuff keeps falling we might have to worry about train delays.”

For the first holiday season in years in which Serizawa was neither trapped by the fear of his own powers nor a member of a terrorist organization, he’d apparently decided to fully embrace every festive tradition he could get his hands on. Last week he’d enlisted Mob in helping him decorate Spirits & Such with paper snowflakes of various geometric designs, dangling them from the ceiling tiles by paper clips stolen from Reigen’s desk. Serizawa had illuminated their artworks with ropes of tiny white lights that he strung through the office. And most recently, he’d flexed his burgeoning cooking skills and baked enough cookies to hand-deliver some to everyone he knew in Spice City.

Reigen had never been particularly interested in the holiday season before now, always regarding it with more annoyance than pleasure. Yet Serizawa’s joyous enthusiasm was infectious, and Reigen found himself offering to join the cookie-delivering spree just to continue basking in the glow of Serizawa’s delight.

However, Serizawa had made a surprising number of friends and acquaintances in the short amount of time since he’d left Claw; Reigen hadn’t realized quite how many houses they’d be visiting. Confronted with house after house of “Happy Holidays!” by strangers who welcomed Serizawa and then peered at him with polite uncertainty, Reigen was very ready to turn in for the day. The steadily-increasing snowfall made him all the more eager to return home to lonely but familiar solitude. 

He peered over Serizawa’s burly shoulder, trying to see where they were going next.

“Who’s the lucky recipient of the last plate?”

“Kageyama-kun’s family!” Serizawa was practically buzzing with excitement. “I saved the best batch for them, they’re hardly burnt at all.”  

Reigen brightened; finally, someone he knew. He picked up his pace, not only eager for the chance to see Mob, but also for the excuse to see him at home, double check that everything was going okay for him there. Reigen didn’t see Mob’s family very often, and Mob’s little brother in particular had always viewed him with suspicion. Reigen welcomed any opportunity to correct this impression.

An unpleasant thought struck him at this, and he glanced at Serizawa uneasily.   

“Ah…crap. I probably should have brought something for them, too.”

Serizawa beamed. “Don’t worry Reigen-san; I put both our names on the gift tag!”

Reigen was taken aback, but squinted at the tag pasted to the red cellophane-wrapped paper plate. Sure enough, both their names were there in Serizawa’s clear, careful writing.

“Oh.” Words failed Reigen at the kindhearted gesture. “Thanks, Serizawa.”

Serizawa grinned wider, shaking the fresh snow from his curls. “No problem!”

They continued down the peaceful street in the direction of the Kageyama’s house, footsteps crunching in the snow. Fat flakes drifted all around them, muffling sound, blurring the landscape and lending it a strange sense of isolation, like they were the only two people in the world.

Reigen grinned at Serizawa, feeling suddenly a little giddy. “You ever catch snowflakes on your tongue as a kid?”

Serizawa’s eyes rounded. “No! I never spent much time outside, even as a kid. Other kids thought I was weird – I hid a lot.” 

Reigen’s heart panged at that, but he froze the grin to his face, holding the pains of Serizawa’s past at bay and eager to help him make up for any lost time.

“You want to try it now?”

“Doesn’t that seem a little, you know, immature?”

“Serizawa, you spent two days last week doing arts and crafts to hang in the office.”

“That was to help bring in business!” Serizawa protested. “I heard customers love those kinds of gimmicks.”

“Ok, sure. Of course. Still, no one’s watching now, eh? No reason not to be a little silly? Here, I’ll try it first.” Reigen closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide, waiting for the soft, cold sensation of a snowflake on his tongue.

Instead, a well-packed clump of snow smacked him square in the face.

Reigen rocked back at the impact, sputtering and choking at the snow that filled his eyes and mouth.

“What the–!?”

He swiped at his snow-covered face and glared out at his surroundings, searching for the culprit. Serizawa held a glove-clad hand clasped over his mouth in shock, but was clearly trying not to laugh. Reigen followed his line of sight, turning around just in time to see a spiky black head duck behind a mound of snow.

A second head poked up from another snow mound a few meters away, one sporting a very familiar bowl-cut that peeked out from under a woolen winter hat.

It seemed they had arrived at the Kageyama’s neighborhood.

“Ritsu, I don’t know if that was very nice. Shishou wasn’t expecting it.” Mob blinked, trying to free the snowflakes that clung to his lashes as he looked up at Reigen. “Hi Shishou, what are you doing here?”

Ritsu’s head slowly rose back up over the top of his own snow fort, just enough for his eyes to peek over. They regarded Reigen with a predatory gleam, and Reigen would have bet money that another snowball was being held out of sight just below. Reigen pasted on a smile and shuffled a bit closer to Serizawa, just in case.

“No, no, Mob. It’s fine,” he said, wiping the last of the snow from his face. “We just dropped by to bring your family some treats, didn’t mean to interrupt your epic snow battle.”

Serizawa stepped forward, clutching the cookie plate, looking back and forth between the two forts with eyes bright with interest.

“Were you having a snowball fight? Like on TV?”

Mob nodded, and tossed a snowball in demonstration. It flew about two meters before landing on the snow-covered lawn, breaking into pieces with a soft psh. 

Mob contemplated the location it had fallen, as though trying to understand where he’d gone wrong. Ritsu finally abandoned his post and stood up straight behind his snow fort. He walked to his brother, squeezing a snowball between his hands as he packed it tighter.

“I told you Nii-san, I think you’ll do better if you aim high up. Then your snowballs will at least go farther.” Ritsu tossed his snowball up and towards their own house in demonstration. It flew high, traveling much farther than Mob’s had. Mob nodded seriously, taking his brother’s advice as absolute fact.

Reigen saw an opportunity, and jumped on it before he could second-guess himself. 

“Ritsu’s right, Mob. Here, let me show you my special technique for throwing snowballs–”

Ritsu whipped toward him, eyes narrowing.

“Oh, interesting. You want to try teaching my brother something else you know nothing about.”

“Hey, now,” Reigen said, hands flying up in a placating gesture. “I just think that, with my advanced knowledge of both natural and paranatural physics, I–” 

Ritsu’s second snowball hit him in the face.

Reigen spluttered loudly and indignantly, but he didn’t miss the quickly-smothered guffaw from his left. He also saw, as soon as he’d cleared enough of the snow to see, a spark of humor in Mob’s face, the likes of which he hadn’t seen in weeks - not since Dimple’s abrupt and mysterious disappearance.

A new idea formed swiftly. Reigen wanted to encourage this light-hearted mood of Mob’s, and if Serizawa’s attitude towards holiday activities thus far proved anything, he would have an absolute blast having a snowball fight.

Reigen glared huffily down at Ritsu, who was looking smug. 

“Oho, I see how it is. Young Ritsu, I do believe that was a challenge.” Reigen drew himself up to his full height. “What do you say–myself and Mob versus you and Serizawa for a snowball fight the likes of which you’ve never in your young life encountered? Unless, of course, you’re too timid?”

Fire flashed in Ritsu’s eyes. “I think that’s the most intelligent idea you’ve had yet, Reigen-san,” Ritsu said, too calmly. “Nii-san and I would love to participate.”

“Excellent. Um, and no psychic powers allowed,” Reigen added hastily, eyeing Ritsu’s expression. “With my skills, it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of you.”

Mob wandered bemusedly to Reigen’s side, clearly keen to join whatever Ritsu wanted to do. However, Serizawa hesitated.

“Reigen-san, you’re sure this isn’t too childish? What if a prospective client sees?”

“Come now, Serizawa, snowball fights are winter holiday tradition!” Reigen said firmly. “We must defend our honor! And we can’t disappoint the boys, can we?”

“Oh,” Serizawa said, his expression clearing as he nodded solemnly. “You’re right. I will do my best, Reigen-san.”

***

Reigen had miscalculated.

“Run, Mob! Run!” Reigen panted, legs flying as fast as they would go as he pelted down the Kageyama’s street. Mob ran beside him, panting a little but otherwise seeming far less concerned than Reigen thought was warranted. Of course, that might be because the barrage of snowballs being flung their way all seemed to be aimed at him.

He chanced a quick look behind him. Ritsu was only a dozen or so meters back, Serizawa keeping pace right beside him. They both had snowballs in hand and equally-determined looks on their faces.

Serizawa’s enthusiasm plus Ritsu’s teenage vindictiveness were, it seemed, a devastating combination. A snowball hit the street with a more solid sound than Reigen thought a snowball had any right to make, barely missing his own churning feet.

“Serizawa, you know this suit isn’t meant for running!”

“Then stop running and defend your honor, Reigen-san!”

Reigen managed to dig up more speed.

The Kageyama’s house rose before them; at some point, they must have turned back around. As if on cue, Mrs. Kageyama opened the door just as he was racing up to it.

“Ah, hello!” Reigen huffed as he darted in close to the doorway, too close for Ritsu and Serizawa to risk the civilian casualty. Mob followed, and Serizawa and Ritsu joined them a few feet from the doorway, both looking pleased as punch, snowballs mysteriously vanished.

“We… just came… to drop off… some cookies!” Reigen continued, between breaths. Serizawa nodded earnestly, the picture of a generous visitor, as the plate of cookies dropped into his hands from the air above them. Mrs. Kageyama didn’t bat an eye, clearly accustomed to random psychic phenomena occurring in her house.

“Oh, how kind of you!” She smiled warmly at them. “I know how much Shigeo looks up to you, Reigen-san, and Serizawa-san, he’s told us so much about you! I was just about to call the kids in for dinner, but there’s plenty if the two of you’d like to join us?”

“Oh! I, uh,” Reigen was at a loss for words for the second time that night at this offer. He found himself looking to Serizawa, whose broad grin had reappeared.

“We’d love to, thank you!” Serizawa said, taking Reigen’s look as an invitation to accept for the both of them.

Reigen found himself ushered in with the rest of the group, and before he knew it was seated at the kitchen table with the entire family. No probing looks on this visit; instead, Mrs. Kageyama cheerily questioned him about his business while Mr. Kageyama added more rice to his plate. Serizawa had managed to draw Mob into a conversation about his athletic club, complimenting him on his speed that day. Even Ritsu, who’d been studying his brother’s minutely-cheered expression, passed Reigen his silverware with something that was almost a smile.

Reigen started when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He twisted to see Serizawa offering him a chocolate-chip cookie, edges only a little too dark. 

“Thanks for coming with me today, Reigen-san. I – I can’t express my gratitude enough, on top of how you’ve helped me, giving me a job, and helping me with school and with getting used to interacting with other people…Especially,” he swallowed uncertainly. “Especially since I got the feeling you didn’t care much for the holidays…”

“Oh…it’s no problem Serizawa! Happy to help, of course!” Reigen took the cookie, waving a hand airily as Serizawa beamed at him before turning back to rejoin his conversation with Mr. Kageyama.

Reigen bit into the cookie, munching contemplatively. Not half bad, he thought, relaxing into the conversation and company, his concerns about the train schedule forgotten despite the snow softly piling up outside.

[lovelesswiki]

Post-Moonless predictions— Well-Kept Secrets (6/10)

previous part<–[here] –> next part

for the last week or so, i’ve been talking about a large theory i’ve been writing. since finishing it, i’ve decided to publish it in parts, since it’s actually about 10 different theories all on one subject. since it’s all written out, i’ll try to be publishing one part of this per day.

essentially, this is a set of theories about what i believe will have to happen in order to properly lead up to a climax–the one we’ve been building up to for years and years now. so, these are what i theorize will happen after the first moonless vs beloved battle, broken up into ten different parts. each theory is explained and theres images for each one.

table of contents (bolded is the post you’re looking at):

moonless and beloved will rematch (1)

soubi will fall into a deep depression and possibly become suicidal (2)

ritsuka will arrive at seven voices, SM’s activity will be revealed (3)

SM will reveal that there was a mole in their organization (4)

kio will be the one to take ritsuka to goura (5)

ritsuka will find things out about soubi and the aoyagi family (6)

SM’s true purpose will be revealed. ritsuka will have to make a decision about good vs evil (7)

seventh SM member will be revealed (8)

nagisa will find out what really happened to sanae (9)

ritsuka will be asked to join SM to fill the aoyagi seat (10)

Theory: soubi keeps secrets well for many reasons, but now that he’s gone, they’re going to have to come to light, and ritsuka will find out more about him and his own family, forcing him to realize just how strong and terrible seimei’s hold over soubi is.

Note: this theory heavily discusses the topic of rape in terms of soubi being both the victim and the perpetrator and in terms of nisei’s rape of mikado. proceeding with caution is advised. 

we’ve already been a little bit introduced to this. or, should i say, ritsuka has been a little bit more introduced to this.

soubi keeps secrets from ritsuka. soubi keeps secrets that he has not explicitly been told to keep. ill write up another post someday about this, but i suspect that soubi keeps secrets about his past from ritsuka because seimei already knew all those secrets and used them against him, and he thinks that not telling them to ritsuka will prevent them from hurting, so he can just ignore his past and pretend like it never happened. this actually isnt uncommon in people who have been through constant abuse, and it makes sense why soubi hasn’t told ritsuka (or anyone) anything yet.

not even kio or natsuo and youji seem to know about soubi’s complete past, involving mainly ritsu’s treatment of him, but also involving what soubi did under seimei’s rule. it is pretty clear from the angry, verbally violent way that he responds to tokino with that he did some pretty terrible things under seimei’s rule. when tokino implies that like nisei, it was soubi’s job to rape and murder enemies, soubi loses his shit but never really denies it. aside from this, we have hard evidence of soubi murdering other teams for seimei, including this being explicitly stated in a drama CD where someone that soubi took pity on comes back to haunt him, and the fact that one of the crimes seimei’s being prosecuted for includes murder, and seimei doesn’t do the dirty work to say the least. there’s also the fact that in the beginning, he kept asking ritsuka if he wanted soubi to murder their opponents, which strongly implies that he’d been put in a situation previously, where that question was necessary and appropriate, and where the answer was ‘yes’. this is a secret long-kept, and i do believe it’s key in understanding soubi, which is something ritsuka (and by extension kio) desperately need, and it’ll play into ritsuka’s later development of understanding that not everything falls into ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

(pictured: soubi starts an yelling argument with tokino over one comment, resulting in youji telling him to calm the fuck down.)

soubi has let a couple things go to ritsuka. he confirmed that ritsu raised him and was very cruel to him, but he didnt expand much on either point. with the few stories that soubi did tell ritsuka, ritsuka seemed a bit distressed and commented that the things ritsu did were horrible. in addition to this, ritsuka learning about seimei and nisei raping mikado seemed to be a huge turning point for him in the way he viewed seimei, and i suspect that there will be something similar when ritsuka learns that soubi was raped at a young age by the man raising him. and i suspect he’ll become very confused and disorientated when he realizes that seimei had soubi do many of the same things that nisei did. while i think their situations are different to where soubi had no capacity to enjoy it or even want to do it, whereas with nisei and in the case of mikado, nisei seems to have gone above and beyond whatever seimei ordered him to do and going along with his personality, enjoyed it, especially given his comments of liking it when listening to ritsuka cry through his wiretaps. 

(it’s probably safe to say that he enjoyed what he did to mikado.)

ritsuka is a particular character, because he’s young, and young people tend to view the world in terms of ‘black’ and ‘white’. for a long, long time, ritsuka viewed his brother as ‘good’ and in the series, mostly towards the beginning, he struggled with whether or not soubi was a ‘bad guy’. however, hes quickly discovering that the world isn’t so clear-cut, which we’ll get to in a hot minute (or more, in the next part of this series).  

by some way or another, probably by just directly asking ritsu or nagisa and by spending an extended amount of time at seven voices, ritsuka will find out about soubi’s childhood. he will also go deeper into what the flashback chapters introduced and we’ll find out what further transpired with ritsu, nagisa, akio, and the rest of the kids in that particular year. i say this because, at this point, it’s detrimental to the story. we’ve gotten to a point where we sort of need to know why these older characters act the way they do and why there’s so much bad blood between them. this will also help ritsuka understand SM more, too, but ill get to that in the next point. there’s also the fact that, you know, theres two potential people that could be ritsuka’s father, the fact that soubi’s mother and ritsuka’s mother were friends, and the fact that a kid suspiciously drown in knee-deep water. so, a lot of unsolved mysteries we haven’t gotten to yet.

so, we have ritsuka and kio finding out about the horrors of soubi’s past, and i think this will heavily impact the way ritsuka sees ritsu and septimal moon. right now, ritsuka seems to sort of respect ritsu, but i doubt he will after he finds out about everything, especially the fact that ritsu raped soubi when he was incredibly young and abused him in every way before and after that. this will cause ritsuka’s opinion of ritsu to drop incredibly low, which will affect what happens in the next part of this series.

ritsuka may also find out about the things soubi did for seimei and will find out that many of the crimes that seimei is held accountable for were actually done with soubi’s hands. i don’t believe in any way, shape, or form that soubi can be held accountable for this in this world, nor do i personally believe he should be held accountable, but i’m unsure if ritsuka will immediately see it this way. ritsuka will be forced to make a choice about good vs evil regarding soubi, and will be forced to come to the realization of just how strong seimei’s hold over soubi and nisei is and what the extent of his power is.

in addition, we’ll find out more about ritsuka’s family, too. i should say that im a firm believer that yun has been building up to something having to do with ritsuka’s father, who he is, and why he’s never present, and ive thought this ever since we got the indirect confirmation that seats are passed down throughout the family, meaning that it was most likely the elder aoyagi who held it beforehand. notice that i say elder aoyagi and not ritsuka’s father, because we don’t know if ritsuka’s father is seimei sr or aoyagi masaki, misaki’s biology professor in high school. this will play a huge amount into who ritsuka is and what he discovers about himself, and how it could even relate to seimei’s motives and his own memory loss.

the way i see it, ritsuka and seimei are masaki aoyagi’s kids. or, at the very least, seimei is his, but i personally believe ritsuka is, too. however, there’s a very real possibility that ritsuka thinks nowaki seimei--who will be referred to as seimei sr, mostly because i think it’s funny--is his father. i’m fairly certain that seimei sr is the one that ritsuka calls ‘dad’ and the person that we see for a couple panels in the early volumes of the manga, and im unsure if he knows that he was fathered by someone else. seimei jr alludes to knowing more about their family and why they’re named what they are named in an extra chapter about ritsuka’s birthday, but doesn’t say much about his family beyond that. regardless, there is something fucked up going on with the aoyagi family seniors, since misaki, ritsuka, and seimei jr all take the last name ‘aoyagi’. the kids look like aoyagi masaki, but the person ritsuka calls ‘dad’ is never home and is most definitely not aoyagi masaki. there’s also the fact that when seimei jr is being taken to the hospital for ritsuka’s birth in a flashback, we don’t actually see daddy. on top of this ‘dad’ is never home and ritsuka even states at one point while he’s tied up that he won’t come save him, and he doesn’t attend ritsuka’s school functions (in fact, soubi seems to be the person his school considers his parent, since he’s asked to come help out at an art museum and he offers to go to the dad event at school for ritsuka in early series loveless).  

i’m of the belief that something is going on with the aoyagi parental lineage, since i don’t really see any evidence that ritsuka’s father is just absent a lot. there’s too much pointing to the fact that something suspicious is going on. and i think this is something seimei knows, but ritsuka does not. i also think that ritsuka will be finding out more about his memory loss, and i theorize that ritsuka at one point found out something he shouldn’t have, resulting in seimei ordering to have his memory taken, and that soubi is probably the one to have done this, given that soubi is able to alter memories, since he did so to hitomi in relation to natsuo and youji.

to put it simply, there’s a lot of very well-kept secrets that i think are about to come out, and it’s going to be detrimental when they do.

[thinkanamelater]

It Won’t be Long (A Mob Psycho 100 fanfiction) Chapter 3/?

Also on ao3!

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

Note: Mob and Ritsu's mom in this is not the same Kageyamom from canon!

Chapter 3: Something

Touichirou wasn't home yet.

Sure they talked over phone daily, and texted plenty, too, but it wasn't the same as having him home. It couldn't be the same, and Serizawa just missed him.

He had to admit, however, that I wasn't as bad as other times Touichirou had been out, and he had Shou's friends to thank. Shou usually went out to see the Kageyama brothers, but they visited the house enough to distract Serizawa. They were polite and cared about Shou, which made Serizawa happy.

He liked them.

Ritsu was smart and acid, sometimes; he seemed to be thinking more than he actually said, but he was never disrespectful. Shigeo, however, was the most comfortable to be around, not that he'd ever need to admit something like that. Granted, the amount of power he could perceive from the teen had feel overwhelming at first, but with time he managed to focus more in his soft voice, his calm expression, his big eyes. Shigeo was like a small animal, ready to bolt at any loud noise or brusque motion. He didn't, or else he wouldn't have stayed around Shou at all; but he sure looked like it, and Serizawa could easily relate.

“Are we friends, Seri-san?”

Shigeo wandered into the kitchen one day, where Serizawa was making tea and, without warning, dropped the question; followed with a very soft “can I have milk please?”

Making a pause, Serizawa looked at him and considered what to answer. Well, they usually chatted, and he definitely enjoyed his presence, but he wasn't sure how he could tell if someone was a friend… He didn't even know if Shou counted as a friend, so, besides Touichirou, he had no one else to compare. But how do you explain that to a kid that's looking at you with eagerness?

He didn't know, so he just bit his lip and turned to the fridge. Shigeo didn't seem fazed by the lack of response, and continued talking.

“I asked dad, and he says one can be friends with any good person, that their age doesn't matter”

“Your dad is a good man, isn't he?” Serizawa mused, and placed a glass of milk in front of Shigeo.

“He is!” Shigeo's eyes lit up as his lips showed a small smile. It was so adorable Serizawa felt the urge to pinch his cheeks, but he was wouldn't have wanted to startle the kid with invasive affection, so he settled on petting his head lightly.

Later that day, he was approached again, by Shou this time, who, in the same breath, knocked the bathroom door, opened it and said “They invited me to sleep at Ritsu's can I go thank you!”

Standing in front of the mirror, Serizawa smiled at him at put down the razor he was holding. He was thinking about shaving, but he didn't really feeling like it, so it was alright.

“Only if you promise me you'll behave. Oh, uhm, and I'll walk you guys, alright?”

“When do I not behave?” Shou shooted back, and seemed deeply wounded by the other's words.

“Once I let you into my room and you set my bed on fire, Shou-kun” Was the reply, with a resigned sigh.

“You said it, once! And pops got you a better one after that” The teen wrapped up the conversation with a grin and grabbed Serizawa's hand, dragging him. The older didn't oppose any resistance; following him with only a soft complain that went unobserved.

“My favorite book was under the covers…”

Shou held his hand the whole walk, and Shigeo stayed close to his other arm, ocasionally holding onto it. As they were approaching the house, someone greeted them with profuse arm motions.

“Hey, Mob!” Reigen was standing a few meters from the door, and Shigeo ran the last steps to hug him. “Here. I'll pick you up tomorrow, alright? Call me if you need anything”

Shigeo pulled apart and grabbed the backpack his dad was giving him and joined Shou and Ritsu, who were already getting inside. Serizawa waved at them with a smile and was about to go back, when Reigen turned at him.

“Oh, hey, are you busy?” He asked and Serizawa jumped slightly, his hands clutching at his sides.

“Uh, w-well, I-I don't have anything to do right now… W-why?”

“I have to drop by my office, I need some papers that I couldn't find at home and the office is my last hope” The man explained, and Serizawa had to make an effort to not get distracted by his hand gestures. “Care to join?”

“Uhm. Sure”

Before starting his walk, Reigen showed a row of white teeth with a smile too wide to even belong in Shigeo's usual blank face, but Serizawa thought he could see a hint of similarity there, and that made him smile too. But as he followed the other, a sensation of vertigo filled his stomach. Something felt off, but he couldn't tell what. Trying to keep his breath even, he searched his pockets with both hands for his cellphone, and looked over the last texts Touichirou sent him.

“Everything alright?” Reigen had stopped and was looking back at him. Serizawa re-read the last conversation and nodded.

Nothing was wrong, he decided and repeated that to himself during their walk. The feeling persisted for some time, however, but Reigen's incessant chattering kept him entertained, and soon they were up the stairs to the office.

“Do you want coffee?” Reigen offered when he opened the door, wasting no time in inspecting drawers and sorting through papers.

Serizawa took a timid step inside, looking around with curiosity. His eyes immediatly were drawn to the brimming bookshelf, many of the books about psychology, but he could recognize a few fiction titles. There were potted plants everywhere and the desk was messy, more now after Reigen's search, but besides that it seemed overall clean. A nice, cozy office, if you weren't intimidated by the huge poster of Reigen's smiling face hanging from one of the walls.

It did intimidate Serizawa, however, and so it took him a moment to register the question.

“Uh…” He hesitated. Coffee wasn't between is favorite beverages, with its bitter taste and strong scent. But, he didn't want to refuse and come off as rude.

“I have tea, too, I think” Reigen said after a quick glance at his conflicted expression.

“Tea sounds good, thank you” Serizawa accepted with a relieved smile.

“Great!” Reigen smiled back and disappeared into a door, a kitchenette probably, Serizawa guessed “Oh, right, take a seat wherever you want” Came Reigen's voice, loud as if he were across the street and not bare meters away.

“Thanks” Serizawa muttered and sat down in front of the small coffee table. He let his eyes wander around once more and then looked down at his nervously fiddling hands, when something under his seat caught his attention. A bright pink piece of plastic, and when he reached down to grab it he pulled out a folder.

“Uh, Reigen-san?” He called, peeking inside it. It looked like important stuff. “I found these papers under the chair? And uh, maybe this was what you were looking for…?”

Reigen emerged a moment later, balancing a cup on each hand and a sugar bowl tightly hold against his side with an elbow, and looked over Serizawa's shoulder.

“Ah, yes!” He exclaimed, taking hold of the folder as Serizawa took the cups from him and placed them on the table. “Thanks, man, you're a lifesaver!” Reigen said, sitting down and emphasizing it with wild gesticulating since his hands were free again. Serizawa didn't catch that, busy eyeing the sugar bowl and silently wondering how much would be ok for him to pour on his tea. What he did catch Reigen generously sweetening his own coffee, and that made him feel more at ease about getting his tea as sweet as he enjoyed it.

For a moment both of them sipped at their cups without talking. Reigen looked up and seemed about to say something, but then shook his head slightly and focused on his coffee again.

That, along with the unfamiliarity of the situation, made Serizawa suddenly feel self-conscious. The silence was heavy. Was it weird that he wasn't saying anything at all…? Now that he thought about it, just how much had he talked since he got here? Shouldn't he try and make casual talk? But he didn’t have anything interesting to say…

He could feel sweat on his forehead. His hands curled around the cup. Just say something…!

“Uhm, Shigeo-kun…” He started, not really sure how to keep going, but mentioning Shigeo actually brought up something he'd been thinking about “A-and Ritsu-kun, too, they… don't have your last name…” Well that was lame.  Was that even a question? What was he thinking? “W-well, I mean, uh, you-you're divorced?”

Reigen didn't look impressed.

“I- Not exactly” He answered flatly and took a long sip of coffee. Meanwhile he looked right into Serizawa's eyes, with a focused expression, and sighed when he put his cup down “Mob and Ritsu are half-brothers, by their mother. I thought it was better to let them share their last names, instead of changing Mob's”

“Uh, so…” Serizawa mumbled, trying to process the cryptic information the other provided him. So far he collected that Ritsu was not Reigen's son, but he was at lost at the last names matter.

“I'm not drunk enough for the whole story” Reigen interrupted with another sigh, lifting his cup again and putting it down almost immediately. “Shou doesn't have your last name, either” He pointed out with a check-mate tone.

Serizawa was not drinking his tea, but he choked with his spit instead.

“W-well, that's because I'm not his dad…!” He started explaining, messily, once his nervous coughing stopped “He-he has a father, o-of course, but he travels a lot and… uhm… I-I usually look after him… S-since his dad and I… uh, us…” Serizawa was lost at words. He never had the need to define the bond between him and Touichirou, and he just found out he couldn't name it now, so it was a relief when Reigen gestured at him to shut up.

“Chill, I get it” He said, raising an eyebrow and doing a pretty bad job at keeping back a laugh. Embarrassed, Serizawa finished what was left of his tea clumsily and got up.

“Th-thanks for the tea, I should go home now” He managed to say. He heard Reigen saying he didn't need to leave yet,  but he was already hurrying down the stairs.

Touichirou once said he was like a dog, that he could drop him in the street and Serizawa would still sniff his way back. Serizawa agreed with that; even when he wasn't familiar with the outside, not really going further than the block they lived, he could always tell the direction to go home. It wasn't easy, after all, to miss the incredible source of raw psychic power he was so used to perceive and that drenched their house.

So he made his way through unfamiliar streets, only taking one or two false turns but quickly correcting himself, while his mind was somewhere else entirely.

Reigen had assumed he was Shou's dad. Shou's dad.

What if he got to be? Maybe, one day not too far in the future? He and Touichirou… The thought alone made him feel tingly, his cheeks overheating.

Lost in a vision of wedding suits and flower bouquets, he almost didn't register when he reached home. But the light outside was on, and that pulled him out of his thoughts. He was sure he didn't switch it on before leaving, so did that mean…?

He hurriedly opened the door, and sure enough, Touichirou's briefcase was on the living room table. He could feel his heart beating faster, excitedly, as he held his breath and approached the older's room. There were faint noises on the inside, but the door was closed. Serizawa contemplated knocking on it, but decided not to disturb Touichirou, since he might be too tired from is trip back.

He would see him in the morning, he thought, and his wide smile couldn't be contained.

Next chapter

[adaandportmafiaimagines]

ERROR [1/4]

[Dazai Osamu X Hacker!Reader]

[Slight!Chuuya X Hacker!Reader]

Inspired by the Vocaloid song [ERROR], originally sung by Lily but Ritsu Namine made it popular. The translation is found here.

(Read: LONG chapter(s) [first chapter alone is 7 pages] ahead under ‘read more’ and endgame is Dazai because I can’t get enough of him)

Description

“Chuuya, Dazai… I’ve got a pleasant surprise for you…” The flaming red haired directed the two children to a room, filled with flashing lights and blank screens, “meet the upcoming mastermind of Port Mafia’s technology system… at a young age, she already understood and hacked into thousands of Japan’s advanced systems…” The two children squinted their eyes, bust able to see an outline of a small figure, motionless, as the third child sat on the chair, “children… meet [Surname] [Name].”

Can you see it? The tears in my eye  I'm blurred by the colours of life  What did you leave me?  Ask me - I'll collapse

 “Mommy…” The five year old child quietly directed her question at the older image of herself

“Yes darling…?” The said mother of the child softly looked at her daughter with sorrowful orbs

“Why… are they burying daddy?”

This simple question, this innocent and naive question made the old woman’s eyes water. Transparent droplets of liquid escaped their homes and slid softly down rosy cheeks.

“M-mommy! Why are you crying? A-are they doing something bad to daddy?” The little child panicked, “daddy still has work to do tomorrow… what if he’s late because he can’t get out? Daddy promised me to buy me that bunny plushie for my birthday! B-but he can’t do that because-because-”

The mother engulfed her daughter in a hug. Her salty eyes escaping some more from her closed eyes. How could she tell her innocent child that her father was killed? How could she tell her that he could never wake up? She knew that their jobs in the mafia would be risky, but never had she thought that one of them could loose a life…

How fragile human lives are…

What a merciless world this is…

Around 8 years later…

 The flaming red haired woman led the two boys zigzagging through the Port Mafia’s headquarters. Her strong strides never loosing rhythm as she explained that to both celebrate the future of Port Mafia two executives (they both were developing fantastically), and they need more children around their age to bond with, she decided to introduce them to yet another future mastermind.

The three walked into a room without any source of light bulbs, if it was not for the flashing tiny dots on both monitors and system/base units, along with screens, the place would be thrown in total darkness.

Endless amount of wires, thick and thin, snaked around the floor, overlapping with one another, though non were tangled, these wires were plugged into dozens of base units, almost as tall as Kouyou herself. Among the mess, in the middle of the room, the faint outline of a raised platform could be seen. Perhaps a desk?

“Ane-san,” Chuuya started, “who is that?”

He directed them to a leather chair, one fit for rotation, and if they squinted their eyes enough, an outline of a child could be seen.

“Might be a dummy Chuuya.” Dazai started, “or maybe a corpse.”

“Dazai,” Kouyou gently scolded, her equally red eyes narrowing, though her expression showed nothing but amusement, “you’re not really leaving a good first impression by saying that.”

“Sorry, sorry ane-san.” He sheepishly rubbed his head, though as if he just made a stupid blunder instead of deliberately mistaking someone for a corpse

“Now then… [Name]-chan, would you please introduce yourself to the future Port Mafia executives?”

The dark leather chair rotated sideways, so the child could face all three. From what little light was in the room at the time, Dazai could see that she wore a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her dark coloured skirt was wrinkled, though it flowed just above her knees along with an equally dark knee-high socks, her formal shoes were blended in the darkness so well that it might as well be nonexistent, her tie, unlike both Dazai and Chuuya, was so loosely tied that the knot ended up at her chest, as if she just slapped it on in the last second.

All in all, she looked nothing like Port mafia’s mastermind hacker Dazai had in mind.

Nor could he predict how painfully important the said girl could be in his future.

 Ahh… that was… the start huh…?

 Blue, red, and white are mixing  I'm shouting from this world 

What was I wishing for?  I was tired from chasing after it

 Years flown by like minutes after [Name] made friends with both Dazai and Chuuya. Perhaps, it was precisely because of how everyday was both so tiring and energetic that the days turned into months…

The two males never did get along as one might describe as ‘partners’, no, not the romantic one, but the one where they work together and go on dirty jobs. Even when Dazai was promoted and became the youngest Port Mafia executive, even when the much feared Soukoku was formed, while their teamwork spread despair among the Mafia employees, deeply rooted into their souls, on the other hand, their personalities could not conflict so much anymore.

It had become a common occurrence for the [hair colour] female to not-so-gently whack both red and brown on their head if they annoyed her too much.

In other words, every half hour then.

And [Name]?

She, like her honey-brown orbed male, developed quickly before (just like Kouyou predicted) becoming one of Port Mafia’s top hackers.

“Say [Name]-chan…” Dazai asked to the fifteen year old, as the tiniest (belated) celebration was held in Dazai’s apartment for him becoming an executive, “why did you become a hacker? Surely, someone with such high intelligence could become a well-respected government official where the highest protection could be given? But, that’s not to say Port Mafia lacks any protection…”

“Why ask Dazai?” She answered, sipping her favourite drink, her [eye colour] watched carefully at the ice in her drink

“Just curiosity. But, to be honest, you do not necessary have to tell me if you’re so seriously against it.”

“Dazai’s right,” Chuuya walked towards the two, and in an instant, the calming look on Dazai’s face morphed one of a scowl, Chuuya’s expression was almost an exact mirror image, [Name] however, just retained her pokerface, “you can tell me about it.”

“Oh? Who’s talking? I-is it a ghost? I can’t see anyone.”

“You-!”

[Name] sighed, she pondered to whether tell the story just to get them to not murder each other for a while. Ah well, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of sharing one’s past eventhough one of them is an executive right?

That’s… what fr- no, no such words and meaning exists in Port Mafia.

“As you may know, I have an ability… dubbed, “The Sun Also Rises”… its power is similar to our only star – the Sun.” She held up her ice drink and activated her ability, the chunk of ice in her glass melted until it was no longer there, “I can manipulate heat with my entire body, which gives off light at the same time… that light could be used on solar panels to generate electricity.”

“… Which is why the laptop you carry has solar panels… so you could work without depending on electricity in an emergency…”

“Exactly correct Dazai. Now… as to why I became a hacker… my parents were in Port Mafia as well, and my mother was also an experienced hacker, my father, on the other hand, was one of the lowest ranking employees they have… as unlikely as it was, the two fell in love and… here I am.”

She took a mini break in her explanation by sipping her favourite drink, which now was disgustingly warm (no) thanks to her Gift. She made a disgusted face, throwing her tongue out. All Dazai could think of was how the normally expressionless female could made such an expression, it really was a valuable and rare moment.

Damn… such a nice change… he thought, she should express herself more…

“Then, father died… perished because of a bullet wound, which of course, was fatal… though he was one of the lowest members of the organisation, he was popular among the mafia as well… always looking out for people when he was on missions, which was partially why there were a lot of people at his funeral.”

Her once calm [eye colour] hardened, before continuing.

“However… the thing is… it was his day off, mother was in an important meeting with the executives and she took me along, of course, I wasn't present in the room, but outside, playing on a gaming device, while father was at home… resting as he got home late last night. However, several hours later someone broke the news to mother and I that father died.”

Silence, “At that time, I did not know what the word “died” meant, well, perhaps my parents wanted me to stray as far as Port Mafia as I could… huh? Well, guess that failed, I mean… look at me now. Anyhow, the thing is… though some amount of money was stolen, there was not a single sign of struggle at out house… besides, father would never be outdone by a simple burglar… which lead both I and mother to the conclusion of… someone purposely murdered him.”

“And so by doing technology-based work, and moving up the ranks using any means necessary, you could uncover the profiles along with autopsy and paperworks, some of these are not even revealed to the victim’s family.”

“Correct again Dazai… but to be honest… I guess I really had a thing for numbers and hacking… unlike humans, if you simply input a correct numerical formula and formula alike, the computer would do exactly what you told it to do… whereas humans would constant have their own minds… along with pure emotions as obstacles… but then, I guess I was lonely too as well, I mean, I used to think numbers were my friends, who would do anything I asked…”

“Ah, you’re so weird [Name]-chan~” in an instant, the teenager felt a harsh click on her forehead

“Wh-what was that for Idiot-zai?” She pouted, her free hand furiously rubbing the spot

“Oooooh, nice nickname for this right here!”

“Shut up little guy.”

“You-!”

“But [Name]-chan, if ‘friends’ is the wrong word for us, we’re your… well, we’re less than friends, but we’re something… ah, except for this right here… I don’t wanna be even acquaintances with him.”

“My thoughts exactly Dazai! You’re just a bandage-wasting-sorry-state-of-a-human!”

“Ehhh- but who was it that got promoted to an executive in this room I wonder~? Executives raise their hands~” Only a bandaged hand was in the air, “only me then~”

WHACK. WHACK.

“O-ouch… so harsh [Name]-chan…”

“C-couldn’t you be a little bit gentler next time [Name]-chan?”

“And here I thought I could go an hour without having to hit you two…” The only female muttered, deadpanning at the two’s over-dramatic responses, “but, shall we… have a toast?”

“To what?” The opal eyes questioned, though he raised his glass as Dazai did the same

“To… whatever this is.”

“Well… to our complicated relationship.” Dazai named

“To our relationship- wait, that sounded so wrong.”

“Hush Chuuya… to our relationship…”

“Cheers!” Three voices of different pitches simultaneously resonated throughout the Sun-kissed room.

[Name] then remembered something on the back of her mind. A wish made years ago…

-Flashback-

“Why do other children fear me so much?” The child, no bigger than ten questioned, compared to other kids her age, she doesn’t show a variety of emotions

“Is it… because of this so called “Gift”? Is my ability more of a curse…?”

She laid fresh flowers down on the gravestone, looking up at the midnight sky, thousands of bright jewels blinked down, compared to the endless expanding universe, she and her problems seems so small and insignificant.

“You said… on clear nights like this… you would always wish for something trivial and achievable, but you couldn’t bring up the courage to do it or the circumstances were vastly against you… you then explained to me that important wishes, no matter how impossible they seem, you would save those for comets…”

I wish for…

“Hey… would my selfish wish be granted? ... Please answer me… father!”

People to accept for who I am… people who would not be afraid of my position and intelligence… people who I would like to call… “friends”

-Flashback END-

 Dazai remembered that on that day, he wished to see [Name] smile… however impossible that sounds; he would be the one her vibrant smile would be directed to… though it sounds possessive, it was just a not-so-innocent teenage boy’s thoughts.

Is this what they call “love”?

Or is this what they call “friendship”?

Ahh… those were… peaceful days… tranquil days indeed…

 How much?

 Sitting in a certain Port Mafia’s office, with heaps of paper on the desk which hid the working member behind as another mastermind sat on a nearby chair, hurriedly clicking the buttons on her GBA[1] as if her life depended on it.

“[Name]-chan… maybe you should stop playing and work…” The red haired voiced his concern at the female.

Why? You ask. Partly to stop suspicions on how he got a female in his office, partly to stop people questioning her if they suddenly barged into his office, but mainly because with the way she was so absorbed in it, she reminded him of his oh-so-wonderful partner.

“Why? It’s a good game.”

Just like a certain bandage-wasting-human… “Say… did you hear about the legendary stolen sapphire-”

He stopped abruptly, gone the peaceful expression on her face, but replaced with partially between horror and anger.

“Sapphire… sapphire… Pokemon Sapphire… Kyogre just awakened by Archie, leader of Team Aqua and-”

“Wait, that was what made you ticked off with such a despising expression?!” Chuuya exclaimed, astounded how a simple game could cause his emotionless friend to be capable of such intense emotion.

“Chuuya, Kyogre wrecked my entire team… even with the usage of dozens of revives and both super and hyper potions… but then, it is a legendary, so what can you say?”

“I say stop playing such games or you’ll become intelligently declined like Dazai!”

She blinked at him. Her [eye colour gem] meeting opal before she resumed playing on her game, “It sounds as if… you’re almost jealous of Dazai.”

“Why-! I am more certainly not jealous of that!” He stomped to her form and yanked the game device out of her hands, “this is what I would love to do to him if it’s not for that blasted ability of his!”

Her GBA ruthlessly hit both ceiling and floor a few times before completely smashed into useless pieces because of Chuuya’s ability.

“Chuuya.”

“What?” He asked, still irritated. Him? Compared to that bandage-wasting-womanising-good-for-nothing-absolutely-useless-

“You are jealous.” She patted his shoulder, which tensed at the contact, before walking out of the room, not fazed at what just took place, “oh, and by the way, you own me a new GBA.”

 [1] – Let’s just say that the Dark era BSD universe is set in 2010s, thus it would be possible for reader to have Pokemon Sapphire as it was released in Japan in 2003.

[mp100secretsanta2017-blog]

From : help-i-cant-adult

To : @pagerunners

Message : Happy Holidays! This was actually pretty fun to write, even though it isn’t that great. I hope you like it! Merry Christmas!

Reigen was definitely not an esper.

He couldn’t be.

Because, if he was…

Well, if he was, he would’ve noticed that they’d been separated, wouldn’t he?

 __________________________________________________________

It was Shou’s idea, at first. Mob’s day had already deviated from the relaxing usual routine when Ritsu had insisted on coming with him to work. “To keep an eye on him,” he had said, but Mob knew something must’ve caused Ritsu’s intense distrust of Reigen to flare up once more. Maybe it was the fact that this was a big case. In fact, it was so big that they’d called in backup in the form of Teru and Shou.

There had been reports of a poltergeist terrorizing the areas in and around the Hoisin theme park - it was so severe that the park had actually shut down. The owner, frantic about the amount of money he was losing by closing the park down smack in the middle of summer, had come to the first person willing to help - Reigen, the fifty-second psychic on the list.

They had been paired off and had split up - Mob and Ritsu together, and Reigen supervising the other two, not really sure if he could trust them to stay focused.

They’d been investigating for all of fifteen minutes when Shou got bored and dragged Teru into an alley. Reigen kept walking, still talking about his innate abilities and how they were so strong that he needed weaker espers to help him with simple stuff like this.

“What’s up?” asked Teru, seemingly unfazed by being dragged into an alley by the son of a crazy megalomaniac.

“I haven’t been to a theme park in ages,” said Shou, his eyes bright with barely contained excitement, “And I bet Ritsu and Ritsu’s brother haven’t either.”

“Well, what ’s stopping us?” grinned Teru.

“I think I last saw them that way.”

__________________________________________________________

“But the park is closed,” said Ritsu.

Teru rolled his eyes. “Oh, Llittle Brother-kun, you naïve soul. What do you think we have powers for?”

“What about Shishou and the spirit?” protested Mob.

“Ditch work today,” shrugged Shou. “I’m sure Reigen will understand.”

“Yeah, niisan, if reigen-san is as great as he claims to be, he wont need our help.” Ritsu’s eyes gleamed.

“Well…” Mob couldn’t argue with that. And he did want to go to a theme park.

Shou’s enormous grin widened another centimetre.

“What’re we waiting for  then?”

__________________________________________________________

“Which one do you guys want to ride first?” asked Shou. “I’ve been on the Brain-Melter, but I don’t really remember it, and I don’t think I’ve been on the Limb-Twister yet.”

“Those sound a bit dangerous…” said Mob, but Ritsu and Teru had both spoken over him.

“Limb-twister,” they said in unison, then looked at each other in surprise, like they hadn’t ever thought they could have similar tastes.

“Limb-Twister it is,” shrugged Shou, ducking under the rope that kept the line to the roller coaster closed.

“Lucky us, there’s no line,” drawled Teru.

“The park is closed, Teru-kun. How could there be a line?” asked Mob.

Ritsu snickered.

“Come on slowpokes, we don’t have all day!” yelled Shou, from where he was already seated in the  cart. “We need to get back before Reigen notices we’re gone or Ritsu’s big brother could get in big trouble!”

Once they were settled in the cart (Ritsu and Mob in front, Teru and Shou behind), there was the debate about who should push the cart up and down the tracks.

“It was my idea, so I should get to do it!” argued Shou.

“Well I don’t trust you to not get us all killed, so…”

“Hmmm.” Shou chewed on his lower lip, trying to come up with a quick solution. “Well, how about your brother and I push, Ritsu? You trust him, don’t you?”

Ritsu turned to look at his brother.

“I don’t mind,” said Mob.

“Alright then! Remember, Ritsu’s brother, the tracks are for babies and we’ve got to make this go as fast as it can to get the full experience!”

“No-”

“Don’t-”

“LET’S GO!” yelled Shou, cutting Teru and Ritsu’s protests short as the cart blasted forward, propelled by pure esper energy and a desire to have fun.

“THIS IS FUN!” called Mob at the top of his voice, trying to be heard over the rushing in his ears. Ritsu’s answering smile looked suspiciously like a grimace.

Must’ve been the wind.

“FASTER!” yelled Shou, and Mob complied.

As they approached the peak, Teru seemed to break.

“STOP! YOU GUYS ARE GONNA GET US KILLED YOU HAVE  TO-”

There was a break. They were perfectly balanced on the peak of the coaster, seemingly impossibly high. Time stopped just long enough for Teru to finish his sentence.

“-slow down.”

And then they fell forward, hurtling faster and faster towards certain doom. Mob and Shou screamed in exhilaration.

(Ritsu and Teru were also screaming in exhilaration, definitely not terror why do you ask?)

__________________________________________________________

“Well! That was fun! What’s next?” said Shou, hopping out of the cart as it screeched to a stop, courtesy of Teru and Ritsu, who looked haggard. Mob also clambered out, after it had stopped, and offered a hand to Ritsu, who took it gladly.

Teru repeatedly ran his hands through his less-impeccable-than-usual hair.

“Whatever Kageyama-kun wants.”

“I think I would like to go on the Mind-Melter. It has loops,” said Mob.

Teru’s smile instantly became more pained, but he gave a forced hum of assent anyway.

“As long as we don’t go too fast,” said Ritsu. “I still don’t trust you, Shou.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” said Shou dismissively as he bounced towards the Mind-Melter.

“Last one there is a smelly fart!”

“Real mature,” said Teru, and Ritsu rolled his eyes, but both of them sped up anyway.

__________________________________________________________

The instant they got into the car, Ritsu and Teru regretted it. Shou had gotten there first, and they had slowed down so that Mob wouldn’t be last.

“Move your asses!” Shou had said, before  flicking his hand and shoving both of them into the back seat of the car.

“That wasn’t very nice, Suzuki-kun,” scolded Mob, but he didn’t stop Shou from speeding the car along the tracks before the two in the back could be seated properly.

“You’re going too fast! We need to stop!” said Teru. “Little brother-kun agrees with me, doesn’t he?”

“Well, yeah, but I have a name. You should use it.”

“See!”

“Look, if we slow down we’re not gonna have enough momentum to finish the loop,” said Shou, “ So y'all are just gonna have to suuck iit uupp!”

They stopped at the center of the loop.  Hanging upside down, there was just enough time for Shou to give the backseat a dirty look before they fell out of the cart. They caught themselves, each esper supported by their own aura, and, suprisingly, Shou’s.

Ritsu shot him a quizzical look.

“Accidents at theme parks just get in the way,” said Shou, but he looked very relieved that everyone seemed unhurt. His relief quickly turned to irritation.

“Alright, which of you morons did this?” he snapped.

“They aren’t morons,” rebuked Mob, but he seemed to agree with the assessment.

“It wasn’t us, you dumb-” Ritsu cast a look at his older brother and cut himself off.

“You may be annoying and slightly insane, but your understanding of physics is pretty sound, Suzuki-kun,” said Teru, legs crossed and inspecting his nails like none of this even phased him.

“It could be the spirit we came to investigate,” said Mob in a small voice, just in case he was wrong.

The others’ eyes widened simultaneously, as though they would never have thought of that.

“You truly are a genius, Kageyama-kun,” said Teru in awe.

 Ritsu shot him a dirty look.

“Yeah, good job Ritsu’s brother,” Shou smirked.

“I guess we should find this spirit then?” asked Teru, starting to get up from his reclining position, still midair.

“No need!” chirped an unfamiliar voice, putting all four espers on guard.

A child-spirit hovered before them, grinning ear to ear.

“That was so great! If more people had fun like that I might not have had to shut down the park!”

With twin sighs, Teru and Ritsu raised their arms to exorcise the spirit, only to be stopped by Mob.

“If we find out what he wants, we don’t have to hurt him,” he said, causing the other two to drop their hands.

‘So what exactly do you want, kid?“ asked Shou.

The spirit’s smile widened.

"To have fun!”

__________________________________________________________

“I knew this was a bad idea,” murmured Ritsu to Teru. They were hanging behind the other two, who had run ahead to start on the bouncy castle with the spirit.

“Kageyama-kun is very smart,” said Teru, “and wise. Why does he insist on trusting spirits he’s just met?”

Ritsu sighed.

“Niisan is neither smart nor wise. But he is very kind. Almost too kind,” he said, shooting a look at Teru.

“He sometimes befriends characters he would be better off without.”

Teru nodded, as though Ritsu had confided an important secret in him.

“Then I’ll help you make sure none of them hurt him.”

He started to catch up with the others, leaving Ritsu to stare after him incredulously.

Just how unaware was this guy?

__________________________________________________________

“Where were you kids? I’ve been searching all day! You can’t just run off without telling me! What if the poltergeist had gotten you?”

Mob looked at Shou. Ritsu looked at Teru. Shou looked at Ritsu. Teru looked at Mob.

“Do you wanna stop looking at each other and actually say something?”

Mob decided to take pity on his Shishou, who was sweating very hard.

“It did.”

“Huh?”

“The poltergeist. It did get us.”

“HUH??!!”

They watched as sweat dripped down Reigen’s face, even faster than before.

“Are any of you hurt?”

Ritsu raised a mocking eyebrow, but Mob just shook his head.

“We’re fine Shishou. We played some games with him and then he left.”

“Just like that?”

“Well…”

Mob’s mind flashed back to when the spirit, wanting Mob and Shou to stay and play with him, had tried to kill them so they could haunt the park together. Ritsu and Teru had jumped into action with the first movement the spirit made towards Mob, but Shou had beat them to it, exorcising the thing with a fiery snap of his fingers.

“Yes.” said Teru, finishing Mob’s sentence for him. “Just like that.”

“Well then,” said Reigen, looking at their sweaty, flushed faces, “God job kids. Let’s go home.”

“Can we get takoyaki first?”

“Of course, Mob. Of course we can.”

[mustdang-100]

Shifting Perspectives - Ch. 5

Reigen works through some issues.

Summary: 

How many espers does it take to rescue one abducted conman?

Months after the events of the World Domination arc, Reigen disappears sometime between leaving the office and after-work plans. Serizawa finds himself the unwilling leader of a bunch of former Claw members and a couple of stubborn teenagers, determined to get Reigen back.

Read on AO3 Ch.1|Ch.2|Ch.3|Ch.4|Ch.5 Tumblr Ch.1|Ch.2|Ch.3|Ch.4|Ch.5 - below|Ch.6

“Nice place you have here.”

Teru glanced up at Shou, who had thrown himself across Teru’s neatly-made bed now lay leisurely on his back, legs crossed, foot dangling. Teru tried not to be irritated.

“Thanks,” he said shortly, then returned to folding a spare shirt, tucking it neatly into his shoulder bag.

Teru stood to survey his apartment, gaze sweeping the spotless floor and shelves of books and knick-knacks, contemplating what else he might need during a covert spy-slash-rescue mission of unknown duration. Binoculars, maybe? He tried to remember where he’d put his pair – somewhere safe, he was absolutely certain. He remembered the feeling of satisfaction as he tucked them somewhere that was definitely, positively safe. Now if he could only remember where that safe spot was…

“Do you really think we’re gonna need all that?” Shou interrupted his thoughts just as he reached up a hand to search the top shelf of his closet. “This all kinda seems like overkill. It would have been simpler to just wait around and then follow Serizawa and his merry band straight to Hatori.”

Teru glanced back over his shoulder. “Now is when we know exactly where they’re going next, so it might be the only time we could leave without risking losing them. Of course, all of them together throw off so much power that I could find them anywhere in the city with a small amount of effort, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious. And they might leave the city, and then where would we be. Unless you can sense auras from further away than a couple dozen kilometers?”

Shou made a huffing sound, but pillowed the back of head on his arms and didn’t protest further. Teru had thought not, considering that he could only sense other espers within a radius much smaller than the entire city, but he’d wanted to be sure.

However, the question brought back some of Teru’s earlier curiosity; he turned back to fully face Shou.

“You don’t have to stick around, you know. I’d be fine following them on my own. And you don’t even really know Reigen. There’s no need for you to help if you don’t want to.”

Shou sat up on his elbows and looked back at him, face solemn, light eyes steady and piercing. Teru blinked, a little unnerved; he decidedly did not like being the subject of that too-intense gaze. It made him feel like Shou could see straight through him.

But then Shou grinned cheerfully, erasing the serious persona as though it had never existed. “I’m bored. And this seems like it’ll be fun.”

Teru eyed him for a moment, dubious – he recognized the kinds of smiles people wore as masks. But then he shrugged and turned to reach back into his closet, trying not to care. Shou did a lot of things that he didn’t really understand.

Truthfully, part of him had hoped Shou would leave. They didn’t know each other that well, and Teru preferred working with people he had more of a handle on. He knew very little about Shou: he was an esper. His asshole father was an egomaniac with too much power, and was now incarcerated somewhere. He had befriended Ritsu, something Teru hadn’t known was possible. And as of the confrontation today, Teru knew that Shou knew Serizawa quite well; the undercurrent of tension between the two of them had strummed in the air like a guitar string, adding undertones to Serizawa’s apology that Teru did not understand.

Teru’s own relationship with Shou had started off rocky, given that it had commenced with the small, red-haired stranger carrying the unconscious bodies of the Kageyama brothers into a room where he himself was already restrained and groggily coming-to.

Yet Teru’s initial, rather violent, disposition towards Shou had been confounded by his defending them not even hours later. Shou had appeared out of nowhere, crushed their opposition right when events had taken a turn for the worst, and then disappeared into the night. You had to admire that kind of power, Teru had admitted grudgingly to himself. And not to mention, that presentation.

They hadn’t seen much of each other during Claw’s push for world domination, but they had been solidly on the same side that time, at least. In the months that followed Shou would disappear for weeks, and then Ritsu would show up with Shou suddenly in tow, both of them acting like it was nothing out of the ordinary. Teru took his cue from Shigeo, who always took Shou’s appearances in stride. But he and Shou had never interacted without the Kageyamas present, and the lack of that buffer now made Teru wary.

The hand searching the top shelf found the smooth, cool shape of the large shoebox he’d been looking for. He pulled it down and lifted the lid. A floppy outdoors hat rested on top; he half grinned as he set it aside. Underneath were a magnifying glass, sunscreen, a field guide on Japanese insects… aha! He removed the binoculars and added them to his bags.

“You're taking forever, and I’m starving,” Shou groaned. He jumped off the bed and headed for the kitchen area. Teru heard the fridge door open and a pop from a Tupperware lid, and spun to glare at the intruder.

“Why don’t you go back to your place to get your own food. And your own supplies, for that matter. We don’t know when we’ll get another chance to get more.”

“I have cash,” Shou said indistinctly, mouth already full of whatever he’d grabbed. He swallowed. “I’ll just grab what I need on the way. If we ever get around to actually leaving.”

Teru raised an eyebrow at him. “Why don’t you want to go back to your place?”

Shou paused in taking another large spoonful to glare at him. Teru couldn’t resist prying further.

“Do you even actually live around here? Like, did your dad have a place here, in the city he tried to destroy?”

Shou’s body had gone a little tense.

“Don’t worry about it.” He put down the food and gave Teru a smile that could have cut glass. “Why do you live alone?”

Teru crossed his arms across his chest, an automatic gesture. Then, slowly, he gave Shou a crooked smile back, shifting his weight onto one hip.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied coolly, in turn.

Message received. No personal talk. No family talk.

That’s okay, that was just the way he liked it.

Teru grabbed an older, empty bag from under his bed and tossed it at Shou, who caught it automatically with one hand. Shou held it away from himself, eyeing the bag like it was going to bite him.

Teru hefted his own bag onto his shoulders. “You can borrow that. We’ll stop somewhere on the way if we need anything else. And we’ll get some real food so you can stop eating my leftovers.”

Shou hesitated a second more, then nodded, relaxing as he rolled his eyes. “Whatever, dude. Let’s go already, before we lose them.”

***

Reigen wasn’t left alone in the interrogation room for long.

A muscular man with short brown hair threw the door open and, without a word, hauled Reigen up from the glass-covered floor. He gestured for Reigen to follow, and led him down a series of nondescript off-white hallways and staircases. A cloud of invisible pressure brushed at Reigen’s arms and torso, taking some of the weight off his shaking legs but enforcing the unmistakable threat of restraint should he try and run. Reigen barely registered surprise at the appearance of psychic power, and accepted the support unthinkingly. It wasn’t like he’d be running off anywhere just then anyway, and frankly he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay upright without that aid.

It occurred to him, as they paced through hall after hall, that he ought to try keeping track of the layout of the place; where he’d come from, and where he was going. Laying the groundwork for the devious escape plan he was certain he’d formulate any moment now, just in case he needed one. But the notion just made him feel tired, and it slid away almost as soon as it appeared, too slippery for his mind to keep hold of.

He almost ran right into the esper he was following when he finally stopped before one of the dozen-odd identical gray-painted doors that lined the current hallway. The esper opened the door, prodded Reigen inside, and shut it again behind him. A locking mechanism clicked with a sound of finality.

Reigen gazed blearily around at what was clearly a jail cell, furnished with a single bunk flush against a concrete block wall, a small desk and chair, and not much else. That they had set up a place to stash him did not bode well for his hopes that, now that they knew he wasn’t psychic, they might just… let him go.

There was a tray on the desk, with food he didn’t bother to identify. Reigen knew he should eat – who knew the last time he’d eaten anything, he really should be hungry – but the last remnant of shock from his interrogation was draining away, and sweeping all that remained of his energy along with it. It left behind a fuzzy numbness that settled over his mind like a fog, smothering any interest in food. His stomach churned nauseously at the very thought of eating.

Eh. The tray would still be there later.

He slumped onto the bunk’s thin pad and stared at the flat gray wall.

Well. He was alive. And as far as he could tell, unharmed, other than a few bumps, bruises, and shallow slashes. He supposed that was probably a good thing. But, as the weight of the misery settling onto his shoulders reminded him, that did not mean he’d come out ahead in that encounter, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Reigen buried his face in his hands.

He’d gotten in over his head. Again.

He’d never intended to be drawn into the world of espers, back when he’d first started Spirits & Such, despite his grandiose claims of otherworldly powers. He used to be so good at taking on only those troubles he knew he could solve, whether through a quickly-mastered skill or an assertive, soothing lie – and usually, some combination of the two. If other people – the firefighters, the search-and-rescuers – chose to try combatting the world’s greater ills, good for them. He applauded their efforts. But he was perfectly content to make his living by easing the small, everyday problems of the people who walked through his door, whether they were the problems they thought they had or not.

They walked in with a problem. Reigen provided them with a solution. They left. The cycle repeated.

Except sometimes… sometimes the person who walked through his door was a ten-year-old boy searching for reassurance of his own morality, even humanity, just because he could do something that others couldn’t.

Sometimes the person who walked through his door was a fourteen-year-old kid who’d been told he was an adult so convincingly and often that even he believed he was entirely self-sufficient. That is, until his own loneliness drove him to swallow his pride and go looking for help.

Sometimes the person who walked through his door did so admittedly because Reigen led him through it, because that person was an adult with a new chance at life, and because Reigen had seen potential in him that must be allowed to blossom and thrive.

Espers were people first, and despite the occasionally paranormal packaging, the cores of their problems were the same ones any person might have: ones that dealt with loneliness, or human morality, or living day to day life. Problems Reigen could undertake with confidence, or at least the appearance of it.

No, the trouble had come when new problems followed the espers in his care, problems larger than he could handle, dealing with powers well out of his league.

At that point, Reigen’s options were to either turn away from the people he cared for, the ones who stayed, whose problems he had already decided to make his own. Or, he could continue to help them in any way he could, regardless of his personal safety.

It was no kind of decision at all.

It was the Claw’s attack on the city that violently alerted Reigen to the fact that he’d ignored all the warning signs, and finally dived into events too far out of his depth. His futile struggle to protect Mob at the top of the tower had almost gotten himself killed, and ultimately had done nothing to prevent the weight of an entire city’s safety from being pressed onto the shoulders of a fourteen-year-old child.

Watching the immense shadow bursting from the rubble in the last place he’d seen the kid, his kid, was the first time Reigen really, truly thought he’d lost Mob. And there had been nothing, nothing he could do to help him.

But Mob had survived. And Mob was his own person, allowed to set his own path and make his own mistakes. But that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve help.

Next time, Reigen had told himself. Next time, I’ll be there.

Except the next time had been the day the broccoli disappeared…

Reigen winced, pulling his head up and rubbing at his forehead, as though he could force back the dull pain that suddenly bloomed deep behind his eyes. It always made his head hurt to think about that day too hard, which in and of itself made him uneasy. His memories of the day were so fuzzy…

But what he did remember, was that he and Mob had set out to take care of the broccoli and the esper responsible for its hold, and that it had indeed been taken care of. But not by him. Once again, Mob had set out to accomplish a task, and once again, he must have done so, without any help.

Reigen had been worse than useless – he couldn’t even remember how it had happened.

And now…

He hadn’t been able to fool the division into believing he was the psychic responsible for the phenomena that had threatened the city. Which meant they would keep looking for the one who had.

And in that, he’d failed Mob again.

Reigen returned his gaze to the wall, as though hoping answers for what to do next might begin scrawling themselves into the concrete blocks.

He didn’t know how long they planned to keep him here, but they hadn’t gotten an identity for the esper they were looking for yet. That meant there had to be hope, that there was still something he could do, if he could get out in time…

This pep talk did nothing to lessen the numb sense of dread that was deadening his limbs, trapping them in an invisible miasma. Another conclusion was staring him in the face, taunting him, inescapable:

No one was coming to help him.

He’d never been more aware of just how few people he regularly interacted with. He didn’t talk to the members of his family often; the most frequent was his mother, and even her he only talked to once every few weeks. It would take her a long time to realize anything was wrong.

He hadn’t talked to Mob in over a week. Mob stopped by the office with increasing rarity, especially since the summer break had begun; he wasn’t scheduled to come in to the office until next Thursday. In fact, Reigen was more likely to see Teru come in his door than Mob, of late - but that was without notice, without schedule – without obligation. If Teru stopped by to find the lights off and door locked, he would probably just think the office was closed for the day.  

Reigen wondered, for the thousandth time, where Dimple could be. He hadn’t seen the spirit in months. He’d felt almost foolish, when he’d finally given in and casually asked Mob when he’d last seen Dimple, a few days after Reigen had noticed his absence. Mob’s face had gone blank, completely blank, to the extent that not even Reigen could tell what emotion he was fighting against. Reigen had backed off quickly, distracting his student with something work-related, but he feared the worst. Reigen had not asked again.

And Serizawa…

It seemed so stupid, so comparatively trivial, his dismay over missing the chance to spend time with Serizawa – outside of work, with no justification for the invitation but that Serizawa enjoyed his company. And that smile when he’d agreed to join him…

But now, Reigen was sure Serizawa thought he’d decided to blow him off.  

He wondered what Serizawa had done when he hadn’t shown up at work. He wondered if he’d tried tracking him down, or just gone about the day as usual. He knew at some point Serizawa would realize something really was wrong, but what could he possibly do? There was no way for him to find Reigen, no way for him to even know he’d been taken, and not just up and disappeared.

And if Reigen never showed up again?

Serizawa was set up for success. He’d already been making preparations to go on and do something else in his life, something more, causing Reigen to bite his tongue all the tighter every time he thought about suggesting making Spirits & Such officially an equal partnership… But no. Reigen had accomplished his task, and Serizawa would be fine. He would finish his schooling, and move on to a new place of work.

Reigen’s despair swelled, swamping his mind, drowning him in hopelessness.

He wondered, idly, how long he’d been staring at the wall.

He decided it probably didn’t matter.

***

An uncertain amount of time later – it had to be hours, surely it hadn’t been days – the sound of the door opening stirred Reigen from his apathy. He sat up, blinking; at some point he’d moved to a horizontal position, falling in and out of a restless sleep.

Nagata entered the room with confidence, as though Reigen had never seen him press himself quivering with fear against a wall. Two people followed: the esper who had brought him here, and –

Reigen did a double take. The other was the dark-haired woman who had been driving the car and asked him for directions the night he was taken. She showed him no sign of recognition, and looked far less friendly now; hair pulled back in a tight, functional ponytail and dressed in the same black fatigues as the ice esper and the man beside her. The two sported similar expressions of boredom, yet somehow both managed to emanate an impression of “badass” into the room. They assumed positions of alert distance on either side of the door. Reigen would have bet his freedom that the woman was an esper as well. Fantastic.

Nagata sat at the small desk and propped his elbows on the surface, gazing at Reigen over his crossed fingers, not a hair out of place. His carefully-schooled expression sat somewhere between disappointment and concern, as though he was a teacher who wanted to guide a wayward student into making the best choices for their future.

Reigen barely refrained from asking how often the slimeball had practiced that expression in the mirror.

Reigen crossed his legs on the bed and leaned back on his arms. He was still in the same clothes he’d been abducted in, and now that adrenaline was pushing against the haze of lethargy, he felt greasy and disgusting, and smelled more than a little ripe.

He was tired, tired of being trapped, tired of feeling useless, and tired of this man and his power games. He raised an eyebrow, and went on the attack.

“So. Have you cleaned up the mess your esper made of the interrogation room yet?”

Nagata instantly lost the concerned mask, face flashing through fear and anger before settling into an annoyed scowl.

And… something snagged in Reigen’s brain there, in that response. The con-artist in him sat up and concentrated. He prodded Nagata again, curious.

“For someone so concerned about powerfully destructive espers, I’m kinda surprised you have one on staff. I mean, she doesn’t really seem that respectful of government property. And please know that, yes, that does include you.”

Nagata’s eye twitched as his glare deepened; Reigen was certain he was going to start yelling. But then he took a deep breath, and pulled the calm, concerned mask back over his features, so completely and decisively that it was unnerving.

“Sonata and her employees are… outside consultants, contracted for their very specific expertise in… combat. They are not government employees, and thus are still learning what is and is not necessary and permitted.”

Reigen read between the lines to what Nagata left unsaid. He’d learned there were espers working as mercenaries just this past year; that there were entire organizations of them available for anyone to hire was not so surprising. He had not expected that mercenaries could be hired by their own government, though. It seemed to him that it exposed a level of ruthless desperation that Nagata didn’t seem to realize.

Reigen caught movement in his peripheral vision, behind the agent’s back. The two espers by the door had both turned to look at Nagata, faces mostly blank but somehow still giving the impression of scorn. When they noticed Reigen’s attention, however, they turned back and resumed looking at nothing in particular.

Reigen guessed they must be among the ice esper’s – Sonata’s – people, and did not appreciate being talked about as though they were naughty children who hadn’t learned proper manners yet.

Nagata turned to follow Reigen’s line of sight to the two esper guards. He paused for a moment, as if considering, then turned his back to them.

“I need to speak with Mr. Reigen alone for a moment. Please wait outside the door; I’ll alert you should you be needed.” He waved a hand, dismissive.

The two stepped outside. Nagata waited until he heard the door close, and then visibly relaxed. Reigen, watching the entire display with interest, wondered how much of Nagata’s behavior was an act.

“I understand you concerns about Sonata, and I apologize for the treatment you experienced at her hands,” Nagata said smoothly. “I, of course, intended no such thing to happen. And I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about our department – I assure you that our own esper agents know how to behave themselves.”

Reigen rapidly decided he didn’t like that tone any better than the esper guards had. But Nagata leaned in, conspiratorially.

“But of course, we must always remain vigilant even around our own employees, mustn’t we, when they have that kind of power at their fingertips.” He smiled, expression too understanding, inviting Reigen to join him in noble victimhood.

“Mr. Reigen, I know the company you keep, and the feats you have witnessed. You know these… people can’t always control themselves, and their powers.”

There was the barest hesitation before the word ‘people.’ Something cold and hard clenched in Reigen’s chest at the implications of that deliberate hesitation, the insinuation that people with psychic powers were somehow inhuman, violent animals who lashed out indiscriminately.

“They require rules: guidance that we at the Paranormal Monitoring Division are happy and eager to supply…”

Espers must be controlled and subdued if necessary.

“…in order for them to persist in our society peacefully.”

They are not like us. They are other, and must be treated as such.

Reigen thought of Mob, who’d fought for so long and so hard to control his powers, and longed for nothing more than to be ‘normal.’ He thought of Teruki, who once set upon the right path, struggled to do good, to learn and keep from making the same mistakes again.

He thought of Serizawa, who, instead of inflicting his uncontrolled powers onto innocent bystanders, forced himself into isolation for over a decade.

Reigen had to fight hard against his immediate inclination to try punching the superior self-righteousness right out of Nagata.

“I know you might not like it, but it really is in everyone’s best interest, in our country’s best interest, for you to tell us anything you know about the esper responsible for the appearance and disappearance of the Divine Tree. Or, anything else you feel might be relevant?”

Deeper down, below the bright and immediate anger, the government agent’s words terrified Reigen. Reigen had been good in school, especially in classes that explored society or human behavior. He’d also particularly enjoyed baiting his history teachers, and read outside material just to demonstrate how incorrect the outdated and biased textbooks were.

He knew his history well. And history contained far too many examples of what those in power did to any group of people they fear.

He needed to learn more. He needed to know if this kind of prejudice was indicative of the government as a whole. But more than that, he needed to warn his espers of a possible danger.

The cogs of his brain began to whir again, pushing back against the sucking pull of apathy as the con artist in him smiled in grim satisfaction. Despite its chilling implications, the way Nagata talked about people with psychic power – up to and including the people he worked with – provided the gift of opportunity.

Reigen looked down, forcing his features into an expression of uncertainty, of wavering conviction. He looked back up at Nagata and opened his mouth slightly, as though he was going to say something, and then closed it, looking away again.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the agent smile in satisfaction.

“I understand this might be difficult for you. You don’t want to betray your… associates? But I think you know what the right thing to do here is.”

Nagata stood, brushing creases out of his clothes.

“I’ll give you some space, and more time to think it over. Let me make sure you get a change of clothes, and something else to eat, and I’ll be back to see if there’s anything more you’d like to discuss.”

As soon as the door closed behind Nagata, Reigen let his face relax. He got up and sniffed at the tray still sitting on the desk. He shrugged mentally, and began eating with one hand, tapping his leg absently with the other as his mind chugged back to work, weaving ideas into the beginnings of a plan.

If he was going to attempt a daring escape, he might as well do it on a full stomach.

[thinkanamelater]

It Won’t be Long (A Mob Psycho 100 fanfiction) Chapter 1/?

(Mostly) Serizawa-centric, set on a canon divergence AU where there aren’t evil spirits, Claw hasn’t formed (yet), Mob is Reigen’s son, and tons of more details you’re gonna have to read to find out.

Pairings: Touichirou/Serizawa - Reigen/Serizawa (on later chapters) - ??

Also on ao3!

Summary: A house to call his own, someone to love and be loved, someone to look after. After spending 15 years locked in his room, Serizawa still can’t believe he’s got this lucky.

That is, until Shou’s new friend introduces more people into his life, and the balance he thought he had starts to drift away.

Chapter 1: Happiness is a Warm Gun

“Thanks for the meal”

Touchirou stood up, sending his almost empty dish to the sink with a wave of psychic energy, and that signaled the end of lunchtime.

Standing up too, Serizawa stuttered an excited string of “You're welcome!”, “Glad you enjoyed it”, “Have a great day at work”; and managed to add “I'll be waiting!” before Touchirou was already out of the door, one hand holding the briefcase, the other distractedly waving goodbye.

With a satisfied hum and an easy smile, Serizawa sat down, only to get back on his feet seconds after and catch the dishes that Shou also tried to send flying.

“When will be the day you'll let me help clean up, Seri?” The teen that had been silent and frowning during lunch was now fake complaining, all complete with a dramatic sigh. Serizawa smiled bigger at this and stretched out a hand to mess up the already messy red hair.

“I don't mind doing it, so you don't have to worry” The older said once Shou had squirmed out of his hand, picking up more things from the table and balancing them on his arms “Besides” He added with a playful tone, one he only really used when it was just the two of them “Shouldn't you tidy your room? You have visits today”

Shou pouted at this, and let out a snarky and elongated “Fiiiiine mom” while turning to his room.

It took the now flustered Serizawa more time than usual to finish his self-imposed chores, but he did finish them anyway, and went to check how Shou's room was doing.

Saying it was exactly the same as the last time he'd seen it (that morning when he made the teen's bed), would have been unfair. It was more like Shou had managed to move all the mess from one place to another, that place being mostly under his bed. However, that sight made Serizawa visibly beam.

“Oh, Shou-kun!” He clasped his hands together “You did a great work!” Sarcasm would have fit better than the cheerful, honest tone Serizawa used; but sarcasm wasn't something Serizawa was familiar with. And Shou was usually quick with his words, but he wasn't really sure how to reply to that, he always got a bit confused with the older man's kind comments.

There was no need for him to reply though, as the bell rang and Serizawa announced “Coming!”, with Shou following behind closely.

As visitors weren't really a thing in their house, Shou wasn’t surprised at all that it turned out to be his friend at the door. Had it been a school day, he’d be wearing his uniform, clean and formal; like the first time Shou saw him, when he also saw all that potential swirling around him, wrapping him; it was like seeing something that wasn’t quite there, but oh it was going to be there, Shou was so sure. Uniform or not, the formality was still present, in the way his friend nodded to him slightly and immediatly bowed to Serizawa.

“Nice to meet you, sir, my name’s Kageyama Ritsu” He said, straightening his back and looking directly into the older man’s eyes, which seemed like he wasn’t sure what to do with all the attention “You must be Shou’s fath-“

“Nope! Pops’ out at work!” Shou quickly interrupted Ritsu before he could finish his phrase, pulling him inside by the arm “This is Serizawa! Or just Seri, if you want to” The alluded waved a hand, sheepishly, and Ritsu nodded “And, you already introduced yourself, but Seri, he’s my friend Ritsu! He doesn’t think I’m weird!” Shou stated, proudly.

“I do think you’re weird, just not because of your powers” Ritsu retorted in a heartbeat.

“And you’re cool despite of being kinda uptight!” Shou said, laughing loudly.

Serizawa looked at them as they continued their friendly banter, an amused smile on his lips, and then his eyes drifted towards the still open door.

“Uh, Shou-kun?” He called, after a moment of hesitation, and fidgeted with his hands once the teen turned at him “Um, I need some groceries, so I was thinking on going out for a moment?” He finished with a hint of nervousness.

Shou glanced quickly at Ritsu, who was doing a very good job on hiding his curiosity at the scene, and then shot an encouraging smile at Serizawa.

“Of course! We’ll be fine so don’t worry about us!”

Visibly relaxing with that, the man let out a soft “thanks” and grabbed his umbrella resting against the wall. Ritsu couldn’t keep it much longer at that, raising his eyebrows and looking about to make a comment, and Shou shook his head at him, discreetly raising a finger to his lips.

“Ah…” Ritsu was already speaking when the signal caught on, and Serizawa had stopped on his movements to look at him, so he awkwardly bowed again “Ah, have- have fun going out… Seri-san…”

There was a flash of surprise going on the older’s face, that was immediately replaced by a wide smile, and with a new “thanks!” he went out the door, umbrella firmly in his hand, and got far enough to not be able to hear Ritsu’s sigh followed by Shou’s boisterous laugh.

When he got back the boys where already on Shou’s room; engrossed, if he wasn’t wrong, with the same videogame that Shou and Serizawa were trying to beat for almost a week. He put the groceries away and walked towards the room, thinking he’d ask if they wanted snacks, or maybe he’d just join them.

“…won’t say I hate pops, but I like Seri better, y’know? He’s-“ Coming out of the room, Shou’s voice was as loud as always, obviously not caring about Serizawa listening or not.

What he is, however, Serizawa didn’t stop to listen, heading quickly for his own room instead.

It was a good room, Serizawa thought. Not particularly big, but the first impression it gave was “spacious”, with the window that provided a good amount of sunlight, and the minimal amount of furniture, so it wasn’t clustered at all. Just a closet besides the door, the bed on the opposite wall and the occasional book waiting at the top of the pillow. Nothing too attractive that might tempt one into locking themselves there, Serizawa made sure to keep it that way. And the best part? Right in front of his door, just across the hall, was the real tempting room. Touichirou’s room, where he was welcomed more often than not, but that still gave him that thrill when he was called to spend the night.

There wasn’t any thrill now, when he let himself fell down on the bed. He picked up the novel he was reading from and opened it where he left it, not really focusing in the written words. Instead, he kept thinking about what he heard from Shou.

Upset. He could say he felt upset, but there was something else in there, something making him feel weird, and he didn’t know what was it, and that made him feel even weirder. His eyes were feeling heavy. It was similar to when he first found out about his psychic powers, he thought, but the thought was blurry and not quite conscious, as he was drifting off to sleep.

“…ri. Seri! Serizawa!” Not sure how much time later, a potent voice in his room jolted him awake, opening his eyes with difficulty. Shou was there, talking and gesticulating “Ritsu just left, said something about having to meet his brother…? Apparently he was out for some weeks or som- Are you alright?” He maude a pause to ask, frowning at Serizawa’s uncharacteristically lack of attention towards him.

“I’m upset, Shou-kun” Was the mumbled answer.

“Uh?”

“I-I appre-“ Serizawa’s voice faltered, and he tried again “I appreciate that- that you… appreciate me…? Uhm…” He made a pause “B-but I don’t-! Don’t like hearing you talk like that about your father…”

Shou didn’t even blink before blankly stating “Pops doesn’t deserve you, Seri”

“Shou-kun!” Serizawa protested quickly, sitting up in the bed, and Shou just shrugged. He seemed about to say something to defend his point, but the sound of the opening front door and the deep “I’m back” that resonated through the house was enough to make Shou drop the topic, and to make Serizawa smile warmly as all past uncomfortableness was gone, because Touichirou was back home.

Next chapter