Chapter Text
The storm breaks after Mob murders Toichiro Suzuki. Red clouds recede, leaving behind the muted blue of dusk. The wreckage of Suzuki’s headquarters succumbs to gravity, falling into rubble. Mob stands triumphant, covered in the gore that is his trophy. Patches of his uniform are damp and sticky, bits of red on the white collar. His once-white shoes are soaked through and will need to be disposed of. Half of his face is masked with blood, the other half blank. His hair floats around him as if caught in powerful winds.
Reigen’s heart is pounding. Screaming at him to run from this new, terrifying threat. And yeah, it’s ridiculous. Mob is his student. He’s known the kid for years, since he was tiny and withdrawn and terrified. But…he can’t wipe away what he’s just seen. Mob had twisted that man to pieces, and he’d laughed. Even now that it’s over, Mob’s pale lips have an upward quirk to them. As though he’s in on a tiny, private joke that none of them are privy to.
The espers around Reigen seem to feel the same fear. He doesn’t miss their fighting stances or their hands on their weapons. The only one not openly fearful is the redheaded kid, the one who’d saved their asses at the Claw lab all that time ago. He isn’t afraid of Mob. He isn’t even looking at him, he’s looking at the smear of red on the pavement. The fast-drying blood and gleaming wet bone. He seems shocked. But he’s probably seen a dead body before, right? He works (or worked) for a terrorist organization. He looks beaten to shit, was he fighting too?
Mob stares them all down, energy building and snapping at the air. No, he’s not staring at them. He’s staring at Reigen. He’s never had Mob direct a look like that at him before. They’ve fought more than a couple of times—almost separated completely from each other once—but that fighting was never over something like this. He’s never once feared that Mob would use his powers to render Reigen into paste. Now, he’s not so sure.
Mob’s strange blond friend, Hanazawa, is the one to speak first. “You did it, Kageyama-kun,” he says. “You saved us. We’re okay now. Thank you.”
Some of the other espers, following Hanazawa’s lead, shower Mob with praise. They compliment his abilities and strength, thank him for his intervention. It’s transparent manipulation—but, worse, it’s apt to be ineffective. The first rule of manipulating people is to know one’s target. The sane part of Mob would not react well to praise of his psychic powers, and he would especially dislike being praised for using those powers to kill a man. The other part…well, it’s unlikely to respond to anything at all.
Mob’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Why did you lie?” he asks. His voice is warped, layered with something like radio static.
Reigen winces. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t ask if you were sorry, I asked why you did it.”
“I didn’t lie. I thought they were alive, I really did, Mob. I swear.”
“Did you really?”
Reigen looks at his unlikely companions. They’re all cringing away from Reigen. It’s logical self-protection, to distance themselves from the target of Mob’s animosity, but the explanation doesn’t make it feel any less like a betrayal.
“Mob. I understand that you’re upset, but you can’t just take it out on people. Just look around you. You—we, we need to be responsible.”
“I’m tired of being responsible,” Mob says. Despite the anger in his words, the static behind them is growing fainter. He sounds closer to tears than he is to committing another murder. “Nothing I did mattered. Nothing. Everything got taken away from me anyway. I’m done.”
Reigen aches. “It mattered, Mob. It still matters.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Mob clenches his fists and dusts starts to kick up around him. His eyes go white. “Stop lying to me!”
Before Reigen can apologize or grovel, Hanazawa steps out in front of him. Glowing a blinding yellow, like a second sun, he takes a few steps towards Mob. “I get it, Kageyama-kun.”
“You don’t—”
“No, listen to me. I get it. Claw killed my family, too.” When Hanazawa says this, Mob looks up sharply. His expression changes, from a mask of anger to muted shock. The dust cloud dies down, as does the floating of his hair. Hanazawa continues, “I know it hurts right now, more than you think you can possibly survive, but hurting people isn’t going to help. I tried it, I tried everything, so I can tell you this without a doubt. Just rest right now. Everything else can come later.”
Mob closes his eyes. Twin tears streak down his face, tracing clean lines through the gore. Hanazawa reaches out to cup his cheek and thumb the tear away. Mob sniffs, sounding every bit a child, as innocent as he was all those years ago when Reigen lied to him for the first time. With the enraged energy that was holding him up gone, Mob deflates, falling into the mercy of sleep. Hanazawa catches him delicately, lowering him to the ground.
They all stand completely silent for a few minutes. Nobody wants to be the one to reawaken the beast. The adrenaline of the confrontation begins to fade. Did the marathon really happen yesterday? Had he really run alongside Mob? Did he really stop for takeout before going to meet with the contractor? Impossible. It’s two different worlds, two different lives.
“Well,” says the red-head boy. “Show’s over, then. I’m gonna head out.”
“Shou, wait.” Serizawa breaks away from their uneasy little group, walking up to Shou and putting a hand on his shoulder. “How badly are you hurt? Where are you going to go?”
“Stop, I’m fine. And, with Mom, I guess.”
“I…God, Shou, I’m so sorry.”
Shou plasters on a confident smirk. “Don’t be. I would have done it myself if I could.”
Serizawa’s bottom lip trembles. “It’s okay to be upset.”
“He was a terrible guy. He tried to kill me. What’s there to be upset about?”
“I know it’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” Shou’s intense blue eyes suddenly focus on Reigen. Fuck, but he can’t take another stare-down. Shou says, “There should be a guy around here, Joseph. From the government. Bald head, slimy looking, smokes a lot. You should talk to him about your homeless nuke.”
Reigen has many, many follow-up questions. Before he can ask any of them, Shou vanishes. Just…poof, pops out of existence. Serizawa crumbles in Shou’s wake, burying his face in his hands. He’s not the only one. Reigen is surrounded by people in the process of breaking down. One of the young esper girls is openly sobbing into her hands, while two other kids try to comfort her. The adult espers that Reigen once chewed out for kidnapping Ritsu are standing in a rough circle, talking anxiously and attempting to avoid looking at the pile of once-human in the rubble.
“Well, this is a mess,” someone sighs. Reigen turns to see Dimple, floating close beside him. The annoying green blob appears particularly aggravating right now. He can’t exorcise Dimple, but he wishes he could with every bone in his body.
“And where were you this whole time?”
“Are you joking? Kid would have wiped me out. I’m not gonna show my face just for that.”
“This is your fault. Why’d you have to tell him that they were dummies?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry that I stopped him from wiping Japan off the map. My fault entirely, I’ll let him do it next time.”
“You—” Reigen doesn’t have much of a retort. If Mob really was about to destroy everything in his path, then Dimple’s not-so-white lie was justified. It worked, after all. “Fine. Fine. But…what do we do now?”
Dimple’s face is grim. “Do sensō-koji still live under overpasses?”
It takes a while to work things out. There are kids that need transport home, adults too hysterical to take on any actual responsibility, people without homes to return to, and people with injuries that need treatment. It feels like a game—trying to get the fox, chicken, and grain across the river with only one boat. Reigen feels too tired, too beaten up, for all of it. By the time he’s left with himself, Hanazawa, and Mob, night has fallen and he feels about ten years older than he did before.
He realizes, watching Mob sleep, that he’d been subconsciously assuming that Mob would come with him. He was the most logical choice, as Mob’s master and most-trusted adult. Surely, he would calm down and forgive Reigen if given enough rest, right? Wouldn’t that be a safe enough conclusion?
Hanazawa is seated next to Mob, running gentle fingers through his hair. Reigen had no idea that they were so close. But, maybe the shared trauma changed things a little. When Hanazawa looks up at Reigen, his face is red, puffy, and wet. Despite this, he regards Reigen calmly and steadily. “I’ll take him home,” Hanazawa says in a whisper, even though Mob likely wouldn’t wake up if he screamed it. “You find Joseph.”
Reigen squats down, dropping his voice to match Hanazawa’s. “You both can come with me, for now. I’m sure I can find Joseph later.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You’re kids, you shouldn’t be alone, I can—”
“Reigen-san,” Hanazawa cuts him off, voice raised. With a guilty glance down at Mob, he drops it down again. “You can’t be there when he wakes up. He might attack you again. And he already has enough on his plate.”
Reigen gets the point, but he just can’t leave them on their own. They’re two orphans, for crying out loud. “This isn’t your responsibility.”
“I disagree. But, that’s beside the point. I’m taking him with me and I’ll call you when he wakes up. This is not a debate.”
Reigen opens his mouth, but Dimple beats him to it. “Reigen, just let them go. Hanazawa can take care of both of them just fine. He’s done it before.”
His mouth is dry, full of sand. He’s made a lot of mistakes today. This, this feels like another one. But they’re right. Mob isn’t just a kid in mourning, he’s a kid in mourning whose brain is a lethal weapon. It’s safer for him to be with another esper. An esper he doesn’t hate. Neck stiff, teeth clenched, he looks away. And nods.
Hanazawa sighs—not in relief. It sounds a lot more like irritation. Like Reigen’s approval was not just unneeded, but unwanted. Hanazawa gently gathers Mob’s loose limbs together and lifts him into his arms. Before he can go, Reigen catches his sleeve.
“Call me when he wakes up. Please.”
Hanazawa nods, holding the eye contact. “He might never forgive you for what you did.” Hanazawa’s face is completely closed off. His eyes are drained of color in the moonlight, cold and gray. “Just know, even if he does…I won’t.”
Hanazawa takes off into the air. Reigen watches the night sky long after they’re out of sight.
Sixty-six million years ago, the apocalypse happened. It was not the first time. There had been many worlds, in the billions of years of living history. All of them gradually crumbled to dust, ceding to the plodding march of time. But this apocalypse had been unique. It had been a sudden shock, not a graceful fade to black. The Chicxulub asteroid had hit with incredible speed and force, disintegrating on impact and leaving hellfire behind.
The asteroid had been unthinking. Unfeeling. A chunk of rock, a devastating weapon deployed by nothing and intended by no one. The Earth spun around the Sun as it always had, and the asteroid moved forward as it always had. A brief meeting, a shared moment between them. In the space left behind, the blood of billions.
It didn’t need to be special or unique to do something terrible.
It just needed to be unlucky.