—
He was being summoned. Mob trots over to the grand staircase leading to Olympus, his black robes over-sized and shapeless, eyes wide and blank and clueless as he takes a bow, and, "You called for me, shishou?"
How can this guy be so damn innocent? Reigen almost cries — he face-palms, instead; a rough, calloused palm sliding along the panes of his youthful (stressed, weary, "oh what do I do with this situation") immortal face.
"Mob," he says pleasantly instead, gesturing his hands towards the poker-faced deity from his seat on the golden-brimmed throne. "I'm sure you're aware as to why I called you here."
Mob stares at him, emotionless. After a full minute — where numerous sweatdrops cascade as a sign of Reigen's steadily declining sanity — Mob blinks a slow blink... then tilts his head. Puzzled.
Reigen would have sacrificed himself to the humans right then and there if not for the hand that reaches out over his shaking fist. Serizawa gives him a small smile, mouthing "may I?" then turns his eyes to the death deity before them.
Mob has not moved even an inch before them. He's still the same as the dawns that gave them light. Which is ironic, because he was the ruler of the dead, of the Underworld. Serizawa knows it is with this that he's not supposed to be surprised with the paleness of Mob's skin, stretching over his bones and barely covering the lines of his veins, blue and red and seemingly mortal — and yet even with the illusive frailness of Mob's eminence, he is indubitably by far the most powerful among them all. The young man might not have been able to control the seas like his brother, or move the skies like his beloved shishou, but Mob held the ability that could even kill one of their kind, a frightening capability of very grave proportions.
Which was why the current predicament was incredibly worrisome.
"Mob," Serizawa starts, gently, "you've been very good to us these past centuries. You've done your job wonderfully, and we would never dare to ask for more of what you have provided us... But... um... we would never have pegged you the type, uh, to cause trouble like th—"
WRONG MOVE.
"Trouble?" Mob croaks, eyes bulging. And the speed of which Reigen and Serizawa stand up from their thrones and sprint up to Mob is even faster than Shou's horses racing to bring the sun.
"No!" They both shriek, desperate to stop the glistening of Mob's eyes. The two immediately fight over who gets to hug/comfort/show affection that Mob normally does not allow first.
Reigen has just managed to make Serizawa let go of Mob's torso with a slap of thunder to his ass when Mob teleports to the other side of the throne room, face contorted into realization.
"Oh... Do you guys mean Teru?"
They both freeze.
"So you've acknowledged it!" Reigen points an accusing finger at Mob, mighty with the confession as if he had solved a crime. "You've admitted you have the spring deity in your possession!"
"Yeah."
Serizawa immediately steps up while Reigen recovers the burnt pieces of his dignity from Mob's sheer nonchalance. "Mob... You do realize that... it's kind of... um, I don't know, wrong?"
Mob gives them another long, slow blink.
"Why?" He asks after a moment.
It is Serizawa's turn to gape like an idiot in the background, as Reigen, recently recovered, shoves himself in front of Mob. "Beats me! Of course it's perfectly acceptable to kidnap another deity and bring him to your dark, creepy chambers for doing nothing!"
Another long, slow blink.
"...huh." Reigen turns to face Serizawa, pointing at Mob stupidly. "He doesn't get it."
"Mob," Serizawa says, trying to cease the wobble in his mouth as he struggles for words. He looks at Mob and his big, innocent eyes and relaxed, slumped figure — and fleetingly thinks of how he has never changed. Eventually Serizawa settles with a hesitant, "Why?"
Reigen stops his ministrations to stare up Mob too hard, too. And with the gaze of his most admired guardians, Mob ducks his head low, suddenly shy.
An epiphany gradually dawns on Serizawa.
"He was..." It's hard to read Mob's eyes when his bangs are covering them. But he's fumbling with his clothes, hands twining and thumbs brushing against each other in odd, nervous swipes. "I was in the woods, and, well, there was someone playing with the nymphs — " He's breathing deep, as if trying to calm himself, "and Ritsu always told me that nymphs were bad, a-and that they liked to play tricks on you, so I was just curious whether it was true, but it wasn't, because — because there was that sound, of laughing, and I followed it and then there were flowers, flowers everywhere, in this huge field of grass and — " And Mob pauses here, hands suddenly stopping in their fidgeting. He wonders if he should tell them the whole truth of what he saw, but decides against it. His voice is quiet, soft, merely a whisper gone unheard if not for the fact that his audience wasn't human. "And he was so pretty…"
Serizawa takes all his thoughts of Mob not changing back.
"You can't just," Regan sputters, almost shocking himself with his thunderbolt, "you can't just kidnap someone because you thought they were pretty."
But Serizawa holds out a hand and places it on Reigen's arm. They both turn to look at each other. One might assume that at this point they have used mind-reading to communicate, as all immortals do sometimes, but these two were husband and husband for eons and time long before life. It doesn't take them too long to recognize what each is trying to say.
Reigen stares at his once-pupil, who never even once complained when they forcibly took away his family, his brother; when they stopped him from seeing the daylight; when they dragged him down, this unprepared child prince, to solely rule the Dead.
Mob is standing in front of Reigen right now; rim-rod straight, a buzz in his veins, a something in his eyes.
Reigen has never seen him like this.
"…fine," he says, and is wholly unprepared for the beam that greets him.
—
"Dimple," Mob says, eyeing the messenger deity pacing outside the grand hallways of his ridiculously lavish palace ("I don't need a—" "SHUSH," Minori growls, throwing more gold in his face), "What are you—"
"Out of all the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the freaking flowers in the fields," Dimple deadpans, up in Mob's face in an instant, "you just have to pick this particular dandelion, huh?"
Mob furrows his brows in confusion, and Dimple throws his hands up in the air, huffing.
"Have you seen the dining court? This guy thrashed it – thrashed it, Mob! Ritsu will kill me – again! Again, Mob! The Underworld isn't really an ideal place to travel twice, you know!"
"He hasn't eaten yet," Mob states after a while, biting his lip in worry. He paces towards the great mahogany doors, charcoal and golden and lined with intricate carvings that Mob hasn't particularly paid any attention to, and knocks.
"…it's you." says the voice from the other side. A fact.
"How did you know?" Mob queries, while Dimple continuously whines behind him.
"That green guy would have banged on the doors." He says, voice muffled; a matter of fact again. "He's been doing that for the past hour or so."
"Not without good reason, I'm sure," Mob says, coming to Dimple's defense. Dimple immediately glows with the remark.
Silence.
Dimple grows impatient, and calls out to the recipient on the other side of the door, thumping loudly on its surface, "You know! This is the ruler of the Underworld you're talking to! He could have broken your door by now even if you locked it!"
"So why doesn't he?" Teru lashes out, and Mob feels a pang of sadness hit him. He doesn't know why. "He could barge in and have his way with me – his powers far surpass Zeus', or Apollo's, or even Poseidon's – so why doesn't he?"
Despite the angry, biting feeling constricting tightly in his stomach, Mob leans his forehead against the solid surface of the door, and says, softly, "That doesn't give me any right."
"…wha—"
"I saw you… in the woods. At first I thought you were playing with the nymphs, with all that noise, but I realized that it was only you who was having fun. The nymphs weren't enjoying, at all. You were – you were using your powers to do… horrible things," Mob finishes lamely, but gains his resolution again when he remembers the look on the nymphs' faces, and their scarred and battered bodies. "Having powers doesn't give you any right to abuse others."
And before Teru can interject, Mob adds quickly, "Just like how having powers doesn't give me a right to barge into your privacy, even if I could."
Another silence occurs, and although Mob is used to it since he's always the one who initiates them, this silence is long, awkward, and stretching into a type of tension that Mob isn't used to. Dimple has left now, no doubt trying to fix the destruction that Teru has done in the chance of Ritsu dropping by with one of his surprise visits – when suddenly the door creaks open, and Mob is left breathless.
"You already kidnapped me though," Teru jeers lightly, with eyes so blue and deep and thoughtful, in a very bad way that makes Mob's stomach clench. He's about to open his mouth, probably to utter something embarrassing like, "wow you're so pretty" or "your eyes are so blue" or "that flower around your neck suits you so much can I touch it and kiss it and—"
But Teru's face goes stone-cold and harsh, painting lines on the cusps of his lips, baring into something ugly and twisted.
"Fight me," Teru says, and Mob wonders what exactly he has gotten himself into.