Sometimes you just had to let kids be kids…and sometimes you had to be the responsible adult in this situation.
That was how Reigen Arataka had found himself hiking through the woods with his most devoted pupil, well his only pupil, in his dress shoes. Ritsu was only ten, almost eleven but still just ten, and sometimes his imagination got away with him. Like today. Apparently there was some evil organization in these woods, the same one that Ritsu was always talking about, and now that Ritsu had a location he could gather evidence.
He had such an active imagination sometimes.
Reigen was happy to indulge him. It had been shaping up to be a dead afternoon anyway and it was nice to get some exercise and a change of scenery every now and again. There was nothing wrong with a little hike in the middle of the day…even if that hike took you onto private land. Very private land. The sort of private land that had multiple 'no trespassing' signs up. That was fine. If they got caught then they could just say that they got lost. This was just the woods after all. What's the worst that could happen?
Besides getting lost, of course, but Reigen knew for a fact that they were not lost.
"Reigen, stop. Hang on, I found another one." said Ritsu. He didn't know why Reigen had wanted to come with. Ritsu could do this on his own. He just needed proof of some kind, proof that he wasn't making things up, proof that Claw was real and it was out there and it was kidnapping people and doing all kinds of other bad stuff.
Ritsu was not a liar and he was not crazy.
Reigen was the only one who believed him…so it was nice that he came…even though Ritsu could have handled this on his own. He just had to follow the…it was sort of like a pull….and a buzz….towards…well he didn't know what exactly was out there. A whole base maybe? Ritsu had done his research and he knew that Claw had esper bases all over the country…all over the world…and that they were recruiting espers for something big. He didn't think that they were the ones responsible for that tsunami, though, and he was pretty sure that they weren't trying to steal the moon either…or any of that other crazy stuff people talked about.
Now those people were crazy…but not him. No, he knew what he was talking about.
"Good eye, student. I bet it's like a trail leading to-" said Reigen
"No, these rocks go off into the woods. I just found another one. I know where I'm going, I can feel it. The rocks just mean….well I don't know what they mean but I've seen the symbol everywhere….well this one and ones like it." Said Ritsu as he put the rock in his pocket. This was good evidence for later.
"Maybe the evil organization is trying to throw up off their trail." Said Reigen. He had seen those symbols around town, some kind of local graffiti or something, but he wasn't going to burst Ritsu's bubble. He was just a kid, it was best to let him have some magic left in his life…also he was an esper but…well let him believe that he was saving the world from an evil organization of espers or whatever.
"Yeah, that makes sense. They're trying to lead us away….anyway, come on. It's this way. Their base or whatever. We just need to get proof and then we can go and get some ramen or something." Said Ritsu. That was a good excuse. He knew that he'd be out for a while, the buses only came once every hour out this far, and he knew that he'd be home late…and he hated lying to mom and dad. Even though it was for their own good, him lying to them. They couldn't know about this.
They would either think that he was crazy or freak out, one of the two, and he did not want to deal with that.
"Correct as usual, student. My powers were just telling me-" said Reigen
"You don't have any powers." Said Ritsu
"I have spiritual powers." Said Reigen
"Well those aren't going to help us if we get captured so just…try not to get captured." Said Ritsu as they walked through the woods. He…well he had told Tsubomi that if he didn't come home tonight to tell his parents that he had run away from home and he was never going to call them again. That was better than them knowing that he'd been kidnapped and was being used for experiments or brainwashed or…whatever these people did to kids who tried to take down their organization.
The internet had been kind of…unclear…about what exactly happened.
Some people said that they dissected you while you were still alive. Other people said that they dug deep holes and left traitors down there to die. Some people said that they snatched babies from their cribs if they were espers and brainwashed them so they grew up to be a part of the esper army. Some people said that they sold the people they captured to the yakuza. Other people just said that none of that was true and Claw was a noble organization that brought espers all over the world together and that anyone who told mean lies wouldn't be allowed to join…
There were a lot of crazy people on the internet.
"I'll do my best." Said Reigen
"I'm being serious. They do bad things to normal people. I'm at least an esper but you…well you have spiritual powers but I don't think that these people care about spiritual powers." Said Ritsu
"What do they care about, you think?" asked Reigen. He didn't tell Ritsu that the worst thing that was probably going to happen was they were going to get chased off of private land for trespassing…unless this was that place with all the unexploded bombs from the war and…no. That was the sweet potato patch. This was just the woods. Yeah, they were going to be fine.
"Power. I read that they're collecting espers for something big. They control most of the esper groups in Japan and a bunch of yakuza families too. They're trying to take over the world or something. I hear that they worship this one family because they're really powerful, like Gods or something, and they capture people so they have more people to worship with them or whatever. I think that one might be crazy talk though….but I'm not sure." Said Ritsu
"So we're going up against the yakuza too?" asked Reigen. Ritsu turned around and glared at him.
"If you aren't going to take this seriously then you can just go home." Said Ritsu. He didn't need Reigen treating this like some game. This wasn't a game, this was real life, and the stakes were real. He had made sure to tell mom and dad he loved them before he left that morning. That was important…because he was sure that if something went wrong that he would never see them again…and…and….
And this was just something that he had to do. If he didn't do this then nobody else would.
"I am taking this seriously, don't worry. I know how important this is to you." Said Reigen
"This is important for everyone, not just me." Said Ritsu
"Alright, alright, I get it. Fate of the world and all that. So what are going to when we get there? Pick them off one by one like ninjas or take them all on at once?" asked Reigen
"Neither. We're just getting evidence. I don't think that I can fight them all. I'm…not strong enough." Said Ritsu. He knew that if it came down to it then he couldn't take them…and he knew that if it came down to it Reigen wouldn't be any help. So he was just gathering evidence and then if he didn't get captured he was going to go home and tell mom and dad that he loved them. There. Easy.
"You? Not strong enough? You're the strongest esper that I've ever met." Said Reigen
"I'm the only esper you've ever met….and my powers don't always work all the time. You know that." Said Ritsu
"I know…but that doesn't matter. I'm sure that you'll be fine. I'm sure that we'll get enough evidence to put this evil organization down for good and then we'll go home and get some ramen…with extra pork in it just for you." Said Reigen
"…and an egg too." Said Ritsu
"Hmm….well I think that I can swing that for the kid who's going to save the world." Said Reigen
"I'm not going to save the world…just espers….but…ok." said Ritsu. Why did Reigen have to put it that way? When he said that the whole thing just seemed so….big. But that shouldn't have bothered him. He was doing the right thing. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to do. He was going to save…well he was going to take down this organization and then after that he was going to go home and see his family and then after that…well Sho would probably pop up at some point and ask him what in the hell he thought that he'd been doing…and he was looking forward to it.
He really was.
Being able to see Sho without the shadow of the organization coming between them. Where they could just…hang out…and stuff. He wondered what Sho…liked. Well Sho had told him that he liked to draw and…and Ritsu wanted to see some of his drawings. He had never really liked art, art class was pretty boring and the art museum…well he would have had more fun waiting at school for his class to come back than if he had gone with them on their fieldtrip. Art…well he could like art…and whatever else Sho liked…like videogames and stuff….
And…yeah. He and Sho could be friends…or maybe more than friends….
Ritsu walks a little faster. He can feel Reigen looking at him…and he does NOT want to talk about this. Nobody knew…well the guys he'd kissed knew that he liked guys…but nobody else knew and nobody else could know. That was just…no. He knew Reigen and he knew that Reigen liked him and stuff…but he didn't know what he would do if Reigen ever stopped liking him…and even if he didn't Ritsu…he just did not want anyone to know about this. About how he just…was like this. It was private and…and stuff….and anyway even if Sho did like him back it wasn't like he could just ask Sho to be his boyfriend or something….and Sho probably didn't like him back either…or maybe he did….it was hard to read him sometimes, actually…
Ritsu hoped that, when this was all over, he got to know Sho well enough that he could read him better.
"Ritsu, slow down. If we get separated then what am I supposed to tell your parents?" asked Reigen. He was half kidding. Ritsu wasn't that far ahead of him but…well if he did lose Ritsu in these woods then the Kageyamas would kill him. They would literally kill him. They wouldn't wait for the law to do it's job. They would just kill him, chop him up into little pieces, and then spread him in their garden like fertilizer.
"It's not my fault that you can't keep up." Said Ritsu
"Well it's not my fault that nobody told me that we'd be hiking in the woods today. If I'd had a little warning then maybe I could have worn some actual hiking shoes." Said Reigen
"Even if you had the right shoes on you still wouldn't have been able to keep up. You smoke way too much. I've seen you get out of breath getting up from your chair." Said Ritsu
"That was one time and-" said Reigen as Ritsu came to a sudden stop. He put his finger to his lips and then pointed forward through the bushes.
"Quiet. Human voices." Said Ritsu. He heard…he could hear people talking. That was….not good. Or maybe really good. He took his phone out and started recording…he was too far away to hear. He just knew that people were talking. He took a step forward…and then was pulled back by his hood.
"Stay here." Whispered Reigen. This was that worst case scenario he had been thinking of. Getting caught trespassing on private land. He had no idea what this land was used for, just that the Suzuki holding corporation owned it. They owned a lot of land in Japan, actually, and while Reigen had no clue what that company did with all that land he knew that they had deep enough pockets to punish them to the full extent of the law. He didn't have three days to spend in jail or a hundred thousand yen to pay the fine with…and it would be even worse than that since technically he was contributing to the delinquency of a minor…and also he could catch child endangerment charges too…and then there were all those labor laws he broke…
Hey. He had learned something in law school after all.
"No." said Ritsu as he pulled his hood free from Reigen's hands. He had to get closer. He felt Reigen reach out again and he slipped away. He felt his powers trying to make another invisible wall and he stopped them as best as he could. He didn't want these people to notice him. He just…had to hear what they were saying…maybe it would be enough to convince everyone that he had been right about these people….
He got closer.
Reigen was walking behind him, and not stealthily at all, but at least he wasn't trying to stop him. Well his was whispering at him to knock it off but…yeah. He wasn't going to be doing that. He had to figure out what all of this was about. Who those people were and why they were there….and where the base was…and all of that. He just had to get closer…
Not much closer.
He pulled Reigen behind a tree and ducked. There, two people in red and black uniforms. A couple of guys…one of them had a blue ribbon tied around his neck. Ritsu pressed his finger to his lips and looked Reigen in the eye. Reigen, for once in his life, kept his mouth shut. He nodded and then pulled out his own phone too. This was…he had never seen these people up close before…
They looked kind of stupid, actually.
"…can't believe they sent us out here to look for intruders. WE aren't security…"
"Well that's what you get for wearing that stupid thing. You know that we're not supposed to break uniform codes. We'll never awaken at this rate!"
"I don't see what our uniforms have to do with Awakening. Besides, Mob says that what's on the outside doesn't matter nearly as much as what's on the inside. If we believe in ourselves, and our friends, then we'll become the Awakened…or whatever else our dreams are. She didn't say 'awakening' specifically. We just have to believe in the powers of love and friendship!"
"…you know that she's like, eight, right?"
"No, she's twelve. It's almost her birthday. Remember, we get the day off?"
"OK, yeah, I like her now. Anyway what do you say to fucking off to the break room. If one of the Scars asked the intruders ran away…or whatever."
"Mob doesn't like lies. True friendship can only be built on a foundation of trust and without truth there can be no trust. Friendship and love, the only true powers in this world, will be the keys to our salvation and-"
"You need to stop reading her newsletters, man, they're poisoning your mind."
Ritsu had recorded the whole thing. That was…weird. Weird and kind of…really weird. He had been expecting them to talk about their evil plans or whatever not…that. Whatever that had been. He waited until they were out of sight, until he couldn't see them or their auras anymore, before he put his phone back in his pocket. He tried to take a step out of his hiding place but Reigen grabbed the back of his hood again.
When all of this was over Reigen owed him a new hoodie.
"Reigen! Let go! We're close to the truth and-" said Ritsu
"We're close enough. Come on, we're going. I don't know if this is some kind of new religion or something but I do know that if we get caught then we're in trouble…mostly me because I'm the adult in this situation-" said Reigen
"Then we won't get caught!" said Ritsu as he slipped out of his hoodie. This was not the time for Reigen to be all 'sometimes you have to run away' or whatever! They were close, Ritsu was close, and if Reigen didn't want to be a part of this then he could stay there and be scared. Ritsu wasn't scared at all. Ritsu was…well it felt like the time he tried coffee…he was all full of energy and…and…
And he had never felt like this before.
"Ritsu! Wait!" said Reigen as he took off after Ritsu. He made sure to hold onto his hoodie. It was still cold out. That was…ridiculous. Thinking about Ritsu catching a chill when he was about to catch trespassing charges. He hadn't expected anything to be out here. Maybe some kind of…building…or something. He had no idea what anyone would want to set up shop in the woods for. This was so out of the way and all…
Now he knew.
Some kind of new religion. A fancy way of saying a cult. This was some kind of cult and…well not all cults were murder suicide cults…but enough of them were. Enough of them were and even if Ritsu wasn't about to walk into one of them…this was still not the place that they should have been. How could he have been so irresponsible!? Ritsu was just a kid, he didn't always understand that there was a limit to playing, and Reigen was a grown man. He had no excuse.
Time to save Ritsu from himself.
He chased Ritsu through the woods as best as he could. He hadn't been lying, before, about the shoes thing. He wished that Ritsu had gotten the idea to come here earlier…or just told Reigen earlier that they would be trapesing through the woods this afternoon. Running through these woods. Trying to run through these woods. Ritsu had the advantage being younger and more agile….and having gym shoes on…and there was the whole 'he hadn't been smoking a pack a day for the past ten years' thing to take into account too. Reigen did his best to chase Ritsu, to catch him, and to hopefully talk some sense into him.
His best wasn't good enough.
Dress shoes were not the right footwear for chasing your apprentice through the woods. He knew this now. Well he had always known this but now he had confirmation. He stepped wrong, slid on a pile of leaves, and the only thing that saved him from tumbling head first onto the ground was a tree…one with a lot of splinters.
Great.
He was never having kids. He had been on the fence about it before, he liked kids, but now…Ritsu wasn't even his kid and here he was with a rolled ankle and a hand with what must have been a world's record setting number of splinters in it. God only knew what his kid would be like. When he'd been a kid he'd been like Ritsu…but worse. He hadn't gone running through the woods, though, no. He had been sneaking out to go to graveyards trying to do séances like that Mogami guy he used to watch when he had been a kid. Mom had told him, back then, that he was driving her to an early grave. Back then he had thought that she'd been overly dramatic….
He knew better now.
Ritsu had, thankfully, stopped. He had his phone out. The shutter could be heard. He was taking pictures of…something. Reigen groaned. Well now that was illegal surveillance and peeping…this was private land after all….and Reigen would be the one held responsible since he was supposed to be the adult in this situation…
Times like these made Reigen wish he was back selling water coolers.
"Ritsu, you can't just…what? Wh-what in the hell are you…looking….at….?" asked Reigen as he came up beside Ritsu. That was…it was…the only thing that Reigen could compare it to was a supervillain's base. These new religion were so weird…and this must have been a new religion. There were people in uniforms hanging out…uniforms with that symbol on them….the two eyes and the word and…
And maybe this wasn't a new religion after all.
"See? I told you that they were out here. I'm not crazy and I wasn't playing a game. There. See? That's Claw. That's the base." Said Ritsu as he took pictures of the base. This was…he wanted to run away…and he wanted to run into that building. The building where…it all happened. Where all the torture and kidnappings and experiments happened. He made sure to keep his aura close. He didn't want to be discovered…or maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to go in there and take it down from the inside…
Even though he knew that he didn't stand a chance.
"What the hell is that?" asked Reigen. Who in the hell had built this?! And…and why!? He had taken enough real estate law to know that a structure like that within city limits…and the woods were within city limits even if this was private land. This land had been won in a case with Fermented Foods City in…NOW he remembers…he had no idea what he was even thinking. This was just…he regularly fought evil spirits with a ten year old boy and…and this was the strangest thing…that he had ever seen…and he just…
Sometimes you had to run away. This was one of those times.
"Let go! I'm gathering evidence!" whispered Ritsu as Reigen grabbed him by the back of his shirt. He wasn't above slinking out of his shirt of he had to…even if it was cold out here. He was going to get all the evidence he needed and then everyone would know that he had been telling the truth and…and if people knew the truth then they could do something about this!
"No. Ritsu, we're leaving right now." Said Reigen in his best 'I am the adult here' voice.
"You can leave but I'm staying. I have to see…I need more evidence. I need enough evidence to show everyone that I was right and-" said Ritsu. Now people would stop thinking that he was weird. Now everyone would see that he was right and that…that they were in danger and….and he knew that he was in a lot of danger right now but he could handle himself! He could fight his way out and…and even if he couldn't then…well Sho lived here and they were kind of friends…
He'd be fine.
"Ritsu, no! I am the adult here and I say that we're running away before-" said Reigen. He grabbed Ritsu by the arm so he couldn't run away. This was not the area to be poking around in. Reigen knew how crazy these new religion people could be. They weren't all murder cults but he didn't want to wait and see if this was a peace and love cult or a sacrifice people to our God cult. He had a responsibility to Ritsu and he had to get him out of here before…
"I found the intruders! I win! Suck it level threes! Level fours for life!"
….that happened.