This was an idiot's only event, and Reigen was an idiot for being here.

The whole idea had been idiotic from start to finish, the sort of thing that a couple of kids would have come up with. A couple of kids had come up with it. An exorcism. The sort of thing he did all the time, supposedly, and the kind of thing that Teru and Ritsu could do for real. The sort of thing that he didn't want them doing for real.

Even he knew how dangerous this situation was. Idiotically dangerous.

"You two sure you don't want to do something else? Anything else?" asked Reigen. He got eyerolls in response. Of course he did. Eyerolling was pretty much instinct at that age. Teru wasn't nearly as good at it as Ritsu was, of course. Ritsu had mastered eyerolling a long time ago. This whole thing had been his idea. He thought that he could do this.

There was such a thing as being overly confident, as Reigen knew all too well.

"If you want to wait outside you can, this is just for psychics anyway." Said Ritsu, half paying attention to Reigen. There were auras here, a lot of auras. More auras than he would have thought…more espers in the world than he would have thought…

But none of them from Claw. That had been on the invitation.

"If we ever even get a chance to actually exorcise anything, that is." Muttered Teru as he looked around the room, past all the other auras, looking for one in particular. He knew what the invitation had said, he could read just fine. No Claw members would be attending. Ritsu had thought that it had been a trap, that the whole thing would be Claw members, but somehow it was Teru who had known better for once.

Miracles did happen.

None of these people were Claw. Claw members usually either had that same red aura over and over again or were a hell of a lot stronger than this. He couldn't feel anyone stronger than him here, not that there were a lot of people who fit that criteria of course. He was Teru. He was one of the strongest espers there was.

He had just met someone stronger, that was all.

"We will, just be alert." Said Ritsu, his aura fanning out again. There was something…something there. Something cold and black and…and best avoided. For now. It wasn't an esper. That was all he needed. To see who was here, to see who they could get to help them, to meet someone new…or to maybe see someone again…

Of course he wouldn't be coming. The invitation had been perfectly clear.

"Seriously. I will take you guys literally anywhere else. We're close to Tokyo, we could-" said Reigen

"If you want to go then you can go. I won't tell my parents that you left us alone." Said Ritsu

"That's not the point." Said Reigen. It really wasn't. He was supposed to be taking the kids to one of those away games Teru's team was always playing, this time a big one outside of Tokyo. Ritsu was here as moral support, supposedly. It was nice of the Kageyama's to think so highly of him, to trust him with their son, not that this was any different than what their relationship had been for the past he didn't even know how long…

Three years. They'd been trusting him with their son for the past three years,

"Then what is?" asked Ritsu, giving Reigen more of his attention than he would have liked too. He was looking for…he needed to find…there were a lot of things he was looking for and Reigen wasn't one of them. He'd seen Reigen nearly every day for the past three years. He was a fraud, Ritsu wasn't dumb enough to ignore an actual confession to the fact, and that meant that he was…not useless but…but not what Ritsu needed right now. Who he needed right now.

He needed…a lot of things right now.

"Reigen's just scared." Said Teru takinf Ritsu's hand, mainly for Reigen's benefit. To the outside observer it didn't look like anything other than holding his 'boyfriend's' hand. To Ritsu, however, the pressure of Teru's hand on his and the direct eye contact should have sent a very clear message.

"I know." said Ritsu

"Not that he has anything to be scared of, of course we'll protect him, but this is kind of a lot for someone like him." Said Teru

"Which is why he can go. I don't need him to find…I don't need him to do this exorcism." Said Ritsu, pulling his hand away. It didn't help. Teru was giving him that look again, a look that his own real and actual boyfriend never gave him. A look closer to the one Reigen gave him when he talked about taking Claw down…

Ritsu didn't need anyone giving him that look.

"Don't tell me you're looking for-" said Teru

"What? And you're not looking for-" said Ritsu

"I'm not!" said Teru, his voice cracking as badly as his aura did at the end. He could feel eyes and auras on him. He shrank back and drew his shoulders upwards.

"Hey, hey, come on. Nobody's looking for anything. You're just trying to do some good here and…and that's good…but maybe this kind of thing is best left to the professionals." Said Reigen, getting another eye roll in response.

"Right. Professionals." Said Ritsu, motioning to the esper licking a crystal ball and saying that he was in the process of catching the spirit. It wasn't anywhere near them. Most of the people here were like Reigen. Claw didn't have to be specifically unvented, they of course wouldn't have wanted anything to do with this. The people here seemed to think that a cool costume made someone more powerful or something. Everyone here was ridiculous, more ridiculous than Claw it's self was. Of course they wouldn't have come…of course Sho wouldn't have come. He was probably busy getting ready to take over the world, to stop his dad from taking over the world, or just busy hanging out with his sister or drawing or playing with his little sister or the million and one things that he did with his time that didn't involve Ritsu….that should have…that he wished should have….

He had a job to do here.

He wasn't going to cry. He didn't even feel like crying. It had been a passing thought. He was here on business and business what was he was going to do. He was going to see who here was going to be useful and probably also do the exorcism and then he was going to keep working at stopping Claw. He wasn't going to end up like Teru, hung up on something that could never be.

Not that he and Sho could never be…it was just…it was hard, now, but it would get easier once all of this was done with.

"Aren't we supposed to be professionals?" asked Teru

"Don't be-" said Reigen before a hush fell over the crowd. He could feel a shift in the energy around him as a door opened. The room was some kind of reception hall, maybe, or whatever it was called when rich people needed a place to make big statements or speeches or whatever. If they even did that outside of the movies, that is. Reigen hadn't spent a lot of time around rich people, the truly opulently wealthy, the sort of people who could afford a house like this.

The money for this job…it wouldn't have been that bad.

It wasn't like he didn't need the money, he always needed more money. Nobody in the history of the world, since money had been invented, had ever looked around and decided that they had enough money. It would have been nice to have been able to find a bigger place, one where he and Teru wouldn't have been living on top of one another, and to maybe be able to work a little less so he had time to actually watch his pseudo kids and keep them from getting involved in situations like these…this job would have been worth it…

But not if it put the kids in danger.

"Quiet, they're starting." Said Ritsu as an old man, older than his Dad anyway, walked across the stage. He wasn't as old as his grandma even if he walked like her. All slow and with a cane. He looked, as Ritsu watched him more closely, like he had been in some kind of a fight and lost. Badly. Two black eyes, a fat lip, some kind of cast thing around his arm…even Ritsu had never beaten anyone up that badly before. There was a shift in the bad energy around them. Whatever was behind that curtain was awake…and mad.

Really mad.

"Yeah, I can tell." Said Teru, taking a step back. Well that was…unpleasant, to say the least. It felt like he needed a shower, a long one. Something had passed over him, something that had felt like an aura but was clearly not. At least not like any aura he'd ever felt before, and yes, he was counting ghosts. Ghosts didn't feel like that, like people, and people didn't feel like that…like ghosts…not that it felt like a ghost or a person. It felt like something in between…something wrong.

Something very wrong.

"Well I didn't know if you could tell since you weren't-" said Ritsu

"Hey, hey, save it for the train ride home." Said Reigen trying his best to channel both of his parents at once. The way those two carried on he couldn't tell if they were like brothers or an old married couple. It varied from day to day. On the train they had been like an old married couple, all cuddled up together, but here…well there wouldn't be a here for very long. His eyes scanned the room. It was packed with espers. They might not have even gotten a turn at whatever this thing was. He put his hands on the kids' shoulders and slowly pulled them back towards the wall. If a line formed he didn't want to be at the front of it. If they were going to draw straws he wanted to minimize their chances of getting the short one. If they were going to do something truly dumb like playing 'rock, paper, scissors' then…well he might not have been able to stop himself. He had always been the master of 'rock, paper, scissors' after all. Ever since he had been a kid.

Ever since he had been Ritsu and Teru's ages, their actual ages, not the adults that they pretended to be.

"You worry too much, you're worse than my mom and dad put together." Muttered Ritsu as he let himself be pulled back. The guy had introduced himself, something Asagiri. Ritsu had heard that name before. It was probably common or something. He knew that it wasn't a Claw name. No, the top players in Claw wouldn't have been caught dead here. That thing was dangerous, he could tell from all the way back here, and Claw didn't like to take risks like that. No. From what he had heard their leader was cold and calculating, the kind of person who thought twenty moves in advance and one to the side. The kind of person who never in a million years would have tried to destroy, or control, whatever that thing was…

It was powerful, yes, but Ritsu didn't want it anywhere near him.

"Be quiet." Said Teru. Asagiri…he knew that name…and the guy looked familiar. Judging by this house and the amount of money that was on the line for whoever could destroy that spirit thing this guy might have been one of his parent's associates…but he knew that he'd heard that name somewhere else…but where…

He reached for his phone. He knew this.

"….as you know you're the greatest team of independent psychics that Japan has to offer. I trust that you'll be able to do what needs to be…I trust that you'll be able to save my daughter." Said Masashi Asagiri as he took in the crowd in front of him. They may not have all been paying attention to him but he sure as hell was paying attention to them. This…this was all that was left over. Cutting ties with Claw had been…it had been the right thing to do. Those people had led him and Minori down a bad path, a path which had taken him here, and he knew that if he brought those people back into their lives it would only lead them to ruin. Hiding from them, breaking ties, it hadn't been easy. Doing it all with his daughter rapidly declining into…into whatever she was becoming, had been damn near impossible.

A twinge at his side. He ignored it.

He'd been thrown across the room again that morning. He had said something or done something or maybe just breathed wrong in her direction. He had joked to himself, privately, that caring for a teenage girl was like caring for someone possessed. There were days when she was her sweet, old self and there were days when it felt like a demon from the deepest depths of hell had taken over his daughter's body.

How wrong he had been.

"I trust that you can save-" said Masashi Asagiri as the curtains went up. The people in the crowd, the eclectic group of oddly dressed people, adults, and the occasional teenager…couldn't they put their phones down for one moment? He had asked, at least he thought that he had asked, for one of those signal jammer things. Claw had their ways of tracking you. Suzuki's son, the oldest and newest one, was supposedly some kind of prodigy hacker with psychic powers that let him dive into the internet itself. No signal was supposed to be able to get in or out…so then how…

He would focus on that later, he would complain about disrespectful teenagers later. Right now his daughter needed him.

"Asagiri Minori!" called out Teru as the curtains went up. He knew he had known that name and…and there she was. He'd met her before once or twice and they mutually followed each other on just about everything. Just because she had style, of course, and she could be kind of hot if you forgot what a complete and total bitch she was. It was kind of easy to forget that now. She looked more like a patient in an insane asylum. She was in these white pajamas that did nothing for her, not that white did anything for anyone really, and strapped down to a bed but not in the fun 'things he knew Reigen would kill him for watching' sort of way. Her hair was dull and matted. Her eyes looked crazy. Her aura looked…

He knew for a fact that she was a normal person. He knew for a fact that she wasn't supposed to have any kind of aura at all, especially not a black and red one.

"Who?" asked Ritsu. If that aura was anything to go by then she was either some new kind of esper he had never heard about before, it wasn't like they didn't get locked up all the time since normal people usually just thought that they were crazy, or these was a really evil and angry spirit stuck to her….either way it was weird that Teru knew her and not him. He was the one who took this thing seriously. He was the one who had everything on the line.

Yeah, Teru was the idiot here, not him.

Teru was the one who was more focused on girls than saving the world. Teru was the one focused on girls, one girl, who he couldn't even have. He just thought that he loved Sho's sister because he did it with her, Reigen had said that was how it worked when you were young. You did it with someone and then you thought that you were in love with them even if it had all just been about doing it. That was how Ritsu knew that he was really in love with Sho, they hadn't done it but being away from him still hurt worse than anything that he had ever felt before in his entire life. Things would be better thought once this was all over, once he took Claw down, once he actually found someone to help him take Claw down. Someone who wasn't an idiot. Someone who wasn't Teru. Someone who…who…

Ritsu wasn't an idiot and he wasn't scared. He knew what he was doing.

"It doesn't matter who, we need to go. Now. I recognize a bad situation when I see it and this situation, whatever the hell this is, is bad." said Reigen. He didn't need psychic powers to be able to tell that this wasn't going to end well. He didn't need to be able to see ghosts and auras to know that there was something wrong with that girl. He didn't need to be a genius to know that you went 'away' from the person all tied up like Hannibal Lecter, not towards. Hell, Teru at least should have known that! They'd watched that lamb movie so many times that he should have known better than to follow Ritsu's lead on this one for once!

"Reigen." Said Ritsu

"Don't you 'Reigen' me. Ritsu, this situation is going from bad to worse-" said Reigen. Ritsu and Teru shook their heads 'no'….why?!

"Nothing even happened yet and if it did it's not like me and Teru can't handle ourselves." Said Ritsu. Teru nodded in agreement. For once they could agree on something. Reigen would have probably been proud if he hadn't been in the middle of freaking out over nothing. He and Teru were the only psychics, the only real espers, here. They'd be fine.

They had to be.

"You and Teru are kids and I'm the adult. When I say that we go then that-that means that we're getting the hell out of here!" said Reigen. All he got was a long look and a raised eyebrow in response.

"Like I said, you can go if you want, but we're staying and there's really nothing you can do to make us leave." Said Ritsu and Reigen tried to pull him and Teru away. He used his powers to pull Regien's hand from his shoulder. He could have done worse if he'd wanted to, not that he wanted to. He did care about Reigen even if he could be really annoying sometimes. Like now. He didn't want to have to hurt him, even a little, but these fate of the world was on the line here.

Sho was on the line here.

"Ritsu….I'm not going anywhere." Said Reigen. He omitted the 'idiot that he was' part. That was what Reigen was in this moment, an idiot. He was actually going to let the kids stay here…there was nothing that he could do in this situation to get them the hell out of here. It had taken Reigen years to learn when to run away…and it didn't look like Ritsu or Teru wanted any lessons in that right now. So he'd stay there with them. At least this was he could kind of keep them safe, reign in their very worst impulses, maybe even beg them enough to leave…not that he knew why they even wanted to stay.

Truly only an idiot would want to stay here and face whatever it was that they were about to face.