Teenage girls were like mice, when you had one more would follow.
Cute mice, though. Cute, giggly, whispering mice. Like those fancy mice they had at the pet store, not those regular mice that Reigen's landlord still hadn't called an exterminator about. Or maybe not mice at all, maybe some other creature that multiplied and hung out in your office and giggled nonstop.
God, Reigen was getting old.
But good for Mob, making friends like that.
Especially after what happened.
"Now he's going to put a bomb there, jump! Quick!" said Rei, the newest addition to Spirits and Such. Well not addition but the newest of Mob's little friends to hang out all day. She wasn't being paid in money, experience, or good memories but she had been hanging out almost every afternoon since…all of that stuff happened.
Yeah. That had been a lot of stuff.
But Reigen was fine. She got the esper kids home safe, found Mob eventually, and the insurance paid to have the office rebuilt. The day was saved, everyone was alive, and she had replaced the suit she ruined. That was weeks ago and this was now and everything was fine.
"Isn't this cheating?" asked Mob. Mob was fine. After all of that she was totally fine. Normal. She was normal. Even after that madman beat her up….and tossed her through the sky…and the thing with the sky being set on fire…and then Mob picked up all of those skyscrapers with her powers…
Mob was back to normal.
"No, it's creative winning." Said Tome. Well she thought that the entire thing had been exciting. She even said that she wished that she had been there. The kid had no idea what she was talking about. It was a good thing that she had spent the entire ordeal playing videogames with her friends. Enough kids had been involved in that mess to begin with. Fuck that Matsuura guy for letting those esper kids, kids that didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell, go up against those wannabe shonen villains.
"I don't mind helping out. Back at the lab I used to help Go win all the time. Well sometimes Takeshi, when Go and I were fighting." Said Rei. She was a nice kid, and a smart one. She had brains enough to cut her ties, mostly, with that Awakening Lab place. It was downright irresponsible of that guy to have let those kids get involved. Rei had been the only one who was the least bit helpful.
They formed a human chain. Everyone held onto the person in front and in back of them. Rei was in front, right in front of Reigen, telling everyone where to go. Left. Right. Forward. Back. Walk. Run. Hide. Barriers.
"Which one is your boyfriend, though?" asked Mob, ever the hopeless romantic. That was good. It was good that she was worrying about things that a fourteen year old girl ought to be worried about. Boys and dating, not saving the world and almost dying. Not how fragile she was. Not what it looked like when two…
That was how he put it, the lavender haired mini boss. "So this is what it looks like when two Gods fight."
Reigen didn't much care for him…her? Them. No eyebrows lavender haired guy. Reigen didn't care for that person much even though he had saved his life…after she got thrown out the window…after she almost got incinerated….after she offered herself to that maniac to save Mob….after she tried to shoot said maniac with a toy gun….
"Right now neither of them. Go is being so immature and when Go acts immature Takeshi acts immature right along with him. I am so tired of immature guys. I just want someone who takes things seriously. Like, they both still want to go to the lab even though we got kidnapped once and even almost…" said Rei. She was a smart kid, that one. A good friend for Mob. Mob who told everyone point blank that they could not help her and that she had to do it alone.
And Reigen had been a moron for letting her go.
"I can't believe you both left me out of the epic boss fight!" said Tome. Reigen shook her head. She was behind her desk trying to look busy. In actuality she was flipping through her texts. Nothing. Well guys she knew, one from her mother she planned on ignoring, a coupon from the department store she liked…oh. Him.
The man who saved her life.
The man who made sure that she made it through the 'epic boss fight.'
"Tome, Master Reigen is right. It's better that you weren't there. You don't have any powers and even if you did you could have gotten really hurt or even died." Said Mob. How was Mob taking this? Every time Reigen asked Mob just said that she was fine. The very next day, after she had regained her strength, she even asked if they had work. They didn't, of course, but Mob kept on asking and asking and asking so eventually Reigen just invented something for them to do. They just sort of walked around the city…the parts that were safe to travel through…looking for spirits. They didn't find spirits but they found plenty of displaced espers. Including him.
The man who saved her life.
She had offered him a job and…he was taking it. He had nowhere else to go. Reigen had offered it to him in the daze after the explosion and reoffered it to him when they ran into him out and about at a hundred yen shop of all place. Or maybe Mob had led them there. She had been following Mob, mostly, that day. It had been such a shock seeing him after…everything. After everything went all 'end of Akira' and she wasn't sure if she was alive or dead. When he pulled her out of the rubble and she found herself totally fine. Even the scars on the backs of her heels from wearing improperly fitted shoes were gone. Aside from destroyed clothes everyone was fine.
"Yeah…it was really scary. But we're fine now! Really, there's a zero percent chance that it'll ever happen again." Said Rei. The kid could see the future. Reigen believed her. Really they were all fine. No broken bones, concussions, contusions, or anything like that. She was even in better shape than when she went into the whole thing. Well, maybe. Mob's sort of boyfriend definitely was. Poor kid…that blind guy really did a number on him…then practically pissed himself when she and Mob showed up.
All of those guys had practically pissed themselves when Mob showed up. Even Suzuki looked scared. When Mob stopped playing around. When Mob told him to shut the fuck up, exact words. Mob may have been little, and Reigen had been telling her for years that she was human the same as everyone else, but she was also…she was also possibly the most powerful esper in the world. She was strong enough to stop that madman and save the world and save all of them and now she was fine and everything was fine.
"But if it ever does….you guys had better call me!" said Tome. Reigen rolled her eyes. Tome, despite her claims to the contrary, was still such a kid. Reigen wouldn't have been much different at that age…so she couldn't fault Tome. Not that she had reason to. Everyone was fine and everything was fine and they were having a normal day in the office. She was doing something akin to work and the girls were hanging out and playing videogame and they were fine and everyone was fine and everything was fine.
"I'll call you to tell you to run away. Sometimes you have to run away, right Master?" asked Mob. Reigen looked up after a moment when she realized that she had been addressed. She clicked her phone off, she had been in the middle of texting that guy, Serizawa. He was definitely getting the job.
Not that she was replacing Mob.
No, Mob just deserved to enjoy her youth and to be…safe. Mob needed to be safe.
"What? Oh yeah. Sometimes you have to run away." Said Reigen. She omitted the fact that Mob didn't listen, that day. That nobody had listened and they all went headlong into danger and that it was a fucking MIRACLE that everyone lived through that.
But she said nothing, because it was over.
It was over and everything was fine. The kids were safe, Mob was alive, Reigen was alive, and everything was fine.
The girls were back to their talking and whispering and giggling, the subject of their conversation had, mercifully, gone back to boys and their various idiosyncrasies. Back to things that girls their age should have been worried about. Not about epic boss fights and almost dying. Not about what could have so easily happened.
They were fine. So Reigen had to be, too.