A/N: I don't really like how this turned out, but oh well. (I wrote this very quickly too.)
.
Mob liked Ritsu a lot. Fortunately, Ritsu liked him too.
Mob remembered (or liked to think he remembered) he had a little brother like Ritsu when he lived with his actual parents. He remembered one day there wasn't someone else in the household, then there was: a someone smaller than even he was. Mob hurt somewhat thinking about how he had a baby brother out there in the world, one he never really got the chance to meet or see grow up.
He had Ritsu, though.
And Ritsu was as close to a little brother as one could get. He admired Mob in the way little brothers do, and he was always eager to be with him, and he even called Mob his big brother. All of it together made Mob ready to fill the niche of being Ritsu's older sibling.
However, Mob naïvely did not realize that being a big brother came with other responsibilities. Being a big brother wasn't just bending spoons to make Ritsu smile.
Fate saw he learned the awful truth, on a bright day amongst the new spring and budding leaves.
"Make it look like a star, Niisan!"
Ritsu gasped in excitement as the spoon twisted into the shape of a star. Would he ever tire of the same trick? I didn't seem so.
"Can you do anything more complicated yet?"
Mob furrowed his brow. The spoon arched into something different, and Ritsu had to take a minute to analyze it.
"It's a… snake?"
"Oh, it's supposed to be a swan…"
That was embarrassing. Nevertheless, Ritsu laughed. Mob was a psychic, not an artist!
"Keep trying, Niisan! I'm sure you'll get it eventually."
At least Ritsu thought so. The concept of spoons and snakes reminded him of something his teacher said, and Ritsu told Mob about an ancient mound in America that looked like a spoon, but was actually a snake. It was hard for him to convey how big it was, and he had to stand up from the steps of the shrine to spread out his arms fully.
"It's hundreds of meters long!" He tried to demonstrate with the insufficient length of his arms. "You can only tell it's a snake from above."
A sound-something like a ball hitting a bat, something like a gunshot-echoed across the graveyard. Both Mob and Ritsu winced at the sickening noise, and Mob felt his skin gooseflesh as sudden fear made his blood crawl. Ritsu held his most effected ear, turning out slowly to see the origin of the noise.
"… High schoolers?"
Three of them stood around one of the gravestones. They must have come in and snuck around the shrine while Mob and Ritsu were hidden on the other side. They all had on beaten up jackets, and one of them was rattling in his as he rolled his shoulders. The closest one had his back to them, and in his hand was a baseball bat.
Intuition told Mob at once that was very, very bad.
He lifted the bat for a swing. He followed through with all his might, and the aluminum bat collided with the gravestone, the resulting crack thunderous like the first.
Only this time, the top rock of the gravestone wobbled.
Mob had to get Ritsu to safety. He had to get them home to Reigen, and he had to tell him people were vandalizing the graveyard, because he was an adult, and he could stop them, he could call the police, he could—
"Hey!"
Mob's hand froze halfway to Ritsu. The younger's eyes widened in terror.
The outermost one had spotted them.
Soon, the others were turned around and looking at the sorry pair of children. The one with the bat grimaced at the sight, tossing the bat onto his shoulder.
"It's only elementary kids."
The high schoolers walked towards him, and God, did Mob ever want to run. He finally managed to take Ritsu's arm and yank him away from the shrine, only to have his shirt collar grabbed violently.
"Whoa, whoa!"
Mob's weak grasp could not hold onto Ritsu. Ritsu was shaken from him, and Mob was pulled away and twisted around to face the high schooler.
"You didn't think you were just going to leave, did you?"
Mob heard Ritsu's hitched breath as the others overshadowed him. He stumbled back and knocked into Mob, forcing him even closer to the threat. Mob, however, was more concerned with Ritsu's wellbeing, craning his head to try and look behind.
"Ritsu!"
"Well?"
Another of the high schoolers pulled Ritsu away. Mob was jerked up by his shirt like he weighted nothing, and the high schooler scowled at him. Ritsu did not go easily, and he cried out as he was separated.
"Niisan!"
So it was Mob's responsibility.
Mob was the older brother. He all at once realized the obligation fell to him: the obligation to keep Ritsu unharmed, the obligation to work them out of this mess. Ritsu was scared, and didn't know what to do, and as a result he had called out to his big brother to help him.
Mob was the only one who could.
The weight of the burden squeezed Mob's insides. The high schooler tightened his grip like he knew of Mob's new turmoil.
"Are you going to give us your money or not?"
Cold settled in Mob's heart. He dropped his eyes to the ground, his brain scrambled as he thought of the best thing to say.
"We… I'm sorry, we don't have any money."
The high schooler growled in his throat. He lifted Mob higher, practically choking him with his own collar.
He was God, and he could be as bloody as all gods are.
"No money? You expect us to believe that?"
He tossed Mob to the ground. As he fell, Mob saw beyond the arm that had thrown him, right to Ritsu with tears in his eyes and his arm reaching forward.
"Niisan!"
His head hit the stair with a deafening crack.
.
Ritsu thought Mob was dead.
He screamed when Mob wouldn't get up. He just lied like a broken toy, his head against the shrine stairs and his eyes shut. Ritsu fought with all his strength to go to him despite the tears blinding his eyes.
"Niisan! Niisan!"
"Stop flopping about!" The high schooler holding him back ordered. "Hey, help me already!"
The other took Ritsu's left arm. Struggling was futile, but at that point Ritsu did not care. He only cared about his motionless big brother, and the high schooler standing over him like it was nothing.
But in a flash of light that was all over.
It happened in something slow and partial that was not quite reality. One moment there was a light, and another the high schooler with the bat was skidding across the lawn like a rock on water. The wind picked up, and everything was in motion, as if a storm had fallen to earth and brought all the violence and beauty that came with it.
And there stood Mob.
He was both light and shadow; both movement and stillness. Wind whipped at his hair, and he looked like some terrific beast, with a formless, rippling body and eyes like white lanterns. Hot colors of blue and purple and pink seethed from his very being, and the high schoolers holding Ritsu audibly lost their breath.
They saw an Angel of Death.
.
The silence shattered with the glass.
Reigen shrieked when the tree barreled into his office window without warning. It was a young one without full-grown leaves yet, luckily. Its topmost branches simply broke the window, sending bits of sharp glass raining down on Mob's special nook and the office floor.
Reigen's shallow breathing returned to normal as his heartbeat slowed. With a frustrated shut of his laptop, Reigen rose from his desk and went to the window to assess the damage.
And he saw.
Beyond the nearly bare twigs of the tree, a clear line of shredded earth traced back to the mature trees and into the graveyard. And further even than that, at the very end of the trail, stood something like an abysmal bird of prey, with multicolored wings that reached up into the sky and claws that tore at the air.
It was Mob.
Reigen almost did not recognize him. But that—that power; that power in such a little body—could not fathomably be anything but a psychic gone haywire.
It could only be Mob.
Broken glass scattered into the hallway as Reigen rushed immediately to the front gate. He met a group of thuggish high schoolers on the way, all screaming and all running out of the graveyard regardless of their clearly injured limbs. Reigen ignored them almost completely. They did not matter.
Reigen arrived too late to do anything. He witnessed the last of it: the divine wings crashing down, and the wind ceasing, and Mob crumpling down under it all. His energy fizzled out with a light and sound like a firework, and he fell face-first to the ground, motionless.
Reigen was smart enough to not try and move him. He instead lifted his wrist to check for a pulse, and in the process almost burned himself from heat of Mob's skin. There was a heartbeat there, though, and the fact soothed some of Reigen's frayed nerves.
But, the little one… The little one…
He looked like a dead baby bird. Blood was smeared on the grass around him and into his hair; a deep gash was sliced across his forehead. He rested beside a gravestone, once so proud and majestic, now in complete ruin. His little chest shuddered, and he looked like he was struggling to breathe.
Reigen had to abandon Mob for the one in more need. He was careful not to move his head as he picked him up; he was fragile, and chillingly limp. The only sign he was alive were the small, shivering breaths he took.
Reigen had to get him to the hospital immediately. He had to, but he also could not leave Mob, unconscious and unprotected in the middle of the graveyard.
Reigen broke his gentlemanly composure and swore all the nasty words he knew. He did not have time to deliberate what to do, the kid could be dying.
An idea came to him before he truly began to panic. Reigen remembered the first little boy he had found, peeking between the bars of the fence and playing with something he could not see. But, if Mob saw, it must be true, and Reigen had no real doubt.
"Grandma…" Reigen said in a low, clipped voice to no direction in particular. "I need you to watch Mob."
He hesitated. If there was a response, he could not perceive it, and Reigen ultimately had to trust in his grandmother's will after death. He stood quickly, and held Ritsu's head steady as he hurried to the hospital.
If he looked back, maybe he would have seen a white figure, bending over the fallen Mob and stroking his hair.
.
Unlike Mob years ago, the boy Reigen had never met until that day had a school identification card.
And Ritsu Kageyama had a mother that came almost instantly. She was a tense, nonsensical woman, and she intimidated Reigen enough to make him break a sweat. She walked into the hospital room like a mother rhinoceros, and Reigen jumped from his skin and seat.
"Ritsu! Baby!"
Reigen was obviously not her top priority. She went to the cot where her baby was sleeping, his head wound cleaned and wrapped, and painkillers keeping his fractured rib from hurting. He did not wake up, not even for her, and that made her more worried than anything.
It also made her notice Reigen. She was not mean at him like he expected her to be—after all, Ritsu was hurt on property his family owned—but rather calm and civil.
"You're the one who found him, right?" she asked quietly, and Reigen nodded. "Do you know what happened?"
He did, and didn't. He knew something had happened between Mob and Ritsu and the high schoolers that triggered Mob's powers, but he did not know exactly what, and he could not go telling her that otherworldly powers had thrown her son through a headstone. He had to protect Mob also.
So, he lied.
"I think he tripped on a root and fell into a gravestone," Reigen lied like it were easy this time, like his skin were not creeping and his heart racing under the need for her trust. "Or maybe on the shrine steps to the fountain."
Ritsu's mother looked back to him, her mouth a hard line highlighted by aged crevices.
"Ritsu…"
She bought it. Reigen practically melted in relief. It was easy to lie when nothing was at stake—a single customer, or simply money—but when someone he cared about had their safety in jeopardy, well… It didn't seem to flow so effortlessly.
She bowed to him suddenly. The abrupt display of respect startled Reigen, until he saw how she tightly clasped her hands to keep her emotions in check. Her voice had in it the waver of tears.
"Thank you… Thank you for saving my baby."
.
Mob felt like he was burning alive.
He jolted away from sleep. Feverish, and confused, he clawed at his arms and twisted in agony at his hot body, whimpering out of sheer pain and wanting to scream.
"Hush now."
A cool cloth pressed to his forehead. Almost by instinct his body relaxed, settling back onto the futon coated in sweat. A fan kicked on, and he whined again as the breeze brushed the heat off his body. He grasped enough rationale to open his eyes, and he saw Reigen's mom perched on the floor beside him.
"Hi, sweetheart," she said softly. "Don't try to move so much, okay?"
"What… What happened?"
His voice felt and sounded like sandpaper. Reigen's mother presented him with a water bottle that he took fervently, and she tucked it away when it was empty. Not having a raw throat and unbearably hot body made Mob woozy. He wanted to sleep and not care he did not remember what had happened since Ritsu told him about the mound that looked like a spoon.
"Hush," Reigen's mother repeated. "You need to rest."
She flipped over the cloth on his head. Mob meant to thank her, but he was already drifting off into the peaceful black of a dreamless sleep.
.
A/N: The mound Ritsu is talking about is The Great Serpent Mound if anyone is interested!
