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“Ah, Mob, it’s your old master. I know you’ve said so many times not to call you out of the blue, but, well… I could really use your help?”Reigen pressed the phone to his ear, hearing Mob’s bit off sigh of annoyance. He felt bad, he really wouldn’t have called him for a last minute thing like this, except Serizawa was out on a camping trip with his school buddies, and he hadn’t seen Dimple today at all. Mob was out of high school for the summer break… so it should be okay. “What do you need, Master?” Mob said flatly, and Reigen laughed, waving his free arm around. “Well, you see, I may have bitten off more than I could chew.” Reigen took in his surroundings, the small closet he was hiding in was dusty, and dim, with the only light coming from the crack under the door, and his cell phone. Outside the closet, he could hear the thuds and wails from the spirit that had him trapped here. Sorry, spirits. Multiple. Far more than the client had led him to believe, and a lot more than the zero he’d expected. “I could have sworn this wasn’t a real haunting!” He had salt (purified now, Serizawa wouldn’t let him trust the cheap supermarket stuff anymore) in a line on the floor, and a couple of spirit tags pinned to the door, but his hiding place wouldn’t last for long. Mob sighed over the phone and asked for the address. Reigen told him and suppressed a breath of relief when Mob said he was only twenty minutes away. “Oh, I’ll definitely be fine holding them off until then, no problem at all!” “I’ll be there soon.” Mob hung up without saying anything more, and Reigen snapped the phone shut, checking that the salt line was still okay. As if called by the thought, one of the spirits thudded into the door, and it shuddered. Then the scratching started, like they were picking at the barrier the spirit tags had made. Reigen gulped nervously. Why had he come here alone? He hadn’t gone on a house call without esper back up or at least Dimple in years. That was probably what had been bothering him. Was he feeling smothered by Serizawa and various high schoolers feeling the need to protect him all the time? Eh, it’s possible. As the only non-esper, he supposed he was a bit more… squishy than everyone else, but that still didn’t mean he couldn’t do his damn job without any help. He’d been getting more confident too, with his slowly growing ability to see and sense spirit stuff, not to mention a growing arsenal of actual exorcist tools, he could hold his own against a lot of shit. But not everything. The naysayers were apparently all correct, and he shouldn’t have gotten his pride in a knot. If he had brought Dimple or Mob or even called Hanazawa or Ritsu in the first place, he wouldn’t be cowering in a closet. Drawing in a breath, Reigen thumped his head back against the wall, and listened as the spirits scratched even more at the door. It had been, what? Ten minutes. Ten minutes more until Mob arrived. The door shuddered when the spirit made a new effort to get in, and Reigen groaned at this predicament. There really hadn’t been any indication that this was a real haunting. The building was old, full of creaking pipes, and shifting spaces between the floorboards - a prime spot for an old man (such as his client) to get a little hysterical. There had been no cold spots, no history in the house that he could find online, and yet. And yet…
Sccreeeetcchhhh!!
They weren’t human, at least not for a long time, as far as Reigen could tell. But, they were definitely dangerous, if what they were doing to the door was any indication. And no matter how much it pinged his pride to just hide in the closet until Mob got here, he was happier with all his limbs unscathed. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t have the choice much longer, if this kept up! And as that thought passed his brain, Reigen was blinded by the sudden light as the door shattered. Wincing back from the flying splinters, Reigen gave a startled shout as his ankle was seized. “Oh no you don’t!” Reigen said, even as he was being dragged out. His flailing fingers clutched a fistful of salt, and he punched out hard, striking the thing at least once. It didn’t let go, but it stopped pulling him enough for him to attempt to pull out a seal - but, there was no need. Rubber shoes scuffed the floor softly by the door into the room, and Mob’s raised finger blew the spirits surrounding him gently away, like the candles in a birthday cake. The heaviness in the room abruptly lightened, and Reigen took a deep inhale, sprawled out as he was on the floor. Tilting his head, he watched upside down as Mob came in. “Ah, Mob,” he said, lifting his hands up, and accidentally scattering salt over his face. He jolted up and blinked his eyes furiously to make sure he hadn’t gotten any grains in them, shaking his hands out. “Argh, ouch!” he said, scrubbing at his face. “Master, are you alright?” Mob said, tone as flat as ever, but Reigen could pick out the concern and remaining annoyance. It had gotten easier to tell over the years. “I’m fine! Thank you, Mob, let me just-” A hand reached out to help him as he clambered to his feet, wincing as his ankle twinged. That spirit’s grip had been persistent. “Ah, thanks.” Mob was looking at him, and geez, Reigen continually forgot that the sixteen-year-old was eye to eye with him now, and was bulkier than him to boot. Judging by Mr. Kageyama, Mob would pass him just as Ritsu had already done (which the kid never got tired of holding over him). Reigen brushed off his suit, and straightened up. “Well, now that that’s cleared up, you should be getting going,”“Master.” “And yes, of course, I’ll give you a cut of the profits this time, plus, whaddya say to a bonus, since I called you so suddenly, but no worries, you can head back to whatever it was you were doing-” “Master,” Mob said, smiling a little. “It’s okay. I didn’t mind that much.” Reigen let out a breath. “Ah, well then.” “Serizawa-san is out of town, isn’t he?” Reigen felt a little pang in his chest at missing Katsuya, both at work and at home. “Yeah, he is. And I wasn’t about to bring Tome out on a house call. She gets into too much trouble.” Mob chuckled in agreement. “Dimple has been with Ritsu lately, I think they’re working on something.” “That’s… ominous,” Reigen said. He glanced around the room, taking in the damage and automatically calculating the cut his profits would take. Eh, it was just a door, he decided. It wouldn’t be too bad. “Well, but anyway, I definitely had it handled of course, but, well, thanks for coming.” Mob was smiling at him, not fooled a bit, but hey, the kid’s grown up. “Do you want to get some ramen, Master?” Reigen deflated his chest, dropping all pretenses, and grinned at the teen who was still so damn tall. “I’d like that,” he said. “You don’t have somewhere else to be?” “No.” Mob’s answers were short and truthful, and Reigen let out a chuckle, turning to swing his arm around Mob’s shoulders, using him surreptitiously as a crutch for his hurting foot. “Alright, then, there’s a place not far from here. I don’t think we’ve been since you were, what? Twelve? Much shorter than now, for sure!” “I’ll pass you soon, Master,” Mob said, and Reigen smashed down his hair on top of his head. “Ah, no you don’t, you beansprout!” They walked off out of the no-longer-haunted house towards the warm soup, and Reigen had the thought that hey, his life was pretty great.