#and it was the same as when Dimple got scared of Mob in that cult meeting and decided this child had to die

[brown-little-robin]

PARALLEL!! In S1E8 of mp100, Reigen reveals the delightfully baffling ethic he works by. When a woman tells him that a fortuneteller told her that there was a spirit on her shoulders, Reigen instantly disapproves of someone telling her that and doing nothing about it. And of course he considers himself so much better than this fortuneteller for... also lying to the woman, but giving her a massage. So he's allowed to lie to people, but he draws the line at not helping them. That... that's perfect. That's what he does with Mob, after all. He lies to Mob constantly about being a psychic, but he considers it fine because he's helping Mob by doing so. The woman had real pain in her shoulders; Mob has real pain in his heart. Reigen helps with both by allowing them to think he's a psychic.

Shortly after that, in S1E10, Dimple makes this remark while possessing a security guard:

IT'S THE EXACT SAME ETHICS. (okay, it's slightly worse because it's just harm reduction rather than actively helping, but Dimple is on the right track, okay?) Dimple's allowed to possess people, to steal their bodies (temporarily), but he's not allowed to let them get hurt. Letting the body he possesses be damaged is a step too far. Reigen's allowed to lie, but heaven help people who lie to others without helping them.

Just. Yeah. Dimple and Reigen both use people. Reigen lies to them, Dimple possesses them. Reigen twists the mind, Dimple twists the body. And yet they're both disgusted and offended by people who would use people without care for their welfare. They're better than that. They're not irresponsible.

edit: alt text for images 1 and 2 provided by @princess-of-purple-prose! thanks!

[silvensei]

In which Reigen learns not to let psychic powers mix, lest something unexpected happens. Like finding himself looking at his own emotionless face through his disciple's eyes.

Guess what happens when you like platonic relationships, body swap scenarios, and Mob Psycho 100 a bit too much?? This. This is what happens. Mostly comedy; angst kept to a minimum (and also kept over here). Rated T most likely

Available above on AO3, [here] on FFnet, and right below the cut for your site of preference

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Maybe they should get out of the office more.

Usually the clients that came to the Spirits and Such Consultation Office had a problem or specter already in mind that they wanted dealt with as soon as possible. From there, it was at most just a trip to and from the specified site.

However, today’s job was more akin to private detective work, and they couldn’t actually start until they found the person they needed to tail. For now, Reigen Arataka and his student, Mob, sat outside a café, respective cups of coffee and milk in hand.

They had been sitting there in comfortable silence for half an hour when Dimple found them. It was getting to be late afternoon, but the weather was still nice enough that it wouldn’t be too brisk for a few more hours. In Reigen’s expert opinion, it was optimal outdoor café season. He was almost about to forget they had someone to look for before a familiar and obnoxious voice assaulted his eardrums.

“Oi, oi, don’t you two have some sort of fake business to uphold?” asked Dimple, floating around the pair and peeking at their drinks. “Or is this some kind of day off?”

“No, we have a job. We’re waiting for someone,” Mob explained, waiting for the spirit to drift away from his cup before he took another sip.

Dimple scoffed. “Well, that’s descriptive. Is Reigen attempting to teach you how to pick up chicks or something?”

A faint blush highlighted the boy’s face, and he kept his cup to his mouth in an attempt to hide it. Reigen didn’t notice as he waved a hand. “I actually do make money, you know. And we do have a job today: We have to tail a suspicious figure and intervene if they prove to be dangerous.”

“Yeah, you’re still on the vague side of this whole explanation thing….”

Setting his coffee on the table, the con man unfolded a sheet of notes from his pocket. “Earlier today, our client came by, uneasy but not terribly distressed. She said that a few days ago, her husband came home from work ‘a changed man.’” He tapped his finger against the quote on the page. “He hasn’t been keeping up his routines or habits, and more change every day. She hasn’t noticed anything suspicious around home, so she thinks one of his coworkers must’ve cursed him.”

“That’s a pretty bold jump there,” the ghost mumbled, looking bored but reading over the page anyway.

Reigen shrugged. “We’ve had jobs on less. I told her we’d scout out the area and see if there’s anyone with that kind of power around. If it’s nothing, then at least we discovered a pretty decent café, right, Mob?”

Mob nodded.

Dimple tsk-ed and looked up at the other side of the street. It seemed to Reigen that the spirit was perpetually at a state somewhere in between disinterested and annoyed, so this was no different. A moment passed before he realized the spirit was actually watching something in particular. With a bobbing motion that passed as a nod, he asked Reigen, “That the office over there?”

“Yep.” The nod had gestured to the multi-story building across the street, one that was as indistinguishably corporate as they come. “Our suspect should be finishing up work there soon,” added the blond as he brought his coffee to his lips again.

Dimple was quiet. Uncharacteristically so. “Shigeo, is he weak or just far away?” He didn’t look away from the building.

“He could be no minor threat,” Mob mumbled. He was looking in the same direction.

Reigen slowly put his coffee back on the table. So there really was a psychic here? Guess it probably was the real deal after all. Just more work in the end, really. He checked his phone. “The regular work day ends in fifteen minutes, so when he leaves, we’ll tail him—”

“Ah, scratch that, P.I. Reigen, feels like he’s leaving now.” There was something about the way Dimple said that that started to set him on edge. Was it confusion? Nervousness, even…?

They watched the stream of people entering and exiting the office building for one minute, then two. Then one stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned.

“Shit!” the ghost hissed. He darted behind the teen. “I knew he seemed familiar! That’s the poor bastard I possessed for the whole religious cult business!”

Reigen raised an eyebrow. The man on the sidewalk hadn’t moved. That was a good sign, right? The situation hadn’t escalated unbelievably fast yet, as fights between espers usually go. “Maybe it’s coincidence?” he offered.

“Nu-uh, doubt it. Shigeo’s been sitting out here for what, an hour? He would’ve definitely sensed him, but he only came out when I got here.” Dimple sunk further behind the café chair. “I doubt he’s happy about that whole event….”

Mob still held his cup, but he didn’t move to drink any more. “Can he even remember being possessed?” he asked.

“If his powers grew this much stronger during that month, then yeah, maybe. He’s still standing there, after all.” He took a quick glance over the boy’s shoulder. “Yep. Can’t even run,” the ghost muttered. “He knows I’m here now and looks ready for a chase, and damn, he’s going to be pissed. Any sane person would be, after all.”

They were just talking about how weak that guy could be, and now this? Reigen checked that the man still hadn’t moved. “If you’re so scared, then go hide somewhere,” he proposed. Honestly, having Dimple in this state of mind was starting to make him uneasy as well.

“Oh yeah? And where can I hide that he won’t be able to sense me, genius?” Dimple shot back.

“Alright, calm down. It doesn’t even seem like that big of a problem right now.”

And then, suddenly, everything just stopped.

Everyone in the immediate vicinity, first the pedestrians, then both lanes of traffic and the café patrons slowed to a stop. They stood or sat, unmoving, unbothered.

And through it all, the man across the street started walking toward them.

Breath hitched in his throat, Reigen amended his statement with, “Alright, okay, maybe now it’s looking suspicious.”

Mob set his cup on the table. “Dimple,” he said quietly with a glance over his shoulder, “would my powers be able to hide you in me?”

An alarmed “Huh?!” came from the pair. “Hide me?” the spirit exclaimed, darting under the table so he could look the boy in the eye. “Damn well they could, but I can’t even get through them to possess you in the first place!”

Biting his lower lip, Reigen watched the offending psychic stalk across the street, now most assuredly coming for the three of them. Everyone else on the block was still frozen in place, staring blankly ahead, completely complacent. It definitely could be some form of mass hypnosis, he figured.

There was a clattering behind him, almost making him jump out of his chair. All the other patrons had stood up in unison, pausing only a moment before shuffling away from the café.

That officially made this unsettling.

“What about me?” the con man suggested before he could convince himself otherwise. “If he’s really after you, then I can suppress my abilities enough to be possessed.”

“And how’s that going to work, dumbass?”

“Then let me hear your better idea, ‘cause you’re getting thrown to the dogs otherwise.”

The man was on their side of the road now, close enough to see he did not look friendly. Dimple saw this and grimaced. “You’re doing the talking,” he said, the only warning Reigen got before something cold hit, then seeped into his chest.

He gasped, more from the shock of it than the cold, as the feeling disappeared as quickly as it came. A small shiver ran down his back, his shoulders stiffened, and a light pressure seemed to push on his head. He also could feel heat gather on his cheeks, probably lighting up the vicious red blush that appeared on the spirit’s hosts.

Nothing really felt different, though. He was going to double check that Dimple had really vanished when in between his ears there hummed, Jeez, you’re tense.

I wonder why, he retorted with a thought. Whether that was how this telepathy worked or not, he didn’t know, but he did know that their suspect was within earshot now. Painting one of his signature smiles on his almost uncomfortably warm face, crossing his arms, and leaning back in his chair, Reigen called out, “That’s some fancy hypnosis you’ve got there.”

The newcomer stopped some feet from their table. His cool gaze considered Mob momentarily before settling on Reigen. “What are you…two doing here?”

“Enjoying a drink at this fine establishment. Have you come here before?” He lifted his coffee and inclined his head. “Some good coffee, if I do say so myself. It’s a shame everyone else had to leave when they did.”

That elicited no visible reaction. “You’ve been sitting outside my office building for too long to be normal. Add to it the fact that you’re psychics, and it becomes suspicious. So. What do you want?”

Reigen’s smile shrunk. He took a long, deliberate sip of coffee before asking, “What are you hoping to achieve through hypnosis?”

“What’s it to you?”

“You shouldn’t use your powers on other people,” Mob said, head tilted ever so slightly so that he was looking through his bangs. It added enough of an edge to his monotonous words to make the man frown and shift his weight. The boy made his master proud.

“I shouldn’t, eh?” the psychic echoed. “What’s a few missing minutes out of their lives? Maybe one less decision they have to mull over? Where’s the harm in that? After all—” He grimaced. “—it’s not like they’re having their free will stripped from them for over a month, right?”

“So you remember,” Mob mused.

“Damn right, I do!” He dropped his hands onto the table, spilling the last bit of Mob’s milk onto its surface. “Not all of it at first, but my life has been uprooted so much that it wouldn’t even matter if I remembered!” His fingers curled around the edge of the table. “And I know the evil spirit that did that is hiding here somewhere!”

Reigen had had enough. They could deal with a company man on a revenge-driven power trip when Dimple wasn’t around to complicate things. He downed the last of his coffee and set it down with as much of a clatter as a paper cup could muster. “This sounds more like a personal issue than what we were paid to deal with. If you promise not to mess with people anymore, then I think we can just be on our way.”

He made to get up but stumbled. His legs felt weak, and his feet sluggishly took a few steps to balance. “Shit,” his lips hissed, “not used to—”

Reigen snapped his mouth shut. He hadn’t said that.

…backseating, Dimple finished lamely in his thoughts.

Across from him, the psychic straightened up. “Still taking vessels, I see,” he commented, anger on his face, resolve in his voice. A dandelion yellow aura blurred into view around him.

One last shot to save this. “No, no, it’s just my new shoes,” he said easily, hoping the sweat on his brow wasn’t visible. “You know how it is; always takes some breaking in before—”

“Let’s see your face, you son of a bitch.”

A bright golden hand thrust out a couple feet from him, and yet Reigen felt something grab his hair. He heard a shout from someone—maybe himself?—along with a bright blue flash, and then that something pulled, and pulled hard. 

It yanked him to the side, where it felt like he immediately slammed into a solid wall. He gasped, the impact rippling through his body. Instead of sliding down the wall, though, he fell, tripping over a chair onto the ground.

He ached all over, which is not what crashing into something should result in. In fact, now that he thought about it, they were in the middle of a cluster of tables; there were no walls around them….

Everything was blurry, but from his vantage point on the ground, he saw a speck of green dart toward the mass of black, white, and yellow. Dimple and the other psychic, probably? Reigen blinked a few more times before he could clearly see the man, cheeks red and aura ablaze.

“Ack, no no no no, ah, fuck!” he was saying. “God damn, you got strong! Screw this, I’m out!” Dimple vaguely pointed at Reigen and added, “Catch you later!” before flying out and up over the roof, out of sight.

His former host stumbled back, powers getting even brighter as he frantically looked around. With the green pest gone, though, he glared at Reigen one last time before he turned heel and ran.

He let out a sigh of relief. The con man laid like that, on his side on the concrete, until he heard the rumble of traffic start up again. The ache was still there but dissolving at an astonishing rate. Well, he supposed that could’ve gone worse. He rolled onto his back, debating with himself over whether he should really charge his client for this probably incomplete job when he heard a quiet, “Shishou?” from his side.

“Hm?”

“I think there’s something wrong.”

“How do you mean?”

Reigen paused at the higher pitch of his voice. He cleared his throat and tried again. “What do you—”

He froze this time. That’s not what he sounded like. Thoughts beginning to race, he took a deep breath, which is when he noticed the black at the edge of his vision shift away. That wasn’t concussion-induced darkness, he realized, it was just dark. A dark-colored something that acted a lot like hair.

He reached an arm toward the sky. The sleeve was black, the hand much too light and soft and definitely not his. Something clicked together, and it locked into place when a much too familiar face appeared over him, sandy blond hair shading dull, lidded eyes.

He took another breath. Exhaled. “I think I’m gonna have to agree with you on that.”