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“Alright, kids, who’s ready for your special training today?” Mob seemed unmoved by Reigen’s question. He didn’t really understand why his master asked to meet him and his friends outside of a job, but he didn’t really mind it. He liked the opportunity to be in the snow.
Reigen jerked his arm outwards, gesturing wildly to the frozen lake in front of them. “Today you’re going to learn some real world skills! You’ll get nowhere in life if you don’t know how to fend for yourself. You’ll be learning how to do that right here, today!” Reigen shakily put one skate on the ice and slowly inched to the other side of the lake. Mob and company stood there in silence, watching Reigen almost fall at least 6 times. Once Reigen got to the other side, he raised both hands in the air and struck something akin to a victory pose. He then proceeded to shout across the lake. “You see that? You need to learn how to do that if you want to survive in society. You guys’ turn now!” After that, he plopped down on a nearby rock, head squarely paced in his hands.
Reigen had told everyone to bring supplies for this excursion, including skates, they were already ready to handle the task at hand. There was one problem, though: Mob hadn’t tried to skate since he was a baby. He wasn’t exactly the most graceful child, and he really wasn’t fairing any better now. Shou was the first one to leap up and get on the lake. He faced the remaining three boys as he glided on to the ice. “Hey Ritsu, watch this!” He leaped into the air, only to fall right on his ass. A hunched-over Reigen called out to him, as if he was suddenly reminded that he forgot to say something important. “By the way, I had that toy-guy do one of those anti-ESP whatevers on this lake, so you have to do it honestly.” Reigen didn’t try to get up and go to Shou—Ritsu and Teru were already on the way to help him up. Mob watched on as they helped a now-embarrassed Shou back on to his feet. Right after Shou was stable, Ritsu seemed to start to lecture him about his brazen attitude. The two of them started to bicker, though even an untrained eye could see it was more playful than anything. Ritsu grabbed on to Shou’s arm and started to pull him across the ice.
Teru turned away from the two of them and towards the staring Mob, who seemed to startle at being noticed. “Are you going to come out on to the ice?” Mob gently nodded, looking out to Ritsu. His brother was far more confident on the ice than he was. “It’s just… I haven’t skated in a long time.” Teru followed his gaze and then turned back to Mob. “It looks like your brother is busy taking care of Suzuki…” Mob nodded again at the obvious comment. “Uh, Hanazawa-kun, do you feel confident with skating?” Teru seemed to light up a little. “Of course! I’ve gone skating a hundred times.” Teru paused for a second. “Though, uh, I haven’t done it without my powers… I guess even after you opened my eyes to my powers. Not that I use my powers the whole time! Just in case I fall, or…” Mob awkwardly watched on as Teru over-explained himself, and Teru eagerly tried to change the subject. “A-ah! How about we both go on the ice together! We can help each other if we fall!” A more trained viewer would notice how Teru instantly regretted his method of subject-avoidance, but that quickly faded after Mob replied a soft “Okay.”
Mob gingerly stepped onto the ice with both of his arms outstretched, looking for some sort of balance. Teru stayed close as Mob as he tried to get his footing. Once Mob was soundly on the ice, he started his shaky trek to the other side. Right foot, left foot… Mob was too focused on not falling down to enjoy himself on the ice. After inching a few feet forward, he started to slip, only for his arm to get caught by a more-stable Teru. “Are you okay, Kageyama-kun? Do you need help staying upright?” Mob looked at where Teru was holding on to his arm and shook his head. Teru followed his eyes and quickly let go, turning to look at some far-off scenery after severing the connection. His voice sounded similar to when he made the initial pair-skating comment. “R-right! Of course! Let’s keep going, then!” Mob looked at how steadily (albeit nervously) Teru was standing on the ice and clarified his response. “I can stay up on my own, but I’m not doing very well at moving… do you think you could help me?” Teru turned back around with an obvious smile. “Of course!” Teru held out his arm and Mob quickly held on to it, eager to increase his stability.
The two of them slowly skated across the ice. Teru was a much better skater than Mob was—those “hundred” previous practices would make him competent, ESP-use or not. The help of an experienced skater made Mob’s time on the ice far more enjoyable. Teru’s head was squarely facing away from his skating partner, so Mob tried to focus on what he could be looking at without ignoring the ice ahead of him for too long. The area all around them was covered in barely-touched snow. “Hanazawa-kun, do you like the snow?” Teru turned back to Mob, slightly confused. “You’re just looking at it a lot.” Teru’s eyes widened. “Oh! Yeah. Uh, I guess I love the snow. It’s… really beautiful.” Mob took that as an acceptable answer. “I wish I was confident enough to look around while skating.” Teru lightly chuckled, relieved at either the compliment or the change of topic. “Yeah, like I said, I’ve been skating a few different times. It’s pretty common for someone to ask me to go skating during winter. Parties or dates, things like that--” “I understand how not being able to use powers might make this more scary, but after all those times, you should probably be able to get across this without any help.” Teru stared at Mob, mouth still open from when he finished his comment.
Mob started thinking about why Teru was hanging back to skate with him despite all of his experience. The pace that they’re going at must be painfully slow for him, and he’s been pretty quiet the whole time… Mob remembered when Teru held out his arm to support him. Should he not be hugging his arm like this? Did he mess up somehow? “Uh… Hanazawa-kun?” Teru snapped out of his odd expression. “What is it, Kageyama-kun?” “Well… is helping me skate a bother to you?” “What? No! Of course not!” “Oh. It’s just that you’re so good at skating. You’ve been pretty quiet too, and I might have messed up this holding-on thing…” Teru was quick to respond. “No! You’re doing great. At the holding-on thing, I mean. It’s more stable this way! It would be awful if one of us fell, after all! We can’t use our powers, so…” Teru cleared his throat. “And don’t worry about my skating. I’m happy to help you out, Kageyama-kun. You’ve helped me out so much before, so this is nothing.” Mob replied with another quiet “Okay.” They were almost at the end of the lake by then, but Teru spoke one more time before they reached the edge. “Skating with you is nice anyway, Kageyama-kun. I don’t really care if we’re not talking much. Hanging around you is nice on its own.” Mob gave a soft smile in reply. Something in the comment made him feel a little warmer. It didn’t seem to make Teru warmer, though, since his face was redder than ever.
30%
The hunched-over Reigen lifted his head to watch them as they stepped on the snow. “Were you able to skate alright, Mob?” Mob nodded, though he thought to himself that it was more because of Teru’s help than everything. Reigen smiled. “Great, Mob. This is an important lesson for you. You were able to traverse the elements without the help of any powers! Remember this major accomplishment.” He turned towards the already-waiting Shou and Ritsu. “Alright, everyone. It’s on to the next phase of this special training. Take off your skates and meet me by that hill.”
Once they all moved to the aforementioned location, Reigen snapped his arms out, dramatically framing a medium-sized, snow-covered hill. “This,” he started, “is the next phase of this special training!” Mob tossed in a flat “You just said that,” but Reigen continued on, undeterred. “There are two sleds at the top of the hill. Your goal is to get to the bottom of the hill using them. Just like before, you can’t use your powers! It’ll ruin the whole point of the exercise.” He pointed at the hill one last time, for good measure. “Alright! I’ll watch from down here! You kids get moving!”
Mob was relieved that difficulty curve of the “training” had gone far down. He climbed up the hill in relative silence, listening to the crunching of his boots in the snow. It would be pretty calming, if it wasn’t for the pain that hiking up the hill was causing him. He eagerly plopped down in the snow once he reached the top and tried to catch his breath. A little way across from him were two sleds, one blue, and one green. Teru, Ritsu, and Shou were standing behind him, trying to figure out the seating order.
“I think I should sit with Nii-san, and you two can have the other one.” Shou laughed at Ritsu’s suggestion. “Aww, Ritsu, are you sick of me?” “I just don’t trust you after your stellar performance on the ice.” Shou turned and marched towards the sleds in a possibly-hyperbolic huff. Teru spoke up. “I don’t suppose that you two could stay together again?” Ritsu glared, and Teru replied with a short “Right.” Ritsu turned to his brother. “Nii-san, who do you want to ride with?” Mob looked up, slightly dazed from the hike. “Huh? Uh. I want to ride in the green one.” A “Yeah!” could be heard from sleds—Shou was already sitting in the front of the aforementioned green one. Ritsu put his hand to his face. “Nii-san… are you alright with riding with Suzuki?” Mob nodded. “That’s fine with me.” Ritsu held out his hand to Mob and helped him up. “Alright. I’ll ride with Teru-san.” Together, they walked over to the sleds. Mob didn’t really care who he rode with. He was just glad this exercise involved something far-less scary with far-more sitting.
Before taking his place on the back of the blue sled, Ritsu stepped over to the green sled and stood in front of Shou. “Suzuki, if you cause any sort of crash, I will beat the crap out of you.” “Yeah, that worked out so well the first time!” Ritsu quickly turned back to his sled. “Teru-san, I want to be the first sled to reach the bottom of this hill.” Teru smiled. “Leave it to me, Brother-kun!” Shou turned around to face Mob. “Yo, looks like this has become a competition. You ready to win?” Mob looked at Ritsu and Teru’s enthusiastic faces and nodded. “I guess so… I don’t know how much help I’ll be, though.” Shou gave a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna smoke ‘em.”
After some deliberation, Shou gave the starting countdown. “Three… two… ONEGO!” On that last note, Shou hurriedly pushed off the sled down the hill, narrowly avoiding a few curses from the opposing team. Shou was leaning forward hard, presumably to help with the steering—Mob was too focused on not falling off the thing to think too hard about it. From where he was sitting, it looked like the dubious start was the only thing keeping the two teams from a complete tie, and he wasn’t sure how much help he could be to keep the lead. Shou spoke up while still facing forward. “Hey, I’ve got an idea! Take the front for a sec!” Without waiting for a response, Shou climbed over Mob and moved him to his former place. In an instant, the sled was going faster—the only problem was that it was now going faster in a completely different direction. Mob turned his head to see Shou sitting with his legs facing the back of the sled, posed in a way that led his eyes straight to a tree that they were now pushing away from. Some noise drew Mob’s attention to his other side, where Teru and Ritsu were yelling some ways behind them. Shou’s accompanying laughter cut through Mob’s (justified) state of panic and confusion to give him an idea. He steered the sled hard in their direction, using the leftover speed from the push-off to get them right in front of the other two. The noise got a hell of a lot louder after that. Ritsu and Teru tried to go around them, but by the time they got their sled in a different lane, Mob and Shou were already at the bottom of the hill. Shou, of course, was still laughing. He smacked Mob’s back when he stood up to leave. “That was priceless! Ritsu’s face when you did that was almost TOO good!” He wiped a tear from his eye. “Anyway, thanks for steering us at the end there.” Mob smiled and scratched the back of his head, looking away nervously. “I couldn’t have done it without your good idea...” Shou lit up. “Yeah, well, we make a pretty great team! We should totally—“
A handful of snow interrupted Shou’s sentence, with a disgruntled Ritsu shoving it into his face. “That’s for cheating.” He picked up another handful and plopped it on Shou’s hair. “And THAT’S for taunting us at the end.” Mob spoke up. “Actually, getting in front of you was my idea.” “Yeah, but I didn’t see you laughing at us for half of the ride.” He turned around for a few seconds, and then faced Mob again with a devilish smile. “Though, if you insist!” Ritsu shoved a handful of snow on top of Mob’s unsuspecting head. He only shook the snow off and smiled.
60%
Reigen clapped his hands together. “Alright, alright! Get serious, you guys! This is serious training! You need to pay attention, seriously!” The four boys stared blankly at him. “Anyway, good work. Now you can master fast snow travel! Not even the elements can stop you from getting down a hill!” He put his hand under his chin and smiled wisely. “Now it’s time for the third part of your training… SCULPTURE! Without your powers!” He wildly gestured to the snowy expanse around them. “A liberal arts education is important in this day and age! You won’t get anywhere in life if you’re not a little bit cultured, alright? Sculpt something out of this snow!”
At the same time, Ritsu and Mob shared a glance that could only be verbally equated with a terse “Mhm.” Ritsu giggled and started piling up some snow. “Nii-san, what are you going to make to culture yourself?” Mob started doing the same. “I don’t know. Dimple, probably.” He poked two holes in his snow-pile and stared blankly at his handiwork. Ritsu looked on and nodded. “I can’t say that’s not an accurate recreation, Nii-san. Though, if it’s really Dimple, it needs a better face.” Ritsu scooted over to where Mob was working and traced a typically-grumpy expression in the snow—actions that both made Mob show a small smile. “The face looks perfect, Ritsu. He would probably be mad if he saw that this had so little to it, though.” Ritsu’s face had a sudden look of who cares to it, but he nodded and got to work anyway. The two of them tried to add on Dimple’s signature antenna with more snow without ruining their initial prototype. After several failed attempts, they decided to leave their now-misshapen snowmess and start anew.
Mob really appreciated Ritsu in times like this. The space between them didn’t feel awkward in the silence caused by their “artistic focus.” Mob figured that he felt comfortable because he’d known Ritsu for so long, but at the same time, he felt like there was something else, too—after all, he had known his parents for a longer time than his brother, and he didn’t feel nearly as cozy when around them. It was something about Ritsu, specifically, that made Mob always calm down. Maybe it was Ritsu’s kindness, or the way he was always dependable, or even the dryness that both of the Kageyama brothers seemed to share. Mob couldn’t really put his finger on it, but he figured that it wasn’t that important right now. All that mattered was their ugly snow-spirit and how nice it was to make it with his brother.
The two of them scooted back from their creation after a few minutes of dedicated sculpting. In front of them sat, essentially, a larger version of the Dimple they had been working on the first time, this time with a more pronounced head-point. The whole thing didn’t seem like that much of an improvement from their first try. Ritsu awkwardly laughed, but Mob spoke up before he could say anything. “I love it.” “Are you sure…?” “Yeah. I love it because we made it together.” Ritsu’s eyes widened and suddenly Mob was taken into a hug. “I’m glad you like it, Nii-san!” Mob hugged him back, feeling even more comfortable in the snow.
90%
After their hug ended, Mob had an idea. “Oh, Ritsu, we should show the others what we made. I think they would like it.” Mob turned towards where the rest of the group was making their “sculptures,” only to reconsider getting their attention. In front of Shou was an unnecessarily large snow mound that was easily recognizable as a Hamster of Unusual Size, with Shou chucking more and more snow on the beast as Mob watched. Beside that was a snow-giraffe that somehow managed to keep its neck intact and a nervous Teru who was desperately trying to keep the snow-shrapnel from Shou’s questionable sculpting technique from hitting his creation. “Maybe we should just leave them to it, Nii-san.” Mob just nodded.
“Times up! Let’s see if you made some real art here.” Reigen didn’t move to look at the sculptures up-close. Instead, he placed one hand on his chin and squinted at the three pieces from where he was standing, bending slightly for effect. “Looks pretty good. You four seem like with some extra training, you could survive any real-world art encounter.” Mob noticed that he was pushing his left foot behind him a few times, destroying a small snow pile that looked vaguely dog-like. “Now it’s time for the final part of training for today. It’s perhaps the most important skill to know to survive in winter society.” Mob wondered what exactly winter society meant, but kept quiet anyway. “This final challenge… is a snowball fight!” Reigen scooped up a ball of snow and displayed it for the kids in one fell swoop. “You can be challenged at any time to a snowball fight. This skill is vital for self-defense! Start arming yourself!”
Mob did what he was told and started scooping up some snow. He wasn’t very sure of his skills in a snowball fight, but every other stage of the “training” had turned out fun, so he wasn’t too worried about it. As he was forming a ball, Shou spoke up. “Hey, you left out the part where you tell us we can’t use any powers. Did you forget that part of your speal?” The tone was obviously not serious, but Reigen responded with a scoff and smirk. “That was no mistake. The reason that I didn’t say that is simple… It’s because you CAN use your powers!” Reigen struck a magnanimous pose. “Uhm… master, are you sure?” Mob nervously looked side to side. “It’s not good to hurt other people with psychic powers…” “Mob, remember when I said having psychic powers was just another trait?” Reigen had moved right next to Mob, and put one hand on his shoulder. “It’s important for everyone to learn to love all of their traits. You need to have fun with them! If you don’t embrace all of the parts of yourself, you won’t be able to be happy, so you need to appreciate your different traits every now and again.” “Didn’t you just say this was a self-defense lesson, and not something to do for fun?” Reigen tensed up and laughed it off—he said something about how snowball fighting was a multifaceted skill, and how it could be for fun or for survival depending on the situation. Despite his dry teasing, Mob knew what Reigen was getting at. Reigen’s voice had that sort of self-assured quality that Mob had come to take comfort in through the years. Like most things Reigen said, he wasn’t sure how truthful the words really were, but something about them made Mob feel at ease. “Okay, Master. I’ll try.” Reigen patted Mob on the shoulder and started stepping back. “Alright! Ready yourselves! And try to aim away from me!”
The psychic snowball fight was pretty similar to a normal snowball fight, except with faster throws and less visibility. Snow was thrown everywhere, and despite Reigen’s final plea, aiming ended up being optional. Mob felt a little awkward about throwing snow at his friends at first, but after getting hit initially (by Shou, of course), he was far more eager to participate. After a few throws of far too many snowballs at once, Mob’s field of vision was nearly half filled with snow. He could still sense the other boys’ auras, obviously, but the snow-filled air added more mystery and adventure to the fight. Using his powers for harmless fun like this… knowing that he can use his powers to have a fun time with his friends… all of that made Mob feel happy. The soft snow, along with his friends’ laughter and chatter, reassured Mob that no one was at risk to be hurt by his powers. He felt like he was part of a group where he could be himself. Snow started flurrying up from where it laid, and everyone paused to watch it in wonder. It was slow and soft, and gave the scene a picturesque vibe. Ritsu sat down as the snow that covered him started floating off into the air, while Teru and Reigen watched amazed and Shou kicked snow as it flew up. “This day has been amazing, Nii-san.” Mob smiled. “Yeah.”
100% HAPPINESS