Fanfic / Off to the Races

Art by Nixy

What if Mob was a girl... and was raised by Suzuki Touichirou... wait, don't go!

Off to the Races is a Mob Psycho 100 Alternate Universe Fic fanfic by Green_Kneesocks in which a Gender Flip version of Mob is adopted at the age of two by Suzuki Touichirou…and then the rest of her life ensues.

Watch as Mob grows up in Claw with Sho for a brother, Suzuki Touichirou for a father, and the Ultimate Five as her best friends. Hilarity, pain, and copious amounts of angst ensue.

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Off to the Races provides examples of:

• 1000 Origami Cranes: Mob and Sho make two thousand origami cranes in an effort to bring their mother back. It doesn’t work.
• Abusive Parents: It’s Claw, you’d have an easier time counting the people whose parents WEREN’T abusive. There’s Suzuki Touichirou who reveals in chapter 381 that his parents would ignore him for long periods of time if he didn’t live up to their standards and his father hit him with a kendo sword, not for losing a match, but for getting a point against him. Then we have Suzuki Touichirou himself who regularly verbally and physically abuses Sho while putting Mob onto a pedestal and giving her the role of ‘wife and mother’ in the family when she’s only ten years old. That brings us to Mob’s actual mother, Suzuki Masami, who left her two children with her emotionally and physically abusive husband because it would have been too difficult to leave with them and, due to her depression, let Mob go emotionally long before she left the family physically. The other main characters don’t have it any better. Minegishi was beaten, starved, and verbally abused by their parents for being an esper and then didn’t have it much better in the group home they were put in. Shimazaki had it even worse having been locked in his room until the age of five for being born without eyes. He’s very blasé about being starved, isolated, and forced to use a bucket in the corner of his room as a toilet along with the physical and emotional abuse his parents put him through but it does effect him in his adult life. He steals food, does anything for attention, and overcorrects for his life with Sho by running wild with him and doing literally anything he wants no matter who they hurt.
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: Shibata Hiroshi. He couldn’t always control his strength…which hasn’t mixed well with his love of all things small and cute.
• Age-Inappropriate Dress: Mob and Minori are on both sides of the spectrum. Mob lives in an Elsa costume until she gets too big that the Disney Store stops carrying them in her size. After that she moves onto princess T-shirts and tutu skirts despite being over ten years old. Minori, on the other hand, wears crop tops, short shorts, mini skirts, and heavy makeup despite being Mob's age.
• Aimlessly Seeking Happiness: Shimazaki Ryou. Due to an early childhood isolated in his room with only toys and records for company he seeks happiness and stimulation wherever he goes... mostly through drugs and causing chaos.
• The Alcoholic: Mob become this at the age of eight once she realizes that drinking can help her control her powers and her feelings.
• Allergic to Routine: Shimazaki and Sho…well more like Sho BECAUSE of Shimazaki.
• Alpha Bitch: Minori is one of these as she is in cannon.
• Ambiguously Bi: Suzuki Touichirou. He will wax poetic in his mind about how he would gladly had dated Fukuda and married him if one of them had been female. They also experimented together when they were in middle school, high school, and college. He feels the same way about Hatori and will check out both Hatori and Fukuda without even realizing he’s doing it. He’s checked out a shirtless Shimazaki from time to time as well.
• Apologises a Lot: Mob has a bad habit of this.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: How power is obtained and held onto in Claw. Mob doesn’t care for this at all and one of her first acts as the little boss lady is to change it. Is it any wonder that everyone likes her better than her dad?
• Attention Whore: Shimazaki due to be ignored and isolated as a child.
• Ax-Crazy: Fukuda forgets that as funny as Shimazaki can be he can and has killed people before and he has no problem adding to his body count.
• Bad Boss: Suzuki Touichirou can be very violent towards his underlings. He doesn’t care who he hurts. To him everyone but Mob is replaceable.
• The Beard: Emmy Mcbride is this to Sho. He starts his relationship with her before he knows he’s gay and by the time he’s ready to admit it and break up with her Fukuda convinces him that since he needs a girlfriend, Suzuki will never accept him for who he is, it had might as well be Emmy. She likes him, he's at least friends with her, and since she lives in London he never has to see her so it all works out.
• Because I'm Good At It: Fukuda has stayed with Claw since the beginning because he’s good at taking care of Suzuki. He knows all of his tells and triggers and he doesn’t even think about leaving because nobody else could manage Suzuki as well as him.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Fukuda has crafted this internal narrative where he and Masami were madly in love with one another to take away from the cold truth of what had happened. He slept with an emotionally unstable woman while she was at the lowest point in her life….while her children were in the house. This woman was his best friend’s wife. He never stops believing that they were in love.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Mob. Don’t push her too far. You’ll regret it.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Shimazaki may be drunk and high all the time, and he may act like a ten year old, but he’s also a very powerful esper who’s been killing people since the age of fourteen.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Minegishi may be quiet, and the may just want to be left alone, but they can and will turn you into plant food without a second thought.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Fukuda. He hates Claw, hates his best friend, hates Mob for being exactly like (in his mind) his best friend, and internally doesn’t have a good word to say about anyone. Externally he portrays himself as a good natured person who begrudgingly goes along with the insanity that is Claw and cares for Sho because he sees him as a son…not because of the promise he made to Sho’s mother who he was sleeping with.
• The Bore: Both Mob and Suzuki tend to go off on long tangents about things that only they are interested in. Mob tries to fix this. Suzuki does not.
• Brutal Honesty: Mob in her younger days. Her telling her mother that she likes her dad more is one of the things that drives Masami from the family.
• Cannot Talk to Women: Suzuki Touichirou is this way around any woman who speaks to him for more than five seconds. He’s extremely grateful that most espers are male.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Hatori at the Christmas party. He eventually learns that he’s bad at drinking and that he needs to stop.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Sho, by virtue of the fact that he’s allergic to knocking, almost catches Fukuda in this situation. Thankfully he only notices a laptop closing really fast. Sho gets this from his father, Suzuki, who gets a door to the face when he attempts to enter Mob’s room without knocking.
• Chaotic Stupid: Shimazaki Ryou. Highlights include giving Mob acid, getting high with Sho, going off onto the wing of a moving plane, and stealing a baby for Mob to play with because she was sad.
• Child Prodigy: Suzuki was this in his youth. He was always at the top of his class, a kendo star, and the most powerful esper alive. Mob is, in universe, described as a prodigy due to her powers.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Sho to Shimazaki. He can’t stand anyone else so much as speaking to Shimazaki let alone trying to befriend him. Shimazaki tries his best to ignore this.
• Closet Key: Shimazaki to Sho. For his entire life Sho’s had crushes on boys but he always rationalized them as wanting really badly to be friends. He meets Shimazaki, becomes his best friend, and then eventually realizes that he wants to be more than friends….and this shakes his whole world.
• Closet Punishment: When Shimazaki was a child his father would lock him in his room for days on end when he made his existence known to his father. This directly contributes to his pathological need for attention as an adult.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Pretty much all of Claw. People regularly get beaten up terrible, sent to torture machines to awaken their powers, and are thrown in holes to rot. There’s really no choice but to get used to it.
• Confirmed Bachelor: Fukuda never married. If you ask him he’ll say that he never met the right person, well a person who wasn’t already married. If you ask Suzuki it’s because women are strange and don’t realize what a catch Fukuda is. If you ask anyone else it’s because he’s a very unpleasant man.
• The Corrupter: Shimazaki sees nothing wrong with sharing drugs of all kinds with everyone...even Mob and Sho.
• Corruption by a Minor: Mob doesn’t think that she’s doing anything wrong by getting Hatori stoned.
• Corruption of a Minor: Minegishi and Shimazaki prefer to deal with their problems through drinking and drugs…something that they taught to Mob and Sho. Minegishi at least feels guilty about what they did.
• Cringe Comedy: If it’s a chapter about the Ultimate Five, any of the characters attempting to interact with people in the normal world, or a Suzuki centric chapter be prepared for the cringe. That’s just how it goes when most of the cast has No Social Skills.
• Crush Filter: Hatori to Mob. He’s got terrible skin, wears unflattering clothes that he doesn’t wash often enough, and instead of bathing just puts on another layer of body spray…and Mob as far as Mob’s concerned he’s God’s gift to her.
• Deadpan Snarker: Minegishi Toshiki as in cannon.
• Deaf Composer: Shimazaki is covered in colorful and intricate tattoos…and he’s also completely blind.
• Denied Food as Punishment: Minegishi’s parents were found of denying them food whenever they used their powers in an attempt to starve the ‘crazy’ out of them. It didn’t work.
• Desperately Craves Affection: The entire cast, really. Suzuki craves affection from his wife but cannot express it causing her to leave, so he transfers all of those feelings onto Mob. Mob doesn’t much like being smothered by her dad but she doesn’t want him to stop loving her either and wants not only his love but everyone else’s because her mother left her. Sho craves love too and tries to get it from Shimazaki, one of the few positive relationships in his life, because Suzuki only interacts with him to put him down or punish him. Shimazaki spent most of his life being told that he was worthless because he was born blind and isolated in his room from a very early age. This causes him to cling to Sho, someone who he knows has a crush on but also enjoys being around, and also to Minegishi who he’s romantically involved with. Minegishi likes to think that they’re above needing love but changes once they start their friendship with Mob and will do anything not to lose her like they’ve lost so many people in their past.
• Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: Shimazaki loves hitting people with his cane as he walks by among other things. He knows that he’ll never get called on anything he does because he’s blind and he’s happy to exploit that.
• Disability Superpower: Shimazaki Ryou is blind, as in cannon, but his powers more than make up for this. He can read his opponents movements which, coupled with his teleporting and extra strong barrier, he more than makes up for his blindness.
• Disneyland Dad: Suzuki dumps his kids at Disneyworld for the first year or so after Masami leaves. They get bored of it pretty quickly.
• Doesn't Know Their Own Child: The only thing Suzuki knows about Sho is that he likes art and animals. That’s it.
• Domestic Abuse: Suzuki Touchirou may not realize it but he was incredibly emotionally abusive towards Masami.
• Doorstopper: It currently clocks in at 5,260,601 words over 1015 chapters as of Janurary 1st, 2023. This makes it the fourth longest work hosted on Archive of Our Own. The author recommends to begin reading at chapter 1000, which is when the plot starts to pick up for those that are turned away by it's absurd length.
• Drama Queen: Hatori and Suzuki. Hatori will panic and hide no matter what’s going wrong and Suzuki always overreacts to every single minor setback in life.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Mob has a bad habit of doing this as a coping mechanism and Minegishi will never forgive themselves for teaching Mob how to get drunk.
• Embarrassing Damp Sheets: Mob gets her first period while she’s sleeping next to her dad. She manages to get the sheets in the washing machine before he notices.
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: Suzuki just can’t say he’s in love…and that’s one of the things that drives Masami away from him. He gets better though, and over corrects in the other direction when it comes to Mob.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Suzuki and Minegishi can’t stand the idiots that they’re surrounded by.
• Enfant Terrible: Mob is seen as this by both Masami and Fukuda due to her powers and flat effect. She’s really just a sweet little girl but it’s difficult to see past it. The fact that Suzuki, her father, actually was one of these when he was young doesn’t help.
• Entitled Bastard: Fukuda treats everyone around him aside from Sho terribly but still expects to be respected. It doesn’t go well.
• Erotic Dream: Suzuki has one of these while he’s asleep next to Mob…and he mistakes her for his wife. He stops himself before he can do anything but he’s still shaken. Mob is just confused.
• Experimented in College: Suzuki and Fukuda experimented together in college…and high school….and middle school….but Suzuki swears that he’s straight. He just likes to occasionally kiss Fukuda because he would have been attracted to Fukuda if he had been born female. That’s how he rationalizes this to himelf.
• Family Man: Despite being horribly abusive Suzuki is devoted to his family.
• Family of Choice: Every member of the Ultimate Five, so far, comes to see Mob and Sho as either their children or their younger siblings.
• Fatal Flaw: Mob will do anything to make the people around her happy even if it’s detrimental to her. Suzuki will never believe that he can be wrong in any way. Fukuda can never examine his behavior and see why nobody likes him, in his mind he’s always good and moral and right. Shibata is incapable to saying no to a kid even if what the kid wants isn’t good for them. Shimazaki will do anything for attention and to alleviate boredom. Minegishi’s first impulse is always to push people away so they don’t get hurt. Hatori runs and hides at the first sign of danger no matter how small it is.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Suzuki is a firm believer in this and that’s why, by age eleven, Mob is cooking all of her family meals. The only trouble is that she can’t really cook.
• Fille Fatale: Fukuda starts to see Mob as this when he catches Shimazaki flirting with her. This colors his view of her for the rest of her life to the point that when he thinks that Hatori, another grown man, is interested in her he does nothing despite the fact that she isn’t even a teenager yet.
• First Period Panic: Mob doesn’t know what’s happening to her when she gets her first period. She thinks that she’s dying and she resigns herself to die. Sho, when he sees the blood on her, panics more than she ever did.
• Fool for Love: Minegishi’s been hurt before, and done some hurting, but they still fall in love with Shimazaki just the same.
• For Happiness: Mob will do anything to make her friends happy regardless of whether or not it’s a good idea.
• For Your Own Good: Suzuki’s justification for the way he treats Sho.
• Forced Out of the Closet: Hatori is outed by Suzuki…and he was never ‘in’ to begin with.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Masami and Suzuki marry very soon after meeting because she gets pregnant with Sho.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Suzuki may have had very pushy, cold, and distant parents but that’s no excuse for how he treats his kids.
• Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't: Sho and Mob don’t have the best home life, or even a decent one, but what they do have are their friends and those friends are better family to them than they actual mother and father.
• Friends with Benefits: Shimazaki and Minegishi. Also, in the past, Suzuki and Fukuda…though they’ve vowed never to speak of it again.
• From the Mouths of Babes: Anything that comes out of Minori Asagiri’s mouth. Anything. Mob has her moments too after she becomes friends with Minori.
• Gay Best Friend: Hatori to Suzuki thanks to an impulsive lie.
• Gayngst: Sho. He’s got to deal with having a crush on someone thrice his age, his father’s disproval, and the fear of rejection from everyone when they realize the truth... and this starts when he’s only ten.
• Geeky Turn-On: If a woman so much as mentions math, science fiction, or any combination of the two they will have Suzuki’s heart.
• Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand: Masami is the gentle touch, Suzuki is the firm hand. It doesn’t go well.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Suzuki to Mukai. He doesn’t even acknowledge her as his daughter in his own mind.
• Glurge Addict: Sho, Mob, and Shimazaki will eat anything so long as it’s covered in sugar or chocolate.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: Sho has one of these when he catches Shimazaki in bed with Minegishi. He realizes that he can’t compete with boobs, someone who was born female, and he realizes that he isn’t competing with Minegishi for Shimazaki’s friendship but his love.
• Guilt Complex: Mob thinks everything that goes wrong is her fault even when it has nothing to do with her.
• Guilty Pleasure: Suzuki Touichirou loves sci-fi, arcade games, and hanging out with his daughter….but if anyone asks he only does these things for legitimate work reasons.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Suzuki and Sho.
• Handicapped Badass: Shimazaki is completely blind and has been from birth…but he’ll still kick your ass without breaking a sweat. Just as Fukuda.
• Has a Type: Mob has a thing for geeky guys as can be seen in her crush on Hatori. Sho has a thing for bad boys as can be seen in his crush on Shimazaki. Suzuki has a thing for intelligent light haired women as can be seen in his marriage to Masami. Fukuda has a thing for women Suzuki is attracted to see his affair with Masami. Minegishi likes honesty even if the person that they’re into is honestly insane as can be seen by their relationship with Shimazaki. Hatori is, apparently, into something so strange that he’s been forbidden from talking about it.
• Hates Their Parent: Sho hates his father for the lifetime of abuse. Shimazaki and Minegishi feel the same about their parents for similar reasons. It’s easier to name the characters who don’t gate their parents.
• Helicopter Parents: Suzuki before he learns to tone it down. He doesn’t want Mob out of his sight but he gets better…though God help any boy who dares talk to his precious little girl.
• Hikikomori: Serizawa, as in cannon. Suzuki tends to fall into his behavior when he does something he finds completely abhorrent ie: sleeping with a woman who isn’t Masami.
• Hime Cut: Mob has one of these coupled with a pair of braids.
• Housewife: Masami was a housewife for the duration of her marriage. She finds it incredibly claustrophobic and mourns the life she left behind. Mob plans on becoming a housewife when she grows up because she’s been given no other option in life.
• How Dad Met Mom: Masami isn’t happy when Mob asks how she and Suzuki met. She met him at a train station, went to bed with him, and then got pregnant with Sho. Mob is only seven when she asks and she doesn’t understand why her mom doesn’t want to talk about this.
• I Miss Mom: Mob and Sho never stop missing Masami no matter how many years pass.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Minegishi whenever they’re with Shimazaki. Sho overhears one of these on the worst Valentine’s Day of his life.
• Inconvenient Attraction: Sho’s crush on Shimazaki. Sho has been given a very clear path in life, one which involves marrying a woman and continuing his bloodline, and he knows that his father will never accept that he’s gay. In addition to his father’s homophobia Shimazaki is also Sho’s best friend, is twenty years older than him, and is in love with Minegishi. This crush causes Sho no shortage of pain and no matter how many times he tries to fall out of love it never sticks.
• In Love with Love: It’s unclear how much of Mob’s attraction to Hatori came from being in love with him and how much of it came from the steady diet of Disney movies she’s been fed her entire life.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Sho is very attached to Shimazaki and doesn’t respect a locked door. Twice he’s walked in on Shimazaki and Minegishi right in the middle of it. Mob, at least, learns from the first time she walks in on them.
• It Runs in the Family: Sho is just as prone to fits of anger and mood swings as his father and he’s just as obsessive about the people he loves as his father.
• I Want Grandkids: Suzuki wants grandkids…to raise with Mob. Mob who is in still in her tweens.
• The Jailbait Wait: Shimazaki is very open about the fact that he’s waiting for Mob to hit the age of consent... the age of consent that was in effect in Japan when he was young. Everyone but Minegishi thinks that he’s just kidding. He’s not.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Shimazaki and Minegishi. Minegishi may be too tired to deal with everyone, they may rarely if ever have a kind word to say to anyone, and they may be more likely to kill you than to help you but God help you if you do anything to hurt Mob. They’re fiercly loyal to her and, eventually, the rest of the Ultimate Five as well. The same goes for Shimazaki who, yes, does love to cause chaos and torment people in either violent or juvenile ways, but he still cares deeply for Minegishi, Mob, and Sho and will defend them to the death.
• Kids Are Cruel: Sho, in his younger years, took all of his anger out on Mob because she was the only person around who could take it. He gets better after seeing what his dad does to people who make him angry and hasn’t hit Mob once since.
• Kids Raiding the Wine Cabinet: Mob when she’s eight. She starts drinking and, at first, it’s cute…but then she develops a drinking habit before she’s even in the double digits. Sho, thankfully, doesn’t much care for drinking and doesn’t pick this habit up from his sister.
• The Killjoy: Fukuda. Every party has a pooper and Fukuda makes it his business to poop any parties he can find.
• The Kindnapper: Shimazaki is a fan of kidnapping people to take them on friendship-affirming fieldtrips. Such as the time he took Mob on a coke-fueled field trip all around Tokyo.
• Lack of Empathy: Somehow Fukuda moreso than Suzuki. Suzuki doesn’t get empathy right off the bat but when someone explains their feelings to him logically he makes an effort to understand. Fukuda just doesn’t think that other people even have feelings.
• Ladykiller in Love: Shimazaki to Minegishi. It takes him years in universe to even begin to come to terms with his feelings but when he does it’s worth it.
• Lap Pillow: Shimazaki and Minegishi are fond of this even before they become an official couple.
• Last Het Romance: More like first het romance. Sho realizes he’s gay when he enters into his first romantic relationship and realizes that he doesn’t feel anything romantic for his girlfriend.
• Lawful Pushover: Mob may have power in Claw second only to her father but she almost never uses it.
• Lazy Husband: Masami sees Suzuki as this. She does everything around the house and raises their children while he jets around the world. She has no idea what he actually does but he doesn’t help out around the house when he’s home and that feeds into her resentment of him.
• Limited Social Circle: The Ultimate Five plus the kids pretty much only know the Ultimate Five plus the kids. Suzuki’s social circle is even more limited, he pretty much only has Hatori and Fukuda, which is good because for the past thirty years it’s only been Fukuda.
• Loner-Turned-Friend: Minegishi towards Mob and, eventually, the rest of the Ultimate Five. Suzuki towards Fukuda, when they were kids, and then later on towards Hatori.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: This is why Suzuki forbids Mob from cutting her hair.
• Love at First Sight: When Suzuki met Masami. It doesn’t end well.
• Love Confession: These never end well. Shimazaki confesses to Minegishi while he and Mob are tripping on acid. It gets him slapped across the face. Sho confesses to Shimazaki after getting high for the first time. Shimazaki brushes him off. Mob does the same for Hatori when she’s stone cold sober. He runs away. Hatori confesses to Minegishi in front of everyone at the Holiday Party thanks to the magic of champagne and MDMA. He’s lucky he’s still alive.
• Love Confessor: Fukuda just loves to spill the beans when one of the kids has a crush. He tells Shimazaki that Sho has a crush on him, tells Suzuki that Sho has a girlfriend, and tells Suzuki and Hatori that Mob has a crush on Hatori. He’s tight lipped, though, when it comes to his own feelings about Masami.
• Love Epiphany: Shimazaki has one while on acid. Minegishi is not amused and it takes several in universe months for them to share his feelings.
• Love Hotels: Sho is conceived in one. Shimazaki and Minegishi upgrade their relationship in one.
• Love Hurts: Every single character will be in pain if they’re in love. There are no exceptions.
• Love Is a Weakness: Suzuki believes this at first until Mob teaches him otherwise. Then in true Suzuki Touichirou fashion he overcorrects.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Suzuki and Sho don’t handle love well…at all.
• Love Triangle: Even years after leaving Masami still finds herself in the middle of one of these between her husband, Suzuki, and her husband’s best friend, Fukuda, despite the fact that she hasn’t spoken to either of them since she ran away.
• Mal Mariée: This is how Masami sees herself. Whether this matches up with reality or not is up to interpretation.
• Married to the Job: Suzuki is away from his family, at first, for weeks if not months at a time on official Claw business. He doesn’t see a problem with this as he’s doing important work, in his mind, and he provides for his family. Later it comes out that his father was the same way with him.
• Maternally Challenged: Arguably Suzuki Masami. She kept her kids fed, clean, and educated but she did nothing about the physical and emotional abuse her husband put them, particularly Sho, through. She also said nothing when her kids came up with the idea that they each got one parent to love them. This isn’t even going into running away from home and leaving her two kids with their abusive father. Despite teaching Mob to take drugs and drink in order to cope with her problems at least Minegishi admits that they’re maternally challenged and never calls themselves Mob’s mother.
• Menstrual Menace: Averted with Mob. She doesn’t lose control of her powers on her period any more so than normal. She’s only a little irritable…though that may be the result of her little brother and dad putting her on bedrest every time she gets her period.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Suzuki Touichirou is not normal. It’s strongly implied that he’s on the spectrum. He has very niche interests, can’t read social cues, and has trouble with facial expressions and tones. He also fits the criteria for several personality disorders.
• Missing Mom: Suzuki Masami has been missing from her children’s lives since Mob was seven and Sho was six.
• A Mistake Is Born: Sho was a mistake and Suzuki isn’t afraid to admit this. He had no intention of getting Masami pregnant that day…and he’s not happy with what he got.
• Mood-Swinger: Suzuki Touichirou. He can go from waxing poetic about how much he loves Mob one moment to contemplating how to drown his Son without anyone knowing the next... and then he’ll just settle for playing Minecraft.
• Music/Age Dissonance: Shimazaki’s love of the Beatles along with anything from the 60’s and early 70’s…despite being born in 1985. They were the only records he had as a kid and his mother loved them and, her being the only source of love and kindness for him in his childhood, become the music he loved best in his adult love. He passed that love down onto Sho.
• My Girl Is a Slut: Shimazaki likes that Minegishi sleeps around. It’s the idea of them falling in love with someone else that bothers him.
• My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That: Shimazaki can read people’s movements, sense their auras, and see the blood travelling through their bodies. He can tell immediately when someone is into him or someone else. This doesn’t help Shimazaki when Sho gets a crush on him, though it’s implied the he’s in denial.
• Naginatas Are Feminine: Suzuki is a firm believer in this and his wishes that Mob had taken up the naginata. She, of course, hates violence.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Mob’s got a thing for older dorks as is evidenced by her very long and very intense crush on Hatori.
• Nervous Wreck: Hatori in a nutshell. Every little set back can send him running and hiding in the nearest small, cramped space…usually the bathroom.
• No Social Skills: Mob, as in cannon, is not the most socially competent person but she’s got nothing on Suzuki Touichirou. A combination of strict parents, having only a single friend, and an untreated mental disorder will do that to a person.
• Odd Friendship: Shimazaki and Sho bond over their mutual love of chaos, building forts, and playing in the park despite the fact that Shimazaki is twenty years older than Sho. Minegishi and Mob are another odd friendship with Minegishi starting off as a misanthropic loner and Mob as a lonely eight year old girl. The oddest friendship, however, is between Suzuki and Hatori who bond over Minecraft of all things.
• Oblivious to Love: Shimazaki needs to be told that Sho has a crush on him despite the fact that Sho does nothing at all to hide his feelings for Shimazaki. Hatori is the same way with Mob. Averted with Minegishi and Shimazaki. They know how he feels but they choose to ignore it so that they don’t have to deal with it.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Suzuki has a terrible habit of doing this to women. This is how he got his son, Sho, and his daughter, Mukai.
• One True Love: Suzuki and Fukuda both believe that Masami is this to them.
• Only Friend: Fukuda and Suzuki for three decades. Fukuda does not take it well at all when Suzuki makes friends with Hatori.
• Open-Minded Parent: Suzuki is weirdly alright with Mob drinking and smoking before her teen years…but Sho being gay…well that’s another story.
• Opposites Attract: Minegishi and Mob. One is a depressed misanthropic twenty something and the other is a positive little girl who’s a believer in the powers of love and friendship.
• Over-Enthusiastic Parents: Suzuki to Mob.
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Suzuki is terrified of the vulnerability that comes with sex and love... despite being obsessed with sex and love.
• Parental Abandonment: Masami abandoned her children when she ran away from home. She had plans to send for Sho once she got established…though we have yet to learn what happened to her.
• Parental Favoritism: Suzuki has always favored Mob since the first day he brought her home.
• Parental Neglect: Suzuki is incredibly neglectful to both of his kids for years. He comes around when he starts to see Mob as an adult but Sho could starve to death for all he cares. He’s stated as such multiple times.
• Parental Obliviousness: Suzuki spends years completely oblivious to Mob’s alcohol and drugs abuse for years.
• Parental Substitute: Fukuda to Sho, the job is entrusted to him by Masami, and Minegishi to Mob, the job is thrust onto them because they’re the only person sane enough for the job.
• Parents as People: Suzuki may be a dad but he also likes retro arcade games, kendo, documentaries about outer space, learning about other cultures, and plotting world domination.
• Parent Never Came Back from the Store: Masami went out for a walk one day and just never came back.
• Parent with New Paramour: Mob does not take it well when Pang Su-jin starts flirting with her dad in front of her and she’s aghast when Minegishi tells her that Pang Su-jin wants to be in a relationship with Suzuki. She similarly doesn't take it well when she finds out about Sakata Shiori.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: When Mob and Sho finally get the talk their first thought is ‘Mom and dad sis THAT?!’. They considered the only good thing about their mom being gone is the fact that they can be reasonably assured that their parents will never do anything like that to each other ever again.
• Parenting the Husband: Masami sees herself as being more of a mother than a wife to her husband. Mostly because he’s disconnect from her emotionally and treats her more like a maid, nanny, and call girl…in Masami’s mind at least.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Mob and Minegishi have these fairly often whenever something emotionally heavy happens. Shimazaki has made one of these to Sho…though it wasn’t exactly platonic on Sho’s end.
• Pervert Dad: People gossip that Suzuki is this due to the very spousal way he treats Mob. This includes sharing a bed with her, treating her like an equal member of the household, deferring to her when it comes to raising Sho, and the fact that he constantly talks about how he could never be unfaithful to her.
• The Pig-Pen: Sho can’t stand to be in water after he goes through the awakening experiments and as a consequence of this he severally cuts down on his bathing. It’s not so bad until he starts to hit puberty.
• Pining After Protagonist's Parent: Fukuda never stops pining after Masami. A first it’s romantic but then it just gets sad as the years go by and it becomes more and more obvious that Masami is never coming back. It comes to a head when Sho finds out that Fukuda has been emailing Masami despite the fact that her email account is inactive. Fukuda manages to convince Sho that he loves Masami as a friend but even Sho thinks that it’s weird.
• Porn Stash: Minegishi has quite the substantial stash of manga and erotic novels hidden under their bed.
• Power Incontinence: Mob, as in cannon, though she gets better after a little help from her friends. Suzuki has the same problem, though he prefers to suppress any and all strong emotion instead of finding alternative, and healthier, ways of dealing with his powers.
• Precocious Crush: Mob gets one of these on Hatori and Sho gets one of these on Shimazaki. Neither goes well.
• Princess Phase: Mob goes through one of these from seven to ten in which her only clothes were princess costumes from the Disney store. She would have gone on living in princess costumes if they still made them in her size.
• Professionals Do It on Desks: Mukai is conceived when Suzuki and a subordinate get busy on his office desk. Most of Suzuki’s sexual fantasies involved bending women, and some men if in some alternate universe they had been born women, over desks. He has a thing for desks.
• Promotion to Parent: Suzuki literally promotes Mob to mom rank in their family. She is explicitly tasked with raising her little brother Sho…and this comes after he drops her sister, Mukai, into her lap to raise.
• Puppy Love: Sho and his English girlfriend, Emmy, are as adorably in love as two tweens can be…despite the fact that Sho has no romantic feelings for her. Mob goes through her own puppy love with a boy in her class when she’s in the first grade and, yes, it’s adorable.
• Pushover Parents: Suzuki lets Mob drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, and indulge in marijuana at the age of ten because he doesn’t want to alienate her by telling her to stop…no matter how much he hates her vices. Fukuda, despite not being Sho’s father, lets him get away with anything up to and including beating up his sister and giving himself homemade stick and poke tattoos. He doesn’t want to make Sho’s life harder than it has to be, and he’s made a promise to Masami to take care of him, so he lets Sho get away with everything.
• Raised by the Community: Suzuki isn’t a good, decent, or even acceptable father to his children so it falls to the Ultimate Five, and Fukuda, to raise Mob and Sho. They don’t do a great job but at least they’re trying.
• Ready for Lovemaking: Shimazaki can tell that Minegishi is in the mood based on if they use the soap that he likes.
• Really Gets Around: Shimazaki and Minegishi. Suzuki when he was younger.
• Relationship Upgrade: Shimazaki and Minegishi in chapter 360. Masami and Fukuda in chapter 18.
• Rich Bitch: Asagiri Minori
• Rightly Self-Righteous: Fukuda. He may be a generally unpleasant person and he may look down on every adult character but he has a point. He genuinely looks out for Sho’s best interests, is there for him emotionally, and is the only adult in his life who actually tries to make his life better. Also he doesn’t give the kids drugs.
• Sacred First Kiss: Suzuki and Fukuda’s relationship can be summed up on the fact that Fukuda was Suzuki’s first kiss back when they were kids. For as cold as Suzuki can be, and how often he says that he doesn’t need anyone, he cares deeply for Fukuda and for as much as Fukuda claims to hate him the feeling goes both ways.
• Samaritan Relationship Starter: Suzuki isn’t attracted to Minegishi at all until they help Mob out when she has her first period and freaks out. Suzuki starts to think of them as a woman and starts to check them out and obsess over them. He has yet to do anything about his feelings aside from give them extravagant gifts.
• Sanity Slippage: Suzuki starts to really lose it after Masami leaves and really goes over the deep end after Mukai is born.
• Serial Romeo: Suzuki Touichirou cannot speak to a woman for five seconds without falling in love with her. Sho takes after his father in this respect, though he’s gay.
• Sex Equals Love: Minegishi and Shimazaki start off in a friends with benefits relationship and end up in a committed relationship.
• Sexless Marriage: Masami and Suzuki find themselves in one of these towards the end. Suzuki is afraid of the vulnerability that comes with having sex so he depends on Masami to initiate. Masami thinks that Suzuki isn’t attracted to her and has no sex drive at all because he never initiates.
• School Forced Us Together: If they hadn’t ended up in the same middle school Fukuda and Suzuki would have never met. Aside from both being espers they have nothing in common and, if not for the fact that they had been in the same class in middle school, their thirty year long friendship would have never started.
• Shipping Bed Death: Minegishi and Shimazaki are much less interesting after they confess their love for one another and enter into a relationship.
• Shipping Torpedo: Suzuki is vehemently against Shimazaki having anything to romantically do with Mob.
• Shotgun Wedding: Masami and Suzuki get married after only knowing each other for a few weeks because Masami gets pregnant with Sho.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Fukuda treats Mob terribly because she’s like Suzuki. He sees the worst in her no matter what she does and he pushes her away no matter how much it distresses her.
• Sleeping with the Boss: Pang Su-jin sleeps with Suzuki not to get ahead in Claw but because she’s genuinely attracted to him.
• Sleeping with the Boss'sWife: Fukuda sleeps with Suzuki’s wife, Masami, and this is directly responsible for the breakup of the Suzuki family.
• Sleeps with Everyone but You: Minegishi gets around but won’t touch Hatori with a ten foot pole. He takes it rather well all things considered.
• Smells Sexy: The way a person smells is a big part of attraction in this story. If one character is attracted to another the way they smell will be waxed poetic about.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: More like smitten tween-age girl. Mob crushes hard on Hatori from the ages of ten to eleven despite the fact that he’s nine years older than she is.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Minegishi Toshiki has had a hard life by anyone’s standards. They were starved, beaten, and verbally abused as a child to the point that the Japanese government took them away from their parents and sent them to live in group home that, really, wasn’t much better. Their life didn’t improve after being emancipated at fifteen and meeting the love of their life. They don’t let people in because of the life they’ve lived. Don’t worry, Mob helps with that.
• Sports Dad: Suzuki had one of these growing. As punishment for losing a kendo match, getting a point against him, or just not winning quickly enough his father would make him practice kendo without armor of any kind. Suzuki sees nothing wrong with how he had been treated growing up but also doesn’t push Sho into anything that he doesn’t want to do.
• Stalker with a Crush: Suzuki to every single woman he’s ever had feelings for at any point in his life. Sho takes after him when it comes to Shimazaki.
• Stalking is Love: Suzuki is a firm believer that the way to a woman’s heart is to follow her around so that you can learn everything about her and then show up randomly in her life with extravagant gifts that she didn’t ask for.
• Strangely Arousing: Mob has no idea why the constant smell of cheap body spray and permanently orange fingers that Hatori has turn her on.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: Suzuki has always been attracted to Fukuda and he can’t stand it. He rationalizes it in his mind that it’s alright as long as he imagines Fukuda as a woman. He still hates these constant intrusive thoughts, though.
• The Talk: Masami gives an age appropriate one to Mob and Sho when they are four and five years old. Minegishi gives a more in-depth one to Mob when she’s eleven after she has her first period. Shimazaki attempts to give one to Sho when he’s ten…and he ends up learning a thing or two himself. Nobody took the time to tell him exactly how conception worked so he pieced it together on his own.
• Their First Time: Mob and Teru in chapter 666 at the age of twelve. Neither of them are ready and it may very well end up sinking the ship.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky: Suzuki knows that there aren’t enough espers in the world to be picky about who he recruits. Hence why the Awakened run the gambit from childish to just plain bizarre.
• Tough Love: Suzuki is a firm believer in this. He’s spent Sho’s entire life verbally and physically abusing him in the hopes that it’ll make him better. Later on it’s revealed that his own father treated him just as terribly, including hitting him with a kendo sword whenever he did anything wrong.
• Transparent Closet: Everyone but Suzuki has always been well aware that Sho is gay and they have been since even before he realized it himself.
• Trophy Child: Mob is Suzuki’s trophy child. In his eyes she is the most perfect person to have ever lived. That’s not an exaggeration.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Mob after she befriends Minegishi. First she starts drinking to control her powers…and then she starts drinking on her own…and then smoking... and then the drugs, By the age of eleven she’s a seasoned drinker and budding stoner.
• True Blue Femininity: Mob’s favorite color is blue.
• True Love Is a Kink: Suzuki has a love kink. He can’t feel sexual attraction to a woman, and never has been able to, without also wanting to marry the subject of his affection and take care of her for the rest of his life.
• Turn Out Like His Father: This is Sho’s greatest fear. He can see himself becoming as angry as his father, and he can see how quick he is to hit people, and he’s taking steps to break the cycle before he has his own kids.
• The Un Favourite: Sho has always been Suzuki’s least favorite child. This dates to the day that Sho had been born…and Mob hadn’t been adopted yet. He never forgave Sho for being a C-section baby, crying excessively, and generally acting like a baby. It doesn’t get any better as time goes on.
• Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: Fukuda had an affair with Masami. He considers them to be in love and, even though he hasn’t spoken to her in years, he still loves her and probably will never stop.
• Useless Bystander Parent: Masami did absolutely nothing to protect her children from her husband’s verbal and physical abuse. She knew exactly what was going on but not only did she not even do as little as tell her husband to stop but she even ran away and left her children alone with them.
• Weakness Turns Her On: Mob has a thing for guys who are taller than her but also need her and depend on her.
• "Well Done, Dad!" Guy: Suzuki just wants to do right by Mob. That’s all. Everything he does he does for her and he’s called her, on more than one occasion, he described her as his reason and his life.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Part of Sho hates his father and the other part wants nothing more than to make his dad proud.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Suzuki will do anything to rule the world…but for his own selfish reasons. He wants to rule the world so that espers won’t have to hide or be alone anymore, something that he knows on a fundamental level hadn’t had a good effect on him growing up.
• Went Crazy When They Left: Suzuki has been on a downward trajectory after Masami left him. Everyone who knows him comments on how much he’s declined. He’s even set Claw back with his instability.
• What Does She See in Him?: Nobody understands why Mob has a crush on Hatori. She’s ten when she starts crushing on him and he’s a nineteen year old with bad skin, bad personal hygiene, and is very over dramatic even by Claw standards.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Suzuki for the first part of his children’s lives. His father had been the same way when he had been young.
• Where Did We Go Wrong?: Suzuki asks himself this constantly when it comes to Sho. He’s aware enough to know that there is something wrong with his son but he’s not self-aware enough to know that maybe the lifetime of abuse was where he had gone wrong.
• Why Are You Not My Son?: Fukuda to Sho. He wishes that he had started his affair with Masami sooner so that there could be some chance that Sho was his son.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Suzuki has never kept it a secret that he wishes that Sho was more like Mob. This is given Sho no shortage of issues.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You??: Suzuki blames Sho for all the times that he’s hit him. Later on it’s revealed that his father had been the same when he was young.
• Women Are Delicate: Suzuki is a firm believer that men exist to protect women because they can’t possibly protect themselves. Even Mob, the second most powerful esper in the world, is not exempt from this. This is a combination of the culture he was raised in and the time period he was born in.
• World of No Grandparents: Nobody in this story has living grandparents. Justified because Claw isn’t populated by people with good family lives. Most people are either orphans or estranged from their parents.
• Yandere: Sho to Shimazaki. He wants to mess Minegishi up, badly, for even going near him…Minegishi and everyone else in the world. His big sister when he thinks she has a crush on him. Shimazaki’s drug dealer/tattoo artist/ friend from childhood. Strangers on the street who admire his tattoos. Shimazaki is Sho’s and will always be Sho’s…in his mind at least.

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