During the days when the ravens had finally became silent with their adamant murmurations of warnings from somewhere else, the streets of the cities become devoid of the fur and slime and scale that would catch anyone's eye, even from the pair of spectacles above an open building like an ivory tower surrounded by bogs and giant thorns.
The populace crammed over the streets and shops each day, like a legion of crocodiles over a piece of rotten or mince meat hanging over a twig at any time of the usual forenoon; their jaws hung open from either awe of delight or the petrification that came with terror and panic. One time there had been something that lingered over the city stones and people had become a-frenzied by the suddenness of each waking beast, or one of themselves among the heaping and smelly soiled clothes of rich fat men. Flaunting like a mess each person would hide themselves in between stone and stone in hopes of something else to happen each day of the week, and each week of the month— and so on, so on. Much to some peerages' delight if they weren't caught in between the bourgeoisie and the masses or chawbacons.
The dark-haired woman looked down at her phone, the screen darkening enough for her to actually read it whilst each ray from the corners of her eyes became overcome with ardent uselessness, thus gaining another spectrum of vibrance. Her eyes squinted but blurred from her circular glasses, tinted as brown as the leather straps of her tactical pants like reigns— and the image around her stilled and she ignored the distant bargaining of a clerk just a few shops back.
Her mouth came down to a visible frown, although her black mask obscured her obvious distain and the woman's fingers slightly tightened around small straps from her left, again, like reigns on whatever beast she would lead a-pacing in a deserted town where rum was only a hundred yen, or a thousand. Whichever you'd like if you're confident and brave enough to retrieve it from mold or from dust. She stood still, akin to the one back in City Q and unmoved even as millions bustled around it, and stared longer at the little rectangular technology in her gloved hand as if it was the bane of her ability to make sense to others— the breeze picked up just a little when the earthen odor of lilacs and hydrangeas came and went from under her masked nose, but enough to make her lengthy hair flow like a dark river behind her. Similarly enough as a flashflood carrying blackened waters in winter.
The day had been cold when she had awoken from a night of countless miscalculations and analysis, much like what an ex-teacher would imagine themselves in the past once again after quitting— though the sun hadn't even risen when her ever-so heavy eyelids fluttered earlier than her usual late mornings. And if Kei was there she would have commented how strange it was, as if the latter hadn't heard from her in a while; although brief, the mannerisms and unusual habits were still there. At that time, she had thought of visiting her partner who lived unfortunately far away from her own attentive grasps and tired murmurs during the early hours, maybe even late. Notably positioned and located within City M— wherein most of her doubts and anxiousness was housed and built up upon broken streetlights and sinkholes waiting to happen in the middle of the road during heavy traffic.
The heroine had been very adamant on herself to visit the other, although busied herself among the quiet dusk by having to talk to herself in her mind as she readied her clothes and shoes in royal tactfulness; silently agreeing on certain types of pins and perfumes whilst the warmth of the norn awaited for her mindful ramblings about the deep. Empty glass and plastic bottles and cans still lied about somehow— like dead moths around a smouldering candle, but the woman was too preoccupied on thinking about what to bring the other when she finally got to her partner's apartment that was tucked away, although dubiously, around other boarding buildings and shops and convenience stores.
Between her elbow and side was a beautiful bouquet of flushed pink roses and soft yellow blossoms, a garland that oozed of feminine purpose for the latter to take in, and arranged thoughtfully so the pastel colors would suit the heroine's other half, who, had naturally curly baby blue locks to match her equally significant azure blue eyes. Like the ocean in the day, who, held so many things and yet so little like a wonderful mysterious little box that you wouldn't expect to see on your doorstep at midnight.
Pink had always been a very vibrant color to her as it was always quite straining to the eyes albeit the hue beckoned young ladies for more sweets and ridiculous but amusing gossips amongst themselves and hid behind their fans like shy pups, but she appreciated it's soft counterparts such as peach or if the hue had been pastel— then it would be more desirable for her to look into, it was a feminine color that battled her oftentimes tomboyish methodology and ways of living. But she liked the color enough not to hate it, despite it's plain and blinding side.
A thin sheet of sweat was on her forehead as the hot sun bore on her body, roasting her slowly under dark attire, she was wearing a black coat when she had come out from her apartment and that the time was still fairly early; when the sun was only peeking from the sea like a child at a toy store, looking for anything that catches his eye even though he knows he cannot have them. Then it would be time to hide later on again in the clouds like poles in front of the said store if the child had wandered off again to chew on fake rubber just as the owners take notes at the possible disturbance. So by the time that she had arrived at the shops to buy her partner gifts, the heat was still simmering.
She was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with bouquet and all and looked as if she was going to a funeral event whilst she remained there, looking like the place where the burial was to happen changed last minute to about another location, maybe even in another city. Her outfit made her look like a fine gamine, though eyes looked more at the gems and riches displayed by other women like flags in a parade that passed her recklessly. Albeit the red-eyed heroine was trying to make sense of whatever time it was and her mind was currently tripping on air. Failing and trying to start her timely calculations again and again, like a broken watch that just wouldn't budge even as she hit it. Just like a syntax on a stubborn calculator during examinations or tests or quizzes that required any sort of mathematical reportage and corollary.
Eyebrows furrowed slightly as a pair of bloodred orbs glared holes on the cellphone's screen like two suns in a desert, but fortunately her number crunching had already spat out a result on her cramped brain: she should arrive twenty minutes earlier than she had thought of when she had set out if she took the bus, but then her preferred sweets shop was in the borders, so the woman would get off beforehand and pick chocolates good enough for the other. However Kaimetsu could also take the metal-bound wagons instead, and would just buy lesser sweets in one of the city's shops— then she could arrive only ten minutes precociously. Like broken clockwork that only budges slightly, however enough for the time seeker.
"Does it even matter if I arrive on time or not?" the heroine thought to herself, "But there wouldn't be a point in that if it's planned as a surprise, right? " gloved fingers idly scrolled through various reminders of the day, each landing as alarm clocks in her mind instead and a landmine for tomorrow if she didn't. She haven't seen the other in a week, too busy with her work as a professional hero as well as a leader of her group as she got eaten with whatever thing was currently living in her head as a result of neverending plots that was thrown useless in to the bin of devastated blueprints and clogged ink. One of the reasons why she decided to leave her dark apartment to come to her partner's lively one, where the other would clutch to her neck once she came to her home's doorstep like widowed wives to their lockets clutched close to their bosoms.
The woman seemed strange to the other people that walked by or inside of the buildings that had large windows overlooking the outside, like foreigners to new places and things as they pass by with the tour bus. Onlookers praying on other— possibly lesser— onlookers. Felicitously the red-eyed heroine was wearing shapeless clothing, a black cap and facemask as well as dark tinted teashade glasses to hide the identity of a well-known protector and a lesser known investigator of many masses and deep-rooted organizations and affairs possibly made by the mobs and beasts alike. So people wouldn't recognize her, which worked well since she was only standing there staring at her phone almost in a begrudgingly manner. And doing absolutely nothing else.
To Ultramatica, however, she was still calculating stuff that doesn't need to be calculated in her head— wondering if she should take off now or buy another accessory, she had already bought some things as well as a dress the other would like, but then that would be too much since she was planning on buying sweets and snacks that they would eat together as they hung out in the apartment. Just what little kids do when their companions had come over to play, or whichever simile you would appropriately perceive from this.
She was overthinking things again, like rich fat men with which higher bar would they go to fetch ladies in silk gowns, or maybe ones that looked pretty enough to catch. Or which restaurant would they go to feast like false kings from a broken empire. Usually she doesn't need to stand so still in the middle of a sidewalk to know what to get for the other since she already knows about it as soon as she steps from her doorstep and planted her feet on her 'welcome' mat, but now the woman only disregarded herself as confused when she realized that the latter was not expecting her. A probable surprise that would end up in a bear hug or a kiss, or may be that usurp of excitement and a tired greeting.
As the woman contemplated with another grain of disdain handpicked by the clouds itself, and if her right-hand man was here he'd tug at her arm and lead her to a store while muttering things about mountain dew or coca-cola or pepsi, or any other soft drink good enough for a hot day to the other. Then, ever so suddenly from the corners of her fierce eyes she saw that the vicinity had suddenly grown more brown— under her tinted teashade glasses, but perchance that if she would take it off the rays would be red or orange like smouldering coal in a fireplace or the color of pride imitated from a haughty but asthenic monster that declares itself the pinnacle of all creation before being reduced to a fine demolishment of it's once being. And so take it off she did.
*
The color was not as heavy as she had expected, but the air had became drier and the sky seemed a bit peach or more of a little orange, like an early sunrise. An eyebrow made itself clear that the woman was addled, but which was more concerning? The immediate chaotic of a reaction from the populace around her as she heard them run, stampeding the sidewalks with a million other feet not just her own or the children left behind as they cried their heart out with as much confusion as she. Or the red speck of something in the horizon far away, maybe even cities farther, that was unnoticeably but slowly falling down from the sky?
An alarm went off in her phone like singing blackbirds tweeting rather forcibly in the night, and vermillion orbs traveled down to sentences and sentences that came up from the Hero Association just as a vulture would over a dying faun. She stood there unmoved equivalent to a rock at the very bottom of a rapid moving river during a warm thunderstorm, rumbling deeply within this disarrayed turn of events. They said that it was a Level Dragon, though the hunk of a space rock the size of who knows what was to land in the parameters of City Z, the knowledge of the thing being so big there was a wide possibility of neighboring cities being affected by after effects or tremors and earthquakes taking place if the meteor was not diminished to reasonable fragments.
Once the sidewalks have been cleared of the panicking populace as if anything would affect City L from the meteor, the light sounds of tapping from the river-haired woman exchanged that of the barreled little road that was mumbling something from it's meticulously placed surface of the city grounds. Careful not to damage the delicate petals in her hold she pushed a glass door using her foot and went inside a small cafe, that— was considerate enough to look okay despite the thing going on outside amongst the rumbles and tumbles of one's lower appendage.
Ignoring the worried waitress the woman sat down with a huff on the Cafe's corners in order to work her way into the situation as privately as she can, pulling out a laptop from her bag and put the garland of sardonic blooms just beside the rectangular device in a swift manner. The thin black straps was gone from her surely grips as the black expensive looking bags was put down on the floor, unceremoniously as she would to her regular ones; though her perception of bills among paper didn't work it's way when you have more than enough.
Ordering a large cup of black coffee whilst still abandoning questions and worries from the petite woman in front of her, she had hurried the waitress and the lady hesitantly agreed once realizing that it couldn't be helped. The place grew silent and the sounds of tapping once again drowned her of the delay, eyes going back and forth to send a message for an accomplice whom also lived where the rock was intended to strike— and ordered for drones in her disposal to be deployed on the crashing site.
*
A walking tree wouldn't become much of a trouble for an oversized match with a personality of an avenging tiger, but anything with a lick of common sense that turned alive would have known they be defeated under the guise of painful recognition. And under the wrath and determination of a flaming cyborg with a lot of issues pertaining to an errand from his so-called superior.
Meanwhile as the cyborg continued his daily bouts with the dust in their apartment— sparring with them like a peacock over soiled cement, the true master of the small house has continued on his weekly quotas in a forced manner to reconcile his lost and stolen victories from the last three years like an eagle looking out for it's lost prey amongst the blinding of all the leaves and twigs from the forest below. The bald hero had decided on perduring his acts as a professional hero in place of the names the masses has given him, and some of the disdain driven out from the populace out of their whitening tongues for drinking too much liquor.
Despite the impeccable weirdness that seems to happen around them in a daily basis just as a dog doing it's routine chase after it's never-becoming tail; their days had been going on somehow normal in terms of prevalence from the yellow and white and red clad man, though their hunts and diurnal excursion persisted almost every day and a shrub of moss had already overgrown the old newspapers that the blond had thrown outside in a haste after reading it's balderdash dissertations. Deeming it useless when they already have a TV and a walking robotic almanac.
Saitama didn't really have to try to make an impression of wisdom when it comes to Genos, considering that he had made blunt lines from the past and that the other had taken it seriously as if the phrase had come from a great philosopher's mouth. Almost as if he was a kindergartner talking to that one man outside of the school who always seemed to stare into the distance and smoke paper. It was also baffling and a bit ironic that the young man was naive and streetwise at the same time, jotting down the words the bald man has said as fast as he could analyze the other anomalies in produce. An amusing but also slightly concerning trait of the boy.
The norn had been boring for Saitama that day, as any other time really, he read the manga in his hand as he simultaneously listened to the news broadcasting. The volume on a low buzz, much to the latter's memorandum of why you should do this or that (in terms in listening what you wanted to hear and take in, nevermind the unserviceable banter happening between the announcers); the bald man could hear it perfectly due to his heightened senses however, and only laid on his back as he read wearily; drowning the sound of Genos drying up the freshly washed plates with his built in radiator.
The boy, as best as he could do to finish his enterprise that he had taken hastily from his teacher, the plates came and go like a flock of birds waiting for the sun up north and east— flapping their wings up and down strategically in order to stay in place as they went. But this isn't a story about birds or the sun or the teachings of a washed out plate; my, but the blond had begun picking up fair speeds on picking up the wares so he could maybe finish faster and maybe pick a fight with the toilet next.
A ring shattered the silence of the home, drowning out the sound of running water and plates being placed onto racks like rocks clacking against each other in the sites and that the moisture became devoid of the water that came from it. Genos finished his job of doing the dishes and picked up the phone he had that he had gotten from the Association, a form of modern yet reactionary point of communication from one being to another; bringing the device close to his possible fake ears he began to talk, but still began to move his shoulders as if to loosen up wires. As much as a cyborg could do without doing anything to his other systems, of course (not like it could, Saitama had once thought otherwise).
Saitama only continued reading as he ate chips nearby in another manner of boredom and exchange of something opposite coming off of his chagrin (the bald man felt as if something was nagging at him), the TV had been turned off of it's privilege on being watched when the latter had already conquered his bout with the earthen wares. Disinterested eyes stared blankly at the pages of the manga, reading it for the whatever time he had read it like an old man hovering over a newspaper from a month ago. As his mind drifted, he continued to turn the page even if nothing registered from the dialogue and drawings of the illustration novel— subconsciously continuing without thinking and the bald man only wondered what he and the cyborg will have in the afternoon.
Tempura, maybe? They do still have some in the fridge and it would be a shame if it goes to waste, there were noodles too but he wasn't really in the mood for it. Such are the thoughts of the yellow clad man in the battlefield with whom a certain S-Class admires so much as a kid to his favorite action idol who wasn't really that quite awesome for others but still clutched at by the management.
The bald man heard his disciple say something but he wasn't entirely listening, so instead he just nodded in recognition in languidness and in blind understanding. He was told that it was the association and that the blond was needed for something again, so as the young man exited the apartment Saitama joked about him getting fired akin to a schoolboy to his class comrade. Though he continued to read and think silently to himself again but soon would abandon the lines to look at the cities below when his pupil couldn't take the stubborn thing down as he usually—
*
A bit further into the future by whatever appropriate gap the readers would assume where things were placed, presuming they already know; the heroine had her eyes glued to the monitor in her laptop with a fierce manner and a hidden guarded articulation of things to come. Kindred to a prophet receiving an ill reportage. And if Kei was (again) here, she would be worried for all.
The woman's own form of technology and engineering was nowhere close to one of that of Metal Knight's creations, built by older yet nimble hands and maybe machinery though with the same origin— but her little things were efficient enough to act as a hawk's eye for her when necessary. She does not know where the old scientist get his supplies from as there could be a possibility that he himself make his own components; but let's not forget what we're here for.
The meteor was still in the horizon as seen from the perch of her drone back in City Z, she had told one of her members of her fellowship to deploy one of the things in their hold and it was now high in the air like a raven over desolation and chaos. Her stomach churned slightly in clouded disquietude as her brows were knitted in silent cognitive dissonance, the air around her as tense as the fingers hovering over the keyboard of the device. An empty cup of unworthy caffeine sat uselessly beside the garland, fragrance gone and petals sagged when it had absorbed the negativity oozing off of the heroine.
She had already ordered another cup, but larger in size to try as it must and might to quell her growing fear of the terrible outcome bested with the thoughts of another masses' worries. She wiped cold sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her coat whilst vermillion eyes that became dark by the time she had read the message sent from the society of hopeless nonpareils and corrupted narcissists had come to her like little singing devil-angels with trumpets up their asses. None of the patrons present in the bistro dared to confront the gamine in black with a bouquet on her table, should she be someone important or the other and was receiving a sort of enormities placed in words and letters. Or maybe something else.
In her screen she saw three S-Class ranking beau ideals who stood right where the oversized alien shitload was to land— there was the mechanical Demon Cyborg, the master, Bang, and that other shining robot possibly made by the association or was it one of Metal Knight's seeing the mighty arsenal in it's back it has to be one of the old man's contrivances. But then again, there is a chance of the implicit display of the arsenal will not further damage the meteor, after seeing Demon Cyborg's own show that is. And the dark-haired woman knows two options for the meteor— which was painfully obvious that Tornado of Terror could stop it. Though she highly doubted that the other heroine would come and push a rock off course.
The other was Blast, though it was already non-ambiguous as to why that wouldn't happen.
"Such are the ways of one to many. " Ultramatica thought silently to herself, inclining her back to the chair's hold whilst wondering if oil is enough to retain the colors of the faded effloresce at her side. Her spine curled when her habit of not sitting straight came, and held the hot cup in her hand like a trophy she got from an apple-eating contest with which she won second place in. There was an air and an act around her that couldn't be perceived or said, when she leaned back at the chair the other patrons murmured and worried, some sweated. When she took off her glasses to wipe off the fog created from her ardent breaths their hearts stopped and their bones eroded into nothingness, bloodred orbs darkened though soft like slightly watered down amenities from criminals sent to execution; their throats and bones singing like a broken organ in the night when their skin is pierced and their head bobbing like moving castles afterwards. There was nothing else to say.
It had begun to look pink to her when she took of her sunglasses and the color spoke to her like a sailor mumbling in the night, intoxicated with rum and earthbound to the depths. It dizzied her eyes like a spiral would to a normal person, but then a silent recognition for something came from that deep mind of hers and she looked at the screen as if it held the answers to her questions in sleepless nights. Or that it was currently presenting her the 170 other stories of O Henry that she had been reading recently but not all at once; a Wordsworth Classics that her own mind fell in love with.
There was another that made themselves appear from the viewpoint of her drone and she tried to zoom in on the new figure like a hawk to a soon-to-be prey for an early dinner. The guy wore mostly yellow and sported a white cape behind him; fluttering in the wind like a flag in the battlefield. Weakly but held a mighty air around it that doesn't seem to be diminished even as the bodies begin to rot and fester under it's pole or blade. It looked as if it could have been there for ages.
Her brows furrowed further in thought and vaguely remembered that shiny bald head somewhere else, but couldn't pin down where or when— she could have seen him when she was out, or when she was going over articles or watching news. "Is he someone? " She asks in a silent mutter and leaned in further to have a better view of the scene on live on her device, cup of black coffee held in her hand like a pen waiting to dip into freshly pulled out paper, if the color of pure roasted earthen seeds was nice enough for the eye.
The man leaped, strong and exchanged his force with the spiderweb of large cracks whom he left behind from the mighty act. Then he flew like a swallow, or would he be compared more to the sudden gambado of changes and time warps of work days in the early years? There had been soliloquize muttered in between herself and the sun whilst the moon only peeked from the stacks of papers and metal from her workplace, but the office that she was presented was as dormant as a dead beast, and the woman had always turned down each proposition that was placed in her sight.
And I think the readers knew what happened next.
A gloved fist was slammed on the table, making the little furniture frisk slightly from the impact of her might as the other vendees and navvies jumped from the sudden resonation of force and possible frustration; but they wouldn't know, would they? The black clad woman stared at her screen incredulously with her vermillion eyes slightly widening and jaw almost slacking, though her self-discipline and lack of accommodation in terms of reaction stopped her from going over the line that she had written herself— but then the thing that she just saw loosened her grip on her own barb-wired conscience of something. A shaky line that looked like a grin made it's way to her stern face and a single sweat rolled down from the side of her face like a rock tumbling down from a cliff and landing harshly on the rapid harsh tides below.
"A-ah, well— " the heroine needed not to continue her sentence when she stood up and grabbed all of her things in a haste, that for the vendees looked that the dark woman was rushing out because something bad happened to one of her relatives; just as poets would assume their stanzas would stop and go, and only then a period would once again appear from all of the commas and question marks left behind by perspicacious fingers traced on dust and grime. However they were forced wrong for the only reason the gamine was leaving is because a lost star had died and the victor came down like one of Zeus's lightnings from the glorious heavens.
She slammed the payment of her stay on the counter, even if it had been more than enough, and left the cafe with silent taps from under her shoes just as a cat would be bouncing off from fence to fence unheard by the preys uneaten below. It had been a show, the beginning had been thrilling, filling the masses of dread and terrible wonder to what would happen next, the climax was amazing with a bright show of ire and destruction as if a dragon had made it's way through the city— only to die out for the giant bullets coming from a modern walking canon to rake over then. It was atrocious and provocative and made her feel something other than disappointment and nothing in a long, long while.
But, oh— the ending! Where all seems lost and unbound enough for all the beasts under the earth to reconcile for their own dismay and popped up in the surface; the hero had arrived! My, the river-haired heroine glared at the nothingness in front of with no reason at all, but the mask that obscured her lower face hid a jarring flash of sharp white teeth whilst the heroine smiled almost in a predatory-like manner. Though her thoughts said otherwise about her eyes and the metaphor that was presented with it.
It nagged at her skin and dragged her mind with their hinges not touching the void that it had held onto, her fingers tightened around the bags with things meant for another time and the grip on the garland at her other side will need a vase for it's long but temporary stay with her for a while, though the red-eyed heroine doubts that it would last long under her care. But did not care for it today, for other matters needed to be settled first.
And if not, then, she'd be damned if the society she's in doesn't further listen to her ultimatum longer the woman will only look into the mirror to punch it and use the shards for the association's eyes.
A/N:Hey guys, sorry for not updating sooner, had stuff to do while I was thinking about things to write here. But I hope you enjoyed, though! You can put reviews and constructive criticism if you like, but just please be nice.