To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour. A robin red breast in a cage, puts all heaven in a rage. A dove house filled with doves and pigeons, shudders Hell through all its regions.
Once upon a time, nothing more than a beautiful metaphor. Any small, inconsequential thing in the world could contain the truths we as a species so desperately sought, if we were to look at them with the right amount of imagination.
I wonder what William Blake would say if he could see us now, half a millennium later. Where I could take the infinity he'd spoken about, and twist it into whatever I wished.
It would probably be something along the lines of "what thy fuck". Then he'd lead a mob that would hunt me down for witchcraft, and then things would get really crazy when they would try to burn me at the stake, and… this whole diatribe is getting away from me.
The world I saw was fragmented in the gravel my bike rumbled quietly over. Heaven sang to me from the sakura blossom petals that drifted through the setting sunlight and to the ground around me. No matter what life I was leading, there was a certain magic in the simple act of returning home in the evening. For all the wacky biology and superheroism in the world, the introverted desire to just collapse on the couch and worry about cooking dinner later shone through like a beacon in the night.
All things considered, this was barely even my home. I'd not been there in months, and had spent a scant few days before leaving the first time. I didn't even know if we had a couch big enough for me to tip over the back of without immediately bouncing my head off the ground. And yet as I turned the last corner and that ridiculous mansion came into view, all I could feel was relief.
Maybe it wasn't the home I wanted, but it was the home I had. And it felt good to be back.
Not much had changed in my absence. The paint was slightly shinier, and the garden beds lining the porch, empty but for dirt and bugs when I had left, had been filled with small flecks of greenery. I couldn't tell what any of them were just from sight, but if I had to guess, I would have said that they'd end up steeping in a tea cup.
The biggest difference, however, was the small playground that had been fenced in beside the garage. The colours were muted, a stark difference to the building blocks in eclectic and seizure-inducing shades that any public park was made of. I had to laugh at the swingset; looking far more cobbled together than the rest, with two small seats set off to one side, and three larger ones taking up the rest of the space.
One of the recliners that had been in the front room when I'd left. A seat that looked like it had been torn from the front of a car. Last but not least, an office seat, with the wheels still attached to the bottom. All chained up along the pole to swing, all looking completely out of place, and all somehow fitting in with the others despite the overt and hilarious differences.
I admired the house as my bike sank back within my skin. Even with the similarities it had to every other house I had passed on my way, there was an inexplicable pride in my chest when I thought about how much it stood out from the others. I'd go over it a bit before I left again, make sure everything was still and could still stand even when I was gone, but it looked like it was doing an incredible job even without me.
Eventually, that would be for the best. For now, I was in dire need of a warm bath and some fantastic tea.
My key was somewhere in my body, resting near the base of my left index finger I think? I didn't bother searching for it, instead reaching for the door and unlocking it with Overhaul. Infinity in my palm and I was using it to save myself a second of effort. Truly I was the epitome of the human spirit.
Only, the door wasn't locked. In fact, the door wasn't even closed by the time I reached it. I barely had a moment to reel Overhaul back in before the door was smacking me in the face, followed swiftly by a girl I had never seen before.
"Same time next week, ye- WHOA!"
I stepped back instinctively, letting the door open fully to deposit the girl directly into my chest. She landed with a muted "oomph", the door flying out of her grasp and nearly slamming into the wall beside us if I hadn't managed to catch it with a quick whip of hair.
For a moment, I was worried that she'd somehow managed to catch her forehead on the metal of my bike before it could fully sink below the encompassing wall of muscle I'd built throughout my body. It wouldn't be the worst first impression I had made on a girl; that honour went to the time I entered a house party, tripped over the welcome mat, and in my flailing punched a hole into the hallway wall. At best this would be in the top five.
That worry was soon joined by confusion as her hand slowly rose, disconnected at the wrist from the rest of her arm, and lay palm down across my stomach. Even with my vision blocked by her verdant, slightly curled hair, I could feel her second hand join the first, dragging slowly across the expanse of my abdomen.
If she actually had concussed herself then this would definitely need to be upgraded to the top three.
"Everything alright?" I glanced up sharply as Gentle's head poked around the corner from the living room, doing my best to silently convey to his slowly rising eyebrow that I needed an exfiltration from the situation. Contrary to what history had told me, he was absolutely no help, ambling into the corridor to do nothing but lean against the wall and take a sip from a teacup that I could have sworn had come out of absolutely nowhere. "Ah, Vitaceae. You're early."
The hair on my chest shifted, the hands lifting away from my body from where I could have sworn they were drifting lower. My gaze lowered once more, catching a pair of eyes the same shade as the hair above them, lacking pupils but no less sparkling with life for it.
"So you're the grape guy, huh?" The grin that accompanied those words was sharp, literally. The serrated tips of her teeth almost seemed to catch the light of the setting sun, jolting me with how suddenly familiar it was. It was a smile that I had seen before, even if it had only been through a screen. "Pops didn't tell me there were two cuties living here."
It seemed like 'pops' hadn't told her a lot, considering where she was and who she was talking to. "Uhh…"
"You ain't the only one who studied Latin, dude." Setsuna Tokage rolled her eyes at me, finally pushing herself off my body. Her hands, now reattached to her arms, lingered for a moment, until I gently wrapped some strands of hair around them, lowered them to her sides, and stepped to the side.
The smile I offered her was a bit tight around the edges. Hopefully she couldn't see in it just how much her father would have to answer to, once I got my hands on him.
"Nice meeting you," even to my own ears it sounded insincere. Setsuna's grin dimmed slightly, but before anything else could be said I was already retreating into the house, gallantly leaving Gentle behind to deal with the situation. A fact he was very much aware of, if his grumbling at my exit was anything to go by.
My phone was out of my pocket the moment I'd gotten out of sight, the number keyed in once there was enough house between us to dampen everything I'd be saying. This was going beyond playing with fire. Giran had filled a kiddie pool with lava and was currently betting me twenty bucks that I wouldn't jump in.
Sure, I'd done a lot of stupid shit for twenty bucks in the past, but that was beside the point.
I took the stairs three at a time, paying more attention to typing whatever Giran's newest number was. He changed it every two weeks, and unless you were told what it was explicitly, there was usually a minimum of three different ciphers you'd need to put the previous one through, in the correct order, to get the right numbers. From there you had to take away the area code digits and cross-reference the rest of them against the coordinates of where the person who was told the new number in the first place lived…
The person this fortnight lived in Osaka, so that was easy, but had the last number ended with an eight or a zero? Fuck, I'd need to go through a playfair square for this one.
He'd even changed it last night. Asshole probably knew I'd be trying to get in touch with him today.
The bath was filled halfway by the time I'd figured out the correct combination and the phone was ringing. I took the time while waiting for it to connect to go through the bathroom, brushing against the walls and floor to erase the various different codes I'd written down on the surfaces. That was one advantage of not needing to manually write things down, you could move at the speed of your thoughts and not be forced to slow yourself down by the limits of your physicality.
Eventually, there was a click on the other end. I took a breath, ready to launch into a rant for the ages, when Giran's voice crackled through the speaker, gruffer than it usually would have been.
"Not available. Leave a message."
My hand clenched. The phone splintered in my grip, which terminated the call before I could fix it. Giran never slept this early, and he never let his phone ring through. Which meant he was either in an emergency, or he was avoiding me.
Somehow I doubted his daughter would be so calm if he was facing some kind of crisis.
Fucking hell. Just… fuck. If it was anyone other than a future U.A student this probably would have been fine. That was the only radar I'd been worried about staying off of, at least for the time being.
Giran knew that. He was too sharp to not figure out that there were people I didn't want to deal with just yet. Which just left the question; what the hell was he playing at?
Phone discarded on the vanity, I ran some strips of Overhaul-enchanted hair through my clothing, separating it around my body and leaving it to hang from sticky clumps on the wall, cleaner than I was likely to get. One of the hidden benefits about being able to control things to the microscopic level, you didn't need to worry about laundry. Unless you like the smell of clothes mixed with detergent or something.
I could have done the same for my own body, like I'd been doing while on the road, but at this point I was missing the embrace of warm water. Some of the warm water splashed over the edge of the bath as I climbed in, and with a flex of one of my lesser used pilfered Quirks, I grabbed it in the mental grasp of hydrokinesis and deposited it back where it had come from.
That would be another one that I'd have to deposit elsewhere when I got the chance. It felt weird. Unnatural. Nothing at all like the natural flow of Overhaul and the bestial rage of Muscle Generation.
Hopefully I would get the chance to figure out why that was. That all depended on how thorough U.A's background checks for their recommended students were.
I was going to strangle Giran.
"Hard to believe you're still single when that's how you respond to a young lady flirting with you."
"Gentle, shut up."
Besieged, I took a sip from my teacup. Gentle sat to one side, staring at me with a gimlet eye and looking less impressed than I'd ever seen him. Twice, on my other side, was staring between us like he was watching a tennis match, half of a chocolate bar hanging out of his mouth.
As for La Brava-
A hacking cough erupted from Gentle's other side as she swallowed her mouthful of tea too early, tears beginning to gather in her eyes and she slammed a fist on the table.
"SHE FLIRTED WITH HIM?" Her voice was croaky and pained, likely from the tea still somewhere in her sinuses. "AND I MISSED IT!?"
My head, already hanging, dipped slightly lower. When I'd called a meeting so we could figure out a plan of attack on the Yaoyorozu mansion, I'd been hoping we'd be able to stay on topic beyond the first sentence spoken.
At least Eri had been put down for a nap, I figured to myself, as Gentle began a retelling of what had happened when I got home. There was no need for her to witness La Brava's scary accuracy, as everything within her severely limited grasp periodically sailed at my head.
At least Twice got nailed with a spoon at one point.
That made me feel slightly better.