Weightless Heart
The wind rose, carrying with it a black miasma and the whipping of a tattered cloak. Ill fortune descended to meet the rising wind, and all those caught between it were crushed.
Sandatsu Owari's mouth opened in a black hole smile, and his arms spread out.
He was free.
Freer than anyone else had ever been.
The world is-
That's all.
Where Are They Now: Shiketsu Students Edition.
Sandatsu Owari had gone underground.
No. To the underground, Kyoto's criminal element.
Why?
Sora chewed on the inside of his cheek, staring unblinking at his monitor. On it: footage from Sandatsu Owari's rampage in Europe.
Old news, really.
The world spun quickly.
What some were calling the Night of the Reaper had come and gone. The bodies were cremated, the debris neatly swept off to the corner. Sora hadn't bothered to grieve. Yet the Reaper himself wasn't making a repeat appearance, nor did he seem inclined.
He was strong enough.
For any imaginable definition of enough. Strong enough to evade capture, strong enough to kill, strong enough to do whatever he wanted.
Strong enough to be free.
He'd been thinking a lot about freedom lately.
So something was holding Sandatsu back. Physical, mental, emotional - Europe and Japan stood mismatched.
The freest man in the world, and he still wasn't doing everything he wanted.
In a way, it was sobering to realize that even Sandatsu Owari couldn't completely escape his tethers.
Whatever they were.
Certainly not Sora Tanaka, at the least. They'd never talked.
That was fine.
It'd make whatever came next easier.
Sora killed his PC.
Gravity was the weakest of all fundamental forces.
Sora sometimes wondered what that said about him.
For as free as he wanted to be, he'd always been good at following the rules.
Don't talk back. No domains inside the house. If you want to use that quirk regularly, you need a pro license.
Never show anyone your face.
It didn't bother him much. If anything, the rules gave him direction. Sora was being pointed where to go, what to do, and there was peace of mind in that.
Like the serenity of watching the ground approach.
In your heart, you knew there was nothing you could do.
Lately, though, Sora had started to think about dropping a few rules from his life.
That thought process had led him here to a quiet Kyoto street just outside the Atsushi family manor around midnight.
Nice part of town.
Intermittent lamps bathed the area in a soft gloam closer to sunset than midnight, even as the sky above drowned in light pollution.
Only a few stars were left to shine down on him now.
Hands in his pockets, Sora stared up at the gatefloorwall like it was modern art. Like if he tilted his head just right, the puzzle would complete itself and he'd be graced with its meaning.
...
His sore neck rolled back into place.
There'd be security.
This was a wealthy estate, home to heroes and a ripe target for villains with a grudge. Even, especially, in the aftermath of the Feral attack.
But people, even trained security guards, were awfully bad at looking straight up.
A familiar blind spot that Sora had called home for years.
His foot pressed off against the groundwallfloorroad, and he stepped into the night air.
To an outside observer, Sora was flying. He was just that good. It looked so, and maybe it truly was as simple as that.
The gut knew different.
Neither heart nor head faltered, twisting, when you stood on the edge of a cliff.
Only the gut.
Trust in it, if nothing else, to tell the truth about his own quirk's flaw.
It held a heavy sense of inevitability.
What had that one movie called it?
Ah, yeah.
Falling with style.
That's all.
Sora noted the tiles on Orochi's roof as he touched down unnoticed. Some were damaged, cracked from some fight gone wild and just unseen enough to not demand immediate repair.
Oh well. Off to the room of a girl he hardly knew.
The last time he'd been here, Sora had...
Had he ever been here before?
Hm.
His hood creased slightly, as though frowning in the evening gloom. A wind rustled the leaves of nearby trees just out of sight, and failed to rustle what wasn't there in one particular dead one.
Only one thing to do.
If you want to find the princess, start in the tallest tower.
A few windows drifted by later, and he'd found it.
Tap-tap-tap.
Slightly muffled by glass, Sora heard Orochi's not-too-startled voice as, sitting, he wheeled in place on a gently bored midair axis.
"Kaylee?! Hold on, give me a second!"
A second passed, and as promised, the girl approached the window with clear eyes. With the sudden change in hue, he nearly didn't recognize her at first.
He certainly didn't recognize the lack of hesitation as Orochi's smile failed to even falter when she saw an entirely different guest.
Weird.
The glass door swung inwards, Orochi pleased but confused. "Tanaka? You know, this isn't even the first time this exact thing has happened recently."
Sora shrugged, still lazily spinning in midair.
"Your roof looks like shit."
"What?"
"Never mind," Sora muttered. "Let me in."
Orochi let out an affirmative sound, hardly even having the decency to seem too embarassed as she led Sora into a den of glittering pink. Sora tethered his domain to her, falling in slow motion after her wake inside. One of her hydras seemed to look at him untrustingly, but Orochi shot it a reprimanding stare.
Beneath the hood, Sora tried to blink a couple times just to confirm he wasn't seeing things.
"So... Red, huh." Not the first color on his mind, but probably the more important one.
Orochi beamed. "You like it? I think I needed a change!"
She spun, modelling her new locks only a little bashfully while her hydras posed fabulously.
Orochi seemed lighter, somehow. Not that a weight had been lifted from her, but that she'd gotten strong enough to shoulder it without thinking.
Maybe Sora should try nearly dying himself. Seemed to be doing wonders for his classmates not named Genma.
"It's alright," he said evasively. "The Stars say hi."
This wasn't like him. Normally it was easier to just be direct.
Neither of them were acting very much like themselves, though.
"Oh!" Orochi gasped slightly, fingers coming up to her lips. "Are they okay?! Nothing happened to them while I was fighting, did it!?"
"They're fine, no news. That's all." He looked straight up. "You've got pretty tall floors."
Below his gaze, Orochi sagged with relief, though he couldn't say why. Sora wasn't exactly close to the gang, but he'd probably get told if something was wrong. He wasn't exactly close to anyone and got by just fine.
"So... You're not really the type to drop in on social calls, Tanaka." Orochi fixed him with a level look. "Why are you he-"
"Orochi?"
The door to her room slid open, guided by the hand of Orochi's mother. Wide eyes peered into the room, seeing...
Her daughter, standing there like nothing had happened.
Nabiki frowned.
"I heard voices. Is everything alright?"
"Fine! Everything iiiis... Super OK!" Only panicking a little, the hydra girl tried giving her mom a dubious thumbs up while her passengers writhed around uncomfortably.
"You don't sound OK. I know you've been through a lot, and we talked earlier, but do you still want to...?"
Orochi clearly had to struggle to keep her expression normal. She never had been a great liar, had she?
Even upside down, Sora could tell that.
Sitting cross-legged on the ceilingfloorsurface straight above Nabiki's head, he shrugged helplessly as Orochi's eyes occasionally flicked towards him, desperate for help.
Finally, she gave up.
"Wecantalklaterthankyouforcheckingingoodnight!"
Doing absolutely nothing to assuage her concerns, Orochi quickly ushered her mother out of her room.
Only a minute after the door clicked shut did Orochi finally allow herself to hiss up at the ceiling.
"Tanaka...! Couldn't this have waited for another time?! Thanks for the visit, but if my mom finds a boy in my room at night..." She trailed off with a shudder.
He sat there in silence for a couple seconds, thinking.
"... you don't talk to her about me?"
"TANAKA!" Orochi didn't seem to notice it was an honest question.
"Balcony, then."
He was careful not to leave footprints on Orochi's pink floorceiling as he stepped out onto the cool night air.
His cloak drifted like whispy fog, buoyed by a cold spring night's breeze as Orochi, set in an upside-down world in front of him, shivered in her pajamas.
Reptiles, man. All the same.
"Okay," Orochi huffed into her hands for warmth. "For real. Why are you here? It's okay if it's for no reason, but that doesn't feel like you."
Like you.
Like she knew anything about him. It wasn't resentment building in Sora's chest. It wasn't even confusion.
It was certainty. Objective knowledge. The apple falls down, the earth goes around the sun, and Orochi Atsushi could never make an accurate judgment of Sora Tanaka as a person.
No point in depriving her of it. They'd shared a secret in Orochi's little scuffle, and if she wanted to believe that was all it took then that was fine.
"Let's go up. There's a warm pocket a couple hundred meters above."
"What are y-" Whatever Orochi's protests would've been, they were all stolen away by the wind as the pair fell upwards.
At least she had the good sense not to scream, even if Sora could feel her heartbeat hammering in her fingertips as he led her up by the hand, even through his gloves.
Idly, he wondered if she could feel his.
Probably not.
Didn't want to get accused of kidnapping a girl who could rip his throat out.
At a certain point, he didn't even need to keep gravity reversed. Set it close to zero as he could, and let momentum do the rest.
Sora had been traveling on inertia so long that he'd forgotten what moving under his own power felt like.
"TANAKA!" Orochi's voice ripped out of her and past the wind, half-laughing and half-indignant as her home became a distant spot beneath her. "Very funny, now go back down NOW!"
Being in the empty night sky, when stars and the moon failed to shine, was nice. Void on all sides but the one you turned your back on. There was only one direction where lights stretched out like a sea, further than the naked eye could see.
Call that direction whatever you'd like - up, down, left, right. All that said was a matter of orientation.
What really mattered was that there was only one, inevitable way of getting to it.
Sora looked from the ground to a hovering, rosy-cheeked Orochi, whose eight eyes were locked on him.
"Okay, hold on. I know someone dodging a question when I see it." Orochi wobbled towards Sora, closing the gap and wrapping a hand around his wrist for balance as his domain tightened slightly. "Seriously, what's going on?"
"You were cold."
And Orochi laughed.
That was weird enough, even before Sora noticed she actually meant it.
"You crazy or something?"
"Ugh! I don't even know any more," came a breezy confession. Orochi wiped at her eyes, where tears of laughter had sprung. "I know I should feel worse. God, that would be normal. But how the hell can I call myself that at this point?"
From a million miles away, Sora watched her hydras start to wrap around her core like pythons, leeching body heat.
He didn't say anything.
"Tanaka Sora, looking after his classmate for the second time in a year. Who'd have guessed it?"
He didn't say anything.
Orochi's mirth slowed, replaced in part by concern. "Hey... say something. Hello? Tanaka?"
Sora started to realize he had nothing to say.
The wind around them slowed.
Just take it easy. Like a sheet of paper fluttering back to earth.
"You don't seem scared."
They started to descend, centimeter by centimeter.
Orochi's eyebrows rose. "What, of this fall?"
She looked down, as though gauging the distance, while a hand rose to pull a lock of red freed by the breeze back behind her ear.
"I'd be fine."
Even if he didn't believe her, Sora believed in the confidence in Orochi's voice. She believed it.
"Besides, you wouldn't drop me."
Just as confident as the first statement.
Maybe she was crazy.
"I guess not." Light words, nearly snatched away by the wind.
But why?
It was only the slightest tether between them. One Halloween party, spun out into something she thought was greater than it was.
Gravity only acted on what was there, and there was barely anything keeping them orbiting each other.
She'd nearly died. And for what? A class she'd not even known for a year.
Orochi hadn't freed herself in the slightest. She'd just accepted her role.
... it turned his stomach a little just to watch.
Sora felt his sluggish heart beat another halfhearted beat.
He'd seen everything he needed to.
Guess it had been an open orbit after all.
"Let's get you home."
"Geez," Orochi puffed her cheeks out in frustration. "If you just wanted to check in on me, it could've waited!"
He didn't bother with a reply.
They descended slowly, until Orochi landed lightly on the edge of her balcony, sighing with relief when her slippered feet made touchdown with the earth.
Sora's feet never made it to the ground at all.
"... Hey. Tanaka, you know you can talk to me about anything if you want, don't you?" Orochi stared up at him, hand still wrapped around Sora's wrist. She seemed... determined. "However long it takes."
Trying to protect something she couldn't even keep.
Just like her mother. She didn't even seem to notice.
He shrugged the offer off, and felt the world roll down his back.
"I won't."
What use are wings if you refuse to leave the earth?
Sora let go of Orochi.
"See you around, hospital kid."
He left her there.
Far away, a star dipped below the horizon.
That's all.