Hari spent the rest of his time before school in the normal world. There were so many books on language to get his hands on. Or, rather, to get his eye on. He'd discovered the wonderful aspect of his new eye which meant that he memorized everything it saw. So instead of stealing books, he just flipped the pages and then read it later. He was pretty sure he was getting the hang of Hangul, but probably not sufficiently to try reading an unknown magical text.
In point of fact, a good bit of his time was actually used to make sure he could reliably move around. He'd been doing alright by mostly keeping his left eye shut, but it was difficult to deal with the fact that one eye saw for more than a kilometer and the other saw a few seconds into the future. He'd really hoped the streams would cross and he'd see a bit into the future within the range of his Byakugan. That hadn't been the case.
There was one other thing he had to work on. He had a cool new eye to practice with. He'd promised he wouldn't abuse Uncle Shisui's eye, and he wouldn't, but he did need to understand what it could do. His father had been unusually cagey about details, other than to say that it was Distinguished Heavenly Gods. He'd described an illusion greater than all others, grudgingly admitting that it even exceeded the Moon Reader in power. The specifics though? Just that it was capable implanting suggestions.
There had been something about a once-per-year limit, or something like that, but Hari had kind of tuned it out. He wasn't sure he'd gotten a good deal. He hated illusion techniques. Why he couldn't have gotten an eye like his father's: something that flung unquenchable fire or the like? Still, nothing to be done but test. If it took a year to recharge, oh well. It wasn't like he used illusions much anyways. Never, now that he had that Cloak.
And so he picked a random woman in London. He'd been wandering through Harrod's to see if there were anything interesting to him (there had been some shiny gems he'd walked out with) and spotted what had to be the most ordinary female he'd ever seen. He wouldn't have been surprised if her mother had regularly left school with the wrong child. She was, therefore, a nice baseline to test his abilities on.
The first warning she got was when he was suddenly standing in front of her, Sharingan spinning madly. He discovered that it wasn't as easy as just wanting to implant a suggestion then. She'd ended up standing like a doll for several minutes as he worked out how to do the thing. He wondered if his father had been right and he should have practiced illusions more. He might have found this easier.
Eventually, he managed it and she proceeded to jump up and down the entire way out of the store and on down the street. He wondered if he should have added some sort of trigger to end the compulsion to jump at all times. Then he shrugged and dismissed it as a learning curve. There was an odd lack of pressure behind his eye. It was something he hadn't noticed until it was gone. Probably just the cooldown.
The rest of the day had been spent in the wonderful migrant community, enjoying that no one looked at him oddly when he asked for the kinds of food he liked. Well, except for him looking totally wrong to be asking for it, but that wasn't an issue. And this time around, the locals were confronted by that same odd child who'd been there last year, but was now speaking their language with a truly horrible accent. On the upside, most were willing to correct that aspect and some also would help when he used the wrong word (and often the wrong word order).
One family was nice enough to put him up for a few days after he escorted a particularly unpleasant drunk from their establishment. It was nice not to have to break into a hotel just to get a bed. It wasn't the greatest accommodations, but it had the advantage of getting to practice his Japanese a bit more.
X
X
Oddly, the next day he woke up to that pressure in his eye. He decided to test something out and told his hosts he would be back later (accidentally telling them that he would be back chicken). Then he headed off into greater London to see if he were right.
For the sake of his experiment, he went with a different demographic. It took a while for Hari to find a biker gang, but he'd read about them and the idea amused him. Also, he'd come across stories that made him think they weren't nice to civilian women. As a result, when he found a nice, angry-looking, leather-clad man, it was time to begin.
This time, he tried a different method. Hari felt Distinguished Heavenly Gods trigger and the man straightened up. Where he'd been slouching before, he had good posture and looked down at his attire in horror. Hari's small smile turned slightly worried when the man proceeded to rip his clothes off and go running down the street, screaming he needed proper clothing. He'd intended that the man should get new clothes and generally become what the man believed to be a respectable member of society. This wasn't what had been expected.
Hari shrugged. It wasn't really much of a loss, all things considered. He'd have to be a little more careful in the future. But on the upside, he'd learned that the suggestion was pretty much all-encompassing. A bit of a risk, that. It could be so much fun. He'd find out if it still worked again the next day.
The next several hours were spent in memorizing more and more books from the nearest library. As far as Hari knew, there wasn't an upper limit on what the Sharingan could store, so he just added as much as he could.
That night, he entered a meditative trance instead of normal sleep and went through the books in his head. It was one thing to have them in the Sharingan and another to have them in his mind. Having memorized them, he took the time to actually assimilate the knowledge.
X
X
In the morning, his eye was apparently recharged again. He resolved to mention to his father that there was something slightly off with his estimates. In the meantime, he was going to see what else he could do. There was a broad grin on his face as he wandered towards the Leaky Cauldron. It was probably wrong of him to test this, but he was curious.
A man in a business suit was suddenly possessed of a desire to enter Diagon Alley. He stood around, very confused as he tried to comply with the instructions and then wandered off with what looked like a devil of a headache as his mind kept telling him to do the impossible. It was rather disappointing after his earlier successes. Oh well. Perhaps another day.
Which meant he needed to do something to kill time. It was just a shame that mercenaries here were all adults. Otherwise he'd have killed something to kill time. He supposed he could just rob people, but didn't see the point when he didn't really bother to pay for things much of the time. Money was more of an excuse to go on missions than something useful.
He was given to understand that birthdays were important in this place, so he might as well get a start on his thieving. Hermione was easy enough to get something for, barely had to think about it really. People needed to learn to lock their doors more. And Millie was similarly easy to get things for. The problem was that the rest of his friends had more . . . complicated tastes. Come to think of it, he knew what to get Girl-Tobi. On the upside, finding muggle toys for his other friends managed to take up most of the day.
In actuality, it ate much of the following day as well. He got so wrapped up in trying to find the way to get Blaise's gift that he nearly forgot to test out Distinguished Heavenly Gods. Really, it was so hard to pick the right one and those men in the red suits and big hats had a definite air of people who didn't wait to ask questions about why someone was wandering around. And more importantly, they carried weapons with a certain degree of skill. He wasn't yet ready to see if he could dodge bullets using the Sharingan, so he decided that it might be wise to avoid getting shot. And the Cloak would have been unsporting when he could do it on his own. Cameras were a bitch to avoid, too. They had them everywhere in the place. Took hours to plan a path that let him collect everything before the alarms went off. He really hoped that tapestry he's set on fire to get attention elsewhere wasn't important.
X
X
The woman wandering by the Leaky Cauldron today was surprised to find that she had a pressing desire to enter Diagon Alley. And that she knew where the Leaky Cauldron was (although she had no idea what it was) and remembered to ask the toothless man behind the counter to let her in please because she forgot her wand (whatever the hell that was).
Hari watched her step into the pub and smiled. That had gone better than expected. Just adding a few extra bits of knowledge and a couple of instructions was enough to send a normal person into the magical world. Excellent. He had no idea what he planned to do with this knowledge, but it was the kind of thing that he had no doubt would be useful at some point. In the meantime, he would continue his testing to see what else his Kaleidoscopic Sharingan could do.
He almost wished he had some use for blackmail, given the number of people he saw having affairs on an hourly basis. Actually . . . it killed another day, staking out some places that had things he might want at some point and then following personnel around to find out which of them had dirty laundry (and didn't most of them just?). Of course, some of them might no longer be on staff when the time came, but some of them would be useful. A stolen camera was a wonderfully useful thing.
X
X
There were only two days before the express, so he resolved to make the most of it. First thing was first, his test of Distinguished Heavenly Gods needed to be finished before school began. Though he could always just take a trip if he had to. He was standing on the curb when a car pulled up. At the wheel was a grossly fat man with a huge mustache. There was a purpling to his features that spoke of bad temper and bad health, his Byakugan confirmed the latter. He was shocked the man hadn't yet keeled over of heart failure. Beside the ugly lump was a rail-thin female with a face like a losing jockey's mount. Add to that the fact that her nose was stuck in the air and her eyes flitted around eagerly looking for bad things other people were doing and an expression that said she wanted to see scandal. And if it weren't for his Byakugan, he would honestly have thought that someone had decided to drive through London with a pig in the back seat of the car and, just because it would be funny, stuck a blond wig on it. Actually, that did sound funny, but in this case, it was a human. For a given value of human. Time for a last test.
When Distinguished Heavenly Gods took hold of the man, there was a sudden mad grin on his face. He slammed down the gas and took off roaring down the London street with his wife shrieking, weaving in and out of traffic. That hadn't been what Hari had in mind. He raced after the car, already having a bad feeling about this. He was just in time to see the car swerve hard and crash through the rails on the side of London Bridge. He could see the glee on the man's face and the horror mixed with resigned terror on the face of the wife and son as the car plunged downwards and smashed apart on the water.
That had been . . . disturbing. He had intended it as a sort of demonstration of the absolute limits of his abilities. A sort of destruct-test. Hari had rewritten the man as someone who would cheerfully murder his family before offing himself. He had thought that it was a command that would be instantly thrown off. While nothing else had been, that was far more extreme than anything he'd done. Well then.
Hari stared at the wreckage floating on the Thames. Apparently, he had been playing with a power that made him a god. He was a little sickened. He had no problem with killing, even with collateral damage from not bothering to aim carefully when he fired an attack. This was something else. He'd just made a man deliberately slaughter his family with every sign of happiness. Hari realized that he'd been standing there for more than an hour. More than that, even. The sun had begun to set.
He couldn't play with this eye anymore. It was finally dawning on him what his father had entrusted him with. This was a horrifyingly powerful ability. No one should be able to do what he just did, but his father had granted it to him and believed he was able to handle it. So he would be careful. There were no checks on this but what he imposed on himself and for the first time, he was thinking that he should have limits.
Hari was the custodian of this terrible gift. His use of the power was limited only by his self-control. Well then, he would have to be careful with this. There were limits to what was amusing and what was an abuse of people unable to defend themselves just because he could.
Hari shook himself. He wasn't going to spend his time moping over this. He knew the new rules, that would be enough. He needed to cheer up. He knew just what to do, too. He just needed to figure out where to get a blond wig and a pig.
(A/N John)
While this chapter has been done for a while, it was genuinely the one that took the longest to write. Me and Spoon took a lot of time to work out how to drive home to Hari that Kotoamatsukami isn't something to just treat as a prank. Or, at the very least, to be aware of just what it is he's playing with. I'm certain that he's going to abuse it still, but he's going to be much more cautious about it. Hari recognizes that this is a scary ability that he'd hate to have used against him. Honest, he'll be responsible!
(A/N 2 John)
Also, this chapter took so long to come out because, as I've noted before, chapters are published when the one a few ahead is finished. Spoon and I basically didn't get a chance to write this week because we do it over dinner and she was busy having headaches or whatever. Also, snow.
(A/N 3 John)
No points if you guess who died.
(A/N 4 John)
Minus ten if you don't get it, though.