The diminutive conundrum

Introduction

John Small, like many others, had supernatural abilities. Most people with abilities became heroes that fight crime or villains that use their abilities to fight the heroes for some evil purpose. John was neither of those. Any person that met John would think that he was an ordinary person, which he was, mostly, except for his ability and his resulting traits. John's ability allowed him to shrink himself and any object to any small size but only grow back to its original height. John was an antisocial person that worked a 9-5 shift at a nondescript hardware store on weekdays and lived alone in a small blue house on a nondescript street in the suburbs. The house was a 1 bed, 1 bath house with a basement. In John's basement was a massive table that took up most of the room. On that table covering every inch laid an extremely accurate HO scale model diorama with towns and rolling hills criss-crossed by streets and railroads. John built dioramas and train layouts as a hobby; to escape reality he would create his own ones in his basement. If one were to take a close look at the buildings and the layout they would notice that everything in the diorama functioned and was fully furnished. John would shrink down to size and furnish every building by hand. For the trains he would just use normal model trains by shrinking down the controller as well as adding functionality to the doors and insides. The one thing that John could not recreate was vehicles. To solve this problem John became a car thief. After a few thefts it became a habit. And it's that very habit that caused John to be involved in the events known as the Clash.