115: Going The Extra Mile (Literally) For A Job
My mother, like most days, started her day by getting up, making sure my father wasn't here -he wasn't, I made sure of it-, and leaving her room.
When she did. I moved.
Moving fast isn't something I do a lot, as proven with my time in the brothel, or my patience before I stole weapons, my gift is patience, I prefer making sure nothing can harm me or go wrong before acting, but today, it's the perfect day to act, so even if I need to move fast, something I do not like doing, I move.
I have a subordinate.
I have a plan.
The money is gone.
And there's only one choice for my mother now, a choice I refuse.
That's why my first stop was a shop. To verify that my rushed preparations still stood up. The first preparation is called Tachibana, Tachibana is sleeping, and when he'll wake up, he'll notice that his stock mysteriously dissapeared and that he won't be able to open his shop today and DARE talk to my mother about job 'arragements'
The second preparation is Deguchi, and his stock is dead because of the rain. Ah! The rain! How horrible! He will look at his window and wonder why it's open, but no proof will greet him, he'll wonder why there's so much water, but no proof will greet him, and most importantly, no one will care.
The third preparation doesn't matter. He's too far away and isn't a problem for the next part of my plan.
This part of the plan is sensitive.
It works in multiple steps.
The first step is to get my subordinate up to speed before my mother leave the house, and the second is to go fucking crazy with my illusions and do something I don't have a lot of practice with.
I really don't like going crazy like that, I should have practiced harder and figured out something else, barely memorized Murai, Deguchi, and Tachibana habits and routines and that's not a lot and so many things can go wrong and maybe there was another better choice and-! I'm here.
When my body slinks inside Murai house, from the window he opens every morning, I find myself staring at a nervous but contemplating Murai, on his knees, looking down under his bed, looking up at the ceiling, and drinking from a mug.
He's searching for me.
And I can guess that he's searching for a gigantic black and spooky shadow that talks like a two year old to appear beneath his bed.
Probably because I've met him again, yesterday, and told him to be ready for tomorrow at the first sign of the sun, and now he's here, ready, at the first sign of the sun.
And I'm not here.
Well, I'm here, but he can't see me, even if he's squinting at the hallway leading into his shop and work place, the reason for this is simple, his brain is dripping with my flow.
You know, the first time I noticed that my flow stayed in people EVEN after they went to sleep was in the brothel, it was with the guards, then, proof of it came and went until it picked my curiosity enough to do an experiment.
Nothing crazy. My mother volunteered, I'm her son I can give consent for her, shut up. And after a night shift around the house, the results were clear:
-me sleep = flow is gone
-infected sleep = flow still there
So even if Murai is walking on his tip toes in his hallway, looking over his shoulders at every random noise that AREN'T made by me, and even if he's wary, searching for me, like a guard would, he cannot push through my illusion.
Active illusions > passive illusions.
Or like...environmental illusions. Not gonna lie, since last time I didn't found a better name, maybe environmental illusions (WIP)?
Maybe? Could it wo-! Focus! Passing around him as he tiptoes in his own home, expecting a monster to pop out at any moment, I don't pop out, instead, my flow rises from my guts to settle in my brain and with some screws and tape I try my best to do those new illusions I've been working on.
"FUC-!" Murai yelps but stops by shoving a hand on his mouth as he sees...what I see, a looooong shadowy red trail. It's like a corridor of death, coming from the bottom of his door and shining light all around us, bathing him in blood red, every other lights are normal, this is the only weird one one, unnatural, sliding in front of him and pulsating every five seconds.
Cooooome. Cooooome. Yeah that's it, look left, look right, take a step forward, YES! The second he stops worrying and steps closer to the light, the light pulses, he freezes for a second, but like I learned during my hunting sessions, waiting for the prey to move first and making them feel comfortable is one of the best ways to take them by surprise, and most importantly, to make them go where you want.
And I want him to leave his house.
So whenever he gets closer. The light pulses. It pulses and pulses until he holds the doorknob in his hand and pushes it open, then, boom, no light.
Taking the opportunity to leave I slide back in the street before shifting the magic in his brain, look to the left, and even if I don't know where I need to go YET, I need to teach him that red means follow.
So on the side of the street, almost shy, a red shadow slithers from the wall and plasters itself on the ground like a corridor only him can see.
He eyes a random old man in the street with an umbrella.
The old man ignores him. He ignores the red, doesn't even show a sign of worry at the hell passage I opened, and turns to the right.
Murai gulps.
And after five good seconds of him searching for me everywhere -I can't show myself, I'm not confident in making the shadow + the shaky red path appear at the same time yet-, he whistles.
ARGH! AGAIN WITH THIS!?
Turning my push against the ground into a slide toward my hellish path and taking the left turn, my fingers come into my mouth and my usual whistle resonates in the street. A look at him shows that he's now closing his shop and putting a sign that speaks of it being closed.
I'm already gone.
The moment I saw that, my entire body flew forward as if the ground beneath my feet was made of ice, I don't have a lot of time, twenty seconds at best.
Repeatedly turning around a small street/corner shop that rounds on itself, my body starts feeling queasy as I get more and more speed, an old woman coming out at the first sign of the sun almost die because of my missile-like body, to avoid her fate, I slide around her, and almost transform into baby pulp against the wall, ten turns later, I fly out of the street.
I'm not literally flying. But with the way my cloak flies behind me and the speed I'm moving at, I feel like I'm flying.
I feel like a F1 driver, ever played a reflex game? Basic games really, geometry dash, or those dumb minigames where you need to slide a ball around fast moving holes to avoid splating against them. I did, it's not my favorite type of games, but I have a fair share of reflex games under my belt, the way it goes from super slow to EXPLOSION MOTHERFUCKER, A MISTAKE AND IT'S A GAMEOVER, YOU CAN'T SEE ANYMORE, YOU CAN'T THINK! YOU THOUGHT? FUCK YOU, NOW LOSE!
I don't know why, but those kind of games were funny to me, really felt dexterous whenever I had a high score or broke through a ridiculous level, what I'm doing right now reminds me of those games.
There's no time for thoughts at that speed. There's no time for me to feel the adrenaline making the tip of my fingers shake, I can't even see them because of the wide swipes of my arms I'm making every half second to turn around another street. My legs are jelly, my ankles hurt, there's something in the side of my vision, a turn to the right puts my hands on the ground to help the turn, my palms hurt, everything is a blur, I can't see, I can't think. I can't think, every twitch of my body is nothing but instinct as conscious thoughts cannot handle this kind of speed, something rises in my throat, something bad, a left, a right, two more rights, I know where she should be, the third shop, the one I didn't check because she shouldn't have enough time to see it, she shouldn't have enough time because I'm too fast.
So fast that when my cloak brushes the front of the shop, my mother isn't even here, she's nine streets away, something I figured out by zigzagging through twenty streets around the shop like a Google map car on steroids to finally find her and almost kill her because of how blurry my vision is, my months of practice didn't allowed this to happen however.
No. The only thing my body allowed was for me to burst toward Murai's place once again.
Twenty seconds.
When Murai turned around and closed his shop, I knew I had twenty seconds, I couldn't make him wait too long or I'd risk breaking the impression of power I have over him even more than I did some days ago with my dumb fucking talk, but I needed, I NEEDED, to know where my mother was.
That's why I knew it. I had twenty seconds to go through the entire rich district and find her.
In twenty seconds. I needed to find my mother through an entire city and come back to Murai.
He's here, staring at the red light I managed to keep in his brain hundred of meters away, my body barrels through the small alley I led him in. He stares at the light, he looks around, I hear a whistle? I think? I don't know. My hands brush against the wall, my feet grip the ground, I slime on the ground until I end up on my knees with only my right hand supporting my body up, grippy and slimy against the wall, my left hand is over my mouth, shoving yesterday food back in my gullet.
I hear another whistle and my triple vision? Where's right? Right? Right? Right right, that's right, the red shadow slinks into the background like it never existed and appears further down the alley
Murai looks around. Worried.
I look at the ground, my knees crumbling beneath my weight.
Checking the state of my flow in his mind somehow, the illusion holds.
He steps toward the red light and my entire body crumbles on the ground, my shoulder hyper extending behind me, still stuck to the wall as my stomach violently protest what it went through.
Rain falls on the back of my neck, and only after three stumbling seconds, where I tried to put my feet beneath me once again, do I realize that my cloak has almost been blasted away from my body.
Hatomo cloak is made to protect me for the rain. That's all. He never expected this, the magic, the weapons -all the pockets are luck-, the speed, the fighting, the plan, this fucking plan, and it wasn't ready to take this amount of abuse, at any moment it could have flown away and I'd never see it again. Actually. It probably did fly away from me, a spider-sense on the back of my mind tingles and I smile like a dumbass at the spiderman reference, vomit seeping through my teeth, a flex of this sense later and my cloak sleeves stuck to my forearms with magic let go and my favorite clothing pools down around my waist.
It wasn't made to support this kind of speed. Just like my body.
My body wasn't made to support this kind of speed, since I started training my sliding, my skating, I've never went all out.
My legs shake beneath me as I drag myself up to follow Murai, with a flex of will and a shaky manipulation of my magic, the red light dissapears and appears farther, closer to where my mother is.
I've never went all out.
He keeps following the light, and the way he looks around confused from time to time gives me the holy time to breath and gather the last remaining pieces of brain that got turned into pulp in my own skull.
I've never went all out.
He keeps following the light, sometimes I bullshit and make him takes a longer road just so I can take a breath, just so I can rest for longer, rest long enough to crawl up to a roof and follow him from above as light controls him around the city I NOW mapped, the light showing the path toward my mother, they're closer, I can see her from here. Just some tweakings. Some slight...tweakings, a serving of roof is served. No salt. Pushing my mouth away from the roof floor and crawling toward the edge, two people turns in a empty street.
My mother. Following her natural path.
Murai Taki, following a red light.
Murai almost stops like a creepy fucker mid walking as my wavy red light jump on my mother and encircle her in a halo of red light, gulping the taste of yesterday steak away, I slide on my back and fucking hope Murai can follow an order well.
Back on the roof. Splayed like a starfish, the world turns around me, my head throbs.
The sounds are muffled. My ears are blocked. It's as if I'm underwater.
Can't hear him, can't hear mother too, they're talking? I think?
I don't know, but I know that I never went at full speed before. There was too much risk of injuries and death with my lack of skill, then, when my skill built up, I gradually increased my tricks and the speed at which I was traveling, always felt it, deep in me, I could go faster. Faster and faster.
Never went faster.
It was too dangerous. My hands shake, my visions blurs, the magic in my body is pulsating and flowing through my veins in a way I NEVER seen before. It's like a dam breaking, a dam that's been building up for years and years finally getting a single opening and raging through it till everything explode and everything goes too fast, way too fast.
I never went all out.
And right now. Under the rising sun, hearing the muffled voices of my mother and my subordinate, I know one thing.
Only one.
I didn't go all out.