Take a deeeeeep breath.
Take a deeeeeep exhale.
Monk mode.
This is getting repetitive.
And slow. Very slow. Very fucking slow. At least the people around me doesn't seem to mind, they keep up with their life. They're just here, chilling, walking around, sometimes going inside the brothel and sometimes staying outside.
It depends really.
None of them are searching for me. None of them really care if I'm here, not like they know I'm here. None are guards, and even if I find it odd that poor people that lives in poverty doesn't have the instincts to look left and right to find me.
I don't mind much.
Because the more time passes the clearer it becomes that my invisibility. Or....well, that's not a good name for it anymore. That my illusions are a bit more complex than it appears.
For a first, there's the problem that yes. I can push the flow in my brain in a single second and look invisible to MY OWN EYES AND ONLY MINE, but that's the problem, it only works on me.
Me and only me.
Not on the guards that are ramrod straight, on the sides of the gaping double doors of the brothel I've been trying to breech in, been a week already. This shit is hard.
Thankfully. They don't seem to notice me when I'm far away from them?
Dunno why. I guess that's because I'm in the mass of homeless people.
But I wouldn't risk getting closer just yet, need to be ready for it first.
Talking about being ready. Air escapes me again, a slooooooow breath, a meditative breath, the kind of breathing my flow loves.
And again, more of my flow, more of my magic, more energy escapes my body to disperse around me.
Keep breathing. Keep working on it.
A homeless guy walks around my laying body, not even noticing I'm here, not even noticing I'm readying myself to...what am I planning to do actually?
Well. I have some ideas but....they're... Let's just say they're up to changes. A lot of changes. I don't have much info on the inside after all.
The homeless man keep passing me and greet another homeless man, smaller than him, they talk in hushed tones before pointing to somewhere that leads deeper in the poorer district, away from the ruins and the brothel, a place where streets exist again. The short man shakes his head and ignores him, staying on the surroundings of the brothel instead of following.
Well. Looks like drama to me.
Hope it doesn't affect me. My plan needs me to be focused.
It's not a crazy crazy plan. But it's a plan that takes time. A plan that pushed me to lay down in front of the brothel. A bit to the right of it, not too far, which is a shame because I would have loved to keep my back against the wall of one of those broken house farther away.
But I can't.
I need to stay close. So I'm laying on the ground, hands behind my back, staring at the rain falling on my face.
At least there's not a lot of people around me. Most people stay on the outskirts of the brothel, where the ruins are, they form groups, and make sure not to stay IN FRONT of the brothel, unless they're about to get in.
They do walk in front of the brothel to pass from a side to the other, but nobody really just stay still and chill in front of the brothel like what I'm doing.
I'm ~special~ pretty cool huh?
I can pretty much stay in the middle of the road leading to the brothel -a bit on the right to avoid people that go in- and chill without alerting the guards of my presence. There's still enough people walking around me that I'm in the homeless zone, but not enough people around me for me to spread the sea like a half-baked illusion prophet and get a shit ton of attention.
Don't know how people that AREN'T under my illusions would react if they saw people that ARE under.
Probably badly.
And I don't want to risk getting closer to the brothel for that, we never know how the guards could react if they spot the oddity.
And I don't want to try again tomorrow, because this shit takes SOOOOOOOO long, do you know how long it takes for me to spread my magic around?
A shit ton of time.
And do you know what's worse?
IT DOESN'T EVEN WORK!
Yesterday, I hoped that my flow would like...drift around in the air and contamine everything, I thought it was what happened last time with the guards. I thought it contaminated the air, THEN the rain, and THEN the rain helped spread the contamination.
BUT THAT'S BULLSHIT!
Because some hours ago, I realized, THAT I LOST HOURS OF MY LIFE! My flow didn't infect anyone, no matter how hard I shoved it in the air.
It didn't do shit.
Then while I was tweaking out and trying to understand the problem, I went into thinking mode, and let my body do its life. So it followed the flow, and I started tapping one of my foot -while laying down- on the ground, and making sound with my exhales.
And now?
Now it works.
Now my flow is spreading around and moving instead of staying still in the air like a dumbass.
I don't know why. But I'm guessing there's something with movement, or sound, that makes my flow spread.
Well it's an exaggeration. Because it's still slow as fuck, slower than a snail, a snail would win in a race against my flow actually. And I don't feel like waiting for hours to see how long it would take for my magic to drift in the air like the slowest leaf in the world till it reaches the guards.
That's why, I've been trying to infect the RAIN! Like I naturally did last time.
And it's kind of hard.
Well, infecting the raindrops isn't HARD
But the thing is that they fall. And then. When one of them has the bad idea of passing through my magic drifting in the air, my magic, INFECTS it, mid fall. Then. When the raindrops leave the cloud of magic and falls on the ground, my magic that infected the raindrop splatter on the ground with it and dig inside the ground.
The thing is that...they only get infected when the pass THROUGH my magic cloud.
Or. When I push my magic, in the raindrop.
Did you ever tried to aim at a raindrop?
Did you managed to aim at a FUCKING RAINDROP!?
Don't worry man, if you didn't. I'll tell you how hard it is because I tried.
It's impossible.
There's no questions. It's way too fast. And my magic, my flow that's outside is too slow, can't catch them.
What it can do however is let any raindrop that falls in them get infused, fall in my flow? Get infected, like I said a second ago, and that's way more manageable.
Yes, way more manageable.
But it also means that I need to create some kind of umbrella around the guards with my flow, so that any raindrops that would touch them normally first fall into my magic cloud, and then infect their body, and THEN I can put them through my illusion.
It's hard.
And it kinda makes me want to sleep and just let my body deal with that by itself, because it ALREADY does all of that naturally.
Now that I know more or less how I'm doing it, I can check how my body does it without supervision in real time.
The problem is that it's doing it so inneficiently it's hard to look at.
Basically. My body strategy is simple. SHOVE MAGIC EVERYWHERE EVERYWHERE EVERYWHERE INFECT EVERYTHING MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
And it's slow. Slow and so useless, I mean, bro. Why are you trying to infect a wooden wall! I WANT TO INFECT THE GUARD, NOT THE WALL!
So now I've been practicing molding my magic cloud around and infecting the rain.
Fun time.
The tall homeless man of before passes me by again and find another man to talk to. They talk together for a while, pass by me again, turn deeper in the poor distric-! A random teenager bursts from the side of the alley and pull the shorter homeless man away from the brothel, the taller homeless man helps him, two other kids rush to help the teenager.
When he's out of view, the only sign of the aggression is the sound of people lynching on a homeless guy.
Nobody around me move to help.
Some stare. Most go about their business, whether it's playing betting games in the dirty street, or whispering precautionary tales.
The guards don't help too, but when the teenager pass by the opening of the street leading to the plaza -the ruins around, so broken that the brothel is effectively the only standing building, in, well, a plaza- where the brothel is, the guards do nod at him, just like he answers with a nod.
What the fuck is happening there?