Coda Kustihoko is not a bad man.
Well, he has his good, and he has his bad. He likes drinking, yes, but most of the time he doesn't drink enough to end up in a coma, or drink enough to see things.
Things like me being stuck on the wall.
Well, I'm not stuck anymore. I'm sticking to the wall, yes, but this is happening willingly.
Peter parker would be proud of me.
Wait a second.
Frowning and pushing, I straighten myself, my back against nothing, but my ass on the wall, I look down at Coda. He's an average looking man, but he has pretty rough hands that definetly comes from a lifetime of manual labor, his nose is pretty big, but that doesn't destroy his attractiveness too much. He drinks every week or so with his friends, friends that came to check on him and seemed pretty surprised to see him THAT drunk, so I do assume this bout of crazy drunkness is rare.
Looking down at him. I do the iconic webshooter handsign and-THRUST my hand toward him as a gigantic we-!
Nope.
Nothing.
I'm not spider man apparently.
Or I'm the one who needs to be techsavy.
Sighing and stopping my antics, I observe my victim.
Right now he's dancing in street with other drunks. He's close to the bar entrance, but really? In general, most of the drunks are around the street, there's a lot of them, and the street pretty much belong to them now. Coda is close to the entrance though, and that's why I'm close to the entrance too, and that's why I'm looking down on his progressing baldness. He has an hole in his scalp.
I can see it well. Couldn't have seen it normally, since he's way taller than me.
But considering where I am, I can see it, and to be honest, I can see it pretty easily.
I can see everyone scalps to be honest.
And more importantly, I'm safe from any drunks bumping into me.
I put my right palm under my chin, my crossbow is here too. What? You think I'm strong enough to hold it with a single arm for hours? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No, of course not, it's there but it's stuck on my lap, defying gravity and sticking to me with all the insistence of a tick. Which is a pretty good thing, it was always annoying to carry, but now I can just put it on my body and it sticks.
I still don't know how I'm doing that to be honest. I can feel my flow doing weird things, pushing against my veins, pusing against my skin and covering me like some kind of...exoskeleton?
Yeah. I don't really know what I'm doing, but it's instinctive so that's fine.
I don't know how I can be sticky, but my body follow my desire of stickyness without me focusing on any sort of weird technique, if I want to be sticky, I am sticky, so, I'll just ignore it for now and look at Coda.
Ah right. Coda.
Coda is the drunk that bumped into me some hours ago. After larping as lady luck, I went back in my room, took my crossbow, jumped from the window and made sure that my blanket hiding the view from the inside didn't fell, then, I went back to the bar.
Now with a crossbow and a plan to avoid any little drunks to say dumb shit, I decided to stalk.
At first it was a bit annoying, because of my previous experience here, I was a bit worried about...bumping into drunks, that's why, I was pretty focused, even if my back was against on the wall, I was ready to dodge at any seconds.
I really really wanted to be away.
To be in some kind of comfortable place away from there so I could just spy without risking anything.
And that's when my back started acting a weird.
It was like...sliding up.
Uh, how do I describe that without sounding completly crazy.
It was sliding up.
I was there. Back on the wall, like before. And my entire body started to slide up, as if I was some kind of snail.
Okay.
That's
THAT SOUND CRAZY, I KNOW, BUT HEAR ME OUT!
I'm confused too, still, I didn't panic as much as before, had some practice with this weird sticky thing, and usually, it doesn't harm me. It's only dangerous when I'm worried and panicking, so, I calmed down, chilled, took a big breath and all.
That's what I did, that was the secret sauce.
Just chillllll, my feet were in the air a second later and I found myself hanging from the wall. My back single handedly keeping me there.
....
This was the moment where I did my best not to panic, so I tried to move a bit. Tried to feel that shit out, tried to be chill, and to keep up my stalking as if my body didn't rose up in the air by itself like in an horror movie. Nope. Nothing happened. Fake it till you make it, so I acted like nothing was wrong and tried to keep up my stalking. I was hanging from the wall, back against the wall, vertically. So I couldn't really see Coda, needed to crane my head down to see him. So I tried my best to keep acting like everything was fine, and my body got baited by my acting cause my back peeeeeled itself away from the wall, smoothly too, gently transitioning me from being vertically up against the wall like Jesus, to sitting down on the wall and being perpendicular from said wall.
That's how I found myself sitting on the wall and looking dow-! No, not down, that's how I found myself sitting on the wall and right in front of me was Coda. Coda scalp, and the ground.
Okay now that's the moment where I should start to panic or laugh like a madman.
I wanted to do the second thing, I'M SPIDER-BOY, CODA IS RIGHT!
However, I didn't do any of this. I didn't laugh, or panicked, because this new technique of mine, just like my illusions, had rules.
It's all about...
Trust...?
Belief? Maybe?
Confidence? Sounds better?
Control. That's it!
It's all about control.
The control a human have when walking, you're so much in control, so confident about your walking skills, so good at putting a step after the other that you don't even need to think about it.
That's what's it's all about.
And the problem with panicking is that you're not really in control when panicking, so when I panic, my body sticks things randomly to itself, or unstick other things and all that bullshit.
First time this sticking happened, it was when I was waking up, drowning. Understandably, I was panicking, so I threw myself away. And then, that's the important part. I didn't felt stable, I was drowning in chaotic waters after waking up, it wasn't STABLE at all, I wanted something solid and clear, my bed, something I could anchor myself to, SOMETHING....and the feeling of strong wood beneath my hands was reassuring, made me remember I was alive, where I was, and that I wasn't in the middle of an ocean.
Even if it would have been objectively better for me to let it go. I still enjoyed feeling something that wasn't water under my hands, it soothed me, and what happens?
My hands are stuck there.
And yes, in the end, it gave me prejudice by shoving me back in. But when it did, and I REALLY STARTED TO PANIC and tried to fight against an invisible enemy, took a kunai out and all?
Well.
I was free.
And a kunai was stuck in my hand.
And when I was starting to get worried about it being stuck and was readying myself to go to crazy length to hide it, it fell.
Sounds pretty instinctive to me.
So let's go with the instinctive route.
I think that's the way to go?
I think?
I'm not sure to be honest. Because...if I close my eyes and focus inside my body, I can feel it, my flow. It's moving, it's stuck to my skin, the weird exoskeleton I talked about. It's really focused on my lap and on the bottom of my ass and...
ARGH I DON'T KNOW!
I'm sure I could figure out how to stick to stuff without doing it unconsciously but...is that a good idea?
If I reproduced the flow pattern, I could probably stick something on me. But....it's already working in the background as long as I don't panic, so is it really needed?
I don't knoooow!
I DON'T KNOW!
WHAT IF IT'S LIKE BREATHING!? AND FOCUSING ON IT MAKE IT WORSE!?
ARRGGHHHHH!
Fuck.
Okay, you know what? I'll avoid trying to control whatever is inside of me, just trust my body, and...uh, if I don't see any progress, I'll start trying to control it and manhandle my flow around.
For now though?
I'm sitting on a wall, a smile almost exploding on my face, one I'm trying to restrain. And below me, there's Coda.
A drunk man that didn't talk about spider-boy even once.
So...
I pick up my crossbow and FOCUSING hard on NOT FOCUSING I grab my crossbow and it detaches itself from my lap without any problem. I take aim at Coda. And consider my options.
Kill the guy who's drunk, and all his words could be waved away, risk a bigger investigation that may lead back to me.
Don't kill the guy, let him go on his way, and risk him remembering what he saw.
But he was drunk.
....
With a sigh, I put my crossbow on my lap without thinking about it and almost freeze as I see it stick there. Just like that.
Well that's handy.
Instinctive control is kinda carrying for now.
In any case.
Be thankful little Coda, you're free today.
And me? Well, I need to practice my new power.