After the stress of last week, Ben does what any spider would do when met with familiar tall buildings.
THWIP THWIP..
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None. Just a narrative in case people want to be in that part of town and look up.
It had only been a week and yet it felt like an eternity. Maybe because that week seemed like a hiccup in a journey that Ben had just taken the first step on. Maybe because that week had been a stressful mess of just coming to terms with being stuck in some ‘experiment’ and that week involved a whole lot of ghosts that made taking any action and doing some good feel far too difficult and hopeless. Sure, he had plenty of unasked for experience with the supernatural, but it really wasn’t his forte in being able to fight and protect people from and it wasn’t like he had the back up he did back at home.
But this place. This place. Yes, it wasn’t the same, but then when was it ever? Sometimes, he wondered how it must be for Peter. To just have a continuous memory of this city. To not realize a lot of the changes because it’s just one or two shifts over the course of weeks. A little tweak here and a little adjustment there. Not years of muscle memory having to be retrained. Webline anchor points relearned. Swing arcs recalculated. There was a thrill to that in itself. Learning a city. Discovering the best pathways. But above everything else, this was home. Even with all the emotional baggage, the city had a stability to it that he couldn’t deny. There was an ease to it. A rhythm. Something he could just slip into without too much thought.
Especially when it came to the red and blue. Navigating the people and expectations had its own share of troubles and hoops and uncertainties, but up here? Years of experience made it easy enough to find the right buildings and alleys and fire escapes to get to a roof ledge high above everything. Yeah, the traffic still managed to murmur up and both less boisterous and more at the same time than the one he’d left, but there was a serenity from up above. The soft sound just the flow and heartbeat of the city, mixing with the drafts that the corridors of tall buildings funneled the brisk wind that warned of winter into. Concrete and glass and steel and people moving and living. He could just stand up there on the ledge, soaking it all in all day.
Except there were other things that needed to be done. Just from the feel of this ‘experiment’, he gathered stops like this were few and far between. Even if he woke up to his hair looking just as good as when he got here, personal shopping trips were in order. First most for clothes so that if his current outfit got messed up again, he wouldn’t need to raid the theater (plus he was just done with the suit look). Second, emergency bleach because he didn’t trust that this week reset would always work. But those were the selfish personal focus. Really, trying to find whatever he could for whatever science needs (like those 'ice coffins') was highest priority. Plus food supplies. And likely patrolling...
But for now… Maybe it wasn’t the best idea with this being a different New York City and with types of people he’d noticed in Derleth, but he needed this. He really needed this. The release. It felt a bit weird to have the mask on and to not have someone whispering in his ear, but it also felt… freeing… No agenda. No testing. No debrief afterwards. Just… him and the air… Flying. One last check of mask and webshooters. Then, with a bounce on his toes, he jumped, flipping and tucking in a way that any olympic diver would even before opening up into the freefall. The wind rushing past. The exhilaration. Basking in the sensation before finally whipping an arm out to latch a webline on a building corner, that pull of gravity shifting into an arc and pull of muscles to change direction.
He couldn’t help the whoop of joy as he reached the summit of the arc of one webline. That instance of momentum fighting with the pull down to the street. Waiting for the next anchor point. Waiting. And just as that balance shifted, downward winning against that fling of the webswing….