Twin-Seen - Side B (Commission for Rufran)

TAGS: Kaiju/Macro, Macro Rampage, Destruction, Macro Perspective

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He genuinely didn’t know how it happened.

One minute he was fine, having his fun at the coffee house with a couple of friends, all of them enjoying the absurdity that was the tiny mothbird having to use multiple booster seats just to be able to sit at a regular table, and then next, he was looking down at rooftops… at a distance. Rufran was sure there had to be something in between those two moments, but for the life of him, he had no clue what it might’ve been; he might have lost ten minutes or ten hours for all he knew!

Even worse was how his centre of balance was all off! So used to being a tiny little pipsqueak of a moff, he had no frame of reference for how to even walk at that size, forcing him to learn as he went along. Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t a lot of room to learn in, given that he was in the middle of a city; hard for the mothbird to find his pacing when he had to constantly sidestep buildings and take care not to smush people.

For some reason, he heard sirens from down below. Alarmed, Rufran tried to locate the source of the fire, hoping that maybe he’d be able to do something to stop it; instead, he found that the little ones down below were all running away from him, the sound of shouting just barely reaching him up in the clouds above. Perplexed, the giant figured there might be something happening that caused people to be scared, but no, it was just a random stampede occurring for whatever reason.

Shrugging, Rufran decided he needed to find somewhere as far away from the city as possible; if he stuck around, there was a high chance he might just hurt people without wanting to, especially once he tried to do anything other than just… stand around, really. Wincing, the fluffy titan did his best to turn his body around without pulling his claws off the ground; it still needed some rotation, but he hoped it wouldn’t be enough to cause him to crash into things. Not that he wouldn’t be able to help repair a couple of walls if he knocked them down, but it was just a hassle he didn’t want to deal with.

Down below, something happened that caused a whole lot of shouting and a great deal of extra sirens to go off. Once again, Rufran’s immediate reaction was to scan his surroundings to see if he could help, only to turn out disappointed when it was just more stampeding. Honestly, he didn’t know why people were so flighty that day, it was nothing the city hadn’t already seen before; sure, he may be fluffier than most people, but surely the macro preparations should let people get out of there safely.

Ok, maybe there weren’t those many macro incidents. Maybe they were rare enough that people had a reason to not be that prepared, if they weren’t actively readying themselves on a regular basis. Maybe panic would be enough to take down even the most well-laid-out of plans in but a heartbeat, but surely, surely, people shouldn’t be afraid of him! He was more fluff than anything else! Rufran was pretty sure that if he took a step, the buildings might topple him rather than the other way around! Honestly, no one had anything to worry about from him, not as long as he kept his wits close at hand and his sense of balance moderately close by as well.

Easier said than done though; the last time he was that high, Rufran didn’t exactly have his claws on the ground. Hell, the last time he felt that high he did, but wasn’t any taller than his regular one foot! Hard to gauge what he should even do, given the state of affairs; maybe, if he just did nothing, then things would just solve themselves, or at least go down in such a way that he could avoid causing any real damage. Really, there wasn’t any reason for him to move at all; the simplest solution to not do anything to the city was to literally not do anything.

Of course, he could sit there and pontificate on how he shouldn’t be doing anything for as long as he wanted: the fact of the matter was that he still had planes and helicopters buzzing around him, and he couldn’t exactly avoid that. With a massive, international airport just outside city limits, he had to get out of the way if he wanted to avoid making a hassle, and that meant finding a place he could stand on that wouldn’t intersect with any flight paths. Unfortunately, this needed him to actually move, and that’s where trouble began.

Getting his legs to do what he wanted was… weird. He still had them there, he still felt them as he had before, but the square cube law was a bitch and he suddenly felt far, far heavier than he had just moments prior. From a foot tall frame to a mile tall, it was a wonder he was even upright at all, rather than flailing on his back like a flopped-over turtle; a single step took him the better part of five minutes, and very nearly knocked over a couple of cars!

Granted, from all the noise people down below were making, one would think that Rufran was flattening the whole city. To be fair, some damage was unavoidable;  he was in a dense metropolis and he did grow large enough to disrupt cloud formation, so it was understandable that folks might be slightly worried about it. But what was he going to do, shrink? He couldn’t just do that on demand, that’d be silly! Otherwise there’d be no need for macro preparations at all, and no macro incidents to speak of; not his fault his body bwoompfed like that!

Sadly, now he had to deal with it, leaving the fluff titan grumbling as he did his best to stay as far away as possible from anything resembling an inhabited zone; thankfully, most of the little ones down below had already gotten out of the way for him, letting Rufran somewhat freely pick where to drop his talons and not have to worry too much about what happened. Sure, he’d probably destroy a great deal of windows, but better than having to worry about whole buildings; he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if damages rose to the four digits.

It wasn’t at all helped by how the air was noticeably thinner up there; not enough for a regular person to take much note, but given how massive he was, anything other than the fullest of lungs left him feeling airheaded and woozy. It was easy for him to momentarily lose track of where he was or what he was doing, the world occasionally unfocusing before he hit the side of his head a few times and went back to trying to stay still while not staying still.

A dance, is what it was, a dance between himself and a centre of balance that insisted on shifting every other second, leaving him terribly unprepared for whenever a stiff breeze powerlessly buffeted him and yet still managed to make the giant slightly tip over to the side. He felt like he was half-drunk, in that precarious and often-skipped point where he was sober enough to realise he should stop, but too far gone to actually do so; of course, he could hardly tell himself to stop being big even if he wanted to, so there was that problem to deal with.

Mercifully for everyone involved, he didn’t need to move. Sure, maybe at points it’d be better if he did, and maybe he readjusted himself somewhat whenever he felt like no one was around; that was just a necessity though, nothing too major, certainly not enough for it to cause any damage to his surroundings. He might be big, big enough to wipe out whole city blocks if he wasn’t careful, but Rufran was nothing if not cautious with his size, even if it meant inconveniencing himself.

Of course, sometimes it was just too much for him to handle and he had to take a step; no big deal, it only happened a couple of times, maybe a few. And besides, most of everyone had already left his immediate surroundings when it happened, so it should be fine, it wasn’t as if he was going around getting himself into trouble just because he could. Most of downtown still stood; he didn’t know why parts of it had crumbled into pieces, or why there was a whole cloud of debris following him wherever he went, but he was somewhat certain it had to do with whatever was causing everyone to turn around and leave, whatever that might be.

Entirely by accident, Rufran found himself bumping into a skyscraper. It happened too quickly for him to notice it taking place: one moment he was perfectly fine, the next he was sticking one hand straight through about a dozen floors and ripping the top of the building clean off, prompting him to flinch and take a step back, which did nothing to help with why he reacted that way in the first place. The ensuing comedy of errors led to a significant portion of the commercial districts directly north of the city center being… not flattened, but more or less erased from the map, and to a very flustered fluff giant growing increasingly red in the face as the scale of what he’d done sunk in.

Now, the best thing to do in that scenario was find the person who owned that skyscraper and try to apologise. It was probably not enough, or at least Rufran assumed it wouldn’t be, but better be safe than sorry… or both, in this case. If an apology turned out insufficient, he was ready to offer compensation and help if needed, but for that, he needed to find whoever was in charge of the whole place and attempt to impress upon them how sorry he was for accidentally breaking the building in two.

Finding them, however, would prove to be a chore, given how tiny everyone was. Were it not for the fact that his eyes were so good (and how he had spares to boot), Rufran might’ve had some trouble even spotting the little ones on the ground, especially with how thick the clouds were down there. Were those clouds? He didn’t know why there were clouds so far down where the rest of them were, but he was never a meteorologist himself.

That was beside the point. The main goal was to find the nearest skyscraper owner and hope to the heavens above that they were the right one for the building that was just toppled, and that meant, unfortunately, moving around. Rufran did try his best to keep destruction to a minimum, but alas, when one was over a mile tall, one couldn’t avoid some necessary sacrifices. A road caved in here, a city block unfortunately remodelled there, it was all good in the end; no one was around anyway (he presumed), so no one was hurt!

It took a while for him to reach the first group of people, and even then he had to get rid of a few buildings that happened to be in the way; just an office building or two, nothing anyone would really notice was missing. Thankfully, the crowd was all cheerfully packed together, running in one direction down a car-choked avenue and doing their best to be the one leading the group, creating a bit of a crab bucket for everyone involved. Nothing better, really: this way, Rufran could just bend down and fetch all of them so he could speak to them directly!

Watching the ground get closer to him as quickly as he did was one hell of a ride though, enough that most of all non-essentially blood had rushed straight out of his head; the fluff giant that finished the motion was not the same one that had started it, with one of his arms going limp and slamming against the ground. Giggling, Rufran figured he might as well use it to catch all the little ones before they ran away; he understood they might be scared, but he really needed to speak with that skyscraper manager.

A few tons of asphalt and concrete later, he had about a hundred or so people on one of his palms, ready to be brought up for him to talk to. There was still some work left to be done, he did have to sort everyone and see who he really wanted to address, but once his hand was up to eye-level, it was as simple as tipping it down gently and letting all the rubble fall off so he could focus on the people, rather than what they were buried under. Most of them could be immediately discarded as well: random office workers, the occasional pedestrian, none of them looked like someone who might own a skyscraper; best that he put them somewhere safe, where they wouldn’t have to worry about being hurt.

Best place to do so? Right inside of him! He was reasonably certain that macro incidents ended with everyone just popping free of the macro themselves, so no point dilly-dallying; might as well open his mouth and let all the folks who weren’t the one he was looking for plop on down. Hell, he might even swallow, just for that extra level of safety; didn’t want people being hurt while he was talking and his tongue kept flapping around against his beak and the roof of his mouth!

Unfortunately, in the end, it looked like no one there was the person he was looking for; bit of a bother, but that was fine, he could work with that. Most of them were inside him already anyway, so he could just keep going until he found the right person! Bit of rubble in the way, enough that he actually nearly tripped and had to slam his talons down just to keep from falling onto the ground below, but he managed; landed on something soft as well, probably some form of pillow factory or down storage facility.

All around him, the sounds of the city filled the air, though for some reason, mostly those of panic, as the sirens kept going and so many people screamed that even Rufran could hear it. He was perplexed, honestly; he’d been privy to a macro incident or two before and his was nowhere near as destructive! All he’d done was take down a couple of buildings, and even then he was looking for whoever owned him so he could apologise! Honestly, he’d be better served getting out of the city after all; if not for him being so reluctant to be a bother, he wouldn’t even be in that mess to begin with.

Harumphing, and doing his best not to huff more than he had to, Rufran pointed himself towards the outskirts and started walking. It was the only thing he could really do at that point; anything else might make people panic and do something stupid, like try and scale him so they could plunge a sword in his neck or something. Better if he just walked and let the city sort itself out; he was getting tired of all the yelling anyway.

Really, couldn’t have nice things. A mothbird grew to a mile high and suddenly everyone around them is panicking and flailing and thinking that the world was ending; did they not have macro preparedness drills? Were those not designed to make sure people survived an encounter like that unscathed? Thoughts like those and more crossed through Rufran’s mind as he tried to focus on staying positive throughout: it would soon be over, he kept reminding himself, he just had to keep going and eventually the macro incident would be done with. At some point, someone would show up with suppressants and then he’d be fine.

Actually, the lack of suppressants was somewhat puzzling; he was supposed to have been dosed already, which somewhat lent credence to the hypothesis he made about a second threat, as surely, if he was the main danger there, then the local police department would’ve shot him full of shrink needles already. That they hadn’t could only mean that there must be something else keeping their attention elsewhere… but he might as well get out of their anyway, didn’t want people getting double-antsy over nothing.

Finding a place to sit his fat butt on was a pain in the royal neck as well, but he managed. He had to drag himself across a few miles’ worth of urban sprawl, but he managed; plenty of broken roads and a few wrecked cars, but… well, he got there in the end. Had to do some landscaping, but at least he was out of city, and could look back to appreciate what he’d done to it; yes, him sitting down caused a powerful-enough quake that it leveled multiple suburbs, but that was hardly the point, as by then, most of the danger was gone.

That said, he didn’t expect everything to have gone so… harshly. Really, there were a lot of holes where he went through. A lot of holes. More than he expected, actually; it did look like a serious storm had swept through the whole thing and wiped whole chunks of it clean off the map. Rufran stared.

And Rufran shrugged. Better than the last macro incident, as far as he remembered; that one involved a complete reconstruction of most of the skyline and it still hadn’t been done by the time he grew up. Really, his was downright pleasant, all things considered, so he might as well just lay back and enjoy himself until he shrunk back down.

It was going to be a few hours anyway.