Megamacropolis 7 (Patreon)

“So, welcome to my humble abode! Well not literally humble, it's pretty tall, in fact, your bedroom is on the second floor, right next to mine!”

Assorted quips of the past couple weeks echoed in your mind.

“Just help yourself to anything in the fridge while I'm gone! If not, I'll get Chinese.”

Lots and lots of outwardly benign statements.

“I'm sorry about your problem, if it helps, I am working on it, then we can really spend time together!”

Stuff you liked at first.

Until you understood the context.

“AAAAUGH!” You scream from within a hamsterball; your latest gift from your roommate. Climbing the stairs takes hours, you can't open the fridge, and spending time together had you using a toothbrush as big as you were to help a giant tube rat with her nails. Sure, when you MET you were the same size, but your bloody DISEASE was continuing to prove difficult to stabilize. You stayed just big enough to continue living here.

Admittedly, that was fairly impressive, your escapades in the hospital had apparently driven you all the way to the eighth district. The houses were starting to get fairly nice. By most standards, this was the upper middle class in terms of, well, size.

It's just that to make it you hitched your wagon to your new roommate.

Who was abusing it.

A lot.

By keeping you pet sized relative to herself.

A few hundred feet would NOT cut it.

Rolling your latest prison around, you managed to to ram a chair hard enough to drop it on you, releasing you from your prison. The past two weeks had been focused on getting under your own power, trying to find a proper job, unfortunately; few people were interested in a girl your size in this part of town, particularly one who would have to take constant breaks.

Yesterday you'd given up, after another futile attempt to pry open the fridge, and decided to search Ayana's room for loose crumbs or... something. You found a bookshelf with some interesting things on it. Mostly self-help books and manuals on gymnastics, but some decent history books you struggled down and tried to flip through.

Well, you thought they were decent. When you got them down they seemed closer to a bible or other religious history. It detailed the first titans who grew so large and so powerful, they began to develop magic, means of altering reality of their own accord simply by demanding it... effectively bullying physics by saying 'I'm bigger than you and I will punch.'

Supposedly, the Titans built the first city to their own size, before it collapsed, unable to support a whole world of such splendor. Then they built the second city as it stood today, in tiers. To avert their loneliness, they created people of all shapes and sizes...

Except their own.

The document became rather cultish, detailing how THIS record shows the TRUE history which differs from the mainstream religion (apparently the other thing had been mainstream?) It stated how the titans tried to create more of themselves outright, rather than give their power to their creation that one of them might rise.

And that for their hubris they awakened the elder goddess, who inverted their city. Where before it had stood with the titans at the glorious center and ever smaller creatures further away as their kingdom, now the Titans fell into a pit of ever-greater shrinking... and the city spread outward, only ever getting larger.

So large that without the powers of the Eldest, simultaneity would break down, and so the new titans could only share how large they were truly becoming with her permission.

So large that the Far Reaches could never be filled, and awaited all who were willing to join them.

That was about as far as you got before Ayana caught you, and, livid, stuffed you in your ball to sit and shrink a while.

That was yesterday.

Today, you're going back.

Because nobody in a cult like that ever is not up to something.

Yesterday she left her door open, but today you're small enough to squeeze through the crack under the door. Inside you see the same giant's world as always... but today with a magic circle on the ground, inscribed with a nine pointed star and nine crystals pulsing with light in various different sequences.

When you heard the click of the door, and Ayana coming home early, you were almost relieved, because you did NOT want to try to parse that. Instead you simply hid.

Your ferret friend entered, grinning wildly and removing a crystal ball from a shopping bag which she set in the center... before beginning to chant, a sound that shook the room.

Well, if you died to stumbling into a magic ritual, it WOULD be the appropriate capper to this whole bizarre mess.

Wait, supposedly you couldn't even die, could you?

While you pondered that, Ayana finished whatever she was doing, the crystals disappearing and the crystal ball now glowing brightly... and speaking.

“Yeah whaddya want?” it asked in a deadpan voice.

“Almighty eldest goddess?” Ayana asked, actually surprised.

“Lemme think... Oh! That city. Yes, that's me.” the ball answered.

Ayana continued, sounding much less confident and mystical than before, “I, uh, I created of the blood of the first titans the nine crystals to call you to create a herald, as per the ancient rituals.”

“Yep. Good job too, those first titans can't have a lot of blood these days.”

“It was actually distilled from the municipal water supply...”

“Well that also checks out, since it did all go into the groundwater, so, herald, huh?” the entity asked again.

Ayana coughed, “I was actually going to ask if I could have a specific magic power instead, for the sake of causing chaos in your name. Maybe the ability to manipulate probability?”

“Nah,” the voice answered.

There was an awkward silence before Ayana asked instead, “The ability to grow at will?”

“Now that just undermines the whole premise doesn't it?” the voice responded with sass this time.

“What?”

“What?”

Ayana sighed, “Can I have any of the following: Teleportation, Time Stopping, Infinite Money, Infinite Candy, Comic-book level elasticity, the inability to ever be shrunk, or the ability to make my roommate think I'm the sexiest fucking thing in existence?”

This time the voice paused, before answering, “Yep! Four of 'em, even, but two are going to each of you; have fun with that!”

Ayana barely had time to say “Each of...” before the Crystal Ball shattered with a resounding boom, knocking Ayana backwards and unconscious.

You sighed and waited to be knocked out yourself... again... only to find that you were perfectly fine. Looking around, you noticed that she actually did get some Chinese food, sitting outside the door, and figured she'd be fine without it, tucking in and eating up.

The bit of extra size you got let you into the fridge, which you ate as well.

Though, about halfway through the fridge, you noticed something.

You weren't ravenously hungry anymore.

Instead, you felt pretty good.

Once you finished things off, you went back up to Ayana's room... WALKING up the stairs, having jumped almost to full size.

In fact, Ayana was only about a (relative) foot taller than you now.

And you were in the perfect position to loom over her and grin...