Helping Hurricanes (Chapter 2) (Patreon)

The capital’s downtown itself lay dead-ahead. Vera had to admire the sight of it, even though no building among the silvery cluster of needle-like shapes was any taller than her ankle. It certainly did look like it took a lot of work for the microscopic beings inhabitants to create, and Vera was quite certain that after losing all of that real estate, they would understand the importance of the issue upon which she’d taken her stand. Even the skyscrapers stood like low-cut blades of grass, hued with metal and glass, and Vera wondered if she’d even be able to feel them being destroyed as easily as the suburbs. After all, there was no point to any of this rampage business if the giantess couldn’t detect each and every habitat shattering against her sole flesh, turning to ashen mush in the wrinkles of her arches and getting caught between her digits. She made a mental note of the government facility’s location, as this was all for naught if she accidentally obliterated the place underheel.

Wanting to test out this new ground with a more “delicate” approach first, Vera lifted her leg and balletically lowered her foot back toward Earth, pointed toes aimed like missiles, intercepting first with a row of office towers. Her bulbous toes cruised straight through the upper spires and continued down, turning the many-storied structures to a cloud of splinters and gravel in a matter of seconds. A tingle shot up Vera’s spine. Her beloved coastline ‘ville didn’t have the resources to build anything like this, and so it was a new experience for the giantess to crush something that represented humanity’s highest architectural effort. It still went to pieces at her softest touch, but the difference was notable nevertheless. This sensation was tender yet prickly, like being poked in the toepads by feathers, and Vera relished the whole experience. Having determined that stomping the capital’s downtown to bits was not only a worthwhile endeavor but in fact a vital alternative to leveling homes, she let her heel collide with the shuddering ground, then got to work.

Vera made sure to not smush too much of the capital in any one step, since she wanted this event to last as long as possible, though it also was tempting to press down her foot in the very center and feel, concentrated upon every square meter of her slender soles, those dizzyingly tall citadels go brittle and broken using only the subtlest of downward compressions. When she’d gotten out some of her rampage-hungry energy by simply walking across the city’s sprawling expanse a few times, shuffling and marching in a variety of formations that allowed her to storm through with a different flavor of destruction on each pass, the girl changed tactics.

Retreating to the green acreage again surrounding the downtown area, Vera lowered herself to her haunches, arching both feet and letting them slide across the topography such that the terrain ripped up and overlapped like folded ribbons. Her scrunched toes dug into the planet’s crust for purchase, while the balls of her feet acted as support anchors, allowing Vera to brace herself against the ground and dip down for a more personal introduction to the intricate metropolitan ghost town, where the buildings were tallest and most expensive. It was impossible to repress a toothy ear-to-ear grin on her face as the incredibly tiny city loomed ever-so-slightly nearer, though still immeasurably miniscule.

Like was her custom at the seaside town, just before beginning her annual frenzy of demolition, Vera pressed her chin to the ground and stared into the detail-pocked microverse. Even at this close range, where the giantess’s very sighs made the taller skyscrapers tilt in the breeze, it was tough for the girl to decipher everything. It was all so very small, colorful and sparkly, but difficult to divine except for its boldest and broadest shapes, like the clustered skyscraping buildings and latticed street grid.

Taking a deep breath, Vera puffed up her cheeks then released the air as gale wind into the heart of the downtown’s wealthiest quadrant. Buildings bent like dandelion stems, then toppled swiftly over, all the while tinkling as the girl’s blustery breath spirited through every alley and main street. Earth-quaking laughter rumbled from deep in her trim belly through the downtown area, bowling over a few more resilient structures in the process, and then Vera raised her hand. When she was finished huffing and puffing, only half of the buildings in this district remained standing. Casting a glance in the direction of the government facility to double-check that her gargantuan activities were still visible to those marooned there, she waved at the indiscriminate specks from afar, then extended her dainty index finger like a lance and began prodding skyscrapers.

One at a time, the remaining capital towers were felled with a single tap apiece from Vera’s fingertip. Some with looser foundations even sailed into the air, spinning and landing somewhere in the rubble beyond. Others went down like skeet-shooting targets, and the giantess turned this act into a game, trying to quash the rest of them in the shortest time possible. Still smiling just as sunnily, and increasingly able to see through the city proper thanks to the thinning skyline, Vera’s hand whipped in all directions, flicking and poking every which way just as fast as she could locate skyscrapers amongst the smoking backdrop. When she was through, unable to find another tower even worthy of her time, Vera dusted off her hands, then arched peacefully back to a kneel.

“Wow! I have to say, this was worth the wait. I might have to visit every year from now on!” Vera cheered so the government facility captives could hear. “Well, maybe not every year. I don’t want to play favorites, you know. They might start to miss me by the water. So, maybe we can work out some kind of alternating trade schedule every other year. That way, you’ll have plenty of time to build even better things for me to play with. But just remember, all of you, and I know you’re listening: Rampage Season is too special to take away. If you don’t start taking it seriously again, well, I’m just going to have to visit you every other month instead of every other year!”

Vera arose. She surveyed the damage done, a modest amount that left about half the metropolis in ruins and the rest merely in a state of disarray, with only the odd building or city block cascaded. This was likely sufficient to get her message across. However, on the one-in-a-million chance that Vera’s opinions on government spending and Rampage Week had been somehow lost in translation, the giantess strutted in a circle around the miniature isle of the capital’s untouched political campus. Again and again she lapped the place, each time serenely dismantling a different shining borough, until nothing taller than a mailbox stood any longer in her path. Scores of previously pristine buildings were flattened in her wake, decorating the curvy undersides of Vera’s peds in acres of glittery skyscraper-dust and smearing fiery debris that pleasantly warmed her soles. Her gentle footsteps pounded the earth surrounding the facility yet deeper, until the big wigs in their fortress were left perched on a pillar of earthen crust like a treehouse. Everything else had reached a uniform degree of lower elevation, thanks to the giantess’s deliberate footwork.

A new canyon yawned over the square miles where once the great capital gleamed. It now lay as a sea of rock and soot, molded like clay to the pattering shapes of Vera’s ever-wandering colossal feet, with only the occasional pocket of accidentally uncrunched city geometry to remind anyone that it had once been the most powerful center in the nation. Vera waved farewell to her captive audience, and then made her exit, as nonchalantly as she’d arrived, marking the end of this year’s Rampage Season, the first of its kind for the landlocked city of one-time prestige. When bypassing her lovely coastal city again on her way to the ocean, the giantess silently winked and meaningfully nodded to them all. All-to-eager to return once things had been set right, Vera cautiously side-stepped their meager half-society. By lunging overhead of the shore-wrapped town, she could just manage to clear the place in a single bound without having to set even one destructive toe to their humble ‘burg.

“I’ll be back next year,” Vera promised aloud. “And so will you!”

Sure enough, fifty-two weeks to the date, the revitalized coastal town lay calmly in wait. The budget had not only been regrown but in fact doubled from its previous reserve, allowing them to reconstruct and live in the lap of relative luxury. When through the mist the citizens spotted a familiar leviathan silhouette trudging through the agitated waters and coming their way, they evacuated in resignation and the nearest feeling possible to contentment, all circumstances considered. Their attitudes couldn’t possibly have matched Vera’s degree of elation, though, when she got her first good look at the abandoned mini-metropolis, brighter and better than ever, just begging to be razed beneath her paces.

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THE END (for now)