“Unbeating hearts that are all the same
Empty your veins in my name
New world, new god, new ways of thinking
Notice me, notice me, until you suffocate!!”
A message was delivered onto the sleepy suburbs, a growl that crept into the ears of everyday civilian life. It was no government declaration, more similar to a concert, but still not quite – it was indeed lyrics that haunted the population, and its aggressive words rapidly spread unrest from neighbor to neighbor. Without any instruments to make a melody or support the vocals, the violent mood was still made cuttingly clear, deciphered to mean it was an omen.
Screams snapped, first sparse and distant from one another, before crescendoing into a roar-like gasp. In a swirl of residential architecture, individuals happened upon an image more astonishing than any song. Some saw it from their balconies, others gawked from the streets; two different roads were jammed by its presence, causing cars and trucks to honk at what they had yet to comprehend. Planted hard into the pavement were two well-used sneakers; two legs, oppositely colored in neon tights, stylishly ripped and ending teasingly beneath the hem of a pleated skirt. It dawned on the citizens that upon them was a titan, a monster with wild hair, metal accessories, and bold eyeliner. Having spontaneously arrived in their neighborhood was a giant woman, dressed in a uniform with a rebellious fashion, and it was her from which such cryptic lyrics spoke from.
“Unbeating hearts… Mmm, that’s spicy! New world, new god– Yeah yeah, with the bass going down…~” The chorus almost repeated, but it was just a conversation rather than a performance. The giant hummed a melody to herself, smiling and rocking to the imaginary beat, her eyes closed in full immersion of the song. Beside and between her legs were rows of modest households that rattled alongside her rhythm, caught in the vibrations of her energy. A sneaker would rise and then lower, clapping the street where it stood in place of a kick drum, until her knees knocked inward with electric delight. A hop that barely left the ground was enough to cause the closest onlookers to jump with her; “YES!” she pumped, her sharp violet eyes opening like beacons of her success. “Writer’s block: defeated! Haaah~ Ibuki’s head is so unclogged~ like my brain is no longer constipated~”
Ibuki Mioda continued to recite new lyrics as they popped into mind, mumbling the words to herself as she navigated around rhymes and rhythms. She was absorbed into her passion, that which had been the talent that allowed her to enroll at Hope’s Peak Academy; the Ultimate Musician had only grown more involved in her artistic career since graduation, becoming especially interested in brutal, moody lyrics. She had been in the midst of writing as much for a new song, and still was, lost in her creative process and thus oblivious to her shrunken surroundings. When Ibuki’s renowned hearing picked up the noisy unrest of a tiny community, her head only rocked harder, mistaking the brewing hysteria as a crowd cheering on the song’s debut.
“Hell yeah! Gotta write this down before it all leaks out~” Ibuki began to move, her in-place rocking evolving into a stomp-walk forward and a fuller head-bang. The take-off step immediately urged onlookers to spread out and hide, fearful of where the flat of her shoe would decide to fall – which was partway into a neighbor’s yard, flattening the fenced property into the shape of her footwear. Similar crashes drummed farther into the community as all focus followed her. “These sounds will make Ibuki’s blood go fwooosh! Make my heart go dugga-dugga-dugga-du–”
In a burst of an impulse, Ibuki kicked a leg forward, fast and unflinching – Kra-kooom! An upper-corner of an apartment complex was obliterated in a blink, blown apart as if struck clean by a supercharged wrecking ball. The tenants dwelling inside never had a chance to prepare, only those already enthralled by the giant in position to witness the unforgiving speed of her tights-clad leg before it blitzed into their building. Chunks of walls, floors, and furniture shot away with cannon-like force, hailing across houses and those evacuating from them. The rest of the complex shivered hard from the unpredictable boom, but it was grateful to still otherwise be standing, gashed open with blocks of apartments and their occupants exposed to the afternoon sun.
Yet, despite those disastrous consequences behind her blind dance maneuver, Ibuki continued to jam out with herself, her long hair lashing furiously as her upper body bounced to the beat. Unbeknownst to her, she was making a mockery of victims; survivors within the crumbling corner looked skyward to see a skirt and thighs swaying side to side, the backside of their tormentor thrusting back and forth with rhythmic energy. She would spin once more performing air guitar before she finally noticed what she had done to the building, but rather than take responsibility into guilt, she looked into the plumes of dust with a hyperactive smile. Caught up in her own excitement, Ibuki planted her foot back into the building’s wound, steadying it between multiple floors before–
Thooom! She kicked into the heart of the structure, the sole of her sneaker bursting through walls like they were cardboard. Floors fell upon floors as everything caved into the center, and mounds of debris and furniture spilled towards that hole, dragging with it the ambushed residents. Then, after that first impact, Ibuki tore her foot up and out from the crumbling complex, inflicting a subsequent attack on the location as she removed her leg from the ruins.
“Yeah! Now that’s the energy Ibuki has been looking for~!” Ibuki pumped her fists, finally free from the shackles of creative block and back to her usual impulsiveness. She grinded the point of her shoe into the street, scraping it clean of the debris that was caked into the pattern of her treads – only then did it occur to Ibuki to wonder, “Hmm… Was that supposed to be kickable…?
“H– Huh? W-Wait a moment… Was Ibuki spacing out again…?” Ibuki knelt slightly lower, inspecting not just the smoldering disaster site, but the surrounding area, the grid of similarly-shaped blocks that she was in the middle of. These were buildings and houses, she realized, and so she concluded that these were also streets and alleys, traffic and utilities; an entire residential district and all that spanned beyond it, scaled around her to a lowly fraction of the scale it should have been. Ibuki was agasp as she gradually comprehended her surroundings, “E-E-Everything is s-so… tiny… Then, that must mean…
“Hah! R-Really?! Is this a film set?!?” Ibuki hopped with excess excitement, enough of a jump that her landing rumbled the neighborhood. She twirled and meandered up the road, suddenly invigorated with interest over everything she saw, still oblivious to the shockwaves of every step she took. It was with only the slightest caution that she traversed around the district, considerate of the cars below only as much as she thought of them as props for the set she stumbled into. “Sooo rad~! Is this for a kaiju movie? Or maybe a super sentai show?” She happily posed for each example, fist hunching forward with her hands raised like claws, before shifting to a one-legged battle stance – but in the shadow of her fun, crowds continued to take cover, rightfully keeping distance from her haphazard footfalls. She was oblivious to their troubles, and just as unaware to another detail that the citizens were privy to: as she took into the town with thundering strides, she was slowly growing bigger.
Ibuki sank into where an intersection of streets became a trap of a traffic jam, hitting the pavement hard with her knees before leaning low onto her hands. A row of houses trailed between her legs, but it was no matter to her as she crawled above them, just tall enough for her hips to arch over the roofs. Her rear was lifted especially high as she leaned her face lower to the road, intrigued by the cars and how they realistically honked and flashed their lights – a very true fluster of fear that Ibuki perceived as artistic dedication to whatever was being filmed. Drivers hesitated to leave the presumed safety of their vehicles, urging instead to unknot themselves from the traffic or otherwise hope to be overlooked – the dice were rolled when a hand of brightly-painted nails lurked above the vehicles, deciding on one to take.
“Ooh, cool car~” Ibuki muttered aloud, convinced she was alone on the film set and free to play with the props. She picked out a flashy luxury car that popped to her with its red color and sleek polish, plucking it from off the street and lifting it level with her eyes. It was rotated all around in her grasp, its alarm wailing as she awed louder than it, “Ahh~ so much detail! I can’t believe they have to make so many of them!”
Enthralled as she was with the vehicle itself, the occupants inside were never acknowledged by Ibuki. A pair of women on their commute from work were suddenly abducted and spiraled in the air like an object of interest; their cups of coffee were crudely splashed over them, as were all loose items in the car thrown around in a senseless flurry. When the twisting ceased and they were held steady once again, they thought they had endured enough to be let go, but the haunting giggle promised a different end. The dizzied passenger pointed out ahead of them, but the driver was helpless to steer them elsewhere: they were drawn into the shadow of Ibuki’s collar, and then tucked between her chest and a bra strap.
“Souvenir get~” Ibuki chuckled, patting down her shirt where her prize had been stored. Without any pockets, she could only think of more awkward locations to store away something so valuable. Her thieving was fast, succumbing quickly to klepto behavior that had lifted her guitar picks and drum sticks, but never a prop from a film set. “They won’t miss one car,” she excused herself, crawling past the intersection and into another block of lowrises. “That’s why they made extra of everything, right? Just in case of a wild Ibuki attack~
“Even these houses have to be expendable,” Ibuki giggled, sitting sideways on her hip with one such home in front of her. She grinned ear to ear, “If not, Ibuki will fix everything before she leaves~ No harm, no foul, no shoes, no service!” Rambling like she was known to do, Ibuki carefreely delved into discovering the details of a house, a process that entailed her grabbing the roof and ripping it back like it were a removable lid – except it mostly deteriorated rather than open aside cleanly, not that Ibuki was concerned. She was more keen to find out what was inside, peeking through the damages to spy on what the designers had included with the model house.
It was a surprise to Ibuki when her precise hearing heard a sharp, feminine shriek from the room she had exposed to the open air. She had revealed a bathroom, and the woman making use of it was there to be found, shellshocked next to the tub with a towel draped tight over her body. Her bath had been disturbed by the consecutive quakes, but before she could dress herself, the unknown threat from outside was upon her, catching her at her most vulnerable. She shambled to the tiled floor and squealed in distress, the warm steam rapidly replaced with the cold dread that came with feeling small and weak.
But Ibuki was paused by the scene she uncovered, not having expected to see a naked woman – nor any kind of person. There was the downscaled furniture and decorations that she assumed would be included, but also a living human to make use of them, joined by a spouse that was equally alarmed in the other room. It dawned on Ibuki then that these were not merely model replicas, but actual property, an actual community made alive by actual people – people that were madly running away from where she sat, suspicious of what her next obnoxious bout would be.
“O-Ohh… That’s it! Ibuki is huge!!” she concluded, announcing her thoughts to her enduring audience. She sprung up to stand on her knees, suddenly awashed with embarrassment – only a slither of guilt, but enough to make the rockstar blush and smile shyly, realizing that there were countless eyes pointed up at her. She brushed down her skirt and lifted her leggings, priming herself to account for all of that attention. “Eh-heh… This doesn’t make sense at all~ C-Can anyone explain it to Ibuki? Did she click on an ad she wasn’t supposed to? Did she consent?!”
Ibuki’s head blew into a jumbled race of far-out ideas and theories. Just as fast did her heart drum with worry that she might be in some sort of trouble for all the damages she caused, only some of which she could even remember. The only matter to bring order to her mind was the rise of a new problem: she was not just 50 meters tall, but growing even bigger. She was pressed to make a decision as the roads dwindled tightly around her legs, prompting her to shuffle up to her feet using nearby houses for support. Once risen to that intimidating height, she swirled around with dizziness and staggered backwards, flinching whenever she felt the crunch of a car or light post pop beneath her heels. Her quake-causing movements settled when she found a plot of a field wide enough for her to occupy, but it was a shrinking square of space, soon disappearing beneath her and forcing the suburbia to compromise with her feet.
“I-It can’t be helped… Ibuki keeps growing…” Admitting as much, Ibuki’s stiffness faded, as did any guilt that itched at her. It was an entirely unreal situation and too sudden for any context to make sense of; Ibuki concluded as much with a confident smile, crossing her arms over her chest with an exaggerated nod. “This makes no sense, so it has to be one of Ibuki’s dreams!” she declared, emphasizing herself with a ground-shaking stomp. Her eyes opened with new appreciation for the scale-sized environment, dazzling without the worries of shame or consequence. “Ibuki’s head is so twisted and messed up~ No wonder those lyrics were so good!! Ibuki better write them down IRL before she totally forgets them… but, um… h-how does Ibuki wake up?”
There was no obvious answer to her question, but Ibuki searched for one nonetheless, expecting to find a doorway that would take her to the waking world, or a red button that ended the fantasy. She sifted for such things through the streets and alleys of the community she now loomed long over, disregarding any damages she caused to her supposed dreamscape – none of it mattered, despite the realistic roar of screaming people buzzing in her ears, ringing louder whenever she stepped somewhere new. Upon finding an area of interest, such as a business courtyard or a busy market street, she searched low by kneeling on her haunches and casting a curious gaze across the block, blissfully ignorant of the billboard-like display she made of her legs above crowds she deemed made-up and unimportant.
Panic followed Ibuki as she invaded the denser urban ring of the city. Wider roads and taller buildings meant a grander population responded to her giant size thundering from the suburbs. Two multi-lane highways made for a comfortable and express path that she could walk through, no longer having to haphazardly tip-toe through thin roads or hop between parks. Yet as far as her pursuit took her, she found nothing to end her slumber, instead coming upon countless distractions: towers taller than her, flashing lights with animated advertisements, and floods of civilians scrambling away from her aimless wandering.
Ibuki stopped to think, utilizing a hotel’s corner as a wall to lean her back against. The entire building whined from the pressure she weighed onto it, made worse when she propped her foot against the side for balance. The occupants within had to bear the threatening noise for as long as Ibuki swam in her thoughts, concentrating hard with a constant hum of her own to signal the intensity of her thinking. Her stare dwelled on a multi-level intersection of highway roads, idly taking note of the frantic rush hour drivers and their wariness towards her – it was from that traffic jam that Ibuki found an odd spark of inspiration.
“If this dream is some sort of monster flick, it must end when the monster wins, right?” Ibuki said, speaking to her own reflection from the skyscraper opposite of her – indirectly, she also explained herself to the cowering office workers inside. “End the movie, end the dream! Hehe, Ibuki has never acted before, but I’m used to being the center of attention~” She strode forward one wide pace, relaunching her massiveness into an overarching pose over a bridge of traffic. “Hmm! Ibuki is as big as a kaiju, but she doesn’t really look like one. Hmm-hmm… what would Ibukisaur look like…?”
Ibuki closed her eyes in thought, but soon reopened them when she felt a warmth spontaneously lay over her form – the weight of fabric worn all over her body. The reflective skyscraper was a mirror for her to understand what she was suddenly outfitted in: a full-body kigarumi of a reptilian kaiju, complete with a hood lined with fabric fangs and a plush tail that dragged across the pavement behind her. It was a cartoonish style of costume, depicting a crimson-colored dragon with an oversized mouth and a cutesy expression in its googly eyes. Ibuki was enveloped inside, covered completely except for her hands, shoes, and excess length of hair that spilled from the hood.
The astonishingly bright image popped Ibuki into energetic shivers that infected the very building she saw herself in. Compared to the worry that plagued the hundreds of employees on the other side of the glass, Ibuki’s expression was overwhelmingly cheerful. Her face was drawn near enough for her breaths to stain the windows, pulling away only so she could spin and examine the full picture of the kigarumi. The business park at her feet was cratered by her careless repositioning, and her toy-tail swept the streets in a circle that barreled through any obstacle. “So cute!!” was the extent of her babbling, a phrase repeated as often as the jumps in her growth – though it went unnoticed by her, observant civilians noticed the correlation between her size and rising levels of excitement, implying the possibility that she could keep growing without limit.
Ibuki’s newest spike in size debuted to thundering effect as she lost the will to contain herself any longer. She stomped out her initial territory with a laugh, “Graawr!! Hahaha~!” A trail of craters was made from one corner of the skyscraper to the next, each subsequent footstep proving broader than the last. When obstructed by a high overpass of traffic, Ibuki playfully leaped over it rather than walk over it like she could have, deciding to be as destructive as she whimmed; her two-footed impact struck the land with a hard tremor, jostling everyone and everything unforgivingly, only to be mocked by her girlish amusement. Those that fell but could stand again saw their obnoxious tormentor overhead, the evening sky eclipsed by a 200 meter-tall woman playing the part of a movie monster.
To fully achieve that role, Ibuki knew she had to make a statement of power. Stomping down cars or kicking in landslides was not climactic enough to end a dream, so it seemed, and thus her spirited acting lurked towards that skyscraper again. In the time she trotted around it with exaggerated footfalls, she had noticeably shortened the gap between their heights, though the office building still had a head and crown above her – thus had it earned her attention. While choosing how to dominate the structure, Ibuki leered through the windows and watched the hysteria unfold with a gleeful grin, comprehending the drama as just another figment of her dream.
There was a mischievous sheen to Ibuki’s smile just as she reared her head back. She inhaled in preparation, announcing herself to the public, “Ibukisaur Hidden Ability - Hellfire Song From Hell!!” Her hooded head then rocked forward with the exhale, proposed like a scream but without a voice – instead, there was a blaze of fire expelled from her throat. Flames quickly conquered the upper stories of the skyscraper, flooding the halls and rooms with an extreme heat that melted through the walls and spread between the floors. The peak of the tower was then a lit candle, smoke and fire billowing in the high-altitude winds as embers hailed onto the devastated crowds below.
The citizens learned well at that point to expect the unexpected, much like Ibuki herself had been startled by the fire she summoned. The bright light and quick catch of the flames spooked her into stumbling backwards – truly, she had felt the actual sting of heat from being too near to the fire, a suggestion that the scene was more real than a dream. Certainly it was impressive enough to thrill her like any real pyrotechnics show, and thus did she burst into growth appropriately as she stumbled away from the whipping blaze, a newly increased size that made it all the easier to trample through the businesses behind her. She awed at the torched skyscraper even as it shrunk in front of her, soon surpassing its height as she giggled her way up to 600 meters tall, superior to any other structure the city was once proud of.
Standing as tall as she did, Ibuki relished a unique perspective above the busy district, surveying the city as though it were a playground to experiment with. Her eyes darted about before sinking onto that blazing building; she humored the idea of just stomping it out underfoot and snuffing out the fire, but imagined a more creative means of destruction when she accounted for various other skyscrapers ahead of her. They caught her attention like stout markers, equally deserving of some monstrous punishment.
“Yahoo! That was crazy! But this should be even crazier~!” Ibuki’s hype vibrated the city she had outgrown, readying the population for the inevitable eruption. She stepped into a spread stance, each foot planted heavily into highways too narrow to contain them, then joined her hands together with her fingers posed in the shape of a pistol. Her glare steadied onto her aflame target and her smirk cracked wide, “Ultimate Ibukisaur Hidden Ability - Heavenly Arrow!!”
Exactly as she imagined, a purple light charged into existence at the tips of her fingers. It swelled larger with power, a spectacle that captivated crowds with its sparkling effect – an inhuman ability with clear intentions. What began as a dot of light then propelled forward into a laser beam, instantly striking through the fiery skyscraper. Unexpecting office workers that clustered in the central halls of the complex were suddenly evaporated by an encroaching wall of violet, a barrier that unforgivingly ripped through the heart of the building and cut the structure clean in half. Both sides crumbled, downed alongside those unable to escape and the many caught in the collapse, and only the first of few targets. As angled by Ibuki, the beam traveled from that point to the next, tearing through streets and lesser buildings with a concentrated, indomitable heat. The next victim was an observation tower, a structure packed with tourists that were cursed with the generous view of the attack’s direct approach; thin as the building was, the light cleanly enveloped it, leaving little more than scraps of the tower’s base before proceeding to another landmark to disintegrate.
“Pewww-pewww! Rrrrrr!” Ibuki included her own sound effects to accentuate the laser’s power, despite the actual noise of the beam’s destruction serving plentifully loud as a long percussion of booms and cracks. Each glorious explosion that she conducted rewarded her with a boost to her height, precisely representing her enthusiasm behind her terror. Once all targets had been hit, the laser was dismissed and Ibuki’s hands dropped to her sides – she was bedazzled by the damages, happily looking between the disaster sites and that string of fissured pavement that connected them. Her attack was a total success, and so she celebrated by gesturing forward with her fingers shaped as a V; “Victory~! Evil has been completely vanquished! …Mm, what was the evil again? Wait-wait, isn’t the monster usually the evil one?! Hoooh– plot twist!! Humanity was evil all along…!”
Ibuki’s rambling trailed off with giddy laughter and then a blinking realization. She fell quiet for a moment, listening to the vast emptiness of the atmosphere – she had become so huge without realizing that she was now among the clouds, a highly perspective that enabled her to pinpoint airlines and other air crafts, the entire city spread around her feet like a map she stood upon, entire blocks dominated by the placement of her feet. The dream she had tried to wake from was proving to be her reality, and still without an explanation. She wondered where these powers stemmed from, why her of all people on earth she was blessed with them; as she spun these curiosities messily in her mind, the rest of the world recoiled from her disastrous experimentation – an entire nation gripped by the anxiety of whatever whim was to be next acted out by the unstoppable rockstar.
“Heh, sorry~ but at least that’s out of Ibuki’s system!” Ibuki sighed with relief, casually hoisting her hands behind her head as she stretched one leg at a time. She adapted to her staggering height immediately, unphased to be multiple times bigger than she was just minutes earlier – her carefree attitude carried her perception afloat to the simplest means of acceptance. Thus did she reach a more accurate conclusion regarding her powers; “If it isn’t a dream, then… could it be that Ibuki is just God now?” Ibuki gauged her question with the belittled population, but when she heard only their terrified rioting, she created an answer for them: “We all agree then! Ibuki is the New God!! This is so freakin’ cool~ Ibuki always knew she was born with divine luck! Ah, where does Ibuki begin? Hum hum hum…~”
A new era began to the tune of earthquakes, tremors that were drummed to the tempo of Ibuki’s expeditious strides. She explored the now toy-like city, skipping from one district into the next and with total disregard to whatever lots of buildings were flattened for her to travel about. She returned to the border where urban life eased into suburbs and fields, and it was there that she decided to cast away her outfit; no longer playing the part of a kaiju, Ibuki disrobed from the kigarumi by unzipping the front and stepping out of from the heavy fabric. The high-altitude air was refreshingly cool after being inside the kigarumi for so long; the costume was discarded as she would any clothes, tossed miles aside into rural squares that she considered vacant. The cartoon dragon thus spilled over countless acres like a red-colored tsunami, piling up into a mountain’s worth of fabric that was thick with Ibuki’s sweat and body heat; a mound of rolling hills that generously allowed survivors within its plethora of wrinkles and folds. It was too late when Ibuki thought to try disappearing the kigarumi, only after its weight had settled into place and when she had already meandered elsewhere.
The sky above a bustling town was eclipsed by black and dyed hair, metal piercings, and bold make-up. People ran opposite of her mightiness, but there was no escaping the sheer gravity of being caught beneath her violet eyes, the huge pools that they were hovering overhead like portals to another dimension – certainly her mind could be considered as much, which translated the sample of civilization into the equivalent of a gameboard piece. The modest population nestled between hills and woods was subjugated to the pressure of Ibuki’s loom, the arrival of a new god that had chosen to introduce herself directly to their scrambled community. They fled furiously from an all-encompassing face, but from miles away, the scene was only as active as a lone woman on her hands and knees, crawling over an object of interest spotted on the ground.
“Hello, Tiny Village! Are you all looking up right now? This is the face of your New God~ From now on, direct all prayers to this noggin! Ibuki apologizes for any delay in service~ Thank you for shopping~” Ibuki’s nonsense stormed over the town, every pronunciation rumbling the air like thunder. Her grand size had already amplified her volume, but the musician’s boisterous personality insisted on speaking up for the holy occasion, and thus did her voice rage right through the roofs of lowrises and houses. “Ibuki understands that news travels slowly in the countryside, so Ibuki came personally to deliver the news!! You all have a very kind, hard-working god~ Hehe, feel free to worship me~ worship me~”
The fates of thousands were contemplated by Ibuki as she laid out lazily outside the town. Multiple threads of highways were intercepted by her enormous body that had stretched out like a mountain range, her legs lifted behind her and swaying like metronomes – an idle habit, but her neon-clad calves truly hurled through the sky at breakneck speeds. Airplanes desperately diverted their courses around her mountain range body, but her ever-expanding form chased after their flights, even as she relaxed unaware of the obstacle that she was to them. The most she thought of the civilian perspectives were those grounded beside her slender figure, yet even they earned just a glance of her attention, a passing thought despite her growth gradually swallowing them beneath her flood-like mass.
It was those closest to her core that were then bombarded by a sonic attack, loud and sudden enough to pop eardrums: a stomach grumble, but scaled to Ibuki’s kilometer proportions. A collection of drivers were especially vulnerable to the noise, having been beside a pinch of her belly that her shirt slightly exposed. The whine stretched uncomfortably long, an unmistakable snarl of a hungry stomach that painted the worst fears into the minds of the townsfolk.
“Oh! Ibuki’s tummy is having a jam sess all on its own,” Ibuki joked, shifting how she lay around the pit in her stomach. It roared again, demanding an encore of terror from the people surrounding her; Ibuki never considered such a consequence from something so meager, as her mind was pressed with a greater issue. “Hrm… What’s a god supposed to eat, anyhow? Do any of you know?” Eccentric as she was, Ibuki posed the question genuinely, but was only answered with apocalyptic panic. Her piercing-dotted face rushed close to the landscape, near enough that an idle exhale whipped a windstorm to life. “Ibuki could ask for offerings, Ibuki s’poses… but that’s such a draaaag… Heh, Ibuki has a lazier idea~”
At the instant she thought it, a spoon manifested between Ibuki’s fingers – a simple silverware utensil, made threatening by its gigantic scale despite how lightly she handled it. From high in the sky, it careened down to the earth and pierced through the ground, selectively digging into where a river defined an apt slice of community. The rolling hills that the town was founded through were held largely intact as they were shoveled into the spoon, separated from the world and launched upwards into a different altitude; roads cracked like glass and houses collapsed into landslides, forcing the stumbling citizens into the openness of business parks. There, their dread could gather in one place as their fate fast approached them; the sky was fully conquered by the New God’s face, until it was only her lips, and then the cavernous red of a mouth. Ibuki made a show for the rest of the area to see clearly how she would accept her offerings, widely parting her mouth and drawing the end of the spoon deep inside, before–
“Chomp!” Ibuki’s bite snapped shut, heartlessly claiming the spoonful of land and its people. Its contents spilled onto her tongue as the silverware slipped between her smiling lips, unleashing the acres of dirt and pavement, the wide variety of property and those it belonged to. Without sunlight, their New God had cast them into a dark and humid realm, dominated by the texture and odor of her saliva as it quickly seeped between the fissured architecture, a flood that was viscous and all-consuming. As the land dissolved, the scattered survivors were left to endure the reality of her tongue and teeth, their only hope to cling to her tastebuds or slither onto her gums, and pray they might be overlooked like persistent crumbs. They waited, listening to the watery destruction of their homes, grimly expecting the voyage that would be through her throat.
But fate swerved into a different course – literally spat in a new direction. Rather then be swallowed, the circle of a neighborhood was messily bundled into the scoop of her tongue, then rocketed outward in a grotesque spray of destruction. “Pleh!! Eughh!! It’s just dirt!!” Ibuki cried, rocking side to side in a discomfort that the whole province was made aware of. Indeed, the spoonful from the town had just a gritty taste, and thus the sacrifice of property and people was all in vain, dislodged from her mouth in disgust. The glob of mud and debris was shot back into town, cratering into another neighborhood where the saliva then oozed. More spit hailed onto town as Ibuki coughed and cleared her mouth of the bitterness, but with how vast her mouth was, it was impossible to truly rid everything she had tried eating. Ibuki groaned, “All these hills looked like ice cream, though… Ibuki really wants something sweet now! Ibuki demands sweet-tasting sacrifices only!!”
The wish came true, shaped in the oddball style Ibuki imagined: appearing before, risen from the world itself, was a round, two-layered cake topped with frosting – and dusted with the town it had spawned beneath. The community had no clear understanding of what had occurred to cause the earthquake that it did, only that their new elevation sparked a fire of enthusiasm from their New God. Divisions of the town learned one at a time of the surreality, when town centers caved into an underground of moist bread, and when roads fissured to reveal the chocolate frosting underneath. A saccharine scent of the obscene amount of sugar sickened the confused townsfolk like a poisonous air, truly immersing them in their destiny as Ibuki’s dessert.
“Oh, yeah! Much better!” Ibuki growled with delight as the sweet smell reached her nostrils. Unlike her first sacrificial spoonful, which dug up a sprawl of land carefully enough to maintain the landscape’s shape, her second helping was swiftly swept from the top layer. Eager to replace the dry flavor on her tongue, she hastily served herself the selection of the town, pleased to feel it all crumbled and spread within her puffed cheeks. “Mmm! Mm-mm!” she hummed, brightly expressing the joy brought to her by eating thousands of people – she particularly enjoyed how the hundreds of buildings popped on her tongue like sprinkles, and thus the people were something smaller, like specks of sugar that melted into her pools of saliva. The spoonful was swirled in her mouth with the power of a hurricane, but the miserable cacophony was dimly silenced by a single swallow – an exaggerated gulp that confirmed the sacrifice of only the first batch of offerings.
Ibuki dove into the cake for several more bites, disregarding manners and decorum as she freely feasted. A worldwide audience was captivated by the phenomenon, millions made to wonder the extent of cruelty their New God would inflict upon them. Likewise did Ibuki think of them as well, the gears of her wild mind spinning with weird ideas to utilize her divinity. In her excitement, she outgrew the scale of her dessert until it was more akin to a cupcake, at which point she felt finished with the half-eaten treat. It was left there like a new geological feature, the town abandoned atop its frosting; the spoon was placed nearby as its own monument, an impossibly-sized structure still slick with her saliva. The province marveled at such godly creations, but nothing was more awesome than the ascent of their goddess, her rockstar style eclipsing the sky with her humongous height, several kilometers tall. At her peak well past the clouds, she shined a bright smile across her domain, electrified by a sting of inspiration.
“It all makes sense… Ibuki became god while thinking of those lyrics, so that must be it! Humanity is in need of a killer new song!! Leave it to Ibuki – your New God will perform a concert that changes the world~ It’ll be like the rapture of concerts! When? Where? Good questions!! Ibuki’s instincts will figure it out, but don’t sweat it, just be ready to celebrate when the time comes!! Hell yeah!!”
The sun was warm, the wind was slow, and the grass was soft for Koizumi Mahiru to kneel onto. The photographer stooped to a low angle to be just above a natural flower bed, a pattern of colors that had caught her eye and flared her inspiration. Europe was proving to be a beautiful beginning to her professional career as a photographer, continuing with her ambitions since graduating from Hope's Peak Academy. For the job she was on, Koizumi brought a digital camera to capture peaceful scenes of natural, accompanied by a small, quiet team; she cherished the calm as much as she could, grateful to have distanced herself from the dramas of murder games and revolutions.
Then, in a literal flash of a moment, everything changed. Koizumi had just taken another perfect picture of flowers, smiling with pride over the digital image, but when she looked up from the camera, she instantly saw that her surroundings had drastically changed. The floral colors had disappeared and were replaced with the washed out grays and browns of urban architecture, the whispery winds replaced with car horns and crowds, and the afternoon sky replaced with an eerie dusk. She was in the middle of a street, surrounded by tall buildings and vibrant advertisements, and instead of crouching above a bed of flowers, she found herself posed low in front of a business plaza swarming with citizens and vehicles – as inexplicable as how she got there, Koizumi had also become a giant, facts that left her perplexed and paralyzed.
“H-Huh? This… d-doesn’t make any sense…” Koizumi muttered, looking between the flowery scene shot on her camera versus the model-like city she had been planted in. From her kneeled position, she shifted her feet and felt abandoned cars grind under the soles of her loafers. The vehicular wreck received a glance of doubtful recognition; “I-Is this… real? No way, I-I’m definitely dreaming this…”
Worriedly, Koizumi turned back to the scattering of people in front of her, pointing her interest down at a car trying to weave through the crowds. It was slow enough to grab right off the road and bring to her face, but when she hoped that it would be found out to be a toy or replica, she instead saw the occupants inside, crazed for having been stolen off the road. In desperation, the driver slammed the horn like an attack at Koizumi’s face, startling her with proof that they were very much alive – so startled that Koizumi dropped the car and stood away in a hurry. Her hands clasped over her gasp, “Ehh?! I-It is real?! B…But that can’t– oof!”
Another surprise struck Koizumi against the back of her skull: a skywalk bridge that connected the heights of two opposite buildings. Not expecting that sort of structure behind nor above her, she had backed into the pathway with the force of a wrecking ball, appropriately smashing through the glass and causing the center to collapse. It had been clustered with white-collar workers that marveled at the giant woman’s spontaneous appearance, the lot of them given only seconds to spread out from the impact – many were too slow and were caught in the demolition, falling free from the skywalk and slipping down Koizumi’s shuddering shoulders.
“E-Eww…! G-Get off me!!” she wailed, her complexion shot red with blush. Koizumi twisted and staggered into the plaza, her footsteps carelessly flattening a bus, followed by a shipping truck; she would have apologized for the accidents had she not been itched by those falling down her clothes. She had several balanced on her shoulders, another few trickling down her back, but worst was a secretary slipping down her tie and into the collar of her dress. “Eep! D-Don’t– ergh…!” With no other choice, she reached to her chest and pulled the little woman away, using only the edge of her nails to make contact; just as distantly did she dismiss the secretary, dropping her off onto a nearby balcony before shivering elsewhere.
Koizumi’s patience extended only that far. Biting her lip and seething, she got on her knees and hastily swept anyone else off her body. “Go! Sorry! But go!” she stammered while dusting people off onto the concrete below, bowing forward as a consideration for the distance they fell. Even after the last office worker was removed, Koizumi shivered from the lingering touches. “This is a nightmare,” she concluded, “r-real or not…!”
The unavoidable attention was most irritating of all for Koizumi, never fond of the feeling of being watched. It came from every direction: the crowds circling away from her, the passengers of an elevated train speeding by, but most invasively was the focus from behind her bowed posture. She peered past her shoulder to notice camera operators and news reporters arranged at the frontline of an audience, filming her gigantic stumblings – from the lowly angle that looked up her skirt. Koizumi’s redness darkened as she first tugged her skirt down, then resorted to a panicked kick-back, choosing to defend her grace by bulldozing into the crowds and cars. “Get lost! Perverts!!” she cried out – then, after jolting up straight, she whined, “S-Sorry!”
Koizumi closed her eyes, failing to make sense of the situation; matters were only about to become more confusing for her when she felt a rumble in the ground, a movement in the air. Then, a voice beckoned to her, so powerful that it drowned out the shouting and sirens: “Yooo! Mahiru! There you are~ Ibuki found you! Ibuki’s ears can distinguish your girlish shrieks from a mile away!”
Yet it was more than a mile of distance between Koizumi and her old classmate, Ibuki. The photographer looked to her sides to locate her, but it was only when she craned her neck back and stared straight up that she found the punk-rock musician. Her face, decked with her unmistakable piercings and make-up, loomed high overhead – far above her and the metropolis, scaled to such a titanic size that Koizumi felt suddenly as small as those beneath her. Ibuki was multiple miles tall, so huge that she was not in the city, but seated outside of it; from a mountainbase, her legs stretched wide around most of the architecture, but were otherwise planted directly through suburbs and business parks for the sake of her comfort, imposed upon the population like neon-colored barriers. Unlike Koizumi, Ibuki had zero shame or embarrassment, smiling bright and cheerfully regardless of how tens of thousands were able to see up her skirt, a view of cotton-white that defined the city limits.
“Ehh?! I-I-Ibuki?! Yo-You’re…! Wh-Why are you…?!” Koizumi fell backwards in bafflement, landing on top of a passover bridge that could barely support her. She was too shocked to move when Ibuki’s hand hurtled above rooftops, narrowed to two fingertips that delicately reached between buildings to pluck her friend out from the city. Koizumi squirmed, but the digits were longer than she was tall and easily took her airborne; suddenly, she was hugging onto the fingers with all limbs, convinced she would fall until Ibuki placed her down – atop her left thigh, seated like a doll on the rockstar’s lap. Koizumi wanted to latch onto where she was laid, but with it being Ibuki’s leg, she instead awkwardly balanced herself as best she could, nervously shifting along the skirt. She never stopped stammering, only able to cough a single question: “What is happening?!?”
Ibuki laughed boisterously over Koizumi’s confusion, a reaction that nearly threw her friend off her lap. “Pretty wild, right? Ibuki has ascended to godhood! Apparently!” she replied enthusiastically, raising her arms up into the clouds in celebration. Koizumi was exactly as agasp as she was before. Ibuki giggled, “You haven’t heard the news? It’s sort of a big deal~ Ooh, Ibuki took you away from Europe, didn’t she? Yeah, they don’t have good wifi there…”
Koizumi felt faint after that explanation and the equally nonsense rambling that followed. She gestured at Ibuki to stop; “Hold it! You took me away?” she quoted. “Then, did you make me b-big, too?”
Ibuki shrugged. “Ibuki supposes so~!” she answered singingly, unaware how her volume always shook the atmosphere. “She wasn’t trying to make you big, but it’s a good thing you were born that way! Ibuki might not have found you otherwise~ and something bad could’ve happened to you down there!”
“Mioda!! You shouldn’t have taken me at all!!” Koizumi shouted, her disciplinary tone made clear despite her smaller stature. She turned and surveyed the cityscape behind her, noting all the smoldering locations that traced Ibuki’s legs. “You shouldn’t be doing any of this!! The destruction, the chaos– a-and for goodness sake, won’t you close your legs?!”
“Oops.” Ibuki was obedient when it came to Koizumi, and so she did as told, clasping her legs together by the knees and tucking her skirt in between her thighs. The motion rocked Koizumi forward, but the consequences were far grander in the city, where the clash of Ibuki’s legs brought a slice of civilization to an end; structures, vehicles, and people alike were crushed together, leaving behind an unearthed scrape of wasteland with a long ridge of debris down its middle. “That’s better!” Ibuki chimed to Koizumi, who was struck speechless by the tragic scene.
“Oh! Don’t worry~ Ibuki the God can fix that up instantly!” the rockstar continued, noticing Koizumi’s dismay. With a snap of her fingers, Ibuki’s will was made real: in the scape of destruction made by her legs, the debris quickly moved on its own, every brick and girder reforming back into the structures they originally were – mostly. As well as making adjustments around the shape of Ibuki’s ass and arched knees, the blocks of buildings were refitted in their architectural setup, designed to write out Ibuki’s full name in katakana. “See? Ibuki can fix anything she breaks if she wants to! She can make it even better than before~”
“M-Mioda… Th-This is so not right…” Koizumi mumbled, increasingly hesitant to speak against her friend after witnessing her supernatural power. It was better for her to think this was still a dream, but the realistic consequences and eerie consistency was too gripping to deny. After swallowing some of her fear and nervously adjusting her dress, she looked back to Ibuki; “So, erm… what was it that you needed me for…? L-Looks like you’ve got everything under control…”
“Hmm… Why did I, again…?” Ibuki genuinely thought the reason over, having forgotten her need for Koizumi after finding her. While thinking, she stretched her legs out flat into the city, crumbling away the very district she had rebuilt and then some – Koizumi closed her eyes and ears, too disappointed and distraught to argue. “Aha! I wanted you to take some pictures and post ‘em online! Maybe make some flyers to pass out!”
“So, a-a photoshoot?” Koizumi clarified, straining her attention away from the destruction. “I guess I should’ve expected as much… but, what for?”
“A concert for the world! To celebrate a new divine order, of course!” Ibuki pumped her arms over and over as if building up energy. “It’s gonna rattle the world!! I want everyone to know about it – and being all huuuuge like this, heh, got Ibuki thinking of some sick angles for modeling!! Imagine me usin’ the Tokyo Tower like a guitar, goin’ all nlang-nlang on it~ Ooh, or maybe–!”
The land rumbled when Ibuki began to rise, bounding up suddenly from where she had been planted deep into the mountain. Her latest scale of size dawned upon the frantic humanity, her nonstop excitement having contributed still to her passive growth. Having reached miles of height, civilization only reached as high as her ankles, and an entire city could be cleared in just two strides. Ibuki was doing exactly that, moving so fast that Koizumi was haphazardly rolled off of her lap and into the city below. First came one step – booooom! A business district was replaced with a crater, and its neighbors blown aside by the shockwave. Then came the second step – booooom! Her loafer crashed with her heel in the city and her toes in the harbor, treading into the bay where she then pivoted and faced back towards Koizumi. Ibuki posed brightly with a smile and peace sign, but beneath her were the tornadoes of her movement, too minuscule for her to consider.
But Koizumi was in position to comprehend the chaos, nearly as frightened by Ibuki’s thundering footsteps as the city’s population. After having been abandoned in a residential district, she jumped to her feet and hastily chased after her friend, leaping over a row of homes as if they were a track hurdle. “Mioda!! Wait!! Stop!!” Koizumi yelled, only running so far into the city before stopping – any deeper and she would have to tread across evacuation traffic. “This has to stop, Mioda! N-No offense, but no one wants this! Wh-Why don’t you just shrink us both back to normal, a-and we just… do something else…?”
Ibuki tilted her head with a thoughtful expression, but otherwise remained posed dramatically like she had been. “Hm… Ibuki assumed everyone would want to attend a free concert…” She shifted while contemplating the issue, making a mess of the beach and docks that traced the bay. Her expression became tense and strict the longer she thought, eventually seeming like she had a headache, until her violet eyes popped open with an idea. “Solution discovered! Marketing survey!! Haha!”
Before Koizumi could ask, Ibuki was leaning forward with her plan. She bent sharply forward with one hand on her hip and the other held over her eyes, scanning the city below to estimate the number of people. Deciding on a sample, Ibuki held a palm out and downward; the next moment, citizens in the streets found themselves drifting directly up into the air against their will. They clung to windows and lamps, but if any resisted too long, they would simply teleport into place – that place was laid out in that palm, a landscape of the striped-colors to a fingerless glove. Ibuki rotated her hand with at least a thousand people divinely magnetized to it, presenting them all with a smile as she leveled them at chest-height.
“Greetings, mortals! Thank you for participating in this survey~” Ibuki rang, leaning her head side to side exaggeratedly and making her wild hair bounce. “And there’s only one question! Question One: do you want to celebrate your New God with a concert that will blow your minds? Y/N! Answer honestly pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease~”
In Ibuki’s palm was pandemonium. People raged in all directions if they were not frozen completely. Her question was understood by few, and those that did comprehend her mighty voice were in no less of a panic to answer; those with the heart to reply yelled up at her with blatant rejection of the concert, begging that she be merciful to them, or to be forgiven of whatever sins they committed. Ibuki angled her piercing-studded ear above the thousand-person sample, hopeful she would hear their acceptance, only to learn otherwise.
“Hmmm… Is that really what you think?” Ibuki pouted. “... Reeeaaallyyyy-really-really-really?” She stared closely at her captives, lifting them up to her gaze. The crowds were bedazzled by the details of her eyes, so huge and striking in color that it was impossible not to stare back – and when they did, they were then unable to turn away, locked into that violet color. They were magically entranced, their minds flushed of free-thinking and taken under the control of Ibuki’s whim. There was eventually no more unrest, no shoving or screaming; everyone was united with the single thought of worshiping their New God. They were compelled to bow to her, chanting approvably of the proposed concert as though it were their mission in life. Without realizing, Ibuki had completely brainwashed a thousand people into becoming dedicated worshipers. She smiled upon hearing the change of heart, eagerly returning her attention to Koizumi, “Ya’ hear that? These little dudes want to be rocked out hard!! Woohoo!!”
Koizumi had watched the scene unfold from a distance, yet its disturbing effect still reached her, casting a chill down her spine. Her olive-green eyes were hollow as she stared at Ibuki’s radiant personality; what point was there to defy her? In a shaken state, Koizumi scratched at her neck and replied, “Th-That’s… g-great…”
“Now that that’s settled…” Ibuki chuckled and wiped her hand against the side of her hip – dismissing the hundreds of worshipers like she would sand. “Time to prepare for the show! Koizumi, take lots and lots of pictures of Ibuki while she gets things ready~ Make sure to get her good side! Please and thank you!”
Koizumi nodded, though it was more of a shiver than a response. She remembered her digital camera and took aim with it, but her arms would not stop trembling, especially when trying to sharpen the focus on a target that was so huge and always pacing around the bay. Putting little more effort than that into the photoshoot, Koizumi snapped a few half-hearted pictures of the rockstar titan, until her shivering caused her camera to slip from her fingers and fall into the neighborhood at her feet. She flinched apologetically, seeing it had cratered into the corner of an innocent house, but her gaze dimly returned to Ibuki’s stomping and showboasting, the terrible rhythm she produced with every wild pose she made thinking that pictures were being taken. Koizumi nervously gripped her tie; “Th-This concert… It’s going to end the world…”
On the opposite end of the city, the bay area had been whipped into a storm by all of Ibuki’s looking-around – her inspection of the coastline and how it would become her audience. She carelessly paraded through the water with her usual high-spun energy, causing enormous waves to slam into the harbors and completely wash them away, pulling them into vortexes that swallowed boats whole. Water-levels quickly rose past the beaches and into the city, flooding roads and destabilizing buildings – structures that were already strained to stand upright while giant footsteps bouncing all around. Ibuki remained blissfully unaware of her sweeping damages, her gaze sparkling out towards the sea and its setting sun. Inspiration sprung her energy, and thus too her size, growing larger as she began marching deeper through the ocean – to where her stage would be summoned.
Navy ships positioned miles from the city’s coastline had been keeping tabs on the giant menace, slowly converging into a formation that would approach the so-called New God and meet her with their full-power. On the way of uniting for that offensive, however, began a rumbling from the sea beneath them. Radar operators were baffled by the signal they suddenly caught on their scanners, all hesitating or stuttering to sound an alarm that something huge and fast was rising up from the seabed – from multiple coordinates. Their ships were too heavy and slow to dodge the unnatural event, becoming caught in a wave-of-waves that erupted towards the sky, soon surpassing the heights of surface-level mountains. The mass cascade of water unveiled the objects: two towering speakers with their faces pointed towards the mainland.
Whatever remained of the navy was scattered and overwhelmed by the time Ibuki was near, excitedly taking center stage in the middle of an ocean that was shrinking to her. Cruisers and destroyers that had survived the rise of the speakers began firing at the giant without order, striking their target with incredible explosives that failed to do more than singe the fabrics of her leggings. The closest of the fleet were soon faced with an indirect attack in the form of a footstep sloshing madly through the sea, a mobile island of leather footwear that cracked ships open into clouds of fire, letting the waves it generated battle anything else. Aircraft carriers unleashed swarms of fighter jets, but these gnat-like fliers proved just as weak, their bombs dropping against Ibuki’s waist without so much as staggering her.
“Mm-hmm, this is perfect! A concert live from the middle of the freakin’ ocean – this is so hardcore!!!” Ibuki fidgeted with excitement, feeling the energy of the upcoming performance popping within her, but not without appreciating the scenic stage. She peered around the hip-high speakers, casting her enthusiasm onto islands and faraway shipping vessels; she had grown so huge that clouds were broken by her body, which she recognized as a fog effect for her concert. The most eye-catching find was a boeing plane gliding beside her, its flight path level with her collar. “Yoo! Groupies?” she wondered – or rather, assigned to them, as she then decided to claim the aircraft for herself. By reaching out and closing her hand, the plane full of passengers was her possession; she turned it over a few times under her eyes, oblivious to how the people inside were thrown around their cabins. “Heh… Shouldn’t get distracted…” And so the plane was tucked away into her bra strap, another souvenir added to her collection.
Rotating back towards the city, Ibuki breathed in the view from where she claimed her stage. She faced the coming night sky while the last burn of the sun glowed behind her at the horizon, admiring the cityscape and its lights like an audience of fans raising neon sticks. With nearly everything set for the concert, Ibuki whimmed the last few details into existence: a microphone stand spawned in front of her, followed by a hotrod-red electric guitar that appeared right in her grasp. She quietly fingered a few strings, licking her lips in anticipation – as humanity bunkered down in preparation. Koizumi, still expected to be taking photos, was among the restless, for even as big as she was, Ibuki and her superscaled stage were behemoths compared to her, and she too feared the event to come. Much like those evacuating at her feet, Koizumi prepared for the storm and took cover behind an apartment building, worriedly peeking over the rooftop.
The first quakes of the speakers began when Ibuki tapped the head of the microphone, a sound amplified to rival gunfire. The next noise was even louder like a series of bombs; “Mic check, mic check! One two three! Everybody hear Ibuki?!” Her voice boomed across the ocean with enough volume still to rattle rows of buildings, completely overpowering the sirens and screaming with an intense vibrating effect. Koizumi gasped and held her ears tight, but Ibuki’s voice seeped into her skull nonetheless. “Hell yeah! Let’s get this show started, Earth! Ibuki is your New God, and she compels you to rock your damned minds out!! Live large and go hard – those are your commandments, a’ight?! When the music begins, that’s the Rapture happening!! So set your souls ablaze like it’s the end of the world…!!”
Suspense filled the atmosphere as Ibuki raised a hand above herself, manifesting a guitar pick between her fingertips in a twinkle of light. Her smile sharpened and her legs buckled; without any more patience to spare, the musician struck her first chord. The initial snap of sound was unlike anything humanity had faced. It was an explosion of sound so powerful that its vibrations were a visible distortion, an effect that enveloped everything outward from the speakers. More than just a noise, it was a true bombardment capable of deteriorating manmade structures; buildings and bridges and the land itself all turned to dust at different paces, nearly no material strong enough to resist the blast. Even those that fell deaf from the sound were not safe from the rippling waves in the air, their beings painfully stirred by an unavoidable sonic attack. Koizumi, despite her size and shelter, was amazingly pushed back by the effect, toppling into plaza behind her; she screamed in retaliation, but her voice was totally beaten by the amped guitar. Beyond just the region Ibuki had discovered her godhood within, the chord reached civilizations thousands of miles away, traveling across countries and continents and farther still.
Only a few beats after that explosive, global event, Ibuki inhaled, then rocked forward in a headbang close to the mic. Her mouth opened wildly wide to unleash the next note of her song: a death-metal scream, a screech propelled from the pit of her lungs. Her voice was thunderously loud from her place past the bay, before it was amplified by her microphone and blasted out of the speakers like cannons. If the electric chord was a threat of what Ibuki’s song was capable of, her demonic vocalization was that promise fulfilled; the subsequent wave of sound crashed right through the walls and barriers the previous chord had weakened, and without that defense, humanity was more helpless than ever. Homes and businesses jumped from the land and turned to rubble mid-air, glass shattered into dust-like clouds that sprayed violently into the toppled crowds, and even the heaviest of buildings began to teeter and lean, eventually collapsing like lumbering trees. Yet no noise of this chaos could be deciphered by the victims, their hearing absolutely broken except for the boosted noise of Ibuki’s voice drowning their deepest thoughts.
Then, the rest of her song. Her lyrics laid waste to swathes of land, and her guitar shreds ripped apart entire cities. The ocean danced to her music, rising up like cheering crowds then crashing into one another like an aquatic mosh pit. Ibuki kicked and jumped and hollered, fully immersed into her performance, and appropriately growing in significant bursts – faster than before, to the tempo of insane drum beats, Ibuki grew into the height of tens of miles, then hundreds, then thousands…
The last wail of a note rang not just in Koizumi’s head, but shivered all down her spine – long after the song was concluded. Laid face-down within the remains of suburban homes, she hesitantly stirred and lifted slowly onto her hands and knees. She initially felt that she had been teleported again and dropped off in a desert, but she was where she had been, surrounded by the evidence of a disappeared city. Skyscrapers and highrises had been grounded into jagged mountains, and all else had become streaks of what it once was, leaving behind empty lots of foundations where structures once existed. If there was anything farther to be seen, the night concealed it all, not a flicker of light to indicate a survived civilization. Koizumi was speechless through seeing it all, deathly afraid that she was alone in that wasteland, abandoned after the New God up and left like her usual spontaneous self.
Then, the air rumbled distinctly. Koizumi flinched to any sound after having her hearing shot, but what she heard was a voice, projected from high above, distorted by space and scale. Without a doubt, she knew she had been called to: “Mahiru!! Ibuki found you again~!! And this time, without the help of your shrieking!!” Koizumi was slow to rotate onto her back, even slower to angle her head skyward. Darker than the night was the shadow cast upon her, shed by a massiveness that bridged one part of the world to another – a body hanging above the country, her gigantic eyes glistening with interest and zooming close onto the city. Ibuki had ascended to an absurd size, her breathing alone altering the atmosphere, every twitch of her body tearing into the earth’s crust somewhere. None of those consequences weighed on her; focused on relaxing her throat, she had spawned a gigantic cup of boba tea that she casually drank above the continent. “Eheh~ It was easy to find you, since it looks like you’re the only who stayed for the afterparty~”
Having located Koizumi and delicately retrieving her in a pluck of fingers, Ibuki could proceed with the rest of her divine agenda. With will alone, she passively reconstructed the city from the ruins, as well as undoing the damages done to the rest of the country – anywhere else would have to wait for her to notice. The lives of the millions she killed were restored as well, imagining that each person was back where they were before the concert. There was no doubt among them then that Ibuki truly was their god and that they were simply objects in her domain – a new world order would be gradually established in respect to this reality, and Ibuki herself would remain blissfully unaware, entertained enough with her ability to reshape a city’s architecture into the characters of her full name. Regardless of what it meant for humanity, Ibuki happily continued thinking of new ideas to use her godhood for, spinning through thoughts as though she were creating another new song.