“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!!”