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.