In this chapter: Ashton City gets their first glance at a massive unknown woman while she moves into her new bedroom.
Day 1 - Meanwhile in Ashton City 12:45 P.M. Local
The electrical energy continued to surround Ashton City and its suburbs; the dark grey clouds began to block out the view of the sky. People were in mass panic, all the TVs on every street and storefront had emergency broadcast stations blaring warnings to stay indoors if possible and to not carry any metal. The meteorologists could not explain a lightning storm like this, because it wasn’t, this was different, and any normal person could see that. In the suburbs there were scenes of people packing up everything they owned in their cars and grabbing their kids, some left their pets behind, a few people were crying as lightning came down striking numerous metal structures and roofs relentlessly. The city was much worse, the traffic was completely stalled as people abandoned their cars and ran for whatever they thought was safe at the time, the problem was nobody was going to be safe after an event like this, but more importantly, nobody would ever expect what was going to happen next, no number of sci-fi movies or daydreaming could ever fully prepare the 3.7 million inhabitants. A news helicopter circling the city a few miles away saw an enveloping cloud surging with lightning disappear completely, what remained was nothingness, a smoldering crater that spread out for miles in what used to contain a densely populated city.
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Day 1 - Ashton City – 10 minutes after “The Incident”
Mark was always a heavy sleeper, and it has gotten him in trouble before, being late to work, missing meetings, and the like. He slept right through the anomaly, he finally woke up to screams of panic and hysteria, and he lived in a condo downtown closer to one of the busier night-life areas, so he was used to people yelling and enjoying themselves in a drunken stupor, but this time it sounded different. The first thing he noticed besides the screaming was the temperature, it felt a lot colder, but he knew he had the heat on during the night, something was wrong. He went to the window and pulled open the curtains, his jaw dropped, he saw thousands of people in the streets below in an absolute craze.
“What the fuck is going on?” he mumbled to himself. He went to his dresser and put on the first shirt he found, he hastily put on his shoes and left his apartment to get to the roof for a better view. Mark made it to the roof and put a brick between the door and the frame to keep it from locking him out, he noticed a very different smell than what he was used to, and it was almost overpowering and foul. What he saw next, he could not explain, as he looked across the city between the skyscrapers, he didn’t see a sky, there were no clouds, there was light, but it was not from a star. He saw a large brown structure that dominated the skyline now, it was impossibly huge, and it towered for thousands of feet above even the tallest skyscrapers in the metropolitan area. Mark rubbed his eyes just to make sure, “nope, still there, fuck!” he yelled as he kept scanning, he saw what seemed like stretched out white walls, but that did not make any sense to him, they seemed to go up and across endlessly in every direction. He looked further and saw a cliff of some sort with a steep drop off that bordered on some type of white surface and beyond is what looked like a… “Bed? What the hell? How the fuck is it so far away?” he mumbled to himself. It was far away, many miles relative to his size. Just as Mark started to ponder what was happening, he heard something loud and mechanical while the ground shook ever so slightly. It almost sounded like a door unlocking, unfortunately, he was right. His heart dropped and was positive everyone else in Ashton City felt the same when they heard that noise.
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Day 1 – Miranda –12:57pm Grove View/ Room 3A
Miranda was putting some finishing touches in the guest bathroom, she wanted to get it set up quickly since it was so small and did not require much maintenance. She knew she had to get back to her room as she still had boxes of her stuff and bags upon bags of clothes and shoes to put up. She let down her hair and walked over to her door to unlock it, as she touched the metal of the door knob the static build-up shocked her hand a bit. Miranda walked into her room with a plan to set up her bathroom, she wanted to take a shower later incase her roommates wanted to go out to dinner as a celebration after they were finished setting up what they could.
She started with the bags she already sat down by the closet, it had her makeup and beauty products, she carried them into her bathroom and turned on the light setting the bags on top of the toilet seat and on the floor. Her curtains and towels were in one of the two boxes she sat down on her desk before she moved on to the kitchen earlier. She grabbed the box closest to her and returned to the bathroom, she started setting up what seemed like countless accessories all over the bathroom counter and in the bathtub, Miranda hung up her towels and laid down lush white bathroom mats. She bought a brand-new shower head that she could not wait to install, it was wrapped up by her bright pink shower curtain that was dotted with flowers, she remembered that it was in the last box on her desk.
When she was satisfied with the placement of all her products, she walked over to her desk to grab the last box, as she placed her hands on either side of the box, she could have sworn she heard some kind of weird siren noise that only got louder as she stood completely still with her hands gripping the box tighter in an effort to concentrate. “Huh? What is that noise?” she quietly said under her breath. She picked up the box and sat it down below the desk so she could investigate the strange noise. When Miranda picked her head back up and looked down at her desk her life changed forever.
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Day 1 - Ashton City 12:57 PM – unknown location
The ground tremored more violently than before, people were at a standstill, nearly silent, most people looked to the sky of their new environment, others tried to call their loved ones, but there was no signal at that moment. What the 3.7 million people saw and felt next would sound silly to anyone normal. Those that lived and worked in the tallest buildings saw it first. Many thought their eyes were just playing tricks on them, maybe it was just the lightning playing tricks on them, or this overpowering paint smell making them hallucinate. But no, they saw her. She was walking in what seemed like slow motion. Every step she took made the city shake a bit and made the windows on every building rattle slightly. Those on the streets and in the suburbs bordering the box couldn’t get a good view, some saw a large blur of what looked like tanned skin between the houses and the buildings.
Those that could see beyond the cliff and the box saw her every movement, they were terrified, and some even dropped to their knees and started praying to any deity that would listen. The people craned their necks upwards to see a young-faced woman walking towards them, but her clear blue eyes were not transfixed on them, her bright blue t-shirt caught the attention of everyone else. She took a sharp right and avoided the desk for the time being, the people were relieved, they could hear loud bangs echo through the city as she walked around her room. Minutes later the people in the suburbs saw her coming back to the desk, she was thousands of feet away, but at her size she seemed so close and impossibly gigantic blocking out the entire view of the ceiling and other walls. The frightened people broke out in terror and screams, but where would they go? She lifted what appeared to be a second brown structure that was similar to the one dominating their skyline. She went away again. The local military base of Ashton City got on the sirens and blasted a warning message for everyone to find shelter until further notice, many people fled to any type of building, but most people were too dumbfounded and just stayed put.
About 10 more minutes had passed as people started to come up with theories on what happened, “where the fuck are we?!” “A giant woman?!” “How do we get out of here?!” People felt the violent shaking again and it was becoming more rapid, she was returning to the desk, and the city. Everyone that was still outside looked up again, she was beautiful some people thought, her soft blonde hair swayed with each of her delicate movements... her hands came down with her freshly painted pink nails grabbing the box, the hand could have easily covered a fifth of the city. The people still outside or looking through the windows saw massive fingers plant on the side of that hugely brown structure that had been looming over them for a while. People broke out in panic and again and the sirens of emergency vehicles were on full blast. The giant girl stopped everything for what seemed like an eternity. Her eyebrows lowered and her grip on the box got tighter, each of her actions were noticeable by the denizens of the city. She looked straight forward as if contemplating with her deep blue eyes. “HUH? WHAT IS THAT NOISE?” The sound was louder than any concert anyone had ever been to, it shook a few windows, some people covered their ears, but it was mostly bearable to the average person. After a few seconds she lifted the box and set it down below the desk revealing more of the environment of the city, everyone heard a loud thud and felt the ground shake once again. Her enormous head slowly rose over the city back up beyond the cliff, her face alone dwarfed every single piece of architecture in the city. Only this time she was looking down right at the city in its entirety with soul piercing eyes as if a goddess were judging her subjects…