On the bridge of the mothership, the
Commander stared out the pale blue ball before his fleet. The two
ships he had sent down had gone dark within minutes of touching down
onto the surface. Scanners showed no life signs of any members of the
scouting teams. In fact, all of their trackers embedded within their
suits had also deactivated with the exception of one. Whatever had
befallen the rest of the team, this one, while he had not survived
the encounter, apparently was still on the move. The Commander wanted
the body retrieved immediately. If nothing else, whatever they could
learn from an autopsy would help elucidate whatever had happened to
the scouting teams. Another Recon ship would be sent, however, this
time it would be accompanied by a fleet of Fighters, small, nimble
ships that could quickly overwhelm any target. While the Aliens had
never before encountered life beyond their own planet, their species
had known enough warfare to know to be prepared.
The teams were dispatched to Earth
where, once inside the atmosphere, they began tracking the signal of
the moving corpse.
…
Sarah Leheron walked into her home. It
was a little past ten thirty in the morning. Aside from stepping on
the mysterious little gadgets (an event that she had almost
completely forgotten about), her walk through the park had been
uneventful. Just as she walked through the back door, her mother
happened to come out into the kitchen from the bathroom.
“Oh, hi honey,” Mary-Jean Leheron
said, smiling towards her daughter. “You're back already?”
“Yeah,” Sarah replied simply. “I
was just going for a quick walk.”
“Are you and Neil still doing lunch
later.”
“Mmm-hmm! Are you about to head off
to work?”
“Oh no, I'm working from home
today.”
“Oh...” Sarah replied, looking her
mom up and down. “Aren't you a little...overdressed for work from
home?” Her mother wore her favorite red, long sleeve top, with a
black short skirt, nylons, and, of course, a pair of black heels that
were so polished they gleamed in the overhead light and sparkled in
the rays of the sun.
“Well, I'm still working,”
Mary-Jean said in a matter of fact tone. “So, I figure I might as
well dress for work. Besides, it's possible that I will have a client
or two stop by and of course I'll want to look professional. It's all
about keeping appearances, Sarah.”
“Uh...well...” Sarah said,
stifling a laugh. “Okay...but, um, while you're keeping
appearances...pull your skirt down.”
“Huh?” Mare replied, her hand
instinctively reaching behind her. Instead of feeling the fabric of
her skirt, she felt the bare skin of her posterior and the soft hem
of her panties, which her skirt was tucked inside of. Flushing red,
she quickly dug them out and pulled it down. “Don't say anything.”
Sarah stood there with a small smile
on her face. This was not, by a long mile, the first wardrobe
malfunction her mother had experienced with her and it surely would
not be the last. It was mostly thanks to her mom that Sarah had vowed
never to wear a skirt, paranoid that she would inherit Mare's
clumsiness. In Sarah's humble opinion, her mother had learned a lot
about confidence and, in some ways, egotism from her long best
friend, Valerie Bradson. Mary-Jean often saw herself as a woman of
higher social standing, as she not only supported herself but her
daughter without a husband. And not just supported, but thrived quite
nicely. She often liked to dress well simply because. However, while
she had the elegant clothes, she lacked the grace to really sell the
image. Despite loving them, she still occasionally stumbled in heels,
and, even worse, was terrible at wearing skirts, despite her
insistence to the contrary. It was a surprisingly rare day that Sarah
Leheron did not see up her mother's skirt at least once if she was
wearing one. And, finally, she had a sensitive stomach, which caused
her to burp a lot, often times loudly. The juxtaposition between
Mare's perception of herself and her real behavior was usually very
humorous, especially to Valerie Bradson.
“I didn't say anything.” Sarah
said carefully, still smiling. She knew it would be good to end this
interaction now. “I'm gonna go up to my room.”
“Okay,” Mary-Jean replied,
brushing at her skirt as if to make sure it really was down now.
…
Upon entering the atmosphere, the new
fleet quickly learned one of the more important factors that lead to
the destruction of the first teams. Everything here was immense, far
bigger than what they had thought. How had this happened? Did the
scientists aboard the mothership misinterpret their data? Had they
just assumed? It hardly mattered at this point. They still had a
mission, to recover the body of the fallen, but still intact, scout
from earlier, and so they pressed on. The signal brought them to one
of the massive human built structures, which they were able to enter
through an open window.
The tension was heavy as the fleet
moved inside slowly. Within the Recon Ship, an order was given to
relay info to the Commander about the situation, particularly about
the scale of lifeforms on the planet. With everything being much
larger than previously thought, there was no telling what sort of
threat would appear, and they would have to exercise extreme caution.
An alert came through the computer and
a red light flashed within the cockpit of the Recon Ship. But before
anyone could even comprehend what the message on the screen even
said, the front view of the ship was filled with nothing but red. A
jolt rocked the crew as they made impact. The ship bounced backward
and went into a tailspin. The Fighters, more nimble, were able to, if
only barely, maneuver themselves out of the way to avoid collision.
…
Mary-Jean immediately looked down
towards her chest, having felt something hard against her left
breast, as if somebody had fired a slingshot at her. It hadn't hurt,
but...
Something clattered noisily against
the tile floor, and her eyes were redirected from her ample cleavage
towards something glimmering in the sunlight at her feet.
…
The captain of the Recon Ship slowly
stirred in his seat, which he was firmly fastened in. An alarm was
buzzing drunkenly, the sound systems clearly damaged. The lights were
completely ruined, the flashing beacon from earlier now completely
dark, its bulb shattered. He turned his head to see if the rest of
the crew had survived the crash. Both of his subordinates, battered
and bloodied as they were, seemed largely okay. He opened his mouth
to give the order to run diagnostics to find out the extent of the
damage to the ship when a heavy quake shook the ship. Instinctively,
the captain turned his head upwards. It took him several seconds to
realize that the long black things looming over the ship were legs
and not towers. Craning his neck up further, he saw a flash of red
underneath a black, wavy crown, followed by another wall of red.
After that, his eyes made contact with those belonging to the human,
as it stared over the large fatty bulbs that jutted from its chest.
The captain had traveled across the
vacuum of space, had seen first hand how massive the universe truly
was and how ultimately insignificant all life was in the grand scheme
of things. He still hadn't felt as tiny and helpless as he did in
this moment...
…
At first she thought it was just a
coin, a quarter specifically. But, if that was all it was, how had it
hit her? She quickly gazed towards the sink and saw she had left the
window open. It was possible that somebody was hiding over there and
had playfully tossed the coin at her cleavage as a joke. But there
was really only one person that she could think of doing that, and
she was probably at her flower shop right now. And if it had been
Valerie, she wouldn't have been sneaky about it in the first place.
Subtlety was not a word in Valerie Bradson's vocabulary.
She bent forward, reaching out a hand
to pick up the coin (if that, indeed, was what it was), when
something tiny buzzed right in front of her vision...
…
The Fighter ships had been successful
in avoiding the massive cleavage (they noted that this human appeared
to have larger ones than the specimen original targeted by thee
motehrship), but only barely. Because of the sheer size of the human,
they were still uncomfortably close to it. Some had flown upwards to
avoid the large mountains, and when the body began to lean forward
they immediately had to swerve again. One ship suddenly found the
wind harshly blowing against it and lost control. The tiny vessel was
forced upwards and was quickly swallowed up by the massive vacuum
that was one of the nostrils. Hairs, the size of small trees, smashed
against the ship, shattering the windshield and shearing off the
wings. The hellish ride came to an end, not in a fiery explosion, but
a wet one, with slime filling every crevice of the cockpit, shorting
out the electrical components and covering the pilot with a thick
layer of goop.
The other Fighters that had traveled
this way were suddenly faced with the eye of the giant, which turned
towards the tiny ships as they passed it. The human recoiled, its
body straightening, and suddenly the massive mountains of flesh came
roaring back upwards. They collided against the puny ships with such
force that, despite their inherit softness, they exploded in small
burst of flame. A couple of ships did not hit the flesh directly but
instead found themselves between the mountains and were smashed when
they came together.
…
Gnats, Mary-Jean thought, an
irrational anger welling up in her instantly.
It was a very well known fact to all
that knew her that Mary-Jean Leheron hated bugs. She was not afraid
of them, she just truly HATED them with a fiery passion. This
extended to all insects and crawling creatures, even the ones that
most people had little problem with, like ladybugs and butterflies.
It didn't matter, all of them ended in a flattened pulp if they got
too close to Mary-Jean. She wouldn't even think twice about. She
didn't care how beautiful or how beneficial they may be to the planet
at large, if they approached her, they were getting squished. Period.
No one really knew the origin of this extreme hatred. Sarah, who had
grown up observing such behavior, had once asked Valerie if she had
any insight to this bizarre behavior, but the florist had merely
shrugged. Mare had always been like that, she'd said, citing
instances in college where Mare had gone on a stomping rampage, in
complete view of the public, trying to crush some hapless bumblebee
that had gotten too close to her. Anytime Val had asked about it, the
answer she had merely gotten was bugs were disgusting.
And that feeling of disgust washed
over her now, as she focused her eyes to catch the tiny bugs, the
strange coin dropped from her consciousness as quickly as it came
into it.
“God damn it!” She muttered to
herself. “They must have gotten through the damn window.”
Her eyes scanned the air before her,
searching for any signs of little dots buzzing around. If it were
Valerie the tiny things would probably have a fair chance of
escaping, but Mary-Jean's vision was sharper, especially when it came
to creepy crawlies to crush.
Faintly, a small dot came into her
vision and her right hand instinctively swatted at it.
…
Many pilots of the Fighter fleet,
disoriented from all the confusion, pulled upward to avoid a nosedive
straight into the ground. As they ascended, several of them tried to
make contact with the Recon Ship they had been assigned to protect.
But there was no answer. Finally, after some chatter, it was agreed
to relay the situation back to the mothership. However, they did not
get the chance, as the hand sliced through the air. It only managed
to hit one of the Fighters, effectively wiping it from existence in a
mere moment. The rest of the ships found themselves losing all
control as the displaced air of the limb's passage ripped through
them, causing many to plummet towards the ground.
…
As soon as she swatted, Mary-Jean saw
that there were more. She didn't know if she had actually hit any of
them, but she saw their little bodies react to her swing, causing
them to retreat downwards. This made her more angry. She did not want
any of them flying underneath her skirt and possibly getting into
places they shouldn't. Realizing that merely swatting at them
wouldn't do the trick, she leaned down and raised both her hands,
meaning to clap them together to squish as many of them as she could.
It'd get juice all over her hands, but she was beyond caring about
that. She wasn't always afraid to her hands a little dirty.
But before she could enact such a
move, an itch suddenly manifested within her nostrils. It grew with
such incredible speed that the big sneeze happened before she even
fully realized the sensation was occurring.
…
There was, of course, weather back on
their home planet. There was rain and thunderstorms, and even floods
and tornadoes. But none of those things that they had experienced
back home was anything like this. A powerful gust of wind shot their
already plummeting ships further down towards the ground, but also
launched a storm of water droplets that were the size of large
boulders. They were suddenly like ants in a hurricane. Either the
ships were hit with a massive drop of saliva, which would immediately
rip apart the ship much like a real boulder, or they were hit but
flying gobs of mucus which splattered against their vessels, shorting
out power and removing all visibility. Some of them, knowing that
their ship were lost, ejected.
Far down below, the forgotten Recon
Ship was hit with the briefest, but most powerful downpour its riders
had ever experienced. The bigger ship was not immediately pulverized
by the droplets, but the force of their impact dented its walls,
forcing some of the liquid inside, casing sparks for fly of the
consoles around them. Mucus coated what was left of the windshield.
The captain cried out for someone to
activate the emergency beacon, which would instantly alert the
mothership that they were in trouble. Before any of his co-pilots
could even begin to see if such a move was possible after the partial
flooding of their ship, a huge jolt rocked the entire ship. The
captain could actually feel the ship lift off the ground for a brief
moment before harshly landing back down. He gazed upward and, through
a small gap in the slime covering the windshield, he saw the colossal
figure above them with one of its tower like legs raised.
What followed next was darkness.
…
“Damn it!” Mary-Jean cursed under
her breath.
The sneeze had made her lose them. Why
did they have to be so damn small? Still, they had been about knee
high when she had been about to swat them. If they were still going
down towards the ground, perhaps aided by her sneeze, then they were
actually in a much better position.
Straightening, Mary-Jean lifted her
foot and stamped down with such force that dishes rattled in the
cupboards around her. Then, she raised it again and brought it back
down.
CRUNCH!
Suddenly, she remembered the strange
disc she had seen on the floor.
Lifting her high heel up, revealed
nothing. She brought it back up behind her and saw the warped and
mangled remains of whatever it had been stuck firmly to the bottom of
her shoe. The stomp had been so hard that several bits of the odd
thing were now wedged in the treads of her high heel. Sighing in
exasperation, she reached out a hand and opened a drawer, pulling out
a pen, using that to scrape the broken mess off her shoe. There was
no sense in even trying to identify what it had been anymore, it was
nothing but fragments now and she honestly found herself not even
really caring. Bugs always put her in a sour mood. She just wanted
this mess cleaned up so she could close the window and move on with
her day.
Once the bottom of her shoe had been
cleaned off, she walked to the sink and closed the window before
ripping off a piece of paper towel from the roll. Then, she walked
back to the broken mess and dropped down onto her hands and knees.
…
The chairs of the Fighter ships were
designed to gently bring them to solid ground so that they could
activate their tracking beacons so the mothership could send rescue
teams. However, doing so was immediately forgotten, for the tiny
pilots could not stand for more than a second as the massive being
walked to and fro, its footfalls creating a series of powerful quakes
that shook them to the very bone.
Finally, the human came to a stop
above them, giving them a small reprieve before it began to lower
itself down. The tiny pilots watched, transfixed at something so
large. Suddenly, they were faced with the mountains of fatty flesh.
They fell upon the pilots, smooshing them with their full weight as
they were pressed firmly against the ground. Those that weren't
immediately squished, found their helmets shattering, letting in the
poisonous air of the planet into their lungs. Or at least it would
have let the air into their lungs, if the press of the mountains had
allowed that in the first place...
…
Mary-Jean wiped up both the bits of
metal and small traces of saliva and mucus from her sneeze off the
floor. Mixed in with all that, she thought she could see small little
bugs, meaning she had gotten them after all. When the floor was
cleaned, she stood back up and wadded the ball tightly in her fist,
squeezing it hard to make sure that whatever could have still been
living in it was no longer so. Then, she tossed the wad into the
trashcan. After that was done, she reached up and began to readjust
the straps of her bra, which had been jostled slight after dropping
to the ground and her breasts pressed against the floor. She had
already practically mooned her daughter this morning and she didn't
need The Girls getting free and saying hello to anyone present
(though, as Val would have been quick to point out, it wouldn't have
been the first time).
Once the bra was readjusted, she
turned and walked out of the kitchen to head to her home office. She
had calls to make, perhaps one to a certain florist to see what she
was doing later that day...