The unfathomably large black panther filling the doorway looks around what must to him be a simple room. To you, however, it might as well be a state, the enormous space so large the walls to either side of your are hazy with distance. This monstrous figure immediately fills the space, though, his titanic body filling the door frame for a moment before he steps up to fill -- then overwhelm -- your vision. The lights shining down on you are cut off by his might, and suddenly everything goes black.
You see on the video feed that's been included on your tablet that Chester is peering down at you, his narrowed green eyes piercing to see the speck that you are. When he finally spots you, he purrs and smiles. Rows of sharp teeth bigger than could be believed are revealed, and that simple pleasant noise is rumbling enough to make you feel like your bones could shake apart.
"Hello, Brian," the big cat purred. "Welcome to the University. I'm Chester."
"Oh I know," you say flippantly. "There's really no mistaking you."
Chester's smile brightens. "Heh, I guess not. How was the trip?" The panther lowers down so that he's squatting, but he's still looming over your platform by a good distance. His chest seems to go on forever, and that's replaces by immense shoulders and then a muzzle that could swallow your entire neighborhood in one go. He's close enough now that you can only see his nose. If you crane your head, you can see those enormous green eyes looking down at you, sharply focused. You have to admit, it's a little unnerving being under the gaze of such an immense predator.
"It was all right, thanks." Despite your misgivings, you steel yourself and step forward. You wonder how you must look to this monstrosity, a speck that takes forever to get anywhere. "It was my first time across the hyper bridge. Really impressive, that."
"Thank you." From this distance, you could see the skin underneath Chester's nose darken a little bit, and your video feed was able to capture the folding of his ears, the lowering of his eyes. It was an endearing gesture, all of the hallmarks of shy acknowledgement. Could it be that he was as nervous as you were? "We're quite proud of it, actually. It took us a bit of time figuring out how to shrink everything to your scale on the other end, but we've got some really great micro-engineers to help us out with that."
"Micro-engineers? That sounds intriguing. Is that what your people call us?" You couldn't help but smile at that. It's not the worst name they could have found for the human race.
Chester shook his head and raised a palm that could squash several city blocks flat without even trying. "Oh no. You guys aren't the first little species we've found. Just the latest. And the most interesting." Again, that darkening of the skin underneath his fur. He must do that a lot, you figure. Only most people wouldn't be able to see it under midnight-colored fur.
You picked your way to the edge of the table and jumped on to the vast plain of the cat's palm. The surface of it was quite smooth and warm, and the irregular terrain of it made for slightly difficult travel. Chester tried to keep as still as he could, but the simple act of breathing caused shifts in the landscape that were difficult to compensate for. "Well, that's really kind of you to say. We find you quite interesting too."
The giant's ears perked. He checked his own small video feed to make sure you were secured on his palm before moving to get your cargo container. "Really? You do?"
"Of course we do! It's not every day you meet bipedal, sentient aliens that look like our animals and blown up to...well, incredible proportions." You manage to make it further in to Chester's palm and sit down in a relatively stable crease inside the leathery palmpad. You tap your tablet to make sure he knows you're safe.
"Heh, well, to us everyone else is incredibly small. It's really a surprise to us that there aren't any sentient creatures who've reached our size." He grabbed the cargo container and rose to his full height. The experience was, in a word, insane. Wind whipped around you as your stomach dropped right to your feet. You were lifted several miles in the span of seconds, and the effect was dizzying. Even though Chester was rising and turning slowly, the way he had been trained, you could tell that being carried by this titan would definitely take some getting used to.
"I'm sorry," the cat said. He must have noticed you in the video feed. "Was that too fast?"
"No," you manage to squeak breathlessly. "This is just going to take some getting used to."
Chester chuckled, a booming rumble that shook your body. "You and me both."
The view as you were carried out of the room was nothing short of amazing. Miles of the room whisked by incredibly fast, so that the sterile white and grey walls of the meeting room became a blur. On one side, there was the impossible size of Chester, his torso rising like a sheer, furred cliff stretching miles above and below you. And on the other side, the room became a gigantic hallway, the ceiling well above even the panther's head and the width of it enough for ten of the cats.
"This is...incredible." You look around, trying to guess at how big the hallway is. Really, it could be the size of your home state. Or maybe even continent. To think that it was just a hallway, something to get you from one place to another, was mind-blowing. Without Chester, using your own legs, it would take you days, perhaps weeks, to traverse it.
"Oh, yes, I suppose it is." Chester's purr was starting to become familiar now, as comforting as it was overwhelming. After getting over the initial shock of his size, you find that you like him. "We have to build most buildings for beings of multiple size ranges, though that's somewhat limited here."
"I thought you said that there weren't any other sentient races bigger than you." You couldn't keep the nervousness out of your voice. If there were other, larger creatures here, shouldn't you have been briefed on that?
Chester looks down at you, his tone and expression as reassuring as a 15-mile predator could make himself. "Oh, we are. You mean they didn't tell you?"
You weren't getting a good feeling about this. "Tell me what?"
Chester's ears flick and he looks a bit nervous. Perhaps he hadn't expected to be the one to tell you this. "I was selected because I was a rather small example of my kind..."
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