OK, this was officially way too much!
...if there was a competition going on for the biggest "No shit!" statement of all time, Joey felt pretty sure that that would be a shoo-in for the top prize. Of course this was way too much, his foot was half the size of his goddamn city!
If he hadn't seen it happen himself, there was no way in a million years that he would ever believe that this grey patch of shiny, crystalline gravel that took up as much space as his foot was his city! Even now he was half-convinced that this was all some demented fever dream that he was having, some ridiculous worst-case scenario that could never possibly happen. At any moment he would snap back to reality, and he would still be in his house, medallion firmly in hand as he made his wish to finally be bigger and stronger than his stupid brother for once in his miserable life.
Unfortunately, as much as he wanted to, he couldn't dismiss this as a dream. Dreams didn't have you shivering out in the open, feeling every last stroke of the wind battering mercilessly against your naked, bare skin. Dreams didn't have you feel every awkward, uncanny moment of the ground rippling beneath his feet as though it were made of play-dough, with no rock-solid steadiness to assure him. Not his dreams, anyway - they could never hope to be this distressingly real, not even in his worst nightmares.
Joey wished this was all just a dream - if it was, that meant he wasn't standing bare naked with his dangly bits handing over the entire city, and quite possibly being shown to the entire world!
The only thing that was helping the flustered boy maintain even a scrap of dignity right now was the fact that he had two hands free to fully cover his most private parts. It was of little solace when it came to his rear, which were left bare and exposed to the world. He desperately hoped that whatever news copters were no doubt filming every moment of this, they as least had the good sense to not show every last inch of his bare skin. He didn't want to think that they would be so tasteless as to do that to him, not when there were way bigger concerns at hand.
The 9-year-old didn't dare move even a single inch. He couldn't, not when even the slightest twitch meant that both his city and the surrounding neighborhoods would be wiped out. His right big toe alone was perilously close to smothering out most of the residential suburbs to the west of downtown, and his left foot was on the verge of barging through the borders of a neighboring town. The fate of his friends and family and everyone he loved was hanging in the balance. He couldn't mess up, not when everything was on the line. He wouldn't know what he'd do if he did.
That feeling was only reinforced as he suddenly spotted a tiny little plane flying right by his right thigh, its path being only barely visible to him thanks to the white streak that it left behind. If he been paying even the slightest bit less attention, there was no doubt that the airliner would have become a tiny puff of smoke on his skin.
And then whoever was on there, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas; they all would have been-!
Tears begin to form from the corners of his eyes, but he immediately willed them back in because only babies cried and he was not a baby! He wasn't! He just... was overwhelmed, that's all! Besides, even if he was about to cry, which he wasn't, one of his tears was bound to rocket back down to the earth as a liquid meteorite and drown anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the impact. Worse yet, it could freeze up in the upper atmosphere and fall down as an icy meteor of death - it was possible, it was so unbelievably cold up here that his hair was tinged with bits of frost at the ends, and his skin felt like it was tearing itself apart from the chill.
It would be stupid of him to cry, so therefore he didn't cry. It was only pragmatic!
Then again, Joey wasn't sure if matters could get any worse than they already were. He could already see the damage he caused while he was making a mad dash through downtown; what little of it he could see, anyway. There were tiny little plumes of smoke where the financial district used to be, and equally tiny flames scattered across the rest of the midtown area to complement them. Portions of the outskirts were little more than ruins, with not a single sign that any structure was left standing. There were probably hundreds of people that had died in there. The grizzled veterans who told him war stories, that old lady who once gave him a handmade blanket after he had helped her with finding her cat; all of that was gone because of him. All of it.
He didn't know if the people he had scooped up and left in the abandoned lot were still alive, or if anyone had made it out of the buildings he destroyed, but he hoped that they were alright. God, he hoped they made it out. Please, please God, someone, anyone out there, please make so that they were safe!
His heartbeat was racing at 90 miles an hour as the guilt continued to pile on. He needed to fix this, now! And there was only one way he could do that.
Joey quickly searched around for the medallion, and when it failed to appear, for a moment he felt his lungs freeze completely. Just as the thought of having to spend the rest of his life like was about to come down on him like a guillotine's blade, he suddenly felt the weight of the chain around his neck. Looking down at his chest, he finally saw it - the medallion. He still had it around his neck after all this time. Reluctantly, and with cheeks so crimson that he looked like a ripe tomato, Joey reached for the shimmering disk and held it up to his face. Joey's arms were trembling as he held the accursed medal, his knuckles turning white as his grip tightened around it.
He wanted to crush this stupid thing in his hands and thrown in an incinerator, and then throw the ashes into a compactor and throw what remained into the sea. Right now, though, it was his only way of getting out of this mess. He couldn't trust it, but he'd watched The Monkey's Paw and Pet Sematary enough times to know the score. He just had to make sure to word his next wish really, really carefully so that even if the wish ended up twisted, the after-effects would be mild enough to be manageable.
Not really all that simple when he thought about it, but he had to try anyway.
Joey had only just begun to open his mouth to make his wish when a sharp stinging sensation suddenly struck directly below the nape of his neck, causing him to drop the medallion with a shrill yipe. Fortunately, the chain was still firmly around his neck, so it didn't fall down upon the Earth and cause a mass extinction event.
The same couldn't be said for himself. His stomach did a double-flip as he began to stumble forwards, the heavy, sticky air threatening to throw him off balance. He only managed to stop himself from falling altogether by hurtling his left foot in front of him and slamming it down. The impact was instantaneous and deafening, a massive eruption of dirt and rock that show up into the stratosphere. The surrounding cloud cover was instantly cleared away as titanic shock waves raced across the landscape, tearing through the fragile soil like strips of bacon. Ugly, spindly cracks had formed on the soft earth, the gentle yellows and greens now marred by jagged edges.
Joey couldn't breathe. The adrenaline from having to desperately keep himself balanced had left him listless, staring vacantly at the gigantic, gaping crater that he had formed right in the middle of his home county. He had no idea how many people had lived where that crater was, and he didn't want to know. All he knew was that he desperately, desperately wanted this nightmare to be over. He wanted so badly to close his eyes and will this world out of existence, but nonetheless, he mechanically placed a hand on the back of his neck and felt something sticky and wet dribbling down. He quickly pulled it away like he had just touched a live electrical wire, but but he couldn't what he saw on his fingers; a streak of crimson red.
Just then, more sharp stings came his way, this time peppering his shoulders and his chest. This time, he was more prepared, only barely flinching, but his mind was still roiling. What was happened? He tried to see what was attacking him, but he couldn't see anything! The most he could make out were small blips of grey that flitted into his eyesight before disappearing. Were...were those jets? Did that mean that the military was attacking him? They...they weren't going to try and kill him, were they? T-they wouldn't! He was still a kid! They had to realize that! He wasn't some kind of monste-!
He screamed as his body became awash in a rain of stinging needle-like sensations, like he was being attacked by hordes of metal mosquitoes, or like what bullets must feel like to Superman. He furtively glanced once more at the crater he had just made, and then it hit him: it didn't matter who or what he was - at his size, when every step could mean millions of lives were lost, he was far too dangerous to live.
Joey was about to respond in kind to these pests, but something else dawned on him - these attacks were barely doing anything to him. Sure, they hurt a lot, but thus far, nothing they were throwing at him was meaningfully damaging him in any way. They couldn't kill him at all.
That only made it worse, really. There was nothing that the world's militaries could do against him, but they were still throwing everything they could at him. They just wanted to protect their families. He... he didn't want to hurt any more people.
He had to undo this, but with all of these jets in the way, he couldn't concentrate!
What could he do? Whatcouldhedowhatcouldhedowhatcouldhe-!
"I wish..."
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