This choice: Aadiv's knee. Looks like he's falling behind. • Go Back...Chapter #10Left in the Dust by: Kilbil   Honestly, Rumo wasn't sure why he was even bothering with this. From the moment he arrived, it was more than clear that Aadiv had been busy since the last time he saw the blond giga giant.
No, "giga" was putting it a bit mildly. Looking at Aadiv now, who so all-encompassing large that he was effectively Siberia itself, he was beyond any category!
Which was frankly ridiculous - it's been two months since he last visited! Rumo had been at least stomach height then and catching up fast! He'd been so sure that by now, after all the growth spurts he'd gone through, to the point that his foot took up most of Illinois, he'd have more than caught up to Aadiv. He even had hopes that maybe, quite possibly, he'd finally surpassed him in height for the first time ever!
Given how much Aadiv seemed to hate being as big as he was, Rumo figured that the blond would appreciate being smaller than someone for once.
Looking at the flesh-colored skin-mass that was before him now, those dreams seemed almost inconceivable. As Rumo lifted himself back up, he looked at the raised knee besides him, and how his disheveled mop of dirt-brown hair was barely enough to make it over the top. Then he looked back down at himself, at his lean, lanky profile that had atrophied from months of undernourishment, and compared to Aadiv's towering frame, at the columns of flesh and bone that loomed over and past the horizon. He looked at the endless expanse of meat that took up most of Siberia, at the layers upon layers of landmass that had been compressed by his unyielding mass, at the remains of towering mountains and vast forests all mashed together as little more than toe grime and other nasty body residues beneath his all-consuming form. He thought of the suffocating, almost impenetrable curtain of grey forming from the bottoms of his feet and compared it to the endless sea of clouds emanating from Aadiv's body, so think that they even managed to reach past his ankles.
However, even that did not even come close to capturing the sheer magnitude of Aadiv's presence. You had to be on the other side of the hemisphere in order to be able to see anything more than an endless, stretched out wall of abstract flesh-colored ridges and curves. Even all the way down in Shanghai, you could just make out the hazy figure of a boy-shaped landmass somewhere way out in the distance.
Rumo, the living continent, the boy who could snuff out all of Chicago with a single poke of his finger, the boy whose feet took up entire states, had never felt so small as he did in that moment.
"Geez, talk about overkill." Rumo whispered to himself hesitantly, as though he were making sure that he still had his voice. Maybe Aadiv had a point about isolating himself - he probably couldn't even breath without causing some apocalyptic superstorm. Come to think of it, how had the atmosphere not been completed stripped away from the planet just from his breathing alone? How had everyone not already suffocated? Was it even possible for Aadiv to survive like this? Had he actually eaten anything?
There were far too many questions going through Rumo's mind, ones that he wasn't sure had an answer - or at least, ones that he wanted to hear.
Either way, any hopes Rumo had of catching up had officially withered to a dead stump. Even still, a part of him couldn't let go of the feeling that this wasn't over just yet. Somehow, though he couldn't quite explain why, there was no doubt in his mind that he wasn't done growing just yet. Maybe, just maybe, he could still catch up, and they'd both finally be equals!
Although... he probably, maybe, super didn't want that to happen right now, or ever. There was so much of Aadiv now that he couldn't even begin to imagine how he hadn't crushed the Earth altogether from the sheer accumulated mass. If Rumo happened to get a growth spurt right then and there, the solar system would be left with one less planet to its name for sure.
Suddenly, the idea of going back to his stomping grounds in the US and pretending this whole expedition never happened was looking more tempting by the second. It had been a while since he'd last actually talked to Gris. But no; Rumo wasn't one to turn tail the moment things got stressful, and he especially wasn't one to run like a cowardd when there was someone in needed.
He may not have always understood why, but he knew how Aadiv felt about his height. He knew just how anxious and weary he felt with each additional mile of height that he gained, how often he obsessed over keeping himself as isolated from even the slightest hint of human civilization as he could. Over the course of his many, many growth spurts, as cities and forests alike became lichen and then nothing at all, Rumo had always been the only one who came even close to matching Aadiv in terms of height, and thus he became the sole person that the blond could confide in. When he first reached a mile tall, Aadiv had spent hours venting to Rumo about every last woe he'd endured. He'd told him about the times he had almost fell on his city, about the guilt he felt over the accumulated grime and filth of his body destroying most of Asia's ecosystem, and most of all, about the longing he felt for being able to see his dad again and work on his drawings.
Rumo had simply nodded along at the time, not really registering anything that was being said aside from his dad's old grunge music bouncing around his head. Aadiv didn't seem to mind, though. Just having someone with him that he could talk to - or more accurately, that he could actually perceive with any of his five senses - was enough. Either way, Aadiv needed him now more than ever.
But how could he possibly get his attention? Aadiv was... well, he was huge, for one thing, but that was always the case, and that had never stopped him from pestering him whenever he felt like it. Now, though, it felt as though something had shifted. He was further behind that he had ever been, and it was starting to dawn on him that it was likely only going to get worse as time went on. There would always be a chasm that would exist between them, one that would only widen as Aadiv kept on towering ever higher. Rumo could try all he wanted to reach out, but in the end, his fate was to forever cower like an insect beneath Aadiv's shadow, as he crushed the world unwittingly underneath his heel.
...ok, maybe he was overreacting just a tad bit.
Rumo blinked, and like that, he found himself standing awkwardly out in the middle of nowhere, Aadiv's resting form still slumbering besides him. It had been a while since anything had truly towered over him, so perhaps he needed to time to get adjusted. Made him feel a bit sheepish in hindsight with how he reacted.
Right. Rumo slapped his cheeks together and focused on the massive head out in the distance. At the moment, he was about size of a deluxe action figure compared to the titanic blond. There was still time for him to reach him and talk for a while. All he had to do was go up to Aadiv's ear and make sure that he really noticed him, and they'd figure out what to do from there.
Simple.
With that, Rumo set out towards where Aadiv head was resting, awkwardly shimmying besides the pulsating landmass as close as he could. As Rumo waded through the thick swamp of clouds, he tried his damnedest to keep himself steady on top of the ever-shifting soil, which was being perpetually eroded by Aadiv's ever-expanding mass and heat. In general, the whole ground around Aadiv felt like walking on a waterbed with a very thin, delicate membrane, to point where Rumo worried that even the slightest bit of misapplied pressure would have him sinking directly into the Earth. At a certain point, Rumo had to give a wide berth around Aadiv's lying form just to make progress, as several areas around the titanic blond were giving way completely into bottomless chasms as though they were simply putty, his mass sinking into the Earth's mantle and causing most of North Aisa to crack like an egg. He couldn't see much through the impenetrable cloud mass, but Rumo swore that he could see a red haze outlining Aadiv's body, like the gates of hell themselves were welcoming him.
Unsurprisingly, the air around him was absolutely sweltering, the anvil-weight humidity dragging Rumo down panting like a beaten-senseless dog. What was strange was that he could almost feel it rippling all around him, a pulsating beat washing him over in a steady rhythm. The soft, rippling ground, already liquid-like in composition, was shaking him to and fro in a rhythmic succession. To and fro, almost like...
...like a heartbeat.
...Aadiv wasn't that big compared to him, was he? Compared to the rest of the world, undoubtedly, but...
Rumo's only guess with how massive he had gotten, and how much his body had eroded the continent, the environment had become almost immersed with him, forming a sort of mold around his impossibly towering frame. That would explain why he could feel the ripples coming from the ground, at least...
Just what exactly was he getting himself into?
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Rumo managed to reach the side of Aadiv's head. Looking up close at the massive head, which reached up to his knees, Rumo could see bits of frost lining certain segments with varying degrees of intensity, as though marking which layer of the atmosphere he was breaching at any one time. The blisteringly cold sub-zero temperatures of the middle-upper atmosphere had done a number on Aadiv, wearing away at his skin to the point where it had become ashy and cracked, and yet his youthful face remained impassive, having long gotten accustomed to the extreme permafrost. His once golden-yellow hair was mangled and dirty with the remains of dozens of regions. In a word, he looked miserable.
Rumo tried not to wince as...  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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