This choice: Continue following Rumo as he walks of, wondering what to do. • Go Back...Chapter #8Continue following Rumo as he walks of, wonderi... by: Kilbil   With a silent sigh, the youngest Chynoweth stood back up from his tiptoe squat, in the process freeing most of central Illinois from their long tyranny of darkness underneath the shadow of Rumo's vast twin moons as he stretched all the way up to his full height.
There were no words in the English language that could truly do justice to Rumo as he stood up past the stratosphere. Just his toes alone were far beyond human comprehension in scale, rendering everything as a mat beneath his feet. All around Rumo's country-spanning feet, his towering body heat was birthing an oceanic waterfall of thick, grey cumulonimbus clouds, vast and impenetrable in girth, the condescension only licking away at the bottoms of his soles as they covered the state.
Almost lackadaisically, he slowly turned 180 degrees away from the city by the heels of his feet, paying little mind to the grinding of tectonic plates beneath as yet more "old-fashioned" landscapes for miles across shook before crumbling away into dust. For thousands of miles, as his feet travelled in a wide circumference through the air, the entirety of rural central Illinois was cast in an impenetrable shadow, their worlds completely overcast by unrestrained terror as they waited to see if the infinite landscape of skin would descend upon them.
As their surroundings suddenly began to grow darker, the air getting thinner and thinner with each second, what few bits of civilization were left quickly spring into action, with most retracting deep underground into a network of bunkers and that had been installed all throughout rural America. For those who were left to fend for themselves on the surface, the only hope for survival lay in the gaps between, the recessed furrows between the ridges lining his soles that stretched out as vast as valleys.
As the feet eventually made impact, the ridges pressed deep into the Earth, effortlessly forming a miles-deep mold in the crust like it was made of clay. Everything, from the little vegetation that had managed to grow back from the last time Rumo had come by, to the few holdouts that were unfortunate enough to fall under the ridges, was wiped clean from the surface, the bunkers shuddering from the seismic waves that coursed through the rock. For the cowering microscopic people, it was like the end of the world was happening all around them.
It was... not a very reassuring feeling to deal with every day.
By the time the shockwaves had finally receded, all was still. Rumo's toes loomed over all of Illinois as endless immovable walls of pulsating flesh. For five brief seconds, the town of Bloomington, about 140 miles from Chicago, got to experience the of being a small mountain village perched in the middle of two massive plateaus, right before it would soon get to experience of being an island left adrift in a massive canyon.
In the short time that Rumo had been going through his growth spurt, the second-flattest state in America had been transformed into the most mountainous region in the world, filled with warps and twists as far as the eye could see. The land was a chaotic jumble of shapes intersecting one another, going up and down in discordant, smooth curves with spikes of jagged rock here and there. The rest of the continent was little better off, the surface marred with massive country-spanning footprints all over, all grotesquely fused with one another to form a Corenenberg-esque cacophony of hearted earth-worn clay.
The worst part was that there was nothing that anyone could have done to prevent this; for Rumo, even the simple act of beginning to move was a cataclysm waiting to occur. Just the smallest motion of one of his county-spanning heels rushed headlong against the surface could spell the end of an entire ecosystem. And then there were the aftereffects, the blast waves of air that travelled with supersonic speeds after every last step. These could and had easily blasted away entire states, leveling immense structures that had for years loomed overhead, yet would all the same be reduced to smears.
In every sense of the word, Rumo was inevitable. No matter which part of the world you were in, he would always be there. When you got outside in the morning to tend to some of the flowers in the balcony, a faint shade of pink or dull grey would color the entirety of the horizon. When you went to the beach, you would always have to be on the lookout for any torrential tidal waves that would occur from Rumo going so much as one centimeter into a tectonic plate.
In a word, Rumo had long passed the point of being a mere giant. He was a completely different category of being, one that had been reserved for only a select few. He was, in no uncertain terms, a deity, ancient and primordial, an unfettered god of destruction whose every move brought the world to its knees. If he wished, the boy could have easily laid waste to the entire hemisphere, and few would be able to do anything but await their demise. But Rumo liked the world, and everyone on it. For all that he could come across careless or inattentive, he still cared about making sure he did as little damage as possible.
He just preferred not to linger over how much he had already caused, and would continue to cause, no matter what he did.
Fortunately, the U.S. had adopted a system of sorts to minimize the casualties Rumo incurred just by existing. All of those missiles and bombs that were lobbed at Rumo in Chicago weren't just for that city - just about every major population center in the country was now a modern-day fortress, with seemingly every street corner being decorated with advanced artillery and missile guidance systems dedicated to warding off Rumo from accidentally stepping or squashing anything that he would come to regret. Whenever his feet got anywhere near a place like New York City, or Miami, or even Richmond, the missiles would come without delay, alerting Rumo to put his foot down somewhere more isolated. In this way, an informal sort of shepherding system had been formed, where Rumo would be guided towards the spots he should walk based on how much percussive fire came his way.
In this way, the military-industrial complex had finally found a perpetual engine for its engorgement that didn't involve waging endless war.
Thinking about it, the fact the full military might of the world's strongest nation had been reduced to little more than a crude means of shepherding around a 14-year-old boy was a bit pathetic to witness. Additionally, the number of resources needed to maintain these forces was staggering. But as things stood, any other form of communication between him and the rest of the world was completely impossible, so this less-than-ideal system persisted. No matter what, inevitably, millions would find themselves balancing delicately on the line between life and death.
It was something that weighed on Rumo's mind as he carefully made his was down South, his foot hanging over as humans and giants alike were left completely at his mercy. He knew that being a giant wasn't always sunshine and rainbows, but sometimes it felt like he got the absolute worst end of the stick. He remembered that when he first had his growth spurt, it'd been the best thing that had ever happened to him! He didn't have to worry about anything - no school, no worries, nothing! He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, all while he towered over almost everything in his old hometown.
He had all of that, and then he just would not. stop. growing! The already meager-looking skyscrapers became breadcrumbs, and then eventually they became nothing at all. The same applied for everything; from mountains to rainforests to canyons, they all became nothing, insignificant specks that weren't even visible to him anymore. No more racing against high-speed trains, no more vaulting over mountains - all he had was this tiny, flat little plane with everyone he knew and loved living on the brink of death because of him. At the rate he was going, he was pretty sure he was on his way towards outgrowing the entire country, if he hadn't already!
He had unmitigated power over everything, yet he felt completely powerless anyway. How ironic.
Oh well. Rumo wasn't one to linger on things, so he quickly turned to the question of who he wanted to see today. As it stood, his options were very limited, as vanishingly few things on Earth could even be perceived by him. Even when he could, they certainly couldn't see him. At most, they could only see a tiny a part of him, 1/10000 of him, a single, solitary of sloping skin that never seemed to end.
Maybe he could visit his sister? Glas Chynoweth was a giant just like him, and more importantly, one of the few things in existence that he could interact with. She was just tall enough that she was able to yell, which, considering that even the tallest skyscrapers in America couldn't reach up to her toes, said a lot about just how tall he was. It was a far cry from the days when he only just big enough to be able to ride on her shoulder - days that he missed more and more with each passing week.
Alternatively, he could visit his best friend in the whole world, Aadiv - otherwise known as the largest giant on the face of the planet, and the only being in existence that Rumo had to actually look up to see.
Much like Rumo, Aadiv could not be described as anything less than a deity of destruction, yet his personality couldn't be any further from that. He was so frail, so gentle, Rumo had half a mind to believe that he was some kind of fairy in another life. Ever since his growth spurt, though, he had become a complete nervous wreck. No matter how soft or gentle he was, no matter how minute his actions, a death toll would inevitably follow, which in turn took its toll on him. Perhaps Rumo could cheer him up.
Eventually, after a few minutes, Rumo decided...
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