Drinking From the Firehose

A roaring torrent of water splashed through the surrounding buildings; their foundations already sinking into the rapidly moistening ground, this one blast was enough to loosen a few of them, sending them crashing down. The waves indiscriminately clutched hundreds of fleeing citizens, who grasped light poles, held each others hands, and paddled desperately trying to survive their wrath. Lovers huddled close together atop landmarks as the streets transformed into rivers, rising with each passing second. Luckier ones - like Riley - made beelines for the emergency exits. A number of monuments were even floating amid the raging rapids, nearing the dark ceiling that hung over the metropolis. It shook ominously, dirt sediments raining to the ground.

It was totally surreal for the panting Riley whose legs were barely able to keep up with the sound of splashing behind. Sure, Sandy had told stories about other settlements being destroyed; they popped up all over textbooks, too. Those were different, though - they weren’t subterranean cities, like this one, built under a shield of topsoil and stones. And sure, there had been some slight flooding with the last rainfall; but construction workers just dug the spillover systems, they should've been more durable! Any normal downpour couldn’t possibly cause something this ferocious. And the shaking was no joke, either, making the shape o the currents unpredictable.

A few elbows flew into Riley’s ribs as more people clawed for the escape route, hairs and shirts creating their own flood, squeezing together through the tunnels. The worried murmurs weren’t providing any reassurance. A few reinforced doors opened, and the flat streets transitioned into steep hills of dark-brown dirt. Some beams of light from the above shone over the irregularly carved clay and pebbles. Early escapees found themselves climbed over by a second wave, desperate to leave the flooded habitat that they once called home.

When some finally managed to scurry out the top, they found not rain, but warm sunshine. A light that shone far beyond what any of their artificial creations could muster, forcing some to squint. This became far less of a problem soon; a shadow shifted over them, blocking the sun and the cumulus clouds. A girl; younger than most of the subterranean city-dwellers, yet towering in the sky at a nauseating height. To say that they were like insects in comparison would be an understatement; a common worker ant would be elephantine to their diminutive stature. A sleeveless green top coated her torso; below, a simple pair of shorts, ready for activity; and above, unkempt ginger hair, its curls descending to her freckled shoulders, and a similarly spotted face bearing a neutral gaze. Not angry or confrontational; just the gentle disappointment and frustration one would regard a garden pest with.

Her hand held a still-running hose, connected to the side of her house. She had it pointed at the earth, and was spraying it all over.

Riley’s head barely peeked out when the crowds began swarming back to the exit. It was hard to make out anything above in the panic; but something bigger was clearly in motion above. People struggling to tunnel their way back in pushed and squeezed confused citizens still attempting to escape. A select few just gave up and attempted to bolt away from the scene entirely. Indiscriminately, all of them squeezed together when said enormous object crashed into the earth.

*SQUELCH*

In only a simple step, the freckled girl had them at her mercy. The extra grinding movement she made was really unnecessary. Though their homes lay under stone tiles above a thick layer of ground, most of the emergency escape routes were in areas protected only by blades of grass. One of these exits was now being trampled under a girl’s foot - not a particularly large one, by regular standards. Rather thin toes, a flat ball, and a low arch accompanied flat-cut nails, with some of the lunula peeking out in a slightly curved little dome. Still, it was enough to compress the muddy ground below it, along with all the minuscule people the tunnel contained.

Seeing the first exit open led Freckles to place her hose on the ground, still running. She stepped back, glancing over the figures she’d buried in - and began tearing at the escape route. It took months to create it; now, as her fingers created continual tremors, they would see how quickly it could fall.

Of course, there were other ways to leave the underground municipality. Amidst the incessant rattling, the people in other blocks knew that they had to evacuate quickly. The frenzied mobs crawled over a gravelly mountain - had the pebbles been only a touch looser, they would’ve added a rockslide to the existing flood. An earthy smell floated over the escapees as they neared the exit.

They could spot Freckles in the distance, half-open eyes fully focussed on her impromptu excavation job. Near the crowd rested, like twin monoliths, a pair of petite brown penny loafers. Small scratches and nicks graced the base of the rubber surface, and the opening of a scrunched-up sock overflowed from either quarter. Murmurs hushed down to a unified whisper. Some citizens less caught in the haste tried to claw away at the precious material, hoping to sell it in their next habitat - most, however, used the opportunity to make a stealthy getaway.

*POUND*

With the attention they’d taken to avoid the redhead in the distance, they were totally unprepared for this ambush. A bright pink dress flashed from behind a tree, whose roots once supported the old part of the city. The person wearing it was much curvier than Freckles, still hosing their houses. They could catch a glimpse of her face - brightly smiling, with soft blue eyes, and long tufts of chestnut hair held by a bright blue ribbon. But, as her gleeful dash transitioned into a jump, that was all blocked out by her soles - with footwear removed to avoid mud stains. Anklets with cartoonish, smiling figures taunted the people below. Screams overlapped each other as the meaty things slammed atop them.

The rotund, pudgy heels cushioned the fall, and the minuscule victims underneath. Their clumsy steps engulfed more stragglers; idle wobbles buried these deeper into the canyon-like crevices between her plump digits, or the segment in the ball of her foot between sesamoids. Despite their immense girth, and nails freshly cut right to the quick, they were still recognizably feminine to those who didn’t catch her flowing dress. The small heel-to-ball length and the larger toe region were the give-aways, as they stepped away haphazardly at more of the squirming people.

Squeezing the pads of her toes to her balls slowly, getting a better feel for the underfoot infestation, she chuckled at the grime that was beginning to gather in her soles. Her ankle bracelets dangled with her next stomp.

Riley groaned, then coughed. It hurt everywhere. Each soil-caked limb screamed and ached. The world felt like it was still in motion. Trying to see brought a stinging sensation to either eye. Once the tiny citizen’s eyelids forced open, they shut again nearly instantly. Recognizable faces, parts of everyday scenery, were gazing up in horror from the soil - some only had an odd leg or arm visible from the engulfing mud. But even more stomach-turning was what that sight told about Riley’s position: stuck to Freckles’ foot when she lifted it back up, along with dozens of other citizens. The tips of the speck’s minute fingers could clearly feel the spongy material covering the titan’s first metatarsophalangeal joint, and the gentle flexes it made as it descended back to the stone walkway.

By now, the ground was wet enough to have loosened a few of the stones...

The third mass of fleeing people were now exiting through the last tunnel. This one led further out from the downtown area, and took a longer time to traverse. Many whose homes lay closer to this path worried that the flood would catch up with them before they could make it out, and ran to another exit. But as a trade-off, this way out had the tallest grass covering it, along with a trail of dead leaves and a mighty bush; so leaving through this path were those prudent about threats the outside world, while still unwilling to risk the dangers of the flood.

A few scouts left first, checking the immediate area for signs of threats. Nobody nearby. They reported the news back quickly to those waiting anxiously inside; as they’d predicted, the flood was human-made. And they had the misfortune of the ribbon-haired girl visiting, with narrow-but-massive loafers removed, on the same day that their colony's secrecy fell. But with the proper cover, they could avoid the notice of Freckles or Ribbon.

The crowd quickly got busy tearing up papery chunks of the leaves. Some braver ones returned, intending to use the greenery as rafts to save the others. More of them simply ground it over themselves, adding a few eroded sediments to it as a camouflage. They trudged ahead, traversing the decomposing plant life. Some small patches swayed gently under their combined weight.

As the sounds of damp squelching and rushing water echoed far away, one of the escapees - Sandy - turned her head. She spotted Ribbon, gleefully stamping another distant crowd into the soil with muddy feet. The woman paused. Something didn’t add up. Those loafers in the distance were far too thin to contain Ribbon’s enormous feet, and too long for Freckles’ toes to fit with any comfort. What’s more, the colour didn’t complement either of their dress styles.

Without warning, the ground dropped below her - and several other hidden people. They’d been traversing a leafy path with large amounts of cover, but one of the leaves crumbled from their collective mass. The group fell into a pit. Its walls were too tall for natural erosion or rainfall to explain them; but too imprecise for one of their teams, or another city, to have tunneled it. Its shape was odd, too - like a distorted rectangle with round corners, and five narrow, prolonged ovals.

A footprint. One that perfectly matched the proportions of the loafers in the distance. And this wasn’t just from a casual step; whoever made this had stomped the ground several times in this exact place.

Some minuscule people who saw this from a short distance away fled, or fell in themselves trying to save their companions. Others, not taking notice of their camouflaged colleagues, fell into similar traps; some roughly equal to the footprint, others showing traces of greedy fingers tunnelling into the soil.

*SWOOSH*

Something swept away the leaves covering these pits; a new face loomed over the captured citizens. Not a grumpy gaze or a gleeful grin; this towering girl had an absolutely smug smile. Her rich auburn hair was short, landing right near a pair of red-rimmed glasses. Below that, an outfit more formal than either of the girls, with an indigo vest and matching skirt. This contrasted with the dirt caking the bottom of her slender, delicate soles that slowly filled their field of vision; each long, tightly bound toe topped off with nails cut in a careful oval. She brushed some leafs off her elbow.

From the traps and her demeanour, it became increasingly obvious: it wasn’t just bad luck that Ribbon and this new glasses girl were visiting during the flood. They hadn’t just spotted tiny people running away and decided to stomp them. The three knew that the hidden refuge was underneath Freckles’ yard before. The redhead was flooding them out on purpose. And while the goliath-sized girls might not have known the exact place of the emergency exits, they were able to predict what paths escapees might take to go out; and they could trace that back. In fact, the three had placed themselves far enough apart to cover the widest possible ground.

As Glasses’ filth-coated foot made its descent into the pit, dainty toes wriggling in anticipation, it hit Sandy like a bullet train: this slaughter was pre-meditated.

She let the ball of her foot descend first, feeling mud crumble under it; before the heel slowly, gently followed it. The delicate skin could sense people gathering under her high arch, hoping for protection; but more than that, it felt those too slow or dumb to flee compressed by the brunt of her heel. The titan paused, letting them stick to their false hope; before casually stretching her leg back and forth, digging the hole deeper and deeper and squeezing its contents between the soil and her sole. With a shrug, Glasses tapped her left foot’s deadly digits over another hole, flexing them slowly, teasingly...

Riley’s ears were still ringing after the fall. The floor below was, thankfully, terra firma. The force of Freckles’ wide motions had unglued her big toe’s stowaway; said stowaway was now panting on the ground, trying to stand. The continual rumbling in every direction did very little to help with that. Riley froze at the sight ahead. Ribbon’s immense legs were in a frenzied motion, almost dancing atop the struggling civilians. She pounded them again and again, now with her toes, now with her heel; and each time her foot lifted into the ground, the nearby escapee could glimpse new bodies stuck to the bottom, screaming madly, eyes wide and pupils small. An odd few were clinging desperately to her anklets, struggling to stay anywhere the wide soles weren’t landing.

Those sounds were soon joined by a new rumbling below. Worried murmurs of a new wave of people fleeing the flooded city - some using the leaves that their comrades brought down for support. Riley tried pounding on the soil, shouting to them, anything to stop them; but nothing could change their fate. Ribbon noticed the tiny noise, too; and, lips curling into a catlike grin of excitement, she tested the soil carefully with the pad of her little toe. The soft shaking stopped when her foot landed in one area - even from afar, the escapee could tell where she’d stopped.

The pudgy foot rested right above the emergency exit.

There were no signs that the crowds were stopping. Even as they rushed blindly into the muddy sole, they didn’t grasp the danger they were in. If anything, this mysterious weight blocking their path only led them to redouble their efforts to escape the flood; they slid on top of each other, struggling, fighting, pushing against the damp, glistening flesh. Far above, Ribbon held her hands together in glee, and she let out a girlish giggle. It was hard to resist the tickling sensation of minute city-dwellers squirming desperately just to avoid being engulfed by her skin. After the early confusion, more of them began to pry and wiggle their way through the maze of pudgy wrinkles and folds. She smiled - no doubt thinking about the surprise they’d have once they’d escaped the warm, mucky barrier, looked up, and discovered the true nature of the thing causing them such agony. That is, if she could stand the tickling for long enough not to rub her feet into the ground and bury them all.

Realizing how futile the situation was, Riley simply kept running - holding back tears. The only thing left for their once-proud metropolis was history textbooks. The tiny legs moved with energy never seen on any citizen before. The yard’s exit was in sight. A glance to the left. One to the right. Another worried look left. No giant girls nearby. Riley ran in a zigzag pattern, arriving right to the edge where the grass transitioned to concrete.

And at the end... a hole?

This wasn’t there before. It was a clear path for years. Sandy had walked over it last week for scouting! But now, a straight, deep crevice lay between the sidewalk and the lawn. Climbing it was completely out of the question; and one would need hours to build a bridge that could cross it. Riley kept looking along the side of the line, desperate, wondering where this canyon could end.

Nowhere. Somebody had dug a waterless moat across the yard to prevent anyone from leaving. Riley’s eyes, slowly welling up with water droplets, could only barely spot a face looming nearby - that somebody. Glasses. Even as she lay on her stomach, the youthful, auburn-haired head was still downright mountainous. The behemoth tossed a coy, false-sympathetic smirk, and stretched her arms out in a shrug.

Of course, the little speck sprung right back into a dash - but an immense, dainty pinky finger blocked the path. The phalanx wiggled back and forth teasingly, flesh between each segment stretching and contracting. When Riley turned for the opposite direction, the digit swiftly swept a wide arc around - digging a spherical ditch. Not impossible to traverse, but it would take precious time to climb over - time her eager fingers could use to squash the little thing. This left the insect-like person with nowhere to flee.

Glasses now had her slender right hand curled up slightly, and rested her cheek in the knuckles; the left hand formed into a first and slammed down. The force sent Riley off the ground, only making the itsy-bitsy arms and legs move faster. It was just stalling the inevitable at this point. The enormous girl’s fingers stretched out, balancing on the tips of the index and middle digits. She was pretending her phalanges were legs, chasing Riley around in the makeshift arena; the hand was a giant in its own right, taking long, playfully slow strides.

This escapee realized what Sandy did earlier - this was their plan the whole time. Chase the citizens out of their safe haven, and squash them. If it weren’t for the flooding waves, the little civilization could stay in safety. Wait until the tormentors had left. Rebuild stronger, more sturdier. It wasn’t above them. But now, with fatigue setting in after all the desperate sprinting, Riley couldn’t hope to do much...

The chasing fingers were beginning to have a decreased velocity, too. As their target’s speed reduced to a crawl, Glasses had them tiptoe teasingly, folding one behind the other from time to time to imitate crossing legs. On the other hand, still propping her head, the pinky finger raised to the lower lip as it let a chuckle loose. Finally, the chase concluded with a panting, sweating Riley collapsed limp on the ground. The immense fingertips ruffled its defeated victim’s hair. It a few steps back, like a ball player about to make a free kick - and, finally, flicked the little thing. The blunt impact sent Riley hurtling helplessly through the air.

Everything blurred together. The trees in the distance. The brown and green splotches covering the earth. Spots of pink, peach colour, and orange here and there. Dead branches. Deep prints. And then, with a sudden twinge of pain, it was all dark. The earthy smell still floated in every direction, stronger than ever. And the sound of rushing water to the left...

The hose! Riley was right next to the source of the flood - the long, green hose that Freckles was using!

Instantly, the escapee began clawing at the side of it. The surface refused to budge. Continuing shaking nearby only served as extra encouragement. Riley’s eyes darted back and forth, finally spotting a twig. The minuscule thing grabbed it, and used it as a pick to carve into the rubber. A few nearby people, having crawled away from Ribbon’s pounding feet or slid off Freckles’ sole, spotted their friend, and joined in. A small crowd tore at the hose, biting it, punching it, kicking it - the sum of their panic and anger came out in one assault on the rubber. This mob didn’t even relent at the torrents spraying from newly formed punctures.

Finally, in one sudden shove, gathering all their energy, they took a gigantic hole from the tool. The stones beneath them stained with rushing water. The tsunami from the nozzle ceased. They did it. They'd cut the flood’s source off permanently.

A shadow swept over them, followed by a swaying green shirt. Still looking only mildly peeved at the situation, Freckles reached to the handle and turned the water off. They knew they couldn’t escape. Most of them didn’t care. They prepared for one last soiled foot’s fall, satisfied with the knowledge that they ended the flood.

She turned around. Crouching over, the back of her shorts revealed to the crowd, she picked up one of the solid stones that roofed their subterranean refuge. The red-haired girl flung it away without a thought, and grabbed another. And yet another. With the dampness of the soil, they slid away from their positions easily; she put barely any effort into tearing apart their impenetrable shield.

The green-topped behemoth only barely lifted her thin-toed, flat-soled foot into the air before slamming it down. The wet topsoil gave way easily as it sunk in, with a particularly loud and ominous THUD. When Freckles’ foot came out, a hole in the ground revealed the minute, flooding city. Ribbon came bouncing in from one side, digging away at more stones and dirt; from the other, Glasses dipped her fingers into the shallow water, making some gentle waves by swirling in a spiral shape.

Riley was wrong. These girls weren’t flooding the area to get people out of the city. They were terraforming the environment so that THEY could get in. And with every exit dug up, stomped, or booby-trapped, the survivors who hadn’t left were sitting ducks in a wading pool that was once their home.

And all the efforts taken to destroy the hose only served to give the escaped citizens front-row seats.

Everything happened so quickly that it was nearly impossible to tell what was going on; but the glimpses that the huddling masses got told the situation's severity. The trio dipped their legs into the water below, kicking around - waves carrying commerces, office buildings, and homes crashed against their shins, leading to smiles and laughs above. Freckles cupped her hands, and brought them down; when it came back up, it contained a whole crowd floating on chunks of dead leaves. Ignoring their pleas, she splashed it into her face, its contents landing all over her cheeks and nose.

Soon, the moist ground couldn’t support the girls’ backsides anymore; they slipped into the city. Despite the subterranean passages having been dug quite deeply, those outside the hole could still clearly see most of the movements. First, Ribbon’s chunky flame foot began stampeding in the water, kicking up a storm. There were still people stuck to the soles, cushioned by the flesh and mud. Next, Glasses’ delicate but dirty stretched foot twisting around mockingly in midair - and splashed down. Riley was nearly throwing up at this point: Sandy was there, pressed tightly into her high arch, screaming. Freckles was the last to join in, and the slowest; and yet, when she took steps with her gisselle toes, they made the largest splashes of any of them, sending dozens flying into the air.

Taken by a mischievousness urge, Ribbon reached deep into the water, her mighty buttocks wriggling before the helpless bystanders - and held about four buildings in her hand, clumped together like a snowball. She tossed it at Freckles’ green shirt; it landed with a splat, the proud things turning to rubble with the immense impact. Glaring back, the redhead grappled one of her friend’s arms; the short-haired one, getting the idea, grasped the other. They forced her down slowly into the pool below, eliminating blocks of the city under her chest; she simply laughed it off, rolling around back and forth in it. Her pink dress now housed a residential district on its front, and an industrial development stuck to her rear end. With one loud swarm of laughter, the other two joined in - falling into the metropolitan area turned ruins; splashing about and rolling on top of everything again and again; tossing heaps upon heaps of the city into each other...

...

When Riley regained consciousness, the earthy smell had left. The feeling of mud below the fingers was gone, too; this was a wood floor. It was still just as bright, though - as if no time had moved at all.

All Riley’s senses kicked in at once, and the little survivor scurried forward - only to collide into a wall. A clear, glass wall - the kind used for aquariums. Or ant farms. Though the escapee tried pounding on it for a moment, the movement stopped when they felt a familiar presence behind them.

Riley’s head turned. Sandy! She was standing right there, unharmed - if a bit dirty. They shared a long, tearful hug. But that wasn’t all. More citizens were wandering around far away, mumbling nervously - some trying unsuccessfully to break into the glass. Whole buildings, still dripping, were standing there as if nothing had happened - though placed more haphazardly.

A hand fell in, carrying the convenience store between the fingers - and gently placing it down. As it lifted out, Riley could make out the freckles on it - nearly triggering a panic attack. Outside the glass, Freckles herself was looking in - no, looking above, giving a thorough, all-seeing status check over everyone inside. When it completed, her face broke into a smile. If she hadn’t stomped out this whole place moments ago, the sudden change would’ve looked almost sweet - nothing like her friends’ careless laughter or smug grinning. This one looked knowing, but genuine, almost humble.

Speaking of the other young women - they were nearby, too. Both were, apparently, leaning over something. Drying off their victims? Looking for signs of damage? It was hard to tell. But, eyes finally adjusting to the new surroundings, Riley realized they were in a windowless room. Far in the distance, more glass containers lines the walls - in multiple shelves. Some empty. Some containing cities, just like theirs. The citizens of this once-subterranean habitat could recognize a few from a distance - resembling great fallen civilizations that were in their history textbooks, only with the structures rearranged and stretching higher than usual, as if it they had been rebuilt after their destruction. One or two of the empty glass containers had polaroid pictures taped to them, showing birds-eye views of distant cities - ones they'd seen in modern geography books.

And, on one wall, a few more photos coating a bulletin board. Snapshots of their own proud metropolis - with sticky notes complementing each. In every one of them, their habitat seemed to grow larger, mightier, more unshakable. Every photo had a date underneath in red marker - the earliest was just a month shy of the date the founders had established the colony.

This proved it all. It certainly wasn’t a chance that the three girls discovered the metropolis in one of their yards that day. It wasn’t -just- a pre-planned attack, either. They’d been keeping track of the city’s growth for a long time, now, and were holding back until it was the absolute perfect size; then, they’d snatch it up, have some fun with it, and add it to their collection. And if they had the power to terraform the soil, there was nothing preventing them from having moulded the topography long ago - perhaps making some better living conditions for the little people, possibly scaring predators away, maybe “accidentally” dropping too many resources - just to help the region’s growth. Who’s to say they weren’t gazing from above when the land was first settled, subtly guiding them in; just so that they could add a new city to a collection?

It was all speculation at this point. Nobody could tell how they'd gotten here, or what lay in store for them. Freckles removed the push-pins holding some photos up, ready to put new ones in their place.