A long time ago, when Eric was small enough to walk along the highway without his feet digging into the sides of the nearby buildings, his mom had once told him something that he would never forget for as long as he lived.
It had been a Friday night. Mom was off attending a party of some kind, and he had been left to his own devices, stomping around and fiddling almost obliviously with the tiny trees in the nearby park, barely paying much mind as everyone gave him as wide a berth as they could manage. It was a time when the giant phenomenon had just began rearing its head, and no one had been quite sure what to make of it, so people still had the good sense to run away from the giant little boy who could step on you and your car. Normally, Eric would be waiting for his mom out by the backyard, barely fitting in it as he loomed over his own house, but mom liked using him as a convenient means of beating the traffic. Plus, she preferred to have him around just in case she needed someone "on hand" for when a couple of cars needed to be quashed, or some little people needed to be picked up. Eric didn't quite know at the time what the purpose was for doing that, and he still didn't, but he never questioned it; helping out his mom had always been its own reward for him, especially when it meant lots of warm pats on the head!
While Eric was busy plucking every oak tree that he saw and putting them into a neat pile (for reasons which were now completely unknown to him - just one of those incidental whimsies toddlers had every once in a while, like trying to balance a backpack on your ankle, or attempting to chew through a stick), out of the corner of his eye he saw his mom getting into an argument with a round-looking guy in a parking lot. He couldn't really make out much, since they both were about the size of collectibles to him, but at one point, it looked like the round guy was leering over mom!
At the sight, Eric immediately sprang into action, leaving a footprint-shaped crater half the size of the park right in the center as he sprinted his way through the empty streets. The shockwaves left by each impact, aside from completely decimating the roads, were enough to throw both the round guy and his mom off balance. He rushed into the scene, and, with a single stomp, he completely quashed the tiny car next to the round guy underneath, the feeling of glossy metal crumbling underneath his sole like a paper bag filling him with a boyish, exuberant satisfaction.
The effects had been immediate, as the tiny round man scrambled away, no doubt completely overcome with terror as his fight-or-flight instincts took him far, far away to whatever damp, smelly hole he had crawled out of. His mom, on the other hand, was lying flat on his back, almost completely still, as she stared up at her colossus of a son. With a satisfied huff, Eric wiped of the bits of junk that had stuck to his sole and turned straight down towards his mother, eagerly awaiting the praise he was about to get for coming in and saving the day!
Instead, what he got was the scolding of a lifetime, as his mom chastised him for being so reckless. Though he had to lean far down in order to catch most of what she was saying, Eric could still feel the shame overwhelming him as she listed all the ways that his little stunt could have gone wrong "You could have almost gotten me killed stepping on me like that!"
"But-but I just wanted to help!"
"Pip, I get it, but sometimes you can mess up so badly, you might as well have done nothing to begin with. So next time, don't go running off where you don't belong without thinking, got it?"
~~~
I honestly would have been better off just doing the festival, huh?
This was all that was going through Eric's mind as his foot found itself crashing straight through a nearby lake, the explosion of water granting most of the nearby neighborhoods the novel experience of being in the danger zone of a tsunami while not being anywhere near the coast. Desperately, Eric tried to maintain his balance, flapping his arms around him as he struggled against the sap-like density of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, while Eric was successful in stirring up the clouds so that they formed a mess of chaotic spirals in the air, there was no hope for him maintain his balance. Thus, as his foot finally lost grip on anything solid, and his monolithic body began its descent upon the unfortunate souls, the only thing that Eric could do was to try to redirect himself, hoping desperately that he managed to land somewhere that didn't have too many people living there.
He did not succeed.
Thus, in the nearby city of Lindon, the last thing most of the business district saw was a denim-laced meteor bearing down right on top of them. They didn't even have time to scream before his rear had made impact right in the heart of downtown, his weight shredding through the reinforced steel-and-glass skyscrapers like a paper shredder tearing through classified documents.
It was over in an instant. From Southern Brexton to the Bends District up North, a prominent human-shaped crater had been permanently impressed right across the city. His head extended out from the north side of the outskirts of Lindon, while his legs extended out from the south side, his arms splayed from the east and west to create the perfect image of a child preparing to make a snow angel out of the once-sprawling metropolis.
For a long time, he laid there, motionless, feeling nothing. No sadness, no anger, not even despair. Just a void of emotion, not even a twitch of life to be found, as Eric started up into the sky with a placid, unmoving expression.
Huh. So this was what shock felt like.
For a while, Eric continued to quietly hope that this was all just one of those paranoid daydreams he had, the ones that almost felt real until he was jolted back into reality. That was how this usually worked out.
But this wasn't a dream, was it?
Sirens barely audible below him, Eric's sight grew blurry, the rims of his eyes dangling precipitously on the edge of bursting with unshed tears. Why did he do that? Why? If only he had just stayed put, that poor city would have still been fine. All those people, all those moms and dads and kids that didn't do anything wrong, they wouldn't be...!
The dam in his eyes finally burst at the point, his face contorted and clenched in an ugly, gaping expression as Eric let out a gut-wrenching wail. Once he had started, he became impossible for him to stop, his tears pouring down his cheeks like waterfalls as he cried long and loud for all the world to hear.
In the back of his mind, he knew that he was only making things worse by doing this, that his voice was only shattering the windows of the nearby skyscrapers and causing any to collapse altogether. He knew that the rushing deluge of tears coursing down his face as rapids were no doubt drowning countless poor souls that were trying to escape the carnage, sweeping them up in an unrelenting tide as the final punchline to an already awful day.
He knew it, he knew how ugly and despicable he looked, but he didn't care. He already long passed the point of being irredeemable, so what difference did being a crybaby make? If they somehow didn't think he was a pathetic, ugly, sorry excuse of an existence after what he just did, then... then...!
His throat grew hoarse and his voice ragged as Eric let out more strangled sobs, his eyes now a searing red. He couldn't take this anymore! He couldn't take not being able to do anything about this! He couldn't take not being able to do anything or express himself without worrying about how miserable he was making everyone! He couldn't take not being able to protect anyone!
He couldn't take that he was always so weak.
He couldn't even do something as simple as staying put when he didn't have to go anywhere. What make him think that there was ever a chance of him being able to do anything good for anyone? What made him think he could one day become a renowned artist, of showing off the cloud artworks he could do, or the mountain sized carvings he could make? He could only make everyone's lives just that little bit worse than they already were. All those memories, all those hopes and dreams, were now just that, desperate phantoms that only existed in his mind, and there was no hope that they would ever become a reality.
And to think, if this city had happened to where his mom worked...
There was no doubt in his mind now: he was a monster. That's all he was, and that's all he would ever be.
His eyes stinging and snot dribbling from his nose, he got up, the remains of the city trickling down his backside. Still hiccupping from his wailing, he looked towards the horizon with a grim expression, more determined than he had ever remembered feeling before. There was only one thing that could be done against monsters like him - they had to be stopped. Imprisoned, exiled, destroyed, it didn't matter how. All that matter was making sure that they never hurt anyone ever again, no matter what.
And right now, he knew exactly what he had to do.
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