#but a necessary one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

clumsiestgiantess · 5 months

Text

Chapter 19 of The Other-world Universe; Alexis ignores her new responsibilities and.. goes home?

all chapters listed here

[Inspiration Strikes]

After double-checking with the outposts to ensure the town would be safe enough without me, I caught Erica just before she went into one of the secret little entrances. Literally. I scooped her up as she was walking. “Oof!” she exclaimed as her chest collided with my palm. “What-?” Her disgruntled voice cut off as I curled my fingers around and beneath her, hoisting her gently up in front of my face. “Erica, I think I’m going to head to my world for a bit. I want to see if I can make something that’ll help this town, and maybe myself. Do you mind if I leave you here? I mean, it’s not like I can go with you into the mountain anyways.”

Erica’s expression looked a little bit crestfallen for a moment, before turning her attention back to the present. “Sure, go ahead. You dragged me all the way up here to ask that?” “Well, it’s honestly easier for me to see and hear you this way. Sorry if I picked you up a bit too quickly. I’ll just stick to talking to you on the ground — I don’t want to hurt you.” Erica shook her head, reaching out to put an arm around one of my fingers. “Oh! No, I just didn’t realize- You can pick me up whenever you want,” she told me, a shy smile grazing her lips as she turned embarrassedly away.

I squeezed her a bit in my hand, teasing her. A slight blush crept over her cheeks as I rubbed the side of her arm with the pad of my thumb. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” Erica giggled, then shook herself off as if coming to her senses. “H-Hey! I’m the one who’s supposed to do the flustering! Put me down!” I exhaled a soft breath and let her off on the ground below. She sauntered away towards the town, but paused at the entrance and turned to me. “When will you be back?” It was as if she completely forgot what I’d just told her about needing to be closer to hear her. Her old house had been up on the cliff — close to my head. For so long she didn’t have to worry about my ability to understand her, until now.

Thankfully, I caught the last few words of what she said and figured out the rest. “I think I’ll be back by the end of the day. If not, definitely sometime tomorrow. Go enjoy your new house and have fun! You’ll see me soon.” Erica nodded, then disappeared into the rocks.

Soon afterwards, I vanished into my own world. Maybe I can make something here that could act as a shield for the town. Unfortunately, my father returned to the basement only minutes after I arrived. I completely forgot what we’d been doing prior. Next thing I knew, he had me working on disassembling the ping pong table he'd wanted my help with forever ago. It was messing with my head, the way time was now off-balanced between the other-world and mine. Technically, in my world, Dad had only asked me to help out about a half-hour ago, but I'd lived out several weeks since then — a month at least.

I worked in silence, thinking through different machines or objects I could create to solve the real problem at hand. Not only did the town need protection, I needed it too. Sure, intangibility kept me out of harm's way, but I couldn't pull a punch without my fist falling right through whatever I'd hit. I needed a weapon. A defensive weapon. Something I could use to keep the scientists at bay and fortify the town.

With the work my father gave me finally out of the way, I could get down to business. I sat in the living room and studied multiple types of weapons on my phone. An internet deep-dive revealed several pieces of weaponry I had no idea even existed, but nothing felt quite right. So, for the first time in what felt like forever, I socialized with my family. My grandfather was more than happy to entertain me with a story from his past, and my grandmother baked us chocolate and peanut butter cookies.

Later, I watched Liam play with the puppy he'd gotten for his most recent birthday. He was launching a tennis ball from a comically large gun; I even gave it a go, pulling back the reload slider and letting it fly. I feared we’d give the little thing a heart attack the way his dog flew across the yard after that ball.

That's when I got an ingenious idea. I wanted a gun like this one, only instead of shooting tennis balls, it could shoot a barrier of some sort. Giving a lame excuse, I raced into my room and sketched out the details of my weapon's design, working ceaselessly until I had it looking just the way I imagined. I felt like a maniac, scribbling away design after design, note after note — listing out everything I could need from my new creation.

Alright, I thought as I stared at the drawing in front of me, it'll shoot a barrier for sure, but what if I need to go on the attack? Thinking back to the reload track on the top of the gun's barrel, I added a slim light fixture with four even sections to the side of the gun, right beneath it. So if I pull it back all the way to here, I marked out the very last section, it'll fire a barrier made of some unbreakable glassy-looking light. Yeah, that way you can still see out of it and still breathe through it because it's technically made of light, but it’ll otherwise be impenetrable. It was akin to creating things as a little kid, making up stupid completely unreal powers to deal with any possible problems. However, if I could make boxes that generated both infinite money and food, who's to say I couldn’t make an impossible forcefield if I felt like it? Checkmate, scientists.

I focused on the other three unmarked sections I added beneath the reload track. The closest one will shoot bullets made of the same material as the forcefield, and for good measure, I'll make them explode whenever they hit something. I don’t want to kill anyone with them, though. They’ll have to be small explosives, just enough to tear through clothing or maybe a layer of skin. The middle two.. I could make a half-barrier version of the original barrier. A smaller one I could dispense as a shield whenever I need it.

Since I'm already going to make the bullets explosive, I might as well make the solid-light material itself explosive too. Someone tries to get through the barrier? They get an explosion. Wait, my shield can't explode, I'm holding it! So… it'll explode if I throw it at someone, or the ground, kinda like a smoke bomb. That way, I can fight under cover without being intangible! I’ll make sure to add that the smoke will be invisible to only myself. That way I can still see everything while everyone else is blinded.

It seemed as if everything was coming together nicely, and I thoroughly enjoyed messing around with the properties of my new solid-light material; utilizing it to give me every possible advantage when I fought. By dinner, I'd finalized my plans. The shortest reload notch shot explosive bullets, the longest shot a barrier, and the two in between would either switch the gun to multi-shot mode or generate a shield I could 'break in case of emergency' as a smoke bomb. I might just break one for a cool entrance, who knows?

Only after Dad called the family together for dinner did I realize how long I'd been away from the other-world. I doubted the scientists would come back on the day right after they'd been beaten, though. At least, that's what I told myself as I sat at the table to eat.

Dinner that night was so mundanely normal compared to the many nights I'd spent in the other-world, that it was almost foreign to me. Most of my days had been filled with such grand adventures, even the little everyday things suddenly seemed out of place. Could I even call those days part of my week? In this world it was still the exact same Tuesday it was when I left days ago. Technically, when I woke up in my own bed earlier today, I had no idea that the scientists were even in the other-world. Hell, I had no idea I'd even be in the other-world! After one of the most mind-bending meals I'd ever eaten, I took my finalized weapon plans to the basement.

Unlike the years prior, I no longer had a curfew I needed to be in bed by. I could stay up as late as I wanted to deal with the other-world. The only thing I needed to worry about was someone coming downstairs to find me building with toys at eleven o'clock at night.

As I sat down with a bin of blocks, a sudden realization popped into my mind. If the table and the things on it really have no correlation to the other-world, then why do I get this ability in the first place? There had to be a reason. I’d come up with theoretical reasons why from the very beginning. They’d changed a bit over the years, but there was always some hypothetical reason that made some logical sense.

Invisibility always made sense because I physically wasn’t supposed to exist in the other-world. Controlling and intangibility had originally made sense because I was puppeteering fake people, but now it took on a similar explanation to invisibility. The two powers were my technically non-existent body finding a host, leaving my real one as nothing but a non-physical controller. However, being able to create whatever I wanted and having it transform into something real in the other-world no longer made sense now that I’d found that the other-world was a real and separate place.

If it is truly separate from the building blocks, I should be able to use whatever I want to make something, right? I wandered over to a cabinet and gazed into the top bin of office supplies. Grabbing a packet of sticky notes, I brought them back to the table and pulled off three of them. Quickly, I stuck them together to form a flimsy triangle with an empty center. I stepped into the strange-feeling spot where I’d fallen, giving it a few properties. This little triangle is.. a camping tent. The second after I assumed things had been established, I zapped into the other-world. Sure enough, when I held out the little thing, it was made of canvas and fabric rather than yellow paper. Huh, I guess I’m not limited to blocks after all.

Returning again to my own world, I sat back down on the floor and got to work. Even though I could use other things, the building bricks were probably the easiest and most versatile thing I could use as material, especially since the material itself didn’t actually matter. I don’t know why I can do this, but I don’t think I really need to know. As long as it works, I might as well keep using it.

I’d doubted paper or cardboard could make a better gun than the bricks could, but I was beginning to lose hope after the first hour. Time and time again I tried to build something that at least somewhat resembled what I had on the paper in front of me, but try as I might, I just couldn't get all the pieces to hold on such a large build. I needed the launch gun to be scaled to my own height, meaning I’d have to build a fairly large contraption out of the spare pieces still left over from my youth. I was tempted to steal the gun I’d been inspired by in the first place — Liam’s tennis ball launcher — but realized that the gun I had designed featured a few other add-ons that his plastic one didn’t cover, and scrapped the idea.

For what must've been hours of building and re-building, I worked late into the night. However, nothing I tried worked, and I eventually lay down in a pile of discarded bricks, dead tired. From the floor, I lazily reached across the carpet to my phone. The clock read two forty-five AM. It was later than I'd expected; I really should've been back in the other-world by then. Yet my bed at home was so much more enticing than the literal empty field I slept in before.

In the end, I decided that since it was already late I might as well sleep the night in my own world for a change. I said I’d be back today or definitely tomorrow. So I’ll go back tomorrow. I swear my back cracked in five places at once as I lay down on the blissfully soft mattress in my old room. Was my bed always this comfortable? It had barely been three minutes before I slid into a deep dreamless sleep. I was that tired. Morning seemed to arrive way too early for my liking. When I checked the clock on my bedside table, I realized it was actually almost the afternoon. Now I really should get back to the other-world. Gun construction will have to wait until later.

Once I finished breakfast, though it was more of a brunch, I snuck away to the basement. Bricks were still scattered all over the floor from earlier, so I quickly stashed them away. I didn't need any clues getting to my family about what I was doing down there. Not only would they not understand, they would think I'd lost my mind. I couldn’t even prove the other-world was real; only I could get there. Though, I guess I could vanish right in front of them, but that would just screw over all of my plans. No one needed to know, especially if the government, my government, found out about it somehow. I didn’t need two worlds of people to fight with; one was plenty. I’d already angered one government by disrupting their awful plans; I certainly didn’t need another.

Before I could delve further into the possible backlash that might occur after possibly getting two grown men from some unknown world killed, my brother came to the basement. I practically flung myself away from the table, landing heavily on the couch. “Oh! Hey, Liam. What’s going on?” I asked, hiding my panic as best as I could. He shrugged, “Dad wants you upstairs.” “Ok, in a second,” I replied, pretending to busy myself with something. I was hoping to wait until he left to sneak into the other-world and leave my father’s request for another time. However, true to his semi-annoying brotherly ways, Liam just stood there waiting for me. I waved him off but he just shook his head. He probably knew I was stalling to get out of whatever Dad wanted. Both of us were guilty of that at one time or another.

The rest of my family was already there by the time Liam and I arrived. When we stepped out of the basement, my father announced that we were taking our grandparents out to one of the large farms about an hour away. There was a whole autumn festival going on, and Dad thought it would be a fun way for us to spend time together. I was hoping to have more time for another trip to check on the other-world, as well as another chance to work on my weapon, but I was still stumped on how to build it without the whole thing falling apart under its own weight. In the end, I didn't really mind. I could use some fresh air. My brother was adamant to stay home at first too, but once Dad told him that pets were allowed at the fairgrounds, he quickly changed his mind. His new puppy was all the motivation he needed.

The festival was a nice change of pace from the other-world. In my world, I didn’t have to worry about invading forces or terrified civilians; I could just be a normal person for once. I still carried over a few habits from the other-world, though. I kept checking the ground beneath me before I stepped down, and I was hesitant to run anywhere, fearing that I would cause small tremors if I did.

Once we found a place to park at the festival, we went apple picking, which tired my grandparents out fairly quickly. Dad sat them down at a picnic table, and my brother and I silently groaned at the thought of sitting down when there was so much we hadn't done. My father must've seen the identical bored look on our faces, because he handed me a twenty dollar bill and told us to go have fun. Instantly, my brother made a beeline for the pumpkin smash. I held his dog while he gathered up a bucket of mini pumpkins. He loaded them into slingshots that had been constructed in a nearby field filled with wooden targets, letting them fly with zealous excitement.

After he had his fun, we moved on to the corn maze — one of my favorite autumn activities. At the entrance, we each set a stopwatch on our phones. We quickly counted down to the start, hit the button, and dashed off in different directions through the maze, Scruffy yanking my brother out of sight. I found myself lost multiple times, even passing him once at an intersection. Suddenly, I was wishing for my other-world height back, if only so I could see over the corn stalks.

Against all odds, I managed to make my way out first. I called my brother to tell him I'd won our race, and he burst through the side of the maze a few minutes later. Now he was the one dragging Scruffy. Having given up, he'd made his way directly through the walls of corn. When at last we returned to the table, my dad ordered us food. To top off the day, my whole family piled into the back of a tractor for a hay bale ride. By the end, the sky had gotten dark and I was exhausted. I hadn't exactly slept much the night before — working on my weapon and all.

Back home I lay on my infinitely soft bed, wishing I could have days like that in the other-world. A day where I could take Erica, and maybe even Ivan, out to somewhere fun. However, 'fun' was a lot harder to come by in a world ravaged by giants.

I woke up feeling disconcerted the next day. After breakfast I deduced that something in my dream might have caused it. I didn’t remember much, and I don't think it made much sense, but I know for certain that it had something to do with my failed weapon. Anxiety prompted me back to the basement as I realized that I should’ve returned last night. Rounding the corner of the staircase, I stopped dead. The play table was gone.

Calm down, I reassured myself. The table and the other-world have nothing to do with eachother, you know that. That’s the big reason you left the first time. All I need is the spot on the floor where I fell. Even with that knowledge in mind, it was still unnerving to see the place so barren. My dad must’ve trashed the play table like he’d said he would. Cautiously, I stepped over to where I’d fallen — where I’d always felt that strange energy — and warped into the standard original field, just to check that nothing was amiss. It wasn’t, so I returned immensely relieved.

Again, I tried to make something structurally sound, but nothing stuck. Well, nothing big enough for me to use stuck. A small, hand-sized gun would easily stay in one piece, but when I tried to scale it up, everything broke. Remembering that I could use more than just blocks, I ransacked the unfinished part of the basement for some empty cardboard boxes. If the bricks kept crumbling apart, I would use something sturdier. With a roll of masking tape, a pair of scissors, and a few boxes, I set everything up yet again in hopes that the change in materials would pay off. Yet, after hours of work, I still had nothing but my sketches to show for it. The gun held up well for a while, but as I sat in the warping area for a few minutes to give it its powerful attributes, the tape would always lose its stick and the whole thing would flatten out. This happened again and again, no matter how many pieces of tape I plastered on.

Angrily, I threw my newly crumpled piece across the floor, breaking it further. In vain, I grabbed a random chunk and thought: This stupid piece of cardboard is a gun. Immediately, I disappeared to the other-world to see my results. Despite my immense hatred for that piece of cardboard, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the result of my half-attempt at creation. It was a gun alright, an extremely flattened one. The pistol had taken the shape of the bent box, and looked more like a metal boomerang than an actual gun.

Sighing, I chucked it into the field that I always warped into and returned home. “I need a break,” I grumbled tiredly, “Something distracting, preferably.” That's how I spent most of my day playing video games on the TV with my brother. It was so distracting that I forgot I should have been back in the other-world that day. However, after a rematch on the big screen once dinner was over, my day was gone, as well as my chance to properly return. No, it was not an excuse for me to stay in my way less problematic, way more relaxing world. Or maybe it is, but can I really blame myself for wanting to live in my own reality?

After three days of off-and-on weapons building and RnR, I returned to the other-world with very little fanfare. Of course, the guards outside were a bit startled by my sudden arrival, but they quickly realized I wasn't a threat; I'd simply returned from my own world. Much to my relief, nothing seemed amiss despite having been gone for longer than I intended. I had doubted the chances of another attack in such a short time, but I couldn't help feeling slightly concerned about being gone for so long.

It's not like I'm leaving them without protection, I reminded myself, settling into my new mountain lookout. There are still plenty of guards… not that they were very effective protecting the town the first time. Perched on my stone seat, I could see miles around me in every direction. As far as I could tell, everything looked normal by other-world standards, so I let my mind wander from lookout duty.

The plans I spent so long drawing up would be completely useless if I couldn’t create a weapon big enough to use. I'd have to start back at square one with no way to protect the city. Mulling about the mountains, I boredly watched the clouds slide slowly across the sky. Suddenly, bits of rock tumbled down the slope beside me, announcing the arrival of someone new.

Ivan struggled across a thin stretch of the cliffside, almost sliding off of it twice before I offered him my hand instead. He glanced cautiously down at the steep slope beneath him and slid onto my palm. “Thanks,” he gasped, out of breath. Slowly, I brought him to a flatter part of the mountain on my other side.

“What brings you all the way up here?” I asked. Ivan held up a hand to pause for a moment while he drank from a bottle he’d brought with him in his backpack. “I wanted to see if you’d figured out a way to protect the town," he answered. "I know I told you that it’s your job because you broke the ceiling, but it’s mine too. If you still need ideas, I can help brainstorm.”

I thought back to how he’d been standing guard a few days earlier. When I'd first met Ivan, he'd driven out alone to find someone he didn’t really trust, unsure of whether or not they’d even help him, all for a chance to protect everyone else. Not only did he risk getting attacked by a random ‘giant’ such as myself, he risked getting spotted by the portal ‘giants’ too.

“You really care about them, don’t you?” I asked, gesturing at the town. He glanced up at me and nodded, looking back out over the view. “My family lives down there. Everyone I know who hasn’t been captured lives down there. It's all any of us have left." Ivan turned to gesture at the Cavern Town and the gaping hole in its side. It had seemed like a good idea to create it at the time, but now it fills me with a sort of dread.

Erica keeps telling me that I'm changing for the better, but am I? Ever since I came back I've hurt, no, killed people from two worlds. I’d carelessly destroyed this secret place beneath the rocks without thinking of the people I might hurt doing it, or the consequences it might have on me. That's the kind of thinking that got me into controlling Erica all those years ago. Sure she says I've changed, but all I can see is me returning to my old habits again. I don’t want to end up like we did. Especially not now — not right after I’ve figured out this whole ‘girlfriend from an alternate world’ thing.

I sighed heavily. Ivan must have noticed the way I'd been guiltily staring at the opening into the city; he sighed too. "To be honest with you, I wasn't that much of a defender before all this. In fact, I was called out for being a coward." Startled from my thoughts, I turned to Ivan. Carefully, I lowered my head to rest on the rocks beside him, trying to better read his expressions. "But you seem so fearless," I observed, " I doubt many of you from the town would have dared to approach me after what those scientists and I did, nevermind having the nerves to ask me for help. I couldn't imagine you being a coward if I tried."

Ivan's face scrunched in a melancholy way as he glanced over at me. "Well, I'd rather risk being caught by you than by the scientists. I knew you'd befriended one of us, so it was definitely worth a shot. I had nothing left to lose, anyway." His expression suddenly darkened and I shuffled a bit further from him, confused. "My dad was the real defender of my family."

An uneasy silence rested between us for a moment. Ivan tugged his legs up to his chest and continued. "When your people first invaded, they dragged everything into complete chaos. They tore people right off the ground, threw them into containers, and stepped off into some unknown place through those rifts in the sky. There was so much screaming and yelling; no one knew what was going on; no one knew what to do. My dad knew, though. He kept us herded ahead of himself — every step he kept himself between us and everything else. Dad was the last to get in the car. We survived. Mom, me, my little sister Kelly. But they took him. Why did it have to be him?"

The momentary silence before grew larger, an invisible force weighing down our words. Ivan choked on his question and turned away from me. His voice thinned to a hoarse whisper. “It should've been me." I reached out to comfort him, but stopped once I saw the size of my hand beside him, unsure if he would consider the massive appendage very comforting.

"Hey, don't say that. It shouldn't have been anyone-" "No!" he yelled harshly, cutting me off. "You don't understand, I- I froze up! I was scared! Dad came back for me. I'm the reason he's gone. Don't you see?" Ivan turned back to me, looking up to meet my surprised gaze. "I have to be strong. I have to protect them because it's my fault he's gone!" He seemed surprised by his own outburst — eyes drifting downcast to the rocks beneath him. Blankly, he stared through them, entirely lost in thought.

Finally, he spoke. "I.. don't think I've ever said that aloud before. That- It doesn’t sound right saying it aloud." After another leaden silence, Ivan blinked, eyes going wide like he'd forgotten I was there. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to dump all this on you." I shook my head before he could apologize further. "It's alright," I told him, "Sometimes you need someone to vent to every once and a while, right?" Ivan nodded, trying on a forced smile before dropping it again.

"You aren't like those giants." I wasn't sure if he was telling me this, or just reassuring himself of it, but I took his statement as a form of compliment and nodded slightly. With a large, airy breath, Ivan steadied himself and stood up. "I was hoping to help you come up with something, but I think I should just head back." I nodded in agreement, "Did you want me to bring you back down? So you don't have to climb all the way there?" He nodded, silently grateful for an easier way back to the town. Once he slid off my palm, Ivan began to walk back, but stopped abruptly and turned to me. "You're trying to make something yourself, right? Like the box you made to take your meals out of?" "Yeah, I have an idea in mind, but it's too complicated for me to build." His eyebrows slid together in thought for a moment. "That shouldn't be a problem, though," he commented, "Just make a container for it instead. I assume you didn't build the box with all the food already inside it, right? Make something simple to store whatever it is you're trying to make. Then you don't need to build the thing inside it, just somewhere for it to stay in." I thought about it for a brief moment, then gasped as everything clicked in my mind. "Ivan, you're a genius! I have to go!" With that, I vanished to the basement. I had work to do.

#more of an in-between chapter #but a necessary one #g/t #giant/tiny #other-world universe

16 notes · View notes