Chapter 8: Break-Landia

Atop a tall mountain was a wide cabin Bruce called his “home” in the realm. He stood out as a normal human among the pixelated and blocky furniture of the single big room. Any human would: after all, one couldn’t change their body by Paradise rules, so matching the art style was out of the question. He certainly didn’t try to match the realm’s tones in fashion either, and wore his usual Paradise attire of sneakers, a T-shirt and shorts.

The bespectacled 23 year old was working on something at a craft station when he heard a series of booms. He cautiously stepped to the window.

‘That’s strange’, he thought. ‘I don’t remember reading about any earthquake feature in the latest patch notes.’

Bruce stuck his brown-haired head out the window. His green eyes squinted hard, but whatever was going on was a bit too far away to see. Thankfully, he had a telescopic view lens item. Pulling it out of the pixelated satchel on his side, he peered through its lens.

The man’s jaw dropped. Bruce saw a golden pyramid of his rest beneath a giant’s foot. The light-brown feminine toes curled around its top. Cracks formed in the upper squares of the block-made structure. She flexed those digits just a tad and the top blocks exploded between clenched toes. A second later her foot crashed through the rest of the structure. The entire thing burst apart. His green eyes went wide in horror.

‘What the fuck is going on?’, he thought.

Bruce stowed the telescope back into the hammerspace of his satchel then made a beeline to his elevator. He stepped on a pressure switch and the wooden platform descended past a trap door on the floor into the outside air of his realm. The quakes continued as he went down the mountain. All the while, he had a strange sense of deja vu. Something about that foot was familiar.

At the mountain’s base, Bruce hopped into a blocky jeep of his and zoomed over towards the source of the disturbance. He didn’t fly about his realm that often, as he found it more immersive to stay in a player-mode for the crafting game of his. He felt no rush, nor did he realize that ability was disabled.

Whatever wacky surprise giant invasion event the Make-Landia devs snuck in wouldn’t be something he couldn’t revert. He had plenty of saves, after all.

The vehicle chugged into a zoom across the pixelated and blocky terrain.

--==--==--==--

Delta looked down at the few remaining cubes of the pyramid she just crushed. The blocky structures of Make-Landia make were a novel sensation under sole. The cubes that made up the vast majority of the world had sides about a foot long. This made them easy to to pick and throw while still being big enough to clearly make out. At Delta’s 500ft stature, this gave that pyramid a unique sort of thick granularity as it burst under her stomp.

Delta took just two more steps till she reached the next structure: a big blocky smiley face. It definitely seemed like an earlier work of his, probably when he was just figuring out the game and how to make things. She set her foot upon it and slowly pressed down. Twinges of pleasure went through her body as she gently pressed down and saw the upper block layers of the sculpture crack.

That was another thing she found interesting about the realm. Make-Landia never really had to account for anything crushing blocks before. When she stomped on a creation, the Wish-Interpreter did its best to meet the demand with the existing rules of the games. Blocks didn’t crush normally, but you could break them or blow them up. The pressure she applied now triggered a cracking animation on the stone squares. She kept going till those layers burst into pixelated dust that existed just a few moments till the realm cleaned up the effect.

As with the pyramid, she stepped down hard shortly after. Everything under her foot exploded in a burst of more pixel dust and smoke. That was the other way Paradise handled destruction. Delta could of course overwrite this with a few thoughts to make it more realistic with compressing blocks and the like. However, she liked the novelty.

Even her footprints had a unique charm to them. The system recognized her foot should sink into the ground a bit, so it simply burst a few layers of ground-blocks under her steps. The “natural” grass, dirt, and rock squares cracked away with every foot fall. Turning around, she saw the trail of foot-shaped, blocky crevasses she left in her wake.

In a few more booming steps she made it to the bit of interest. The tan woman had a grin on her face as she raised her foot over a more fanciful looking creation. It was a tall tower of stone and painted wood blocks. At a glance it seemed like some weird building-sized art sculpture, but she realized there was some furniture inside the thing. It must’ve been an old base of his. It stood tall enough she had to raise up her knee to get her foot on it.

Toes curled, she pressed down and the building collapsed beneath the unyielding ball of her foot. When the pixel dust cleared, she saw Bruce’s jeep settled its coordinates a few hundred feet away from her. With her enhanced vision, she saw the shock on his face.

Smiling, Delta walked towards him.

--==--==--==--

Bruce’s journey over was a bumpy one. Every step from the giant woman reverberated through the land as a tremor that bounced his jeep to and fro. Thankfully, the vehicle was made for rugged terrain and he was used to driving on it. He got sight of her just as she finished crushing a structure of his.

“Hey that was one my first bases!” he shouted out from the open-topped car. “I don’t what kind of surprise event your giant ass is part of lady, but if you think I’m just gonna let you break my stuff you got another thing coming!”

She started moving towards him, but he held fast and pulled out a pixelated bazooka from his satchel. It was tricky to aim bouncing around much as he was, but she was a big target. He looked through the weapon’s visor up the those smooth soft-brown legs and past some green shorts. He fired, and watched the missile burst harmlessly against the fabric of her shirt.

The outfit seemed familiar. While he reloaded, he looked up towards his chest, then face. It was her! That angry woman he RP’d with that one time. The face was familiar enough, but that green-and-yellow patterned hair was unmistakable. The way the thin yellow lines of it bent and glowed like a live circuit board of the old times.

But, if that was her, then this wasn’t an event. How could it be? She was clearly a human. No realm could make NPCs like that. What a dumbass he felt like.

Bruce’s jeep was still running. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he felt like he had to get out of here. She was moving so fast though. Her toes settled in front of his vehicle before he had time to turn; the big toe was taller than him. On high, a voice thundered.

“Finally showed up, huh?” said the giant woman.

--==--==--==--

Delta leaned down to scoop up the jeep. She easily gripped the blocky car. Bruce must’ve panicked or something since he hit the gas and the wheels started spinning futilely in the air.

‘Like a bug flailing its legs.’, she thought.

Still crouched, she turned the car over and shook the man out into her palm. He landed on his butt without a hint of grace. She let the car fall to the ground and it bounced.

“Hey careful, that thing has a health bar!” shouted Bruce. He had quickly positioned himself over the edge of a finger to watch it fall. That gave him the perfect vantage point for when she moved her big toe over the itty-bitty thing and twisted it down. From her data feeds, she knew its health went 0 in an instant. The vehicle exploded in a little ball of fire.

“Mmf, warm. That little missile of yours was a good deal warmer though. If I had to choose an explosion to massage me, I’d go with that one.”, said Delta.

Bruce lurched as Delta stood up and rose her hand to her face. He sat in the curl of a finger as he thought about how he’d have to craft another vehicle when he got back to his cabin. Those things took a lot of oil.

Soon, he was face to face with Delta’s amused and looming countenance. The soft exhale from her nostrils berated him as she clearly waited for him to speak. He had a lot of questions, but something about being in the presence of such a large and powerful force had him forget all but the simplest.

“What is going on here? How’d you get in here?”

“Oh?” She spoke, and a hotter, more humid gale ripped past him and ruffled his shirt. “You remember me then?”

“Of course I do! You’re that crazy chick I met up with once.” Bruce shifted his lips to the side.

‘Fuck, what was her name? Something with a D...”

The giant woman clacked her tongue in wait.

“Dana!” he said.

Delta erupted into laughter. Bruce almost rolled off her palm as it shook, but he grabbed onto the soft skin below him and managed to hold tight. That breath of hers roared over him. The sounds of her mirth rumbled in his ears. She eventually stopped.

“Dana, wew. I guess you didn’t remember the name. I gotta say, I’m not too surprised you have a Make-Landia realm base. With all the cubes here, I’m sure blockhead like you fits right in.”

She chuckled softly at her own pun before continuing. “I see you have the same outfit as before? I usually don’t change up my own either, so I guess I can’t fault you there. Still, a name like Delta is pretty unique.”

‘Delta, that was it.’ he thought. He slowly moved his hand towards his satchel as he spoke.

“Ah yes, Delta.”, he began. “Well, uh, what are you doing here? You’re not still sore about that time we spent together. I mean, that was months ago, you know?”

Her pink lips smiled wide. “Oh, my memory’s much better than yours Bruce. For instance, I never forget a slight.”

Bruce was about to yank out his bazooka till he fell over once more. A boom rang out as she started moving again. Each step was a lingering tremor. He slowly got back up and leaned cautiously against a finger of hers for support.

She was heading towards more of his Make-Landia works.