Four shrill beeps permeate the air of an apartment's bedroom. Seconds later, four more ring true before a hand lands on the alarm's snooze button. The mass of covers on the bed starts shifting about as the man starts waking up. The curtains covering his bedroom window are aglow with morning sunlight. After unceremoniously tossing the covers aside, the man shifts to his right and gets off the warm mattress, glancing at the clock as he does so.
``7 am,'' the man muses. ``You'd think I'd be able to get more sleep nowadays...'' He stands, dressed only in a t-shirt and boxers, and starts shuffling towards the bathroom, running a hand through his messy hair. The early-thirties gentleman kept a relatively clean apartment, as the covers of the bed were the only thing askew with the bedroom currently. Clothes were in a hamper near the bed, the dresser was clean, and the same went for a desk that housed a PC. Having made it to the bathroom, the man glances over himself in the mirror before starting his morning routine.
He's halfway through brushing his teeth when the apartment starts shaking. Nothing strong enough to knock the man off his feet, but he can certainly notice and feel it as his ears pick up the sounds of various objects rattling throughout his home. Seconds later, the shaking strengthens as a far louder sound rings out, sounding closer to a jet liner taking off right next to the building than anything else. Eventually, the noise dies out along with the shaking, but all through the ordeal the man continues. He runs some water and spits out his mouthwash. ``I remember when that used to catch me off guard.'' He goes for the razor and shaving cream. ``Certainly wouldn't have lost all those vases...'' he adds as an afterthought.
After the shave, he exits the bathroom, makes up his bed, and changes into fresh clothes. A sweatshirt and jeans complete his ensemble, and he pockets his phone and his wallet off the desk. He's to the door frame of his bedroom when a pair of much stronger tremors rock the apartment. The man is still not fazed by the seismic activity, but has to brace against the frame all the same as he listens to the rattling. ``Good thing I actually bothered to nail stuff down in here,'' the man says to no one in particular as he waits for the shaking to subside. ``I can't replace the TV a third time...''
The man's movements are almost like those of the protagonist of a platformer as he moves from sturdy object to sturdy object while a series of quakes shake the building further, each one stronger than the one before it. Between one pair of tremors, he unlocks his front door, slips outside, and relocks it with the kind of expert precision that indicates it's not the first time he's had to do this. He makes his way downstairs and out of the building, keeping a very firm grip on the railing. ``Guess someone slept in today.''
He finally makes it outside and is greeted by a multitude of people walking on the sidewalk. He awards himself some space against the building and looks around. A tall skyscraper across the empty five-lane street meets his eyes first, just like it has since he can remember. In fact, everything looks like it always has, until he looks far enough to his left. Roughly five blocks away from him is a great wall, a wall reaching so high that it's more than twice as tall as the tallest skyscraper in the area by his best guess. Painted on the wall was a continuation of the street he lived on, along with various buildings, and a blue sky with white clouds scattered about it rested above the cityscape. While it wasn't done by a five-year-old, it certainly wasn't going to win any art awards anytime soon. Glancing to his right, he sees only structures of varying heights as the street disappears around a bend, but he knows for a fact that a similar wall lies beyond them. He's been here long enough, and so has everyone else. Gentle rumbling ensues as a shadow starts covering the street he's on. The walking stops, and everyone looks up. The face of an absurdly massive being starts coming into view. Without a shadow of a doubt it's female. What look like her ears seem to be rather perked up; behind each one a thick lavender appendage extends up and then down and out of view. Her deep purple hair is rather messy and unkempt in a way that makes her seem even cuter. There seem to be sparkles in her huge green eyes as she looks down at everyone. A smile is evident on the mauve portion of her face, and she sports a large green spot on each of her cheeks.
Gabby continued leaning forward over the small city with that warm smile of hers, gently placing her hands on the edge of the wooden wall while commanding her antennae to keep her messy bed hair from cascading down on top of the populace. She was currently in what passes for sleepwear for her: A really big t-shirt that extended down past her waist, and honestly looked more like a short dress on her. How loose the shirt was on her became more apparent as the wall of fabric drew closer and closer to the city below. Once she felt she was close enough, she scanned the streets as well as her tired eyes would let her, seeing that for the most part everyone was looking at her. ``Morning, everyone~,'' she said gently in a sing-song voice. ``I hope you all slept well!'' She pulled up for a stretch of her own, trying very hard to keep the yawn that came with it suppressed before gently leaning back down. ``I think I slept a little too well...'' Her huge smile changed to a grin briefly. ``I should've been up by now.''
She pulled up again and strode for the bed nearby; the ``model'' city vibrating from even the gentlest of her steps. She got to work on making her bed, which would normally kick up some unpleasant air currents, but the high wooden walls negated most of that. Unfortunately, they weren't soundproof, so there wasn't a whole lot Gabby could do regarding the noise being made, but, she had gotten really good at keeping the bed nice and neat, even when she slept, so there wasn't a whole lot of the bed to tidy up in the first place, which in turn reduced the amount of noise. Once she was done there, she walked to her desk at the city's other end. On this desk was a monitor, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad, and speakers; everything you'd need to operate the PC that sat next to it. She slipped into the chair, causing another strong quake, and clicked a button on the mouse to wake up her computer. The PC roared to life, a sound easily heard by the city's residents despite the machine being on the other side of Gabby's desk from them. When the screen saver made itself visible, she took note of the time. ``Seven-thirty? Wow did I overslee - huh?'' Her eyes widen as she focuses more on the day's date. She looks at the city with a bewildered expression. ``Has it been that long already?'' She's out of her chair in short order, nearly taking it with her in her haste because her tail had coiled around it. She goes over to the city and squats down, checking a date she had scribbled on the wall. She nods, nearly bonking her forehead against the wall, and rises again, treating the residents to a sight as the monolithic girl rights herself. ``It's really been fifteen weeks since I found you all...'' she says gently as she strolls back to the chair and sits down.
On that fateful day, she decided to take a nature walk. It was warm enough so why not, right? Well, she got a little curious at one point and went off the beaten path for a short time. She heard a snap and looked down; she had stepped on a twig but the placement of her other foot had her far more alarmed, as she had very nearly stepped on what she thought was a discarded model city. She got down on her hands and knees and looked it over, and only then noticed that there were actual people within the confines of this city, and that there was nothing ``model'' about it aside from its scale. She marked the area as best as she could, sprinted off, returned with a shovel, dug the city out, and took it back with her. She was beyond careful transporting the metropolis, and nothing was too damaged (that she could tell, anyway) once she got it home. She repurposed a table into a home for the city and the rest is history.
Gabby reclined back in her chair a bit. ``Can't believe it's been that long... If anything, it feels like it's been longer... It's been a rough road, but we're doing pretty good, right?'' She asked, looking out over the living model. Although she couldn't see it, most of the residents nodded their agreement. She glanced past her monitor to her left. Next to the speaker sat a water bottle with a small pipe jutting out of it near the bottom. This pipe connected to somewhere underneath the table on which the city rested. Slowly but surely, Gabby could see the water draining out of the bottle. Next, her gaze turned to a nine-volt battery that rested within the city itself, very carefully wired to the nearby power plant. Not too far away, she saw a landfill as isolated as it could be from the living spaces. It was starting to pile up with trash and other junk; she knew what she had to do there. Finally, she looked under her desk to see a small pipe, similar to the one from the water bottle, leading from under the city along the wall to her bathroom, where the pipe disappeared around the corner. She opened a drawer in her desk and started looking for something. ``We got water, we got electricity, we've got a landfill, although you all should be looking into building an incinerator plant soon...'' She finds what she needs and stands again, moving to the city's eastern end while holding up an orange toy shovel. While she waits for the employees and the vehicles to get clear, she continues. ``We even got your sewage system working, although that one was trickier than I could've planned for...'' She taps a finger to her chin. ``I still have to figure out what to do in terms of food. I know it's gotta be running low by this point...'' The landfill is clear of people and trucks, so she scoops up the trash with the shovel, and strides across the room to scrape it all into her trash can. ``Yes, there's always the `eat whatever I don't' option, but I feel I can do better than that. Besides, I've got a whole city to feed!'' She lets out a giggle, but keeps it on the quiet side for sake of tiny eardrums.
Gabby glances at the monitor and her eyes go wide again. Between reminiscing about the encounter and checking on the city's ``modifications,'' she had managed to lose another thirty minutes. Without thinking, she pushes in her computer chair with her tail. ``Ah geez! I've gotta get ready for my day! If I don't move quick, I might be late!'' With that, her movements become more frantic, and certainly more shaky for her tiny roommates, as she takes a set of clothes out from her closet, lays them out on the bed, and dashes into her bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Within a few short minutes, the roar of running water is heard, and the door opens just long enough for a ball of clothing to fly out before it rapidly shuts again.
Meanwhile, back in the city, our early-thirties man is picking himself up off the ground. After the initial speech, he'd taken to getting out of the downtown section, taking care to brace himself for Gabby's quaking steps as she moved about, but when she worked herself up into a frenzy over the time, her movements were nowhere near as gentle, and the resulting tremors knocked him clean off his feet. To make matters worse, he had only just gotten into the suburbs when she began freaking out, and as such there was nothing he could readily get to to ride out the oncoming earthquake. He dusted himself off, and went to help other people who suffered a similar fate. After the rumbles died down to something more manageable, he started up his walk again. ``She may not be the best, but I will agree that she's made this a lot more pleasant than it could've been... I don't want to imagine where we'd all be if she didn't find us, and now we certainly can leave that thought behind, but I think it'd be safe to say that not a whole lot of us would be left after a whole fifteen weeks,'' the man says to himself as he walks. He finds a discarded soda can and starts kicking it along the sidewalk in front of him. ``This whole thing is easily the weirdest thing any of us will ever experience.''
A thought hits him and he checks his wallet. Inside are a few big bills. He shuts it, places it back into his pocket, and chuckles a bit. ``Good thing money doesn't mean anything anymore. We can't exactly export anything like this, and all of our `imports' come from her, anyway,'' he states, even going so far as to do the air quote motion. ``Even if the greedy few here tried to take everyone's money one way or another, there's not a whole lot they could do with it. It's why some of the businesses around here have just stopped asking for money altogether. It's not like we even have bills to pay or anything. It's also why I've been out of work. Even my boss has got a good head on his shoulders. No sense in working if we don't need the paycheck, right? And again, where would our products go?'' He spots a trash can; he picks up the can he was kicking and tosses it inside. ``It may not sound rosy by comparison, but I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.''
He spots the sign of his breakfast eatery of choice in the distance. ``Best part is, that she's trying to help us, and doesn't want anything for it. No payments, no tribute, nothing! In fact, she made that painfully clear...'' He trails off as he flashes back to one of the first days after Gabby brought them to their new location. He remembers being in bed when her voice rang out across the city, saying something about making an announcement. He groggily made his way to the roof, only bothering to throw on a robe. He saw a lot more of their new location from that vantage point, and would go on to deduce that it was her bedroom they all lived in now. At the time, though, he was focused on the most animated object in the room. She had a stern look on her face as she waited before making her announcement. It was the closest he had ever seen her get to flat out angry. She then started talking, keeping her voice low, but still loud. She mentioned stuff about getting comfortable and not wanting to be worshiped or be given tribute and a bunch of other stuff that he honestly believed was just plain common sense. With that, she walked away, and he turned around and started making his way back to bed.
Back in the present, the man's made it to the diner and lets himself in. ``Same as usual?'' asks a waitress upon his entry. `Regular customer' doesn't even begin to describe this guy. ``Yeah, if possible,'' the man replies, sitting at the bar. The two engage in casual conversation, but don't get very far when they both hear a sound. Or lack thereof. ``Looks like she's done with her shower,'' muses the man as vibrations begin to pick up again. The waitress winks. ``There was a reason I didn't put in the order yet.''
A somewhat dry Gabby strides out of the bathroom wrapped up in a bath towel, quickly heading towards her bed. She snatches up her undergarments and returns to the bathroom. Roughly five minutes pass before she once again exits the bathroom dressed in her underclothing, flicking off the light and shutting the door behind her. She goes to her bed, sits down, and starts putting lotion on. Everyone in the city on the table is too busy bracing against her ground-shaking steps, as they are once again not gentle at all. After applying the lotion, she starts putting her actual clothing on. First on is a deep deep purple skirt that has been specifically altered to deal with her large tail. After tying off the string in the back of the skirt, she slips on an old favorite of hers: a pale yellow tank top with green dots similar to the ones on her cheeks running down each side of the garment. How she manages to fit her head through the hole in the tank top still confuses those people who try to rationalize it. Finally, she slips on a burgundy zip-up hoodie t-shirt, complete with front pockets. She runs a brush through her hair a half-dozen times before approaching the city again, once more towering over it with ease.
``Okay, I'm off!'' she says cheerily yet gently. ``I'll see you all when I get back! Hopefully I get some ideas while I'm working today...'' She beams the entire city that warm smile of hers before turning on a heel and walking towards the exit of her bedroom, rattling the model a few final times as she closes the door behind her and makes her way downstairs.
