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They say that the flapping wings of a butterfly can cause hurricanes on the other side of the world.

The analogy, of course, is meant to remind people that even the smallest of actions can have the greatest of consequences. Skipping the routine maintenance on a car can lead to an accident and cause a major pile-up on the highway. Forgetting to pay your electric bill can mean that you go an entire weekend without power, spoiling all of the food in your fridge and freezer. Not sending out a birthday card could ruin someone's entire big day.

Worse still, all of these small things could happen to one person, and when that person was sitting in their apartment, glaring at the cup of coffee that had no whipped cream or caramel drizzled over the top, it could be that one last, tiny straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back.

"One thing...I just wanted one thing to go right for me this week," Zenith muttered, as he began shaking with rage at his kitchen table. He knew that he'd make a terrible mess, but his paw couldn't help clenching into a fist around the cheap, plastic cup in palm, and creamy brown coffee shot up toward the ceiling and spilled over the edges of the table as he fell deeper and deeper into a downward spiral of frustration.

The entire world hadn't crossed Zenith, but it was beginning to feel that way, and though it was just a couple of days into a young week, the civet-hyena hybrid was already giving up on anything positive happening to him anytime soon. He was bloated with anger, and though it was likely his own negative thoughts causing the projection, his tummy really did look a bit more bloated than normal, sticking out from the rest of his body with just a slightly brighter shade of green than the rest of his coat.

"Great. Just fucking great...because I really needed to lose a couple more pounds this week, too!" he cursed, and as his fist slammed down on the table, the plastic container within cracked and fell to pieces in the puddle of wasted coffee. To the colorful hybrid, the scattered bits of clear polyurethane looked like shards of glass floating in a pond, fallen from the remnants of a destroyed building...and a few small, meager cuts appeared on his paw, caused by the jagged plastic that he'd made of his own frustration.

Coffee seeped into the wounds, and the bloating of Zenith's belly only grew from there as he winced his eyes shut for a moment, feeling far less than perfect as he tried to stand up from the table. "Is my stomach...growing?" he asked himself, knowing that there was no one around to answer his inquiry. The two-toned fires of his irises gazed down, and dark, black paws roamed over the slight growth of his belly as he tried to decide if he was losing his mind, or if there really was some kind of growth.

He was sure that there was, but not because of the rotund nature of his stomach; that was actually beginning to fade, thanks to the size of his paws. He picked up a piece of the fragmented plastic, and found that what was originally the size of his palm now sat upon the end of a pawpad, looking like it could pass for a contact lens.

"Well that's a bit of a trip," he muttered, and the longer he focused on the tiny piece of plastic, the smaller it appeared, until something else drew his attention: the cracking of the ceiling above him, as his legs and torso elongated at an accelerated rate. "Oh, come on! I can't afford to replace my ceiling right now!"

The angrier Zenith became, the taller his body grew, and as he tried to hunch over and avoid causing anymore damage, he found that his neck and shoulders pushed up into the ceiling afterwards, even as he bent over at the waist to avoid such a thing. The table that he once sat comfortable at felt further and further away with each passing second, and within a few moments, his legs no longer fit under the small, plain furniture regardless.

His tail swished about with growing frustration, and it cast the chair behind him into the wall, and then, right through it as it was forcibly knocked away. His clothes were of little note before, but they were grasping painfully tight to his growing figure, and the seams were giving way with a series of loud, telltale riiiiiiips, until the very last vestiges of the fabric were no more. Tatters of his t-shirt fell down and became lost in the spilling dust of the cracked drywall, and though he should have been a bit more bashful about it, Zenith could see his most private areas exposed as his shorts remained as nothing more than loose, torn thread.

The cheap tiles of the kitchen floor were bowing under the growing weight of the hybrid, until Zenith could feel them cracking and settling in between the large gaps in his pawpads. It was actually a pleasant and soothing sensation, as the thick, powerful floorboards beneath gave his footpaws a little something extra to rest on, and the solid surface allowed him to stand upright, as his head popped up through the bricks upon the roof, and his ears shrugged them away from the rest of his body.

Drywall dust and crumbling brick were cast away by his long, flickering ears as Zenith stood up and stared out toward the city, accepting the transformation that was happening, even if he still didn't quite understand it. His body was continuing to expand, and before long, he'd be every bit as tall as the apartment building that he was standing in. His own apartment was already going to be destroyed by the process, and it seemed a waste to leave the rest of it standing...

"I don't think you'll be getting a rent check from me this month, Mr. Gurler," Zenith grumbled. Only his head was popped out through the ceiling, but with a clenched fist, Zenith was easily able to punch out the window in his kitchen, and most of the wall with it. Bricks tumbled down to the street below, landing on cars and leaving small cracks in the sidewalk, but all of that minor destruction paled in comparison to the thunderous CRUNCH of Zenith jumping down from the third story and landing squarely on the roof of his landlord's car.

Glass shot out in all directions as the windows were instantly pulverized, and the roof of the car sunk in until it crushed the seats below. The vehicle was empty, but after Zenith landed upon it, it looked as if it was already put through a compactor, and the shocks gave out, popping the tires off of the side of the vehicle from the immense pressure they were under.

"In fact," the hybrid continued his monologue, "I don't think you'll be getting a rent check from anyone this month!"

Rapid and continuous growth left Zenith almost as tall as the building when he stood upright, and eager to test his new abilities, he lined up against the building as if it were a soccer ball and swung his leg right through the side of it, gouging several units out of the building and casting chunks of brick and mortar several blocks away. The residential area was peppered with heavy, stone debris, shattering windows and damaging the siding of several houses; it was terrifying to those residents who were home in the morning, but all told, it was just an appetizer for what Zenith had in mind, as he watched the apartment building collapsing in front of him.

The civet-hyena was already taller than the building as it crumbled over, and his face lit up with a wide, terrible grin as dust kicked up from the toppled remains. Any cars parked on the street nearby were crushed by the falling brick, and if not for the insurance policy that he'd placed on the building, Mr. Gurler would have been completely hosed...though some of his tenants were worse off, to say the least.

Zenith could see small streams of red pouring out from the remnants of the building, but he didn't feel even an ounce of shame. He didn't care much for any of his neighbors, and he hated the building that they all lived in, so to see it toppled in such a way was a cathartic pleasure that completely overrode any guilt that he felt about the collateral damage that was the lives of his neighbors.

"You'd all understand if you were in my shoes," Zenith explained, and his voice boomed across the neighborhood as he continued to grow, standing taller than any of the trees that dotted the streets and yards around him. Pushing right past fifty, sixty and seventy feet, he stood tall enough that people in the buildings downtown would be able to see him coming, and though the skyscrapers might feel safe from most threats, they weren't designed with a large, rampaging hybrid in mind.

The neighborhood was nothing but a warm-up for Zenith, who stepped away from the gruesome remains of his old building in favor of the houses that dotted the suburban streets. Claws that were already sharp and deadly grew further out from the ends of his pawpads, and their chitin turned jagged as the twisted effects of the transformation continued. Tiny bits of pavement were easily ripped up by the growing talons, and houses that once dwarfed Zenith were given the opposite treatment, as he decided to experiment with their durability.

A large, fancy house of white siding and a fresh, dark roof was completely leveled under his gait, and though the frame was sturdy against the abuse of the elements, the two-by-fours were no match for the weight of Zenith's footpaw upon them. Every window in the house was blasted out in seconds, and the walls that were just out of the reach of his paw caved in to the center of what was once a house, as Zenith lifted his foot.

Nearly perfect was the paw-print that remained, leaving an imprint in the basement level of the house that no one would ever be able to forget.

"All right, enough with the small fries!" Zenith roared at the top of his lungs as he began marching down 35th Street, a road that he'd taken in to the city many times before. It always seemed to be under construction, and it was the cause of his being late to work more times than he could remember; bearing that in mind, he made sure that each step he took left a fresh crater in the ground, wanting to give the road crews something that was actually worth fixing before he made it all the way into the big city. "It's about time I make my way to the main course!"

35th Street carried all the way toward a major highway, and where the roads met, traffic was always backed up. For the people in their cars, stuck on the road, it was just another day of sitting still and waiting to get to work.

For Zenith, it was a dream come true, as his voice rang out like a loudspeaker at an arena, giving the people stuck in traffic ample time to turn their heads and see the monster coming before he actually arrived.

Piles of twisted metal were left for a mile behind him, and the carnage moved closer to the city with each step that Zenith took. He was still growing taller, and as he passed the mark of 200 feet, his gait became so wide that he had to slow his pace, making sure that he didn't leave too many cars unscathed. "Why are you all running? You're just gonna die tired!" his yells bellowed across the highway, and desperate creatures pulled their families from their vehicles as they tried to find a way off of the road.

Safety was nowhere to be found. The highway was elevated above the neighborhoods below, and each time Zenith took a step, more sections of road and bridge crumbled, sending helpless bodies tumbling down to the roads below, or, perhaps mercifully, sending them to an early grave as they were smashed under the weight of his pawpads. At his given size and still growing, it felt like little more to Zenith than stepping on plump, juicy grapes, but the reality was far more grievous, as a trail of splattered furs was left in the wake of his death march.

Those lucky few who weren't immediately crushed or kicked didn't always survive, as a long, dragging tail of exotic blue-green shades and black stripes swished back and forth along the road, knocking the remaining cars over railings to drop them onto houses, and crushing people underneath as it swept back and forth. Anyone who survived the carnage would be thanking their lucky stars, but they immediately turned their concerns to their loved ones in the city, as Zenith's path became obvious.

Thanks to his slow approach, the local authorities were able to set up a small blockade, but it was hilariously unprepared, to the point that Zenith was laughing at the idea of something so small impeding him. His fangs were long and jagged, his claws were sharp and massive, and his body was finally peaking at a terrifying height of 300 feet, leaving him taller than any structure the police could possibly muster in such a time.

"Don't you all have families to go home to?" Zenith asked, hesitating for only a moment to give the forces a chance to make the logical decision. Even with the aid of some local military forces, the police were helpless to stop Zenith in his approach, and though pistols and rifles fired up at the massive creature, he felt little more than mosquito bites against his thick, impenetrable skin.

Irritating the hybrid even further was a terrible mistake, and though the ground could barely hold him, Zenith leapt up into the air. Shadows formed under his footpaws as they aimed for the larger trucks, and his guess held all of the luck that the rest of the city was out of. As a poor, random fur who was speared on the end of his dewclaw fell down to the ground before him, Zenith braced himself for impact.

For miles around the city, people could hear the terrible, earth-shaking WHOOOMF as Zenith landed, and under his footpaws, the cache of ammunition that was meant to be used against him was discharged by the pressure of his landing body. Rounds fired off in every direction, and explosives shook the ground as Zenith chuckled from the ticklish sensation. "You...you guys really thought that was gonna work?!" he called out, though the collapse of the road left no one to answer him; nearly every part of the defending force was killed or scattered, and finally, Zenith stood in the face of the only thing still taller than him: the skyscrapers of the downtown that he so passionately hated.

He started with the tunnel.

Though the building was beautiful to look at, having a major skyscraper built over the road was a foolish move, in hindsight. Zenith whipped his tail around and collapsed the building with ease, trapping all of the cars in the tunnel below and crushing almost everyone within as the building toppled. It fell forward, taking over a pair of smaller buildings in the process, and making the city completely inaccessible from the highway, just as he'd planned it.

"Sorry, folks...can't really avoid the collateral damage!" Zenith offered a weak, backhanded apology as he climbed up and over the side of the wreckage and slammed down, crushing a series of cars in the process and smashing the tiny, delicate furs that were within them. He could barely even feel the liquids of their flattened bodies anymore, and any guilt that he might have felt about the same was erased by the joy that came along with such wanton destruction.

The city was his plaything, and though some of the smaller buildings were fun to terrorize, they were all still just part of the practice round.

It wasn't until he reached the skyscraper at Fargo and Madison that his eyes burned with all of the intensity of the flaming wreckage that he'd left behind, and he opened his muzzle wide to take a bite right out of the side of the tall, gray structure. A few furs, now smaller than action figures to the giant, stood and screamed up at him as they watched their building collapse, but none of them were the boss that he was looking for.

He gleefully reached in and brushed a couple of them aside, and they screamed for their lost lives as they fell to the ground. Those who remained weren't much more fortunate, as Zenith squeezed them between his pawtips and examined their bodies, opting to identify his boss by scream, rather than by sight.

"Good morning, Mr. Riley! I'm sorry to interrupt your afternoon secretary banging session, but I'd like to have a little chat with you!" Zenith made his declaration through a mouthful of twisted, metal beams and dusty concrete, but to him, the sauce of revenge made everything taste deliciously sweet. "Did you really think you could just fire me and get away with it, you scumbag?!"

With such a large bite taken out of it, the building was already starting to topple over. It was nearly twice the height of the impressively tall hybrid, but that didn't stop him from reaching up and grabbing the top of the falling tower, catching it with surprisingly skillful paws. Incredible strength gave him just what he needed to toss the fallen mass into the suburbs, and bodies fell from the windows and plummeted toward the ground at the upper half of the tower landed and skidded across an entire neighborhood.

The toss was blind, but his bite was intentional; Zenith knew just what floor his old boss was on, and the tiny, minuscule man was sitting at his desk, now with no building around him to protect him, and indeed, his pants were around his ankles.

"I'd say I'm gonna regret this, but I never lied to you, Mr. Riley...no matter how much you think I did...I'm gonna enjoy every second of this."

Mr. Riley was about the size of a tiny, toy army figurine to Zenith at his current size, and the monstrous hybrid picked up his former boss between his finger and thumb. The smaller of the two monsters trembled, and Zenith snickered as he flicked his former boss like a discarded booger, shooting him all the way across the destroyed parts of the city.

Zenith never saw the man land...but he didn't need to. Just the sight of the man who ruined his life flying through the air with no hope of survival was good enough for the titanic creature, and better still, he had almost half of a city left to destroy, before he made his way to bigger and better things.