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Emberwing Academy

Waverland Falls, Caressee

June 16, 2002 RE

It's amazing how nervous I could feel even after all the hard parts were over with. I was following in my mother's pawsteps and they were awfully big paws, both figuratively and literally. She was actually a foot shorter than me, but that was not saying much when I am 621-feet tall and she is 620-feet tall. Most people cannot tell the difference between our heights. They also tended to think that I am about 650-feet tall because of the ears. That's only when they could be bothered looking all the way up to my ears though. At my height I was about as tall as the average skyscraper to a normal person. That tended to make a lot of people nervous, but not nearly as nervous as some of the larger macros, like the 10,000-foot tall jaguar giving the graduation speech. The fact that there were creatures tall enough that skyscrapers barely qualified as toys to them terrified a lot of people.

Many people assumed that macros like me were never nervous. That went even more so for predators. As a tiger with a lovely orange coat of fur that complimented my fiery red hair perfectly I was looked upon with fear and awe simultaneously. It helped that tigers happened to be especially powerfully built for felines. My mother helping to save the civilization made people look upon me in an almost mystical manner. They were wrong about macros though. We got nervous just as much as any normal sized person. I don't think that they knew just how afraid we are of accidentally stepping on someone someday. Normals tended to look upon us macros as beings of unimaginable power that many of them wished they could be like, but there were a few drawbacks. We would never be able to get around one of their cities easily and that effectively isolated us from a good part of the country's population. Then there were the areas that were set up which normals were not allowed to enter unless they were being carried by a macro. Society was still getting used to the idea of having some citizens that were so much larger than the others.

"Calm down Caroline, I can feel you shaking like a leaf. You're doing perfectly fine. Remember, daddy's right here with you," my father said to me. I could not respond to him at the moment. Mom was sitting in the stands glaring at me. Dad was supposed to be in the stands with her and she must have suspected that he was with me. He was with me because he had promised to on the day when I made it into this academy. It was the most elite military academy in the nation and I had been nervous about actually attending it once I had been accepted. Dad calmed me down by promising he would be with me on the day I graduated from Emberwing. It was amazing how easily he could calm me down even though he was only a fraction of my size. I had always been daddy's little girl though, ever since he had shown up on the third year of my life. Ever since that time I had been trying to make up for the three lost years by monopolizing every bit of his free time that I could. Mom tried to get me to stop, but dad undid all her work by encouraging me. He was of the opinion that dads were supposed to spoil their daughters and I could not have agreed more.

I spent the rest of the ceremony trying to ignore mom's glare while dad whispered words of encouragement to me. My brother John was also right next to me, but I tended to spend more time fighting him throughout my youth than getting encouragement from him. Mom spent a good amount of time teaching us how to fight right so that she would not have to worry about us killing each other during our many tussles. My other brother, Mike, was the good child. That was probably because he was more like dad while John and I took after mother. He had already managed to graduate from some big time university up in Virania last year and he looked like he was going to become a famous scientist just like dad.

As the ceremony finally concluded no one threw their hats up into the air. The macros were not permitted to do it and the normals did not do it out of respect for the macros. Some of the smaller macros probably could have thrown their hats up, but that could be a really dangerous thing for the larger macros to do. If the 6,200-foot tall otter's or the 9,800-foot tall wolf's hats were to land among the normals it would have been a disaster. And speaking of that wolf, he was a childhood friend of mine. Despite being so much larger than me he was actually about half a year younger than me. He was the son of the jaguar that was speaking, but like me and the children of most mixed species couples he heavily resembled his mother. There were a couple of features that he received from his father. His white coat of fur was covered in jaguar spots and his claws were retractable. He was also flashing a sly smile at me now that the ceremony was over. Chances were that he knew my father was with me and he had noticed my mother stalking toward me through the crowd now that parents were mixing in with the graduates.

It did not take long for mom to reach me and she had a smile on her face that only looked half sincere to me. She turned to John first and gave him a little hug while saying, "I'm proud of you. Nice job John." Then she turned to me and gave me a little hug too before saying, "And as for you young lady, I'm proud of you too, but you have got to stop abducting your father. Now why don't you give me my husband back so I can have a talk with him about encouraging your bad behavior."

Despite how much we fought John always stuck up for me and he did so now, "Come on mom. You know dad has never been hurt when he's with sis. She loves him too much to let him get hurt."

"Don't you start encouraging her now too John," my mother said.

"It's alright mom. Dad's perfectly fine and in his usual hiding spot," I said and tilted my head down a bit so she could reach him.

Mom held her hand next to my right ear and I felt a tiny figure moving through my fur and into that hand. As her hand started to move away I heard my father say, "Hey honey."

"Don't you hey honey me. I know you must have encouraged her to do this. Parents are supposed to wait in the stands until the ceremony is over," said my mother. She then placed the tiny figure that was my father onto her shoulder. If it were not for the shirt she was wearing he would have sunken right into her fur. Our family was descended from Siberian tigers and the thickness of our fur reflected that. At the shortest spots on our bodies our fur tended to be a little over eight feet in length while in other spot it would take three fully grown human males standing on each others shoulders to be able to see over our fur. That was how I had been able to sneak around with dad right on my head. No one had been able to see him in my fur.

"I did kind of promise her that I would do this for her," said my father with a playful grin on his face.

"Do you plan on riding into battle with her every time she's feeling nervous Larry?" my mother asked.

"Of course I don't mom," I responded in place of my father, "It's just that ceremonies like this make me uncomfortable. Having dad around simply made it bearable for me."

"You're a big girl now Caroline. Daddy should not have to ride around with you for something like this anymore," my mother said gently.

My ears dropped down a bit in embarrassment, but I knew it was true. It was not that I really needed dad around, though, it was more like I just liked having him with me. But, I was going to have to get used to not having him around now that my official carrier in the military was about to begin. As I was reaching for a way to express my thoughts to my mother I heard a voice over my shoulder say, "I hope this ceremony was a little better than you make it sound Cadet Stone." The jaguar that gave the speech was crouching down behind me trying to look as small as something the size of a mountain possibly could.

It is sometimes easy to forget just how good the hearing of those larger than yourself really is. There was supposed to be some sort of technology around that altered sound or something like that. My father had explained it to me a few times in a very technical manner that I could not understand all that well. Mike was the technical one, not me. But, what I did manage to understand was that it made me able to hear people much smaller than I was as if they were the same size as me. That meant I could hear someone within my normal range of hearing that was six feet tall just as easily as I could if that person were 6,000-feet tall. Normal sized people were not used to macros like me being able to hear them from a few hundred feet away with ease and the speaker had easily been able to hear me from a few thousand feet away.

"Sir, the ceremony was perfectly fine," I quickly explained, "It's just that I've never cared much for these sorts of things."

"To tell you the truth, neither have I," explained the speaker, "But I just had to give the speech since my boy was graduating along with the children of some old friends of mine." The speaker was General Jonathan Miller. He, my mother, my father, and a host of other people had saved civilization together about 18 years ago. Things had been growing unexpectedly back then. That was because the same technology that had shrunken people a few thousand years ago had been running out of power and everything was returning to their natural sizes. Even General Miller was far smaller than he could possibly be. While the planet was currently underpopulated it would be a much different story if everything were to just return to its normal size. Top researchers estimated that the planet might be able to support a maximum population of around 12 billion people if every countries level of technology was within a couple of decades of Virania or Caressee, which they were not. There were currently close to 100 billion people living on the Earth if my father was correct. My father had increased the size of quite a few of the inhabitants on the planet, but there was still more than enough room for them due to the vast tracks of uninhabited lands that still existed out there.

"It's good to see you again Jon," my father said.

The huge jaguar general scratched his head a little bit, looking a little awkward while saying, "Even after close to two decades it still seems strange that I can even see something as small as you Larry."

"Think of how strange it feels for me to be talking to something as large as you," said my father.

"That is true, and how about you let me double the strangeness for you by calling my son over to say hi," said Jon before turning in the direction of the huge form of his son and saying, "Hey Warren, get over here and say hi to the Stones." Warren was the wolf from the ceremony and even though he was about 200 feet shorter than his father he was still mind boggling huge.

Warren had been busy talking to normal sized people. They did not normally get to talk with a macro as large as Warren and they were asking him a bunch of questions he had probably been asked many times before. It did not seem to bother Warren though. He was a friendly guy and he liked talking with people, but he did not get to do so often because his size made it dangerous for him to be around normal people in unplanned for situations. Jon actually had not even let Warren get close to normals until he was eight years old and even then he had only let him see my father. When that happened it was like opening up a whole new world to the young wolf. It was one thing to hear that such tiny people existed, but it was completely different to actually see one. I had not liked him at first because he wanted to learn how to safely interact with normals by practicing with my father. It had always seemed like he would crush my father like a bug, but Warren had been a quick learner and his friendly personality had even won over the overprotective daughter that was me.

"Hello Mr. and Mrs. Stone," Warren said when he made his way over to us, "Carrie, John. It's nice to see you both managed to stay awake through my father's speech. And where did Mike get off to?"

"He just went to the bathroom, but he should be back soon," said my mother. After that the conversation became a pretty standard one for a while. My parents and Warren's parents talked about old times and how proud they were of all their children. We all talked about future plans and then the subject turned towards current events. I could see that something was on Gen. Miller's mind. The look on his face was quickly turning into his professional face and that was when I considered him Gen. Miller instead of the Jon that my brother was named after.

"Out with it general, you look like you're going to explode if you stay in friendly civilian mode much longer while there is business to be discussed," my father said.

Gen. Miller sighed and said, "Intelligence has been telling me that I need to learn to control my expressions a bit better in public. They say I telegraph when I need to say something that others will want to pay attention to. Since this concerns your entire family I would like to talk with you all in private if that's alright with you."

"Sure Jonathan. I take it there is an office somewhere in the Academy that we can talk in," my mother said.

"There is," Gen. Miller said before turning to Warren and said, "Son, would you assist Caroline and Mike while I help out Tracy and John." Gen. Miller meant that he wanted the two of them to carry my family. I was not used to being carried nearly as much as my father was. That did not mean I was uncomfortable with it though. It just felt a little weird to be carried when I was used to being larger than most people around me. There were macros larger than me, but there were only but so many of them. When my father had increased the size of many of the planets inhabitants to ease the strain on the damaged and failing ISM grid he had made sure that everyone wound up in certain size ranges to make things as easy as possible on everyone. Most of the macros were at the smaller end of the size spectrum which was 20 to 30-feet in height, 50 to 60-feet in height, and 90 to 100-feet in height. Those macros were at least allowed in cities as long as they were careful. Then there were the macros that were 200 to 220-feet tall, 390 to 430-feet tall, and 600 to 700-feet tall. There were enough of us to be noticeable, but there were not a whole lot of us. The rarest of macros, some were starting to call them mega macros, were not allowed within a certain range of cities due to the fact that they could cause minor earthquakes just by walking around. Those macros were 2,000 to 2,600-feet tall, 5,500 to 6,400-feet in height, and 8,500 to 10,000-feet in height. The otter was the only other mega macro that I had met besides Jon and Warren.

There were definitely a few good things about riding a mega. They covered a lot of ground awfully quickly and you always had a good view. My father said the same thing about riding me or anyone else in the family, but when you are my size the view seems perfectly normal as does my walking speed. Warren had nice comfortable shoulders to sit on and I rather enjoyed the ride to the private office that was our destination. Gen. Miller closed the door behind us as we entered. The Emberwing Academy was fairly new and it had been built to deal with the realities of having to train people who varied so much in size. After having to live in the building for the past few years I was pretty impressed with how well it had been designed for one of the first buildings that was meant to be used by normals and macros of all sizes.

"So, may I ask what you wanted to talk to us about?" my father asked as we were placed on a desk that Warren and Gen. Miller sat around.

"Of course, and let me get right to the point. We have all been asked to attend a series of negotiations between Galvanta and Firanel that will be held in Virania in about two months," said Gen. Miller.

"What, why us?" asked my mother.

"There are multiple reasons. We are now aware that the man we knew as Prof. Lockwood was actually the nephew of Harold Yorik, the head of the House of Yorik. He is interested in meeting with Larry since he was the last person to see Lockwood alive. At least that is what he says," explained Gen Miller. "As for the rest of us, we have been invited to attend the negotiations by the High Prince Tela'Rexan of Firanel. He wishes to see me and Tracy and thank us for saving civilization. The High Prince has also expressed a desire to congratulate all of our children on their recent graduations. We believe that he is actually doing this as a publicity stunt in Firanel since he will be taking pictures with all of us and we also believe that he wants as many anthros around as possible to intimidate the Galvantans."

"I'm surprised that the Galvantans and the Firanelians are willing to meet with each other about anything," said my mother, "And I'm surprised that the Viranians are willing to let Tela'Rexan into their country even if he is most likely going to be the next Patriarch when the current Matriarch dies. He is a mega macro isn't he?"

"Yes he is," responded Gen. Miller, "He's the same size I am. That is why Virania wants me and my son to accept his invitation. They want as many friendly mega macros around as possible in the event that things should go poorly at the negotiations. And that is more likely to happen than I would wish since it is believed that both Firanel and Galvanta are only attending these negotiations because they are just about ready to try and wipe each other off the map. They are doing everything they can to gauge each others capacities while vainly trying to convince one another that they are sincere in their attempts at obtaining a permanent peace between each other."

Warren snorted and said, "The only way there will be peace between those two countries is if the Firanelians have every human in Galvanta bowing down before them or if the Galvantans wipe out every anthro in Firanel." That was a statement I agreed with wholeheartedly. Going to a meeting like that seemed like a very bad idea to me. The problem was that I thought Gen. Miller would be attending the negotiations since Virania wanted him to. If he was attending the negotiations my parents would be attending the negotiations because they were all old friends. That meant I would be attending the negotiations too since I was not about to let my father attend something like that without me while I had a choice in the matter.