The giant several-hundred-metre tall golden man continued to fall towards the building that the boy crouched on. The golden man accelerated, looking like a giant golden meteor about to smash onto the building. As the man hurtled down the boy heard him falling. It was a hissing static sound. Like a radio that was poorly tuned, but as the man got closer to the ground the sound changed. It sounded like a distorted guitar riff. A maddening distorted wail.

Jian winced and had to cover his ears with his hands. He felt as if his ears were going to bleed.

The top floor was a patchwork of broken masonry, exposed rafters and giant blocks of concrete.

Jian had moved from the exposed metal rafters floating above the giant hole in the centre of the building to the mostly whole outer areas of the top floor.

As the man falling got closer Jian felt his heartbeat accelerating. His palms and face got sweaty and his breathing ragged. He had to move. He had to escape. Otherwise he was dead.

As the golden man got closer, he accelerated, faster and faster. As he accelerated he began to glow, becoming an indistinct circular flash of light. A giant blob of light crashing towards the building. First yellow, then green, then red, then golden. The colors melding together.

Jian ran heaving and panting, sweating so heavily that sweat dripped stinging and blinding into his eyes. He retreated along the trail that he had used to arrive at the centre of the top floor. Running, circling, dodging, ducking and climbing over obstacles.

The giant man was close to the ground. The ships had disengaged from firing on the man. Instead floating above the main in a desultory manner.

He felt trapped. Jian was nowhere near arriving at the edge of the top floor. He looked at the several kilometres of difficult territory and gave up. Instead he changed his path and turned left towards a giant block of concrete, several times his height and circled around it to hunker down behind it.

Just before the golden man crash-landed. There was a giant flash of light. Like a sun had come to earth. The floor that they were on was lit as if under the midday sun.

Boom. There was a sonic boom, a visible wave of compressed air rippling through the air as the giant golden man finally crashed onto the building.

Jian had his eyes closed as he crouched behind the giant concrete block. He felt his heart thumping heavily in chest. He felt the sonic boom hit him in the darkness of his eyes closed.

He felt terrified.

Jian was lucky though. The giant man had crashed through the building on the side opposite to where he crouched.

The building began to sway. The concrete blocks, rafters, rubble and dust on the top of the building shook like a bartender doing the final shake to an excellent cocktail.

Jian was part of that movement of rubble. The building tipping back and forth, mixing him with the rubble. It eventually settled. Jian had some minor bruises.

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A giant dust cloud eventually formed. It was several kilometres high and blanketed everything in sight. Blinding Jian for several minutes.

Jian coughed and hacked. He wiped the tears from his eyes pointlessly until the dust finally began to settle. He finally sat back against the big block and panted quietly.

The six remaining black triangular ships floated above the dusty scene in a predatory manor. They looked like a murder of crows about to pounce on a small animal.

The dust settled slowly. Little mounds of dust and dirt coated random surfaces. The dust moving slowly through the sky looking like eddies in the ocean. The building was quiet.

The only thing that could be heard was the sound of the ships engines as they floated. It was a low grade precise hum. Changing in frequency as they got closer to the impact site. High and loud as they accelerated. Low and quiet as they slowed to a stop.

The building was no longer in it’s intact state. It had been mostly whole. Only a hole in the top of the building showing it’s collapsed state. Now one entire side had collapsed. It was as if a giant hand hand ripped the building roughly into two.

Eventually came a crackling sound. It was the sound of rubble shifting.

The boy crawled around the big block he had hid behind to a hole in the roof to look below. To look through the newly formed giant circle in the centre of the building.

He saw a giant circular crater deep in the bowels of the building. The ground was broken in circular waves from the centre of that crater. It looked like a someone had dropped a rock into a pond, except the rock was concrete.

At the centre of it was the golden man. He was climbing out of the pile of rubble at the centre of those concrete ripples.

Whizz. Whizz. Whizz.

Three lasers fired as soon as the golden man came into sight.

But the man shrank from his giant height into regular height and the lazers missed him.

The man flickered and blurred and vanished. His movements were too fast for Jian to see. He was so much faster than before. The six remaining ships had been arrayed in front of him in a semi-circle.

Then the golden man was suddenly behind the semi-circle.

The six ships all split apart. Sliced neatly in half. Then they blew up. Six explosions of heat and metal fragments. From left to right. The handiwork of the golden man.

Jian sat backwards in fright. He dislodged a few stones and they fell from the broken edge he was looking down at. The rocks clattered down.

The golden man heard the noise. His face looking sharply up at the noice. His eyes clearly looking at Jian.

The sound should have been imperceptible because of the distance. But the golden man heard him.

Jian frightened began to crawl back from the edge of the balcony. Then flipped and stood up from his knees to run.

With a flicker of light the golden man appeared before him.