Megamacropolis 5

 You pace the hospital halls, looking up at the imposing architecture around you. Maybe it's the environment, maybe it's the come down from your earlier growth, but something about this feels... terrible. Your spirit of adventure is fading away, the majesty of being in a new world with a leg up feels somehow wrong, and for all that it can SUPPOSEDLY bring you power you realize you're just a crazy hobo with a weird disease.   

 Maybe it's depression. 

 Or MAYBE it's the fact that the damn vending machine won't stop playing its jingle and the speakers are pointed right at the floor!   

 After ducking into an alcove at the end of the wing, you found yourself in the nicest part of a hospital, some kind of lounge made for the REALLY big patients. Once again you seemed the size of a mouse, and once again you planned to take advantage of it.   

 Beyond the comfortable armchairs and kitschy rugs of the room was a snack counter, a soda machine and snack machine the size of a skyscraper. Your first instinct was to check it for loose change, which of course turned up nothing and almost got your head stuck in a coin return. Your next idea was to just hit buttons and see what happened... but apparently the designers never heard of 'ease of use' and you didn't manage to press them particularly hard.   

 It was about 10 minutes of failing to come up with a plan and slowly shrinking that made you snap. 

 And it was snapping that made you dive inside the machine. 

 It was one of those old-style, never updated vending machines with the spiral arm to release snacks and no real security on the inside besides inconvenience. With a wall to brace yourself against, it was as easy as could be to climb your way up to some of the shelves, browsing what were – from your perspective – person sized sandwich cookies and bus-like king sized candy bars.   

 It was a testament to the fact that your strength really had improved – and to just how poorly designed those buttons were – that you could in fact knock down some sandbox-sized peanut butter crackers by winding them out, pulling with both hands as you rotated it through the loop.   

 It was also a testament to your newfound greed and impulsivity that you decided that wasn't nearly enough. Rather than eat and go... and rather than go FULL moron and attempt to eat inside the machine, your continued shrinking gave yourself an idea. 

 You waited, setting aside a couple cracker packets in case of emergency, before sliding through the machine's innards and entering the coin bin through the slot. Getting the coins back out would be impossible, but picking the lock was less so, especially when you pulled some sugared goop out of your pocket and chowed down.   

 Climbing back out was a chore. Removing the coins after your first bounty... even more so. But having the change pop back into your possession, allowing you to drain the vending machine? That was worth it.   

 As you pigged out on Macroons and God-Sized Andromedas and T&Ts and Googol Grands and a hundred other snacks with aggressively monomaniacal, almost familiar brand names, you felt a little better.   

 Just a bit, though. With a honeybun half in your mouth, you caught your reflection in the vending machine, and just how empty the space behind you was.   

 You still planned to get bigger – apparently that was just what people did – but being a doll seemed like a lot more fun than being a mouse.   

 You spent much of your remaining change on some sodas to take with you – you aren't entirely sure WHEN you lost your hospital gown, but you certainly don't have any pockets now.   

 Well, you have one, but change isn't going in it. 

 You take your haul and step out into the hospital. You're proud to see that at this point you'd count as more of a shortstack than a doll, the extra-large corridors actually fairly possible to navigate for you, but as you continue to munch you realize just HOW precarious your size seems to be. You can either always grow faster or always shrink faster. The more you eat, the more you need to eat. 

 It doesn't feel... sustainable.   

 As you're musing, you hear voices around a corner, and duck into an unlocked exam room hoping to be passed by. Inside it looks like any other hospital, TV on the far end (and, as a rough estimation, a 5000 inch TV at that, now THAT'D be a flex back home.) Curtains, built in toilet... and the silhouette of a patient behind a curtain, head pointed right at you. 

 “Oh...” you say, automatically trying to be friendly “Hello!”   

 “Hello,” responds the patient. You can't really get a good luck at their figure, with all that's immediately noticeable in shadow being a pointed snout, big-ish ears and thick hairstyle. They could be anything from a mouse girl to a fox boy, depending on facial symmetry and ugliness... they could also be freaking out, judging by the sense of tension. 

 “Want a honeybun?” you ask awkwardly, the stolen food suddenly feeling heavy. 

 “...Sure,” the patient answers. 

 You sit next to them, unwrapping one of your lifeline buns and pushing them through the curtains.   

 “So, what are you in for?” you ask in your best mock-tough voice (which still sounds rather cute) 

 “Picked a fight with a dragon and lost a lot of skin. I recovered before the ambulance even finished, but it went down to the nerves so of course I have to stay for monitoring... although I won't pretend I didn't need it.” 

 “DAMN!” you say earnestly, both slightly terrified of how hard healing factors work around here (and the dragons) and sympathetic, “Isn't that... agonizing?” 

 “I got a couple lakes of morphine basically shutting down my ability for physical discomfort. At first, though, yes, absolutely. You get so used to being invincible that when something comes along your shock response just makes it hurt WORSE.” 

 “I feel that?” you didn't mean to say it as a question. 

 “I don't,” the figure laughed. 

 You decided to join in, laughing companionably with an unknown individual in an experience so far from anything you could have prepared for.   

 Eventually, they broke the silence, “So, are you a thief, or an assassin, or an escaped mental patient, or what?” 

 You almost panic, but fortunately some combination of sugar rush and... general rush has your brain working ahead of your mouth, “And why do you say that? Maybe I just wanted to visit you.” 

 “Heh, nice try, but even putting aside the fact that NOBODY visits hospitals anymore, I don't exactly have friends.” 

 You open your mouth, then close it again; taking a moment before continuing, “Well maybe you should. Maybe getting visited by a random good samaritan in the hospital is how your story starts.” 

 “Of a romantic bent, are you?” the patient smirks at your schmaltz, “...well, I can see that.”