All in all, I was putting on a show. It was certainly a sight to see. The landing-lights stretched out before me. I prepared himself, adjusting my position to direct my jets where he was hurtling. As they burned, I slowed down, hopefully allowing myself to 'drop' gracefully and land on my own two feet. They depressed against the scorched asphalt of the runway, keeping me steady as I reduced my engine output until, at last, silencing the thunder of my jets. "Here we go!" I said out loud as I got closer to the ground. My feet slammed into the runway, the eruption of contact only matched by the quaking of my body as my physique battled the tension and torque. Dust and gravel soared into the air as my weight and speed broke yet another million-dollar piece of infrastructure. The tinny whine of the fans spun slower and slower passed as well, and I stood up straight. Brushing dust off my chest, I moved over to the nearest hangar to wait for the V.I.P. It took a while for someone to exit their vehicle. Alerting others with the loud slam of the door, one foolhardy human moved out into the open.
Then, like a series of harsh beats echoing from a faulty speaker, the rest left. The creak and slam of doors punctuated the silence -- ripping it apart as the incredulous crowd assembled mere meters from me. My shadow hung over them. Heavy, blotting out the sun as it crested my shoulder, I was a monster according to them. I had a name, but no face to match it to. If the V.I.P. was here, they were not speaking up. A minute of silence passed. "Hi! I am Alice, reporting on schedule!" I said to break the tension. My voice shook their surroundings -- its fierce volume generated deep within me, thrummed by a set of vocal cords each of them almost the size of a full-grown person. Everyone was quiet. I just talked to them. With my mouth. Like a person...a plane and person combined. "Wuh...wha...tha...fuh...?" one of them said in stupefaction. It was almost funny. They saw a glint of understanding in my visor. "Oh?" I said. I realized the problem. "They didn't tell you the details of my program, did they? I can see why you're shocked! Don't be sacred. I'm here to make a delivery." I said.
Pausing, I gestured to myself. "It's not everyday that you get to meet the future of air transport." I joked to try and break the tension. The lead crewman stepped forward and spoke: "okay...um...Alice. Can you confirm this cargo manifest--" "What?" I boomed. I could not hear him at all. I furrowed my brow at them and realized why. "Oh, sorry! You don't have comlinks, let me get closer..." My hulking form crouched, my endless curves softly shifting to bring me down. Gears and pistons choked and whirred as I adjusted to my new position -- squatting in front of the assembled humans. A sense of unease spread through the crowd, now that they were face-to-face with my large frame. My lowering myself down only amplified my fearsome size in their eyes. "Okay, I should be able to hear you now." I said softly. The ground crew soldiered on. They repeated the request and held out the clipboard with the details -- horrendously old-fashioned, but as I guessed they hadn't been properly prepared. As my vast ocular arrays shone behind the reflective black visor-strip -- scanning the tiny document.
Surprisingly, there was a human that was comfortable enough to be pissed off at me. "Excuse me!?" the brave lead crewman sputtered. "How are you going to explain that, huh?" He pointed to the very scarred landscape that threaded its way towards where I stood right now. "That doesn't look like 'mission accomplished' to me!" he spat. I frowned. "Well, that wasn't my fault! Your runway wasn't built for heavy aircraft like me." I shrugged. I was not concerned. It was not my airstrip. Therefore, it was not my problem "And that's our fault!?" the irate human continued. A barrage of obscenities fired from his mouth, to which I simply remained calm in the face of. Just a bunch of silly jabbering, I told myself, tuning out the tirade until the humans below me wore themselves out. Once finished, I sighed. "Okay, fine. You can complain to my superiors. Do you want me to finish here or what?" I said flippantly to him. "Yes, yes, let's move on," said the tiny human, returning to the clipboard he held. "Now, the cargo." "Yeah..." I trailed off. I was really dreading this. "You want me to drop if off here?"
