Completely unaware of what had been left behind, Jack escaped the scene with as much haste as he could have managed without causing any more undue damage. He felt almost silly from his anxiety; he was a huge, unmatched hunk of a man, the kind of guy who could easily fill any room he was in, physically but also in terms of sheer presence. People were obviously enamored with him - what did he really have to worry about?
Still, old habits die hard, and Jack still had reason to be rattled by the whole ordeal, even if his body was something of a dream. That was in large part because this body was the kind of thing he had previously (and frequently) only dreamed of - when he did calm down somewhat, he could go back to immersing himself in how undeniably powerful and hefty he felt, every squeeze of muscle on on muscle on his gigantic yet cramped frame feeling like a burst of euphoria. But it was also because of how disorienting it was, piloting a body he was totally unused to. He had thought he had given himself enough room, but despite a wide berth, his wide girth meant that the side of his hulking quad muscle slammed into a mail drop box on the sidewalk, not only knocking it down completely but crumpling it considerably like it had been hit by a sledgehammer. Jack didn't even feel bruised. He picked up his pace a little, hoping no one had noticed - or been angry, at least.
But Jack soon realized his size wasn't the only reason this all felt like a dream. Something was... off. Not about him, but about the world around him. It took him some real thinking to piece it together, but that was when he was able to pick out the finer details. Things were different. Not radically different, no, but just enough to be noticeable. Jack had been in this city for a while, and spent a lot of time exploring, especially in the immediate area in and around the NSU campus. So it was alarming to him when he noticed that, for example, a cafe on a corner he had been to once or twice was now a small cozy bookstore instead. Or that the graffiti on a particular alley wall was completely different. Hell, there was even road construction going on at an intersection where Jack was sure there hadn't been earlier in the day, before all that had occurred.
Jack had a very pop science understanding of certain theories, and one of them that came to mind immediately was the idea of the butterfly effect - the idea that any one small decision would have ripple effects that could drastically alter events due to the incredible number of determining factors in the human experience. And what he had done was far more drastic than the flap of a butterfly's wings - he had remade years of his own life, maybe even his entire life, and turned himself into an impossible figure that surely had international attention and praise. That was going to effect a lot of people - and a lot of things. It was possible all the changes he had already seen were due to his direct influence - or, perhaps, a cascading domino effect where one thing he did or didn't do in this new timeline snowballed into something completely different. He had no real way of tracing a lot of it back, but it was almost as dizzying to comprehend as the dimensions of his new body.
Jack was only snapped out of his philosophical stupor temporarily when his eye caught a poster plastered on a bus stop with an enormous figure on it. Him, obviously - no one else was even in his league. It wasn't just any old poster, though; it was an advertisement for Ford, featuring one of their incredibly oversized new pickup trucks... which, in the image Jack was staring at, he was lifting overhead like he was Atlas, his muscles pumped and veiny yet looking hardly strained as he smirked at the viewer. Built Ford Tough indeed.
It was all a lot to take in. He wasn't going to say that he hated it; in fact, it was really only positives being added on. But Jack needed some space to really get his mind acclimated to all this new information, somewhere he could find calm in the urban jungle.
He knew just the place.
Luckily, it seemed his wish hadn't caused some catastrophic chain of events resulting in the local park being bulldozed over, as it was right in the same spot it had always been. Jack felt a sense of freedom and freshness just stepping from the concrete sidewalk onto the paved pathways - partially from the memories of peaceful afternoon walks flooding back to him, partially because he felt a lot less cramped than he did trying to navigate the city. Without cars or buildings or many other pedestrians to worry about, it mattered a lot less how obscenely his shoulders and triceps jutted out off either side of the path, every swing of his arms and legs powerful enough he swore he was rustling some leaves. Letting his mind wander a bit, Jack didn't even really notice himself puffing out his gargantuan table-like chest more and walking a bit taller. In his solitude, not having to worry about the perception of others, he felt more confident in his own skin than he ever had before. He just had to work on applying that more.
Jack did notice one change, at least - the wooden park benches seemed to have been replaced by well-carved marble ones, a lot fancier and more durable. He was pretty sure that change was more directly caused by him than not. Feeling a lot more at peace, Jack plopped himself down on one of them in the middle of the park. It was still incredible how even the act of sitting down caused his glutes to swell out with incredible force against the durable stone, quads most people couldn't full-body hug pumping up like he just added dozens of pounds of mass from the simple act of stretching them out. Not to mention how the sheer width of his frame took up the entire bench and then some. He was simply built bigger than the world was made for, even when the world was trying to catch up.
Jack's gaze wandered, head turning to look over one of his gargantuan shoulders towards a decently far-off playground. Oh, there was another new detail - next to the playground was some sort of rudimentary outdoor gym, with some ellipticals and pull-up bars and simple exercise machines. Seemed like the exercise craze had, in fact, really taken off. Was that all because of him?
Jack sighed, craning his neck, his view of the lightly cloudy sky much more unobstructed than the view directly in front of him. He had a lot of questions, but maybe he was overthinking things at the moment. He seemed to be pretty well set up at the moment, so there was no reason not to let himself relax and just taken in the beauty of a warm afternoon...
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