fantasy
Tora the Tiger

459
It’s a familiar story: You met each other online, started chatting, hit it off and became buddies. Sure, Tora had her quirks, and the fact that every picture she posted of herself had her wearing a hat with fake tiger ears seemed a bit odd, but you just wrote it off as it being her style - her username is “ToraTheTiger,” after all.
One evening, she hits you up in your DMs and says that she’s planning on visiting your home soon so you two can hang out in person for the very first time - which is odd, because you’ve never discussed where either of you live. She doesn’t explain, only assuring you that she didn’t hack you to learn your home address, and insisting that you should think of it as “one big surprise.” Eventually, you choose to let it lie, and decide to sleep on the knowledge that you’ll get to meet your cool friend Tora tomorrow.
An emergency alert on the TV reporting a giant creature in the city is what greets you in the morning, followed by a text - a selfie of a grinning Tora. In the middle of the city. And unless she’s really good at photoshopping phone pictures, she’s somehow gigantic, and has a long, striped tail.
The next message she sends you simply says, “Give me a sec, babes, I’ll be right over!”
And then the earthquakes begin.