Technology was the lifeblood of Lilliput. Technology helped the inch-tall Lilliputians build their dense, but somehow still sprawling cities. Technology kept them safe in a world they shared with their 400-foot-tall neighbors known as Gulliverians. And technology, specifically portal technology, had allowed the miniscule people of Lilliput to colonize not only the seemingly vast reaches of their world, but now other worlds as well.

A specialized team of Lilliputian multiverse explorers first encountered the world of Brobdingnag over 20 years ago. At first no one believed the team’s tales of a god-like 5-mile-tall race of people who looked just like them. A race of people who dwarfed even the massive Gulliverians boggled the mind. And exploration of this daunting world had its challenges – one recon team, finding themselves stranded on a Brobdingnagian park bench, were summarily and unceremoniously wiped out when a passing runner sat down to tie her shoe. But eventually Lilliputian perseverance and ingenuity won out, communication was established, and now a brisk trade between the two worlds enriched both. In particular, Lilliputian knowledge workers, advanced in education and cheap to house, served as the backbone for many a Brob corporation. Thousands of Lilliputians made the commute each day by portal to Brobdingnag, safe in the knowledge that, as ever, their advanced technology would protect them.

---

John was one of those many multiversal commuters. Living in the bustling, 20 million strong metropolis of Concordia City, he waited his turn to walk through one of the Central Ave portals to a cushy accounting gig on the other side. Yet despite having worked there for nearly 5 years now, he had never actually seen a Brobdingnagian in person. For obvious safety reasons, Lillies were not allowed to interact directly with their Brobby co-workers, and were instead housed in a hermetically sealed office space where they interacted solely via video chat. And from the neck up, Brobbies looked like anyone else.

None of this, however, was on John’s mind as he waited his turn through the portal. Instead he was looking forward to the weekend, where a third date with a beautiful girl he’d met via dating app awaited. Yes, it was early, but this could really be the one! he thought excitedly.

The line was moving slowly as always, and just as his daily frustration with the crawl was beginning to mount, a blinding flash, seemingly emanating from the portal, blinded John and his fellow commuters, causing many to cry out in surprise. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the flash was gone, leaving John and others to blink away the lingering after-images. As their vision cleared, confusion took over. Nothing outward had changed, but the portals, once glowing with their otherworldly green energy were dark.

Before panic could set in, a calming, official-sounding female voice on the PA system reassured the crowds that this was merely a technical glitch – one that would be resolved shortly. It was as the message began to repeat that the earthquakes started.

---

At a convenience store on the edge of Concordia City, Luke pondered not for the first time how much he hated his job. For sure, it was cheaper living out here in the boonies, and the job was a steady paycheck, but it was so boring!

Concordia City’s borders were defined by what everyone referred to as “The Boundary.” A thousand-foot-tall energy barrier whose spindly generator towers and hazy blue energy bisected the landscape as you looked towards the desert coast and away from the ocean on the other side of the city. The Boundary was an eyesore, but a necessary one. Unclimbable, supposedly impenetrable and capable of fully enclosing the city in a dome of powerful energy, it kept out anything (primarily the ever-dangerous Gulliverians) that might wish to harm the tiny occupants of Concordia City. And as the city grew, The Boundary shifted outward into the desert surroundings, the movement itself a marker of Lilliputian progress.

Yet as one might expect, not many wished to live directly in the shadow of the Boundary. The low hum of its energy was incessant, and the dim blue glow was known to disturb inhabitants’ sleep. So it was left to the poorest of Concordia City -- those like Luke himself -- to populate these outer reaches.

With no customers in sight, Luke jostled himself from his daily stupor to retrieve a mop from the closet and finally clean up that spilled Slurpee over on aisle three. It was then that through the windows, overpowering even the ever-present glow of the Boundary he saw the flash.

It was startlingly bright, green energy filling the small space of the store and seeming to come from everywhere all at once. And then just as quickly as it happened, it disappeared.

Luke abandoned his mop, and quick-stepped to the front door to see what possibly could’ve caused this unsettling anomaly.

Stepping outside into the warm, summer morning air, he saw others from the shops along his patch of ring road doing the same. They looked westward towards the Boundary, shading their eyes to try to see the root of all the disturbance through a cloud of dust that had kicked up in the desert scrub brush outside the city.

As the dust cleared, a shocking sight was revealed. Miles outside the city, the clear shape of what appeared to be a pair of immense women’s sandals dominated the landscape. Rough brown leather formed a wall nearly two thousand feet wide sitting atop a chunky rubber-looking tread of dark black and towering more than five hundred feet in the air. Wide leather straps stretched even further up, arcing over the monstrous footwear and ending in metal buckles the size of houses. But it was what was encased in this colossal footwear that truly set the curious onlookers at wit’s end. Five cheerfully wiggling, white-painted toes sat atop the leather wall, each the height of a large hill. These were in turn attached to a foot that could swallow a small town, and as they craned their necks to look up and up, they saw a bare ankle adorned with a beaded anklet  that could overtop their highest skyscrapers and a vast plain of smooth, fair skin and lightly muscled leg leading up into a cute pair of tight jean shorts. Looking even further into the air, they could just make out a small patch of toned torso revealed by a tight white sleeveless top straining to contain a pair of breasts the size of mountains. And finally peering over the shelf of those impressive endowments, blued and distorted by the distance, a face. Youthful, undeniably beautiful, with curious green eyes, and framed by a mess of long auburn hair, it gazed down upon their fair city.

For a long moment, silence reigned over the ring road onlookers and seemingly the city itself. No one knew how to react to such a presence. Even for a people used to seeing giant Gulliverans the size of skyscrapers, this was something else. A Gulliverian, for all their size, couldn’t even reach the lip of this girl’s sandal!

“What just happened?” the crack of her powerful voice split the heavens, raining down on the city at a borderline painful volume, only moderated by distance. Her words rumbled like thunder, but somehow retained their feminine lilt under the avalanche of sound.

She stirred, biting her lower lip anxiously, and twisting at the torso to look behind her, seemingly searching for the way she had come, and finding only open desert air.

As she did so a colossal sandaled foot shifted, lifting at the heel, the unconscious movements of a girl lost in thought.

To Luke and his compatriots, though, it was as if the landscape itself was shifting. Despite being miles from the city, they felt as much as saw her casual movements. The mighty heel uprooting itself caused tremors in the unsteady ground, and as her weight shifted to her toes, the thick tread of her sandal sunk heavily into the soft earth, shaking things further, rending the ground around it, and causing a deafening roar of compacted dirt as she ground the desert clay underfoot.

 “What. The. Actual. Fuck,” she muttered in what for her was likely an undertone, but was heard clearly across the entire region. She sounded annoyed. Concordia’s anxiety doubled.

Then she began to move.

---

She covered the four-plus-mile distance to Concordia City in two apocalyptic strides.

Luke and the other onlookers watched shell-shocked as she prepared to take her first step towards them, the defined muscles in her long legs standing out as she tensed, her colossal toes lifting and that mile-long sandal raising impossibly high in the air, which for her just a normal stride. They could hear the air rushing as it was cut apart by something so large moving so fast, and they could hear the creak of massive leather straps straining against the incalculable forces of her simple step. The wait for her footfall seemed interminable, her colossal ped hanging like a human Sword of Damocles, but in reality it was likely only a fraction of second. Her heel hit first, the impact throwing Luke and everyone in the vicinity to the ground as a quake ripped through the border area. It was nothing, though, compared to the impact of the rest of her sole as she completed her step. The sound of her footfall was deafening, the booming thud rattling windows across the city. Near the Boundary, the massive quake of her step shook the earth violently, pinning everyone to the ground as the resulting shockwave hammered against the Boundary forcefield and dust flew up in huge plumes, driven by the displaced air. The glass in the windows behind Luke cracked with the force of it and as he huddled on the ground he could see spidery fractures forming in the concrete walls of his store.

She seemed to pause after that first step. Perhaps she was savoring the violence of it? Luke and others struggled to their feet, brushing dust from faces and clothes, wondering why the Boundary shields hadn’t been fully raised, and preparing to make a break for it, as if they could outpace her miles-long stride. But before anyone could move a muscle she began to step forward again.

Luke dove behind the store walls, hoping their meager strength would save him. Peering around the corner, he watched her massive foot easily clear the Boundary field less than a mile down the road. Its previously impenetrable height a mere couple inches on her scale, it offered no impediment to her casual stride. He noticed for the first time the clods of desert dirt and other detritus raining from her sandal’s tread like bombs. Boulders the size of cars dislodged and fell from the sky as she passed. He saw her shadow spread over the vast area of her footfall throwing trees and road into darkness. And then the inevitable impact. Without the Boundary to buffer, the devastation was catastrophic. The ground heaved, throwing Luke five feet into the air and dropping him painfully to the ground. The shockwave of her footfall tore through the area and he saw cars, road signs, and people flung like discarded toys down the road by the force of it. He heard every window in the area shatter and watched the weaker structures in the strip malls nearby simply collapse from the violence of it all. Saved only by the thin layer of concrete between him and the titaness he cowered, covering his head with his hands and groaning from ribs bruised on his rough landing.

And still she wasn’t done. Finally, the city-wide alarm sounded as she brought her massive right foot to join its partner with equal devastation, Luke now crying out in fear and pain as rubble and debris was flung  through the air around him. The ground heaved yet again, and the store roof behind him collapsed with a loud crash. The Boundary shields began to raise, but it was too late as this second step crushed a generator tower beneath her colossal heel, the titanium and steel compacting like tinfoil, offering no resistance at all as she stepped down. The Boundary, that technological marvel and safeguard against all threats to Lilliput, flickered once, twice and went out.

She paused again, though from her impassive expression it was unclear whether she even noticed the impact she was having on the area, or if she did, whether she cared at all. Luke lay panting on his back, his head bleeding from flying debris his ankle and arm likely broken from the repeated thrashing against the ground. From his prone position he stared up at her, and in the fog of pain and shock he admired absently the youthful beauty in that distant face, the sensuousness of her lithe, athletic form and the overwhelming awesomeness of those well-placed curves.

He saw her smirk faintly, and then she was dropping like a mountain coming to rest -- miles long legs bending, knees extending. Though she was almost a mile away, one knee easily overtopped the entire border area as it fell, her smooth shin getting closer and closer until Luke felt like he could reach out and touch it. In a daze, he started to reach one bloodied hand up…and then blackness.

---

Ava knelt carefully at the outskirts of what she knew to be a Lilliputian city, but to her looked like a variegated, uneven grid bordering the ocean, maybe 50 feet across.

Putting on her most serious expression, she gazed down on the tiny masses she knew to be beneath her, sighed audibly, and said, “OK, tiny peeps, we need to talk.” 

“…we need to talk.”

In a cavernous bunker-cum-war-room, Concordia City’s leaders huddled over a large mahogany table, surrounded by the steady bustle of staff and first line responders, and facing a huge bank of paper-thin video screens mostly displaying multiple angles of the encroaching Brobby girl projected from the city’s many cctv cameras and surveillance drones.

They had heard the girl’s ominous words boom out both over the wall-set speakers and through the very walls themselves. Despite being many feet underground, and the bunker being built to withstand a full-on Gulliverian assault, they could still feel the walls of concrete and steel vibrate beneath her tread, and could see a disturbing amount of dust drift down from the high ceiling from the power of her voice alone.

Perhaps in some misguided attempt to make herself heard, the titaness had leaned out distressingly close to the city as she spoke, multiplying the impact of her voice and nearly deafening the inhabitants below. Reports were already filtering in through the bunker’s myriad emergency lines of people who had crowded rooftops to see the strange and fantastic sight of a real, live Brobdingnagian only to be blown clean off in a hurricane-force gust of sweet, warm breath. And this on top of the hundreds of windows shattering and walls cracking from the vibrations of her speaking and the force of her words.

In the equally deafening silence that followed her proclamation, General Atwood was the first to speak up.

“Well, clearly there’s only one choice. Complete and decisive military response,” he began gruffly. He continued, his volume and bluster increasing with every word, “We must call up the Gulliverian reserves at once and deploy the full might of Concordia’s defensive units!”

Though Lilliput’s various settlements and cities typically belonged to one “national” federation or other, the often-vast distances between them and the capacity limitations of their portals meant that out of necessity they were, in many ways, self-sufficient in matters of defense and other functions of state. It was, therefore, not atypical for each city to have its own military chief of staff, and General Atwood, decorated veteran of the last Gulliverian War, had served Concordia City for years, with the scars to show for it.

“Thank you for that opinion, General.”

Governor Mattison had been the candidate of change, the one to lead Concordia into a bright new future. Young, handsome, brilliant, he knew he would be the first leader to fully step out of the literal and figurative shadow of the Gulliverian incursions and guide this shining beacon of Lilliput to ever higher heights. His focus was marketing, not military strategy, but nevertheless he did what he always did -- project the utmost confidence. “And what weapons systems do we have in place that could deter someone of her size?”

 “Our directed energy cannons can neutralize a Gulliverian half a mile off!” Atwood proclaimed with obvious pride.

Mattison nodded thoughtfully, tenting his fingers under his chiseled chin.

 “That girl is no Gulliverian,” nebbishy Secretary of State Miller whimpered, notes of desperation and panic in his voice. “Did you see what she did to the Boundary?”

Immediately, a heated argument broke out over who was responsible for failing to raise the Boundary shields, all completely neglecting the fact that the shields were, in reality, controlled by the city’s automated defense system.

As it died down, a slightly tentative but clear voice could be heard, that of the sole woman at the table, Councilwoman Brewer, chair of the City Council. “Maybe she just wants to get home…?” she offered.

“Nonsense,” Atwood scoffed. “She’s already destroyed a square mile of Concordia City property, demolished vital military technology, and not to mention caused what appear to be dozens, if not hundreds of civilian casualties. She’s clearly a threat.”

This set off a new round of bickering and aimless discussion, until the most powerful voice of all, the auburn-haired beauty projected on twenty different screens at the front of the room cut in, silencing everyone instantly.

“I’m still waiting.” There was palpable frustration in her projected and omnipresent voice, increasing the drifting ceiling dust noticeably. “You know, my mom always said that you Lillis were a shifty bunch, but I would’ve thought kidnapping for a business deal was beneath even you.”

On the screens they saw her smirk, “And you know, at my size, there’s not much that’s beneath you.”

“Oh fuck.” A voice down the table moaned. Secretary of Commerce Lee had his head in his hands. “I know who she is,” he finally said between clasped fingers. “She’s Susan Chapman’s daughter.”

“Who?” 

“Susan Chapman, she leads Brobdingnag’s largest conglomerate, Chapman Industries. We’re currently negotiating our largest ever trade and investment deal with her.”

Lee looked up searchingly at a row of blank faces. “If she’s anything like her bitch of a mother, we’re all screwed.”

Councilwoman Brewer’s eyes rolled, none of the men noticed.

Governor Mattison knew he needed to get control of the situation. Project authority. “I want options, people,” he said, banging his hand on the table and putting on his best chief executive voice.

Instead, he was greeted with silence.

From the back of the room, heads turned as a reedy voice belonging to a slight-looking communications tech wearing the bars of a lieutenant called out, “I might have an option.”

---

Ava was getting impatient.

She had made her simple request forever ago, and still nothing! Her knees and legs, not to mention her shoes were getting sandy from this desert dirt, this whole kneeling thing was getting uncomfortable, and, oh yeah, she was being kidnapped!

Before this whole ordeal, she had always been fascinated by Lilliput, the realm of practically microscopic people hidden away in another universe or locked in secret, inaccessible chambers in corporate headquarters across the city.

She had devoured the stories about their history, what little of it had reached Brobdingnagian sources. She learned of their long struggle with the much larger Gulliverians, who used to kidnap their kind by the hundreds to do with as they wished. She learned how the Lillis had eventually triumphed over the seemingly impossible size difference with ingenuity and technology. How they now even employed Gulliverian mercenaries to defend their cities against their own countrymen.

Her mother, on the other hand, just found the residents of Lilliput to be a source of endless frustration. When Ava had been in high school, she always knew that her mom had been in a Lilly negotiation when, on returning home after a long day, she would pour herself an overlarge glass of wine and huff, “You know, if I were ever able to get over to that godforsaken universe for even 10 minutes, they’d see who’s really boss.” It had become such a refrain that it was practically an inside joke in her family.

Nevertheless, when Ava found herself unexpectedly transported to what was clearly the Lilliputian realm, she was wary. Would these crafty microbes send out massive suits of mechanized armor to subdue her like something out of the cartoons she’d watched as a kid? Would they vaporize her with one of the energy beams she’d read about on that one internet forum?

And yet despite her fantastical worries, there was nothing of the sort. In fact, standing at her full height (which, admittedly, was exceptionally tall, even for a Brobby), the patch of raised crystalline structures that she knew to be a Lilliputian city looked basically empty. As she knelt to better communicate with this puny metropolis, she could finally start to make out what looked like vehicles and maybe even people, but she really wasn’t sure. It was all multi-colored specks moving down a grid of miniscule threads that must be what they used as roads.

Thinking, not for the first time, on what to do next, something unusual caught her attention. A swarm of thousands upon thousands of black dots was rising from the city and seemingly flowing towards her.

Flies? she thought, before dismissing that as obviously ridiculous.

The black dots seemed to arrange themselves several inches in front of her nose in a closely packed, thin sheet maybe a couple inches across, just hovering there unsettlingly.

Suddenly the dots began to flash bright red, the flashes seemingly random before resolving into what appeared to be letters, appearing one by one slowly across the sheet-like dot murmuration.

“LEAVE,” it read, before the red flashes scattered and the dots turned black again. Quickly the flashes re-started. “NOW,” it displayed.

“AWAIT. ORDERS.”  

Seriously? What the fuck, Ava thought, annoyed. The gall of her kidnappers to order her around like that.

 Suddenly, ten-ish streaks of grey rocketed into position on all sides of the black ‘screen’ before resolving into somewhat larger specks, similarly hovering at face height. Though she could barely make them out, she somehow intuitively knew these to be military in nature.

Almost simultaneously, Ava heard a very faint rumble behind her, and on instinct turned to see the source.

Charging through the desert, kicking up a small (to her) cloud of dust, a column of what were clearly mottled, brownish green vehicles – each of these a few inches long -- streamed towards the city and her. They looked just like the toy tanks her brother used to play with as a kid, and were roughly the same size, if not smaller. She watched them wordlessly as they stopped a number of feet from her and, after a pause, sent up a green flare.

The implication, and the threat, was inescapable.

Ava turned back towards the city and her hovering retinue and grinned slightly, her mother’s words ringing in her ears.

“Yeah, no.”

---

Lieutenant Hardy’s plan, with some modifications of Mattison’s own, had been a good one. Great, even. By combining clear diplomatic outreach and a motivating show of force, Mattison could satisfy Lee and his need to not offend a potential trading partner, appease Atwood and the military, and also show the strength of conviction that any good leader needed to project. Clever compromise, it was what he was known for.

Brewer seemed unhappy with the idea, but who cared what she thought.

Yet now, he watched horrified as all his brilliance was coming to naught. Despite the floor-to-ceiling screens, the zoomed in cameras failed to convey just how immense this girl was. On the screen it simply looked like a pretty girl raising her hand to brush away an irritant, but from reports Mattison knew that each of those immense extremities was nearly half a mile wide.

With that simple, lazy swipe of her hand, she obliterated tens of thousands of drones and the 15 strike fighters of Alpha and Beta squadrons without even trying. She moved so fast there was nowhere to go, billions of dollars in military equipment dashed against long, elegant fingers that didn’t even register their impact.

Mattison, poorly hidden anxiety increasing, turned towards his fellow leaders, looking for their counsel, and instead he found no one would even meet his eyes.

On the screen before him, the girl raised her hand once again.

---

David had just moved into a high-rise in Concordia City’s mid-town. Selling his business and his suburban house, he had ridden a surge of modest success to move to the city from Sycamore Heights hundreds of miles away. He had longed to be closer to the water and to seek his next big idea in one of Lilliput’s leading tech metropolises. And he had found this beautiful apartment and fallen in love. Sure, it didn’t overlook Concordia Beach like the toniest spots in town, but it bordered a lovely park and was situated in a bustling cluster of similarly luxe high-rises, shops, and restaurants.

Now, in the penthouse of 52 Central, he was, perhaps, regretting his decision.

From his west-facing perch on the 91st floor, he had been able to see her coming as soon as she arrived in that blinding flash of green in the desert. Rising not even to the level of her ankles, it was hard to take her all in, such was the degree to which her sheer presence dominated the horizon. But she was far enough off, and the cloudless desert sky clear enough that from his balcony he could just see the full length of her long, toned legs, rising like marble towers miles into the sky, along with the generous swell of her jeans-clad hips, and the tight white top needlessly accentuating a bust that, even at a normal size, would make heads turn. Her fair, lightly freckled face framed by long auburn hair neatly spanned the line between cute and beautiful, and those bright green eyes seemed to look right at him as they peered into the city.

He was transfixed by her beauty, even as the enormity of her remained inconceivable. And the way she casually brushed back a stray lock of fiery hair as she stood there almost made her, even at this immense size, seem like the normal young woman she was.  

That all changed when she began to move. Even at a distance of miles, her casual steps shook his building like an earthquake, and David struggled to keep his balance on the balcony, gripping the rail with white knuckles as tastefully arranged glassware and newly hung artwork crashed to the floor behind him.

When she paused her onslaught (which was really two short steps), he breathed a sigh of relief. Far below, he could see people running into the streets from the buildings around him, struggling to unlock parked cars or streaming into the park nearby. As if there was anywhere they could go that would be out of reach of the living mountain before them. Looking back out to the edges of the city where the Boundary once stood, he saw cute toes the size of cruise ships and painted a sporty white wiggle happily within their leather confines, and while he now struggled to see her face so far above, she seemed wholly unbothered by the panic she was causing.

David had been told this high-tech building was earthquake-proof, and he wasn’t dumb, he knew there was really nowhere to go – he had even heard on the news that even the portals were out. So, he resolved to stay put. Besides, she might be big, but this harmless-looking girl wasn’t going to do anything to hurt them was she?

 He questioned this conclusion as she began to kneel. Dashing inside the glass sliding doors of his balcony so as not to be thrown to his death, David glanced behind him to see miles of creamy white leg descend slowly but surely towards the edges of town. Two knees each larger than a city block came into view as she continued her descent, and he swore he could actually feel the sheer tonnage of her presence lowering itself onto the city from above.

He dove behind the massive, stylish black leather couch occupying the living room, hoping its weight would anchor him as he braced for impact. And the impact was brutal. Earthquake-proof or not, his apartment shook as if it was going to be torn completely apart. The 75-inch flat screen on the wall across from him fell with a mighty crash crushing the console beneath it.  The hard bare wooden floors heaved and rose up to meet him as he was pinned to the ground. Over the deafening boom of her explosive descent, he heard his brand-new furniture sliding and windows cracking from the force of the shockwave ripping through the city. He looked up just in time to see a wrought iron chandelier plummeting towards him, ricocheting off the couch in front of him, and rolled to his left mere seconds before he was impaled underneath.

He lay panting in the ruins of his new apartment, and continued to lay still as he heard, or rather felt, the one-sided dialogue between the Brobby girl and some unseen interlocutor, the volume of her words battering the already shaky building.

Finally, as he listened to sirens continue to wail, and now the roar of powerful engines overhead, he roused himself to see what might be happening outside.

His shoes crunched over the broken glass and plaster covering the floor as he approached the balcony. The balcony door was bent and ajar, and the floor-to-ceiling windows were laced with spidery cracks, but he was able to force his way out. As he looked out on the now much closer giantess, his sense of wonder returned. On her knees she should have perhaps seemed smaller, but she in fact seemed even more massive than before, as her overwhelming presence now fully overshadowed the city. Her knees and massive bare thighs rested a few miles away on his scale, but she seemed so close, he felt like he could touch her and that jeans-covered crotch covering miles of city outskirts beneath it as she sat on her heels. He now couldn’t see her face past the shelf of her massive breasts, but he heard the echoing thunder of her words.

“Yeah, no”

Suddenly a colossal hand, previously resting on a soft, smooth thigh raised and swiped lazily at something in the air above him, and he heard a series of explosions ring out. Seeing something that massive move so quickly was both frightening and exhilarating all at once.  

But it appeared she wasn’t done. She began to lean forward, those mountainous endowments lowering until he could see a veritable canyon of cleavage encased in thin white fabric, large enough to swallow a good-sized town whole with room to spare.  

Her face came into view next, a mischievous look dancing on those delicate, pretty features. He wondered vaguely what they were in for, but stayed still, his ever-present fear overcome by his curiosity (or maybe it was shock).

Her eyes narrowed, and even more than before it truly seemed like she was looking right at him, piercing him with her powerful gaze. She grinned again, and he saw that same right hand, now returned to her side, begin to raise, a single, elegant finger extending as if in accusation at their very existence.

As it came closer and closer, he could see that her finger alone dwarfed every structure in the vicinity. 52 Central was clear and away the tallest high-rise in the area, and he guessed that the glossy nail with its white tip alone would overtop many of the other buildings by far -- a single finger the size perhaps of three or more Gulliverians stacked on top of each other. His own building failed to even reach the silvery ring that adorned her first knuckle.

Still he didn’t run. Why wouldn’t his legs move? He watched as the prodigious digit continued to fly forward and approached the sizable park across the street, nearly matching it in width and dwarfing the leafy canopy of trees that shaded the grounds inside.

Not seconds ago, he had seen people run for shelter from crumbling buildings into that park, and his breath caught as the delicate fingertip inexorably descended. He couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or not, but he swore he heard a cry rise up from the unseen people under the trees, only to be silenced as she made contact with the park itself.

Again he felt the ground quake beneath him as her finger touched down, and he gripped the balcony rail once more. Within the park, he saw mighty oak trees crunch and shatter and the grassy green beneath buckle under her slightest touch. The power, amazingly restored after her initial incursion, immediately cut out again, and he could see stoplights all along the street go dark as her fingertip must have severed some line below as it plunged without resistance into the earth.

She paused, as if enjoying the feeling of the grassy lawn turned to dust beneath her. But then he heard a rumble, and without lifting the fingertip began to move, sliding its way through the ground directly towards him, glossy nail glinting in the sun and tearing through the earth beneath it like a till through soil. It was wider at the knuckle than his building and the one next to it put together, and the immense digit moved slowly, but surely through everything in its path. David watched the dark iron, old-timey gates and brick walls of the park burst apart as the colossal digit plowed through effortlessly. Hapless drivers stuck on the road between his building and the park – those who hadn’t already abandoned their vehicles – pulled desperately at seatbelts before they were plowed under her mighty fingertip without pause or seeming effort, cars flattening and the road itself buckling and breaking in her wake.

David knew this was the end, and just when he was getting started too! Her pale long finger swallowed his entire view as it approached his building and with a crash he felt the walls around him shatter as she continued her lazy motion. For a second, he felt like he was falling, and then, nothing.

---

Mattison watched as twenty different camera angles showed the sheer devastation wrought by a single fingertip. She had lazily dragged that finger through nearly a city block, but what probably just seemed like a few inches to her.

The emergency lines flashed a continuous red as the reports and casualty numbers poured in. Dozens of buildings had crumbled under her mere touch, their walls shattering against her, offering this lowest of extremities no resistance whatsoever. In its wake, all that had been left behind was churned earth and debris. A dark brown scar across the city.

She seemed to look at him then, or at least at whatever camera was focused on her that moment, and the room went quiet once again as through the speakers and the walls they heard her speak with resounding force.

“So here’s my counteroffer. You send me home right now, and I won’t keep playing with your puny little city? Hmm?” 

Jake loved his job. He had done his time in the Gulliverian special forces, done the hard work as a grunt, and made it out the other side. And his reward? This cushy new role in the Lilliputian reserves. It wasn’t necessarily a popular choice, joining his people’s age-old enemies as a merc. His Gulli friends treated his decision with a mix of derision and envy. But the pay was five times any of the other Gulliverian offers out there, and with the Gulli-Lilli wars long-ended, the “work” mostly consisted of running the occasional battle readiness drill or war game, patrolling the base, and hanging out with the other sellouts whom he had come to know and love. Plus, the Lilliputians had provided all the coolest toys – jet packs that could launch a soldier hundreds of feet in the air, recoilless battle rifles more powerful than anything he’d used in the Gulliverian army, devastating energy weapons mounted on fast-moving battle tanks.

The Lilliputians had wanted to keep their Gulliverian lackeys far from judging Lilli eyes, so they positioned the base miles away from Concordia City, out of sight, deep in a valley out in the desert. They had built the base as its own self-contained and semi-autonomous city, but one ready to be called upon in a moment’s notice. So, for Jake and the others outside the base’s command center, the Alert 1 klaxon came as a surprise, especially when accompanied by a droning voice intoning over the PA, “Alert 1 is in effect, report to ready stations, this is not a drill.”

Within minutes, still clueless as to the source of the alarm, Jake was in an APC heading to what he presumed was Concordia City – after all, Alert 1 only was called if the city was under direct threat. Confusingly, though, the broken chatter over comms seemed to refer to “the target,” singular.

Did some solitary Gulliverian wander into the restricted zone? Would they really call an Alert 1 for that? Jake wondered.

Looking out the side slit windows in the APC he could see battle tanks and other carriers streaming through the desert at top speed alongside his own – it really looked like they had mustered the whole Gulliverian force from the base. How could all this be for one Gulli?

Soon they were slowing, the rear hatch opening with a mechanical whir as the carrier came to a stop, and the call from the officers coming for the company to muster in ready formation. Jake and his fellow soldiers rose quickly and streamed out of the large vehicle, weapons ready, preparing themselves to face whatever lay on the other side.

And nearly froze in shock.

Looming over the horizon, over Concordia City itself, was an immense figure. The soldiers could only see the figure’s back, but it was clear that, even kneeling, it towered hundreds of Gulliverian feet, multiple Lilliputian miles into the sky. Jake could immediately tell it was a woman, long auburn hair cascading across her shoulders, shapely figure clear even as she kneeled, but not much else. And her size – he struggled to keep his jaw from dropping. Even in their begrudging peace with the Lillis, Gulliverians had always been the dominant species on the planet on size alone. She was something else, though. Even at a distance as she was, Jake could clearly see he would be less than an insect compared to such a being. And the Lillis of Concordia City? Almost microscopic.

Orders were being shouted, rousing the soldiers out of their stupor. A unit from an APC nearby launched a green flare, usually used to demarcate an LZ, high into the air, and Jake’s company was pressed forward into the desert scrub brush where they took up position at the vanguard of the merc formation. Were they actually signaling this monster to come over here? Jake thought with a start.

She spared them a glance then, and Jake caught a glimpse of an undeniably pretty face, sharp green eyes flashing and faint freckles dotting a slightly smirking visage. After a brief, appraising look, she turned again and resumed whatever she was doing over the city, and they simply waited, the silence only broken by sporadic bursts of comms chatter, whispered exclamations of “holy fuck,” and “at least she’s hot,” and “how do we fight that thing,” and officers with tight expressions telling them to hold.

Jake still had a vague sense of confidence – after all, the Lillis had defeated his fellow Gullis, and they must have been nearly as large to them as she was to the Gullis, right? But it was tinged with something he hadn’t felt in a long while: real fear. He had, of course, heard of Brobdingnagians, but Gullis couldn’t use the Lilli portals, and no one in all of Gulliveria had ever seen one. Who knew what this girl was capable of?

Suddenly the Brobby girl seemed to say something he couldn't quite make out, the comms chatter increased to a fever pitch, and behind him he could hear the hum of powerful electric motors moving massive battle tanks into position, their turrets turning to and fro as they lined up the giant girl in their sights. He felt more than heard the deep thrum of their primary energy weapons going off. Powerful blasts that he knew could annihilate other Gulliverians without a problem streamed towards the titaness’ still turned back.

If she felt the blows, she gave no initial indication beyond a slight flinch as she was struck. Turning again, she looked back over her shoulder at their assembled might, and where perhaps they had hoped for pain or even fear, he could only see annoyance and frustration etched on those pretty features.

She rolled her eyes, and a booming sigh echoed in the air above them. “So, that’s really how you’re going to play it?” she thundered.

She began to rise, and now Jake could truly take in how massive she was. Long, bare legs unfurled beneath her, each hundreds of feet long, stretching majestically into a pair of denim cutoffs that did little to contain a tight, bountiful ass, bouncing alluringly with her movements and towering far above them. The small steps she took in turning in their direction repeatedly shook the ground beneath his feet, and he saw clouds of dust and debris kicked up around her leather sandals as they landed with booming thuds upon the fragile earth, obliterating whatever happened to fall beneath them. He glanced, embarrassed, away from her mountainous breasts jutting out proudly as she faced them, each likely dwarfing a Gulliverian skyscraper in their enormous size. If he had met this beautiful girl in a bar he would’ve asked for her number, but now the lust he felt only amplified his fear.

After a brief pause to casually brush desert dirt and the remains of powdered city blocks from her knees and legs (this accompanied by another eye roll), she started forward in earnest directly towards them, long strides rapidly eating up the previously safe distance, and increasing manifold the anxiety of the assembled mercs.

If Jake thought the ground shook before, it was nothing compared to the quakes she triggered as her powerful, earth-shattering steps closed the gap between them.

Thoom…thoom…thoom…THOOM, she thundered menacingly across the desert.

The ground now practically jumped with each footfall of those massive, sandaled peds, tanks and equipment swaying and bouncing alarmingly, and he and his fellow soldiers struggled to stay upright in their crouched ready positions, officers still yelling, but now with more than a touch of nervousness and even fear in their voices.  The tanks, which had continued firing uselessly at her through most of her approach, now began to fall silent.

She stopped her advance a mere dozen feet from them, the earth mercifully quieting, even as the dust was still rising -- the fractured and churned ground around her feet a reminder of the unimaginable weight that rested upon it. Her sandaled feet had sunk under her incalculable mass into the desert floor, but even still, Jake could see that from his crouched position he could only barely reach the rough leather lip of the sandal, if that. He truly was an insect to her.

White-tipped toes bigger than semi-trucks flexed cutely within their massive leather confines, and Jake wondered absently if she was imagining how he and his fellow soldiers would feel under them. It was only years of military discipline that kept him and his unit from running right then and there.

Looking up at that pretty face far in the distance, he saw the annoyance from before replaced, or maybe just mixed, with a sardonic look, an eyebrow quirking questioningly upwards.

 “I’ve read about you Gulliverian mercs,” she said, and Jake could hear the confidence in the tone with which she addressed the armed soldiers gathered at her feet. Her voice alone at this distance was almost painfully loud, a roar of feminine sound echoing in the desert air.

 “I’m gonna go ahead and guess you have no loyalty to these Lilli kidnappers. So, I’m giving you one chance to walk away.”  

Kidnappers? Jake thought. What had the goddamn Lillis gotten themselves into?

“I’m done waiting around, done taking orders, done being threatened and attacked by puny little people like yourselves,” a pointed look from her at this, “So you have 20 seconds to pack up your gear and go. Otherwise…” she trailed off, simultaneously lifting a colossal sandaled foot straight up in the air. She didn’t even lift it far by her standards, but she brought it down with enough force to level a Lilliputian town.  

Jake and his unit were closest to the titanic Brobby girl and took the brunt of the impact, the shockwave of her footfall knocking them physically backwards, the earth heaving beneath them with a violence beyond anything they had felt before. In the aftermath, they struggled to right themselves, coughing and sputtering and caked in dust, seeing lighter equipment strewn across the desert ground from her little demonstration of power.

That same foot began to tap impatiently, the steady booming thud and resulting tremors emphasizing the now ticking clock.

With that simple statement, and without doing much of anything, she had already broken them -- no one seemed to know what to do. Jake saw one unit immediately begin piling back into their APC, apparently more than willing to take the colossal girl up on her offer. Multiple tanks, their commanders clearly seeing the futility of all this, similarly turned to retreat. Yet others advanced forward, firing their rifles in reckless bursts at the long, toned legs of the giantess, lost in the battle lust of soldiers who hadn’t seen a real fight in years. Divisions appeared within the same unit -- a gunner to his right with a tripod-mounted cannon fired ceaselessly into a set of enormous toes, while her squadmates retreated around her.

With a whoosh, a jet-pack wearing soldier blazed by Jake overhead, soaring in the sky, perhaps thinking she was more vulnerable further up. He was followed by two others as they advanced rapidly upwards toward her waist.

Jake himself just froze, now rising from his crouch, letting his weapon hang limply by its strap to his side and simply staring at the chaos around him. Knowing he should move, but not being able to will his body to do so. He saw several of his squadmates in a similar state of shock.

The tapping foot suddenly stopped. He forced himself to look up slowly at the massive girl, and was surprised to see a mixture of puzzlement and disbelief marking her delicate features.

The rat-a-tat-tat blasts of various small arms and the thrum of the one remaining firing tank continued unabated, and as before, she seemed to feel none of it, just kept staring at them bemusedly with those sparkling green eyes, the way one might look at someone knowingly making the dumbest decision of their life.

After another beat, she seemed to make a decision of her own, and with yet another thunderous sigh began to move.  First, with a rush of wind, she swiped a massive, manicured right hand through the air by her chest – once, twice. He distinctly heard the explosions of the rocket troops as they were wiped out effortlessly, splattered against long elegant fingers adorned with glinting silver rings. Jake didn’t even see them fall -- they just evaporated with a small puff of fire and smoke. She wiped the deadly hand absently on a colossal breast, smearing imperceptibly whatever remains lingered there.

Next, he heard a loud rustling sound and saw the immense toes to his right begin to wiggle and shake as the titaness slowly slid one gargantuan foot from its equally gigantic footwear. The now-bare foot rose into the air, long, white-tipped toes wiggling and flexing as if enjoying their freedom, lightly reddened and dirt-marked sole rising to calf-height. On the bed of the now empty sandal, Jake could just see over the lip a dark imprint of her colossal foot, each individual toe clearly marked by its own deep indentation in the impenetrable leather. Yet one more tiny sign of the terrible power she wielded.  

The crazed turret gunner to his right swung her fire upwards, hypersonic bullets firing many times a second, glancing off the giantess’ warm, soft-looking sole without effect. Her squadmates, now almost reaching their idling APC, turned to yell to their comrade, pleading in raised voices for her to retreat. She paid them no mind, and Jake wondered randomly when she might run out of ammo firing at that pace.

Above, the big toe of the colossal, hovering left foot now flexed downwards. It alone was the size of a house, and with a small movement of the giant leg, it sliced through the air towards the offending gunner, enveloping her in shadow and easily dwarfing the tiny woman. As the gigantic digit approached like a looming storm cloud, the gunner let out an animalistic shout of rage or fear or god knows what before the massive toe came down with a soft thud, driving her into the ground without resistance, replacing her and her weapon completely with a wall of supple toe flesh and expertly manicured toenail.

Jake feared for a moment that she would crush the fleeing APC next, but true to her word, the giantess appeared to let them go before turning to her next victim.  

A tank he recognized as McDaniel’s continued to fire at the giantess from its position behind Jake, energy bolts impacting her shins, her thighs, her torso, all with no effect. One errant blast even seemed to strike her in the right breast, right at the nipple, and Jake, in his altered state, wondered briefly if such a giantess might be able to get aroused that way.

This giantess, however, was clearly not amused, and her long left leg, still shorn of its footwear, swung towards the mighty battle tank.  Jake nearly pissed himself as the deadly foot sailed overhead but it quickly eclipsed him on its way to its new target. Her long toes pursed upwards as she pinpointed the subject of her ire, and she began to lower her foot as McDaniel tried uselessly to turn and speed away. But instead of simply crushing the, to her, soda-can-sized tank beneath her massive sole, she seemed to simply rest her giant foot on top of it, long toes curling over it graspingly, holding it effortlessly in place even as its motors churned. Jake could hear the nigh-impenetrable armor on the massive vehicle groaning under even this ‘light’ touch, the drivetrain buckling beneath the strain, flexing toes indenting the thick metal with their sheer strength as they curled and uncurled around the turret and chassis, even the smallest of them imbued with unimaginable power. Still, she didn’t flatten the tank, but instead began to drag and roll the huge vehicle back towards herself with her toes, as if she was playing soccer and McDaniel’s tank was the ball. Jake quickly realized the danger he was in as the 100-ton, 30+-foot long tank rolled and bounced over the landscape at speed directly towards him and what was left of his squad. He sprinted to his left, but Rogers and Shields, dumbfucks that they were, in a panic ran straight ahead as if they could outrun this giant hunk of reinforced titanium alloy. Jake looked back just in time to see the tank, miraculously still intact, bounce slightly over a small ridge before slamming down on the not-looking soldiers splattering them unseen across the hull.

Jake, panting, watched as the titaness rolled the tank a few more times back and forth beneath her before stepping off it with a small quake as she rested her toes on the heel end of the now-empty sandal, smooth, long bare sole waving idly in the air and toes continuing to flex and grind together lazily on the soft leather. Anyone inside the still-mostly-three-dimensional and now finally upright tank, if not already broken by the abuse, would not be getting out any time soon.

Or so he thought. With a mechanical clank, he saw the top hatch open, and a bruised and bloodied arm reach up dramatically to let the as-yet-unidentified tanker pull themselves out of their battered death trap. Jake’s heart swelled, maybe McDaniel and his crew were still alive! But just as it seemed the figure was about to make his or her exit, the deadly toes lifted from their sandal resting spot and dropped without mercy onto doomed tank. This time there was no playful rolling, as the ball of the huge foot dropped straight onto the tank, driving with force downwards, crushing the turret and its attempted escapee flat with ease. It seemed to Jake for a second that the hull might offer some resistance, the sturdy metal groaning under the strain of her powerful step, but then he saw the giantess’ athletic calf flex slightly and the heel raise and then lower and that was it -- the whole massive vehicle caved and flattened like the aluminum can it resembled, leaving her enormous bare foot resting fully on the desert floor, a thin sheet of metal all that remained of the once-mighty war machine and its crew.

The battle was over. Jake realized with a start that he and a few other shell-shocked survivors were the only ones left. His APC was gone, fleeing with whatever members of his unit had been smart enough to make their escape while he was standing there in a daze. He would have to hoof it home.

The Brobby girl also seemed to recognize her victory as she slid her murderous foot back into its leather home with a rumble – the only evidence of the carnage a tiny stain on her big toe quickly fading and a thin layer of dust on her sole from the ground she had crushed McDaniel’s tank into. She turned slightly to glance back at Concordia City behind her, and Jake felt a twinge of pity for the residents yet to face her wrath, but little shame for the Gulli mercs’ failure – the Lillis had clearly brought this disaster upon themselves.

He grabbed Smith and Alvarez where they stood nearby, and together they shook themselves out of their shock, and began the trudging walk home. That is, until an oddly feminine voice with the power of a god boomed out above and behind them, “Oh! Looks like I missed you guys.” They didn’t even have to turn back to know that a colossal sandaled foot was being raised over them, they could feel its looming presence, even before it blotted out the sun and enveloped them in dark shadow.

“Sorry, I told you the deal,” she thundered, with a small shrug. Alvarez and Smith made as if to run, Jake didn’t bother. There was nowhere to go. The world turned black.

---

John and hundreds of his fellow portal commuters were in a state of panic. They had felt the earthquakes, heard the ominous words of the titaness terrorizing Concordia City, and even seen the videos on their headsets and personal devices before they were taken down by the authorities. But still they were being forced to do nothing. Locked doors and armed guards blocked their exit, “for their safety.”

Now in the vast, high-ceilinged atrium of the Central Ave portal terminal they sat on hard wooden benches or on the floor and continued to wait, for what they didn’t know.

Suddenly they heard a familiar hum.

Were the portals being restored? Could they finally escape this madness?

Energy once again seemed to pour from the portals, but it looked wrong – not the usual green, but red, and it seemed to be spreading like a wave over the whole station. John stood shakily, unsure what to do, and then, with a flash, he along with every other commuter, was gone.

Ava didn’t consider herself a violent person. Sure, like every other smart, self-confident woman with a tendency to sarcasm, she’d occasionally been called a bitch, usually by men lacking in their own self-esteem. But that wasn’t the same thing.

She was a supportive and loyal friend, a good girlfriend, a loving daughter and sister. She was the one who could be counted on to go overboard in celebrating a sorority sister’s birthday, who was the shoulder friends cried on, who cheered the loudest for her volleyball teammates.

Even when someone did her wrong, she didn’t seek revenge. Or, at least, she didn’t take pleasure in it. Not like her friend Jen. God, she shuddered to think what Jen would do with a city of tiny people at her mercy.

But yet, she had just routed an army, done untold damage to the fragile city she now approached on her return from that one-sided battle. She knew, intellectually, that she had killed Gulliverians and Lilliputians with her actions, even as relatively minor or accidental as they were. But seeing these featureless, miniscule specks of color that were this city’s supposed inhabitants, those ant-sized soldiers and their toy vehicles at her feet, it was hard to register them as ‘people’ at all, let alone people worth protecting.

And they had kidnapped her, assaulted her! The conclusion of their intentions was unavoidable: only Lilliput had the technology to bring her here and her capture would undoubtedly make for an effective and lucrative bargaining chip with her mother’s company (who, like her, likely had no idea that she couldn’t actually be harmed by their puny weapons). And when she had tried to push back and leave, they had shot her. Who was she to argue with means, motive, and opportunity?

And so what if she kind of enjoyed tormenting that tank that had blasted her in the tit?

Deep in thought, Ava paused her stroll to idly toe the desert floor with a sandaled foot as she pondered her options, unknowingly sending up a shower of dirt, boulders and plant life hundreds of feet high. What was she going to do now?

Thoughts of Jen brought back other thoughts of home. First of her family – her parents, her brother and sister, presumably not even knowing where she was. Then of her roommates, her closest friends, likely out to lunch or something else fun to pass the school holiday while she languished here in this cursed desert.

When she had left for college, her mom had offered to buy her her own apartment nearby – one of the many perks of being the daughter of one of the richest people in Brobdingnag. But Ava  had said no. Said she wanted a real college experience, not the cloistered lonely one of the solitary rich girl. She had instead lived in the character-building squalor of the campus dorms for two years before she, Jen, Emily, and Sophia had decided to move in together off-campus in a spacious, but modest shared walk-up apartment. Sure, they sometimes fought, as friends and roommates were wont to do, but she couldn’t imagine another group of people she’d rather spend her college days with.

She longed to be back there. Yes, all told, it really hadn’t even been that long in this place, but the thought of being stuck in this godforsaken universe with only hostile microbes for company terrified her.  

She couldn’t accept that, she wouldn’t.

She knew then more than ever that she’d do whatever it took to get home. Microbes be damned. With renewed purpose she strode once again towards the city.

---

John struggled to clear his vision, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands repeatedly. Re-opening them, angry red after-images still slid across his field of view, remnants of the strange, pulsating energy field that had enveloped him in the station. He attempted to take a step forward but staggered, distinctly feeling the disorientation and brief nausea of a portal jump, even though he had stepped through no portal.

What happened?  he wondered groggily as the vertigo started to ebb.

Things coming more into focus didn’t seem to help. He appeared to be in a vast indoor space -- a light-colored, well-worn wooden floor beneath his feet, artificial light mixed with bright sunlight illuminating his surroundings. Yet he couldn’t see any windows, or, now that he thought of it, a ceiling, or walls. The floor beneath him seemed to simply go on for miles, hazy dark shapes looming in the distance looking like towering mountains on the horizon.

He took another tentative step forward, feeling mostly clear-headed for the first time, and a realization borne of years of portal travel hit him like a ton of bricks. Somehow, he had indeed traveled through a portal, and somehow, he was back in Brobdingnag. But not in the terminal station of his daily commute, with its orderly turnstiles, helpful holographic attendants, and high-speed trams and elevators ferrying workers to desk jobs in the sealed, safe Lilli sections of the vast Brobby office towers. 

No, he was in real Brobdingnag. Where miles-tall titans like the girl currently menacing Concordia City lived their daily lives. Beings for whom he would appear as a speck of dust, if they could see him at all. Beings who could wipe out entire Lilliputian towns with a single step, should they choose to do so.

While he was still processing this realization, another hit him: he wasn’t alone. There, several feet away were a group of his fellow Lilliputians, huddled together and apparently equally bewildered by the strange environs. They looked to be people he’d seen in the station with him, people who had, just moments earlier, been whispering together in fear, when not complaining loudly about being trapped inside. And then he saw another group, and another, scattered over this vast wooden floor. There must have been hundreds, even just counting those in his narrow field of view. Spinning fully around, he saw even more – a large group clustered far off in the distance behind him, scattered groups roaming the floor to his left and right.

Had more than one station been hit? How could there be so many? Were there even more he couldn’t see?

John made to walk toward his fellow unwilling travelers to discuss these very questions when a loud, metallic clicking stopped him in his tracks. Far in the distance behind him, the distinct sound of a key turning in a lock echoed sharply across the room, muffled voices seeming to emanate from somewhere unseen.  

Spinning around sharply to find the source of these unsettling sounds, John now noticed a vast, dark portal at the end of what seemed to be an immense, arching hall at the far end of the room. With a whoosh of air he could feel even miles away, this portal -- what he presumed now to be a monstrous, Brob-sized door – swung open to reveal more bright light and the dark outlines of three enormous figures filling the doorway completely as they towered into the sky.

Unobstructed by the previous barrier of wood and metal, overlapping feminine voices of incredible volume suddenly filled the space, words unintelligible in the cacophony of reverberating sound, but punctuated by thunderous high-pitched giggles and resounding exclamations that threatened to burst the ear drums of the tiny Lillis below.

The colossal figures, still chattering away, invaded the narrow entryway, each moving faster than anything that size had a right to. As they stepped into the hall, their heavy footsteps pounded the hardwood floor in irregular and intersecting patterns, the unpredictable and often continuous quakes repeatedly throwing the assembled Lilliputians to the ground as they struggled to stand under the onslaught.

As the figures moved ever closer, John could begin to make out the features of their tormentors. Leading the way, a lithe, athletic-looking girl with long chestnut-colored hair stood head and shoulders taller than the other two, although her already towering height appeared to be further boosted by a pair of cork-looking platform sandals, the soles of which alone must have stood over a thousand feet high. A much shorter blonde sporting a stylish spiky pixie and a glinting nose ring stood just behind and to the brunette’s left, bare right arm encircling the taller girl’s waist and exposing a line-drawn tattoo on the well-defined bicep, while above a pair of sharp blue-grey eyes flashed dangerously. The blonde said something that earned a thunderous laugh from the whole group and with a wicked grin stretched up to plant a brief kiss on the tall brunette, the soles of her black canvas and white rubber shoes lifting off the ground as she strained on tiptoe to reach her paramour’s face high above, the earth shaking even harder as the smirking girl landed heavily on her heels. Bringing up the rear, a warmly smiling, olive-skinned brunette beauty in tight yoga pants, sturdy leather sandals, and skimpy grey tank top split the difference in height but, John noticed, put the others to shame with the way her sports bra and spandex leggings strained ineffectively to contain a set of outrageous curves. All three of the immense Brobby girls looked to John to be maybe in their early 20s – all fit, beautiful, and enjoying another glorious day in the prime of their lives.

And all completely oblivious to the now panicking Lillis scattered across the floor.

“God, you can be such a bitch sometimes, Jen,” Emily said, her fond smile belying the harshness of her words as she leaned down to unbuckle the thin black leather straps of her sandals. She sighed as she set her long bare soles down on the cool wood floor, light-blue-painted toes wiggling happily. Unlike many a tall girl, Emily loved the way shoes like these played up her already towering 6’4” height. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, right?

“Yeah, but you love it Em,” Jen replied with a smirk. The ‘small’ blonde soccer star (who was, in reality, slightly taller than the average Brobby girl, but by far the smallest roommate) toed off her sneakers and kicked them in the general direction of the shoe rack in the entryway, missing by a wide margin, the thin canvas shoes bouncing off the wall and landing with a thud, unknowingly obliterating a group of thirty Lilliputians huddling in terror at the enormous girls’ entrance.

“You know I do,” Emily leaned down for another kiss. Now, barefoot, modestly closer in height to her petite girlfriend.

“Ugh, get a room you two,” Sophia rolled her eyes, not for the first time, as she replaced Jen’s sloppily discarded shoes in their proper place on the rack and added her own sandals.

“Uhh, you know we both live here, right?” Jen retorted.

Choosing to ignore that, Sophia changed the subject. “Has anyone heard from Ava?”

Emily realized then that she actually hadn’t heard from her roommate since Ava had texted the group she was headed to yet another coffee date before joining them later to enjoy the day off. Emily had just assumed the date had gone well when Ava hadn’t shown up to lunch.

And damn if that girl didn’t need it after the whole Greg thing.

“I mean, she probably just took my advice on the joys of getting some strange,” Jen called out with her usual grace.

It was Emily’s turn to roll her eyes. “Jen, we’ve been dating exclusively for like two years.”

“And it’s, like, what, noon?” Sophia added.  

“My statement stands.”

Laughing, the girls entered the apartment proper. Three pairs of massive feet pounded the hardwood floor, violently shaking the ground beneath them as their long strides rapidly erased the distance between them and the huddled masses of terrified Lilliputians cowering beneath their notice.

A small group of more athletically inclined Lilliputians, finding themselves directly across from the titanic girls in the entryway, had sprinted to their left towards the looming sofa and chairs of the distant living room, hoping to find safety in their solidity, size and shadowed overhangs. Yet they had misjudged just how far away the miles-high furniture actually was on their scale, and still found themselves dangerously exposed as Jen approached on her way to her preferred spot on the couch. Her powerful, earth-shaking footfalls quickly knocked all but the most agile to the ground, and from their sprawled position they looked up in horror at the enormous sole of Jen’s enormous socked right foot, thin material clinging to her toes and heel, bottom slightly grayed with repeated wear, rapidly collapsing down on them. Some found themselves pelted by lint balls the size of boulders, and all were utterly erased as her foot hit the ground. Those few still upright and running saw nothing but open floor briefly cast in shadow before they too were pasted by the ball of Jen’s foot as it landed, the massive girl not even breaking stride as she continued on her way.

A ways away, a larger group of several hundred hapless Lilliputians simply milled in a slowly spreading cluster perhaps a few Brobdingnagian inches long, not knowing how to react to the presence of girls the size of mountains. Many shouted pleadingly up at the giants, as if these god-like beings could hear the voices of people the size of a grain of sand. Others meandered by themselves or in small groups in one direction or another, vaguely trying to move away from danger, albeit at an agonizingly slow pace. Still others simply lay curled up where they had fallen, having been thrown to the ground repeatedly by continuous earth-shattering footfalls as the girls strolled idly through the apartment.  All were soon directly confronted with the immense visage of a thirsty Emily, making her way to the kitchen to grab a soda from the refrigerator.

At the colossal girls’ size, it didn’t much matter which of them a Lilli found themselves under -- whether it was towering Emily or relatively petite Jen, a tiny Lilli would be just as dead with one as with any of the others, their only remains a microscopically thin organic film to be washed unnoticed off the sole of a foot in the shower or off a sock thrown in the laundry. But still, something about seeing the largest of the titans bearing down on them struck even greater fear into the hearts of the hundreds of Lillis in Emily’s path.

That fear mounted as Emily’s massive bare feet came closer and closer, the ground shaking more vigorously than ever, deafening booms accompanying each gargantuan footfall, and displaced air buffeting the tiny crowd. Finally, all those able to began to flee in earnest, but it was far, far too late.

At first, it seemed as if Emily would simply walk right over them, annihilating them in-stride as Jen had done. But suddenly she stopped short, one long, bare sole landing a scant few feet away from the terrified masses. The lucky crowd had avoided certain death, but something that large landing that close was not without its own perils: the impact flung masses of fleeing Lillis into the air, many breaking bones as they landed awkwardly on the hard floor or even on top of others, themselves thrown to the ground by the brutal quakes.  Injured and uninjured Lillis alike now stared up in terror at an immense set of sky-blue-painted toes looming hundreds of feet in the air above them, the nearest of them so close they could see the individual whorls and patterns in each massive digit. Through the overwhelming fear, many still marveled at the shapely set of miles-long bare legs above and the way a pale yellow summer dress capable of covering an entire city clung to a toned body bearing the hallmarks of hours of gym and volleyball practice.

“Hey babe, want anything from the fridge?” Emily called out, her raised voice piercing the air, all but deafening the frantic Lillis at her feet.

As she paused to wait for a response from Jen, she idly lifted her looming foot onto its ball, her heel swaying in the air, huge toes flexing and grinding together with her unconscious movements.  Those still lying prone could hear the wooden floor under them creak under the incalculable pressure, feel the vibrations of her smallest movements thrum through the floorboards as she swung the colossal appendage lazily to and fro, wrinkles the size of eight-lane highways rippling languidly across the soft sole. Suddenly and without warning, the immense toes lifted and the foot slid forward slightly, catching several dozen Lillis beneath it, the soft tonnage of the nearly mile-long ped bulldozing them without mercy as they disappeared completely under the slightly reddened ball. The nearby survivors looked up in shock to see a set of five long toes still raised above them and, scrambling to their feet, attempted once again to flee, only for those cruise-ship sized toes to lower, their weight alone enough to completely obliterate those beneath as they softly settled.

“Grab me a beer, would ya?” the thunderous call came back from Jen, now ensconced comfortably on the couch across the room.

Unaware of the mass murder at her feet, Emily moved to continue her journey to the refrigerator, and the hundreds of remaining Lillis before her were cast in shadow as her slender foot and still-flexing toes now swung fully overhead. Bits of dirt and dust from a day of walking barefoot or in sandals drifted down on doomed Lilis from hundreds of feet up as her colossal foot moved inexorably over them. The detritus impacted the ground like bombs, scattering across the floor and injuring many.  As Emily lowered her massive size 12, it covered the entire crowd with room to spare, their panicked efforts to escape all for naught when faced with something so large, moving so quickly.  There were no survivors as she completed what, to her, was just another step into the kitchen.

Meanwhile, Sophia had managed to reach the couch with limited casualties. Several smaller groups of Lillis had still found themselves beneath her wide, soft soles and cute, pink-painted toes, but her path had been mostly clear.

Unfortunately, it was not just the hundreds of Lilliputians scattered across the floor that made up the full population of tinies in that modest city walk-up. In fact, thousands of Lilliputians from portal stations all over Concordia City had been mysteriously transported, scattered on the miles-high furniture that dotted the open plan living and kitchen space, as well as on various surfaces all over the three-bedroom flat.

One of these groups was the four hundred Lillis from Prentice Ave station, and unlike those on the floor they would not be so lucky when it came to Sophia.

More than the others, the Prentice Ave group had one of the clearest views of their surroundings following their unexpected transit. From their vantage point high up on the living room sofa, they knew immediately where they had ended up, although they struggled somewhat to navigate the strange, textured, and slightly bouncy, cloth-upholstered surface beneath their feet. As the girls had entered the apartment there was trepidation, but little they could do, as a couch arm higher than any mountain, combined with a sheer, miles-long drop off the edge, and even the hundreds of foot wide chasms between couch cushions effectively penned them in.

As Jen approached the couch, though, their terror mounted. They could hear the impacts of her socked feet booming loudly far below them and see the churning of powerfully muscled legs in stylishly ‘distressed’ denim above them. Looking up at their potential executioner, they took in a set of defined abs standing in sharp relief beneath a midriff-baring black top and an immense hand with short, unpainted nails running absently through chin-length blonde hair, as a pair of grey-blue eyes the size of small lakes searched for a place to sit. They both hoped and feared she might see them then – multi-colored specks on a light grey couch. When it became clear this was not to be the case, however, their waning hope of rescue turned to hope for simple survival.

Luckily for the stranded Lillis, the sectional couch on which they stood was massive even on a Brobdingnagian scale -- a generous house-warming gift from Ava’s mom. As Jen sprawled herself onto the chaise section at its far end, they thanked their respective deities for their luck, even as the resulting quake threw the whole group off their feet.

When Sophia arrived, it was obvious that their luck had finally run out. As some kind of sports match involving players tossing a ball through a metal ring blared on an incomprehensibly large TV screen on the far wall, hundreds of pairs of eyes focused instead on the latest megalith of a woman to cast them into shadow with her mere presence.  She was turned away from them towards the TV, and many eyes (especially those of the men and quite a few women) were drawn to the wide hips and dangerous, gravity-defying swell of an ass that seemed to be the size of a planet. As a distracted Sophia unconsciously shifted her weight from one foot to the other, each mountainous cheek quivered within its tight spandex confines, the massive canyon-forming monuments shifting in rhythm with her movements, crashing and colliding audibly to the tiny people below.

It wasn’t long before the inevitable occurred. With two small steps back, a pair of powerful, thick thighs collided with the seat cushion the Prentice refugees were sheltering on. A number of more adventurous members had previously made their way to the seat cushion’s edge in the vain hope of finding a way down the miles-high fabric cliff face, and now faced head-on two purple and pink spandex-covered columns, each the width of five city blocks and rapidly approaching. Almost half were knocked clean off the edge as the elastic couch surface jumped violently with the collision, and they plunged the long drop down to the colorful area rug below. There, they either perished on impact, or, in the unlikely event they somehow survived, lost amidst the carpet fibers, it would only be a matter of time before they  found themselves caught beneath one roommate or another’s uncaring footfall. The remaining adventurers were no less doomed, however, ending up smeared between Lycra-covered thigh and couch cushion, the formidable pillars of muscle proving as unyielding as iron against their fragile bodies.

And these few were hardly the last of the Prentice refugees to meet their end as Sophia began to lower herself onto her comfy seat. To the hundreds caught below her, it was as if a living mountain was coming to rest on top of them.  There was nowhere to run, nothing they could do – her mighty ass and thighs  covered nearly the entire seat cushion with their sheer mass. Resigned to his fate, a sole Lilli reached out his hand to touch the lowering, seemingly plush rear that would be his end, his hand sinking ever so slightly into the warm, cushiony surface the instant before he and all his compatriots were buried beneath countless tons of relaxing girlflesh. 

---

John had somehow survived. Barely. While the Brobby girls chatted and joked in the entryway, he and a few others he knew from the station: a woman named Becca, a man named Tom, and another slightly heavyset man whose name he couldn’t remember had split off from the main group, seeking shelter in a small breakfast area between the kitchen and living room.

Tom had been by far the fittest among them, and John and Becca had been running several yards behind him when Tom’s sprinting form and the entire horizon was simply replaced with a nearly mile-long wall of tanned flesh over a thousand feet high, pink-painted toes wiggling sportily in the distance. In the micro-second it took John to process this, he and Becca were blown into the air by the resulting shockwave, crashing into their other compatriot behind in a tangle of limbs. As John extracted himself from the pile, Sophia’s second colossal bare foot landed nearly right on top of him, sending him flying far into the air once again, this time landing awkwardly on his left arm, which he heard snap under him. Groaning in pain, John still managed to frantically look up to spot the giantess’ next move, seeing with some relief that she was already gone, the boom and quake of her footfalls receding as she made her way to the living room.

Now seemingly safe, if worse for wear, John clutched his ruined arm and limped back over to where he thought he’d seen Becca and the other man last. The heavyset man seemed to still be laying prone here John and Becca had bowled him over, somehow not blown away by the shockwave, but moaning in pain in a way John had never heard before. He soon saw why – the man’s entire lower half was simply gone, reduced to paste under a toe bigger than an aircraft carrier. How the mighty digit hadn’t smashed him whole was beyond anyone’s guess, but he was anything but lucky, moaning insensibly and then mercifully passing out again from the pain and blood loss.

Becca was nowhere to be found. John called her name, searched for her on the vast wooden expanse, but she was simply gone. No spot of gore to mark her demise, no remains at all, John had to assume she was simply an unnoticed blemish on the otherwise perfect bare foot of a passing goddess.

So yes, John had survived, but now, having finally made it to the shelter of a monumental dining chair, all he could bring himself to do was to sit down beneath it on the cool wooden floor, and weep.

---

Emily retrieved Jen’s beer from the fridge and popped it open with a bottle opener from a nearby drawer. Seeing her friends gathered around the TV, she grabbed her soda in one hand, beer in the other and made her way over to join them. Ava would really love this hangout, she thought absently.

No fleeing Lillis had survived to mark Emily’s path, save for one lone woman who had never moved at all, her face a blank mask, her body rooted in place by sheer terror. Standing stock still, she had somehow avoided the encroaching tread of both Jen and Sophia, their devastating footsteps landing mere inches from her. And even now she didn’t turn to look up as Emily’s vast sole eclipsed her sky, staring firmly straight ahead as both she and her miraculous survival were extinguished unnoticed beneath it.

Emily handed the beer to Jen and flopped down herself on the couch next to her girlfriend. She swung her long legs up onto the nearby coffee table, crossing them at the ankles and unknowingly dropping a  colossal heel on a group of 20 stranded Lillis who, thinking themselves safe, had watched with mounting horror the massacre that had taken place in the apartment thus far.

Leaning back, Emily looked around approvingly at her gathered best friends, just relaxing together on the couch and enjoying the game. Finally, she turned to Jen with a loving smile, “Doncha you just love a lazy day?”

 

Once again, Ava looked down on the tiny “city” spread like a carpet at her feet. As she gazed on the dense urban sprawl, she continued to be amazed at how what she knew to be miniature skyscrapers of astonishing height failed to surpass even the tops of her toes as they wiggled atop her worn leather sandals.

All that advanced technology can’t even match my lowliest digits, she marveled. How do these people even survive?

She knew what she had to do, she had thought it through. Now it was just a matter of working up the confidence to do it. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she began.

“My name is Ava Chapman. I’ve been brought to this place against my will, threatened, and assaulted, all for the sake of what I can only assume to be the greed of your leaders. I’ve got no beef with you, but I am not just going to take that lying down. So, like your soldier friends in the desert, I’m giving you one final chance. Send me home and call this whole thing off. I’ll give you 20 minutes to make arrangements. After that, I’m coming in there, and finding someone who will. For any of those who wish to leave, I would go now.”

Still outside the city, Ava stepped back from the city’s edge, and lowered herself to the ground to sit and wait.

---

Mattison cradled his head in his hands.  This was a disaster.

Communication backed with strength had failed. Full-on military intervention had failed. General Atwood had had to be physically removed from the war room, his supposedly invincible Gulliverian mercenaries bested in minutes, now reduced to ranting and raving about “the doomsday plan” and “all defensive measures.”

As if things couldn’t get worse, reports were filtering in about people disappearing en masse from portal stations in some strange burst of energy.

Without the portals, there was no way of communicating with Brobdingnag, and no way of calling in more help from Lilliput, as if any of it would be enough against her.

She thought them all greedy kidnappers, and he had no way of contradicting her. The best Lilliputian engineers had been tasked with building a sound system capable of reaching a set of ears miles away, but it would take time. And with her ridiculous ultimatum, time was something they didn’t have.

He turned pleadingly to Secretary of State Miller, who had been put in charge of the science and engineering teams. “Any news on finding a way to portal her out of here?”

Miller, ever reticent, could barely meet his eyes. “The portals are completely unresponsive, and even if they were up and running, they were never designed to transport something that large. Our scientists don’t even know if it’s possible.”

“Well, it’s clearly possible,” Mattison scoffed dejectedly.

Miller said nothing.

On war room screens, they could see Ava’s now-sitting form looming like a human mountain range on the outskirts of the city. She had at least given them the courtesy of not sitting on the city itself, but as that bountiful, mile and half wide denim-clad ass hit the ground, untold mass behind it, it was as if a bomb had gone off. If any buildings on Concordia’s outskirts remained standing after Ava had knelt on them earlier, they were reduced to dust by the shockwave rippling with destructive power across the landscape now. Even in the bunker the city leaders could feel the earth shake, and not stop shaking as she then casually rearranged herself to get more comfortable.

Where the Boundary once stood, a mile-high black rubber sandal sole now towered into the air at the city’s edge. One long leg had been cutely tucked under her, but Ava had left the other extended, the vast plain of flawless pale skin standing like a living monument to her terrible power, dwarfing everything around it. Occasionally, a smooth knee would raise lazily miles into the air, the unfathomable power behind that mighty leg somehow retracting the immovable, towering footwear until the sole landed with its own quake on the desert floor; only for it to extend once more moments later.

Above it all, the girl herself seemed mostly pre-occupied with some kind of enormous communication device, which, from what they could see, looked vaguely like one that Lilliputians had used generations ago. A bored young woman scrolling on her phone, sitting in judgment of the fate of millions.

Meanwhile, Ava’s proclamation to “go now,” combined with the reminder of impending doom that was her titanic presence, had set the city into chaos.  But with the portals down, routes to safety were extremely limited.

Perhaps the luckiest found their way to vast old shelters built for the Gulliverian Wars. Many, if not most had fallen into disrepair or were otherwise inaccessible following the construction of the Boundary, but the few that remained were now packed with Lillis praying that concrete and steel bunkers designed to resist four-hundred-foot-tall invaders could stand up against a single six-mile-plus one.

There was one land route out of the city, and while it thankfully ran away from the titaness at the city’s edge, it was little-used, with the near-instantaneous portals being so readily available and the closest town dozens of miles away. The winding four-lane road was a place to take visiting relatives seeing Concordia’s beautiful beaches for the first time, or to find a discreet place to make out at one of the many scenic overlooks. It was not made for evacuating millions.

That left the port and airports, and thousands flooded these transit points, with more arriving by the minute. Mattison had called out the army to facilitate evacuation, but like everything else it was far too late, and the overwhelmed soldiers in their riot gear struggled to control the surging crowds. There were nowhere near enough boats to save everyone, and while Gulliveria had found it in their hearts to send a set of gigantic freighters to assist, they were far too large to dock at the Lilliputian-sized port and so floated tantalizingly out of reach, people needing to be ferried on smaller boats that could only fit so many at a time. As for the planes, they remained grounded after Ava’s little demonstration with the drones, and even the rogue pilots who had flouted the hold orders only left with the passengers they had onboard – everyone else remained trapped in the terminal.

Despite having little hope of escape, hundreds of thousands, if not millions continued to pour into the streets, stuck in immovable traffic going nowhere or simply wandering the streets aimlessly in a daze. Millions more huddled in houses and shops and buildings, perhaps hoping that this was all just a bad dream and would pass just as easily.

As Mattison pondered this seemingly unsolvable conundrum, what sounded like an alarm clock could be heard blaring over the war room speakers, clearly coming from the giantess’ device.

Guess our time is up, he thought.

On the big screen, Ava’s colossal form began to rise. 

---

As she switched off her alarm with a swipe of a finger, Ava couldn’t believe these puny Lilliputians were calling her bluff. She knew from her mom that Lillis were often arrogant well beyond what their miniscule stature seemed to justify, but could they not see she had all the power here? Did they not realize that their city was little more than an oversized rug to her? That they themselves were less than ants, and that if not for her prior knowledge of Lilliput she might not have even noticed them at all?

She pondered, briefly, whether perhaps they could not actually fulfill her simple demands, but immediately dismissed that as ridiculous. How could they have brought her here with no way to send her home? It made no sense.

Ava peered down at the city, trying to see if any people had managed to escape, but couldn’t really tell from this high up. She supposed there was no turning back now. Her mom had always told her that the minute you back down on a threat in a negotiation you’ve lost. And if there was one thing Ava hated, whether in sports or in the local pub trivia she dragged her roommates to every week, it was losing.

Still, Ava thought she might give the stubborn Lillis one more chance to reconsider. Sliding her well-worn sandals from her pretty feet she lifted the sturdy footwear into air, dangling them by their thick leather straps at arm’s length over a section of city.

“Oops,” she said exaggeratedly, and let them fall to the city below.

Each individual sandal was nearly a mile in length and nearly two thousand feet wide, the leather and rubber monstrosities weighing countless millions of tons. Dropped from a height of several miles, the impact was devastating. The right sandal alone covered an entire neighborhood with ease as it landed heavily on its sole with a deafening boom. Hundreds of houses, apartment buildings and shops, and all the people inside them simply exploded under it, the resulting shockwave flattening the area in a hundred-foot radius and shattering windows far and wide. Below the grooved sandal tread nothing now remained, the sandal resting flat on the ground as if nothing had ever been there at all.   

The left sandal was somehow worse, bouncing on its edge with catastrophic force and then rolling over to land upside down on yet another formerly pristine Lilliputian neighborhood. Those who weren’t immediately crushed flat by the wide leather straps or gargantuan metal buckles found themselves cast into a dark cave, their sky now a vast plain of leather darkened with the imprint of a colossal bare foot, their senses overwhelmed with the pungent smell of leather and feet.

Ava waited, counting the seconds in her head. Still nothing.

Oh well, I tried, she thought, harboring a lingering sense of pity for what was about to happen.

Turning to the city, she addressed the populace once more, “Here’s what’s going to happen now. I’m going to head over to that pretty-looking beach on the other side of town. I might do some sightseeing along the way. Don’t forget, you can make this all stop at any time by doing what I’ve asked. I strongly suggest you consider it.”

With that, she stepped into the city. 

---

Carmen had walked right out the door of her midtown office.

When Ava first took those fateful steps into Concordia proper, Carmen had heeded the emergency broadcast blaring from public address speakers, handheld devices and civil drones all over town to stay indoors, even as the building felt like it was going to be torn apart by the kneeling Brobby girl.

But when Ava returned, Carmen wasn’t waiting around. She wasn’t about to let some titanic bitch just trample right over her without even trying to escape. She got up from her desk, walked right down the stairs and out into the street.

She joined the crowds swarming the sidewalks as they streamed…somewhere. She wasn’t sure where they were going exactly, but at least it was away from the giant redhead now once again looming a few short miles behind them. Rows of honking cars lined the road filled with people trying to escape, but going nowhere fast. With many appearing to be abandoned by their former occupants, it didn’t look like that was going to change anytime soon. Carmen was thankful she’d worn comfortable shoes to the office that day.

Above them, the colossal girl was moving, extending a long, toned arm over the city.  Before Carmen could even register that the massive brown object she held was her own sandals, they were dropping towards the ground, falling towards neighborhoods only a few blocks to the right of where she walked. Carmen just stood there, transfixed, watching those otherwise ordinary-looking shoes tumble through the sky, people surging around her. The impact, when it came, threw her and everyone around her to the ground as it quaked beneath them. Windows shattered above her, and Carmen added her voice to the screaming crowds as she crouched on the sidewalk and desperately covered her head with her hands trying to protect herself as shards of glass flying through the air and littering the street.

The quaking subsided and she could see the discarded footwear towering over the surroundings, now empty of their owner, but no less deadly.

Carmen ran. Others ran too. She had barely covered three blocks when her legs started burning and she could feel a cramp forming. She had been a runner all her life, but lately had been distracted with work – she was regretting that now. But still she kept going.

She looked back at the titaness, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Ava’s massive leg had swung forward, toned muscle flexing, effortlessly outpacing her pathetic attempt to flee with its sheer length. Carmen slowed her pace as the vast foot at the end of that leg glided overhead. It was indescribably huge, eclipsing her sky, going on and on for thousands of feet. She noticed with involuntary recognition how soft and smooth the uncalloused sole looked, how carefully painted and cared for were the long, skyscraper-sized toes.

The girl clearly appreciates a good pedicure, she couldn’t help thinking.

Debris, likely as unnoticed as a bit of dust to the giant girl, began to fall around Carmen, drifting down from the sole above. Car-sized boulders and plant life churned up from the desert floor struck the ground and the fleeing crowd. She saw one fellow runner reduced to gore as a three-ton chunk of rock hit him at speed. She slowed completely. They were about to become just more dirt on that well-cared-for sole.

Like a pretty girl testing water she thought might be too cold, the lowering sole angled downward and the immense toes drifted onto the buildings not a hundred feet ahead of where Carmen stood on the sidewalk gaping. She and the rest of the crowd were cast into an eerie twilight, the vast sole above them still dozens of feet in the air, but so close they could see every line, every minute wrinkle. The colossal toes touched down, almost lightly, and Carmen could see the buildings ahead begin to crumble from the top down under their soft caress. They continued to lower, ever so slowly, the once sturdy buildings continuing to offer no resistance whatsoever to the titanic girl’s gentle touch.

Then, without warning, those same toes came down in force, the massive ball lowering swiftly as well, flattening everything under it instantly, and bringing down with it just a taste of the unfathomable power of the goddess above.

The street became a maelstrom. Buildings to the left and right exploded as the displaced air and force of the impact hit the entire block like a bomb. Shattered masonry, glass and metal flew through the air like shrapnel, tearing into the desperate crowd of Lillis.  Cars lifted off the ground and became projectiles, smashing those in their path into the broken buildings lining the road or the concrete and asphalt below. Carmen felt herself blown sideways several feet in the air, spinning, flying, and landing hard on the hard ground, scraping against it. Sharp pain flared in her side, she felt a dull ache all over, but somehow she was still alive.

As her vision righted, she began crawling crab-like on her hands desperately backwards, anything to escape this hell. Ahead of her she saw a middle-aged man half crushed under falling brickwork, a woman in a business suit pinned against a façade by a car blown on its side clear off the street. Great fissures had spread from the foot’s point of impact, the earth itself fracturing and tearing, and the yawning chasms had swallowed people and buildings whole. A gas main exploded suddenly under the street in a fireball that consumed dozens running desperately nearby, a water main followed, gushing into the air through shattered asphalt.

Still Carmen survived. She staggered to her feet, pain coursing through every inch of her. She looked up and saw the long sole still hovering above her, as if daring them to hope.

No. She wasn’t going to die this way. She had her whole life ahead of her. She was successful, she was beautiful, she was young. No way would she become just a grease spot on some arrogant bitch’s heel.

She ran through the pain. Ran harder than she ever had before. Down a street to the left this time – no longer following the crowds foolishly trying to outrun a goddess. She saw sunlight shining on the ground ahead of her, a patch of asphalt not shadowed by a colossal sole. She could make it.

The light around her dimmed even further. Carmen ran harder. She sensed a weighty presence above her, felt overwhelming body heat make the air swelter. Still she ran. She felt herself pressed into the ground by an unyielding mass, and then she felt nothing at all.

---

Ava’s first step into the city was…odd. The tickling, powdery feeling as she grazed her toes against the crystalline, shimmering structures that she knew to be tiny Lilliputian buildings was like nothing she had ever felt. Lowering her sole in full, she was curious to see that the brittle structures several inches around her pretty, soft foot had also collapsed in on themselves with her step. As she applied more of her weight, she felt her foot sink deeply into the ground as if it were soft clay, the earth itself molding to her sole, jagged fissures and cracks raying outwards from the borders of her vast footprint under the pressure. Wiggling her long toes, she could feel the remnants of whatever had survived between them squish like so much sand.

Still, there didn’t seem to be any danger to her in it. Not that she had really expected there to be. And so she continued onward undeterred, equally devastating steps erasing whole neighborhoods and the thousands -- if not tens of thousands -- of Lilliputian souls in them. The only remnant of her passage a 100-foot-deep imprint of her perfect, nearly mile-long foot, a now-barren wasteland replacing once-bustling cityscape.

Ava thought little of this, though, instead vaguely wondering how she might see this supposed city a bit more up close and personal.

---

Patrick’s goal was getting drunk, and he was well on his way to meeting that goal.

 He had really only planned to be in Concordia City for one night, thinking a stay in a suite at the luxurious Paramount Tower would be a reasonable balance against the stress and hassle of this business trip.

The trip his wife had told him not to go on. Right again, honey, he thought with a sigh.

The glass-faced tower soared over 150 stories in the air, highest in Concordia City, its sculpted glass façade, wide at the base, narrowing and curving gently upwards was a pinnacle of Lilliputian engineering admired far and wide. It was a place where billionaires owned condos from which they could look down through remote-controllable, electrochromic glass on the hoi polloi of the city below, where captains of industry moved markets from corner offices, and where wealthy business travelers like Patrick could enjoy the five-star amenities of its mixed luxury hotel and high-end shopping complex.

The building’s Sky Bar, spanning the tower’s 130th and 131st floors was where one came to see and be seen in Concordia City, to make deals that would shape whole industries. Now it had become a refuge for trapped elites who had simply given up on surviving the calamity occurring outside its two-story floor to ceiling windows. Patrick counted himself among their number.

The bartenders, consummate professionals all (God bless them), kept serving drinks without pause, not even sparing a glance for the giant menace outside. He supposed it was like the orchestra continuing to play on a sinking ship, but with expensive whiskey.

Patrick was on his fourth. When Ava had first stepped into town, Patrick had tried to call his wife over his headset, maybe say goodbye, but to no avail. Whatever communications relays they used were probably smashed like half the city under a colossal set of happily wiggling, white-painted toes. Now, he just chose to drink.

He had to give the Paramount one thing: in addition to stocking the best top-shelf, that high-tech construction really worked. He vaguely remembered watching a holo-stream one night with Claudia on the science behind it, something to do with “active adaptive stabilization” and “self-healing materials.” It was all beyond him. But even as the miles-tall titan stomped around the city, flattening whole blocks at a time under her feet, the whiskey in his cup barely rippled.   

Despite his best efforts, though, it was hard to ignore what was going on outside. The place was known for its near 360-degree view, so all he had to do was glance out the windows across the elliptical mahogany bar at its center and there she was, or at least the little he could see of her shins and deadly feet, not to mention the smoke gently rising from the barren swathes of devastation that were her footprints. Even through the triple-soundproofed windows and piped in music, he could still hear the deep boom of those seismic footfalls, not to mention the constant clang of the air raid siren, as if anyone in Concordia could miss the 6-mile-tall goddess of destruction strolling through the town.

He re-focused on his most important goal.

“Give me another,” Patrick slurred slightly at the bartender, pointing to his glass. He thought his name was Nick. Or maybe Nate?  No matter.

"Is she getting closer?” a worried fellow patron asked no one in particular.

It was true. Those towering legs had turned slightly from their previous leisurely beeline for the beach and seemed instead to instead be sauntering confidently right in their direction.

As she came closer, the ripples in drinks increased, the booming footfalls got louder, but the tower stayed steady. Maybe she’s just strolling on by?

At this ever-shrinking distance, Patrick could see that high up as they were, they barely crested the ankle of the titanic girl. As if to emphasize this point, her left foot swung forward, long, white-tipped toes dragging lazily through the forest of buildings like a girl walking through sand, annihilating them effortlessly in clouds of exploded steel and glass before landing with a thunderous report not a hundred feet from Patrick’s perch, doubtless wiping out scores more beneath. Confirming his suspicions, Patrick could see a simple beaded anklet dangling on a smooth, slender ankle right in front of the Sky Bar’s windows, the beads themselves nearly as tall as the two stories of glass.

“Ooo, this looks cool,” the giantess thundered down at them from far above. There was no doubt in any of the Sky Bar’s patrons’ minds what she was referring to, but still no one moved. Nick/Nate and other bartenders kept serving.

All remained calm until three flesh-colored pillars seemingly descended from the sky on either side of the spacious bar. Each was wider than the building itself at the tapered point at which Patrick sat, with the shortest perhaps close to matching its wider base. Massive silvery rings adorned two of the fingers, each hundreds of feet thick, and the longest finger was nearly as long as the entire building.  

The grasping digits angled slightly, and yelps of panic rang out in the bar as they began to close around the building’s base like a colossal, softly padded vice. As vast fingertips pressed against the cool glass surface of its façade, the Paramount shook in earnest for the first time, drinkware and bottles falling off shelves, bar patrons stumbling or sliding off chairs.

Guess active adaptive whatever can’t stand up to the power of a god after all, Patrick thought as he righted himself on his stool.

Everyone knew what was coming next. The fingers tightened, more power in them than in all of Lilliput. The building shook further, and Patrick heard metal straining and reinforced glass shattering on multiple floors below. But still the building held firm, and there was a pause in the rocking as the giantess perhaps considered her options.

With the calm of moderate intoxication and the foreknowledge of a former life as a military pilot, Patrick slowly stepped down from his stool and lay himself carefully on the floor. He had just settled when the building shook more violently than ever before, rocking and throwing patrons this way and that, bodies and furniture and glassware flying through the air, bouncing off windows and walls. One man was instantly crushed as a heavy slate lounge table pinwheeled through the air to land on top of him. A woman thrown upward against a chandelier landed with a crash on the hard ground and didn’t move again. Then suddenly they were airborne, rocketing upward at a mind-bending pace, and everyone was pinned to the ground by the tremendous g-forces.

Patrick strained not to pass out, mostly succeeding. Others weren’t as lucky. When the motion stopped, he raised his head slightly off the ground, initially only seeing blue sky out the somehow still intact glass windows.

Then he saw it, an emerald-green eye, nearly 400-feet tall, peering with curiosity into what to her was a building the size of a flash drive. She looked at them the way one might gaze curiously at ants in an ant farm. Or, Patrick realized, since they weren’t even the size of ants to this colossal woman, the way you might look at grains of sand in an hourglass.

She was so close, and the room so quiet, he could hear the repeated rush of air of her gentle breathing, gale force blasts of hot breath that would’ve blown him clear away without a single thought. Still she said nothing.

A woman nearby shrieked and then went silent as she came to and saw where they were. Then they were moving again. More horizontally this time, which was somehow worse as Patrick found himself sliding up with a crash against the bar.

She was holding them just in front of her face now, and her astounding visage filled the tall windows. If Patrick had seen her on the street and not miles in the air, he thought it would seem like a kind face, certainly an attractive one. Soft features, cute button nose, clear, fair skin done up lightly for a fashionable natural look. Those piercing green eyes. A splash of freckles and full pink lips breaking now into a gorgeous smile, revealing building-sized teeth, gleaming white, and a dark chasm of a mouth that looked like it could swallow a city whole. She could be one of his daughter’s classmates, just blown up to absurd proportions.

Patrick felt the entire building rotate as she rolled them lightly between her fingers, the high-tech superstructure straining and groaning with the casual pressure. Just a girl examining her catch.

She opened her mouth to speak, and all hell broke loose.

“You guys look important. Maybe you can send me home?” she thundered, still wearing that cute grin.

The words were barely intelligible above the explosion of sound and air that crashed against the tiny building. Windows that had survived the six plus mile climb all seemed to shatter at once with the force of her speaking so close. Patrick and his fellow patrons cowered on the ground desperately covering their shattered eardrums as they were instantly deafened by the sound that filled the space. Shards of glass flew like daggers, impaling deafened guests and embedding with a thud into furniture and walls. Hot breath washed over them with hurricane force.

“No? I guess you’re not much use to me then…”

Though they now couldn’t hear her, the force of this second blast of speech, unimpeded by panes of reinforced glass, flung people and furniture alike across the room. Patrick spun through the air, crashing heavily into a wall and feeling something snap before sliding back down to the hard ground below.

The bar darkened as something huge and pinkish slid across the now windowless walls, blocking out the light.

What do you do with trash you don’t need?

The walls groaned louder, though Patrick couldn’t hear them, and suddenly Patrick felt the wall he was slumped against begin to press inward. Patrick crawled desperately toward the center of the circular bar, though he knew it would be of little use. He felt unbearably sharp pains flare in his arm and leg, but adrenaline alone pushed him onward.

The walls continued to collapse, the floor beginning to split in jagged chunks as it shattered from the pressure. Chandeliers fell from the ceiling, one crushing Nick/Nate, who already appeared half-dead. Still Patrick crawled. The ceiling above now dropped in chunks of concrete, wood, and marble, raining down and pancaking people and furniture alike. The walls continued to get closer, squeezing together as Ava easily crumpled the once-proud building like so much trash between her fingers.

As the squeezing suddenly stopped, Patrick found himself huddled in the dead center of the bar, walls so close he could touch them, somehow the sole being still alive in this living trash compactor. Then he felt the floor drop out beneath him.

Ava let the puny, crumpled skyscraper tumble from her fingers to the ground below, the mass of glass and steel crushing a previously untouched block beneath it.  For good measure she dropped a bare foot on it and the entire neighborhood around it, twisting her toes with relish and grinding the tiny building out like the cigarette it resembled. A once 1500-foot-tall engineering marvel now reduced to a foot-high two-dimensional scrap of metal under her pretty foot.

Ava resumed her deadly stroll to the beach. 

---

The beachfront section of Concordia City was a hub of commercial activity. The working port was one of the busiest in Lilliput, receiving shipments too large to convey via portal, and the miles-long white sand beaches were lined with fancy hotels, luxury shops and hip restaurants.

Tens of thousands of desperate Lilliputians had swarmed the area in their flight from their titanic tormentor. It wasn’t rational -- she had openly declared that the beach was her destination -- but caught up in panicked crowds, their animal brains took over and pushed them towards the area that seemed furthest away from the crushing steps of the giant girl.

But now Ava had arrived, her towering form casting the area in shadow, and panic was fully reaching its height. In the port, thousands pushed and shoved, scratching and clawing to get onto the painfully sparse boats ferrying Lillis out to waiting Gulli freighters. The MPs managing the crowd barely restrained them, sometimes resorting to firing off rounds into the air or even using non-lethal rounds to scare people back into some semblance of order. Others swarmed the beach, perhaps hoping to escape the collapsing buildings that always preceded Ava’s arrival, praying that she might miss them as she surveyed an area that to her appeared to be maybe a dozen feet long and a few inches wide.

As she approached closer, Ava casually erased two squat beachfront luxury hotels and thousands of Lillis under a colossal left foot, the entire area heaving with the resulting earthquake, but took no further steps, seeming merely to observe her chosen spot.

Ava was frustrated. She glanced back at her stroll across the city and saw the clear impact of her presence, perfect imprints of her long feet as if pressed into wet sand covered the city’s center, fires raged and smoke wafted up from sections of city she hadn’t even touched, but instead destroyed with her mere presence.

How could they be so stubborn? It was almost like they were daring her to destroy them.

She stomped her left foot once in frustration, the shockwave from the more powerful step throwing those lining the beach to their knees and shattering windows all along the beachfront.

Well, if this is what they want, they’re certainly going to get it.

Ava stepped over the inches wide beach and into the warm water beyond. The impact of something so large on the water’s surface sent massive tidal waves surging away from her (they looked like little ripples to her). Lilli boats ferrying frantic refugees were consumed by the waves, never to resurface, and even the huge Gulli boats miles from shore struggled in the surge. Lillis on the beach drowned by the hundreds as the wall of water hit them and restaurants closest to the water were simply washed away.

The water at this distance barely covered her toes, and she wiggled them playfully, feeling the sandy bottom churn under the massive digits, and sending fresh new waves crashing against the beachside.

"You really don’t give a girl much room to lay out here, you know?” Ava boomed with a wry laugh, glancing cutely over her shoulder at the beach behind her.

The sharpest in the crowds knew what was coming, but could do nothing to stop it as Ava’s planetary, ripped-denim-covered ass began to descend on an entire swathe of beachfront.

Those on the beach directly under her or observing from the boardwalk looked up to see miles of light blue cotton getting closer and closer. Screams that failed to reach Ava’s ears high above chorused from the doomed tinies, as Ava lowered herself inexorably onto their patch of city.

The impact, when it came, was among the most devastating of Ava’s short reign of terror. Her sculpted ass covered blocks upon blocks of beachfront and city, flattening hotels, restaurants, apartment buildings and parks with equal ease. Tens of thousands of Lillis simply vanished beneath her, millions of tons of denim-covered girlflesh burying them deep into the soft ground. The shockwave was almost equally devastating, shattering the area for miles around as buildings collapsed and people were blown clear away.

But Ava wasn’t done. She pivoted on that colossal rear, the denim-covered edifice sliding and pasting hundreds of Lillis who had previously counted themselves safe under the arc of her long legs. Those same legs now rose into the air, extending miles along the beach, creamy thighs and toned calves casting the desperately fleeing Lillis not previously drowned or crushed into shadow. Her huge feet, wettened from the ocean, swung over the massive port, raining gallons upon gallons of water down on Lillis still hoping to escape by boat, the droplets impacting like bombs, and the flow sweeping hapless Lillis off the dock and into the water below.

As she began to lower herself to lie along the beach, everyone knew it was the end for them. One Lilli sprinted like mad through the churned wet sand as a thigh wider than a city block began to roll over the beach, milky white flesh flattening those running behind him under its soft weight. He had miraculously survived a previous brush with the titaness, spared under her high arch during one of her devastating footsteps. But his luck had run out, and he along with hundreds of others were buried under the crushing softness of Ava’s long leg.

Over the port, those colossal feet also began to lower, thousands of Lillis once straining to get onto the water, now sprinting to get back into the city and away from the nearly mile-long appendages. MPs and citizens fled alike, but none were fast enough. The right foot hit first, unknowingly obliterating all of the remaining Lilli boats and driving them into the sea. Then the left made contact, its width crushing even those who had managed to get just outside the port as they fled. As they settled to the ground, Ava’s long toes flared slightly, instantly squishing a group of ten Lilli dockworkers who had somehow survived between them, and slid forward as her long legs extended, easily smearing the remnants of the port beneath them and driving her colossal toes into the next section of city, where the kaiju-sized digits plowed through yet more Concordia real estate and unlucky citizens.

At the other end of Ava’s seemingly endless body her back and exposed shoulders covered miles of city beneath them as they rolled over and onto the blocks below, crushing them into the ground. Hundreds of thousands looked up to see the drape of simple white cotton or tautly muscled shoulder before being buried without a second thought. Even Ava’s auburn locks caused damage as her head came to rest, the wavy, steel cable like strands of fiery red hair ensnaring vehicles and people and crashing through storefronts.

“Ahhh, that’s better,” Ava said, instantly deafening those nearest the mile-wide head that rested on their city.

Little did she know it, but in the simple act of laying out, Ava had caused the single largest casualty event in Lilliputian history.

---

Ava rested quietly on her city bed, scrolling through pictures on her phone. At first, she had been fascinated by the up-close view of the miniature city next to her now much closer face. She had playfully run her fingers through the buildings, seeing up close how a single fingernail could demolish an entire skyscraper, hell even an entire city block, with ease. She saw how even the simple act of breathing too close blew away the specks she assumed to be cars or vehicles, her minor exhalations washing over them and causing destruction all on their own.

But now she was bored of all that, and very much ready for this whole ordeal to be over. She’d made her point, and there was no way they couldn’t take her seriously now.

Just then, she heard a humming sound, and shading her eyes with one hand, saw that overhead two flying vehicles, each a couple of her inches long, were hovering there. They looked like transport  helicopters but without rotors, seeming to be propelled by some kind of energy system. She was about to swat them out of the sky as just another futile set of attackers when she noticed something much more interesting. There, hanging between them, was a massive, white flag.

She had won! They were giving up!

Now, finally, they had to send her home. And sure enough, just as she had begun sitting up to tell them just that, there was a green flash, and Ava was gone.