The near full moon cast everything in the desert in a monotint of navy-blue hues.  The distinctive LED light signature of a Range Rover cast lonely beams on the northbound lane of Highway 191 about 70 miles east of Tucson.  The vehicle slowed, made a right turn into a barely visible unpaved road, and immediately came to a stop before a locked gate.  A sign on the gate identified the property as belonging to H&I properties.  H&I was a DBA name for a company owned by Padwick Partners, which was wholly owned by a shell company which itself was owned by Barrington industries, which through a few more shell companies, was owned by Wanda Bertrand.  The padlock unlocked itself and hopped from the latch onto the ground, and the gate smoothly opened inward as if it had been powered.  After the vehicle passed through, the gate closed again and the lock leaped back up and stuck the open end of the shackle through the holes in the gate and post plates, and latched itself back into its former position.

The unpaved road soon dissipated and became one with the desert sand, but the Rover was up to the task as it proceeded over a half-mile before stopping.  Lights off, the driver’s door marred with two bullet holes opened and out came a bare foot followed by a noticeably long leg.  The sparse details of the surrounding terrain began to manifest themselves as Wanda’s enhanced eyes adjusted to the moonlit darkness. 

Unsurprising for May in Arizona, the night was warm, which was inviting to Wanda’s body as she raised the power tailgate proceeded to strip off her clothes. Each piece of clothing was neatly placed in the cargo area until she was completely naked.  She pushed the button and darkness returned as the tailgate closed. Wanda pushed the button that locked the vehicle, and stood, uncertain what to do with the keys in her hand before placing them on top of the driver-side rear tire.

Looking around briefly, she then starting walking farther east.  After about five minutes she stopped, figuring this spot was about as good as any other.  Wanda ran her hands up and down her body once.  Even years into this body, she still loved what her hands felt, when she did that. 

‘Time to give it a whirl!’ she thought. After a few minimal experiments in her motel room with full body expansion, she was finally going to see if this could really amount to something.  The first step was to tap her power source.  Over two hundred miles to the west, the Palo Verde Generating Station was the nation’s largest nuclear plant.  She needed just a small percentage of its capacity. She felt the connection, the power was cold, but steady, and so plentiful!

Next came the smoke screen, a standard centuries-old protocol for physical magic in a public location.  There wasn’t much public here but she applied it anyway out of habit. A ring of swirling smoke surrounded her before expanding vertically and becoming a cylinder, blocking view of everything around her, which was pretty much nothing.

And now for the big event!

The cell expansion she experienced almost daily as her breast size adjusted, was similar to the feeling when you slowly move a hand across the hairs on your arm.  Wanda was now experiencing that on her whole body. The smoke rose and expanded with her blocking any visible reference to her progress. She did feel the ground move under her feet trying to push her legs together as she kept adjusted to keep them apart.  She relished the feel of the power plant’s energy entering and spreading out through her body. And now she began to feel air flowing downward against her shoulders, head and through her breasts.  She had no idea how fast she was growing and realized that in the future, she would have to figure out some kind of guide for that.

She should stop.  No just a little bit longer.  And a little bit more. And then a little bit more after that.  There doesn’t seem to be any end, but when she began to feel a chill in her head and shoulders, she stopped for real.

In about ten seconds, the smoke dissipated. And she saw…what exactly?  Perhaps she should have chosen a less barren location.  At least a forest would give her some trees to compare herself to.

She turned around and saw, in the distance, a wide expanse of lights covering the ground.  What city would that be?  Wilcox?  No, there were way too many lights for that small town. Looking closer she could see a small vertical aspect to some of the lights.  High-rise buildings.  That would have to be Tucson. But between her and Tucson was mountain range about 5,000 feet high, peaking at over 10,000 feet at Mt. Graham.  Was it possible she was looking over a 5,000 ridge?  Wanda looked for Mt. Graham which would be to the north of her view of Tucson.  In fact, would be pretty much right in between her and…

Shit, she saw it!  Not Mt Graham, but lights on the horizon edge northwest of her that could only be the Phoenix area!  Mt. Graham wasn’t visible at all.  That is until she looked downward and saw a couple tiny blinking red lights that indicated its peak.  It was low.  Maybe a little above her knee.  That put her at multiple ten-thousands of feet tall!  Scratch that, she was multiple miles tall! 

Wanda had not anticipated this. She had thought this experiment would put her at a range from say fifty feet, like in the movies, maybe even a couple of hundred feet, tops. But that was far from “tops”.  Hell, this wasn’t even tops!  She was this size when she had chosen to stop growing!

Wanda looked back at Tucson.  It seemed so close, now.  It would be nothing to just walk right over there, stepping over the three unseen mountain ridges between here and there as she went!

Among all the lights she saw one moving.  Just one.  At first it seemed like it was going downward but after considering her perspective, she realized it was approaching, but much lower than her. Hell, everything was lower than her!  Was it a car? It now looked like it would go past her on the left and as she focused her attention on it, she instinctively took a couple of steps to the left until it was approaching her directly.  The ground vibrated with each step. 

Via Air flight 480 was an EMB 120 Turbo prop from Tucson to Austin, TX.  It had been delayed two hours due to the fact that 15 of its 21 scheduled passengers all came from the same badly delayed flight from Fresno. This left pretty much everyone on the plane on the irritable side.

“Hey, where’s the sky?”  The question came from the Jerrod, the co-pilot.

What do you mean?” replied the pilot, Martin Weller

I was looking at stars and now I’m not seeing them, except to the right.  It’s like something is blocking them.”

“TAWS and EGPWS are silent.  As they should be. No clouds expected. We’re ascending at 18.5K. The highest point here is under 11K.”

“I know, but I’d still feel better if we flew to the right of whatever is blocking the view.”

“Tucson control, this is Victor India 480 banking 5 degrees south on account of…visibility.  Also requesting an altitude confirmation.  Over

“Roger Victor India 480., adjustment acknowledged, confirming alt at 18.9. Over.”

Jerrod was relieved at seeing the sky in front of him.  “I still see it, the blackout, to the left.  What is that?”

Martin joined in “the delineation is very vertical, more like a rain squall than a mount…

“Whoa!” they voiced in unison upon seeing the blackout move to the right and in front of them again. 

“It moved!  I swear it moved! Jerrod added, followed by “Forward lights” as he flicked a switch. 

Nothing appeared at first, but then as they approached, the black started turning to tan.

Is that…sand?

“Pulling Up! Pulling Up!” shouted the pilot, not hiding his fear.

Victor India 480 to Tucson, encountering unknown obstruction! Repeat, unknown obstruction!”

They watched as the surface began to angle away.  It looked like they were leveling off after coming straight down, and yet it felt like and instruments all said they are going straight up. Then something else appeared, like a massive smooth ball.

“What the hell! It looks like a…”

Wanda watched the light as it approached.  It seemed slow at first, its velocity appeared faster the closer it got, and she became aware of a light buzzing sound.  Suddenly, it became brighter, and then brighter still just before it disappeared under her left breast. Immediately after she felt something like a bug bite under that breast and her left hand instinctively slapped her boob’s underside.

It felt brittle, like that of an insect exoskeleton and when she brought her hand forward, she just saw an orange glow.  She immediately thought ‘firefly’. She corrected herself that firefly lights are green, not orange before remembering that she is miles tall and that fireflies long since became invisible. 

Then it came.  The energy of 24 life-forces entering her body.  Were she normal sized, the sudden influx of 24 human life-forces would be overwhelming. In her present state, it simply registered.

So, it was an aircraft, obviously.  “Was” being the key word as her thumb nudged the tiny orange fireball and snuffed it out before rolling the brittle bits a half inch across her palm.  It was hard to ascribe significance to anything so small, and anyway, what’s done is done.  Wanda swung her left arm up and flicked the wreckage away over her shoulder.

You can access the final sensory impressions of any life-force you capture, though only human experiences offer anything understandable and Wanda hadn’t captured more than one of those at a time since her trek to Gdansk. Now she had 24 all at once.  She randomly tapped into one, which was that of being confused and frightened in a small commercial airliner, as it abruptly climbed to almost vertical before it crashed and compressed like a stomped soda can.  She experienced pretty much the same from slightly different locations in the cabin before she tapped the co-pilot, blurting his emergency message as he saw her lovely skin rushing by through the window and then, comically for Wanda, less than a second of approaching the underside of her boob.

“Well, that was unexpected!” she said out loud to herself.  Reverberation of her words bouncing back to her from the ground alerted her that even introspective comments to herself could be quite loud.

But unexpected it was.  She had this land purchased for this purpose precisely because it was in the middle of nowhere.  She never figured flight paths into it, nor dreamed that flight paths could possibly be an issue.

Not that she could claim that the idea of causing death and destruction hadn’t crossed her mind when she started developing this ability.  And with that, she unconsciously turned toward the distant lights of Phoenix again.  At this size, it would be nothing to stroll over there, lie down on one side of the city and simply roll across the other side.  She could completely obliterate the entire city in a matter of seconds.  They would never know what hit them.

But there lies the problem with that scenario.  She wanted them to know what hit them.  She wanted them shocked, petrified, frightened, worried about their loved ones.  She wanted them to frantically fight for their lives, see possible glimmers of hope only to have them shattered.  In short, she was more interested in creating terror than death in that disgusting city.  And sadly, this size was just too much of a blunt instrument for that.

After mulling it over a little longer, she decided that this was simply too big.  Fortunately, what goes up, can come down, and with a little regret of losing the sheer audacity of what she accomplished, she started the process of reducing herself.  She tapped into the nuclear station again, not to draw energy but to return it.  All that mass had to be converted into something.  The plant’s turbines slowed as the demand reduced, but the absorption rate was still slow.  Wanda spread the energy dispersion a bit and before long every cell phone, car battery and any other rechargeable battery in Tucson was fully charged.

The mountain range rose to block the city lights and the dimly lit ground was approaching.  But it if it was barren before it was even more so having been under her feet when she was five-plus miles high. Not keeping her feet still at that height obscured the foot print shape but she had still created a pair of deep craters in the ground, under one of which, would likely be a one-inch high conversion of her Range Rover. Still shrinking, her feet were now edging her way up the inside walls of each crater.

Wanda looked down at headlights pointing north on Highway 191.  The vehicle was stopped and Wanda assumed it was because she had been spotted, when in fact it was due to the earthquake she had been causing, which was diminishing now.  The vehicle proved useful as Wanda estimated her height by its angle to her.  The vehicle began moving again up the road at what appeared to be a normal speed, which told Wanda she had not been seen and she used the last of its close proximity to stop at what seemed to be a reasonable height. 

She decided to check out this “reasonable” height on a trailer park she knew to be just a few miles away.