Part 3

Mayor Adams could feel the tremors around him as he and several of his aides and military chaperones sat inside of the bunker, a dingy and dusty room that had not seen the touch of human hands in decades. The lights in the room constantly flickered, a sign that the power grid was being compromised by the giant monster's attack. Miraculously, the LCD television still functioned, its screen displaying the carnage that was occurring on the surface; the Air Force was currently engaging the giant monster, but both Mayor Adams and his men were shocked when the monster was coated in a strange white light, and then grew over three times her previous height.

Even worse, she was making short work of the fighter jets.

"What the hell!?" one of the soldiers spoke in a mix of shock and anger. "How can she be winning so easily!? They're not even putting a dent in her!"

"She has some kind of... magic powers?" said another. "How are we supposed to beat that!?"

Magic powers, Mayor Adams thought as he stared intently at the old flatscreen. It would have sounded unbelievable before, but there was no denying what was currently being fed into his eyes. It also lined up with the reports from the park, which mentioned her shrinking several men and utilizing a force field.

This whole situation was putting the flaring of his nerves into overdrive.

Just as he let out a deep sigh, another one of his aides burst into the room. The young, bespectacled fellow wore a disturbed look upon his face as he held a few sheets of paper in his hands.

"Mayor," the young man spoke. "We looked into this woman... We scoured our database of women to see if we could find a match, and they did find a young woman who matched the giant's appearance almost 100%. In fact, we are almost certain that it's the same woman."

The aide handed Mayor Adams a sheet of paper, containing a photograph of the woman in question. Indeed, the likeness was uncanny, though she was far more unkempt in the photo than she was on the television screen, and her lips in the photo were turned into a hopeless frown in opposition to the lively and arrogant grin that the giant had.

Mayor Adams could feel the indignation rising inside. "So, one of the women somehow found a way to rebel in such a manner?!"

The young aide shook his head. "It's not her. We checked, and her owner--Mr. Clark Henderson--confirmed that the woman we pulled up is still in his possession. He was just as shocked as we are, though."

"A lost twin, maybe?" Another aide suggested, to which the bespectacled aide shook his head.

"No. She does not have a twin or even any other sisters."

"But how can this be?!" Another aide spoke up.

Mayor Adams folded his arms and lost himself in thought, trying to make even an ounce of sense of this situation. If she was not a lost twin or sister, then just who--or what--was she? How did she acquire such strange powers? What exactly is her end goal? Dare he think it; did his city even have a chance at prevailing?

The frustrated mayor let out a deep sigh.

"Nearly all the weapons we intended to use on her won't have much effect anymore," a soldier remarked, his smartphone in hand. "General Kilmark is still just about ready to deploy the Gungnir, but if it's not up to the task..."

"Mascopolis is done for..." another aide wearily spoke up.

Mayor Adams folded his arms and bowed his head briefly, before turning around to address his group, his concern hidden behind a brave mask.

"No, we are not finished," he started. "We WILL not fall here. No matter what, we will be sure to take that monster down and restore our city to glory!"

"But-"

"Do you doubt me?" Mayor Adams asked the aide.

"N-no! Yeah, you're right. We have the Gungnir, the greatest weapon in the world. There's no way she'll beat us!"

The other men all nodded in agreement, and they seemed to have regained some confidence--perhaps even overly-optimistic faith--over the situation.

Mayor Adams feigned a confident smile of his own. "That's right. And once that maniac is dealt with, we can rebuild the city and help the survivors settle back in."

The men in the room let out a cheer. Even if the situation seemed bad, Mayor Adams just knew that, in the end, this city--the great city known as Mascopolis--would emerge from this crisis greater than ever.

"Mayor Adams," the smartphone-holding soldier called. "General Kilmark wants to know what to do with the guy on that woman's shoulder."

Mayor Adams and the other men looked towards the chaos on screen. The news helicopters with the cameras filming the assault had settled on top of a rather faraway tower, and while the giant was constantly moving, on her right shoulder they could make out the faint spot of a companion of sorts.

"Is he one of ours?" Mayor Adams asked.

"We did research on him as well," the bespectacled aide said. "His name is Samuel Atkins, and according to eyewitness reports from the park before this all started, he was the first man that the woman came into contact with, and is also one that she seems to have made a conscious effort to spare."

"A traitor!?" One of the soldiers indignantly suggested.

"We are unsure. For all we know, she could be holding him hostage. ...Anyway, what should we do about him?"

Mayor Adams folded his arms, his mind thinking over on this young man and how to deal with him. "...We can't afford to hold anything back while taking her down. If he winds up as collateral damage, so be it. We will just count him as among her slain, and honor his memory along with the others once this is all over."

"Alright, I'll tell him to not concern themselves with his safety, sir," the soldier said before relaying the order to General Kilmark on the other side of the line.

"I'll go back to the rest of the team and see what else we can find out," the bespectacled added, nodding before turning around and exiting the room.

Mayor Adams glanced once more at the screen, watching as his allies put their lives on the line to expel this monster. In truth, Mayor Adams felt rather useless, doing nothing but hiding deep underground while that giant monster terrorized his people above. However, he knew that his safety was of utmost important, that he would be needed to pick up the pieces of the shattered city and restore morale.

...And to ensure that nothing like this ever happened again.

His eyes wandered back down to the young lady's photo in his hands, the doppelganger to the monster destroying their city. With this young woman having no sister or twin, there was no way to make sense of the resemblance. ...But such a mystery was of low priority to him at the moment. He had to focus instead on rebuilding the city once the monster had been slain.

The mystery of her identity would be one to solve afterwards.

~~~

Samuel had long since stopped counting; the last number that he mentally logged was fifty-eight. Fifty-eight Air Force fighter jets--and counting and counting--that have been blasted out of the air. It was not like they were not putting up a fight, either; they fired artillery and missiles at the hulking Iris, but she mostly shrug off their attacks, and retaliated with her own assault.

She hurled a massive orange fireball in the direction of three jets which all veered out of the way; the fireball exploded further away in the sky. Another fireball hit its mark and destroyed one of the jets, with its burning shrapnel falling to the ground below and even striking the other passing jets, which caused said jets to lose control and crash into buildings.

"Come on, you can do better than this, right?" Iris taunted.

A volley of missiles struck her from behind, which caused her to stumble forward a bit. After the eight jets responsible for this attack passed overhead, she launched several arrows of ice in their direction as they circled back in her direction. The spears pierced through the wings of the planes, causing each of them to spin out of control in trails of black smoke and hit several buildings with loud explosions. Said buildings went up in flames, with the smaller ones collapsing almost immediately upon impact.

Still, more of the Air Force came and kept up their attempt in warding off the seemingly-unmovable giant woman. Their attempts failed one after another after another, succumbing to the fire, ice, or lightning that Iris threw at them with rather pinpoint accuracy.

A shell struck Iris' shoulder, scarily close to Samuel. He flinched and scooted away from where the shell had hit.

"This is getting dangerous..." Samuel muttered to himself, as Iris kept fighting--or rather, destroying--the planes.

One plane was struck and coated with lightning from Iris, and the pilot inside ejected himself as his jet fell from the sky. Slowing descending from the air with his parachute, he wound up falling right in front of the giant woman, who flashed him an evil grin before closing her open palms onto him, crushing him inbetween with a loud clap that reverberated throughout the surroundings.

"Loser," Iris commented as she rubbed her hands against each other.

A trio of aircraft broke off from the rest and quickly descended towards her, each one firing their two missiles in the process before curving back upwards to avoid the bolt of lightning shot in their way. With her hands, Iris batted two of the projectiles away--the missiles impacting and exploding on the nearby buildings--while the other four of them struck her chest and adding to the collection of small, burnt holes on her shirt. Of course, she did not seem particularly bothered by it.

"She's gonna need a new shirt," Samuel jokingly remarked.

"I'll deal with that later," Iris responded.

"Wait, you can hear me without me shouting?" Samuel asked.

"Yep, so you don't have to strain your vocal cords," she teased.

She shot a blizzard-like blast of ice which billowed into the sky, creating a floating wall of ice crystals that hung in the air. Several of the jets collided with the bluish, shining cloud, and then exited from the opposite end plummeting towards the ground, smoke and oil pouring from the breaches made by the ice. Several of the pilots ejected before the planes hit the earth, their parachutes opening up and allowing them to safety descend to the ground. ...Or they would have, had Iris' fire not rent each of them to burning ash.

Over half of the jets had been exterminated by then, but the Air Force showed no signs of giving up the fight, and neither did Iris. Another group swooped down and fired their artillery at the giantess, but the shells proved to be about as effective as ping-pong balls hitting a brick wall.

Or so Samuel thought.

"Ahh!! Fuck!!" Iris blurted as she recoiled backwards. She had one hand covering and nursing her right eye. "Damn, one of them hit me in my eye."

As she rubbed her eye, Samuel was extremely surprised to see a sign of weakness in what until then had been a very confident--if not cocky--young woman who balked at any resistance she was confronted with. He knew that the Air Force noticed as well, as they seemed to redouble their efforts in toppling her, launching all sorts of firepower at her from all directions, the projectiles exploding on her face, hair, and torso, though she did not seem to pay any of it any mind.

"I thought you said you were invincible," Samuel teased, though he immediately regretted it as soon as those words passed by his lips.

"...Sam, shut the fuck up," she curtly retorted.

Samuel shuddered. Her irritation was clear, and he knew better than to add anything else, lest she completely turned on him as well. Instead, he bowed his head in submission and apologized. "I'm sorry..."

"You'd better be."

Seemingly getting fed up with the barrage of missiles and shells, she moved her free hand before her, which glowed afterwards. Immediately after, Samuel could see a very transparent, spherical violet light surround the air around Iris. The volley of missiles that had been striking her just seconds before were now exploding in the surrounding air, none of them reaching the giantess at all.

"The force field?" Samuel asked.

Iris nodded, as her other hand pulled away from her eye. As for the jets, perhaps sensing the futility of their current assault, ceased their attack and flew back up into the skies. A few of them circled the sky above Iris, while others stayed in place and awaited her next move.

Samuel sighed a breath of relief. Though the jets were targeting her, he was glad to have even a tiny reprieve from the shells and missiles flying all around him.

"So, what now?" Samuel asked.

"I just need a little breather," Iris answered, as she briefly rubbed her injured eye again.

"Are you alright?"

"Don't worry about me. This is nothing."

"It didn't sound like 'nothing' before."

"...Sam." Iris scolded.

"Yeah, I know," Samuel relented.

Iris looked upward towards the circling jets in the sky above, spinning around on a blue canvas framed by white clouds and black smoke. "Look at them. Circling around, waiting for the perfect chance to strike. They're like vultures. I really hope that didn't think they were able to crack that shell. That was nothing more than just sand in my eye."

Samuel's glances shifted from the planes in the sky to Iris' massive head besides him speaking about them, and then back up to the awaiting jets overhead.

"Sam," Iris said. "You may want to hold on tight. Right about... NOW!!"

Samuel did as she suggested, his hands clenching tightly the fabric of her jacket, just as she stretched both of her arms upward--causing a steep incline on the shoulder that Samuel was upon in the process--and fired off two lightning bolts from each hand, each blast going off with a sound of thunder. The lightning broke through the surrounding purplish barrier, which immediately dissipated, and continued onward to the sky above with great speed, towards the circling jets.

However, despite the swiftness of the electric blasts, the jets aptly dodged both bolts.

"Goddammit, stand still!" Iris barked as she maintained the streams of lightning, now shifting her arms to aim them at different areas of the sky in an effort to take down the aircrafts. At the same time, every one of the crafts resumed their own assault.

Even as an increasing number of the jets were destroyed in an exploding blast upon making contact with the lightning, they did not give up. Shells and missiles filled the air and exploded on Iris' body as she kept pumping out volt after volt. She took a few steps forward as she tried to keep up her accuracy, and turned her body as needed to properly aim at the flying planes as they circled around for another charge. Seemingly taking a break from the electricity, she begun to hurl a rapid barrage of fireballs with both hands, most of which missed while a few clipped the wings of one plane while another one struck a second jet head-on; in either case, both planes were destroyed.

Samuel fought to hold on as hard as he could as the giant blonde's body constantly moved to target the attacking aircraft, the shoulder incline relaxing and rising as her arm acted. All around him were the sounds of the jets and their passing sonic booms, the sounds of their projectiles being launched, the sounds of them hitting their mark but having little effect, and the sounds of Iris' powers blasting away towards their marks.

Another shell struck Iris' shoulder just inches away from Samuel's position. The spark made his heart race, and he feared that the next such bullet may spell his doom.

"I really hope they don't end up shooting me..." Samuel lamented.

"Don't worry about it, Sam," Iris said as her ice beam encased another jet in a block of ice. "You would have been dead by now if they really were targeting you."

"That's reassuring..."

The amount of missiles shooting through the sky seemed to decrease as time went on, and eventually the remaining jets had no choice but to rely on their guns. However, by now, there were only less than three dozen of the aircraft left in the airspace, and that number was decreasing still as Iris--who seemed to lack the jet's resource limitations--picked them off one-by-one with her powers.

A rather brave jet dove in and sped towards Iris' head, blasting away with its gun all the while. Iris blocked her face with her hands; the plane made the fatal mistake of flying too close to the giantess, and she was able to swat it away with a swing of her giant hand, causing it to spin out and crash into a nearby office building with an explosion of shrapnel and glass.

Five more jets attempted to dive in, all of their guns blazing in a hailstorm of shells upon Iris, who stretched her left arm out and let loose a stream of flames that engulfed and melted all of the bullets and striking one jet, knocking it out of the sky and onto the earth with a bang. She then moved the stream around to hit the other jets. They tried to evade the flame, but were unsuccessful and all too were annihilated by the fire blast.

With her other arm, she shot ice crystals off like missiles on their own, the six aircraft on the other side of the sky doing their best to evade the ice but ultimately succumbing to their might. The sharp, frozen blades sliced through the steel like a hot knife through butter, and they plummeted into the building and ground one after another. Some of the pilots ejected and floated down on parachutes, though Iris seemed to ignore them to focus on the planes that remained.

"You're not frying those guys?" Samuel asked her.

"Fuck them," she dismissed. "They're harmless now. ...Not that they were a threat to me to begin with."

At this point, less than a dozen jets remained in the skies. However, with what appeared to be their decreasing reserve of firepower as well as the futility of their mission, the planes ceased firing upon Iris, circled around in the sky above, and proceeded to flee the area, their mission clearly aborted, either via an order from above, or from their own self-preservation, or both.

"They're running away," Samuel noted as they sped off into the southern sky.

Iris nodded. "Yeah. Let me give them something to remember me by."

She pulled her right arm back, and a spherical flame began to form in her hand, its mass rapidly growing larger and glowing with an ever-increasing intensity. Then, with a "huff" she threw the fireball with as much might as she could--so much so that Samuel had to catch himself from being tossed from her shoulder--towards the aircraft. Despite their speed, her fire was much faster, and just as it seemed like the planes had completely disappeared into blue, so did the flame pinpointed by an glowing amber speck of light. Then, said speck was replaced by a massive explosion, accompanied by several smaller ones, a sign that it had hit its mark and destroyed most of not all of the remaining aircraft. Either way, that skirmish was a sure victory for the blond giant.

"Heh, I win." Iris smirked.

"Um... Congrats," Samuel said.

Iris turned her head slightly and smiled in response, before digging with her right hand in her jacket's pocket and pulling out her "HTC" smartphone. Her fingers swiped and tapped at the reflective screen, before she held the phone overhead, grinned proudly, and gestured a V-sign with her free hand, and manipulated her right thumb to press a particular spot on the screen. Samuel could hear a "snap" sound from the phone, and afterwards she brought the device back down, looked at its screen again, and returned it to her pocket.

"I'll post that on Facebook when I get back home," she said.

"'Facebook'? What's that?" Samuel asked.

"You all don't have Facebook here? Huh. Well it's a social media website that lets you stay connected with your friends. ...You do have social media here, right?"

"Yeah, of course. Ours is called 'NetPals', and it's really popular. ...But I don't have an account; I don't really have too many friends... Or any, really..."

"Aww..." She cooed. "Well, anyway, it's time for me to continue wrecking this town. And with my new size, even! ...You hear that, Mascopolis!?" She shouted, to the comparably diminutive city around her, her voice echoing throughout, so much so that Samuel had to cover his ears tightly. "Is this really the best you have?! If so, then you all are fucked!! Heehee!!"

With that, she went on the move once more, her footsteps resounding throughout the area and shaking the world like violent tremors.

~~~

Mayor Adams and his men had watched the entire thing on the bunker's television. They had watched with horror how that blond monster terrorizing their city had almost effortlessly defeated the United States Air Force. Those powerful aircraft had made barely a dent in her hide, and perhaps more insultingly, she appeared to celebrate her victory by doing something--perhaps taking a picture--with her smartphone and then calling out the city on their presumed weakness.

Despite their earlier zeal, everyone in the room was stunned silent. The news choppers filming the chaos took to the air again just as the monster went on the move, and resumed her destruction of the city, her much larger size tearing apart buildings and toppling towers with ease just by walking.

Mayor Adams could feel the rage swelling up within him; deep down, he and perhaps everyone else there knew that the Air Force would do little to rout her, but seeing her so proudly and arrogantly declare her victory made him furious. Perhaps his companions could sense this, as all of their eyes were nervously upon him.

He turned to one of the soldiers to his left, and held out his hand. "Give me your phone. Now."

The soldier dug into his pants pocket and handed the mayor his smartphone. Practically snatching the device from the soldier's hand, Mayor Adams operated the screen and pulled up General Kilmark's name and tapped it. Bringing the phone to his ear, he heard the line on the other end ring four times, before a voice on the other end spoke.

"What is it, Private Stevens?" General Kilmark's voice asked.

"It's Mayor Adams, General," Mayor Adams said.

"Sir!" His tone became more receptive, almost submissive. "What can I do for you?"

"Is the Gungnir ready to be deployed? I'm getting sick of that bitch prancing around like she owns the place."

"We're still getting everything online. But with a weapon this size, you know it takes time to fully prep."

Mayor Adams sighed. "I'm well aware."

"Trust me: I want to get out there and turn her into cinder as much as you do, especially after the Air Force failed spectacularly just now. We are working as fast as we can to deploy the Gungnir."

"Work faster. I want her gone."

"Yes, sir."

Mayor Adams disconnected the call, and handed the phone back to its owner. He focused his attention back on the monster currently wreaking havoc on the city, the screen displaying her wanton destruction.

"...Bitch..." Mayor Adams muttered under his breath. "Just you wait."

~~~

If the buildings toppled easily before, they were even more like toys now compared to Iris' added height, making her stand higher than nearly all of the structures in town. Not even most of the roads were wide enough to contain her, as just by the act of moving pushed the various buildings apart, some falling over completely. Still in the heart of Mascopolis, she easily broke through high-rises and offices with nothing more than her physical strength, and kicked over others which toppled against nearby structures like dominos, while even smaller ones were stomped flat by her might. She giggled and laughed as she continually destroyed each and every tower and high-rise she came across, leaving a sure path of destruction in her wake.

She was gleeful to encounter another large group men running on the road far below; at her size, they were more like small ants to her than anything else. It took no effort at all for her foot to crush them all with a hard, loud stomp, leaving behind a sandal-shaped, blood-soaked crater in the pavement.

Turning to an office tower to her left--one that rose as high as her shoulders--she used both hands to completely tear off the roof and upper floor, dropping the heavy combination of steel, glass, and wood to the ground below. Inside were several men, all in separate office rooms now littered with debris and all petrified at the sight of the murderous blond giant above them.

"Hi, guys," she greeted, before she brought up her right hand and focused its index finger on one man in particular. "Bye, guys."

Before the man could run away, her digit met with his being and violently smashed him into the floor, his body giving away and exploding with a red burst. Then, she proceeded to one-by-one do the same with the other men, her fingertip crushing almost every one of them before the few survivors escaped. Iris brought the bloodied fingertip to her lips and licked the gore from her pale flesh. After which, she placed both of her hands on the sides of the building, and then set it ablaze, before moving on.

Cutting through several city blocks, her large body pushed aside and toppled several more structures, the cries of the people inside drowned out by the roars of steel and glass striking the ground. Iris arrived at another tall building--about 65 stories high--and tore the top from it as well; there was no one inside, and she wore a clear look of disappointment on her face before pushing it down with a shove of her hands. Its collapse took down several more nearby buildings in a chain-reaction before they all hit the ground, their windows shattering and people, furniture, and other objects spilling out onto the earth.

They all crunched beneath her sandaled feet as she walked on the fallen masses and began shooting more of her fireballs across the city, the orange spheres exploding upon hitting their marks and bringing down buildings and blasting roads. One such blast destroyed the Echols Overpass Bridge off in the distance, which Samuel could see held a number of vehicles all trying to escape the city but all caught in a hectic jam. The vehicles--and people inside of them--either were destroyed in the fire blast, or fell to their doom in the Echols River below.

All the while, the Channel 6 news choppers kept flying nearby while still keeping a safe distance. Samuel wondered just how many people in the city were even still watching the news at this point, but he figured that by now, the news of what was going on in Mascopolis was making international headlines, and perhaps people around the world were witnessing live the fall of what had been considered until then the "Greatest City in the World".

"I guess you're famous all over the world, now," Samuel remarked.

"Yeah, if you want to call it 'fame'," Iris said. "It's more like fear. They're scared of me. Afraid that I might come for them next."

"Are you?"

"Maybe." She blasted a stream of ice at a large swath of her surroundings, coating it under a thick layer of frost. "But even if I don't, the fear will be enough. That's why I always leave a few news choppers around to keep filming."

This comment made Samuel recall his earlier epiphany, about her origins. By now, it was all but clear that she was not from this world; there were too many clues leading to that conclusion. If it were true, it would explain a lot; why she seemingly came from nowhere in the park, why she knew nothing of Mascopolis or its customs, her comments about having destroyed cities before, and her confidence that Mascopolis would be yet another tally on her wall, so to speak.

"Iris," Samuel called. "...You're from another world, aren't you?"

"You got it," Iris confirmed with a nod. "Another Universe, to be exact."

"Whoa..." Samuel almost could not believe it. This mysterious, admittedly-attractive blond woman truly was from an alternate Universe. The fact that Universes beyond their own was fact and not some theory confined to some physicist's blackboard was mind-blowing to him as it were, but that there was actual interaction between the Universes was absolutely astonishing.

Iris stomped on several more groups of men that she had spotted on the streets at her feet. "Whenever I need to blow off some steam, or if I'm feeling really whimsical, I saddle up and leap into another Universe. It's completely random each time, so I never know what kind of world I'll get until I get there. There were some that I had to back away from immediately; trust me, when dealing with the Multiverse, you can see some really freaky shit."

"Yeah, I can imagine," Samuel said.

Iris peered through the windows of a building in front of her. "But then, you get worlds that are not too different from where I come from. The ones with cities and towns not all that different from the ones in my world, with regular people going about their business or having a nice outing with their family." She smirked, and then shoved the building over. "Those same people start screaming and running for their lives once I grow big and start stomping on them."

"And those people did nothing to you?"

"Nope. In fact, this is one of the very few worlds that actually provoked me; the rest, I just blew in and started wrecking shit." She chuckled. "It's always fun seeing them try to run away from me. Men, women, young, old, I don't care; they're all bugs to me."

Perhaps Samuel should have expected this attitude by now, but hearing Iris so casually talk about killing people in leisure deeply disturbed him, especially considering that the people of those other worlds did nothing to incur her wrath.

"But don't you care that you're killing a bunch of innocent people and tearing entire families apart?" He asked. "I mean, I can understand on some level why you'd want to destroy Mascopolis, but from the sound of things, those other people did nothing wrong to you!"

Iris paused in place. "Sam, I'm gonna let you in on a secret: the only Universe that matters is mine. The rest of you are just a big sandbox for me to play in."

"Whaa...?" Samuel was rather stunned to hear that she had very little- more like, no regard for the lives of anyone beyond her original Universe. That everyone else--his world and the countless other worlds beyond this Universe and her own--were nothing more than playthings for her to do whatever she wanted with.

Iris went back on the move, using everything she had to destroy each and every building she came across. One building went up in flames and eventually collapsed; another had holes punched into it with her ice, which eventually collapsed as well. Iris grabbed the top of another high-rise with both hands, and pulled it down, the structure snapping and hitting the road quite violently. She happened across more men on the road, though rather than crushing them underfoot, she extended her palm downward and unleashed a jolt of lightning that fried each of those men to smoldering chunks.

Moving several streets over, she spotted a bus six streets over speeding away from the scene. It was just one of several vehicles still on the road within eyesight, but she had zeroed in on the bus in particular. She chased after it--stomping on and smashing through smaller businesses and structures in the process, her footsteps violently rocking the area--and reached the long white vehicle in seconds. Kneeling down, she reached and plucked the bus from the road and held it inbetween her index finger and thumb, and brought it closer to her face.

"There's a bunch of guys in here," Iris noted as she stood back up. "Guess they all tried to catch the express bus to safety. Too bad."

She adjusted the bus in her grip so that the back end stuck farther out from her digits, and then used the thumb and finger on her other hand to tear off the back of the bus, the steel acting more like aluminum foil under her strength.

"Sam, what do you think I should do with the guys in here?" She asked, as she turned the open end towards Samuel.

Moving his body closer to get a better look inside, Samuel could see the dozens of frightened, screaming men inside. Some had already been injured from the violent shifts the bus took during its retrieval from the road, and they lay on the floor perhaps unconscious as there was no movement of their bodies that Samuel could discern.

"Maybe something quick and painless?" Samuel suggested.

"Hah, no," Iris dismissed. "Screw it, I'll just swallow them all."

"Ergh..." Samuel could feel his own stomach churning.

The men inside of the bus understandably began to panic as the vehicle moved away from Samuel and moved closer to Iris' face. She pulled her head back, opened her mouth and stuck out her pink tongue. Then, holding the open end over her tongue, she shook the bus and poured the men out onto her appendage, Each shake brought out more men; Samuel imagined that they were doing whatever they could to hold on inside of the bus, but it was ultimately a fruitless effort. Meanwhile, the men on her tongue tried their best to escape via crawling and stumbled dashing despite how high up from the earth they were. Perhaps sensing their futile efforts, Iris' tongue retreated into the cavern of her mouth, and seconds later Samuel could see a lump on her neck move from her jaw down to her chest, a sign that she had swallowed the hapless men.

"How's that for 'quick and painless'?" Iris mocked before she looked inside of the bus, and then chucked it as far as she could, the long vehicle spinning around in the air. Samuel saw three men get flung from inside of the bus as it sped through the sky, and they all crashed violently into buildings or on the ground just as the bus itself pierced the upper floors of Heichman Tower, a banking firm.

"You really don't care for the suffering of people, do you?" Samuel commented. "I mean, the people outside of your Universe."

"Not at all," she nonchalantly answered. "I thought that was clear by now. I mean, look what I'm doing to your place. Everyone here is suffering in one way or another, and I really couldn't give a shit about it."

"I have to be honest: it's scary being with someone with so little regard for human life."

"Stop making such a big deal out of it," Iris chided. "Life's too short to worry about stuff like that. That's why we have these powers."

"'We'?" Samuel noticed her referring to herself as a collective.

"Oh, I'm not the only one with powers in my world," Iris said. "You can just go online and order them from the manufacturer's website. Though they're pretty expensive, like fifty thousand dollars, and that's just for the cheapest pack. Luckily, my family is filthy rich--like, multi-billionaire rich--so I could easily afford the deluxe pack."

"So there are people from your world right now trampling cities across the Multiverse?" Samuel asked.

"Maybe. ...But what they use their powers for is up to them. Some just want to tour the worlds without interfering with them; some have this hero complex and use their powers to fight 'evil'. And then there are people like me, who delight in destroying as many worlds as they can, however they feel like it. I don't know how many grow into giants, though."

"Are there any issues with people using their powers in your world to cause trouble?" he asked.

Iris stomped on a number of one-story establishments, her flat sandal completely pulverizing the structures that filled the city block below. "No, because the powers only fully function outside of my Universe, and even they could, the price gate prevents just anyone from getting their hands on them."

"Huh..." Samuel wondered if Mascopolis was simply destined to be destroyed at some point, if not by Iris, but by someone else down the line. He wondered if that person would have also grown into a giant just as she had, or if they would have utilized some other method to bring the city to its knees. Perhaps one of those self-proclaimed heroes that Iris mentioned might have been so gung-ho as to not only tear down the city, but rescue the enslaved women in the process.

"...So yeah," Iris said as she toyed with a pick-up truck with her right foot, the red vehicle completely minuscule in comparison to her massive ped. "Destroying a city is always fun, especially when they try to fight back. It's like a huge rush that very little can compare to." Her foot compressed the truck beneath its might.

"Sometimes," she continued as she broke through more tall buildings, causing the contents--and men who had been trying to hide--to spill out and splatter on the hard ground. "When me and my sorority sisters get together, we all go to destroy whatever city we arrive in. You think they'd have their hands full with only one of us, try six!"

She cackled as she plucked out a number of inhabitants from the office building that she had just punched into. They all panicked and did what they could to escape from her palm, while Iris watched their fruitless attempts.

"Though there was this one time, we didn't grow giant," she said, as she simply closed her fingers around them, balling her hand into a fish that she squeezed tightly. "We went out and all together gathered up about a hundred hot guys, shrunk them, made a circle around them, and stomped all of them to death." She chuckled. "Oh, they all ran and cried and begged for their lives, but you know what we did? Laugh." Blood dripped out from within her closed fist and splattered onto the ground.

"Shit..." Samuel could easily picture that scenario in his head, of half a dozen young women treading upon those helpless men, while Iris and her buddies laughed as if they were having a good time; because in actuality, they absolutely were.

"A patrolling cop saw us as when we were almost done," Iris said, "and was horrified to see what we were doing. Melanie then set the cop on fire right as he was calling for backup. Though once we squished the last of them, we got out of there before more cops could show up. We all had a good laugh about all of it when we got home, too." She smeared the gory remains of the mangled men in her grasp onto the windows and outside walls of the very building that they had worked in.

It was all too clear that Iris' empathy and concern for the lives of anyone beyond the bubble of her home Universe was nil; if not just how freely and gleefully she killed the many people that day before Samuel's eyes, but also from the stories that she was telling him. For the inhabitants of Mascopolis, this was perhaps the absolute worst day of their lives; for Iris, it was just another game. Thinking on it, it was a miracle that she kept him alive for as long as she did, but he wondered how his own day would conclude by the time the day ended. Would he escape with his life, relatively unscathed, or would he become yet another red stain on the bottom of her sandal?

"And then," Iris continued reminiscing, "on my third date with Jacob--my boyfriend, FYI--we topped the night off by jumping to another Universe, growing gigantic, and... Well, we fucked, right in the middle of the city."

"Whoa, that's too much info," Samuel commented. He could picture that as well, her and her boyfriend engaging in sexual intercourse on top of a smoldering town. Though he of course had no idea what this "Jacob" looked like, so his mind substituted him with the tanned model from the earlier billboard. "But you really did that?"

"Yep. Also, he didn't finish inside of me. He pulled out and let his splooge spill out on the city. A bunch of people still around for some reason got caught in it and drowned."

Samuel shuddered to imagine such a thing. "Ugh, that's disgusting."

Samuel turned around and noticed the news choppers still following after them. Due to her size, Iris' voice bellowed throughout the entire area, so no doubt that the reporters inside were getting a huge info dump from the blond giant. Physicists the world over would have been jumping for joy at the news of actual alternate Universes if they had not currently been on the edge of their seats due to the Mascopolis crisis.

"Iris," Samuel called. "If you were able to and could get away with it, would you demolish a city in your world?"

"Hell no," she quickly answered. "I already said that my Universe is the only one that matters. That aside, I love my world--faults and all--and I love my family and friends too much to put them through that anguish. I would- I could never do this to my world."

"So, you do have some empathy."

"Of course I do. I'm not completely heartless."

"The people of those other worlds would disagree with that."

"Sam, quit trying to guilt-trip me; it's not gonna work." Iris pushed the office before her over with one hand, and then walked away from it, the structure hitting the ground with a deafening crash.

Samuel sighed, deciding to give up on trying to make Iris see even a tiny bit of wrong in the horrors she's inflicted upon an unknown number of alternate worlds. At that point, he truly did not know who was worst between Iris and the men who ruled Mascopolis; the men in power subjugated women, raped and beat them, used them only as sex toys and for breeding stock, performed all sorts of horrifying experiments on them, and in the end, disposed of them once they had fully served their purpose. Meanwhile, Iris has committed mass murder and sheer destruction on a multi-Universal scale, seeing absolutely no wrong in what she is doing or any worth in the lives of people beyond the scope of her home Universe, and will likely not stop traveling to other worlds just to destroy them.

This truly was a case of Evil vs. Evil.

After tearing through several more city blocks, all the while stomping on abandoned vehicles and the occasional person littering the roads below, she spotted a particular set of white, important-looking buildings, the four of them forming a square arrangement surrounding a grassy garden, in the middle of which was the flag of the City flailing on a very tall pole; unlike the three hall-like buildings before it, the fourth one in back stood three stories high and was much more spacious. The four-set edifice was interconnected among each other. A walkway led from the street to the complex, the path flanked on both sides by pristine green grass, bushes arranged in a repetitious pattern along the walkway, and a number of trees here-and-there on the surrounding grass as well as more flagpoles, these flying the United States flag. A few cars were parked on the road in front of the complex, and a parking lot could be seen behind the largest building that also contained a number of vehicles, though there was no doubt that every one of them sat abandoned.

"That's the town hall," Samuel stated.

"Yeah, it does look pretty important," Iris said as she approached the complex. "Wonder if anyone's in it?"

"Maybe a few people, but the of course Mayor's more than likely gone. I have no idea where he is; it's kind of a top secret, for obvious reasons."

"Yeah, yeah." Her shadow completely enveloped the complex as she reached it. The smaller forebuildings were barely taller than Iris' toes resting in their pink sandals. Samuel looked down as closely as he could for any signs of life, but it was all but impossible with how high up from the ground that he was.

"What are you going to do with it?" Samuel asked. "...Wait, do I even need to ask?"

Iris chuckled. "You're learning, Sam."

The blond giant lifted her foot from the ground and held it over Town Hall.

"Say 'good-bye' to town hall!" she announced with excitement.

However, just as she began to bring her foot down, the ground started to rumble. Feeling this, Iris pulled her foot back and settled it next to its twin, as she curiously looked around the city.

"What's that?" She asked. "An earthquake?"

"No, I don't think so," Samuel answered. "But... It could be..."

Samuel looked far ahead, far past Town Hall, and spotted a large and wide runway--approximately the size of sixteen city blocks--in the distance, surrounded by a small military bases. Very few planes or jets had ever made use of it, but of course, it was off limits to everyone except authorized personnel. The rumbling was joined by loud horns blaring short bursts of alerting sound, all coming from the direction of the base.

Then, it started to split open, slowly but surely. Split in half, the two halves pulled away from each other and disappeared underneath the pavement. A small cloud of steam briefly billowed out from within, before something started to rise up from the massive hole. Even as its very top peaked up, Samuel could tell that this metallic object was also massive, and as more of it showed itself to the light, it exposed its sleek, silver frame, armed with various firearms--including a large reddish one dead center on its frame--and possessing several docked aircraft, all of which were molded from the same sleek design as the behemoth itself. It bore four appendages, two on its sides like arms, and the others on its back not that dissimilar to wings; the arms were tipped with another set of guns, while the "wings" were folded. On both the top and in the middle were turquoise windows, though the material appeared to be one-way, even from a distance. It completely exited from its containment, revealing a size rivaling that of Iris' own.

Samuel's heart skipped several beats when he realized what exactly it was that he was looking at. It was a superweapon feared the world over, at one point considered Mascopolis' secret weapon.

This was none other than the Gungnir.

Before today, Samuel never thought that he would have seen this war machine with his very own eyes, and yet, there it was, ready to defend Mascopolis from Iris' wanton destruction. He feared that he would be caught in the crossfire, and was now more than before starting to regret not taking his chance to flee the city while he could at the park.

"Oh, my!" Iris purred; there was no hint of fear in her demeanor and in fact sounded eager. "Sam, what is that thing?"

"That's the Gungnir," he answered. "Mascopolis' one-time secret weapon, and what made the rest of the world fear us. It can take down whole fleets and demolish entire cities with ease."

"I suppose this is their last line of defense. Saving the best for last, eh? Well, I'm game."

Samuel nervously watched the Gungnir as it started to approach Iris.

"You think you can beat it?" Samuel asked, just as several of the fighter jets broke away from the much bigger craft and sped towards the giant.

Iris simply grinned in anticipation. "Of course."



[TO BE CONCLUDED]