Three steps out from the rooftop where she had addressed the city, Laura stopped and opened her palm, letting the tiny figure of former Mayor Strauss to roll to its center.
 
"Hi there, Jacob."
 
He needed a couple of seconds to recover from the dizziness, but when he did, his words came out quickly.
 
"Please, let me go."
 
Laura smirked and arched an eyebrow.
 
“Now, why would I do that?” she asked, trying to sound surprised
 
“I did everything you told me to” Strauss protested at the time he looked close to desperation.
 
Laura chuckled, reinforcing the effect on the tiny man.
 
“Jacob, Jacob, Jacob…” she started saying. “Do you have any idea about how many people I stepped on, today?” she asked in the most casual tone
 
Strauss’ face lost all its color.
 
"I don't know myself. Thousands, surely. Tens of thousands, most likely" she said. Then, she added: "Do you know what they had done to me?"
 
She waited for a couple of seconds. As expected, she did not get an answer from Strauss.
 
"Nothing. They were innocent; they were just in my way." 
 
She gave Strauss a couple of seconds to swallow hard. Then, she went on:
 
“You, on the other hand… Jacob, you represent everything I despise. You are what I want to free the world from. It would be ironic if you made it out of this, wouldn’t it?”
 
“It… it… it is not fair” was all that Jacob Strauss was able to babble. Laura could hear him perfectly well, though. She could not prevent a loud chuckle.
 
“Life’s not fair, is it Jacob? One day you think you have all the power, that you are above the law, that you can do as you please, insult who you please, ruin as many lives as you please… and then it all fades away, doesn’t it?”
 
She was enjoying every instant. Seeing the reaction of the man she had hated so much was turning her on.
 
"Suddenly, one day, someone truly powerful shows up, and you realize what you are. Have you realized yet?" Laura asked
 
She observed the broken man with a smirk.
 
"You haven't? Let me spell it out for you: you are a mite. You might be rich or powerful among mites, but it does not matter, does it? You have no real power. Right now, I have an itch in my butt that is more noticeable than you." 
 
She knew she was being harsh, but at the same time, she realized that the way she was addressing Strauss was humiliating both for him and the rest of the people who was surely listening to her. She knew it was counter-productive for her plans but at that precise moment, she did not care. She hated Strauss with passion and… hell! Why shouldn't she be able to do and say as she pleased?   
 
Her words had had their toll on Strauss. The man was sobbing and visibly not controlling himself. Laura would have never thought that she would enjoy inflicting psychological pain to someone, but the truth was that the current moment ranked among the best she’d had as a goddess, and she was not even moving a finger.
 
“I will destroy you, Jacob. You are the embodiment of everything I will weed out of this world. And you know what? It’s personal too. I’ve lived under you, I’ve had to suffer your rants, your hate politics, your policies… I will enjoy this. Enormously”
 
Laura knew that she was acting like a bully, but somehow it did not feel bad.
 
Keeping her palm cupped and observing the desperate tiny man in its center, Laura resumed her walk. She kept her eyes trained on her victim as she smiled, ignoring the world at her feet. She was walking back along the path she had taken when heading towards the rooftop where Strauss had surrendered the city to her, which reduced the number of new victims. Still, it was impossible for her to move without the list of casualties increasing.
 
She reached her destination quickly enough.
 
"I will destroy your legacy, Jacob. By the time I'm done with you, everything people will be able to remember about you will be your pathetic speech in my nipple. I will start here. Emerald should not have to stand a city hall that looks like an oversized glass shoebox."
 
Laura looked down and saw people pouring out of the building, probably pushed by her words. She had assumed that it would be empty, but now she realized that her previous antics at the square had probably not done much to encourage people to get out of the city hall.
 
"Oh fuck,"  she thought. Her brain immediately added an idea. "It's not as if they're going to make a difference, at this point. Tough shit, I guess."
 
With that, Laura gracefully lifted her right leg and rested a foot the size of an Olympic swimming pool on the North-East corner of the building. She did not even need to apply force. Just pushing down gently was enough to bring down an entire section of the City Hall and turn it into rubble.
 
Screams down at toe-level intensified enough for Laura to receive them all the way up to her ears.
 
She knew it would not take her too many additional steps to complete the job. Her ears confirmed to her that her usual following of news choppers was around, not missing any single detail of her antics. Suddenly aware of their presence, Laura thought on how she could make the destruction of City Hall more spectacular.
 
She would have sworn she had not felt that itch before. It was quite a surprising reaction of her body, since she had not felt the need to eat or drink ever since she had woken up, having turned into someone new. 
 
She had not put too much thought into her sustenance needs, but the little attention she had devoted to the matter had been to be grateful for the lack of them. The times to enjoy a nice meal were over for Laura in any case, but this meant that she did not need to burden the world with equivalent food and water needs to a large city. It was fair, she guessed. Still, she wondered if her body would be able to process the food, should she choose to ingest it no matter what.
 
Laura could not prevent thinking about the irony of not needing nourishment at the same time her sex drive was requiring constant attention. It was almost as ironic as not needing to drink while her body was telling her that she could freely exercise one of the basic consequences of drinking.
 
She paused for a second and thought whether it was a good idea to move ahead with what her body was demanding her to do. It was rude, extremely rude… which was what ended making her mind up.
 
She hated Strauss, she hated the City Hall building and, by extension, she hated everyone who worked on it, which included those scurrying by her toes right now and those that were still inside. She wanted them to feel how much she despised them. And she wanted the world to see. And right now, she could not think of any greater alternative. 
 
So, without warning, Laura took a step back, spread her legs wide and squatted down. She could feel hundreds of eyes around her wondering what all that was about, including the eyes of the choppers that were broadcasting every single one of her actions to the entire world.
 
The world did not have to wait long. A golden torrent of piss roared out of her womanhood and tore through the roof of City Hall like it was rice paper. Laura smirked, again impressed with herself for the umpteenth time today - she couldn't help but think of the scene from Independence Day where the White House was destroyed by the aliens’ laser. Laura tilted her hand so that her tiny captive could witness the destruction of his cushy office complex.
 
The devastating beam punched through all eight floors and into the basement in a matter of seconds, and the entire structure began to sag as the roaring tide began to erode the foundation and backwash into the lower floors, flattening walls and tearing out support beams as the wave swept up furniture, office equipment and occupants alike. The glass facade put up a good fight before shattering, unleashing a 10-foot high tsunami riddled with furniture, debris, victims and deadly shards of glass into the plaza.
 
Those who had managed to evacuate now fared poorly as the tidal waves swept them up and carried them into the neighboring streets, where hundreds of people that had felt relatively safe soon learned that they had not been.
 
By the time Laura felt the last drops, the surroundings of City Hall looked like the aftermath of a tsunami. Laura was more proud than concerned about that. Her main focus of attention was another one.
 
Standing up and taking a couple of steps in the safe side of the square and into the area where Emerald’s Trade Show Center was, Laura crouched and ripped a large tent from the ground with ease, removing the cover of some of the only people in the area that had not been hit by her self-made tsunami.
 
It was the largest piece of cloth around, even if it still felt small to Laura. It was enough to clean her private parts, though, even if they were not so private anymore.
 
Nothing about Laura would be private again. Her body, her words, her actions… they all belonged to everyone now. She was their only master, though, which in turn, turned her into the only master of the world. 
 
Discarding the now wet cloth, Laura giggled when she observed the mayhem she had created in such an “unexpected” way and turned towards the choppers.
 
"That damned building had always pissed me off," she said, not able to prevent another giggle. She suddenly realized how all this must be feeling to the audiences at home. She had been trying to tell them that all this was for the greater good… and now she had probably pissed a few hundred people to death. She guessed that if she were still tiny, this type of act would have felt like nothing more than humiliation. She could not prevent feeling great about what she had done, though. She had to express that feeling to the choppers, trying to make some sense of it at the same time. 
 
"This is my city now. I don't have to stand things I don't like. You should expect some more redesign. But don't worry too much. I mostly like Emerald's architecture" Laura said as if that settled the matter.
 
Then, she looked at the tiny sobbing figure of Jacob Strauss on her cupped free hand and smirked at him. 
 
"Don't worry; I'm not going to drown you in my pee. That would be way too good for you."  
 
Closing her fingers slightly around the tiny man, as to protect him even more, Laura looked around, trying to find her next destination. One of the advantages of being taller than anything else in the city, combined with her enhanced sight, was that she could find everything with utter ease.
 
She did not owe any explanation to the tiny worm in her hand, so she did not offer any. She just started moving towards her destination, making sure to avoid her pee, which had reached much farther than she had originally expected.
 
Like every time she moved without interruptions along the city, Laura reached a crowd soon enough. She stopped just one step before starting a massacre, letting her toes dangle above the tiny people. 
 
She just needed a quick look to know that her path towards her objective would be pretty costly regarding human lives. She did not know too well why, but the avenue that would    lead her to her destination was incredibly packed as if a majority of the population in the area had chosen it as an escape route.  
 
“I suppose it would be too much to ask you to clear a path, would it?” Laura asked
 
She only got screams and even more erratic movements from the people in front of her.
 
"Well, tough shit," she said, taking the first step into the dense mob and snuffing a hundred lives with ease. A second foot doubled the body count. After all, a few thousand lives were an acceptable price to pay to get where she wanted to.   
 
She was about to take the third step when she stopped. From her godly height, it was easy enough to see her entire surroundings, and her superhuman mind was processing every piece of sensorial information she was getting in the background. Soon, an alert rang in the back of her head and told her that there was an alternative to massacring the population at her feet.  
 
Laura looked to her left and down, trying to get more details on the route her conscience was suggesting.
 
The alternative avenue was remarkably empty. The contrast between it and the one she had chosen felt almost impossible. Quickly following its path, Laura concluded that it would take her where she wanted to as well. It was a tad longer, but nothing that mattered for a woman of her height and speed.
 
There was only a little problem. There were no side streets she could easily take to move from where she was to the new route. The only alternative seemed to be heading back multiple blocks, which was something Laura was not willing to do.
 
Her pragmatism and mental abilities showed her an answer. She rejected it at first, but after a second thought, she realized that it was more efficient than her original route. And besides, the architecture in this particular area of the city was not great.
 
The knee-high buildings were too tall for her to step over them with ease. They were not sturdy enough to prevent Laura from walking through them though, which is what she did. Her first step ended up with her foot and her shin halfway through the building right to her left. A new step brought that building down and part of her limbs into the adjacent block.
 
Encouraged by the results, Laura kept walking, wading across the concrete, admittedly impressed by the ease of it all.
 
"I'm doing this for you," she said aloud, although she doubted that anyone would share her evaluation of the matter.
 
Laura knew that she was finishing hundreds of lives, lives of people that could not have expected at all that their buildings would collapse on top of them. It was tough luck, but it was the best option. Walking down the avenue would have caused plenty more victims. 
 
A few steps and a few downed city blocks later, she reached her destination. It felt almost impossible to look at a wide and mostly empty stretch of road. The number of people on it was so inconsequential that Laura had even a hard time to consider them as the same  kind as the ones she had prevented stepping on in the parallel avenue. To her, the scattered ants in her path were more than acceptable collateral damage.
 
Up to some point, Laura felt content about the situation. She just risked a glance over her shoulder to observe the trail of destruction she had had to leave in her path to get to it.
 
Just in the last moment before raising her right foot for a first step, a thought of guilt crossed Laura’s mind; it almost felt like her sub-conscious pouring water into the wine. Her level of excitement went considerably down when she realized that by doing what she had just done, all her previous addresses to crowds, urging them to abandon streets and to get into buildings, would now lack credibility. After all, she had just done the opposite from what she had been preaching: bringing several buildings down and leaving the people in the streets alone.
 
It felt bad… for a moment. Then, Laura had an easy time to convince herself that she had not been successful at all before, so there was nothing to lose with her new change of approach.
 
Almost as if to reinforce that thought, Laura said aloud:
 
"Since you tinies don't want to cooperate, it's up to me to decide how to crush as few of you as possible."
 
The next thing the city heard about Laura was the loud thud of her right foot as it rested her weight on the road ahead of her and broke through the asphalt and into the ground below. There had been three people in the area where her sole landed. Almost nothing by Laura’s crushing standards.
 
Besides the unavoidable smashed pedestrians, Laura’s stroll towards her destination was both uneventful and amusing. Having crossed to an avenue lined with relatively low buildings, Laura enjoyed the feeling of towering even more over her surroundings. There was nothing in the city that could stand taller than her, once she had dealt with the Beck Tower, but she still felt a little constrained when walking among skyscrapers that could reach all the way to her chest. She loved moving among them, but she was also enjoying this “more open” section of Downtown, for a change.
 
The fact that every one of her steps ended up digging a deep and perfectly contoured imprint of her otherwise lovely feet in the asphalt meant that, by the time she was done walking around the city, no one that did not share her height would be able to do much use of the roads. She realized the fact but ignored it. Her mobility was way more important than that of all the millions of people in the city combined. Roads and avenues had become her private trails.  
 
Building height started to gradually increase once more; with her size, the speed at which she moved and made the landscape change around her was impressive. She reached her destination soon enough. As in the case of the City Hall, her target building was right across a plaza. The difference was that the plaza was not filled by cops, but by regular citizens.
 
“Oh, it never stays easy for too long” Laura protested from up high
 
 
Of course, Mary had heard about the giant woman. Who in the world had not? Differently to most other people, Mary happened to share the same city with her, though, which made her interest in the news quite different.
 
She had gone through a denial phase first. At one point, the truth had become unquestionable, though. This had led her directly to a phase of panic, which was the one she was at now. As a pretty natural reaction to it, she had left the relative safety of her office building and joined the mindless mob in Liberty Plaza.
 
She realized about the stupidity of her actions shortly after. By the time she regained her self-control, though, she was way too trapped in the crowd to be able to move back. It was more or less at the moment when her clarity came back to her that the shakings started.   
 
Screams all around her intensified considerably. The mob had noticed the tremors and had guessed their cause. Mary had, too. A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she found herself joining the crowd in its screams.
 
Her vocal chords ached. This was not what drove her to shut up, though. The last shake did. It almost made her lost her footing. She managed to keep standing. A change in the lighting drove her to instinctively look upwards. Her jaw dropped as her gaze joined that of thousands of other people in the area.
 
Nothing she had heard, no live feed from the news stations that had been following her all morning, no video she had received on her cellphone… nothing could have prepared her for the shock of seeing her life, standing in the opposite side of the plaza, in a stance that reminded her of that of a girl that wants to be noticed in a bar.   
 
She would not have needed it. No matter what she would have done, she would have been impossible to miss. Mary quickly understood that the giantess was not seeking attention. She was just feeling comfortable, incredibly comfortable.
 
Of course, Mary had heard about her size before. She had listened to dozens of clips and read hundreds of texts that had informed her that the giant was about a thousand feet tall. She had known, but she had not understood. Now, for the first time, the true implications of someone being that size were sinking in.
 
Mary prided herself not to be easily impressible. It was impossible not to feel struck by awe by the sight right in front of her eyes, though. Her cubicle on the 34 th floor was close enough to the windows so that she had a good view of the plaza as she worked. So, she knew just how tall the building right across it was supposed to be. This made Mary more ready than others around her to understand the implications of the fact that its roof could not reach much higher than the young woman's shapely hips.    
 
Everything about her distilled youth and health. And power, of course. Her face, partially distorted by the effect of perspective, was that of a curious and visibly content girl. Mary had never been too good at judging ages, but if the woman in front of her was not still at college, it could not be too long since she had finished.
 
Then, the thought struck her: they were at the mercy of a woman in her early twenties, with nothing they could do about it.
 
She could not go on with her thoughts. A deep and quite sensual voice engulfed her, its sheer power making her shake.
 
"Oh, it never stays easy for too long," it said
 
Her shivers went up in intensity. The goddess remained silent for a few seconds as if pondering something. Then, her godlike voice came back, engulfing her and everyone else in the plaza.
 
"You're in my way. That's not good."
 
There were no further words. An instant later Mary heard a loud whooshing sound, though. She was trying to make some sense of what it was when the hurricane hit. Mary barely had time to think about how warm and moist the extreme wind currents were before she was sent off her feet. The next thing she noticed was a hard crash against something hard and cold. She could have sworn that something was shattering as the result of her body's impact. The thought that it felt like glass was the last one to go through her head before the world went dark.  
 
 
 
Laura knew she was much more impulsive than she should. The reasoning behind her actions was simple enough, though. She was going to walk across the plaza anyway, so the people on it were as good as dead. Under those circumstances, what was the harm in testing something new? 
 
This something new was not, actually, that new. The results were, even if she should have expected them. She had been able to blow a storm front away, so it was easy enough to predict what would happen with a crowd.
 
Still, the sight of hundreds of people being thrown around like dust in the wind by the mere act of blowing at them was… invigorating. It was yet another proof that size mattered but also that she was much more than just an oversized girl. She was a certified goddess, and she loved being able to show it to the world every time she could.
 
The plaza was empty by the time she cut her breath. Some of the buildings across it were randomly stained as some of the people she had blown away had just crashed against their façades.
 
She could not prevent a moan. She realized she would need another plane soon enough.
 
Laura advanced through a new clear path. As soon as she was standing in the center of the plaza, she brought her hand up and looked at the diminutive figure of Jacob Strauss. He looked somewhat recovered. After all, she had not messed with him for a while. His expression changed when Laura tilted her hand enough for him to see the building she was standing in front of: the Strauss Center.
 
He seemed to hesitate. Then, his mousy voice came back.
 
“What are you going to do?”
 
Laura smiled and asked:
 
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
 
“You can’t do that!” the tiny man protested
 
"Jacob! After all, you've seen me do… do you believe that?" Laura asked in a tone of mockery. 
 
The man looked desperate. This suited Laura well. Breaking him was way better than just killing him.
 
"I told you I would destroy your legacy," she said. "That's a horrible building, by the way. That golden color is just… awful" Laura then added.
 
"There… there are hundreds of people working in there."
 
Laura could not prevent a chuckle.
 
“This must be a first! Jacob Strauss worrying about someone other than himself”
 
He was puzzled by her answer. She took advantage of that to go on with her plan. She had thought about it on her way to the plaza.
 
Reaching out with her free hand, Laura took hold of two or three of her hairs and pulled, easily pulling them off. It was the closest she had been to pain ever since she had woken up, despite the fact that she had had thousands of bullets shot at her.
 
Looking at the long, silky brown strand in her fingers, she smiled and proceeded with the operation. She did not want to hurt Strauss yet, and he was so tiny that this would require some delicacy.
 
Two steps brought Laura next to a rooftop that reached the height of her belly button's piercing. Setting the strand of hair on it, she then reached for the teeny body of the former mayor of the city and pinched it between her fingertips. She rested it on the roof, on top of her hair strand and close to one of its ends of the strand of hair. Then, without letting him move, she took hold of the end, lifted it and passed it around the man's legs, which was conveniently lifted by a careful movement of one of her free fingernails. This first movement was the hardest one. Once she was done, the rest was quite simpler. To Laura, it felt as if she had been this size forever, not just for a few hours. Looping her hair around the man's body like a harness, she finished the job by tying a knot between the end of the strand and a section above the spot where she had set Strauss. 
 
She was proud of her work as she lifted the strand from its opposite end and let Jacob Strauss dangle in front of her excited eyes.
 
“You make a nice toy” she said, mocking
 
Any recovery Strauss might have had on her way to the plaza was gone, as his face showed him how shocked he was by this new form of humiliation Laura had thought for him.
 
She smirked naughtily at him and then raised her eyes to guide herself in her short trek to the opposite side of the plaza, where a construction crane had caught her attention. Tying the strand of hair to its edge, she let Strauss hanging there and then stooped to smile at him again.
 
"You'll get a nice view from here," she said.
 
“Stop!” the tiny man yelled with an energy that surprised Laura. She broadened her smile and chuckled.
 
“You still think that you are in a position to issue commands? That’s cute” Laura said
 
“Please! Why are you doing this?” Strauss yelled, now sounding desperate
 
"Because I want to. Simple as that. You, of all people, should understand that. I have what you've always sought. The only difference is that I don't need to hide my true intentions. My power is absolute, so I don't need that. I would not be good at politicking either, so it's good that I'm above that. From now on, I will make decisions, I will announce them to the world, and I will execute them. And I don't have to give a damn whether anyone agrees!" Laura said, her voice sounded more excited as she went on.
 
"There are things I've never liked in Emerald. Starting with anything that smells of you. And I've just realized that it's really up to me to have them changed" Laura concluded. 
 
“The people…” Strauss started
 
“Can’t be prevented, I’m afraid” Laura said. “It’s all for the greater good, in the end” she added, almost as if trying to convince herself.
 
She remained silent for a few seconds. Strauss looked too shocked to say anything either. Laura finally added: “Take a good look and enjoy the action. After I’m done, it’s your turn”.
 
She moved her head away and winked at him. Then she stood up and faced the Strauss Center. It was the worst possible display of modern architecture, standing out like a gaudy monolith among the much more refined skyline of the city.     
 
Of course, everyone in her surroundings had listened to her end of the conversation, so it was easy enough to deduce what she was going to do next. The sizeable group of people rushing out of the Strauss Center was proof enough of that.
 
Somehow, Laura did not like that. She rationally knew that none of those people had done anything to her. The fact that they worked at the Strauss Center made them more hateful than the rest of the population, though.
 
A moment of pause would have been enough for Laura to realize that she had nothing to gain from finishing them. Unfortunately for them, she did not take that moment, and she just followed her gut, which was telling her to step on them. Once she did, it only took her a moment to move her foot in their direction and fit practically all of them under her sole before stepping down. 
 
Moving her foot backward, she stooped slightly to inspect the several dozen gory stains in the deep depression her foot had left in the concrete of the plaza. All she said was:
 
“Oops”
 
Laura decided to use the fact that the rest of the people in the lobby of the Strauss Center were having second thoughts about getting out after seeing the fate of their colleagues as proof that what she had done had served a purpose. 
 
Happy with it, she just straightened back up and took a good look at the chest-high building right in front of her. Out of all the modern monstrosities that had been built in Emerald, the Strauss Center was by far the ugliest one. It stood out from the city's more traditional architecture, and its golden color made it even worse than what its unremarkable blocky appearance was already. 
 
She did not want that in her city.
 
Almost by impulse, Laura closed her fist and then punched the building's top third. It ripped like wet tissue. She was quite happy when she felt her hand exiting through the other side but the building holding. She was curious, so she removed her first with great care and stooped to look through the massive hole she had just put into the skyscraper.
 
 
Andrea was scared shitless about the situation. Like everyone else, she knew everything about the giant woman that was standing right in front of the building she worked at and that she had announced that she would bring the building down.
 
Unlike many of her co-workers, Andrea was going through her fear with a calmer demeanor. She worked at the seventy-second floor of the building which, with the elevators gone, meant that her only way out was seventy-two very long flights of stairs. Many of the people in her office were trying their luck. She had decided to accept her fate. She was not the only one. 
 
Andrea was used to watching the landscape at the other side of the windows. She knew just how tall they were. This made the rough skin that was now filling her vision, which she perfectly knew was the giant's nipple, even more remarkable. She had already consciously known it but realizing for real that the young woman was larger than the Strauss Center sent a shiver running down her spine.  
 
Andrea did not have time to react when the nipple moved away and was replaced by a fast-moving object. She could not understand that it was nothing else than the woman's closed fist before she was thrown violently around, the light getting
knocked out of her as the sounds and screams of destruction grew all around her.
 
It was amazing how utter chaos could become complete calm so quickly. Andrea managed to turn and open her eyelids. Her office was no more. She was surrounded by smoke and rubble. And the light was way more intense than she was used to. A quick look around told her the reason why: there were no windows anymore. There were no walls either. And judging by the lack of screams, there were no survivors.
 
She sat down, and her blood froze when a movement outside made her look in the right direction and lock into the massive eye that was observing her with unhidden curiosity.
 
Andrea frantically looked around her to check that she was, actually, the only one in the area that was alive. This should have been good news… only they weren't. It meant that the giant woman's attention was fully trained on her.
 
 
 
 
 
The tiny redhead was curious to observe. Laura did not know how she had managed to survive, but she even looked unscratched.
 
"You are a tough little ant," she said cheerfully. The woman did not like her words at all, of course. Laura did not know if that had been driven by the words themselves or by the fact that she had realized that she was focused on her. 
 
The tiny survivor was interesting enough for Laura to want to have a closer look. She thought about letting her know but then discarded the idea. It would not make any difference, would it?
 
She just reached out with two fingers the length of a city bus and pinched the woman with a care that she was now completely used to but that felt completely illogical to the rest of the world.
 
Straightening back up, she just held the now screaming redhead in front of her curious eyes and smiled at her.
 
"You little people never cease to amaze me," Laura said, her soft voice easily overshadowing the tiny woman's screams.
 
“Let me go!” the woman finally screamed
 
Laura chuckled.
 
“You see? This is the reason I need to be in charge and make the calls for you. If I did as you want, you would drop a thousand feet to the ground. I know that would not be good… but you tinies just can’t see it, can you?” she said, mocking.
 
"Please," the woman said, now crying.
 
It was stupid. Laura realized about it. She was about to bring the entire building down, along with the hundreds of people inside. One more woman would not make any difference at all. And still, she found herself crouching and setting the puny office worker on the road below, right on a right foot that dwarfed her.   
 
"I would get out as quickly as possible if I were you," Laura said. "After all the hassle, I would hate it if I ended up stepping on you" she added.
 
The woman did not waste time to start running. Still crouching, Laura observed her comical movements for a few more seconds, chuckling again just before standing back up to face the building.
 
She could not fool herself. These little acts of magnanimity did nothing to compensate the increasing violence with which she was treating the city. They still made her feel good, though. They made them feel that she was still fair-minded.
 
It was very ironic that her next action right after this thought was another punch into the building, this time in a lower section.
 
Significantly weakened in two critical spots, the Strauss Center could not hold it anymore and started to collapse on itself.
 
"Oh well," Laura said aloud. She had expected that the golden monstrosity would offer her some more entertainment.
 
Debris rained into the street below, burying some of the ones that had decided to try their luck in the plaza once they had realized that staying in the lobby would not save them. It felt like a chain reaction… and then it stopped.
 
The building was about the height of her mid-thigh by the time it did.
 
There were plenty of ways Laura could have dealt with it. Her previous training with the Windsor had told her as much. She just kicked it, out of contempt. Her foot broke through the building as if it had been made of crackers. By the time she drew her leg back, nothing left standing of Jacob Strauss’ former headquarters.
 
Laura was satisfied. And at the same time, she was disappointed. She was feeling playful, and up to some point, she felt that she had broken her latest toy way too quickly.
 
Shrugging, she just thought:
 
"Well, this was hardly the only skyscraper I don't like in the city."
 
Not putting too much thought into the fact that she was beginning to long for chances to show and use her size and power, regardless of the real purpose this would have for her plans.
 
Laura did not see anything wrong with that.
 
Turning to look across the plaza, she smirked at a very shocked Jacob Strauss and headed back towards him. It was time to deal with the man once and for all.
 
 
 
“We were already expecting this, of course, but the speed at which Laura Anderson is evolving is amazing. The level of creativity and arbitrariness of her latest victims could not have been expected just a few hours ago” Laya said
 
“Well, you might not have expected it. I did” Quo replied, smiling
 
“Sure, professor” Laya replied, doing a gesture with her four arms that was equivalent to shrugging
 
"You will enjoy it for a while more," Quo said
 
“How do you know?” Laya asked
 
"Well, until some external factor pushes our subject in the direction we want, she will just keep on evolving her current state, which is nothing else than pure indulgence," Quo said
 
“She already went through this before” Laya pointed out
 
"She went through a phase of indulging with her size. Now she is indulging in her power. In her mind, she has already taken over the city. And she longs to prove it to the population in every occasion she is granted" Quo said  
 
"But she has not taken over the city, yet, according to you," Laya said 
 
“No. Not until she breaks real resistance” Quo said
 
“When will that happen?” Laya said
 
“Oh, soon enough. But for now, it will be entertaining to see her exercising her authority over the population, punishing those she did not like as she keeps on exploring” Quo said
 
“Will it be even better once she is tested?” Laya asked
 
“I doubt it. If things go the way I’m predicting, Laura Anderson’s reaction to her first real challenge will be genuinely violent” Quo said
 
“Isn’t she being violent now?” Laya asked
 
“Not in her mind. You always need to take into account the point of view” Quo said
 
“Of course” Laya acknowledged
 
"Anyway, let's enjoy the current moment. I'm not sure how long it will last, but it has a lot of potential."