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Chapter 17

 

Feeling both powerful and playful, Laura stood up from the wreck she had just caused and looked for new sources of fun. She was aware of the fact that she was, once more, delaying her meeting with Stacy, but she now realized that she had been holding off in using her new size adequately and had some backlog.
 
Her antics with the building had given the crowds in the area some time to evacuate, but from her vantage point of view, now 50 feet over the 1000-foot mark, Laura had no trouble in finding them soon enough. It was just a matter of choosing. And she chose the largest one.
 
“Fee Fi Fo Fum!” Laura bellowed playfully to the city. “Ready or not, here I come!”
 
There were no apparent traces of the stateswoman she had wanted to be when she had shown up in the city and announced her intentions. She was there, waiting for a future occasion to come out, but right now all the city could see was the little girl that had had her lifelong fantasy come true. 
 
She paraded down the avenue as if it were a fashion runway, using her enhanced sight to observe the panic she could cause even from a dozen blocks away.
 
Feeling sexy, Laura took advantage of passing next to one of the tallest buildings in the area, which reached as high as her waist and slammed her butt into it with a sensual sideways movement of her shapely hip. The building never stood a chance, its top half crumbling like a sand castle at the tremendous blow.
 
“I guess they don’t build them like they used to” Laura mocked.
 
Soon enough she was standing right behind the crowd. Their screams reached her ears. Even from over a thousand feet above the people that uttered them. They were all waiting for her next step, for the blow that would sow a hundred lives. It never came. Laura just widened her stance and placed her hands on her hips, looking down with despise at the mass of people trying to flee from her. 
 
As usual, she was amused at their reactions to her. They were so utterly stupid that there was even some universal justice in finishing them. Up to some point, she was making the gene pool better. She knew she could not move forward with that criteria, though. If she were to be strict about it, she had the risk of depopulating the planet too much.   
 
She was tempted just to resume her walk and stomp them, but somehow it felt too easy. She had already done plenty of that when she had not been trying to amuse herself and knew everything that had to be known already. When the crowd was packed enough, each of her steps would kill around a hundred people, her sole feeling them popping right before the road under them sank, and she buried their splattered remainders several feet under the ground. It could be argued that being able to flatten them under her feet like bugs was still one of the most obvious demonstrations of her power, but it was probably not the most amusing one.     
 
Keeping her sight fixed on the crowd of thousands, Laura searched for something that would open some new possibility. She smiled when she identified a candidate. After all, the cop trying to guide the crowd in their desperate attempts to flee was too cute to leave him alone.
 
Without further warning, Laura took a step forward. Her objective was not the death that would come from the step per se, but it came anyway. Two more steps and she was already in position to crouch first and kneel later. She did not know what gave a clue to the cop that she was after him, but he reacted to her and got into his squad car in some instinctive move. How cute!  
 
It only made things easier for Laura, of course, who now only had to pick the diminutive cruiser with two fingers and raise it with her as she stood back up.
 
Laura set the squad car in her palm and looked through its windshield with piercing eyes. Smiling, she addressed the terrified centimeter-tall cop inside.
 
"You are lovely," she said.
 
It was quite obvious that the man did not like her attention at all.
 
“Honk once if you can understand me. Don’t honk and I’ll flatten your car with my thumb” Laura said in a casual tone. She could not suppress a giggle when a long honk came immediately.
 
"Good," she said, satisfied. "I will need public servants that help me enforce my laws in my new world. Judging from what I've seen, you might as well be one of them. Step out of the car and serve me" Laura said.
 
She was putting back her conquering goddess hat, but it was only a temporary charade to mess with the cop.
 
The officer hesitated a bit more this time, but he finally opened the door and stepped out into her uneven skin. It was too good!
 
Laura just flexed the thumb of the same palm that had been holding the cop and the squad car and flattened the cruiser mercilessly, barely avoiding the officer, who was thrown off his feet.
 
“Don’t worry, that won’t happen to you” Laura said.
 
“What do you want from me?” the cop said finally, sobbing.
 
"I don't want anything from you. I want you" Laura said and then reached into her cunt to remove her private free-fall boat transport. Manipulating it and opening its back door, she commanded: "Get in and get acquainted with it. You are going to spend some time inside me."
 
The man hesitated, but all she needed to make him comply was a stare and a frown.
 
Bringing the boat back in, Laura thought that she might have to look for some bigger transport if she kept increasing the number of guests.
 
It was time to handle the crowd, which had barely managed to clear a block in the time she had spent with the cop. She was tempted to trample them this time, but then a better idea came to her head. 
 
Smirking, Laura opened her hand and pushed it into one of the tallest buildings in the vicinity. Curling it like an excavator, Laura got her hand out of the building and was satisfied with the collection of rubble, furniture, and corpses on it. She closed her fist to smash the contents a bit  more for good measure and when she was satisfied with the level of granularity, moved to the next step in her plan.
 
Opening her palm flat, she tilted it somewhat down and adjusted her body so that the palm would point in the direction of the crowd. And then she just started blowing.
 
Football sized boulders flew along the street at the impulse of her hurricane-forced winds. It was a massacre; the hundreds of chunks of rubble she had been holding in her palm hit their targets more often than they missed. By the end of the sandstorm, there were hundreds of victims and many more very startled people.
 
Feeling both naughty and mean, Laura let a laugh out at the deadly results of her game.
 
“You guys really cannot hold your own, can you?” she mocked them.
 
She remained idle, hands on her hips, observing the crowd to try to come up with new ideas to disrupt their activity. As she did, Laura narrowed her eyes at some weird pattern in the mob. It took her a few seconds to realize that, as observed, the crowd was thinning. A short while later she found the cause in a subway entrance a couple of blocks down the avenue. Hundreds of people were trying to get away from her underground.
 
This upset Laura and her new and rougher approach to handling people. Without further word, she stomped her way to the subway sign, her merciless feet snuffing hundreds of lives without her even paying any attention to them. 
 
She could sense the spike in fear as she approached. Focusing, she felt it propagating underground. Making some adjustments into her mental perception as she became more and more used to it, Laura soon tuned with the thousands of people in the station and in the tunnels that spread from it. The shakes and raining debris caused by her mere walking were causing shockwaves of fear among the people.
 
Taking a good look at the ridiculous centimeter-tall folks disappearing underground right in front of her towering toes, Laura used a grave tone as she said:
 
“How dare you?”
 
Laura understood that the time for lessons was far from over. She set to it without wasting time. She could feel the anxiety in the area as she slowly got down on her knees. She ignored those crushed under them, as well as the ones that gave her lives so that she would be able to rest her hands on the road. The times to try to minimize victims were over. Bringing her head closer to the ground, Laura’s hair started to wreak havoc on its own, but again she ignored it.
 
No one knew what she was about until the gusting sound flooded the avenue and gale-like winds caught the crowd unprepared. Those that were not too busy trying to stay on their feet soon found out that there was something weird happening. It took them a few seconds to realize that it had to do with the direction of the wind: it was not blowing from the giant woman but towards her.
 
Laura kept inhaling, filling her lungs with compressed air, her overpowered muscles letting her breathe in for way longer than a normal person would have been able to, even at her height.
 
Laura had to honestly admit that she had not been expecting her breathing to suck some of the people closest to her in, so she was a bit startled when she felt their tiny bodies hit the back of her throat and slide down into her stomach. For an instant, she even considered stopping the entire process, but she quickly discarded the idea and kept on filling her lungs.
 
She did not stop until she was satisfied. When she did, she crouched even lower and brought her lips into the subway entrance, encompassing it as if she were kissing a lover. And then, she unleashed the hurricane she had been building up in her lungs.
 
It was brutal. Not having room to expand freely other than the halls and tunnels of the subway system, the air she was violently channeling through her lips did not merely throw people around, but it hit them with the force of an explosion. Those in the station she was kissing were obliterated almost instantly. It did not stop there. Heavily compressed air traveled through the tunnels, not finding enough room to properly expand. Those in other stations in the system never knew what hit them when the gusting sound was quickly followed by a splattering force.  
 
Potholes and the areas around them were violently sent flying as her hurricane advanced. The explosions became more massive when the basement of a building or a wider area in a square exploded as the storm reached a station.
 
 
 
POV of someone from a station being killed
 
 
 
 
Intending to be thorough, Laura kept blowing for close to a minute. By the time she stopped, she had caused her worst massacre yet. Half of the vast network of subway tunnels in Emerald had been hit, thousands of people had been disintegrated.
 
Stopping and sitting back on her knees, Laura smirked in satisfaction as she observed how her little act of retribution had been way more effective than she had been expecting. It turned out that she still managed to surprise herself with her newfound abilities.
 
Thinking of them, she tuned her emotional antenna, just passively receiving. Her smirk widened as she felt the overall shock at what she had just done. It was exhilarating to confirm her ability to still shock the crowd. Just when they thought they had seen everything from her, she managed to find new ways to exercise her power.
 
"You cannot hide from me," Laura said, not even raising her tone. "You cannot run away from me" she added. "You cannot fight me back" she concluded. "It's time for you to accept that you belong to me. It will increase your chances of survival." 
 
Spying a group that was close enough and that was still trying to get away from her, Laura frowned and spat at them in contempt. It turned out that even this was fatal. Coming from pretty high above and having a larger than expected mass, Laura's saliva took on quite a bit of kinetic energy before hitting the ground. The results were some people splattered in the epicenter of the hit and quite a few more being caught by the "explosion" that ensued.   
Not having expected it, Laura snorted like a little girl as she slapped her thigh.
 
“Oh my God!”
 
Encouraged, she turned towards the high-rise to her right and smiled evilly at the shadows gathering behind the windows. They never stood a chance as Laura balled up her saliva behind her lips once more and then expelled it at high speed. It hit the façade with the strength of a tank shell, making it explode and caving a large section of a couple of floors in. The funniest image yet was that of the badly injured survivors at the edge of the explosion.
 
Feeling encouraged by this, Laura adjusted her stance and took a closer look at the building. People were moaning in pain and screaming in terror. She smiled at them and then punched a quite larger hole without warning.
 
“How are we all doing today?” she asked as half a dozen floors of the office building were exposed to her.
 
No one seemed to be very interested in answering to her. Following them with her sight, Laura soon identified a pattern and smirked when she saw what it was: people running towards the elevators. Seeing many them getting into one of the elevator carts, Laura reached towards it, unconcerned when the doors closed before her fingers reached the area.
 
Why should she have been concerned when she could break through the wall and pinch the elevator car into its shaft? Holding it tight for a few seconds while she tried to reach mentally to those trapped in it, Laura transmitted them something in the lines of "Yeah, sure, as if you were going to be able to get away from me". Then, she just pushed her fingers together, crushing the elevator and the close to twenty people inside into nothing.
 
Removing her hand from the building, she kept observing the dynamics inside, the panic now even higher as word of what she had done spread through the people on it. She smirked at them, then without warning, she shot another round of saliva, obliterating a few more people in the process. She knew she was behaving like a mean little girl, but she did not see anything wrong with it.    
 
Finally bored with the building, Laura stood up, ignoring the very shocked survivors and focusing her sight on the landscape down the avenue.
 
It looked quite worse than she had expected. Her blowing into the subway had been way more destructive than anticipated, and besides the thousands killed in tunnels and stations, it had also made large sections of the streets around her explode upwards. She could rip another building open to find some more toys, but the area was essentially wasted in what had probably been her most destructive outburst yet.
 
Shrugging, she said aloud what she had been thinking, for everyone to hear:
 
"Time to find me another playground."  
 
With no better way to go, she started heading towards Stacy’s neighborhood. Having caused so much destruction upfront meant that her path was quiet for some time. Of course, she still ended up stepping on some stranded laggards, but it was nothing compared to the usual body count when she moved.
 
The casual stroll helped her to relax a bit, so quite naturally, Laura started to observe her surroundings, much like a tourist doing some sightseeing. The city sprawled for miles and Laura smirked at the thought that everything she could see was hers. Everything she could not see was hers too. It was just that the world did not know it for a fact yet. 
 
Gradually, Laura started getting out of her exclusively playful mood and focusing back on her main world-domination mission. She had indulged for a bit, and it felt great, but she could not lose track of the longer-term objective.
 
With no better direction to go, she decided to find Stacy for good first and complete her conquest of the city right after.
 
She knew Emerald well enough to plot a path towards Stacy’s apartment, even though her view of the city was changed. She enjoyed once more observing how most buildings could not make it even up to her shapely ass and started strutting shortly after. It was a Laura more focused on her image than on her deeds once more.
 
And, with enough mental capacity to spare, she let her mind wander into what came next. After all, if she was to subdue the world she needed something like an action plan, so she started building it in her head.
 
First, she would find Stacy. She was the only person in the world Laura cared about, and she wanted to make her part of her dream. Once she had caught up with her, she would resume her city takeover. There was no doubt in Laura's mind that she was already the only power in the city, and she guessed that by now its population had reluctantly accepted it too, but one thing had the power and the other one was projecting it. She needed the world to see that she was in power. And this would require some display of it.    
 
Luckily for Laura, this was one of those aspects of her campaign she had thoroughly considered in her years getting ready to become a goddess. So, she knew what was involved. Laura would finally use mass media to her convenience, announcing her intentions. And then, she would issue her commands to the population. They would be simple enough at first, something that they would do without too much effort. It would show the world that they were obeying her, though. Then, she would gradually escalate in her demands until it was clear to everyone that Emerald’s citizens obeyed her. She hoped that she would not need to punish anyone during this phase, not because she was not ready to, but because the smoother her display of power was, the easier it would be to export it to a larger scale.
 
Which would be, of course, the next step. Once there was no doubt to anyone in the world that Emerald was hers, she would step things up. City first, country next. It would take her more than a day, she knew. The United States of America was the most powerful country in the world, so Laura would effectively be fighting to subdue the second most powerful entity on Earth after her. In some of her mental plans, this process unfolded to close to a week. It all depended on whether she would need to sleep or not, something which was already a big unknown to her.
 
The reason for the expected length of her campaign had nothing to do with the fact that the centers of power were on the East Coast. She could be there in less than a day at a leisurely pace, she knew. Laura did not expect. However, the USA would surrender without a fight, so she knew that she would need to defeat its armies at least once. Probably more times, if they were as stubborn as she expected. This would, in turn, require her to invest some time into punishment raids. It was especially important in this first phase of her ascension to show the world that she was ruthless. Defiance could not go unanswered.     
 
She knew she would need to break the will of the country first. Once she did, it was only a matter of showing at DC, the center of power, and dictating her new rules. The good thing about being born in the USA was that once she had taken over her country, it was over. No one else could dare oppose her if the USA fell. She knew some would try, but maybe except the Chinese and the Russian, their will would be weak. She did not expect too much of a fight from Europeans, and smaller nations knew they would never stand a chance.  
 
Laura's train of thought was interrupted when a tiny noise she had not been expecting brought her attention back to feet level after a while. She could not prevent a snort when she saw a tiny squad car with its siren on stopped at a bit more than two steps away.
 
“Oh well, that should be interesting” Laura thought.
 
It was obvious to Laura that the squad car was not in a foolish attempt to stop her. After everything that had happened along the morning, no one could be that stupid. She was curious about what their intentions could be. There were three centimeter-tall people gathered around the vehicle, and they looked obviously nervous.
 
Smirking, Laura took another step towards them, feeling their panic increase. Then, without warning, she proceeded to sit on one knee.
 
Like every time Laura stopped treating people like masses and focused on a specific individual, she was exhilarated by the difference in scale. The three tinies, two cops and a man in a suit, felt even lesser than bugs. They were not bugs, though, she knew. They were humans, and despite the vast difference there was with her now, they were still the second most powerful species on the planet. The species she aspired to rule.  
 
"You wanted my attention," Laura said in a soft tone. It was a statement, not a question.
 
It made the three tinies even more nervous, but finally, the man in the suit gathered the courage to take a step to the front and said:
 
"We've come to present our terms for a surrender."
 
Laura had to work hard not to let a loud laugh out. Instead, she made an effort to keep a serious face as she asked:
 
“Who are you?”
 
"My name is Roger Limbaugh, I'm… I was the deputy mayor of Emerald" he said. 
 
This was getting interesting. So, she was dealing with the authority, and she had not even had to search for it. Laura felt genuinely curious about the tiny man’s intentions. Still, she was not about to waste a chance to make a statement. So, still looking and sounding serious, she said:
 
"Come closer."
 
Even without her increased mental abilities, it would have been very obvious that the man was terrified. She reached out and felt him a bit more, without tampering. It was easy to notice the fear and a stronger feeling emerging and beating it. The man took the first step towards her. So, she was in front of a brave man. Because, in her mind, brave men were not the ones that felt no fear but those that acted despite it.   
 
Curling her lips only slightly, she observed the man taking one step, then another… and then another. He stopped when he was well within grabbing distance.
 
“So, I guess I made you acting mayor when I ate Strauss, didn’t I?” Laura said, taunting him on purpose. She wanted to learn more about the kind of man she was dealing with.
 
She was satisfied when the man showed disgust but held his ground.
 
“Are you willing to talk?” the tiny man said, his voice barely carrying to her ears, even if for some other amazing side effect of her transformation she could hear him perfectly.
 
"Always. The question is, why did you decide to talk?" Laura asked. 
 
"I… we are concerned about the well-being of our fellow citizens," Limbaugh said. 
 
“You are right to be” Laura replied dryly, making him swallow hard.
 
“We… the cabinet… we have decided to offer you rule of the city in exchange for you stopping to cause death and destruction” the man finally said. It was obvious that the words had been hard to pronounce.
 
Laura did not change her expression at all when she said:
 
"This is now how it's going to work."
 
She would not have needed her mental muscle to realize the combination of surprise and frustration her answer caused. She ignored it and went on.
 
“You called this a negotiation, but this is far from what it is. I don’t need to negotiate with you. The city is mine, whether you say it or not” Laura said.
 
She smirked at the shock her words had. Still, she went on.
 
"There's no way I can move around the city without killing some people and breaking some stuff, so there's no way I will promise what I cannot fulfill. Besides, I don't want to. I want to have the option to kill and destroy when I want, not just when I need" Laura said.     
 
The level of anxiety in the trio in front of her threatened to reach unbearable levels. Concerned that any of them could have a heart attack, she eased the pressure a bit.
 
"This does not mean I cannot be reasonable, though," she said. Feeling some opening for hope in the deputy mayor, she added "I can tune it down. These last few minutes have been wilder than they need to be looking forward. Once the city is formally mine, I will be more interested in ruling and less in disrupting its activity" she added.
 
The three men were left speechless. Finally, the deputy mayor managed to open his mouth.
 
“What… what do you want?”
 
Laura smirked and said:
 
"Unconditional surrender. You will gather what remains of the government and the press somewhere public. Let's say, the Eagles' stadium. You will name me supreme ruler of the city. You will advise people to follow every order coming from me. And then I'll give my acceptance speech. In case you are interested, you can keep your post. You will report to me. I need some people to do my bidding and take care of the housekeeping, and you've proved to have guts" 
 
“What… what if we don’t?” Limbaugh said.
 
Laura narrowed her eyes and brought a finger so close to the tiny man that he jumped backward in reaction.
 
She ignored that and just pressed her fingertip on the road, making it crack first and sink later. Her finger followed, like a bulldozer. By the time she stopped pushing, Laura had drilled a five-foot-wide, fifty-foot-deep hole in the asphalt, reaching the piping level underneath. 
 
Removing her wet fingertip from the ground, Laura fixed her stare on the tiny man and said:
 
“By the time I’m done, there will be only two types of people in the world: those I rule and those that are not anymore. Be smart” she said.
 
Without further word, Laura stood up, the tiny man looking tinier and tinier as she rose to her height, now above the one-thousand-foot mark.
 
"There's someone I need to pick up that cannot miss my coronation. Make haste. It would be good if everything were ready in the Eagles' stadium when I get there so that I don't need to find myself any distraction while I wait for you."   
 
 
 
 
"I was not expecting humans to surrender to her," Laya said.
 
“Well, the one that surrendered to her hardly counts. She broke the chain of command enough with her previous antics so that the one making the decisions was weak” Quo replied.
 
"But he surrendered the city to her," Laya said.
 
“Did he have the power to do that? Only if everyone else follows” Quo said.
 
“Why should not they? The same way he realized it was worthless to fight Laura, the rest of the population must have seen it too” Laya said.
 
“Humans are the most stubborn and resilient species we’ve found so far. What you’ve seen so far is far from the level of resistance that’s expected from them” Quo said.
 
“Even if they realize it’s meaningless to fight back?” Laya asked.
 
“Have they realized yet?” Quo replied with a question.
 
"They should," Laya said.
 
“Oh, you’re very wrong there. Laura Anderson is far from breaking humanity’s fighting spirit” Quo said.
 
"She will, though, eventually," Laya said.
 
"Of course. It will be then when it is safe to say that she has taken over the world."   
 

Chapter End Notes:

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