Chapter 21

Laura advanced towards the military in a straight line, ignoring streets or other useless human conventions. Her shins obliterated every building in her path as her feet finished anyone unlucky enough to have not been able to flee the area.
 
The goddess had a determined look, facing her fate with serenity. Stopping right before her toes got wet, Laura widened her stance and looked at her attackers in the distance once more. Even from the opposite side of the bay it was easy enough to feel their fear.
 
She used one hand to widen her lower lips as the other fingered the contents of her vagina out. She would have time for fun later; she had business to attend to, now. Dozens of bodies fell hundreds of feet to the ground below, but only a few of them were actually alive enough to scream.
 
Her sensitive ears told her that her usual entourage of news helicopters was not far behind. They had an important mission. They would be the ones showing the world how it was to fight a goddess.
 
 
 
 
General McKenzie looked at the image of the giant woman on the other side of the bay and sighed, trying to prevent his men from seeing the gesture. He knew he had probably doomed them, but it was them or the city, and they had all sworn an oath to serve.
 
The time it had taken to be ready had passed painfully slowly. Once they were, it was hard to decide when to proceed. Until the woman reached the stadium and he knew he had to save the people there, even at the cost of his own men.
 
Not having been able to had been devastating. Learning that the woman was using the population for her own sexual enjoyment first had been tough. Seeing her bring the entire stadium down for the whole purpose of killing every soul in the area had been even worse. When had she become such a monster?
 
Kyle McKenzie had seen her profile. There was nothing too remarkable there. Twenty-two, college graduate, manager at a well-known department store, lesbian and with a stable couple… how did a woman like this end up in a creature that killed people by the thousands? Was her growth enough explanation for such a change?
 
He did not have too much time to think about it, in any case. The battle for Emerald was about to start.
 
“Send Wing 1” he said.
 
He did not hold too many hopes on the results of the attack planes. Recent experience had taught him as much. Still, the more he could delay the woman from reaching his troops, the longer they’d live.
 
 
 
Laura saw the wake of the fighter jets as they got ready to attack her. She remained in dry land, hands on her hips, completely unconcerned by them. She knew she would not be harmed. And now she also knew she could bring them down.
 
She was about to link herself mentally with the pilots, ready to fry a few more brains, when she thought on putting together a better show for the live audiences. A whooshing sound took over the area. The water surface started undulating and anything that was not firmly attached to the street started moving, including abandoned cars and trucks. She was at it for a while, waiting for the trails of the fighter jets to become closer. There were two dozen of them.
 
Even after finishing her apparently never-ending deep breath, Laura waited a bit more, hands on her hips, chest held high. The jets were slower than she would have expected. Finally, they got where she wanted them to be.
 
And then, she unleashed the power of her weather-shaping lungs. Not only did she catch each and every single of the fighters getting ready to shoot their missiles at her. Her hurricane, with winds way faster than any that had ever been recorded on Earth, dissolved nearby clouds and noticeably changed the atmospheric pressure in the bay. The jets never stood a chance. A few were sent meandering down to crash with the sea. Some others were not so lucky and just disintegrated under the power of her breath.
 
The attack helicopters that had fired at her while on the stadium had not been directly engaged in this new attempt on her, but they suffered its consequences too. Not directly on the path of her self-generated typhoon, their rotors were not ready to react to the abrupt change in pressure. Soon, the dozen or so aircraft started spiraling, their drops ending in noticeable explosions and geysers as they crashed with the sea surface.
 
Laura could not have been happier with the results of her actions. She knew that killing them mentally would have been an equal, if not larger, display of power. But she was playing for her audience now, and she reasoned that sheer physical power still ruled when it came to pure intimidation.
 
“Look at that! Two birds with one stone!” Laura said proudly.
 
The level of fear and unrest projected from the opposite side of the bay increased. It suited Laura well. They would soon meet the same fate as their comrades. As a matter of fact, she did not see why they should wait for her to get there to give them a taste of what was coming to them.
 
Crouching, Laura reached out and grabbed a medium sized boat that had drifted close to her position. It was clearly abandoned, but this did not matter for what she had planned. Lifting the boat from the water with one hand, she let it rest in her palm. It was about as long as her hand, heel to fingertips. It soon became shorter, as Laura tightened her first around it, twisting it into an unrecognizable shape with ease. The boat’s thick hull was quickly losing the battle with the astronomical forge of Laura’s digits and kept deforming. A few seconds later, Laura used her other hand to help shaping the boat into what she wanted: a compacted and much denser ball of steel that took less than half the room in her palm as the original ship had.
 
Tossing it up gently and catching it back, Laura weighed the metal sphere she had created and then raised her sight, setting it on the army waiting for her.
 
She had never been especially good at throwing. She did not need to be. The army was taking a vast enough extension so that missing would be practically impossible. Laura drew her arm back without further consideration and tossed the ball, letting it describe an arc over the bay. She was happy enough with its apex and the point where it started its descent. It was obvious that she would hit the thickest of the troops.
 
The results were even better than expected, the ball having accumulated energy in its flight and causing a kinetic explosion that she had not been looking for. Dozens of soldiers were instantly obliterated by the initial blow. A few dozen more joined them once the ball refused to stay idle and started rolling over them.
 
All the reaction they got from Laura was a short snort.
 
Then, the goddess took a step forward and started wading across the bay.
 
They had apparently been waiting for her to be away enough from the city to start the artillery barrage, since the impacts started as soon as she was one third of the way to them. Judging by the multiple misses, which caused noticeable columns of water around her, the cannons were not as precise as the missiles that had been shot at her before, which was probably the reason they had held for her to be at a certain distance from the city they were trying to protect before firing at her.
 
Still, the majority of the shells impacted her. It did not make even the slightest difference. Much like a truck that drives across an insect infested area, getting splashed mosquitos into its windshield, Laura advanced uninterrupted through the artillery rounds.
 
“Haven’t you seen enough of me to learn that a few cannons are not even going to slow me down?” she asked, defiant.
 
Well, she had fired at them and they were firing back at her, she guessed. Only the results were so much different…
 
Her path across the bay led her next to a small islet that she would have ignored if not for the fact that she had been actively looking for something to throw back at the army. Stopping and looking at its rocky surface she was about to ignore it. Then, she thought:
 
“Who’s the goddess here?”
 
Laura crouched, ignoring the shells that continued to harmlessly bounce of her impregnable skin. Placing one hand on each side of the islet, she then started to pull. She could feel the resistance, the seabed not wanting to part with one of its features. She could also feel that her supply of raw strength was not even close to exhaust.
 
Laura’s biceps bulged as she willed to rip the rock from the Earth. And she did. It was spectacular, the noise of the geological event she had caused easily reaching the panicked troops.
 
She was slow and deliberate as she lifted the rock off the water, bringing it over her head with both hands. It looked easily a couple of feet long to her, a true meteorite to the mites that were so unsuccessfully attacking her.
 
She held it in position for a few seconds, letting the fear at what was coming spread across the army ranks.
 
“I can throw stuff too” she said just before tossing the massive rock towards her attackers.
 
It was spectacular. Hundreds were instantly crushed under the islet’s sheer mass. Hundreds more died as a result of the impossible shockwave. Best of all, the artillery fire finished. The army was too broken to be able to keep firing at her.
 
Laura felt incredibly proud. Risking a peek over her shoulder, she made certain that the news crews had caught her latest action in its full glory. Then, not being able to hold herself any longer, the giant let a loud laugh out and bellowed:
 
“So, what’s the score? Army 0 – Laura 2,000?”
 
 
 
 
The giant had not yet reached them and the casualties among his ranks were already unbearable. General McKenzie pondered his next move carefully. He did not ask his staff, not wanting to involve them into a decision that would probably not be well understood.
 
It was a day or giving orders he would have never thought possible, apparently. He owed it to his men, though. They had done their duty. They had sacrificed themselves with valor and discipline, attracting the giant woman out of the city and suffering the worst losses the US military had had since the Vietnam war.
 
There was no point in sacrificing them all. He knew not all of them would make it, no matter what he decided. But he needed to save at least a few.
 
Turning and addressing his officers he said:
 
“Prepare for retreat”
 
 
 
 
“Oh no, you won’t!” Laura bellowed as she saw the troops starting to fall back from their positions. She unconsciously accelerated her pace, her shins making taller waves as they effortlessly cut through the water.
 
There was blood in Laura’s eyes and it was crystal clear to her that she was not going to let the army leave in one piece. They had to pay for Stacy. And they had to show the world what happened when someone challenged her.
 
Bi-rotor cargo helicopters, looking like the ones she had blown out of the sky over the Admiral’s stadium, started lifting on the rearguard of the army. They would be the first ones to go then.
 
Without time for elaborate displays, Laura tapped into the limitless power of her mind and scanned the pilots into her control with an ease that suggested that she was beginning to master this new ability. The distance did not matter. Their number did not matter. Her mind could beat any of those feeble challenges.
 
She did not need to toy around this time. She knew just what she needed to fry them all. Still, she used a couple of extra seconds to let them know what would happen, to send them into a shriek just before she killed them with a wish.
 
A dozen helicopters dropped from the sky like flies suddenly caught in insecticide, killing the soldiers in them and dragging a few more lives as they exploded when hitting the ground.
 
The impact in the ground troops was immediate. It was easy enough for Laura to observe how shocked and directionless they had become. She did not mind. They would die just the same.
 
Her feet were on solid ground before anyone could react, water cascading down her shins and flooding the area around her. The ant-sized soldiers were not too far, their efforts not having let them put that much distance with the coast for her new standards.
 
Artillery batteries were abandoned around her. Curious, Laura bent down and picked one of the largest canons around, not looking much longer than a couple inches to her. Bending its barrel casually with a fingernail, she then tossed it over her shoulder and moved her humongous right foot to finish a dozen similar weapons under her sole. Soon, thousands of soldiers would have the same fate.
 
Laura did not feel any sympathy for them. She did not feel sympathy for the fucking ants anymore.
 
“You think you can get away from me?” she asked, defiant. “Really?”
 
Slowly, ponderously, she took a step forward. Her naked body was instantly hit by dozens of shells. Once more, they were totally ineffective. As a matter of fact, to Laura this last attempt felt even feebler than any of the previous ones.
 
It did not take her long to find its source in a battalion of tanks that were staying behind, turrets turned, canons raised, firing at her while they covered the retreat of the ground troops. As if this was going to help them.
 
She ignored the impacts, nothing more than raindrops breaking in her anatomy, as she kept her slow advance towards them. She saw no reason to strain herself in the pursuit when it was evident that she was going to catch them soon enough.
 
A dozen steps later, her toes were right behind the lagging tanks. They could not hit her much higher than her shins and ankles now. Laura could have sunk half a dozen of the pesky cockroaches in one more of her footprints, but decided otherwise. Instead, she sat on her haunches and reached for the closest one.
 
The 2 inches long armored vehicle felt more resilient than most of the stuff she had held between her fingertips so far. Its colleagues were still firing at her, but with the tank shells being more inconsequential than the breeze, Laura decided to ignore them and focus on the catch at hand.
“So, this is what you guys send when you want to storm an enemy’s position” she said. “Let me show you what I send”
 
Without further consideration, Laura started to push her fingertips together, pleased to feel the thick armor giving and deforming under the astronomical strength of her digits. A few seconds later, all that remained of the tank was a penny-shaped disc of metal.
 
“Do you guys even realize just how easy this is for me?” Laura asked, arrogant. She started picking up tanks one by one and placing them in her cupped palm. Needless to say, the tanks were trying their best to flee from her, but with the difference in scale, their speed could not even be compared to that of a snail.
 
“It would have been best if you had just accepted the new reality. It was not so hard, believe me. I did. I know it’s easier to accept that you are a goddess than to accept that you will now have to live under one, but it’s called being realistic. Being pragmatic. But no, you had to keep your illusions that you could defeat me. And you ended up killing Stacy instead. Now, you have to pay”
 
As she said that, Laura closed her hand into a fist, a dozen tanks compressing and merging with each other, their crews turning to pulp barely as she was getting started. She enjoyed the ease of it all, how the world obeyed to every single of her wishes by proving itself as weak as she had expected.
 
She opened her palm to find a more or less spherical pile of armored steel weighing close to a thousand tons. With nothing planned for it, Laura just sat on her knees and rolled it on the ground, giggling when she saw the “tank-ball” chasing the fleeing soldiers and leaving a read streak in the ground as it trampled them. Still, the effects were less spectacular than they could have been, since the sphere had been anything but perfect and started losing traction soon after she threw it with tremendous initial momentum.
 
“Oh” Laura said as the ball stopped. “I guess I’ll have to finish you myself” she added.
 
Dropping to her hands and knees, Laura punched a group of tanks to her right and started to crawl in the direction of the fleeing soldiers. There were thousands of them. She set her mind to finishing the job fast.
 
 
 
They all knew that she was huge, but her true scale did not become evident until she was upon them. Seeing the powerful M1 Abrams tanks not being able to reach over the toes of the behemoth, whose features appeared distorted, was awe-inspiring. Feeling the shakes in the grounds as she dropped to her knees was humbling. And seeing her finish dozens of the armored vehicles with her bare hands was terrifying.
 
From up close, Laura Anderson stopped looking like a giant woman and started feeling like a monster. It was impossible to keep their attention in the entire vastness of her body, different parts of it raining death on his comrades as she advanced upon them.
 
Her thundering voice made their bones rattle and their souls freeze with fear every time she addressed them, letting them know what they were to them, letting them know what future awaited.
 
Corporal Hicks started questioning everything that had happened. It was evident now that they had no chance against her. That they did not have even a hundredth of a chance. With Laura Anderson’s figure looming so close, the truth that she was invincible sunk in. How could they hope to defeat a creature like her?
 
He was about to lose his footing twice. The shakes had been tremendous. Some of his comrades did. Hicks just pushed on, knowing that they were doomed. A few of the men, most likely having lost their minds, stopped and started firing at the approaching giant, as if that was going to achieve anything. To Hicks it felt like firing to a meteorite in a collision course with Earth.
Another shake. This one was worse. It was almost a miracle that he had not lost his footing this time. The area around him started to become darker. Finally, a dark shadow was cast over him. Every cell in his body asked him to turn, to take a peek to see what was going on. He knew this would be a fatal mistake. His only hope was to keep moving forward…
 
This was the last thought to ever run through Carter Hicks’ mind.
 
 
 
 
Laura snorted as she observed the spiderwebs of cracks originating in every corner of her hand. She had slammed it open into a group of fleeing soldiers, instantly obliterating dozens of them, making them noticeably splash. Dozens more dropped off their feet around the spot her hand had hit, some of them now being engulfed by the widening cracks.
 
Laura enjoyed the handprint she had got in the tarmac, close enough to those the celebrities had in Hollywood Boulevard, with the only difference of a number of red splotches on it.
 
“Pests” she said as she slammed her hand into another group.
 
One of the most obvious advantages of her size was that she could finish them by the dozen. Still, there were so many of them that it would take her a while. Or maybe…
 
Laura dashed forward quite impulsively, removing her hands from the ground and letting her mammoth body drop. It was an instant massacre, her titanic figure crushing hundreds at once under every inch of her anatomy. Laura could feel them everywhere: under her thighs, under her stomach, under her crotch and under her boobs. Those being turned into pulp under her nipples were possibly the ones she noticed the most, just before her perky breasts kept going and dug suggestively shaped holes in the road under her.
 
“Whoa!” Laura said, allowing herself a tiny bit of cheerfulness after a long while.
 
Somehow, she felt like a little girl playing on mud, only she knew that the slimy substance under her was different. Lying, she had a great view of those right in front of her towering face. An instant later they were obliterated as her fist landed like a comet on them.
 
Sitting back on her knees to take a look at the carnage, Laura smirked and eyed the very shocked remainders of the army. She was surprised to see a few flashes coming from it, a clear indication that some of the soldiers were still shooting at her, even if she could not feel it.
 
“I think you are not scared enough yet” Laura said casually.
 
With that, she scooted forward and reached out, scooping a group of soldiers in her cupped right hand. A number of them died, bulldozed by her careless movement, but Laura did not care too much, since she had enough living mite-sized soldiers in her palm by the time she was done.
 
Looking at them, she repeated in a softer tone:
 
“I think that you have already accepted that I can crush you. But there’s, oh, so much more I can do to you. Here, let me show you”
 
Without further consideration, Laura brought her palm upwards and tilted it, creating a ramp. Those on her hand started screaming when they saw that the only destination was her open mouth.
 
Laura moaned, enjoying both the physical and psychological pleasure as centimeter-tall soldiers started dropping into her ready mouth, guiding them with her tongue and storing them in the side of the massive cavity.
 
She was not hungry. She had not been ever since waking up. But she knew that she could eat. And with all of her power, there were very few deaths she could think about that could rival in horror with being slowly dissolved in her stomach.
 
Laura took care not to kill them too fast. A few salty splashes told her that she was not successful with every soldier, but there were still enough noticeable wiggles in her mouth by the time she was done to know that there were plenty of alive morsels in there.
 
Sitting back up and without further ceremony, Laura swallowed. She did not chew, just sending a couple dozen full grown men to her esophagus and down to her ready stomach. The pleasure she felt while they slid down their path to doom made her moan and think if she was turning into too much of a sadist. She did not care. She did not give a damn about it anymore. Laura was not a human being anymore, so she should not be bounded by the same stupid moral standards of the much lesser creatures.
 
Her actions had the desired effect. The remainders of the army had been scared. Now, the soldiers were close to a nervous breakdown. Laura contributed a bit more when she scooped two more handfuls, sending them down the hatch with the same grim finality.
 
“Yummy” she said. It was the final insult.
 
Laura was wet again. Apparently, her libido had not gone that far away. A quick look at her surroundings showed her that the battle had been a decisive win. And to think that the only reason she had broken a sweat had been out of sexual arousal!
 
Not finding any reason to remain focused anymore, Laura made her mind up and grabbed two more handfuls. She then turned, let herself drop on her back and fit them into her. Never before had she been so rough with her sexual playthings, but she did not care about their wellbeing anymore. All she cared about was having a hundred or so bodies working on the most sensitive area of her anatomy.
 
It was soon evident that there would be no fireworks, no matter how many humans she fit in there. Impatient, and with nothing looking close to a dildo anymore, Laura sent her fingers to help.
 
Bodies burst with every stroke. She did not care, the accelerating pace of her fingers and her panting showing that she was getting somewhere. This was the last image the news helicopters ever reported of her, her ecstatic scream as she reached her climax making them practically disintegrate in the air.
 
Her scream was not the only fatal surge that came with her orgasm. Having learned about her mental powers but still far from being able to control them, Laura’s mind had chosen the same moment to release a massive surge of energy that killed thousands of synapses right away, the owners of their brains instantly falling dead.
 
Laura’s body relaxed. At the time, her mind was beginning to understand that she had both defeated the army and avenged Stacy. For the first time since her awakening, Laura felt quiet, together with a warm certainty that the world would be hers. Content with that thought, she dozed off.
 
 
 
 
“She needs to rest?” Laya asked.
“She doesn’t” Quo replied. It was curious how her disciple’s questions had suddenly shifted to getting more detail about Laura Anderson’s goddesshood.
 
Seeing Laya’s inquisitive look, Quo went on.
 
“I was expecting this. She needs to consolidate all the knowledge she has got”
 
“And then?” Laya asked.
 
“Then, she will accept her true self”