Chapter 2

 
 
"So, there's the city" Laura thought as she looked at Emerald's skyline. It was still a few miles away, but instinctively she knew that it would take her just a short stroll to get there at her new size.
 
Her new size... her new amazing size. Ever since she had woken up she had only been able to compare herself to the landscape. Seeing how her body dwarfed the countryside she was so familiar with had already been amazing enough. The redwood trees she had looked up to in admiration just a day ago now could barely brush her lower thighs.
 
She knew she should have been freaked out. Only she wasn't. Her size felt... natural. The dream had been so real... and then she had woken up and she had found out it was true. Having played the scenario so many times in her head, her thoughts as she held a large pine tree in her fingers as it were a mere flower were only about how the rest of the world would look to her. Now she was about to find out.
        
Her first stop was obvious enough. From her lofty point of view, the dark ribbon stretching into the city was too attractive to let it pass. Or rather, its contents were. The sound of crashing and screaming easily reached her ears as her hazel eyes scanned the hundreds of cars stuck in the worst pile up ever. Thousands of people were trying their best to get as far away as possible along the aisles formed between the stopped cars. Smiling, Laura knew they would only be going as far as she let them.
 
Without saying a word she took one step, then another one in the direction of the highway. She saw the cars visibly bounce as her great weight rested closer to them. She could not prevent a giggle. There was nothing better than the feeling of power and there was nothing that could make Laura feel more powerful than seeing how powerless everyone else was to prevent her from doing anything she wanted.
 
Ever since she had memories Laura had wanted to be a giant. In her fantasies, she had wished to be large enough to look down at buildings, walk long distances in a matter of minutes and pick vehicles like toys. But more than anything, her wish for size had been related to a craving for power, and the one and only measure for her new power was people. People that had been her equals just a day ago; people who now would have no hope to oppose her. So, quite naturally, people were the first thing she wanted to observe from her new condition.
 
Dropping to a knee, Laura took a closer look at the highway and reveled on the chaos at it. Knowing that her mere presence was the cause for it was the best possible proof of her newfound status. People had been running ever since they had spotted her, and at her height she was easy enough to spot. Still, her vast reach made any attempts at escaping her futile, and she knew that. 
 
Of course, it was not as if they were not trying. Especially annoying were the owners of some vehicles that were trying to ram obstacles out of the way as they attempted to put as much distance with her as possible. An SUV that looked especially large caught her attention. Well, at least it looked large in comparison to its surroundings. Of course, from Laura’s new point of view, the difference in size with the few hundred other vehicles on the road was almost inconsequential.
 
She had always despised people who owned monster cars like that one and that thought that killing the planet’s environment was acceptable as long as they could drive the closest possible thing to a tank. When she saw the SUV running over a couple of people and pushing two cars aside she felt her blood boil. She just needed an instant to realize that now she could do something about people she abhorred.
 
Reaching out with her right hand, she extended an index finger the size of a city bus and rested its tip on top of the offending car, stopping it on its tracks. She marveled that she could feel the puny efforts of the vehicle trying to break free from just a fraction of the weight of her digit. Then, she just effortlessly pushed, easily caving the roof in and soon embedding the crushed remnants of the car into the asphalt below.
 
Laura lightly moaned as her simple act of justice sent ripples of pleasure down her spine. She had not enjoyed taking a life per se, but the impromptu sentence she had dictated had given her a taste of the absolute power she now held over the rest of the world’s population.
 
As the power rush calmed down, Laura realized that her first interaction with the ones that were to be her subjects had ended up with the loss of a life. It had never been like this in her dreams. In the end, she did not want to be the type of goddess that ended lives purely for enjoyment. She did not fool herself into thinking that her size alone would not cause hundreds, if not thousands of victims, though. And that was if she managed to stay careful enough, which she suspected would not be the case more often than not.
 
No, she would not apologize for being big and for its consequences. And she would certainly not feel bad for the guy she had just squished under her finger. It was not as if he had not deserved it.
 
In a way, it was not bad to set the expectations right from the very beginning, she considered. Building on this thought, she realized that the fact that the little people were trying to get away from her annoyed her. It wasn’t as if it was not to be expected, but that hardly mattered anymore. All that mattered is that she did not want it to happen.
 
"Stop" Laura said in an apparently soft tone that was heard in the entire highway, nonetheless. There, her first words to the world had been in the form of a very explicit command. It felt only natural.
 
Predictably enough, the crowd did not comply. The predictability of the people’s reaction did not make it any less annoying. Of course, ignoring such a challenge to her authority was not an option. A taste of the consequences of such behavior was in order. Reaching out to her far right, she took hold of an overpass and pulled, easily toppling it over the highway and effectively blocking the way. A dozen cars and the few unlucky people that had been standing on it were thrown to the highway below; she did not get a clear picture on whether anyone had been buried under it, but it was almost impossible that no one had not.
 
"I said stop, and I meant it. From now on, you'll learn to follow my orders" she said in a calm tone
 
The words came naturally to her. She was no stranger to authority but of course leading the girl scouts or the reading club could not compare to having a few thousand people at her mercy.
 
Her little show of force had come at the cost of several more victims, but her mind was beginning to rationalize that the sooner the world learned everyone’s new place the better if would be for everyone in the long run.
 
With their escape path now blocked, Laura had now time to decide what to do. She had longed for the current moment for so long that she decided to take it slow and enjoy it. Bringing her legs backwards, she let herself drop on her stomach and stretched her body, as long as it was. Resting her chin on her folded arms, her building-sized face loomed right over the highway and the population trapped on it.
 
Laura’s billboard-sized eyes observed the miniature world with curiosity. Right under her cute nose dozens of cars and hundreds of people did not know how to react to her presence anymore.
 
She let their miniscule sizes sink in. She could only imagine how magnificent she must look to them.
 
The level of detail she could make despite the size difference was amazing. Her sight momentarily focused on a suited man fighting with all his strength to open the twisted door of a car that had obviously been involved in an accident. A shadow inside told her that he was trying to free someone. She quickly scanned through a dozen of uninteresting people and stopped again at blonde woman. She was on her own and she was easy to spot amongst the crowd. It was the kind of woman every heterosexual man in the world would dream of. It was also the type of woman Laura would have hit on the minute she had seen her on a bar. Well, at least before she had met Stacy, of course. The woman’s eyes locked with hers for an instant and Laura smiled at her. The tiny blonde did not hold her sight for too long, though. Opening a little more her field of vision, she saw that many of the rest of the people in the highway shared a common attitude: while plenty of their comrades were still running around without too much sense, they had stopped and staring at her in awe. It was at this moment that Laura realized that she had not introduced herself. How rude of her! It was time to correct that.
 
Keeping her head in her folded arms, Laura used her sweetest and softest voice to address her audience:
 
“My lovely tiny people” she started. “I’m Laura and I guess that it’s pointless to say that I’m huge. You all have eyes. I did not intend to be so rough with that overpass I toppled, but I told you to stop and I really meant it. I hope you’ve learned that you’ll be better off if you follow my orders. As for the car I crushed… well, I guess you’ll all agree that the asshole deserved being squished. I’ll try not to kill any more of you, but I have to admit that, given the difference in size, that might prove difficult. I’m not really interested in hurting you, though. I’m more interested on having a closer look”
 
As she said that, Laura unfolded her arms and reached out for the highway. Her simple gesture brought panic a couple of notches up, and it had been pretty high to start with. She did not care. It was not as if anyone was going to get out of her reach, no matter how hard they tried. If anything, she was just amused by their attempts.
 
No one save Laura knew where her extended fingers would be heading. Her choice was obvious enough, though. She wanted to be careful, so she was slow. This gave the blonde hottie enough time to realize that the shadow of Laura’s fingers was moving in her direction and to react. She “hid” behind a van, not realizing that from her point of view Laura could see her well enough. Resting her fingernail right in front of the van, Laura gently pushed it out of the way, the unfathomable strength of her finger sending it rolling over itself.
 
Laura realized too late that her careless gesture had ended up making the van trample a few people. She would not have bet for them being alive, which meant that she had failed in her intention not to kill anyone else less than a minute after announcing it.
 
“Not killing them is going to be even harder than I thought” she thought, not really too concerned about what had happened. Instinctively she knew that it would be far from the last time something like this happened, so there was no point in making a big deal out of it.
 
She was more concerned about the little blonde woman. She had seemed to realize that she was the object of her attention and with the cover of the van gone she had turned and started running. Laura easily stopped her, her index finger suddenly becoming an impassable wall of flesh in the woman’s way. The tiny blonde even bumped against her smooth skin and fell on her remarkable ass. Laura giggled and waited for her to stand up and turn before she closed her pinch with her thumb, trapping the half-inch tall woman between her fingertips, trying to be careful enough not to hurt her.
 
Once she was reasonably certain that she had struck the right balance between holding the woman in place and crushing her, Laura lifted her up and brought her right in front of her curious eyes. She had to roll her in her fingertips so that the woman would face her. Then, she smiled at her tiny captive as she reaffirmed herself on her initial observation: the woman was smoking hot!
 
“Hi there” Laura said in a cheerful tone.
 
The woman looked pale, but did not scream. She seemed to be too much in shock for that.
 
“I would have invited you to climb, but this seemed so much easier” Laura added casually.
 
The woman did not seem to share Laura’s enthusiasm, but this hardly stopped her from going on.
 
“So, what is your name, tiny?” she asked.
 
The paperclip-sized woman did not reply, but she made some noise. It was progress, but it was slow. Laura’s patience was not proportional to her size, so she decided to push.
 
“Come on, tell me your name. You’re hot. I’d hate having to crush you between my fingers so soon after having met you”
 
“Noooo” the woman screamed.
 
Laura giggled and said:
 
“See, you can talk”
 
“Jane! My name is Jane” the woman screamed.
 
“Jane?” Laura asked. “That’s too plain for a woman like you. I was expecting something more… exotic” Laura said, teasing.
 
“Please, don’t hurt me!” the woman screamed.
 
Laura chuckled.
 
“Well, that was stereotypical. I guess I’ll have to get used to it, though. I’m sure I’ll be getting a lot of this as I keep going”
 
The woman seemed nervous, so Laura added: “I was not planning to hurt you, anyway”
 
Then, without warning, Laura rolled on herself and lied on her back. She was careful to keep Jane secure in her fingers during the process. Holding her over her head, she said:
 
“You know, I think I like you”
 
“You… you killed people” the blonde woman said.
 
Laura rolled her eyes.
 
“Some of them were not on purpose” she said, as if this settled the matter. From Jane’s face, it was easy to see that she had not been successful, at least from the little woman’s point of view. Laura decided to ignore her reaction.
 
Bringing the woman to her right tit, she carefully set her against her erect nipple. Letting her go, she waited a couple of seconds so that she would find her footing and then giggled as she observed that her nipple actually stood taller than Jane.
 
“You’re really cute” Laura said as she observed her nipple towering over Jane.
 
The tiny woman looked anything but comfortable. Laura did not care as she added:
 
“You know, the only real drawback of being naked is that I have nowhere to carry you”
 
The woman finally seemed to come back to life at the reference to her immediate future. Her voice was shaky as she asked:
 
“What… what are you going to do with me?”
 
Laura smiled and said:
 
“I guess I’m going to set you back down. It was nice meeting you and everything, but I’m really eager to get to the city”
 
“You are going to the city?” the woman asked, seemingly forgetting for the first time about the consequences on herself of their encounter.
 
“Sure, where else would a woman my size go?” Laura asked casually.
 
“What… what are you gonna…” Jane started.
 
Laura didn’t need to wait for her to finish the question:
 
“Check my new size out a little and, you know, take over”
 
 
 
 
The feeling of being on top of a hill that felt as alive as the giant woman’s breast was very weird. Jane had managed to secure her footing and was resting her weight against the dark hard column she knew was the woman’s nipple, even if the concept itself was difficult to grasp. Lying back, with her head slightly craned to look at her, the giant woman seemed incredibly content. It was hard to believe that this woman she was having a conversation with had just taken a few lives and did not seem to be the least concerned about it.
 
And now, this woman had just said that she was going to take over the city in the same tone she could have used to say she was going to watch a movie.
 
“Take over” Jane muttered to herself, but apparently the woman heard her nonetheless.
 
“Of course. With my size and power it’s only logical, don’t you think?” the giant woman asked.
 
Jane remained speechless. She did not know what to make of the change in the woman’s expression until a large shadow was cast over her and she realized that two giant fingers were reaching back for her. She screamed, but the two massive pillars of flesh closed on her nonetheless and pushed her between two somewhat soft surfaces she knew were oversized fingertips. Like in the highway, Jane was about to throw her breakfast out when she was risen with the momentum of the space shuttle during take-off. She was dizzy for a few seconds while she felt her body was being transported around. When she managed to focus her eyes again she realized that she was hovering right on top of the woman’s face.
 
“It was nice talking to you” the thundering voice coming out of the semi sized lips said.
 
Then, she felt dizzy once more. By the time her head had finished rolling, her feet were back on solid ground. She looked around to try to check where she was. She found the second a massive shake made her lose her footing and fall on her ass once more. Her jaw dropped when she recognized an anklebone looming fifty feet over her.
 
A fast-moving shadow was quickly followed by another shake. And then another. Three shakes later Jane had enough perspective to see Laura, the titanic woman that had just held her in her fingers, walking down the highway. She noticed her hard ass and long fit legs as she advanced. Jane could not prevent thinking that her enormous body looked thin and athletic, despite the deformation that was caused by perspective. Then, a chill ran down her spine. Was she… walking on the highway? Quickly standing up she felt relieved to see that she was walking just next to it. Jane could only imagine the massacre that would have ensued if the giant woman had chosen to step just a bit to her left.
 
 
 
 
Her first encounter with the tiny population had been refreshing. It had been everything she had hoped it would be and then some more. The conversation with the blonde hottie had also been fun. After a few steps down the highway she had regretted leaving her so soon and even pondered going back for her, but she quickly discarded the idea.
 
“She was just one tiny woman out of the hundreds of millions of people in the country. There will be more like her. There will be thousands more like her. And all of them will be mine”
 
Laura’s nipples hardened as the implications of her new size started sinking in.
 
“I now own every single person in world. I need to get used to the notion. And they better get used to it too”
 
Less than a dozen steps later, her path was met by a new overpass. She had been leaving the hundreds of people trapped in the highway alone as she advanced, but she was way too excited about her new size to ignore all the lives by her feet for too long. Easily bringing her right foot over the overpass, she turned and straddled it. The road was barely at ankle level.
 
“Well, so much for my little tribute to Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” Laura said cheerfully. “I guess I’m way bigger than Nancy Archer ever was. I think I could pick her up like a doll” she added
 
Without further word she crouched and reached for a vehicle that had caught her attention. It was a gray long-distance bus and it was barely longer than her middle finger. She easily picked it up by the sides with two fingers.
 
Straightening back up, she brought the bus in front of her huge hazel eyes and looked through the windows. A rush of excitement ran along her body as she saw that the coach was actually pretty packed.
 
“Oh God! There’s so many of you!” she said excitedly
 
She wasted no time in making herself a better view of the contents of her catch. It took very little effort for one of her fingernails to bulldoze its way into the bus and allow her enough leverage to rip the roof off it with ease.
 
Tossing the roof over her shoulder, she brought the now topless bus a little higher and looked at the people inside. They were screaming to the top of their lungs. This did not bother Laura. She kind of liked being able to cause such a reaction.
 
“This is amazing” she almost whispered, even if everyone on the bus could hear her without problems. “You’re all mine” she repeated in the same soft tone.
 
She decided to make it more obvious. Tilting the bus to the side, she placed it over her extended palm and started shaking everyone out as if it were a pack of tic-tacs. The half-inch tall people could do nothing to fight the overwhelming strength of her “light” shakes and started landing, bouncing and settling on different corners of her hand.
 
Once she was happy that all the contents of the bus were safely resting on her soft skin, she pushed the vehicle between her fingers, easily crushing it, and then let it drop hundreds of feet to the ground below.
 
“I own all of you” she repeated in a soft voice. She sounded excited. She was.
 
On her palm, a few of the people started recovering and some started even to move around it. She was not even a little concerned by this. There was nowhere they could go.
 
“There are maybe a couple dozen of you, and all it takes me is a hand to hold you all. Fuck, I could probably fit plenty more of you if I wanted to. Is there any better proof of my status?”
 
She got no answer. She wanted one, so she reached with her free hand and plucked a person at random from the crowd in her hand. Bringing the tiny man in front of her eyes, she asked:
 
“What do you think?”
 
The man only screamed.
 
“I asked you something” Laura said, calmly. “If you cannot answer you are useless to me” she added.
 
The man kept on screaming. She just tossed him over her shoulder, making sure that everyone else at her hand took notice. She knew she could have spared him, but she hoped that her little show would help her get better results from the rest of the crowd. Reaching back down, she plucked another man.
 
“So, can you talk?”
 
The man was shaking between her fingertips, but managed to let out words that were understandable enough.
 
“Ple… please do not hurt me. You own us. You own us!” he screamed as he finished.
 
She smiled. Then, she asked:
 
“How do you feel next to me?”
 
The man had to think a couple of seconds before he asked. He finally let out a single word:
 
“Powerless”
 
Satisfied, Laura dropped him back at her palm and smiled at the crowd there.
 
“I don’t want to hurt you” she said, ignoring what she had just done with the first man she had plucked. “I just wanted you to know. I’ll let you go under one condition. You have a mission. Let everyone know how you felt. Tell everyone you meet that now every single person in the world is in my palm, that I can do anything I want to anyone I want. And let them know that as long as they obey me, I can be reasonably gentle. And consider yourselves lucky to be the ones to carry my word to the world”
 
As she finished, Laura crouched again, making sure that she kept her palm as balanced as she could and then brought it towards the overpass where everything had started. Tilting her palm quite carefully, she let the people on it roll and drop into the road below.
 
Standing back up, Laura completed her step over the overpass and resumed her walk right next to the highway. Emerald’s skyline was getting closer by the second. She felt almost as if she could grasp it in her fingers.
 
Taking a deep breath, she let the reaction of the city to her now undeniable presence sink in. She took into the distant screams and the sounds of thousands of horns telling her that the nightmare of the highway’s traffic was now probably being replicated in every single street and intersection of the city.
 
She smiled as she saw the first choppers buzzing in the distance like insects and wondered how many carried people that were trying to get away from the city as soon as possible versus the ones that were owned by news stations and were probably trying to get the best spot to film her awe-inspiring approach to the city.
 
She knew that besides the choppers, thousands of cameras were probably trained on her at that precise moment. Leaving aside those owned by journalism professionals, everyone with a smartphone would have its camera focused on her.
 
She was sure that her presence was currently making the headlines of every newscast and online news outlet in the world. More than this, she had no doubt either that she was now Twitter trending topic and that pictures of her were probably filling thousands of Facebook status updates as footage of her ponderous approach accumulated millions of clicks in YouTube.
 
Suddenly aware of the world’s attention, she enjoyed it and then put some swagger into her movement, to make her feminity and sexuality more prevalent.
 
Less than five minutes later she had reached the gates of the city and stopped, taking a commanding pose. With one foot on each side of the highway, which was now turning into a wide avenue, Laura brought one hand to her hip as she let the other casually dangle on her side. The twin buildings that marked the entrance into the city barely reached as high as her knees.
 
She smiled. She knew that millions of people in the city and billions in their homes everywhere else in the world were waiting for her first words or her first action. She let them wait a few more seconds as the breeze cooled her titanic body down. She wanted them to realize how absolutely big and powerful she was.
 
She pondered what her first move would be. She had played the scenario in her head a million times before, but there were many ways a woman like her could get introduced to the city. She needed to find a suitable enough one. Luckily, there was no need to rush.
 
 
 
 
“She killed several people already. Was her profile wrong?” Laya asked.
 
“What was really surprising was that she left the people on the highway as alone as she did” Quo replied confidently. “I don’t think her profile was wrong. It would be a first, to start with” he added.
 
“Well, the profile was clear enough. She wanted to become giant in order to get absolute power, but she did not want to use her size to kill or destroy more than needed. But her first interaction with humans has ended up with several victims, many of them unnecessary” Laya said.
 
“Are you concerned for the lives of humans, then? You were the one that did not have too much of an issue with choosing a candidate with higher risk of species annihilation…”
 
“It’s not the humans’ lives that concern me, but the accuracy of our predictions” Laya defended herself.
 
Quo let out the equivalent sound to a chuckle.
 
“I guess I’m missing something” Laya said.
 
“You are missing the basic thing: human nature” Quo said.
 
“What do you mean?” Laya asked.
 
“This was probably the most balanced subject we could find, but she’s still human. And no matter how much a human can think of a given situation, her considerations will never be able to replicate her body chemistry and her perception of reality once that moment comes” Quo said.
 
“She will not behave as she thought she would?” Laya said.
 
“Partly. But not entirely. Every time she thought about what her behavior would be, Laura Anderson was thinking on having the power giant size would grant her, but was not actually giant. She wished to be, but she was not. Now that she is, she feels more excited than she has ever felt before. Her body chemistry is not the same. There are thousands of tons of hormones pumping through her body that were not there when she “just” dreamed about the scenario. At the same time, in her dreams Laura Anderson was thinking of herself as giant from a normal human’s perspective. Now, she is a giant and she is seeing what the normal humans are to her from her new eyes, not a conceptualization she attempted but she was not successful at doing. This is presenting her the power she has in a totally different way of what she might have imagined. At this point, her ego is larger than her body”
 
“So, her attitude is the same but her perception of the world is not?” Laya asked.
 
“No. Her attitude is not the same either. We could say that her overall intentions, her guiding principles, are the same. But she is shocked by the change she has gone through in a very positive way. This is affecting not only the way she sees the world but also her attitude towards it. Just to give you an example: her principles about taking a life will probably remain similar, but her attitude towards the same topic will vary” Quo said.
 
“I don’t think I followed the last part” Laya acknowledged.
 
“Let me try like this: Laura Anderson thinks it’s bad to take a human life needlessly. That’s her principle. However, from her new size and as excited as she feels in this precise moment, an individual human life has very little value to her. So, in Laura Anderson’s head, a human life or a few are perfectly acceptable prices to pay to get things she needs” Quo said.
 
“The man in the SUV?” Laya asked.
 
“He was breaking her laws. His life was the price Laura paid to enforce them and establish herself as the authority. Same thing for those that were killed when she toppled the overpass” Quo said.
 
“Trying to run is not equivalent to running over some people” Laya said.
 
“In her eyes, their crime was not trying to run. It was challenging her orders”
 
“That’s setting a very low bar, for someone that had started with so high standards… Anyway, what about the ones that got trampled by the van?” Laya insisted.
 
“These ones are tricky, but the best explanation I can get to is that they were the price to pay for her size” Quo said.
 
“What do you mean?” Laya asked.
 
“We made her just as big as she wished to be, even if that size was quite bigger than what would have been needed. The benefits of an easier adaptation outweighed the challenges of such a large size. Some of the challenges are that she can kill by accident very easily. She knows that. In front of that, she has two alternatives: restrain herself and be extra careful the entire time or move freely and accept that accidents will happen. So, the deaths are the price to pay for her freedom to use her size as she sees fit, and she is willing to accept them” Quo said.
 
“And the man she threw over her shoulder? Challenger?” Laya asked.
 
“Kind of. I believe he also served a purpose. She used his death to prompt the rest of people to comply with her orders” Quo said.
 
It was Laya who chuckled this time.
 
“So, we have a woman that by principle would not kill anyone but that has no problem to kill those that do things she does not like, those that do not immediately obey her, those that happen to be in the way when she needs to do something and also those she needs to kills to set an example. Not bad”
 
Quo smiled.
 
“No one said that human nature was easy. That’s why they are so interesting to study” she said.
 
“One last question, director” Laya asked. Quo nodded to her and she went on: “What prevents her from considering that human lives are a small enough price to pay to have fun?”
 
Quo smiled once more.
“Interesting question, Laya. There is no simple answer, actually. In principle, her morals should prevent her from reaching that conclusion. In practical terms, there are no assurances” she said.
 
“Will she do it?” Laya asked, concerned.
 
“I don’t know” Quo admitted.
 
“But, wouldn’t this kill the purpose of the mission?” Laya said.
 
“That’s why I introduced failsafe mechanisms to recover from that eventuality” Quo said.
 
“But we cannot interfere” Laya observed.
 
“We won’t need to. If Laura Anderson gets deviated enough from her purpose, which she might, she will correct herself”
 
“How” Laya asked
 
“Let’s wait and see, shall we?” Quo said. “She’s about to get into the city. This will be interesting”
 
“More than the highway?” Laya asked.
 
“Of course. There can be nothing more interesting for a woman of Laura Anderson’s size than a large city”