Gina bowed her back inward, cracking every vertebra with a delightful pop.  She had been hunched over or resting on her hands and knees for the past two days, and it felt good to stand to her full height again.  The solution was so simple, she couldn’t believe it took her so long to think of it.  If she can shrink houses, like the ones she had placed in the terrarium, she ought to be able to grow them, too.  Now the house was almost twice its original size, and she didn’t have to destroy it to get out.  Her parents would be delighted when they came for their next bi-annual visit – if they weren’t flabbergasted by her own size.

“Now what?” Veronica asked.  Though she only came up to Gina’s shoulders, they both knew that she would be tremendous compared to any other person.  “We can get out, but like… where should we go?”

Gina took a half-step toward her dresser and pinched a drawer open, causing Julie to jump out of the way of the titanic foot.  She had been wearing the same clothes for almost five months, and it was time for a change.  With a single hand she pulled out a “fresh” outfit to put on.  It was the exact same as what she had on, except it was clean and the stockings weren’t riddled with holes.  “First, we get a shower and a change of clothes,” she said, tossing a set of Veronica’s clothes to her.  “I don’t know about you, but I feel absolutely filthy after all that time as Akane’s prisoner.”

“Prisoner?” Akane repeated.  “Is that what you think…”

Gina gave her a rough shove into the wall, making her see stars.  “Was I talking to you?  Didn’t think so.”  She leaned down and flicked Akane’s forehead, making a loud thud.    “Mind your own fucking business if you want to keep what little bit of size you have left.  Now, be good while your masters go and freshen up after how you treated them.”  As she walked past she feinted toward Akane, making her flinch backward.  Being feared again felt good, too.

Unfortunately, only the frame of the house had grown; all the fixtures were still normal size.  The two could only wash one body part at a time, but rinsing off all the accumulated dust and grime felt amazing.  They spent nearly an hour scrubbing themselves down, washing and conditioning their hair, getting their skin moisturized again.  When they emerged from their showers they felt like new women and carried themselves like the goddesses they always knew they had been.

When they were both dressed in their fresh outfits they met at the top of the stairs.  Their golden hair shined brightly, and Veronica’s bright red running shorts were a startling contrast to Gina’s short black ones, though they both left over ten feet of leg exposed – bare in Veronica’s case, wrapped in form-fitting black nylon in Gina’s.  The sleeves of Gina’s black shirt just reached past her elbows, while her counterpart’s dark blue one was bereft of sleeves altogether.  Both of them had enormous feet, though while Gina stayed with her familiar black flats Veronica had made a new pair of Adidas running shoes suitable for her size.

“Fuck, that does feel better!” Veronica exclaimed when she reached the top of the stairs.  “I didn’t realize how much crap had built up on me.  But what do we do now?  If I remember right, your three itty-bitty friends should still be lost in the carpet somewhere.”

“Yeah, and what about them?” Gina asked.  “I’ll get to them in good time, Akane can look out for them.  Or step on them by accident, I don’t really care.  I’ve got more important things on my mind.”

“Like what?”

“Revenge.”  A sinister smile spread across Gina’s face while she looked toward the door.  “I’ve been trapped here all this time and not a single person from school came looking for me.  Shit, you’ve been missing for two years and I haven’t heard a peep from anyone looking for you!”  Of course, she conveniently left out that she had been the one originally keeping Veronica prisoner.  “Don’t you want to go make people remember who you are, and make them pay for their apathy?”

“Sure, of course I do,” Veronica began, though she sounded uncertain, “but won’t people notice a pair of twenty-foot-tall women walking down the street?  We sure as hell won’t fit in any cars.”

“I’m counting on it,” Gina replied, still sporting a devilish smirk.  “It’s part of the deal.  The fear slowly building while we approach and they realize how big we are, and that they could never escape us.  I want them to notice us, to either run or be paralyzed by fear, by their awe of us, until we make it to them.  Then… well, the tank’s been looking a little empty since Akane’s reign of terror began.”

That offer scratched the itch that Veronica just hadn’t been able to reach.  Though her time as a would-be goddess had been short, she loved every second of it.  She was naturally very tall to begin with, and would sometimes imagine the people she humiliated at track and field meets as literally in her shadow as much as they were metaphorically.  The ability to make that a reality went a long way toward redeeming Gina in her eyes.  It would be the first time she actually made someone puny with her own power, so she could watch them dwindle down to almost nothing.

“Now that I think about it, yeah, it has.”  Veronica was totally convinced to go along with Gina now.  “I bet everyone on the track team would recognize me, I set so many records.  Let’s go make sure they never forget my face as long as they live.”

“And I’ve got a bone to pick with the basketball team,” Gina added.  “Well, several of their bones to pick my teeth clean after I devour them.  Let’s go, I just made myself hungry.”  The pair of impossibly tall women stomped their way down the stairs and ducked through the front doorway, then got on their way toward meting out vengeance.

* * *

The two of them strode along a road, each taking up a lane with their tremendous gaits.  Gina breathed in the fresh air, listened passively to the birds singing in the trees, and marveled at how even the tallest cars didn’t even make it up to her waist.  Most of them barely even cleared her knees.  She even towered over some houses, to her extreme delight.  Why didn’t she make herself this big years ago?  Scratch that, why didn’t she make herself even bigger?

Veronica decided to be a lot more active and demonstrative with her size.  She plainly dwarfed the cars parked along the street, and with a brief running start she bounded over one from fender to bumper.  Her long legs easily cleared the roof and her sneakers soared over the hood ornament so that she landed on the asphalt with a loud thud.  “Ha!  Still got it!” she exclaimed, then stood back up.  All the time she spent conditioning herself had paid off.

“You’re such a show-off, Roni!” Gina teased, not even breaking her stride.  “Can’t you just enjoy towering over everything while we’re on our way to wreak havoc?”

“But I am!” Veronica replied.  “I can long jump over cars, I couldn’t do that before!”  She dashed forward again and leapt over the next car, landing with even more clearance.  “I bet if I were just a bit taller, I could get over houses!”

“I bet you could!” Gina agreed.  “I’d rather not have to grow the house again just yet though, the neighbors might have something to say about that.”

“Then let’s get rid of them, too!” Veronica offered.  “Why should they stand between us and being huge?”

“One target at a time, Ron!”  It was an unusual fit of self-control for Gina, but she wanted to stay focused on her revenge for now.  Ambition could come later.  “We’re almost at the school, and I promise you, you’ll feel plenty big soon.”  Though nobody could stop them physically, she was still hesitant to openly talk about their activities.  People might get suspicious if they heard two enormous women talking about shrinking people shortly before a few dozen people disappeared.

Sure enough, they crossed the street to the school’s track not even a minute later.  The team was out practicing on a sunny day, and could not ignore the heavy, thudding footsteps of two enormous women approaching.  Instead of running in fear like Gina and Veronica expected, however, they turned and looked at them with eager anticipation.  They excitedly whispered amongst themselves while the pair approached, craning their necks back looking more and more surprised.

When they stopped at the edge of the shotput pad, the team had formed up in a semi-circle gawking up at them.  A couple of them might have reached Gina’s knees, but most fell well short, and she and Veronica looked down at them contemptuously.  “Oh shit, it’s Gina!” one of the runners exclaimed.

“And is that Roni?!” one of the seniors shouted, pointing up at her.  “I thought you were dead!”

“I thought Gina was dead!”

“And they’ve both had a hell of a growth spurt!”  It might have been a while since either of them had been seen, but no one remembered them being quite this gigantic.

“Yeah, we sure did,” Veronica replied, casting a downward gaze over all of them.  Her voice was a good bit deeper than the last time anyone had heard it while retaining some feminine qualities.  “And we’re about to have another one.”  The team went back to gossiping, wondering how she knew it would be coming on – and how she could possibly get taller.

Veronica looked over each one, and as her glare passed from one to the next they began to rapidly diminish in size.  By the time any of them knew what was going on the first had already been reduced to an inch, and the others were too scared to move.  They could only watch while Veronica became even more massive, her gigantic body stretching further into the sky.  When their drastic shrinking was done they would have been dwarfed by her big toe were it not contained within a shoe.

The crash from Veronica taking a step forward broke them out of their trance, but it was too late.  They began running when she knelt in the middle of the concrete circle and swept an arm wide, palm open, along the pad’s edge.  She collected each one in her hand, stacking one on top of the other, until they were all in a pile in the middle of her palm.  Veronica closed her fingers over the dozen or so track team members, sealing them inside an enormous fist, before returning to her superhuman height.

“Are you happy now?” Gina asked, noticing Veronica’s radiant smile.

“Yes, I am,” Veronica answered, feeling the tiny bodies writhing in her hands.  “I could be happier, though.”  A lot of them were completely innocent in her abandonment, but that was beside the point.  She wanted tiny people to play with, and now she had them, no matter how flimsy the excuse was.  It’s not like Gina ever needed a reason.

“Let’s get you happier, then,” Gina said, pointing to a large white building in front of them.  “The basketball teams should be practicing right about now, and not a single one of them came looking for me.  Plus, they must be terrible without me and my old crew, not a single one of them could dunk.  Let’s go even up my score.”

Veronica gave the tinies in her hand a light squeeze, pressing them together.  Tiny wails of pain filtered out between her fingers, making her smile even wider.  “Yeah, let’s” she told Gina.  She wanted so much to see more people shrink until they were naught but puny insects, even if she wouldn’t be the one doing it.

They set off across the field toward the gymnasium, stepping over the track with just one long stride.  Even though nobody could see their approach, that would only make their sudden appearance more surprising.  One moment they would be practicing, and the next they’d have to deal with an enormous pair of women looming over them.  Gina imagined the surprise on their faces while they gawped up at her and already felt a sense of satisfaction at her dominance.

Unfortunately, the door proved to be a more potent obstacle than they had expected.  Gina’s knees were about even with the top of the frame, and the only way she would be able to open the door was by prying at the handle with her fingernail.  Even if that worked, there was no way she’d be able to fit through it.  This door had been built for someone of relatively normal size, and previously she’d had to double over and contort her body to make it through.  Now there was no way she’d be able to squeeze her enormous frame through it, and she was not yet strong enough to simply break through the walls.

“I’ve got an idea,” Gina announced.  She was about half as tall as the building, and she ought to be able to fit it in one hand if it were the proper size.  It was entirely separate from the school building as a whole, so reducing just the gym itself shouldn’t be too disruptive.  “I think the terrarium’s about to get a new building, if you’re willing to help me a little.”

“I’d love to,” Veronica said, stepping to the corner beside Gina’s.  They closed their eyes and focused their energy on the gym, whispering under their breath and visualizing it getting smaller.  Reality changed to match their imaginations, and over the course of ten seconds the building vastly reduced in size, shrinking its hapless occupants with it.

When they opened their eyes, the gym stood in the middle of a massive patch of dirt and dead grass, no more than four inches tall.  Gina strode forward, and her thundering footfalls were the first sign anything was wrong to the basketball teams practicing.  Before any of them could escape, Gina leaned forward and wrapped a hand around the building, blocking the exits with her fingers.  She squeezed her palm, crumpling the aluminum walls, and yanked it out of the ground by its foundation.  Although she was perfectly capable of palming it, she brought her other hand in for support in case she lost her grip.

“That enough revenge for you for now?” Veronica asked, giving her prisoners another light squeeze.  She didn’t want to smash them quite yet, but hoped they would be very uncomfortable.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Gina confirmed.  “Let’s get these tinies back to the house so we can properly introduce them to the others.”  They spun on their heels and walked back to Gina’s house as though nothing at all had happened.