Chapter 8:

(Posted: February 4)

It's amazing, Harrison recalled later when he thought back on that diner, how many things can happen in such a short span of time. As all the men bolted from their seats, his immediate relief was that Kat stood between him and the assailants. Although she easily stood a few feet taller than the men in the diner, there was only one of her. And a lot of them.

Kat's duffel bag slid from her left shoulder as her right hand reached for her pistol. Harrison's first reaction was to turn around and head back to the door leading to the side space. He bolted past a stunned Jessica and an angry Rich who was taking his rifle off his shoulder. It occurred to Harrison that even though the three of them were considerably smaller than they should have been, maybe around four feet tall in this world, the miniature bullets coming from Rich's gun would still hurt quite a bit.

Harrison retreated back behind the boxes to open the green door. At his reduced stature, to twist the doorknob he had to drop his bag and wrap both of his hands around it. But try as he might, he could not get the doorknob to turn. Once again, VERSA had somehow locked them out.

Raucous crashing rocked Harrison back to the present situation in the diner. Though he couldn't see from behind the boxes, he heard the fight begin. Kat had kicked the first man who charged her with her large boot, throwing him backward into two more men. From behind her, small Rich began firing his rifle at one of the men hopping over the counter. Red spots suddenly bloomed from his white apron as he crashed down to the floor.

Kat's pistol, now raised in front of her face, boomed with its first shots. The over-sized bullets, well over their original caliber in this world, tore through a hapless man's torso. His chest exploded and he unceremoniously fell to the floor. Running back up to his companions, Harrison caught a glimpse of the man's demise and concluded he must be dead, or whatever death's equivalent was for these things they were fighting.

As Rich and Kat's guns shot up the room, it became evident that while Kat's bullets could easily destroy these men, Rich's bullets only injured and slowed them down. As Kat started reloading her gun, Rich adjusted his strategy and began aiming for their heads. As the battle unfolded, this tactic proved much more deadly.

The baseball bat man pushed one of his bullet-filled patrons aside and lunged at Kat. He swung the bat at her head and she reacted swiftly, deflecting it with her left arm. Crashing into her, the man's momentum caused Kat to fall backward, her gun flying out of her hand. Jessica, who'd been standing right behind her, quickly dove out of the way.

Fighting the man on top of her, Kat grappled him with her large body, holding back his arms and trying to twist him off of her. Harrison saw his chance to help and dove onto the man too. Fighting the large woman below him and now a small man on top of him, the attacker had no chance of winning.

Rich still shot away at the rest of the diner, but even with his short, controlled bursts, his gun finally ran out of ammo. His duffel next to him had extra clips in it, but as he reached in to grab another, a man in a suit dove at him and wrestled him down to the floor, easily overpowering him. Though Rich was shorter by a couple feet, he still put up quite a struggle.

At the same time, Kat flung her attacker off, sending the man and Harrison to the floor. Harrison leaped up to confront the beaten man, but before the bully could make another move, Kat viciously kicked him in the gut with her boot. The man stopped moving and closed his eyes, but he, like the other men, never showed any visible signs of pain. As more died, there were no screams or yells. Whether winning or losing, they all silently attacked.

Kat took a long stride over to Rich and pulled his assailant off of him, easily tossing the man to the side. As another man came at her she punched him in the chest, sending him reeling back. Rich hastily reloaded his rifle and quickly began firing again.

Harrison felt somewhat useless behind Kat and Rich, who were pretty much doing all the work. So he finally decided to unholster his pistol and try using it. He flipped off the safety like Rich had showed him and pointed it toward the room.

Spotting a man trying to recover from one of Kat's bone-shattering punches, Harrison stretched his arm, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand, startling him. He hadn't hit his target. But now knowing what to expect from the recoil and vowing not to be surprised again, Harrison took another shot. And when his gun went off, a bloodstain began to form on the man's torso.

Harrison shot him a few more times before trying to make sense of the chaos around him. He saw another man coming at them, fired a more shots at him, then as the slide clicked back realized he'd ran out of ammo. Shit. He didn't have another clip in his pocket.

Just as he tried coming up with a solution, Rich's firing stopped. Harrison looked up and saw an absolutely wrecked diner. Bar stools and bodies were everywhere, the mirrors on the wall had been smashed, and the front window was completely gone. But they'd killed or seriously wounded everyone.

“We gotta get out of here now,” Kat proclaimed, turning back toward the side space door.

“It's locked!” Harrison called out to her, but she had to see it for herself. He tossed his useless gun to the floor.

“Dammit!” she said after she tried to open it. She slammed a large fist into the door.

“Well if we can't retreat, we have to go through it,” Rich said. Not only had he been stuffing his pockets with more clips for his rifle, he'd also taken out one of the submachine guns and slung it over his shoulder too.

“Where's the next door?” Harrison asked Kat, who began scanning the front of the diner.

“It's about a half mile away,” she replied.

“Do you think VERSA made all these men to stop us?” Jessica asked.

“Probably,” Kat guessed. “I just can't believe it can make non-pilots now.” She was still in disbelief.

“Hey,” Rich called out, snapping Kat back to the diner, “any other way to get to the next door without just walking down the street?”

Kat thought for a moment. “No, don't think so,” she finally admitted.

“Oh shit,” Harrison cried, spotting movement outside. Their battle had finally caught the rest of this world's attention. A few figures resembling the same man were appearing in the street.

“Oh fuck, get ready,” Rich said, bringing his rifle up to fire.

“No, let's get out of here instead!” Kat suggested.

She took off towards the street, black hair flowing behind her, racing to get out of the diner before the next group closed in. None of them could hope to match her long legs and big strides. Rich grabbed his bag and tried to keep up with her at his reduced size while Jessica scrambled after him. Harrison was about to grab his bag when he realized in her haste, Kat had left her duffel. Her duffel contained the apples and the black book!

“Kat wait!” he called out, but she was already in the street. If he could have, he would have grabbed her over-sized bag, but it was much too large and much too heavy for his small body to carry. With no time to think, he made a choice. Scrambling, he unzipped the bag and grabbed the black book. It looked comically huge in his hands, but he could carry it under his arm. He bolted out of the diner to meet up with the rest of the group.

Stepping onto the sidewalk, Harrison saw a world dominated by art deco skyscrapers that rose up from a large street devoid of vehicles. It reminded him of midtown Manhattan. At ground level the storefronts and signs displayed words written in English, but arranged in no coherent or grammatical order. VERSA was learning.

Harrison watched Kat, who was standing in the middle of the street, kick a man square in the gut. He staggered back and keeled over from the brute force of her boot. But around them more men started appearing, coming onto the street as individuals but slowly forming into packs as they briskly walked closer. Rich, standing next to one of Kat's legs, held his rifle out with a submachine gun over one shoulder and his bag over the other. But he hadn't starting shooting yet, perhaps realizing he would run out of bullets long before he could fell every man. Jessica huddled nearby, weaponless, staying close to Kat for safety. Their situation was looking dreadfully more hopeless by the second.

Eyeing all the clones of the exact same man beginning to surround them, Rich said up to Kat, “Ok, now you guys are really ripping off The Matrix!” Even under intense pressure, Rich never lost his angry sense of humor. Kat chose not to reply.

Knowing it was time, Harrison opened the black book, trying to cradle it in his arms. Balancing it while flipping to the right page, he nearly dropped it. But after turning through endless blank pages, he finally found the correct one containing those two simple words that granted him unlimited power: “ENTER COMMAND.”

Quickly, Harrison tried to remember which pilot he was. Was he six? Or five? He was pretty sure he was five or six. But as he tried to think about it, he noticed a man in a hat briskly walking up to him. The larger man already towered over him, glaring at Harrison with an emotionless yet menacing look. He had no time. Harrison shouted into the book first thing that came to mind.

“Enlarge Pilot Five to... one thousand percent!!” he blurted out. But nothing happened. What did he do wrong? Then it came to him. “Execute!” he yelled.

The next thing Harrison realized was that he was not Pilot Five. The man bearing down on him punched him in the chest, knocking him backward, the black book tumbling onto the sidewalk. Impacting the ground, Harrison's vision went blurry. He rolled onto his back quickly and held his arms out to protect himself.

Looking up and expecting to see the man standing over him, something else blocked out the sky above him. Jessica. He'd accidentally made her big instead! The man who'd punched him, now distracted by a much larger Jessica, mindlessly switched targets and began moving towards her. Harrison propped himself up on his elbows to survey the new scene.

Jessica was big, but not as huge as she's been yesterday. Judging by the windows on the buildings near her head, she looked about six stories tall. Kat, now standing between her legs and looking stunned, was about as tall as the length of one of Jessica's shoes. And Jessica's feet, still wearing the white tennis shoes she'd changed into in the equipment room, remained planted firmly in the street. Rich, still the same size as Harrison, only came up a little past her ankle.

She stood over the scene, shocked and surprised by her transformation. Harrison wasn't sure she'd even seen him with the book. But after taking a second to be awed by her new height, Jessica surveyed the street and furrowed her brow. These men had to be dealt with.

Jessica raised her right foot, now bigger than a regular person, and kicked one of the larger crowds of men. Her shoe, making contact with some of the men, easily knocked their bodies into the air. Though completely helpless in the diner, Jessica was now a force to be reckoned with in the street.

After seeing their comrades pathetically kicked aside by this young woman, the men in the street simultaneously stopped in their tracks and looked up at Jessica. Where a normal man would show fear or concern, these drones showed nothing. But it seemed like they were recalculating their strategy.

Suddenly, the men in the street lowered their gaze and focused it on the three smaller pilots. They readjusted their targets and started running towards them.

“Follow me!” Kat shouted, starting into a run down the street. As a few men tried to surround her, she delivered harsh punches and kicks to fend them off, with relative success. The reach of her arms and legs gave her an advantage over these shorter men, and she used it to her advantage.

Rich, on the other hand, had no such advantage, nor could his shorter legs keep up with Kat. To compensate, he fired his rifle when men got close to him, dropping them efficiently with head shots. He tried following Kat down the street this way.

Harrison, lacking a large body like Kat and a gun like Rich, could not punch or shoot any of the men. So he ran, as fast as his little legs would carry him, abandoning the over-sized black book on the sidewalk and hoping to catch up with Rich.

High above them, Jessica did her best to keep the attacking men away. Although she could easily kick swaths of them at a time, there were a lot of men. And she started to notice that some of the ones she'd knock down the street would get back up and silently run towards her friends again. So she changed tactics.

Running up next to Rich, who had briefly stopped to reload, Harrison nearly fell over as the ground shook and a loud boom reverberated through the street. Looking to his left, he saw one of Jessica's giant shoes smashed into the pavement of the road. She lifted her foot, and Harrison saw two bloody masses pulverized into the street, barely fitting under the shoe print. He looked up, following her jeans up to her white shirt and her enormous breasts heaving beneath the fabric. Jessica was pleased with herself, but not as pleased as Harrison was with her. He was certainly glad she was on their side.

She stomped again. This was fun, she thought, almost like stepping on bugs. She wished they'd been smaller so she could get more in one step. But she didn't like the sound the men made when her shoes squashed them. It was gross and kind of crunchy. Spying her colleagues down by her feet, she casually wondered what Harrison and Rich were thinking down below.

Harrison and Rich both remained in awe and terror at Jessica's destructive capabilities. Rich kept shooting and they both kept moving down the street, but it was hard to keep balance every time Jessica slammed one of her feet down.

“Oh shit!” Rich exclaimed. Harrison looked to see him pulling an empty clip out of his rifle. Men were closing in fast. Rich slung his rifle and grabbed for his submachine gun on his other shoulder. He pulled it in front of him and thumbed off the safety as Jessica's foot slammed down dangerously close to them. The impact threw them both off, and Rich's first few shots with the submachine gun when high above an approaching man.

The drone lunged into Rich, tackling him to the ground. Harrison ran over to kick the man, but another assailant appeared right next to him and threw a punch. It missed Harrison but he turned to block the man, and then felt his side erupt in pain as another man he hadn't seen landed a punch on him. The despair of defeat suddenly overcame Harrison; he was outnumbered in this fight. Wildly he threw a fist to his right, hoping to hit something. He could hear Rich yelling and exerting himself in his own struggle, which was also not going well.

All of a sudden, the ground dropped out from under Harrison. His brain's first reaction was that he was growing, but he noticed his legs dangling below him. Jessica had picked him up! He became conscious of the firm grip of her two fingers on his torso, the bright red paint of her nails confirming her presence.

“Do I have to do all the work?” she teased him hurriedly as she lifted him up. Harrison, scared of the height he dangled from, tried to figure out what was going on as the men who'd been beating him receded away. Jessica was considerably smaller this time around, as he noticed that even his reduced body was still longer than one of her fingers. As he rose higher, Harrison saw Rich's small figure pinched in her other hand.

Holding them both up to her face she smirked, amused by the situation. “Alright guys, you're staying with me now,” she informed them. “Let's find Kat.”

Rotating her hands, Jessica transitioned Harrison and Rich into her palms, cupping them so they could sit somewhat safely. Compared to the last time, their sizes took up much more of her hands and they had to be very careful not to fall off her upturned palms. Bringing her hands against her torso, Jessica did her best to hold them steady, lest her passengers fall off and down into the chaotic street below.

Harrison looked up and saw Jessica held him directly beneath one of her large breasts. Looking at the underside of her boob through her shirt, he became mesmerized by the sight. As she started walking down the street, her breasts bounced in an incredibly arousing way. Harrison couldn't have moved even if he had wanted to, but he felt extremely guilty leering at her from below. It didn't feel right. He tried watching what was happening below him instead, but he found it hard not to occasionally steal a glance back at her.

With no regard for the miniature men milling around her feet, Jessica calmly strolled down the street. She quickly caught up with Kat, who was desperately running and punching her way through an unlimited horde of men. Though Kat wasn't yet surrounded and could still fight her attackers one at a time, after so much action in the last few minutes she was starting to tire. Her hands hurt from defending herself and she had to take deeper and deeper breaths to stay physically capable.

Jessica, conversely, hardly exerted herself as she stepped on the hapless men that stood in her way. Stepping into a position over Kat, she did her best to stomp out the attackers closest to her friend. Kat gazed up when Jessica's shadow fell over her, relieved she finally had some help. Besides the booming noises Jessica made when she walked, the relative quiet allowed Kat to shout up to Jessica.

“Thanks Jessica!” she yelled up to the giantess. “We need to go down another block and turn right!”

“Ok,” Jessica replied, searching for new targets. “I'm holding Rich and Harrison, you keep running and I'll cover you!”

Harrison listened to all of this from Jessica's hand. If they got to the next door, how would Jessica ever fit? They were going to need to shrink her down at some point. He remembered the black book he left on the street a few blocks back. They should go back for it! Having it back in their possession would keep them all safe.

“Hey Jessica!” he shouted up to her. She didn't hear him, mostly because she wasn't listening. He needed to get her attention. Next he tried tapping her stomach, using enough force that she had notice to him, but she still failed to acknowledge him. Finally, in frustration, he did the last thing he could think of. He shakily rose to his feet, and steadying himself as he reached up, he hit the underside of her boob.

Jessica immediately pulled her hand away from her body to look at him. “Harrison!” she cried out in surprise. “What are you doing?!” Shocked and angry, she wrapped her hand around him, squeezing him in her fist.

“I couldn't get your attention any other way!” he explained defensively. “We need to go back for the book so we can change you back!”

“Change me back?” Jessica said indignantly. “What are you talking about?” She looked away to stomp on another man.

“How are we going to get you back to normal when we leave?” Harrison pleaded with her. “We need the book!” Jessica was listening but she wasn't looking at him, instead crushing more men around Kat.

He tried to argue more but she simply talked over him. “I can't just leave Kat,” she said tersely, focusing on the task at hand. It occurred to her she could try carrying all three of them, but she wasn't sure how well that would work. Plus, she liked this height. She felt safe.

“Jessica!” Harrison called out to her again. Trying to argue with a giantess wasn't his strong suit.

“Harrison,” she cut him off, “Maybe later, I'm getting you all to safety.” She turned her face to look at him. She looked mad. “Just shut up, I don't want to have to put you in my pocket.”

He was stunned by how casually she'd just threatened him. Though he hadn't meant to come off as combative, she clearly was not in a patient mood. Harrison had never seen her treat him, or anyone, with such a dismissive tone before. It might have been the current stress that made her talk down to him, but he wondered how much it might have to do with her current size. Instead of returning him to her gently cupped hand, Jessica kept him gripped in her fist.

Kat continued to move through the city, block by block, defended by Jessica. Harrison couldn't tell if the men had thinned out or if they'd simply outrun most of the crowd, but Jessica was doing less crushing now. Harrison, stuck in her fist, was swung around uncomfortably as Jessica naturally moved her arms as she walked. He started feeling a bit sick, but his adrenaline kept him alert to everything around him.

Finally Kat approached the door of a towering skyscraper that seemed even taller and wider than its neighbors. “It's this building!” Kat called up to Jessica.

“Ok, go inside,” Jessica instructed. “Rich, Harrison, you guys go in too,” she added as she lowered them both to the ground. Rich finally got to look at Harrison for the first time after witnessing Jessica scold him. He gave him a bemused look. Harrison rolled his eyes.

Harrison and Rich ran through the glass door as Kat held it open. Rich, fortunately, still had both of his guns and his bag. It was all the group had left from when they geared up just a few hours ago.

Looking around the interior of the building, Harrison could tell it was a lobby of some sort. Once both safely behind her, Kat blocked the door with her body. Some men were coming towards them in the street, but they were still a long distance away.

“Jessica!” Kat called up to her. “There's a change-key in here! We're going to take you with us!” She could see Jessica thoughtlessly stepping on another man.

“I'm going to barricade you three in so they can't get into the building while you search,” Jessica told her. “If you can't get me on your way out, just go on without me. I'll find a way out eventually.”

Harrison hated the sound of that, but he knew better than to argue with her now.

“How are you going to barricade the door?” Kat yelled up, confused.

Jessica knelt down and began untying a tennis shoe. As she slipped off the giant shoe, Kat realized her plan and ducked back into the building. The door closed inwards, and to prevent it from reopening, Jessica dropped her shoe right in front of it. She'd trapped them inside, their way out blocked by an immovable woman's shoe. Standing so close to it, Harrison immediately smelled its unpleasant, sweaty scent.

Through the glass door and over the top of the shoe, the three watched Jessica remove her other shoe and toss it to the side. Now wearing just a pair of socks, Jessica began kicking at the men who tried approaching the door. Some tried battling her specifically, but each one was easily crushed by her enormous feet.

“Ok, the door is on this level, technically,” Kat explained to the small men. “And we're going to need a change-key.”

“Yes ma'am,” Rich responded politely. Him and Harrison were in no position to argue with Kat, who not only knew VERSA infinitely better than them, but still stood nearly double their heights.

Hurriedly they moved through the lobby as the chandeliers in the building swayed with each of Jessica's footfalls outside.

“Oh wait!” Kat called out, remembering something. Harrison and Rich both paused, not knowing where to go without her. Kat bounded across the lobby and squeezed behind a reception counter. She rummaged around a few drawers until finding what she was looking for. She moved back out into the lobby holding a notepad. “Ok, now let's go,” she said.

The decorated style of the lobby quickly yielded to a more mundane aesthetic as they moved into the bowels of the building. Kat kept ducking her head as she was still too big for the regular size of this world. In one hallway, Kat ran past an unmarked metal door, then stopped. Harrison and Rich nearly slammed into her bare legs before they caught themselves too.

“Kat!” Rich exclaimed, trying to see what was going on. Kat's eyes went back to the door and she started thinking.

“Yeah, it's behind that door,” she said. She walked over the metal door. It was mounted to the wall on sliders, almost like a boxcar door. She grabbed the handle, which her hand absolutely dwarfed, and pulled it to the side.

It opened to a dark room. Kat ducked through the opening and the other two followed. Harrison couldn't see anything in the darkness, but from the echo this room must have been massive.

“I remember there's a light switch on the wall near the door somewhere.” Kat said, feeling around clumsily in the darkness. A few seconds later she found it and pulled the level. As the electric system kicked in, lights at the top of the room clanked on and started lighting up in succession down to the floor. The light was faint, but Harrison couldn't miss the green door against the wall. It must have been thirty stories tall.

“Holy crap,” Rich said. “Is this entire building just a big door on the inside?”

“Yeah pretty much,” Kat said, craning her neck to look up at the giant doorknob well out of reach. Like all the doors into the side space, this door clearly swung outward into their world. Opening it would destroy this entire building.

“Is that the change-key?” Harrison asked her, pointing to the notepad.

“You betcha,” she said happily, looking down at him. “You guys, get out of the way, hug the wall.”

“Uh oh,” Rich muttered, seeing where this was going. Him and Harrison started backing towards the wall. Kat pulled a pencil out of the spiral binding of the notepad and started scribbling. She paused, looked up at the towering door, did a silent calculation, then finished writing with a flourish. The moment she tore the page from the notepad, she grew.

Fortunately for Harrison and Rich, the interior of the building was truly cavernous. Kat instantaneously expanded into a dizzying proportion right in front of the two shocked men. Facing Harrison, her boot towered over him. He wasn't even as tall as the laces; her foot was the size of a house. If she were out of her boots, he wondered if he'd even be as big as one of her toes. Probably not, he concluded. It was the largest he'd ever seen anyone in the sim so far, even larger than Jessica the first time she accidentally didn't shrink.

To Harrison, Kat's body looked more like a force of nature than a woman who normally stood a little over five feet tall. His entire existence felt inconsequential next to this towering goddess, and the self-deprecating part of his brain wondered how he always ended up the small one. He looked for the notepad Kat used to grow herself, but it had disappeared somewhere under the immeasurable weight of her gargantuan feet.

In the real world, it absentmindedly occurred to him, physics would never allow for a creature this big. It just wasn't actually possible, the giant would collapse under its own weight. But here in VERSA, where all the rules were simply the limit of some programmer's imagination, anything was possible.

“Guys, this building is going to collapse when I open this door,” Kat informed them with a booming god-like voice from above. “I'm going to need to keep you both safe.” Before either of them could react, she squatted down and covered their minuscule bodies with her massive hands. To see her body suddenly drop into a crouching position terrified Harrison; it was like watching an avalanche descend upon him. Though one hand would have easily covered both Harrison and Rich, she used both.

As she crouched, her knees smashed through the side of the building, causing a structural chain reaction that made the entire skyscraper collapse around the green door. In the world under her protective hands, dust swirled up and both men started coughing profusely. The large pieces of the building and the resulting debris harmlessly fell around her protective hands, and as the smoke started to clear, Kat lifted her hands off of the miniature men.

The building was gone, completely replaced by the large green door now rising above the surrounding streets ruined with rubble. Looking up, Harrison saw daylight once again.

“Holy shit Kat!” he heard Jessica's voice. “You nearly killed me!” He heard her pause, then add, “Damn, you're huge!”

“Impressed?” Kat asked her with a smile. Harrison could hardly see Kat's face from so far away.

“Where are the guys?” he heard Jessica ask, still unable to see her over the rubble.

“Down by my feet, I'll carry them,” Kat offered. She peered down, looking for the ants near her boots. As her eyes glanced down on him, Harrison's brain screamed at him to run. Everything about Kat's size terrified him, she could kill him so easily. He knew she wouldn't try to, but even a small mistake could unwittingly end his life. Tiny creatures like him did not hang out around giants like her. That was simply how nature worked.

Her fingers, thick as tree trunks, reached down for him. Daintily, she plucked him off the ground and deposited him into the palm of her other hand. She grabbed Rich the same way, both men tumbling together in her giant, sweaty hand. Harrison tried recovering as she lifted her hand up. He must have only been about an inch tall to her. He felt pathetic.

“Guys, I'm putting you in here for safekeeping,” she told them. She wasn't giving them a choice. She opened up the left breast pocket of her flannel shirt and dumped them inside. Harrison and Rich fell down into the pocket, landing on top of one another. Harrison tried pushing himself up and orienting himself, but he found it difficult in the dark interior of her pocket. Rich's bag had smashed into him, hurting his ribs. Rich started grumbling obscenities.

Harrison started kicking a bit, trying to get untangled from Rich and his gear. Frustration quickly set in: frustration from his current trip into VERSA, frustration from being so helpless during this whole time, frustration from now being stuck in this woman's giant pocket... In the last twenty minutes he'd been manhandled by two women and beaten up by legions of the same man. He was not having fun and regretted indulging Kat's strange mission into VERSA.

“Hey cut it out in there!” he heard Kat say to him. “Stop it!... That tickles!” she giggled. Embarrassment washed over Harrison; he realized he'd been kicking her giant breast.

Back outside of the pocket, Kat towered over Jessica. The former giantess, now small, did not even reach Kat's knees. From Kat's perspective she could see over many of the city's buildings, though some of the taller ones still eclipsed her height. But she didn't care, she was now queen of this world. Too bad they were leaving, she thought.

“Ready to go?” she asked Jessica. Looking down she could still see swarms of men thronging the streets. Briefly, she wondered how many she could crush with one of her massive feet. But they were inconsequential now, they couldn't harm her.

“Um yeah,” Jessica called up to her, “But my shoes are gone, they're under the rubble somewhere.”

“Hmm,” Kat said, stroking her chin. “You know, we'll just have to get you some new ones soon. Want me to lift you over the rubble and through the door?”

“Sure, that'd be great,” acknowledged Jessica.

Before grabbing Jessica, Kat reached behind her and pulled the towering door open, which was now the perfect size. She pulled it through some of the building's rubble before it opened enough for her to fit through. Turning again, Kat reached down and picked Jessica up by her torso, using both hands to be safe. She walked through the door and into another hallway. Gently she placed Jessica down on the floor.

Still wearing her dirty, blood soaked socks, Jessica took them both off and flung them back through the door. “No use for those now,” she commented. Kat closed the door behind her and looked at the watch on her wrist. Her timer read six hours and seventeen minutes elapsed. She felt more movement on her breast as the men fidgeted around in the pocket. She smiled. They were making great time.