Chapter 2: Attack

“Miles.”, spoke The Leopard.

Laura set her communicator to “always on” mode during the ride out of the Leopard Cave. Every sound in close enough proximity, or simply loud enough, would be picked up. The ear piece had software smart enough to give her own words extra precedence during transmission, however. In those cases, the background noises would be muffled in volume.

“Miles tall. The loafer is taller than the Bricksenheim Building its looming over. That means the attacker has to be... 10 miles at least. 10 at least.”

The ground rumbled as whatever feet in the loafers presumably shifted slightly. A wiggle of toes or the like. Perhaps some other, minute replacement of weight, likely not even thought about by the giant being the shoes belonged to.

“Loafers, brown. Socks, black. I can’t see much higher, even on the cliff of my--the manor.”

As a habit, while in costume she tried not to admit to owning any of the Yeal properties or the namesake company’s holdings.

Laura spoke with an odd mixture of hesitance and haste. On the one hand, she recognized that she needed to cram as much information as possible into her transmissions to Margret. On the other hand, the sight was as bewildering as it was unexpected.

If only she knew it was just beginning.

A great buffet of wind sweeper over the city from its distant edge all the way towards Laura. Great currents of air whipped up and thrust her way as she looked out towards the south end of the metropolis she called home.

The giant crouched down and leaned over in a sudden movement.

Laura could make out the face is it took up much of the morning sky.

“Female. Young woman. College aged? Purple hair, medium length. White skin. Brown almond eyes. No lipstick on smiling lips. No blemi-”

The smile, stretched hundreds of feet wide, turned to a grin as the teeth were bared.

The giant spoke.

“Miiiii-naaaaaaaaa-saaaa-nnnn”

A single, drawn out utterance vibrated building and bone alike. Laura could feel her spine tingle just from the power of the words. It didn’t seem right. She felt like she shouldn't have been able to make out anything from a being that large, and yet she could feel the syllables echo in her head with clarity.

It was a language she had dabbled in, but didn’t know particularly well. She knew enough to recognize that word though.

“Minasan, that’s Japanese for ‘everyone’. Attacker is Japanese perhaps? Fits some facial features. No facial blemishes or scars. No other unique marks. Face is perhaps a mile or more in-”

The giant started speaking again. Laura shut herself up, as she wanted her communicator to pick up every word said above without any sort of interference. The super heroine trusted Margret, listening on the other end, to keep typing whatever she heard no matter who said it.

“Keheh, good morning, good morning~ How nice of the city of Kramston to help me unwind.”

Laura heard those word with equal clarity. She heard the laugh too. An odd sort of chortle. It was somewhat abrasive.

“English. Attacker speaks English as well.”, said Laura.

The air was in tumult once again as the giant woman moved. She leaned back, resting on her haunches somewhat. Laura could make out more of her form.

“Healthy build. Black skirt. Black-blue jacket. There’s a symbol on it I can’t make out in full. Partially pink symbol. Looks like school outfit? Pink symbol might be emblem. Scattering drones and checking cams.”

Laura hit a few buttons. Some drones flew off from around the city. They gained altitude quickly. The left lens of Laura’s masked lit up as it become a screen on the inside. She saw an array of views from every drone as they zoomed upwards. She was hoping to get more intel before the colossal woman moved again.

“C’mon, c’mon.”, she muttered.

Her hand was on her wrist, where her gloves had flipped open for drone controls. At first the drones had naught but views of flesh. They had to fly up past the bend of giant’s knees. Soon, they started recording the fabric of the skirt, then the jacket. The symbol Laura gleamed was on the left side of the coat, so she cut half the views off then and there.

The giant was moving slightly left and right, like someone looking over a march of ants in their yard. The shifting of weight ravaged the city with quakes: it was enough to trigger a bunch of auto alerts for seismic monitors that Laura had interspersed about Kramston. Moreover, the clearly threatening posture was enough that some city officials had activated some defensive measures throughout the metropolis.

Laura saw some missile launchers pop out of the roofs of a select few buildings across the city. They looked like two sets of honeycombs, joined by a solid band of metal that extended down into their latch point on the structure roofs. From the comb-like pods, they fired a series of missiles upwards at the gigantic gal.

“Shit.”, muttered Laura. “They’re gonna make her move!”

The missiles roared through the sky. Designed by Yeal Enterprises, they were some of the fastest on the market and it wasn’t more than than a second before they hit the bare knees all the way up towards the sky.

The drones had since cleared that area, but Laura could see the tiniest puffs of red explosions on the giant woman’s kneecaps. It seemed utterly ineffective, and the booming chortle that followed confirmed Laura’s suspicion.

“Kehehehe, that was fast! Usually takes a little longer for your guys to strike. Must be eager to play huh? Well, let’s get started then.”

As the heroine feared, the giant rose up. Already having flown up miles, the hi-tech drones now had much more to go before she could gleam the emblem on the jacket. An emblem would at worst narrow down the attacker’s association with a specific school, but at best could even narrow it down to a local club or something even more identifying.

Laura quietly cursed under her breath. In the meantime, the enormous attacker set one hand to her hip, and pointed her right hand outwards. The super heroine kept narrating it all. Every action could be a clue, after all, when the time for the defilement of time had passed.

“She’s raising her finger, pointing it at the eastern edge of the city, where the majority of the launchers were set-up.”

Her tone was one of perplexment, then quickly it shifted to surprise.

“There’s a light in the sky. A--mother of...”

As the woman chortled overhead, a great beam of red light surged forth from her finger. The ferocity of the ray was enough to have Laura shielding her eyes, and the wind screamed as it seared through it like a torch through butter. Disintegrating heat singed all the beam touched and melted the ground to glass. Anything near the impact burst into flames.

“Beam.”, spoke Laura. “Laser beam from finger. The eastern district is gone. Temperature must be off the charts. Too many structures obliterated to list each in time.”

The beam terminated, and the giant spoke again. Though Laura couldn’t see it, she brought her finger to her mouth and blew on it as though it was the muzzle of a gun.

“Kehe, not a bad shot right? How’s that for a counterattack? I think it’s pretty fun.”

A rumble roiled through the air. The giant shifted her right foot. It moved over towards the hind of the left loafer.

All this, Laura narrated into her communicator, as well as repeating the giant’s words.

“Fun buuut I shouldn’t just laser you all away. That’d be too easy. Too impersonal.”

The giant woman lifted her left foot free from its loafer, with the right following soon after. She kicked the shoes behind her, then wiggled her toes within the black socks that covered her feet.

Buildings at the edge of the city buckled and fell. Grinning, the giant slid one socked foot forward, toes wiggling still, and crumbled a few dozen more blocks beneath the warm black fabric of her socks.

She was so immense that people and structures in the area actually went through the warp and weft of the socks fabric, falling into the even warmer confines of the garb where they crashed against her toes.

“Then again, I think even this isn’t close enough. If I’m gonna kill you all, I wanna feel it you know? Better chance of your city giving me a good massage with socks off, right?”

She chortled, then leaned back and bent her knee. Her fingers found the front of her sock. Holding the mildly awkward posture with the ease of a gymnast, the purple haired city invader tugged the garb loose.

Her left foot now bared, she taunted the blocks at her feet by hovering her sole over them. The shadow cast for miles. A wiggle of her toes and some of the earlier building bits and cars fell after they had sifted through the sock fabric earlier.

Laura’s drones were almost level with the chest again. Then, the attacked stepped down. Her footing shifted, and the process of the movement had the massive woman shifting *slightly* forward which, at her scale, meant an uproaring of air by her chest that blew a few drones off course.

“Dammit!”, muttered the super heroine.

“C’mon, stay still.”, Laura said to the giant in vain.

“Stay focused.”, Laura said to herself.

Laura grit her teeth and mentioned the going-ons into her communicator. The drones were almost at their target again. She could see the bits of pink on the jacket emblem.

The giant had finished her step, and cruelly shifted her foot which caused quite the tremor through the city again. That done, she swung her sock in hand, then chucked it towards a distant part of the city. There, the thousands and thousands of lives beneath it were crushed under its cloying bulk.

More derisive chortling rumbled through the city.

“Not bad, but too fast. I should take it nice and slow for my next step. I should really feel you at least once.”

With that, the miles tall invader moved to get her other sock off. Alas, she did so by bending forward! Nearly the entire fleet of Laura’s drones burst against the massive woman’s chest. Only a couple still remained.

“No!”, Laura shouted. She needed that image, but the feeds were all scuffed and staticky. She kept culling them from her view on the mask’s built-in smart lens. Her fingers were flying across the controls built into her costume’s wrist.

“C’mon...”

As this happened, the woman hoisted up her leg and slowly peeled her right sock off now. She flicked it towards another more-pristine part of the city in the opposite direction of her last sock strike. Chortling, she watched it soar through the air and land across a stadium-turned-shelter that was packed to the brim.

“C’mon!!!”

As the attacker moved to lower her right foot for a ‘slower’ step, she had leaned back down just slightly. At the same time, one of the injured drones sputtered out of its glitched camera state. The angle of the massive woman’s body in its lean was *just* enough for the heroine to get the image she wanted.

The drone’s propellers were busted, too, so as it fell from the sky the Leopard even got a zoom-out effect. She saw the emblem at last.

“A pink peach. Pink peach emblem on jacket. The college emblem, perhaps?”

The giant stepped down again, slowly as she had promised. Thousands beneath her sole looked up to see the sheer precision she tortured them with. Her foot stopped right at the tips of the buildings, and she output just enough pressure to have them creak, but not enough to break them. For a few brief moments, they were basking in the body heat radiating off the recently freed foot. Her sole was clean, and not at all offensive in odor, but they felt its presence nonetheless through something so casual and humiliating as the thermals of the giants body.

Then, she pressed down. With the sound of her roaring coos, the foot slowly tore through the structures as it fell bit by bit. Buildings weren’t meant to withstand this sort of thing, slow step or no, and thus they fell inwards on-themselves like paper boxes given a push.

Pretty soon the only things un-crushed were people and cars. The young woman held them there, flush against the whorls and wrinkles of her sole. She felt them squirm, and clearly enjoyed it as the continuing coos intensified. Their screams, too, intensified, as did their futile wiggling and writhing.

It ended, though, when she pressed down with a bit more pressure. As clouds of red mist, they briefly stained the surface of her sole. She sighed.

“Mmm, not bad. But, I hope you all understand I can’t give each and every step that much attention. Well, I can, but I’m not gonna be *that* slow.”

With that, the miles tall monster started leveling the city in earnest. She lifted her legs up for powerful stomps; she swept her feet left and right, and dashed out swaths of districts against the unstoppable side of her foot.

Her movements were faster now. Every step quaked the earth. The very mountain the Yeal manor rested on was beginning to crumble. Laura still did her best to narrate everything. She did her best to hold her composure as Kramston, her city, was flattened to ruins one step at a time.

Soon, the giant woman spotted something though.

“Eh? Fancy manor. I think I can snuff you out with just a toe though: maybe a bit more too~”

The Leopard looked up as the sky was replaced by the print of the woman’s big toe. She angled her right foot so that the digit would fall first. Laura narrated it all as the spiral-like-patterned flesh drew down on her. It was all she can see. It was so massive, so much power behind it that she hardly even felt pain before everything went black.