Chapter 19: Fury

There was madness on the streets. Never before had Gigantopia descended into such a mayhem. And while Laure felt it gave her an opportunity to validate the reforms she was pushing now, with the help of the Gigantics. But she had hoped to be able to contain the fear of the population, to be able to prepare them for what was to come. But it wasn’t to be, clearly. Not with riots in the streets.

Thousands of terrified Normals had descended on the boulevards of every part of the nation, after a filmed assault on one of them – a cop but still – by a Small woman. Probably only a handful recognized Alicia Sapovitch in the relatively grainy video of a shaking smartphone, filming from whatever position its holder had been hiding into. The screams were horrible, but the smirk of disdain on the Grown woman was worse.

Laure couldn’t even tell if her officer was alive or not. The videa had been cut off sooner rather than later, and while the very fact it had been posted online prove whoever did that survived, it wasn’t the mood on the streets. Fear made Normals believe the cameraman – or woman – had been killed. And when the police had tried to calmly get them back to their homes, fear had turned to anger.

Now, trashcans were burning, and so were cars. Tens of thousands of peoples had joined the protests, asking for protection, if not segregation from the Growns. For the first time since the foundation of the City-State the size of a continent, peddlers of size-related hatred were able to get a large audience. And as the fury mounted, Laure feared an accident. If another Grown went on a rampage, perhaps even because he or she wanted to protect Normal friends or family, things would get worse.

“Madame Commissar!” called someone, shaking her out of her brooding. “He’s awake now!”

“Who?” asked Laure, confused for a moment. “Oh! Rick de Paul? He’s out of his comatose state already?”

“Yes, the medics were able to get to him in time, and his implant helped a lot apparently.”

“Good, good. We need to know what happened in there! And fast!”

The Giantess followed her guide, a Normal like all the members of police force. The poor guy was running as fast as he could and she still covered more distance with one of her strides than he could in a five-minute run. And yet, she neither picked him up or overtook him, even if she knew where to go. It was necessary, now more than ever. She had to lead by example and show that she was mindful and respectful of her subordinates.

She had to show the whole world that at least one Grown didn’t think that she was inherently superior to Normals and thus could do with them whatever she wanted. If she was honest, she did feel superior to Normals and Smalls. But it didn’t give her the right to act as she pleased, she couldn’t lord over them. And now more than ever, now that so many Normals were so afraid they had become angry. Fear had a way to turn to violence in a way that frightened even her.

“As he said anything?” she asked, masking her impatience as best she could – drone and helicopters were buzzing, almost in reach for her, and she needed to be seen interacting as a Normal Commissar would have – or so she hoped.

“He’s asked to be let out of the hospital immediately to hunt down whoever assault Sapovitch and him” came the reply, and it took a lot of self-control for Laure not to chuckle nervously.

“Really? Well, he must not have been hurt as bad as I was led to believe, then.”

“The doctors say he may never walk again, Ma’am” said her assistant and Laure gasped. “It’s already a miracle he hadn’t his spine entirely severed.”

Laure couldn’t help but wince this time, and then she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. She was furious now, more than even before. Dragos was potentially in danger, he couldn’t answer her phone calls – or wouldn’t. And with how dangerous the streets were now for a Normal, she was worried for him. So bad. And now one of the few officers she really trusted may have been maimed for life!

“Do we already know who did that? It must have been a gang or something” she asked when she finally reached the entrance of the hospital where Rick was healed.

It was a good thing it was another mix-sized hospital, as she could enter, even if, as a Giantess, she felt cramped – her head brushed all the ceilings and even the doors were somewhat narrow for her curvaceous body. She had requested for as many of the people hurt in this dark day to be treated here – seemingly, several of them were the ambushers of Rick and Alicia, and would be interrogated as soon as possible.

Once inside, Laure finally sighed. She was out of sight from the cameras. Media wasn’t allowed in there, and they had better things to film to have a great audience – all the peoples too afraid to get out of their homes. It gave her a time to focus back on the situation at hand without the risk of being mischaracterized by cameras catching her giving in to the pressure. She already had to deal with peoples considering that her body shape and size made her a poor Commissar at the best of time!

“Where is Rick?” she asked her guide. “You’ve already ran a long way toward here, you need to get some rest.”

She smiled, hoping that it helped her officer be sure she wasn’t dismissive of him. She needed her subordinates to be ready to obey her at a moment’s notice. She needed them well rested – as much as possible – and sure that she had their back. She may be forced to send them directly against the most violent of the rioters. Some may be hurt – none would die, she was sure of that because they were well equipped. But still.

“Room A136, Ma’am” he replied. “It’s a place where you can fit – sort off. It’s more Small sized than anything but if you sit I think it should be doable.”

“Damn. Well, I’ll struggle then. But I need to talk to him. Now.”

She sighed. It was really good there was no camera, nobody needed to see her struggling to enter through a door too small for her because her tits and ass were simply too massive to fit easily. And while she was certain all the Normals around – and even most Smalls – would find it arousing, it was something she wanted to give to Dragos only. She bit her lips, struggling against her urges.

“Hey boss” came a raspy voice when she managed to see the door and had was trying to crawl into it. “Any news about Alicia?”

“Can’t you wait for me to be sitting before asking anything?” she grumbled, as she struggled with the door, while doing her best not to knock down any medical material.

Rick grunted something that could have been an affirmative answer, and Laure didn’t try to press him further on the matter. She couldn’t blame him for his anxious reaction. Looking at him, as soon as she had finished entering the room and huddling as best she could to not knock anything down, she could tell he was in a really bad shape. He was pale, with heavy undereye bags. But he had a somber look of determination on his face.

“What happened in there?” she asked him, as soon as she was in place.

“It was an ambush, boss” he mumbled. “Somebody who was a friend of our escaped witness approached us. Both Sapovitch and me suspected foul play but he picked up a café, with enough people around to be pretty public, so we expected that things would get, at the very least, mildly threatening but nothing more.”

“It turns out you were wrong. It was a place able to cater to Smalls, right? I read the report. Surely when you saw one inside, you must have felt worried? Whoever it was, it wasn’t careful and maimed and killed a lot of people, in a pretty gruesome - what?”

Rick had coughed and seemed mildly embarrassed as she talked. It was surprising. She had expected shock, anger, fear. Instead he genuinely seemed ashamed. He had no reason to, he had pursued a lead, perhaps a little too much doggedly, but it was something that could happen. And he had paid a heavy price. If the doctors believed he could never walk again… it must have been terrible for him to know that.

“It’s Alicia, who did all that, Ma’am” he finally said.

“What!?”

“I know! It’s… she’s super strong, way more than she looks. She told me it was genetic and… and I think it’s what saved my life, to be honest… They were all part of the same gang in there, boss. There was no Small, the one who intervened waited outside, probably to not make us afraid.”

“Wait a minute… tell me in details what happened then” she ordered him.

And so he did, and the more he talked, the more Laure worried. There was something big happening here, something far larger than what she had been led to believe. She knew perfectly well that Gigantopia was far from a real utopia, especially for Normals. They could be crushed by Growns who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to where their feet landed, for instance.

But that level of criminal coordination, and violence? It was something new, something sinister. Her predecessors should have seen the warning signs, they should have been able to stop it before it became as big as it had grown. Instead they had failed to notice, or perhaps they had even been bribed. It was corruption in the force that had led her to be instated as Commissar after all.

The nation was in a volatile state, and things seemed to be headed to worse waters still, she realized. She doubted now that what had happened to their slippery witness was related to that man-eating Giantess in the North. It meant that she had two crises on her hands now, and one where an officer had been grievously injured, the other’s situation unknown. She needed to act decisively now.

“I order you to stay put here, Rick. No, don’t even try to discuss it” she added when he opened his mouth to protest. “You’re maimed, and I get it, you want your partner safe. I will bring her back, I swear. But you’re in no condition to do anything about it. You need to focus on you and your health. You know you may not ever walk again, right? We have the best doctors here, I’m sure they’ll do their best but they’ll need your compliance, get it?”

“Yes boss” he finally mumbled after a few tense seconds.

“Thank you. I understand, it’s hard to not know what happened to your partner. And something is telling me she was more than a professional partner to you. I don’t care, mind you. But I can’t let your emotions cloud your judgment, especially when your condition isn’t great. I’ll get Alicia back.” 

“And what if she’s dead?” he asked, his voice suddenly hollow. “What if… what if there is no one to save?”

“I… I don’t know, Rick” she admitted. “I want to do my best, I really do. And I’ll stop whoever did that to the both of you. But I can’t assure you she’s perfectly safe. I hope whoever captured her knew it would only add to their problem if she was killed or even maimed. But… We live in worrying times, I can’t lie to you.”

“... Thank you boss” said Rick after a moment, his eyes teary.

Laure nodded and got out of the room. She needed to return to the situation at hand, now that she knew what had truly happened to her officers. She would be able to make better judgment calls about it all now. She just needed to find a way to appease the streets. She just couldn’t bring down her wrath on anyone before she had done that. Normals needed to get back to their home, to clear the way for her.

But just as she returned to the lobby of the hospital, she heard screams of dismay and horrors. They drew her attention to a small screen, a Normal-sized one, near her left feet. Normal nurses and doctors were wailing and screaming, one of them even seemed to lose consciousness. She had to know what was happening. Even with her superior eyesight, they were too huddled to the screen for her to see it.

“What’s happening!?” she barked, drawing their attention from the TV at her - only to be met with more yells and a stampede, as several nurses bolted away from her.

“It’s happening! The Growns are going to kill us all!” screamed several, as she stood there, dumbfounded.

In a matter of second, chaos had erupted in the hospital, with Normals scurrying away in every direction, as if seized by some insanity. Laure didn’t dare move a muscle, she couldn’t know what had caused it and she didn’t want to add to it. But then, when enough people had cleared from around the TV screen, she saw, and she knew. Her heart sank in her stomach and she felt light-headed, as if she was suffering from a vertigo attack.

On the screen, above a red and white tagline “Bloody rampage, is it the start of a Growns’ coup?” was a Giantess. She walked over the crowds of terrified Normals. She was crushing them, dozens of them, with each step she took. She didn’t care. No, realized Laure, she was amused by it. She was smirking, as if extinguishing hundreds of lives in a matter of seconds was just some sick game.

“I need to stop her” she mumbled.