Chapter 5 – Bad news

Laure sighed as she pushed herself away from her desk. It had been another tortuous day reviewing a police force largely inept, corrupt or both. A part of her really wanted to deal with all those rotten apples in a very obvious way. Trampling a few hundreds or so into gore under her heels would probably do wonder to have the others fall in line. She closed her eyes and envisioned it. Their little bodies popping like ripe grapes under her tremendous weight, their pleas ignored like they had been deaf to the suffering of their victims.

It was definitively a great fantasy, even if perhaps a little wicked. It had been drilled into her mind ever since she had been old enough to remember that she had to be careful with the smaller beings around her. As a Giantess, it was her duty to be mindful of them and to avoid hurting them as much as possible. If she was in a hurry, she still had to watch her steps – sure, sometimes some idiot Small or a suicidal Normal wouldn’t notice her moving and she’d step on them – usually they died quickly enough to not really suffer. But she tried to minimize the occurrence as much as possible.

And she had to stay clear of Titans and especially Gigantics. As the only beings which made her feel small, they had a humbling effect on her. She could be the one trampled upon if she wasn’t careful around them after all. That thought broke her off her reverie. It was pointless thinking about handing out brutal justice like that, she’d only get hated and it’d go against everything Gigantopia was supposed to be. You weren’t meant to go around leveraging your size to pick on the smaller peoples – and it’s allowing it which had had started to kill this country.

“Ma’am” peeped Cheryl’s voice, bringing her fully back to the real world. “You wanted to see me?”

“I told you to call me Laure, Cheryl” sighed the Giantess as the looked down at the petite Normal, who had put her notebook against her small chest, as if to protect herself. “You don’t need to be so formal around me, I picked you up as my secretary among a vast number of peoples for a reason, okay?”

“Yes Ma’am, I mean, Laure” replied the nervous woman, before chuckling a little. “Sorry, I’m… I’m not used to being around, you know…”

“Someone as tall as me?”

“Yeah, and also…” started her secretary before stopping abruptly but for a moment, her gaze followed the curves of Laure more than generous breasts.

“They can be intimidating, right?”

“What!?” yelped Cheryl, blushing so much she looked like a tomato – well, pictures of tomatoes Laure had seen, she was far too tall to really know what those looked like when not prepared for her.

“My breasts. They are frightening you a little. I get that a lot, even Smalls and other Giantess are sometimes off-put by them. And, well… they must look enormous to you Cheryl. But that’s okay, they won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you. So relax, really.”

It was something she had picked up quickly once she had started interacting with Normals. They got really terrified of Giants and above citizens – which was probably fair, considering how frail they were. And trying to pretend that there was no danger and the like by downplaying the size difference almost always had an adverse effect because they assumed that then, you were clueless or a ditz and that they were in real danger. It was better to tell them you knew how big you were and that you’d make sure they were safe.

“I… uh… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… Oh God, I must look like a perv now…”

“No, you don’t Cheryl. Really, I understand. I’ll let you on a secret. Sometimes, I’m really looking at Titaness and Gigantics’ breasts with envy.”

“What?” yelped her secretary, whose face turned even redder somehow.

“I mean, have you seen the size of some of those? I’m pretty sure I could sit on some of those racks and they wouldn’t bulge. And if they sat on me, well, I don’t think my bones would be able to endure their weight. So, really, what I’m trying to tell is that it’s okay to be impressed when around Growns, but you don’t need to worry that much, okay?”

Just as Cheryl opened her mouth, she froze and picked up her phone. She immediately turned her back on Laure, who frowned. What could be so important that it’d take precedence over both their little break and their discussion? Nothing good surely. She picked up one of her pens, as long as a dozen Normals, if not more, and started to scribble stuff down as her secretary kept her voice low as she talked to the person on the other side of the call. Finally, the call was put on hold and Cheryl turned back toward her.

“What’s happening?” asked Laure, her voice fully professional now.

“It’s agents De Paul and Sapovitch. Apparently, they met a hurdle Ma’am. The nurses didn’t want to let them interrogate the suspect, or even wake him up.”

“They can’t deal with nurses?” smirked the Giantess.

“Not Small ones, Ma’am.”

“Shit” swore Laure, who pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay, have them go to where that man was found. Perhaps they’ll get some clues over there. Fuck, we really didn’t need to be met with an obstacle like that already…”

She was really angry now. She almost wanted to go and stomp over that dumb hospital. She’d probably be able to impress that nurse and cowing her, insuring that her agents would have access to the testimony of that suspect. But sadly, she couldn’t. She would have destroyed any chance of wooing the man she pinned after if she did that, he wouldn’t abide by such an abuse of her size and all the rights it afforded her unofficially. She groaned and shook her head, trying to calm herself.

“Do you want me to go, Laure?” managed to say Cheryl, and the Giantess was impressed by her effort to not use Ma’am again. “I could leave you alone, if you want.”

“I… wanted to bond a little more with you tonight, since it seemed to be a particularly calm shift” sighed the colossal woman, looking down at the one who was barely over a hundredth of her size. “But I think it’ll be better to have you go home early tonight Cheryl” she added, smiling weakly. “Just be a dear and have your call sent directly to me. I feel like reviewing my files some more.”

Her secretary thanked her and quickly evacuated her office, going down from her desk to the floor with the elevator and then rushing on the ground toward the Normal-sized door in the wall. Laure started to furrow through her stuff. She needed something to focus on, anything, really. She fished her phone and almost sent a text to her crush. She was already picturing the best way to convince him that he was the one who really wanted to go and watch a movie with her, in a mixed-sized theater and all. But she resisted the urge a little bit longer.

She was “rewarded” by a sudden phone call. She grumbled and almost let it ring out on its own. But a sudden feeling in her guts made her decide to pick it up anyway. She had told Cheryl to send any call to her office directly after all, it wasn’t to not listen to what her troops had to say, after all. She expected nothing, perhaps just a trite information sent her secretary’s way, or perhaps something even more upsetting like rumors or dirty calls – after all nobody knew it wasn’t Cheryl on the phone.

“Cheryl? I need to speak to the commish, ASAP!” fervently urged a masculine voice, dissipating any idea of catching some gossiper red-handed she could have had.

“It’s the Commissar Carin on the phone” she replied, her voice stern and professional now. “What’s happening officer?”

“Commissar? Thank God I got to you so fast. It’s officer Kirkman. I… I’ve found something I thought you’d want to learn immediately!”

There was something in his tone which convinced the young commissar that it wasn’t just a call to get in her good graces. His voice seemed almost feverish, something which seemed to synchronize with the dread she felt in her belly. She now prepped her pens to take some notes of what would be said. She knew, without any concrete evidence yet, that it’d be bad news and she steeled herself. She’d need to act on those news, and fast.

“Go on then officer”

“I was on the docks, near what had been the Netherlands and all” he started, stopping only long enough to clear his throat a little, a clear sign of nervousness. “I saw nothing out of the ordinary and I assumed my shift would end on a calm note… but then that vagrant approached me, and he told me he had seen something… horrible.”

“What something?” pressed Laure.

“At first he wasn’t coherent enough… but from what I’ve gathered, he used to see some gang members doing their stuff on the docks at night. But a few nights ago, they were… attacked by something. Something which destroyed them entirely.”

“Aren’t you a little overdramatic officer” chided him the Giantess. “We would have seen marks of a fight or something like that if it had happened.”

“That’s the thing commissar… the witness, he told me it wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter. You see… the gang assailant, he said it was… beg your pardon, it’s his words, not mine. He said it was a fucking giantess.”

“What?”

“Apparently, a Giantess assaulted the gang members. They were a dozen or so.. and she… according to the witness, she ate them. Alive.”

Suddenly, Laure felt nauseous. She had always found the idea of engulfing something alive in her mouth to be disgusting. She had tried it once, when she had been but a teenager, stoned in some mixture of chemical wastes and radioactive uranium. She and her friends had went and picked up a few cows from a nearby farm and had gulped them alive and kicking. She still half-remembered their screams, muffled but nonetheless conveying such a primal fear that even what little she remembered was enough to give her a cold sweat.

“Officer Kirkman, I want you to bring that witness to the headquarter, top-priority. Try to remain discreet, but if you even suspect you’re being tailed or something like that, do whatever it is to bring him here. Got it?”

“Got it Commissar. But… hum… about what he said, if it’s true…”

“We’re in deep shit if it’s true officer, I think you know it as well as I do” she grumbled. “I’ll see you as soon as you arrive, with your witness.”

“Beg your pardon Ma’am, but… uh… I don’t think he’ll want t talk to a Giantess anytime soon. He’s… rambling. He spent the last few days hidden, too afraid to even search for food and drink. If he hadn’t been so thirsty, he’d probably have remained hidden even today, but his water bottles were all finished so…”

“You’re right officer. Okay, I’ll, uh, I’ll have someone I can trust interrogating him. You did a good job, and I’ll remember it.”

“Thanks Commissar, Ma’am? I’ll be going now.”

With that, he hung up and Laure Carin was left with her thoughts. Giants didn’t need to eat much organic matter, or at least non-contaminated organic matter. And she highly doubted that whatever mixture of booze and drugs the goons had taken would have excited the appetite of another fellow Giantess. Now, if what the vagrant had seen was true, it was not some famished super-sized citizen going on some sort of rampage. It was a deliberate erasure of her victims, and possibly the herald of something worse to come.

“I need to call Dragos” she realized, startled, as she picked up her phone.

He worked late, and while he was far from the place this horrible event had happened, she couldn’t help but feel worried about him. She knew he wouldn’t understand why she called him then, why she’d sound so frantic instead of her normally controlled self… She stopped her call before he could pick up. She wouldn’t frighten him unnecessarily. Instead, she’d go to him. She looked at the hour. She would be able to make it, even if she ended her shift late. She smiled weakly. It’d be a great opportunity to spend time with him.

“And if whoever tries to hurt him, Normal or Gigantic, they better be prepared because I’ll tear them apart, limb from limb” she growled.