Chapter 2: Dominant

Nobody with any interest in having a great life wanted to work with the police force of Gigantopia. It had been a rule in Laure’s family ever since it had been truly formed, in the same time as the nation itself. It wasn’t that police didn’t do useful work – sometimes – or that it was too violent or anything like that. No. Put it simply, it was absolutely demeaning for a Giantess to be working with the force. Simple as that.

A few Smalls could perhaps accept joining, but they were generally losers and, while it was never said in polite circles, all Giants knew that Smalls were at the very bottom of the picking order and, frankly, barely smarter than Normals. Oh, they were great at barking orders and dealing with day to day tedium administration and other menial tasks like that, far better than their smallest brethren. But they lacked what made taller citizens better. Superior even. It had been admitted long ago by all Giants that it was true.

At least, that was what Laure had been taught as a child, and now she was dedicated to prove that wrong. Not that she had a lot of esteem for her colleagues and subordinates. At barely thirty years all, she had joined the police force with the rank of Prefect of Gigantopia, effectively the highest rank in the force. Had she been a Normal or even a Small, it would have made the headlines that she was a genius. Since she was a Giantess, even her admitted that anything else lower would have been insulting.

“Ah putain” she mumbled as she looked at her data. “How come nobody seems to be able to see that?”

It was a constant problem for her. Gigantics were able to design incredible new technologies but they were mostly aloof and unable to really make use of it beyond their own little interests. Titans were great planners, able to write down a way to rebuild the whole energetic grid of the nation in a matter of days and to make use of the Gigantics’ otherworldly invention. But they lacked the critical ability to see the smallest details. Her kind could.

In fact, a slew of seemingly random information allowed Giants to deduce facts at an alarming speed. It left them somewhat jaded, since even a white lie or even a not important lie would be almost immediately detected and sour their relationship a little. It allowed them to be brutally honest with themselves, but dealing with their smaller cousin was in exchange far harder. Smalls and Normals seemed to love hiding dumb stuff and hated it to be exposed, but she couldn’t help it.

“One more on the firing squad” she grumbled to herself as she added a new name to an already threateningly long list she had been writing down since she had started her day, barely an hour ago. “Is there even ONE cop who isn’t dirty in this god-damned city, or am I too naive?”

As far as she could tell, it was obviously the first choice which was true. In the three weeks since she had taken the lead, she had uncovered more morons, incompetent and plain old rotten cops that she had believed could exist in the whole nation. And she had barely been dealing with a quarter of the whole force as it was. Some of her alleged “superior” were somewhat discontent but they were Normals and she was a Giantess and it meant she could do as she damn pleased, because her backing was far stronger than their legitimacy.

She winced at that thought. She knew someone who would be extremely unhappy if she expressed such a reality to his face. She glanced at her phone but resisted the impulse to light its screen to see his face. He could wait. He had to wait. She had promised herself she’d only be open about her feelings for him once she’d have cleaned the police force and made Gigantopia a place she knew he would be truly safe to wander unsupervised. Otherwise she’d never be able to let him go out of sight.

“Ma’am, officer De Paul is here” said her secretary, her minuscule voice carried through Laure’s phone.

“Get him in” she replied, her voice already stern.

She straightened in her chair, hastily passed her fingers through her blonde mane and focused on the ridiculously small door through which the cop she had called for the day would pass. Her stare hardened. She knew her eyes were often frightening for Normals and even Smalls. Like all Giants, her eyes were far paler than normal, in her case their green tinge made her look deeply inhuman apparently. It came in handy to terrify her visitors however, who all seemed to lose their shit under her withering glare.

“He… hello Miss Carin” said her officer, sounding rather meek and afraid, while he was said to be outspoken and brash in the rapport she had read. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, indeed officer De Paul” she replied her voice cold and almost emotionless.

“You.. ah… you can call me Rick, Miss Carin.”

“Duly noted” she said, picking up a pen far longer than he was tall and writing down something – in truth, nothing more than a scribble but it always worked.

As a Giantess, the former office of the Prefect couldn’t accommodate her, so a new one had had to be erected. There had been a lot of grumble but everyone knew that now that a Giantess had taken interest in that post, it had accrued far more prestige and influence than ever before and her successor would be of the same size, so the whole headquarters had been razed and rebuilt in a matter of weeks to make sure everyone knew who was now the dominant force here.

“You… uh.. You want me to sit somewhere or…”

“Yes, there is a chair for you up here. You’ll find an elevator for your use at the bottom of the desk. Please, hurry up officer, I don’t have all day.”

“Yes Ma’am!”

She followed him until he disappeared, hidden by the edge of her desk. Laura had to give him credit where it was due: he didn’t run or even scampered around, but walked toward the elevator. Briskly perhaps, but it was to be expected, since she had already achieved a certain reputation among her agents. Those she hadn’t already fired for such blatant abuses or disregard for the law they were supposed to uphold that she couldn’t fathom sparing them even for a moment.

The ding of the doors opening brought her focus entirely on the first officer she’d be grilling today. In truth, she was almost certain of her decision already but she wanted to see him in person, to truly gauge him. It was bad practice and the mark of a sloppy person to make decisions without reviewing all the elements at one’s disposal and confronting them to reality. Usually, as improbable as it seemed, what remained was the truth. In that regard, her analytical mind gave her such an edge over Normals that they were well and truly outmatched.

She looked at Rick De Paul as he emerged from the elevator, looking a little confused and frightened for a moment, especially when he saw her look at him with her best poker face, but he was able to walk relatively normally toward the chair designated for him. It had been placed extremely carefully by Laure herself, who wanted to be able to look down at her subordinates without looking too ridiculous because of her opulent breasts, which seemed almost too big for her body shape.

“So. Do you know why you’re here, officer De Paul?”

“Honestly? No Miss Cartin” he replied and, to his credit, his voice didn’t even waver, even while he should have heard all the rumors by now and Laure knew her cold and detached tone made them Normals quake in their boots.

“Well. Since your job is investigating, I think that’s a rather bad mark on your efficiency officer.”

“With all due respect Ma’am” he said, and she saw him tensing in his chair and then look straight at her – and her eyes. “I’ve heard rumors of you wanting to purge the force. But I don’t have enough evidence to be sure of it. Yet.”

“Interesting” she simply replied, dropping her pen a moment to cross her fingers below her nose, so it could rest of them for a moment. “I won’t confirm or deny those rumors, but I can admit that I’m accessing the abilities and characters of the people I’m working with.”

“If you’re interrogating all the officers of the force in Gigantopia you’ll have for a lot of time, Ma’am” he grumbled but he still looked at her.

“You’re right. And yet I’ve already done that with a quarter of you all by now, as you probably knew. And I do intend to go over that process with everyone” she continued when it became clear he didn’t want to talk just yet but nodded in agreement. “So, officer De Paul… Are you a good police officer? A good man?”

He didn’t immediately got all defensive, shouting from the top of his lungs and shaking his fist, like some had did before him. He seemed to ponder her questions seriously, which didn’t surprise her, she suspected she knew him almost as well as he did himself. She didn’t let him think peacefully however, she wanted to coerce his true feelings out of him. She got her pen back and let its tip tap rhythmically on her wooden desk near him; close enough to be unnerving but not threatening.

“I think I am” he finally said, his voice almost steady, even if she heard the start of a tremor in it – truly, he was an impressive specimen since her pen could have crushed him – or worse – without requiring any effort on her part. “I’ve always did my duty properly, I’ve never… dabbled in malpractices and I have even reported those when I knew or suspected of them.”

“Have you always done that?”

“Yes.”

She looked straight at him as she let her pen fall loudly on the desk. It rolled toward the little Normal, threatening to roll over him but he didn’t moved and even if he broke eye contact for a moment, he returned to their staring contest after a moment or two. Laure extended a finger and stopped the pen effortlessly just as he grazed De Paul’s legs. They would have snapped in seconds if she had been slower. The Giantess smiled for the first time since her work day had started.

“Well, that’ll be all Rick. I’ll have a report of our little session today sent to you. I won’t be speaking more about it today, but just so you know, if you’ve been holding on buying something for fear of your future… you shouldn’t anymore.”

“I.. oh, okay Ma’am. Anything else?”

“No. Just be kind enough to say to Cheryl that’ll I go on my lunch break as you exit, it’d be helpful.”

“Of course Ma’am.”

The little cop saluted and turned around, returning to the elevator. Laure looked at him as he went in, and then walked away. He didn’t even look back once. A part of her felt a little sad, some of the cops she had had here had leered at her cleavage and even glanced back when they left, even after having been subjected to her coldest behavior. Rick seemed to truly be a good man, as his file and her personal observations had deduced. He joined the ridiculously short list of cops she knew she could count on in the future.

“Well, time to dig in and –” she was cut off by her phone dinging.

Immediately, all her attention went to that screen, far taller than any Normal. She did her best to ignore the picture of the masculine face smiling on her screen to focus on the message itself. It was the same man writing her. She knew why he did that of course. In their circle of friends, they had decided to make a big thing out of her promotion and she had hinted that the next week-end would be calm enough for her to join a party. She had been clever enough that the brave little things didn’t even suspected she knew all about their plans already.

She answered as expertly as ever, so as to be sure that they’d believe they had managed to fool her when they did that. Especially him. She wanted him to believe she couldn’t read him like an open book. She knew it helped tremendously Giant-Normal relationships when the smaller breed of peoples didn’t realized that they couldn’t keep anything secret from their mates. Otherwise they went crazy with paranoia and the relationship usually broke down. Laure wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Nonetheless, it was quite hard to not actually make uses of what she knew of him to actually make him be honest with his feelings for her just yet. All it’d take would be a few texts and he’d confess, believing to be the one having started all of it. Her fingers hovered over her phone but she finally dropped it. Not yet. She could wait. Even if some bitch came and tried to put her claws into her target, she knew of to bring him back to her. It’d be so easy. But not yet, she had work to do first.

The rest of her lunch break was largely uneventful. She got to enjoy some particularly delicious food – at least for her kind. As a Giantess, she couldn’t just eat what Normals and Smalls ate, she needed something more to get going. And she loved spicy food. Therefore, rice spiced with some dusted out uranium was definitively the best. Sure, it was all tingly and she had to make sure the Tupperware was sealed tight but she just loved the rush it gave her when she tasted it!

“Uh… excuse me… Miss Carin?” suddenly said the voice of her secretary just as she had barely finished eating.

“Yes Cheryl? And as I told you already, you can call me Laure. In fact, I’d rather you’d call me Laure, okay?” she added, trying to break the ice a little with the woman she had handpicked for that job.

“Uh, okay Miss… I mean, Laure… Uh… so…”

“Yes?”

“We’ve got a report that… that someone we have been suspecting to be linked to drug traffics and perhaps even worse has been admitted to Greater Health Hospital. Absolute urgency apparently. They… they are not sure he’ll survive the day but…”

“I’d like very much to hear from him if he does survive. Send them Rick De Paul” she added on a whim. “I have too many bad eggs to deal with for the rest of the day to go there myself. Assign Alicia Sapovitch to him okay? If any of them has any complain, send them my way before they go, I’ll find the time for some dress-down.”

“Will do Ma’am.”

Laure leant back in her chair. Her mind was already wandering toward the possibilities. She had been sniffing something vast and dangerous ever since she had taken an interest in the police force of Gigantopia. Her kind lacked interest in what happened at their feet far too much for her taste and someone, a lot of someones, had been taking advantage of it for decades, if not more. But things were always shifting in that underworld of sort, and she was confident it was happening again, violently so.

They should have used their size, strength and intellect to police this city far more directly for a long time now. She was truly starting to realize how their disinterest was hurting a lot of peoples but also the very idea of Gigantopia. If it was a place which only truly worked for its taller inhabitants, it didn’t live up to its goals. That the rest of the world was a backwater place where living was worse hardly made it up for the Giantess. Now, it seemed she got an opportunity to clean things up quickly and efficiently.

“I’m sure that poor son of a bitch will be more than willing to speak now that he’s been left for dead by his little crew. He probably don’t know much, but a little is better than nothing, I guess…”

In that, Laure was wrong.