As Chiara fell to a kneeling position, her leg obliterated the area where we'd been standing moments before. She was still growing—even running as quickly as I could, her body was expanding easily as quickly, ready to overtake me. I didn't even know if she knew I was there.

Akita scooped me up and flew, just before I would have been crushed by Chiara's thigh. From up in the air, I had an excellent view of Chiara towering over the city. At this point, each of her legs was a block wide, each of her fingers was larger than a bus, and she could've held my giant form in her hand the same way I would hold a human.

As I wondered whether she'd outgrow the city, the planet, or even the universe, she stopped, picking up her elbow and shifting her legs, obliterating several city blocks until she was casually lounging across Bern's entire downtown.

And Chiara turned her head to look at us, and she smiled—a smile that could devour an entire building like a piece of chocolate. "Let me put it like this," she taunted. "You're nothing. I'm everything. I could devour every last human on this planet, and there's nothing you could do to stop me. Now do you see how insignificant you are?"

I glanced up at Akita in horror. "What do we do?"

And to my shock, Akita smiled. "I've got her exactly where I want her," she replied. "She isn't even considering that we could manipulate her."

"How on earth would we be able to manipulate her?" I asked. "We barely survived even when she was a fraction of this size."

"Think about it, Evanna," Akita explained. "How does Chiara interact with people she actually thinks are insignificant?"

"She doesn't give them a second thought," I answered immediately. "She'll just ignore them and do whatever she wants regardless of how it affects them."

"Exactly!" Akita affirmed. "And so the fact she needed to tell me that I was insignificant to her automatically means that I'm not."

"So how do we use that?"

"We need to lead her away from the city," she explained. "Once there's enough distance, the government can launch nuclear missiles at her. But it'd be hard to do this while holding on to you, so you're going to need wings. I've got a spare set on the zeppelin; I'll take you there."

As we flew towards Akita's zeppelin, Chiara simply watched, slowly turning her head to follow the glow from Akita's wings in the fog. Even though we'd be the size of ants relative to her, she wouldn't be losing track of where we were.

And just as we were about to arrive, Chiara's hand advanced towards us. Akita deftly dodged in between Chiara's fingers, which closed around the zeppelin. Chiara flashed us a wink and tightened her grip, and the hull of the zeppelin slowly began to crumple and crack until it finally buckled and exploded. By then, Akita had taken me to a relatively safe distance.

"Time to get her to stand up," Akita declared, flying further into the fog. Chiara's silhouette faded and disappeared, only to reappear as she walked towards us, seemingly savoring every step. Akita may have been fast, but Chiara was faster.

But we had one advantage Chiara didn't. Akita flew upwards, even higher than Chiara could reach. And Chiara certainly tried, crouching down and leaping, her fingers passing only slightly below our altitude. There a thunderous crash as she landed, even though the ground was too far below for us to make out her feet through the fog.

"Should I grow?" I asked Akita, clinging on to her as tightly as I could.

"Only if you fall," Akita replied. "Otherwise, you're just making yourself a bigger target."

Two gigantic beams of energy cut through the air with an audible hum. Akita gasped. "She's a better engineer than I gave her credit for," she commented. "I thought there was no way her eye beams would work on this scale. We may need to do a bit of dodging."

"I don't think so," I countered. "She'll know she can't hit us through this fog. That's an intimidation display to get us to fly lower."

"Then let's take the bait," Akita decided, diving downwards and forwards. Chiara kept up, taking a few grabs at us that narrowly missed. And suddenly, we weren't flying. For a moment, I thought she'd grabbed us, until I saw that Akita had landed us behind a rocky outcropping. We must have already made it to the mountains.

"Stay quiet," Akita whispered, folding her wings and crouching down.

And Chiara emerged, glancing around slowly, clearly looking for us. The fog was still too thick for us to see her entire body, but she was certainly close enough to see us if she knew where to look.

"She's looking for the light," Akita concluded, still in a whisper. "She's assumed we're still flying and just too far away to spot."

Chiara's hand came crashing into the side of the mountain—not near us, but the impact was almost strong enough to knock us out of our hiding spot.

"What's she doing now?" I asked.

And Chiara closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and blew. Almost instantly, the fog was washed away, showing us her entire colossal form to reveal she was more than half the height of the mountain. But I didn't have very long to look, as the hurricane force of her breath sent both Akita and myself careening away. Akita grabbed my hand and spread her wings, riding the wind to fly faster than she ever had before.

"There you are!" Chiara sang, her voice echoing across the mountains. "It's good to see you again!"

Instead of pursuing us, Chiara climbed up onto the mountain, grabbing onto the summit and peering around the side to watch it. Now that she'd blown away the fog, she had a clear shot at us, and Akita narrowly dodged as the beams continued past us to level a mountain a good distance away.

And Akita set me down, pointing up into the sky. "It looks like we win."

Following her finger, I spotted the missile descending from the sky.

But Chiara saw it too. And as we watched, she reached out her hand and effortlessly flicked the missile away with one finger. It burst moments later, but Chiara was unharmed.

Akita was speechless. "It appears my plan may have a flaw," she eventually stated.

"Then we need a new plan!" I replied. "Do you know if she has any weak spots?"

Akita paused in contemplation for a moment. "Can you shoot eye beams like she does?" she eventually asked.

I shook my head. "All I've got are my hand blasts."

"And how do those work?" Akita pressed.

"I don't know; Chiara built my arm," I explained. "She said the energy comes from me, but I need the machinery to channel it."

Akita grinned. "So what you're saying is that she has machinery in her eyes that enables her to fire her eye beams," she determined.

I bit my tongue. "She's never mentioned anything about that," I recalled.

"Of course she hasn't!" Akita exclaimed, clutching her hands together. "That would ruin the image of pure power she cares so much about projecting!"

Akita and I reflexively leapt aside as a boulder the size of a house landed right next to us.

"So all we need to do is hit her in the eyes," Akita concluded. "Anything that shoots beams on that scale has got to be something we can explode. The explosion will impact her brain and that should be enough to take her down."

"Can you carry me to where I can get a good shot?" I asked.

Akita grabbed me and flew—and just in time, because Chiara had caught up with us, and her hand came down where we'd been standing, her fingers raking trenches into the rock.

As we ascended, gradually approaching the height of Chiara's head, I charged as strong a blast as I could. Seeing Chiara's face in front of me, filling my entire field of view, letting my fear and despair strike back against the one they came from.

The blast landed. As it faded, I could see that her eyelid had closed, rendering my attack completely useless. A smile spread across her face as she opened her eyes, bathing us in light. And she returned the blast, with an eruption that made my attack look like a tiny spark by comparison.

"How can I make the shot if she closes her eyes?" I asked over the roaring hum of Chiara's eye beams.

Akita dove and set me down on a small plateau that I soon realized was the back of Chiara's hand. "Grab onto her finger and follow my lead!" she shouted, taking off again.

If it hadn't been for the glow of Akita's wings, I'd have lost sight of her as she flew farther and farther away with Chiara's face behind her. But following the glow, I saw Akita landing on Chiara's eyelid, grabbing on with her wings to keep Chiara's eye open.

And Chiara picked up her hand. The sudden motion knocked me off-balance, but my climbing instincts kicked in and I grabbed on. Akita had told me to get to Chiara's finger, so I climbed as quickly as I could. I hadn't earned that gold medal through luck alone—as Chiara's hand approached her face, I reached her fingertip and grabbed on, dangling from one hand and charging a blast.

And Akita's plan clicked in my mind. Chiara was reaching to pull Akita off her eyelid, and in doing so, she was giving me a perfect shot.

I fired my blast, and it hit the exact center of Chiara's pupil. Even as she screamed, I kept up a beam for as long as I could, until she reflexively jerked her hand away. I could now clearly see that Chiara's entire eye was mechanical—and seconds later, it exploded, and Chiara disappeared.

Suddenly, I was impossibly high above the ground with nothing to hold onto. Glancing around to see if Akita was there to catch me, I realized Akita had grabbed onto a now human-sized Chiara—she wouldn't be able to help.

So I swallowed a berry, trying as hard as I could to grow as large as I could before I'd inevitably crash into the ground. And I landed and stretched out a hand for Akita and Chiara to land in.

"Keep her restrained," Akita instructed, setting down Chiara and flying up to land on my shoulder.

I obeyed, closing my fingers around Chiara and gripping her tightly. She was still conscious, but clearly in a daze.

"Are you comfortable finishing her off?" Akita queried into my ear.

And I pondered. She'd undoubtedly killed hundreds or even thousands of people today, and she'd expressed no willingness to change. I could save countless future lives by simply tightening my fist.

And Chiara looked up at me with an expression of utter dessolation across her face. I suppose it made sense: even using the full extent of her power, she'd been defeated. Her dream of having total control over her life had ended up being nothing more than a fantasy.

"Please, Evanna," I heard Chiara whisper, her voice almost lost in the wind..

I shook my head, careful to not knock Akita off my shoulder. "I can't," I replied. "I won't stop you if you decide she has to die, but I hope that won't be necessary."

Akita nodded, and faced Chiara. "I think you've underestimated humanity," she declared. "We can and will stop you if we have to. Hopefully now you'll understand, and we won't ever have to defeat you again. Because if it comes down to that, you won't get any more chances."

Chiara bit her tongue and nodded. I loosened my grip slightly.

"I'll stay in the mountains," Chiara promised. "I'll keep to myself. I know the humans won't ever accept me as one of their own anymore." She turned her eyes to me. "They'll never accept you either, you know."

She wasn't wrong. I recalled the faces of all the people whose lives I'd saved in Bern—the fear in their eyes, even when I was only there to help. In order to be accepted, I'd need to take on a new identity, to never show my true nature, to stay small forever.

And yet, this didn't bother me at all. They weren't ever going to see me as a human, and that was okay. Because I didn't need them to. I couldn't ever simply be a regular person again, but I didn't want to be. I suppose it was ironic: I was the only one of us who accepted power, even though Chiara was always the one to flaunt it. It must have been some kind of self-loathing, then, that made her into a force of destruction—she'd never thought she'd be granted the opportunity to be anything else.

So I held her gently, as I had back when my hand had been a place of comfort and safety for her to rest in. And even now, she nestled in: her role had been reversed, and for a moment, she was content.

Perhaps I'd underestimated humanity. I certainly couldn't pretend I wasn't different, but not everybody was bothered by that. And yes, it was awkward to have to explain to my family that I'd tried to conquer the world, but that didn't stop them from inviting me home to visit. Some of my old friends were scared away, and others began to only care about me for my power, but I was still surrounded by people who cared.

Like Akita.

I was at human size when I asked her to be my girlfriend, but I felt far, far smaller, like a mortal daring to court a god. Even in all the times I towered over her, I'd never seen her as anything less than an equal, her skill and dedication more than compensating for our physical differences.

And yet, she didn't laugh. She didn't dismiss me. Instead, she smiled. I hadn't seen her smile very often, and I was unprepared: when Chiara had smiled, it had been only for her own sake, but Akita was smiling at me.

"I won't deny that I fancy you," she replied. "And so if that's what you want, then that's a yes from me." She gently placed a hand on my shoulder. "But I have to ask—do you think you're ready? You've just come away from two toxic relationships, and so you haven't had much of a chance to see what a good one looks like. Do you know what you're looking for?"

This was new to me. She wasn't telling me what she thought was best for me, like both Étienne and Chiara had. All she was doing was making sure I had everything I needed in order to decide for myself. And this is how I knew I wasn't ready: if this hadn't been something I'd been able to conceptualize, I needed more time.

So we waited. But that didn't keep us apart. Going forward, Akita was right by my side and I was right by hers. She protected me from those who sought me out for my power, and I protected her from those who fought against her efforts to change the world. And we found our place in the world, working in secret to do what humanity's leaders were failing to do for the people.

And I never stopped thinking back to Chiara. Perhaps one day, she'd finally learn the empathy that she'd chosen again and again to reject. But until then, she was simply the giant in the mountains, seen by almost nobody outside rumors and legends. She needed companionship, and I was the only person she'd ever been willing to accept that from. But it wasn't my responsibility to get her to change.

And as I slept, with Akita curled up in my hand, nothing was missing. I didn't control every aspect of my life, but I was controlled by nobody. I was free.