Jo had never had a proper friend. Kids in school were mean to her, because she didn’t share those interests which society pushed on the girls her age, and the boys didn’t want that strange shy girl to be a part of their group. Teachers were just as absent. Jo was neither one of the excellent students, nor one of the most problematic. Her lack of sociability passed almost unnoticed, her parents didn’t present any particular lamentation about anything, so they could all divert their attention to more pressing matters. Therefore, the girl lived a kind of lonely life.

This explained why she was always so affectionate with each members of her family, taken alone. She was starving for some sort of special connection, be it with her mother, her sister or her grandma. But her mother seemed to focus her attention on the most rebellious teenage daughter; her sister had a far more vivid social life and since Zack had entered their world Mimi was all about him; her grandma was the funnier of the three but Jo didn’t understand two third of the things the old woman said and their time together was inevitably limited.

This was no particular problem. She had learned to be lonely, to profit from the enormous space of autonomy she had been gifted by the general ignorance in which she lived, to savor even that freedom. Of course, she had not developed the most positive feelings toward humanity at large. People were almost completely indifferent to her. Most of the time they were at best boring, at worst obstacles for what she wanted. Now that people were smaller than mites they could in no way be an obstacle for anything, and instead they had even become less boring.

Even now that the court of people her parents could revert to had been shrunk significantly, they still had managed to ignore their younger daughter enough to give her time to think about herself and the world around. Jo wasn’t in fact completely blissful to her condition like her parents seemed to be. She knew those insects on the ground were still people, and that it was her and her family which were now something else. She knew it wasn’t just an accident every time that the giants trampled the little people. Of course, it was involuntary most of the time, but it wasn’t just an accident. It was also a display of power.

Her parents and herself were like superheroes now, they were even stronger than superheroes. Jo knew it was them which weren’t normal or the world strange. The world was always the same. They were special. She was special. She was in power and she could do whatever she wanted with people. They belonged to her, like the servants to their rulers. Like dolls to their owner. Like food to her belly. She was, thus, both a super heroine and a princess. She had achieved the dreams of both the girls and the boys at her school. But she didn’t want to be either. She didn’t understand the rush of superheroes to save people from monsters, disasters and crime, nor she craved all the attention, vanity and jewelry into which princesses used to be drowned.

All of this also had come to realization from observing her parents’ behavior. The two over-sized adults didn’t behave like king and queen, and even less like superheroes themselves. They seemed almost the same as before. Their only relation to the world below had been practical and offhand. Her mom and dad really knew how to remove any sign of magic from things. But she forgave them. Because for the first time she didn’t disdain such behavior.

To be practical and offhand with ants, bugs, plants or objects around the house was one thing, and surely a pretty unamusing one. But unleashing the same attitude toward what Jo still regarded as people, and buildings and stuff which in a certain way mattered for real, had had a fascinating effect on her. Something had been unlocked into the depth of her soul. She couldn’t express it properly, she couldn’t even bring it up to full awareness, but she couldn’t deny she loved it. She loved that people, buildings and cities still mattered just as much as before, and yet all those incredibly important things could be so easily annihilated by the sheer power of her mommy and daddy.

When her daddy ripped a ten stories apartment building off the ground and split it two to better consume it, without giving the smallest sign of care, Jo felt butterflies in her stomach. When she observed her mother slowly dropping a foot on an office building crushing it one level at a time just to scratch her foot, Jo savored the sight with her heart even more than with her eyes. The careless destruction deployed by her parents was the highest delight she had ever experienced. And that was what she wanted to mimic so starkly. She wanted to apprehend and master that ability to wreak havoc without any effort.

Kids tend to consider themselves and the world in a bonded relation that always passes through the filter of their parents. The contemporary knowledge that her parents were invincible and supremely powerful and that they had to worry infinitely less about her had sprouted in her mind into a feeling of absolute protection yet indomitable freedom. She could do what she wanted with the whole world, and she was always going to be within the safe gaze of her parents.

Concerning the little people and the world, Jo didn’t have any hostile feeling for them. It’s not that she wanted them to suffer. It’s that she knew they could understand what was happening to them. It’s that they knew her family and herself were gods to them. A form of reciprocal recognition that she surely could’ve never expected before from ants. The death and destruction were, thus, just the waste product of that power play. When the giants, that Jo knew of, were just herself and her parents, this is where her mind and heart had settled. But the event of the evening and the night before had radically transformed that conception.

At least another player had entered the game. Jo couldn’t know it because she never had felt similar feelings before, but she was already enamored of Arthur. Not as the object of any romantic feeling. Those were still alien to her, and her only consideration for romanticism around her, either in the form of Mimi and Zach’s cohesiveness or her parents’ cheesyness, was in the form of utter disgust. She had also thought with curiosity about Elsa. But the fact that she moved, behaved and sounded mostly like her parents, had curbed her enthusiasm about adult titans in general. They were boring. If anything, they were going to conquer the planet and make it look like their office duty or a corporate field trip.

On the other side of this spectrum of consideration, she was mesmerized by the infinite possibility that Arthur as a playmate could offer. All of the things she was already listing to do as a giantess were not just doubled but multiplied again and again. Arthur himself had proved to be incredibly fit for the job of fulfilling Jo’s fantasies. He was in fact both very shy and very subservient. He did almost every single thing the little titaness asked him. She didn’t mind to lead and he seemed very happy to follow. They were in this sense probably the better assorted couple in the whole giant community.

The only place where Arthur didn’t seem oriented at mindlessly following Jo’s initiative was in the treatment of little people. Who knows why, he seemed pretty contrarian to hurting them voluntarily. He had taken note of Micheal’s words about little accidents, and was almost completely reassured that his mother really didn’t bother if he happened to stumble into some buildings and destroy them. At best, she had laughed at him in the occurrence. But mostly she had just let him be without further notice. That’s why after some failed attempts at explaining to the boy why it was the funniest thing in the word to capture and devour people from the streets, Jo had moved to a more sophisticated solution.

She would’ve had all the time and occasion to both exert her incredible power over the little people and yet spend her time playing with Arthur which instead wanted to preserve them. It was just a matter to make all that into a game of their interest. Thus she had invented her sessions of the monster attacking the city and the robot protecting it. In every old and cheesy tv series the whole thing always turned pretty badly for the city, even if the robotic protector used to always come on top. Jo considered it even noble, because everyone was going to get what they needed. Arthur would’ve protected the city, she would’ve had time to inflict some damage, and the little people and their homes were duly going to get smashed under her toes. Everybody was winning, in her perspective.

And thus they had spent the night before, at least until Arthur had fallen asleep and she had followed through soon after. And thus they had spent the morning at least until Mimi and Zack had arrived and interrupted the fun. The only thing which had disappointed the little titaness that morning, though, had been the acknowledgment that during the night, almost every inhabitant of the city on the coast had left. There weren’t people anywhere, despite her scrupulous search. Arthur of course was far less bothered by the fact and he played his role with the same enthusiasm of the night before. For him it was all a game, regardless of how realistic was the playground. But Jo felt a little off for missing the audience she had put all that show on for. She could understand that people didn’t want to get crushed by a nine years old colossus, and that was mostly why she wanted to crush them so badly. And still, she felt a little abandoned and betrayed.

After another adventure was over she just retreated on the beach and started working with the actual sand, the seawater and other sand produced by crumbling the buildings on the shoreline, to build a sandcastle or something. After some failed attempts at making a tower, with a pile of sand already three hundred feet tall, Arthur joined her. He observed her for a while and then commented.
“Maybe it’s too difficlut without a bucket!”
“Yeah, good luck finding one around here!” She harshly countered.

When she saw the boy had been a bit hurt by her tone she tried to recover. “What do you suggest?”
Arthur shook off the grudge and rushed to her side. “Well, we can build a sand turtle!”
“What?”
“Yeah look!” He then started collecting the piled sand and worked attentively to shape it in the form of a melon. She just sat there leaning on his shoulder and watching him operate. When she saw he was going to finish the reserve of sand available, she rushed to rip off some other building from the ground with both her hands and started reducing it to dust right into the sea. Arthur was too intent in tracing the distinctive drawing of a turtle shell to consider the provenance of his construction materials.

After a while the Turtle was ready. It had six paws instead of four out of Jo’s request and a very little horn on the small round head. There were also two dark holes to function as the turtle monster eyes. The thing was now lying partly on the beach and partly over what once was the city, looming over the city blocks around. It was quite impressive. The dull sand creatures seen from below dominated the scene, its horn surpassing in heights most of the buildings. It was quite the demeaning vision for whomever beholder in the human realm. To Jo, the thing seemed unfothomably cute.

“It’s more like a kaiju turtle now!” Arthur commented unsure of the result.
“It’s wonderful! I love it!” Jo interrupted him. “In fact, I here declare it as the kaiju’s baby!”
“The what?”
“Well, since I’m a kaiju princess now, I am his mommy!”
Arthur wasn’t convinced. “But … but I made it!”
Jo pondered about the thing. “Well, it’s decided of course!”
“What?!”
“You’re the kaiju’s daddy!”
“What?! No!” Arthur protested louder.
“Well, you made it, it is our child now! Do you want to abandon your own son!”
Arthur was overwhelmed by the unexpected responsibility of fatherhood, and he surrendered, shrugging and sighing.
“So, we’re a family now!” Jo celebrated.
“Yeah, a family of kaiju!” Arthur commented sarcastic and still a bit recalcitrant.

That last sentence struck Jo mid air. That little pile of sand in the form of a turtle may have been the absolutely first concession of Arthur to the idea of standing on her side against humanity. She tried to force him.
“So we can’t fight anymore! We have to take responsibility for our puppy. Go search for something to feed him in the city!” She commanded.
“What? No! I am supposed to defend the city!”
“Well, you should’ve thought that before bringing this poor little creature into this world!” She argued unabashed.
Arthur tried to squeeze any valid counter-argument out of his own brain, but he had to admit defeat to Jo’s too much powerful logic.

He grunted and stood up. Jo followed every single movement of her friend transfixed. Arthur left the beach stomping hard with each step to signal his unwillingness toward his current task. That spread several tremors in the whole coast city and left very distinguishable footprints in the concrete or among the smaller buildings which ended up trampled. He finally reached something that seemed appropriate for the purpose. A pretty large water tank on the roof a very large complex which used to be a hospital. He ripped the metal tank off the roof with ease and turned back toward Jo and their “baby”. Jo was already on cloud nine watching Arthur stomping on the city on her behalf, yet she was incapable to contain herself. She wanted more of it.

“Wait!” She stopped him on the spot.
“What?” Arthur asked once again puzzled.
“You can’t just leave!”
He thought a little about those words “Why?”
“Because if you take that thing just like that … they may come back and take it back again!”
Arthur looked behind at the silent complex building. “I … I think there’s nobody inside.”
“How can you be sure?” She objected.
Arthur puffed exasperated. He tried his best and squinted his eyes. “I tell you there’s no one inside. They won’t come to take it!”
Jo didn’t want to listen to any reason. “You should just demolish it!”
“What?!” The boy asked incredulous.
“You should demolish the building. Just to be safe!”
“I … I don’t think I should.” Arthur rejected the idea.
“It’s for our baby’s safety! Don’t you want him to be safe?” Arthur was getting tired of arguing.
“Mom said I shouldn’t destroy stuff for no reason!”
“But there’s a reason. Plus you said it is empty! If it’s empty nobody will complain. If it’s not, there is a reason!” And she started caressing the little turtle’s head while intently looking at her playmate.

Arthur couldn’t stand that level of psychological manipulation and capitulated. He stomped back to the hospital even harder than before to signal he was upset. When he was in front of the structure he tried to look at the windows and the interplay of reflexes from the sunlight and shadows from the inside made it pretty difficult to actually assess if the place was in fact empty. Maybe it wasn’t, and they had seen he had stolen the water tank. What if they were coming for him? He felt like every child which risks to be caught red handed and couldn’t think of a better solution than to hide the proof at his best. So after another small pause hesitating and panting a little in excitement he finally kicked the building’s facade with his sole sinking with his whole foot into it.

A lot of stuff fell from the upper to the lower floors through the enormous hole he had just created and a lot more precipitated on the parking lot. Arthur could recognize some hospital beds, some desks and a multiplicity of strange machinery among the chaotic mess. But he could also finally find an answer to his doubts. Not everyone had had the chance to leave the hospital, there were small figures moving from one part to the other of the still standing hallways and rooms. He felt embarrassed. A feeling that increased looking at his own hand where his loot was clearly visible. He took a deep breath and stomped once again into the building. With some fatigue he managed to disentangle his leg from the crumbling structure.

“You should also roar!”
The voice of Jo struck him while he was still standing on one leg only. She was right on his side. “Here, look!”
The little titaness approached the structure, knelt down and then punched it with both hands while roaring at the highest volume she was capable of. Arthur looked her performing the whole action in silence. Then he approached the building once again, this one time getting closer to one of its extension on the right side. He crouched a little and then roared before jumping and diving into the structure with his whole body. Jo looked at his figure emerging from the enormous cloud of dust that he had raised and couldn’t feel more amazed. Of all the marvelous surprises that growing had brought, to watch someone else destroy a building out of her request immediately topped them all. It was like discovering that even though power over tiny humans was delightful, power over titan humans was just incredible. She let Arthur continue his work of demolition, roaring and stomping all over the remains of the hospital and some surrounding buildings. When he was over, panting and sweating, she stood on his side.
“Thank you papa-kaiju!” And then she greeted him with a loud kiss on the cheek.
“Eeeeewww!!!” was the only comment of the dust-covered boy.

They then both returned to the beach where the giant sand turtle was awaiting, Arthur still holding the water tank in his hand, mostly undamaged.
“We should name it!” The boy proposed when they arrived.
“You’re right!” Jo agreed delighted by the suggestion.
“It should be something fierce and cool … like … Turtlegeddon, or, or Doomshell … or …”
“His name is Reginald!” Jo interrupted him.
“What!? No! That’s lame!”
“Hey, don’t offend little Reginald! He is still very young and sensitive!” Jo scolded him.
“But … but, if it’s a kaiju it should have a name that shows how strong and mighty he is!” Arthur tried to argue.
“Don’t listen to him, Reggie! Mommy loves you, and you’re the mightiest and cutest kaiju in the world!” Jo reassured the small sand turtle.
Arthur gave up “Okay, it’ll be Reginald. What does Reginald wants to do?”
“Well, he wants to eat of course! He is still little and mommy and daddy must bring him stuff to eat and grow strong and healthy like them!” For the remaining time they kept playing at nurturing the small creature or cuddling it careful not to dismantle its shape. Half an hour later, Jo ventured into the sea with her playmate.