Dee drove through the streets of G-City, capital city of the entire planet of Ginormon located in Galaxy G. She swerved through the street’s tight corners, her getaway car dented and billowing black smoke.

In her backseat was the final piece she needed to install for her Size Thingamabob.

Green and purple lights flashed in her rearview mirror.

Shit! Dee cursed. She slammed on the accelerator with her foot while sliding the joystick forward to its hilt, pushing the vehicle to its limits. The maghovers hummed so loudly, the frame of her transport rattled so hard she thought it would fall apart! It wouldn’t be functional much longer. Nor would she need it to  be. Not as soon as she installed the Size Thingamabob.

Then all of Planet Ginormon would see. Their civilization, resting on its laurels, thinking it had accomplished enough, denouncing Dee’s outside the box and larger than life thinking... once Dee put this final component into her size gun, she would show them. She would show all Ginormons how much further they had to go as a race.

And she would put her oppressors in their place.

They had balked at the idea of a size ray gun. It broke the laws of physics, they said. Even if the science worked, the ethical dilemma remained, they said. What good would it even do to be hundreds of times larger than they already were?

Dee mentioned the benefits to constructing high-rises, military might and effectiveness, things of that nature. But for her, becoming a giantess was the goal. The end all and be all of her research. But she never told anyone, not that anyone would have helped her anyway. She hid her motives. Pretending as if she’d been foiled, Dee dropped all mention of the subject and appeared to give up the chase.

So Dee worked in secrecy. For eighty years, she toiled in some of her own private laboratories, spreading out her research into different fronts so as to try and dodge the authorities who knew of her unique... proclivities.

She was brilliant. Brilliant, relentless, and driven. While other Ginormons were living their useless, hedonistic lifestyles, Dee worked tirelessly on not only her research, but on building connections with people. Various manufacturers whom she had to convince to produce technology to her specifications, government officials she bribed to look the other way, law enforcement whom she swayed to her cause by appealing to their more sadistic, violent sides, promising to make those who were loyal to her larger as well, or shrinking those who were not... Dee hated to rub elbows with these people, but it was a necessary piece of getting her size gun developed.

But not everything had gone according to plan. The Size Thingamabob was the final piece, and the most conspicuous piece of technology she needed fabricated. Someone, she didn’t know who, apparently had gotten cold feet and informed some authorities she hadn’t bought off. Now, Samantha, the head of all security on planet Ginormon, was hot on her trail.

And now she was flying her hover mobile through G-City’s streets, fleeing from the most self-aggrandizing government agent/politician she’d ever known. Apparently the highest branches of law enforcement had never stopped keeping an eye on her.

Fuck! Dee manipulated some levers and twisted the joystick hard. She slammed into another parked hover mobile, shattering her passenger side windows and crumpling the doors. The Size Thingamabob, a tiny, black box resting in a case in her backseat slammed around in the interior of her vehicle.

“No!” she screamed, taking her hands off of the joystick and reaching into the back to grab it lest it fly out of her hover mobile. If she lost it now, all of her plotting, her scheming... all of her sacrifices would be for naught!

She caught the Size Thingamabob, but at the cost of her hover mobile. It crashed into a row of parked vehicles as the interior safety mechanisms went off, saving Dee from a premature end. Stumbling out of her now defunct vehicle, she cradled the STMB in her wounded arms. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. The blood pumped in her ears. She wasn’t far from her key laboratory.

Dee made her way through the alleyways, hiding behind overflowing dumpsters in the worst part of G city. She’d only chosen this location because rent was cheaper and perhaps it would take the authorities longer to find her, but clearly that cat was out of the bag. Various hover mobiles with green and purple sirens blaring on their roofs whizzed by. Dee could almost swear, hiding from behind those disgusting trash receptacles, that she saw Samantha herself in the flesh.

Just a few more meters. Dee’s secret entrance wasn’t far.

A wall in the alleyway slid open with a low hum. A familiar cool, air conditioned breeze that smelled of chemicals greeted her. Sweating and dripping a bit of blood, Dee made her way down those steps, cursing herself for not having escalators installed. In her hands was the Size Thingamabob.

A low intensity blue light filled her lab. On her main research bench was her size gun, years in the making, missing only its core component. With hope in her heart, she trotted over to it, grimacing but ignoring the pain in her injured leg.

Fear gripped her heart as she considered a bunch of possible outcomes. Of course, no one had ever tested anything like this before. And all Dee had were computer simulations. Would it seriously cause her to grow, like she’d always dreamed of? What if it were miscalibrated and shrank her!? Or, what if it just flat out vaporized her, leaving nothing but a black smear and some foul smelling smoke.

Or maybe she would pull the trigger, it would click, and absolutely nothing would happen.

“Dee! We’ve got you now! Come out with your hands forward, palms open!” Samantha shouted from the other end of the laboratory. The main entrance. That hadn’t taken long.

No time to worry about it now. Dee slid the STMB into her gun. She snapped the cubby shut, hearing the satisfying click as her final piece completed the jigsaw puzzle she’d been building for years.

“Dee! We’ll shoot!”

Samantha and her thugs were on Dee now, phaser guns pointed. No choice now. If Dee was going out, she was going to go out like a boss.

“You’re too late, Samantha! Hahaha!” Dee lifted her gun.

“Drop it!”

Dee ignored the order. Instead, she turned the gun on herself. Aiming the shooty end right into her chest, she pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happened.

Samatnah and her team stunned Dee with their phasers. Dee shuddered and collapsed to the floor, unable to move. The last thing she saw was the feet of her captors... the irony was too much to take. It should’ve been the other way around. All those years of her life...

Her world went black.

Dee, dressed in green prison fatigues and hands cuffed, followed Samantha and the Ginormon government goons toward their teleportation facilities.

“Dee, you have been found guilty for your crimes against the fabric of Ginormon society. For this, your sentence will be life imprisonment in the prison of the Milk Galaxy on planet Gas Giant. You will serve out your sentence doing hard labor in a toxic environment for the rest of the duration of your natural life,” Samantha declared coldly and professionally. But Dee could practically hear  the giddy undertones in Samanatha’s voice.

All around her, large wide-screen monitors of various rulers of Ginormon planet looked down upon her. The sickly green glow and smoke of the courtroom was all designed to play it up to the worldwide audience, who no doubt was watching her receiving her sentence at this very moment. She knew; she’d watched more than her fair share. Yet another example of their planet needing an upheaval. A giant Dee wrecking the decadent and corrupt powers that be would have been sweet, sweet revenge. Hell, after stomping into their media outlets with her bare foot, crushing the buildings and squishing those other blithe Ginormon citizens to death, she would have taken a broadcasting unit and done it herself.

What fun it would have been, to hear the screams of her feckless former colleagues and fellow citizens, screaming in fear as the shadow of her sole eclipsed out the sun before she squashed them into a gory paste. Just by walking!

Or bending down to pick up an entire skyscraper like a plaything, swinging the heavy structure around as though it weighed as little as a netball racket... while people were still inside of it.

Dee barely even heard the end of the faux trial sentencing. She was being led away, dressed in her red and blue outfit for prisoners that were to be sentenced to the maximum security extra-galactic prisons. Her hands were bound in heavy, unbreakable, magnetized cuffs. Nobody ever survived the gas giant in Milk Galaxy for long.

The two guards holding Dee by her upper arms and pushing her along were suddenly prodding her in the side. Their poking was becoming more urgent and forceful.

“Ow! Fuck!” she hissed at them. How much worse could it get anyway? She was doomed to die in obscurity.

“Ms. Dee! Ms. Dee! It’s us!” one of the guards whispered through his visor.

“Is your project done?” the other asked. “I heard Samantha and the others talking about how close you were!”

These guards... she couldn’t see their faces, but these must have been some of the ones she’d bought off! And she promised to grow them along with herself, promising them sovereignty over Ginormon and freedom from their mundane lives. And well, if they weren’t and they were just toying with her, how much worse could it get anyway?

“Yes!” she whispered back. “I collected the final piece to my size gun! But Samantha broke it as I was just about to use it! Get me out of here, and we can overthrow the current rulers while we literally crush them beneath our heels!”

“We understand, Ms. Dee! We believe you all the way! Ginormon will be ours!”

Those fools. Brainless, trusting fools. She wished she had more of them at her beck and call.

When they reached the long distance teleportation chamber, her two guards placed her on the glowing teleportation pad. She looked at them menacingly. Were they going to rescue her or not? It was now or never.

She could smell the male sweat reeking off of them. They were nervous. Their hands trembled.

“You two! What are you doing?!” Samantha’s voice boomed over the speakers while she remained in a secure chamber above, observing the whole process. “Get on with it and throw the switch!”

“Help me! Now!” Dee hissed.

“Y-yes!” One of the guards obeyed faster than the other.

He withdrew his gun clumsily and turned to open fire at the lower level of other guards. He wasn’t quick or effective, but the sheer surprise factor allowed him to shoot a few men dead before they retaliated.

As they gunned him down, her other paid off guard drew his gun and ran for the control panel for the teleportation device.

“Stop them! Kill him!” Samantha screamed.

Even the control panel’s heavy shielding didn’t protect it from phaser fire. As the advanced circuitry began to fry, her second useless guard’s body slammed into the wall and slumped over dead. His corpse triggered the ignition sequence for her teleportation.

“Well fuck,” Dee said simply.

This time, the last thing she saw was a dozen phaser rifle barrels pointed at her before a bright beam of light teleported away to who knew where.