You open your eyes, still slumped on a cold metal bench in another claustrophobic alcove of this winding underground prison. And then you just try to find the centered calm you know you’re going to need if you’re ever going to escape from here in one piece. Most importantly, you have to see that your cousin Sophie isn’t harmed in any way. You already feel awful enough for a lifetime that she was dragged into this madness at all. Especially when you owe so much of your miraculous progress to her over this difficult last year and a half of your re-humanized recovery. First Sophie saved you from you-know-who back in that fateful college dorm room, shrinking your sister by surprise and offering her a taste of her own long-deserved medicine, before at last bringing your secret bittersweet suffering into the light. Then she saved you again by serving as your only true friend ever since you returned home, offering you constant comfort and gradually giving you the courage required to stand up to those inescapable PTSD apparitions of your longtime golden-haired giant captor.

Now, it’s more than past time for you to return the favor. Sophie is going to get out of here, you silently promise yourself. She is going to be safe, if it’s the last thing you ever do. That’s all you can make yourself care about at this point.

True enough, you’re still locked up together in some private subterranean lab located in the middle of nowhere, U.S.A. And you’re still in the custody of a tactical gear-clad redhead named Claire Brookes and her cronies, apparently set to stay here for the long haul as her permanent guinea pig while the biological code to human size-altering is further cracked. But, as of half an hour ago, you are also no longer a helpless shrunken subhuman victim, after an otherworldly zap from that massive cobalt-glowing machine restored you to your natural six-foot-tall stature. And then that long-awaited reunion with your younger sister inside a glass cage concluded with you rejecting her delirious foot-flavored plea to become “hers” again. You actually broke free of her, after all this time. And now with both your body and mind seemingly healed, even still boxed inside Claire’s grotty scientific clubhouse, you feel surer than ever that you can somehow have a happy ending.

After all, with some help from Sophie, you once escaped the maniacal psychosexual clutches of your titanic “little” sister: an outcome that at one time in your previously-broken life felt about as impossible as punching God in the face. If you can do that, you can do anything. Right?

Still seated beside Sophie on the bench, while Claire’s stout underling (Jones, you’re pretty sure she called him) taps away on a computer from an angle that he can still cautiously observe the both of you, you quietly study your surroundings, just hoping to take stock of anything useful. Though there isn’t much in this particular cell that looks like it could help you now: a stack of old laptops, a table covered in algebraic scribbles, a refrigerator marked for sample storage, and vacant olive-hued crates probably meant to transport heavy equipment. Only the cabinet by the door seems hypothetically promising. Maybe if your current babysitter ever lets his guard down, you might be able to find a tool in there to free yourselves or even a spare key, so long as you’re not tied down. You’re not about to do anything brash if it might endanger your cousin’s life, but you also refuse to just sit here doing nothing.

Poor Sophie’s still shivering, understandably afraid of doing or saying anything under threat of reprisal from your jailers. Considering the circumstances, she’s being incredibly brave. The girl really does look so much like a two-years-younger incarnation of your own sister that it still never fails to astound you on some level. Though in this case, Sophie sets herself apart, since you’re not used to seeing a look of such overwhelming dread on your actual sibling’s face. The only time you can recall seeing that same degree of crestfallen despair, in fact, was back when you were originally freed from your sister’s slavery, and then again less than an hour ago, when you told your former owner in no uncertain terms that she would never repossess you.

Still riddled with guilt, remembering that Sophie is only in this current mess because of all she’s done to help you, you reach for her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. She’s done the same thing for you so many times before, whenever you were still shrunken and tremoring through another traumatic episode in the palm of this same hand, so it seems only right that you offer her whatever feeble support you can. Gratefully, this gesture seems to help her a little, as you notice Sophie’s trembling settle back down while she squeezes your hand back in return. She dares to peek over at you then, sharing a look of wordless understanding: you are both going to get out of this place, together. You just have to wait for the right moment.
            Suddenly a bone-vibrating quake rattles from wall to wall, and something tells you it wasn’t just in this room. Then another one follows quickly after. You’ve never lived near to an active fault line, but your gut tells you this isn’t normal seismic activity. It’s too focused. Too close. Like a bolt of lightning that took shape from under the Earth and then erupted straight to the surface. Smaller but no less troubling impacts palpably emanate shortly thereafter, thwooming from somewhere in the middle distance, through layers of concrete and steel. Pounding, rumbling, and echoing outward in chaotic non-cadence. And just in case you’d started to wonder whether this recurring pulse was some bizarre regularly-scheduled phenomenon down here in Claire’s militarized lair, Jones appears to take pause as well, frowning up at the ceiling and then over at the door. Yes, something’s definitely wrong.

Could it be some piece of facility-vital equipment disastrously malfunctioning? Maybe even the same immense apparatus that recently undid your over six-year-long shrinkage? Whatever it is, it occurs to you that such an emergency might require everyone to evacuate back to the surface, where you could get a better look at where you’re actually being held, or even take a chance at escaping with Sophie, once you’re no longer stuck behind so many locked doors. It seems like you’re too important to Claire’s heartless aims for her to leave you and your cousin down here to die. Probably.

Then again, that’s assuming you even have the chance to leave. If something’s really wrong out there, or something important-enough happened to explode into a whole chain reaction of lethal failures, maybe the exits are already cut off and you’re all about to go up in flames together. And while you would definitely hold a personal grudge against both yourself and the universe itself for damning Sophie to such a fate, a part of you also has to imagine that the world at large would be better off if all Claire’s size-stealing research simply vanished into a fiery grave. You don’t quite know what the woman plans to do with this newly-unlocked power, now that you and your sister were involuntarily used to reveal a whole new undiscovered branch of physical science, but you’re willing to bet it’s not good news for anybody else out there. Jones, with his jittery gaze darting between you and the door, whips out a radio just as another ground-disturbing vibration rolls through the space.

“Hey. Mitchell? Um, Goodwin? Somebody?” he mutters into the receiver. “We’re over in the draw station. The two new ones are still with me. We can hear… huh? Say that again?”

He paces across the room, keeping the radio clutched to his ear so only he can perceive a crackly voice responding on the other end. You and Sophie exchange another silent look, with your concern only matched by bewilderment. Again you grasp your cousin’s hand in yours, though you doubt it’s of much comfort to her right now. Even while you’re unable to decipher the fuzzy low-volume speech coming out of that device, you can certainly tell its message is breathless and frantic.

“Speak up! Comms are going goddamned haywire for some reason. I can barely keep a signal,” Jones says into the radio, fiddling for a better sound. “What the hell’s happening out there? Did that same generator blow all the fuses again? Because it definitely wasn’t this LOUD last time! Seriously, somebody better tell me if we need to head for the vault right now, because- huh? I can’t… uh, repeat that last part for me? But how is that even- wait, she did what? Hello? HEY!”

With an edgy grunt, Jones stuffs the radio back into his belt, apparently unable to keep the damaged connection live any longer. You can tell he didn’t get much out of that transmission other than garbled static and some piece of information he didn’t seem to believe was possible anyway. Yet somehow, even though you didn’t hear a single word that actually came out of the radio, a glimmer of spontaneous intuition begins at your core and then abruptly bursts into certainty. You can’t explain it, nor do you know precisely what could’ve led to this butterfly-effected consequence. But just by the incredulity of Jones’ voice, especially when he invoked the word “she,” you know what – or who – must have been responsible for the uproar. Still holding Sophie’s hand, you feel her palm begin to shake against yours, obviously arriving at the same precognitive conclusion as you.

You don’t even have to say her name.

###

            Carly Arton, having ascended up to one hundred and fifty feet tall, loomed at her full monumental stature for the first time above the dust-swirling crater in the cracked desert terrain where she’d just broken through the laboratory ceiling and crawled back out into the sunlight. As if finally reborn into a form she was always meant to occupy. Her even-longer shadow swallowed the open-air remains of Claire’s primary underground testing chamber, which now lay in total rubble-piled ruin, along with the prototype Matter Reduction Device that had been used to resize both herself and her brother Jack a short while ago. Not wanting there to be any chance of undoing the humongous upgrade in scope she’d just given herself, at least not anytime in the near future, Carly made a point of smashing the invention to unrecoverable smithereens beneath her bare feet before she emerged. Amazingly, the simple yet well-tailored blue top, summertime skirt, and silky-soft undergarments that her lovesick accomplice Michelle handmade for her were all still comfortably intact throughout that havoc, the clothes having enlarged in perfect proportion with her under the MRD’s rays.

For obvious reasons, there was nothing on the surface so much as hinting that there was a highly-secure laboratory buried stories deep under the dirt right here, except for an unassuming-looking warehouse just a couple hundred feet away. The industrial structure was probably used by Claire and her flunkies as cover to go in and out of their little mad science sanctum down below, without locals being any the wiser to what was really going on. Upon her breakout, Carly scanned in every direction. Less than a mile away was a humble hamlet of quaint houses and low-lying buildings, marked by a green sign that read “Avalon Valley.” Other than that, there were no signs of civilization anywhere on the mountainous horizon.

Not that she cared to find any. While Carly’s interest was piqued by this small desert valley village that apparently lived in blissful ignorance of Claire’s underground size-testing machinations, especially now that she was big enough to look down on it like a doll-scale model town, the twenty-year-old giantess’s greatest priority laid elsewhere entirely. Specifically, it was still captive somewhere down in the mazelike dugout she’d just evacuated. And literally nothing in existence could’ve convinced Carly to leave without first claiming this long-desired prize.

She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until she had Jack. Not until she’d fixed him, once and for all.

Naturally the girl’s radically-grander size was going to make it tricky to get back in there herself. Not without some serious effort and a lot of collateral. But it was far from impossible, either. Carly balled her fists, smiling at the tangible sensation of her massively upgraded strength rippling through every square inch of toned anatomy. She felt powerful in a way that bordered on indescribable. Being a lifelong athlete, she’d always been physically fit, and her years of dominion over her helpless shrunken brother had only amplified that mindset for her, but this was a whole new echelon beyond anything she could’ve previously imagined. Carly was definitely strong enough now to rip through the dirt with her bare hands and peel apart Claire’s secret stronghold underneath like it was all made of cardboard. She was sure of that much.

But she also wasn’t taking any chances here. Jack was still down in there somewhere, supposedly transformed into a wrongful “normal” human size – though she’d fortunately helped rebalance that ugly perversion by growing herself up to this gigantic stature – and as long as there was even an infinitesimal risk of harming him, there was no way Carly was going to start tearing through tunnels and bashing lab chambers apart beneath her heels.

Luckily, though, she knew she wouldn’t need to call on such full-blown barbarity, unless her miniscule foes left with her with literally no other choice. Intimidating a figure as Carly presented, now more than ever, her true talent had always been getting exactly her way in life via means other than outright brute force. Sure, a little show of physical superiority went a long way here and there. Especially during those earlier halcyon years, when her pet older brother would occasionally misbehave himself. And she had no doubt that Claire’s people, or whoever else might arrive to stop her, were going to need proof of who was in charge here now. Carly was more than prepared to show them all what her newly enormous form could do, and was even looking forward to exploring that eventuality. After over a year spent trapped at that disgustingly powerless toy-size, she was dying to exert her true potential again. To blow off some steam. But Carly also had a good feeling that this whole situation could and would proceed to her liking in relatively clean fashion. She just had to be persuasive. And she was nothing, if not persuasive.

Kneeling down again beside the swimming pool-sized cavity in the ground she’d just created, Carly took a deep breath, then listened intently. She could hear the ruckus of tiny squabbling voices on the other side of the vault door inside the test chamber which led deeper into Claire’s hideaway, now blocked off by debris. They were trying to get back through. Not that it would matter, even if they did. Then, looking back toward the seemingly abandoned warehouse barely a few giant steps away, Carly detected the same argumentative hubbub of little male voices squawking from inside. Smiling, she gracefully rose back up to full height again: momentarily dizzied by the ongoing adjustment of her raised eyeline residing at roughly fifteen stories up in the air.

Though any bodily adaption Carly still had to take in was easily smoothed over by the profound rush she felt at this size. It was absolutely magical. Almost unreal. But of course as much like a perfect dream as this felt – the kind of imaginary impossibility she used to comfort (and arouse) herself during her shrunken captivity, after Jack was stolen away from her – this wasn’t just a fantasy anymore. This was actually happening. And Carly really had become this new self. No, her real self.

What’s more, now seemed like the ideal time to show off what she was capable of: nothing too extreme, not the worst she could do, but just enough effort to send a message. With that merciful subtlety on her mind, Carly crouched down in front of the warehouse’s widest bay and flattened her prodigious hand against the metal door. Then balling her fingers into that retractable barrier like it was made of tin foil, she proceeded to rip away not just the gate, but a whole corner of the roof. Girders and crumpled architectural detritus rained into the building’s interior, where Carly now beheld a dozen diminutive men dressed in desert-tan combat gear, apparently still devising whatever their game plan was before the giantess nonchalantly ripped away a chunk of their shelter.

She couldn’t repress a smirk, deliciously dazzled when half of them violently flinched at her sudden one-handed redecorating job, while the other half dove backward and yelped like they’d been jumped in a haunted house. Then again, she could hardly blame them. How often in their wildest dreams – let alone in real life – had they ever beheld something in the same realm of astonishing as this gorgeously monstrous hundred-and-fifty-foot young woman currently looking down at them through the substantial hole she’d just ripped in the roof?

With the shredded bay door still hanging from Carly’s hand, she effortlessly scrunched the remnants down like a wad of wet paper, before catapulting the refuse far beyond the warehouse, and this time laughed merrily at the wild-eyed shock and awe she’d inspired in the faces of Claire’s runty goons. Despite the clandestine and highly illegal work they’d gotten themselves involved with here, plainly none of them was at all prepared or trained for this kind of skyscraping fallout. It was clear they were only out here now, rather than cowering down in the relatively safer refuge of those lab tunnels, on Claire’s furious orders. Having thrown the debris a quarter-mile away, Carly raised her empty hand, slow-wagging her fingers for an ominous salutation. And then suddenly, probably more out of blind panic than strategic wisdom, one of the men aimed his rifle up at the titanic girl’s billboard-huge countenance overhead and opened fire.

Carly felt the bullets graze her cheek and chin. And they obviously weren’t plastic BBs, either. Yet those head-on strikes didn’t even come close to breaking her skin, let alone inflicting any actual hurt. At worst, it was an irritating almost-ticklish sensation: like a mosquito drunkenly pinging off one’s face midflight. Strangely, even though Carly didn’t know for certain until that moment whether or not she was actually bulletproof at this size, she wasn’t at all troubled by the sight of those puny weapons in their hands when she ripped off a hunk of the roof. Their guns, and the men holding them, were just so adorably pathetic that it seemed laughable to imagine such things ever hurting her. So she purposefully hadn’t even tried to avoid being shot. Which meant all twelve of Claire’s all-too-paltry strike force were able to watch that deadly ammunition deflecting pointlessly off the giantess’s smiley-dimpled cheek like gentle raindrops. And now her confident hunch was happily confirmed, while their anxiety visibly tripled.

“Awww. This is just… wow. God, I missed seeing stuff this way. You know, from way up above. Except it’s way different this time. I’m… over EVERYTHING now. Not just over him. I… I like it. A lot,” Carly declared in a soft voice that still carried like mounting thunder, then added with a throaty giggle: “So, um, are you guys totally sure that she pays you good enough for this? For what’s about to happen, I mean. Cuz it’ll probably be, like, a ton easier for everybody if you just put down your dinky toys right now and then do exactly what I say, like good little boys. No, huh? You’re positive about this? Well, that’s okay. Honestly, it’s been so long since I got to feel really happy… since I got to play… that I was kinda hoping you guys wouldn’t just give up super easy. So, thanks for that!”