Chapter 2. New world

There was only a massive crater left in what used to be a pretty large campus. Kelly had seen to it. The FSD and the investigation going on there had represented too much of a threat to her power, so she had dealt with it. She knew that in the process she had ended with hundreds, if not thousands of lives, but she failed to feel bad about it. It had been necessary. And deep inside, she knew that if she wanted to take over the world, this would not be the last time she would need to do something like this. And she was taking over the world.

The first stop was obvious: Washington D.C. It was not that far away to the north. As a matter of fact, nothing was that far away from her now. Kelly wondered how long it would take her to get to the West Coast across the country if she headed that way. Instinctively, she felt it would be not much more than a somewhat long trek. It would for sure be much shorter if she felt like jogging. After all, she had always kept in good shape. She realized that she had not run ever since she had grown through the hotel. It had not been necessary. Walking had been enough to get anywhere she had wanted and to mock any attempts at fleeing her from the little people. And that had been when she had been a mere 25-stories tall.

Now, she was so big that Lisa and Casey, who were still 25-stories tall, barely looked like Barbie dolls compared to her. She wondered how tall that made her. The best reference she had had so far had been the Millennium Tower, but even the tallest building in Hollner had not been able to reach higher than her chest.

Thinking about Casey and Lisa made Kelly wonder what her former friends would be doing, back in Hollner. Would they be fighting again? It was not so long since she had left them there and threatened them on what would happen if they did not behave, but she did not fool herself into thinking that they would stay quiet for too long.

She knew it all came up to whatever attitude Casey decided to adopt. Lisa was probably still trying to understand what had happened. She had no doubts that Casey would be very pissed off with the situation, but she also knew that she was quite more adaptable and had a quicker mind than Lisa.

Kelly wondered whether she should head back to Hollner and take care of the smaller girls, now that she had dealt with the immediate threat of the FSD. In the end, getting back to the city would only take her a few minutes. Her self-confidence, which had got even bigger than her body, decided against it.

She was already half the way to Washington D.C., which was her real destination, and she did not feel like delaying her seizure of power. She could always deal with Casey and Lisa later. They would be easy enough to find and easy enough to handle. There was nothing they could do to challenge her new position and even in the worst case, the consequences of leaving them alone would be limited.

Worst-case scenario was that they would start fighting again. She wondered if Casey would be interested in that, now that she had been forced to calm down and had had a few minutes to think. She knew for sure that she wanted to kill Lisa, but Kelly knew that she was also smart enough to have realized already that it was not going to happen. Kelly had seen it already. They were both too strong and too tough.

She could not rule the possibility that Casey was still too angry out, of course. Chances that she would resume the fight with Lisa were still high. If she did not do that, Kelly had no doubts that Casey would find a way to vent the frustration she was certainly feeling with the little people.

Both scenarios would end up with plenty of victims but, somehow, from the new perspective on the world that her increased size had given her, this certainty failed to disturb her as much as it would have just a few hours ago. Had she not just killed thousands of people to protect her status?

The cynic in her even reasoned that this would give her an excuse to punish Casey once she went back for her. It would have been necessary, in any case, to better establish everyone’s new roles. She was not interested in hurting her, but Casey was the ultimate bully, and the only way to make her obey was to bully her into it. And still, Kelly knew that she was too wild to keep her under control the entire time. She wondered what she would need to do to solve that challenge, but decided that she would think about it later.

“Maybe I will need to look the other way, from time to time” Kelly thought. Surprisingly, the biggest problem she found in that idea were not the consequences of what Casey could do if left on her own but the effect in her own image with the population. In the end, one of the most obvious advantages she could offer them as she took over was that she could keep Casey under control.

“I’ll think about it later” she finally decided. She was going to take over the world, first. And even before, she was going to have a closer look at this new world from her new perspective.

From her height she could easily see the Highway that led north and that would bring her to Washington D.C. She could have easily advanced cross-country, but the thousands of cars stuck into it were too beckoning, so she moved towards it. It was time to have a look at the people she intended to rule without crushing them. She covered the two miles in a couple dozen steps, one of them easily bringing her over a four hundred feet tall hill.

Stopping a couple of steps away from her destination she placed her hands on her hips and observed I-455 and the piled up traffic. She marveled once again at how much detail she could make, considering the distance and how small everything was next to her, now. Her massive hazel eyes scanned the stretch of highway in front of her and she took into the chaos that her mere presence was causing.

At her new scale, the people, their cars and their infrastructure were now so diminutive that it was hard for her to see them as people anymore. She wondered, not for the first time, if she had got too big.

Her current size had definitely been practical when dealing with the army. And it also had allowed her to take care of the FSD without problems. But ultimately her goal was to rule over the people and that meant that she had to be able to interact with them.

Her previous height had been much more convenient for that purpose, she thought. If presented with the choice, she would have stayed with it. But she had had no other option. Growing had been the only possibility. Casey and Lisa were to blame for that. They had not wanted to understand the situation. If they had only listened to her… She knew that the three of them working together would have been able to accomplish just anything. Why in the hell had they had to be so stupid?

She had been forced to get bigger to keep them under control. She had known she could grow even more for some time. In the end, it was just a matter of almost dying. It was so simple and yet, she knew that neither Casey nor Lisa, who had not been conscious when they had grown, would never be able to think on that.

She had not realized right away. But something in her body’s reaction when the military had hit her for the fist time with a missile had made her understand that she could get bigger. She had just hoped that it would not have to come to that. Casey and Lisa had not given her any other option, though.

The electrical substation had been an obvious enough choice. She had to bring her body to the limit and another thing she had learned from her confrontation with the army was that there were not that many things that could harm her anymore. She decided to give electricity a chance and she had been right. The pain had been intense during the first few seconds, but soon enough it had been replaced by the familiar and pleasurable feeling of her body expanding. She felt exhilarated at having been right. It had been even better to finally get the proof that she was truly unstoppable. The gain had clearly outweighed the pain.

She had expected to get about twice as big as she had been, unconsciously assuming that the growth ratio would be similar to the difference between her size back in Henford and her bigger size in Hollner. She easily reached the height she was expecting. And then she kept on growing.

Kelly had not been prepared for what happened. The growth process had been faster and way more intense than she had expected. And by the time if was over, she was enormous. Some of the closest buildings, which had been about chest-height before could not even reach mid-shin after the growth was over. It was much more than she had expected. Too much.

She felt disoriented for a short while. Then, the commotion from Downtown took her out of he trance. From her new amazing height Kelly spotted Casey and Lisa easily enough. A cloud of dust was forming where their bodies had broken through yet another building. The area around them looked like a war zone.

Kelly reminded herself that she had decided to get bigger for a reason. Setting aside the concerns for how much bigger than expected she had got, she decided that her new size would at least prove useful in dealing with the now much smaller giant women.

She easily subdued her former friends and then she used her vastly increased power to deal in a much easier way with the army’s new attempts to stop her. For a while, her new size looked almost as a blessing. It made everything look much easier. Now, with the most immediate issues already taken care of, it was time for Kelly to let the new situation sink in.

“Being this big will definitely help to make everyone realize about my power” Kelly thought. “But it will make dealing with people much harder too”

She remained motionless for a few more seconds. Then, she felt some resolve and thought:

“Well, you’ll never know until you try”

Taking a small step to the front, she set her foot softly on the ground, trying to reduce her impact in her surroundings. Even like this, the consequences of her simple gesture were noticeable. Her foot sank deep into the ground. She could see some of the tiny cars bounce slightly as she did so. As soon as she rested her full weight, cracks formed around her foot and advanced towards the highway. She felt some relief when she saw that they stopped about a foot (from her point of view) away from reaching it.

“Fuck” she thought, realizing that she had to get closer and that there was not too much she would be able to do to be gentler than she had been already.

Soon, her left foot was parallel with her right, which made more cars bounce and more cracks form. She started to crouch.

Even being as gentle as she could, her knees landed like meteorites. And, being much closer to the highway than her feet had been, the cracks that formed around them got as far as the road. Kelly could do nothing to prevent a few cars from falling into one of them. From a much closer distance, she saw that the level of chaos in that particular spot was even higher than on the rest of the highway.

Kelly’s mind blocked any feeling of guilt.

“I did not do it on purpose. But I’m not going to stop moving or doing anything I need to do just because the world around me is too fragile. I am taking over the world, am I not?”

Kneeling, the 8-lane highway, now not even a foot wide from her perspective, was within her vast reach. She rested her hands on her knees and took a deep breath as she thought on what to do.

“I need to interact with them” she thought. “So, let’s try it”

Right in front of her a minivan was unsuccessfully trying to trample her way through the packed abandoned cars. Kelly thought it looked interesting enough.

She reached out, moving her hand slowly. In the shadow cast by it, hundreds of people tried to get away from its path. Kelly felt something close to despise at them, knowing that all it would take her to block their attempts of escape would be a slight movement of her wrist. She was not interested on doing that though. She had another objective.

The fingertips of her thumb and index finger closed on the target minivan. Kelly was extremely mindful of the pressure she applied, knowing that it would take her just a small push to crush the van into a metal pancake. Once she felt she had a good enough grip on it, she lifted it from the road and brought it right in front of her enormous hazel eyes. Each of them was larger than the van itself.

The fact that the van had been moving had told her that it was occupied. Now, she could see two very terrified people through the windshield. Bringing her other hand up, she set the minivan in the middle of her palm. The vehicle, barely the size of one of her fingernails, was dwarfed by its immensity. Positioning her palm so that she could look through the windshield again, she proceeded to do what she intended.

“Do everything I say and you’ll live” she said, keeping her voice soft. She knew that even like this she could probably be heard for miles.

“The whole purpose of this is to make sure that you can understand what I say. The rules are simple: if you do what I tell you to do, I’ll know that you can get what I’m saying and I’ll let you live. If you don’t, I’ll crush you”

Kelly gave the people inside the minivan a few seconds to understand what she was saying. Well, at least she was hoping that they could. Then, she went on:

“Get out of the van. You have ten seconds” she said

She realized that she was a little nervous. In the end, this was an important moment. Ever since she had grown to her current size she had addressed the ant-sized people under the assumption that they would understand what she was saying, but she had had no proof of that. And once she had taken care of the immediate issues and had calmed down, her mind had been wondering if her assumption had been right. After all, her voice could now be too thundering or sound just too weird for the little people to understand her.

A door opened. One of the occupants of the minivan got out and stepped into her palm, his hands up. She could not feel him. But she could see him. He was a man in his forties and he was terrified. Still, he had done as commanded and this made Kelly feel very relieved.

“So, they understand me” she thought. “This is going to make everything so much easier”

A few seconds after the first man had gone out, the second occupant of the van had still not made his mind up. Knowing that she could be understood, Kelly felt challenged by that. And she did not like to be challenged at all.

“You, inside the van” Kelly said. “I don’t know what the hell you are thinking about, but you have ten seconds to get out before I crush you.” Her voice kept soft, but her tone was commanding nonetheless.

Seeing that the man already out got even more scared than he had been, Kelly realized that he was probably related to the driver.

“If you don’t want to lose whoever is still inside, I’d recommend you to get him or her out”

The man tried to run around the vehicle and to the passenger’s door, but Kelly realized that the surface of her palm must be much more irregular than it seemed to her, since the man could barely take two strides before he lost his footing and dropped to his knees.

Kelly chuckled, suddenly amused at the difficulties the tiny man was having at something apparently so easy. She could see him looking up at her and she thought that even being so tiny as he was, she could see some anger in his expression.

Just then, the door of the minivan opened and a woman got out. She looked in Kelly’s direction. If she had thought the man was scared, the fear of the woman was several levels higher.

Kelly did not say anything. She just reached to her palm with two fingers and picked the minivan again. Then, holding it over her palm, she pushed her fingers together and flattened it beyond recognition.

“You were seconds away from ending like this” she said in a lecturing tone. The people’s reactions told her that they had understood her again.

Kelly felt very happy at being able to address the tiny people. This removed a lot of concerns from her mind. Feeling more relaxed, she focused on what to tell them.

“You are really tiny, you know?” Kelly said, speaking softly. “I’d say that you are about the size of an ant to me now. How does that make you feel?” she asked

Of course, she was not expecting any answer. She just went on:

“I wonder how many of you I could hold in my palm. What do you think? A few hundreds? The number is hard to grasp, I know. It’s even hard for me. I’ve only been this big for a while. I’m still getting used to it”

It was the most surrealistic and at the same time the scariest moment in Thomas life. It was still hard to believe that Martha and him were standing in a hand the size of a basketball court. But the soft skin under their feet and a looming face the size of a building were proof enough.

They had seen her coming, of course. How could have they missed her? She was so massive they had been able to see her as she approached the highway, even from beyond the hills. The highway had already been gridlocked by the time she had started heading towards them, of course. Thomas and Martha had been stopped for what seemed like forever. Around them, some people had abandoned their cars and were running in either direction. Some others had tried to leave the highway, but they had seen a few get injured when the height between it and the land below had proven to be too much.

Thomas’ thoughts were split between the incredulity at the woman’s size and the wonder at how attractive she was. Martha had been screaming the entire time. Thomas began getting concerned when she easily stepped over the hills and stopped not too far away from them. Each of her steps had caused an ever increasing shake, but the last one, the one that had cleared the hill, had created a quake so strong that everyone in sight lost their footing.

She stopped, and Thomas could not see much more than her calves and thighs; the woman was too close for him to get a view of any other part of her colossal body. Then, after a period of time that felt as it had lasted for ages, one of her feet rose again and, shortly after, set down, much closer to where he was.

It felt like an earthquake. Their minivan lost contact with the road and bounced. It violently hit the road a second later. Martha was screaming and Thomas was wondering what was happening when another earthquake made their van bounce even higher. There was a moment of pause and then two closer and stronger earthquakes. When Thomas felt a large shadow cast over them he knew they were in trouble.

Martha seemed to recover just then. She stepped on the gas and their minivan shot forward, soon crashing into the SUV in front of them. For some reason, Thomas knew that this had been a bad idea. A couple of minutes and a very rough ride later, he was standing on the palm of the woman’s hand and was wondering if any of this would have happened if his wife would have just remained still.

The woman was young and she was visibly happy, after an initial phase where she had shown some puzzle. Her lips, which were thicker than he was tall, were curled in a permanent smile now. She opened her mouth and he knew she would be talking again. Every time she did, it felt as if the sky had opened and someone was addressing him from Heaven. Despite its power, her voice still sounded feminine, though.

“I’m really a Goddess now” the young woman said

Thomas had no option but to agree. Standing in the middle of her hand, he tried to understand how powerful that woman really was. The task was too much for his mind.

“Now I really know what it means” Kelly said, the thought forming in her head. “I own you. I just own every single one of you. The bigger I get, the most obvious it is”

After a period of uncertainty, Kelly was beginning to feel the power rushing inside her again. She reminded Casey’s words when they had been standing in front of the Millennium Tower.

“Maybe she was right” Kelly thought. “Every size has its pros and cons, but it may be just a matter of adapting. And the bigger I get, the more uncontested my power will be”

The woman in her palm took her out of her thoughts. Based on her gestures, Kelly had assumed that she had been screaming all the time, but now she had also began moving. Kelly frowned slightly when she saw that the woman had started running in her palm and that she seemed to head for the edge. She tripped once, as her husband had done, probably due to the fact that the surface of her skin was uneven for someone so tiny. But she managed to stand up and keep on her way.

Kelly wondered what would the woman do, in case she reached her destination. Would she jump? She was not in the mood for checking it out, though. In a casual gesture, she just cupped her palm and observed as the woman was stopped and then started rolling towards its center.

“Where the hell did you think you were going?” she demanded

The woman tried to stand up, but with her hand still cupped, she was having a hard time to do it. Her husband had rolled just next to her.

A little pissed at the woman, Kelly decided to try something else with her. Turning her free hand upwards, she extended a finger and moved it towards the woman. Then, she used her polished fingernail as some sort of excavator and gently scooped the woman, resting her between her nail and her fingertip. She fit nicely in there.

Raising her until she was right in front of her curious eyes, she took a closer look. She had thought that the woman had been scared before. It was nothing compared with how utterly terrified she was now.

Kelly felt very proud of the technique she had just used. What happened as she held the woman in front of her right eye made her even happier. She could hear her screams. She remembered about the soldier she had briefly captured when she had defeated the army, back in Hollner. Bringing her fingertip closer to her ear, she delighted when the woman’s screams became clearer.

She moved her finger in front of her face once more. In a very soft but very determined voice, she said:

“If you want to live, stop screaming”

It took a while for the woman to comply, but she finally did.

“You and I are going to have a conversation” Kelly announced

She thought she could see a questioning look in the woman’s face.

“I will ask you questions and you will shout your answers to me. If I’m satisfied, I’ll let you and your husband go”

The woman did not move. Kelly added:

“Nod if you understood”

She smiled when she saw the woman’s frantic nods.

“Good” Kelly said as she moved her finger to her ear once more.

“Tell me your name” Kelly commanded

She gave the woman enough time. She finally got her answer in a mousy voice:

“Martha. My name is Martha”

Kelly felt a moment of intense joy. She could understand the tiny woman’s words!

“Can you understand everything I say?” Kelly asked, although she was already quite certain of the answer

“Yes” the ant-sized woman came back in her squeaky voice

The confirmation that she could be understood and at the same time understand what was being said felt almost as good as growing. It was a confirmation that her quest to take over the world would be much easier. Kelly had no doubts that everyone could realize about her absolute power now. Being able to talk to the people meant that she would not need to use it indiscriminately. She expected that most of the times, it would be enough just to bargain from a position of strength. She’d rather bully than destroy on her path to world domination.

So, feeling ecstatic, Kelly moved the finger back to the front and looked at the woman. Then, she said:

“Ok, Martha. Since you can understand me well enough, I have a mission for you. I’ll let you go. But you’ll have to do something for me. I want you and your husband to tell everyone about this. I want everyone to know that I can be merciful. But I also want everyone to know that I’m in charge now. And I want them to know that I won’t restrain on using my power to make sure that everyone understands that. Did you understand?”

Martha nodded frantically once more.

“Good, Martha” Kelly said. Then, she moved her finger carefully towards the road and gently maneuvered so that she would set the tiny woman on the ground as carefully as possible.

When she was done, she looked at her palm, extended the same finger that had held Martha and invited the tiny man to climb. She did not push him when he hesitated. When he finally climbed, she released him close enough to his wife.

“If I can communicate with them I can command them” Kelly thought. “That’s all that’s needed to rule. Well, that and an unlimited supply of raw power. The rest is a just a matter of getting creative”

After her initial doubts at her new size, Kelly felt much better now. She felt as she should be able to handle things, even if some of them would be quite more challenging than they had been. It was the price for having made her power grow exponentially.

“This size can be fun as well” she then thought. “You just need to start exploring your surroundings from a new point of view, that’s all”

The highway, with its thousands of trapped vehicles looked amusing enough to spend some more time getting used to her new perspective. Tired of being on her knees, she decided to sit. She moved carefully in order to sit parallel to the road. No matter how gentle she had tried to be, though, the moment her buttocks hit the ground the consequences were quite worse than she had anticipated.

With her long legs extending hundreds of feet parallel to the road, Kelly looked with incredulity at the dozens of cars that were now upside down just because she had rested her ass on the ground. Among them, hundreds of people were trying to get back on their feet and were running in what she assumed was panic.

“Well, it will take a while to get used to the impact of my new size in the world, it seems” she thought. Once more, she did not feel bad about what had happened. She was just surprised. She had not been careless when she had sat, so there was no way she could have avoided what had happened. And once more, she decided that she would not stop doing anything she wanted just because those that did not share her height could not handle it.

She got distracted observing the fleeing people for a few seconds. They were so small! They seemed to be running at a snail’s pace and from Kelly’s point of view. Their whole effort seemed to be utterly stupid, since they were basically running parallel to her legs and not getting away from her at all.

She wondered what to do. She felt playful and a little naughty.

“You on the highway” she addressed them. “I know you can understand me, so pay attention”

She saw some people stopping, but most still kept on running. She knew that they could hear her just the same, so she just went on.

“I will allow you to flee, but only if you follow my instructions” she said. Then, she let them know what she wanted: “In a while I will be heading north. No matter how careful I am, you guys don’t seem to fare so well when I’m around, so I don’t want you in my path when I get on my way. I want you to go south. If you are already going in that direction, great. If you are going north, though, stop right now, turn and start running in the opposite direction”

She waited for a few seconds. She was happy to see that quite a lot of people were doing as commanded. There were always a few that could not follow instructions, though. She was tempted to be rough with them, but in the last moment, she decided that digging an empty stretch of highway with her hand and making it impassable on the way north would be just as effective.

“That was a warning. Don’t test my patience” she warned them

Even if they had wanted to test it, they would not have been able to, of course. The fifty foot deep and two hundred foot long crater she had dug on the road was absolutely impassable for the tiny people.

Happy that she had got what she wanted, Kelly forgot about the mites and focused on their vehicles. A gray coach got her attention. Picking it up, she extended the middle finger of her left hand and placed it on it. The coach could not even match its length.

“One of this can fit about fifty people” Kelly thought, amazed. “I truly am colossal” her mind added.

Toying with the coach, which was empty, she placed it on her palm and looked for the largest vehicles she could find. A couple of minutes later, her palm was holding two more coaches, and four eighteen wheelers.

“I should get in the transportation business” she joked aloud.

Then, she just clapped her hands together, with the intention of flattening the vehicles on it. The effects were much worse, though. Unanticipated by Kelly, her clap produced a massive shockwave of devastating consequences for the ant-sized people close to her. Windows in all the cars two miles around shattered into pieces. Those cars that had been closer to her were even flattened by the wave front. People in the same area simply ceased to be. That included Thomas and Martha. Kelly was awestruck by what had happened. Even the road right under where her hands had met had sunk and cracked, pushed by an invisible but violent force.

“Of fuck!” she said aloud

Stooping down, she took a closer look at the road. It was very hard to believe that her simple gesture could have had so dire consequences. But the results of her action where there to be seen… She could not deny the crushed vehicles… or the corpses.

“There must be hundreds of victims… but I just clapped!” her mind protested

Once more, she felt astonished at what had happened but she did not feel guilty. She was beginning to realize that she could not sympathize with the tiny mites. She was just incapable of feeling sorry for them.

With no one alive or in good shape at arm’s reach, Kelly decided that this was as good a moment as any to stand up. She did not mind being careful when stepping, now. After all, all possible damage had been done already.

Back from her full height, Kelly looked north, the direction she would be heading to. Her previous warning and the consequent incentive had prevented any more people from moving in that direction, but it did not matter. The highway was gridlocked as far as her eye could see, and she could see very far.

She looked down to see the pretty noticeable depression on the road just next to her left foot. It was spherical… as if a giant ball had crashed with it.

“This size… I’m not just bigger, there is something else. I’m big beyond a point where the consequences of my actions are at a completely different level. I’m like a force of nature now” Kelly reflected

Then, as she took a step to the front, her foot landing right next to the highway, she saw more cars bounce.

“I won’t be able to stay careful enough. It’s just impossible. Things will get destroyed. People will die. I should better accept it”

“I’m sorry” she said aloud, although she didn’t really sound like she was.

“And they should better accept it as well. It’s not as if they can do anything about it, anyway” she thought

Then, she started walking north, increasing her distance with the highway just a little, to give the tiny people a chance.