Chapter 10

The building where she had done her impromptu press conference was now level with its neighbors, after Lucia’s fist had brought its top third down immediately after crushing the cameraman. She was vaguely aware that this meant that the tiny fucker had probably been joined by dozens of invisible victims, but she could not care less. Not anymore.

It was time to get back on the move. She just turned to see that her usual following of news helicopters was still there, even if she had just slayed one of their own. It had just felt like the right thing to do. Lucia had initially been curious about the young, cute woman. She had liked her boldness, until she had started to get fed up with it. Being insulted had made it for her, especially when she realized that the tiny hackette was trying to make herself a name at Lucia’s expense. And then, she realized that she did not have to put up with it. She did not have to take shit from anyone anymore.

She reflected for an instant whether killing the little reporter would have any negative side effects. She thought she may need to use the press again in the future, and having smeared one of their own would probably not encourage others to try their luck. And then, she just chuckled when she realized it made no difference. She was beyond the point where anyone would like her or do anything willingly for her. And yet, never before in her life she had been in a better position to get everything she wanted.

This would be no different with journalists. If she wanted to talk to them again or to have them broadcast her words, she did not need willingness. She just had to force them.

Lucia had adapted remarkably well to her new size, but one of the aspects she was struggling with was the abrupt change of mental frame it represented. More often than not, she defaulted to thinking in the same terms she had when she was a normal woman. So, despite the considerably violence she had engaged in, she still caught herself thinking about how her actions would be seen by others or how they would affect future relationships or needs.

Of course, it was pointless. Lucia had already learned that being the size of a skyscraper had changed the way she would be perceived forever. People would fear her, reject her and abhor her. Nothing she could do would change that. Her first hours as a giant had proven her as much. Trying to change that perception was plain stupid. Especially because she did not need to. She was not one of them anymore. Their opinion on her did not matter anymore. And being feared was not a bad thing. For Lucia now had the power to prevail only by herself. She did not need others. And minding them only slowed her down.

She realized she needed to apply this new vision more consistently. Her place was above, unconcerned by the thoughts of others, unconcerned by their morals. She made her own morals now.

Almost as a reinforcement of that idea, Lucia let her foot hover over the laggards of the first small mob she had crossed with after starting her random trek back towards Downtown. She smirked as she slowly set it down, not even making an effort before snuffing a score of lives and leaving her deep signature on the asphalt. Her left foot soon followed, wiping out another group of unlucky bastards just before she widened her stance and placed her hands on her hips, pushing her chest out in pride as she inspected the road ahead.

Her toes towered over some of the stragglers in the crowd as Lucia stopped and took yet another look to her new world. One thing that did not cease to surprise her was how the only reaction most people seemed to have to her presence was to run away from her down the road. As if they were going to outrun her! Of course, one of the obvious advantages of Lucia’s new size was her ability to move dozens of times faster than anyone else, up to the point where crossing across a city as vast as Kingston looked like a mere stroll to her. With that being the case, what was the point on trying to beat her by running? From her vantage point of view, Lucia would have found way more logical that people would try to move to the side streets or inside the buildings. Of course, she could always change her route or bring a building down, but this was not what she was typically doing.

It was not as if she minded, of course. By now, feeling people pop under her soles as she advanced had become as familiar as the sensation of walking on wet beach sand the soft asphalt offered as she set her feet on it.

Not moving her hands from her hips, Lucia looked a bit further into the crowd and curled her lips into a smile as she got yet another proof that her size was not her only enhancement. Her eyes zoomed in and gave her way more detail about the individual people at a relatively large distance than they should have had the right to. This new ability would certainly prove useful to find Carl, she thought. And then, her mind wandered to her ex. Her nipples swelled as she imagined his tiny figure in her palm, curled like a scared child as she observed her from above.

Lucia tried to imagine what she would do to him and caught herself day dreaming of dozens of ways to use her size that she had not even thought about before. None of them were gentle. One thing was clear in her mind: he would suffer. Just killing him would not do it. Her body count was probably well into the four figures and what most of the people on it had done was to be in her path. Carl deserved special attention. And he would get it.

Looking back at their relationship and his betrayal, Lucia could now see that he had abused her. He had cheated her, taken advantage of her weakness to deceive her first and mock her later. He had hurt her, and so, she would hurt him. And there was no fucking reason she should be proportional in her revenge.

She was about to resume her walk when a voice in the back of her head told her that in order to get retribution, she would first need to find her ex, though. Her plan so far had been quite simplistic: get to the fire station where he worked and rip the roof off with the hopes of finding him inside. The same voice told her that this plan was not very likely to succeed.

An hour ago, Lucia would have not given a damn about the thought. She would have just stomped her way to where she thought Carl would be and tried her luck. She was not the same woman, though. Now much more aware of her new self, Lucia had calmed down considerably and was interpreting the world through a much cooler mind. And even if what most people saw in her was a big-boobed secretary and associated that to lack of smarts, Lucia was far from dumb. And now, with her confidence at her peak, her cunning started working.

Looking back at the crowd directly ahead of her from a more general point of view, Lucia estimated that it had to be a few hundred people strong. Probably over a thousand. And it did not even look that packed. Her short trek across the city had already taught her that the street she was standing on was probably very representative of the average street in Kingston, right now. She did not need to be a genius to reach the conclusion: there would be hundreds of thousands of people around. Millions more inside the buildings. And she needed one of them. It would be harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

This would not be the case, of course, if she could narrow down the area where Carl would be. With her strength and her reach, if she managed to find him, there was no way on Earth he would be able to escape. This had been, of course, her intention when heading towards the fire station. But no longer in a frenzy, Lucia could not fool herself. The chances of finding him there were close to zero.

To start with, Carl was a fireman. He had been called because the city had an emergency, an emergency with a woman’s name. Considering how much she had fucked the city so far despite not having actively intended to, chances were that he had been sent somewhere with his mates, and there was no way to know where.

Of course, there was also the fact that she was hardly a surprise for the city anymore. The sun was right over her head, which told her that the morning was reaching its end and that she had already roamed the city in her new size for quite some time. There was no way Carl would not know about her by now. And if he had seen her actions and, especially, listened to her words, the last thing he would do would be to wait for her.

Lucia cursed, trying to find a way out, but realized that there was no point in wishful thinking. For all her power, discretion was not amongst her new abilities. The possibility of not being able to find Carl started to feel frighteningly real in her mind; her fists clenched until her knuckles went white and she narrowed her eyes as she tried to find alternatives.

The first one that came to mind was reminiscent of what she had already done to get the first person that had shot at her, in what felt like ages ago. The idea was to find some other journalist and make another statement. This time she would demand for Carl to be delivered to her. Otherwise she would set her mind into causing death and destruction in a way that would make her actions so far like child play.

It was not a bad idea, she reasoned. She was tempted to try it. She realized it was risky by the time she was already looking for someone to convey her message. If Carl was at large, which he probably was, he would flee the moment he heard her announce her intentions publicly.

Her fists clenched again, trying to find another option. She could not think of any. And then, as she scanned her surroundings without too much purpose, her eyes set on a dark ribbon that was very familiar and that stood just half a dozen blocks away and she figured it all out.

I-377 had been a permanent part of her life almost since the moment she had moved into Kingston. With up to five lanes on each direction, it crossed Kingston from North to South and linked Downtown with the different office parks in the outskirts, something that ensured traffic would be bad at almost any time of the day.

Her first apartment after Richard dumped her had been right over the highway, the intense noise of traffic at any time of day having become a permanent soundtrack to her life. She had progressed since then, moving a few blocks farther away from it, but there was no way for her to afford any apartment closer to Downtown, so she had ended up living in the outskirts, forced to endure the heavy traffic northward and southward every day. Quite ironically, all her employments had ended up being around the massive tarmac ribbon, from her first jobs as a store clerk in the Riverside Mall to her initial attempts as a secretary in short-lasting, very underpaid positions to her evolution to what felt like her career ceiling as an executive assistant at BioChem.

Her eyes stopped in a specific office park, the one where she had had her first real job once Richard abandoned her and she had to earn money to make a living for the first time in her life. It was a shitty job, like the majority she had had. She had worked as a receptionist in a small insurance company, welcoming customers, picking up the phone and making coffee. She had not been in a position to choose, back then, so it took her a couple of months to realize how low of a job she had landed. The office was open for long hours and she was expected to be in the front desk at all times, so she ended up spending most of the day in there in exchange for a miserable salary. She realized about how shitty the atmosphere was after having worked in a couple more places afterwards. The managers and sales reps were incredibly arrogant and even the three secretaries working for the directors looked at her over their shoulders. There was only one reason she was not completely ignored, and she found out about it when one of the sales managers suggested her that it would not be bad if she unfastened another button of her blouse while working.

No one in the office even whispered a kind word to her when she was fired six months later. They never gave her a reason but found out afterwards that her sharp answer to a customer that had tried to be too witty had not been approved. Lucia had started working as a clerk in a shopping mall shortly after and had quickly forgotten about Eternal Insurance, but every now and then, memories spiked in her mind as she drove past the office park and the offending building greeted her.

“It will do,” she muttered as her lips curled into a smirk. Eternal Insurance would have been low in her retribution list, but it was readily available, and, in any case, it was better than any other place without a personal history.

So, removing her hands from her hips, Lucia took two steps and made a right into the next intersection she found, finding a straight and clear path towards her objective, the highway. With no more obstacle than the occasional straggler and several abandoned cars that crushed nicely under her soles, she swaggered along the six city blocks until she reached the elevated platform of the highway.

The relative calm of the last few minutes ended as soon as she stood by the ankle-high freeway. There was no doubt that she had been seen, and it had probably been a while ago. Cars were still crashing into each other at hearing distance as the traffic gradually collapsed into an impassable pile of massed vehicles. Lucia just stood by the interstate, chuckling as she observed the ripple effect of her mere presence extending farther into both directions of the city’s main artery.

And then, without further word, she raised her right leg and stretched it as far as she could, planting beyond the outermost lane of the highway, effectively straddling the ten lanes of I-377 and trapping dozens of cars under her neatly trimmed Brazilian strip. Placing her hands on her hips and pushing her chest out, Lucia giggled as she thought of herself as the famous 50s poster.

Car doors started opening as dozens of trapped drivers joined their comrades on foot in a desperate attempt at putting some distance between them and the giant, running without too much purpose along the narrow aisles between packed vehicles. Lucia could not prevent enjoying the sight, with hundreds of people caught under her womanhood, which was getting moist as a result of it all.

“Are you in a hurry?” Lucia mocked from above, feeling more and more comfortable in her role as a rampaging titaness.

People kept running as she smiled at them from the heights, thoroughly enjoying her impact on the world. And then, a reflection a few hundred feet ahead caught her eye and her smirk widened when she identified the tanker truck. It would make things so much easier!

There was something she had to do before, though.

“You guys made quite a mess!” she mocked again. “It’s good that I don’t really need a highway to move around!”

Lucia removed her hands from her hips as soon as she finished the sentence. Dozens in the highway saw in terror as she raised her right foot as high as she could, but there was nothing they could do to stop her. The world shook as her foot stomped down. Lucia had not held anything back, and the results confirmed it. Her sole easily tore through people, cars, highway and a couple dozen feet of compacted ground, sending a wave of destruction down the road and fucking up I-377 for good.

There had not been too much thought involved in the act, only the impulse she had felt at doing it combined with a vague notion that messing up with people’s mobility worked in her favor. After all, traffic would not stop her, but there were many people she intended to visit in her new superlative condition and the less they could move the easier it would be.

The crowd was still recovering, with some of its members unsuccessfully trying to free themselves from the chunks of tarmac and concrete that were threatening to bury them, but Lucia was already on the move, now having crossed to the far side of the highway, walking along the lanes that headed deeper into downtown. She stopped just a few steps later.

Those still on foot reacted in fear as the giant’s body dropped on them, casting a threatening shadow as her colossal figure crouched over them. And then, her limitless arm reached out and fingers as long as the lampposts that lit the interstate closed around the shiny silver metal of the tanker truck she had been looking for and which was just a tad longer than her vast hand.

Lucia stood back up holding her prized catch in hand, mostly ignoring those that had been around it. She marveled at how even the largest vehicles people could make looked merely like toys to her now. Levelling the tanker in her hand, she peeked through the windows of its cabin but, much as expected, the driver had long fled the semi.

So, with no further excuse to mess with anyone, she just ripped the cabin off, let it drop hundreds of feet into the highway and closed her fingers gently around the phallic-like barrel. Its size and shape were just too suggestive not to have ideas, especially considering how much the entire giantess scenario was turning her on, but she managed to keep her urges at bay and turned, casually walking past terrified trapped people and reaching her target destination soon enough.

Lucia did not think that anyone at the office park would recognize her as the young receptionist that had worked at Eternal Insurance some years ago. Judging from the screams, everyone recognized her as the giant woman that was terrorizing the city. It suited her well. She liked much more who she was now than who she had been, back then.

She did not rush her approach as she stepped between the buildings that marked the entrance to the office park and to the plaza in its center. Beyond it, the pile up that started in the ramp to I-377 reached all the way back to the large parking lot, effectively rendering any attempt to flee the area useless. Or mostly useless, as her window-sized brown eyes soon found a few adventurous owners of SUVs trying to climb the earth ramp of the lot in the direction of the small wood’s road, with partial success. Lucia decided that she could not have that so, without further word, she crossed the plaza and the parking lot in a casual stroll, unconcerned about the rising toll of victims.

She did not stop until she reached the spot where a few more SUVs were now lining up to imitate their colleague’s.

“I don’t think I gave anyone permission to leave,” she said calmly as some of the drivers started having second thoughts and were trying to move backwards. She never gave them the chance to, a foot that was longer than a city-bus dropping on them like a meteorite and embedding three of the vehicles and half of another into a deep footprint that had the added effect of preventing anyone else from reaching the ramp.

Another well-placed step took care of the ones that were closer to freedom and expanded the impassable trench that would make it impossible for anyone else to try to outsmart her.

With the highway and the woods’ road now inaccessible, there was no way in or out of the office park, even if a quick look from her vantage point of view told her that the hundreds of people trapped on it had not accepted it yet.

Lucia turned to take a new look at her former workplace and smirked when she saw the teeming crowds running around without too much purpose. Shadows behind the windows of the half a dozen office buildings lining both sides of the relatively wide area told her that her audience was larger than what could be seen with the naked eye.

The giantess placed her left hand on her hip as she kept holding the barrel of the tanker truck in her right, admiring once more her effect on people. A few years ago, she could have been one of them, a puny receptionist running like a headless chicken, feeling powerless and overwhelmed by life. Now, she was the one doing the overwhelming.

“Remember me?” she asked with a luring tone. She gave them a few seconds to wonder what she was talking about before she said: “I’m Lucia Torres. I used to work here.”

The six office buildings were pretty unremarkable, all of them made of a brown concrete finish and dark windows. Whoever had designed the office park had tried to make up for the lack of attractiveness of the buildings themselves with a certain grace in their arrangement. Eternal Insurance, the place where she had worked, took the top half of the furthermost building on the park, an office high-rise that Lucia remembered was eighteen stories tall and that seemed to reach more or less to crotch level. The building just before it stood about two thirds of its height and the one before was about half as tall as the one in the middle. The pattern repeated on the opposite side, but in inverse order, giving some dynamism to the entire business area.

Lucia guessed that by now some of her former co-workers at Eternal would have recognized her, but the truth was that she did not have a clue on how many would still work in there. There was no point on giving them more time to react, in any case, so Lucia was soon walking back in the way that she had come, the thousands of tons of extremely fit woman making parked cars bounce and windows rattle.

She reached her target soon enough and much like she was used already, the face it offered to her was its unfamiliar roof rather than the more recognizable façade. It was nothing that she could not solve easily. Soon, she was sitting on her haunches and stooping lightly to peek through the windows of the top floors.

Her first sight of the dozens of occupants of the high-rise was blurred by the dark glass of the windows. She solved it easily. Setting the tanker on the ground, Lucia knelt to get a more stable position and then brought her face closer to the façade, her nose brushing its concrete. From up close, the mirror effect was lost and her huge brown eyes could see those inside. Seeing the shock the proximity of her eye caused them was delightful.

The giant scanned a few windows at random, trying to identify someone known at the same time she marveled at the puniness of the people, who looked like nothing more than little Lego figures inside a dollhouse.

The finesse and focus that her scanning technique required soon started to become tedious and Lucia opted for a much simpler method. Extending a finger like a battering ram, the titaness started poking holes at random in the building’s façade, her finger easily breaking through steel, concrete and glass as if the structure had been made of crackers. A few seconds later, the building front looked like a swiss cheese and the panic inside had increased a few notches. Chuckling, Lucia bent again to take another peek and smiled at the panicked people on the other side of the ineffective façade.

Mentally choosing the floor where she had worked, she completed her work by poking her right index finger in the leftmost window and dragging it all the way to the right, breaking both inner and outer walls and ripping the entire floor open to her inquisitive gaze.

The impact of her simple gestures in the insignificant people inside were exhilarating, even more when she thought that she started recognizing some of the panicky forms running without purpose.

Lucia reached back with a finger and swept it along the floor, brushing walls, people and office furniture in her readily cupped left palm, which was waiting right outside the building. Her nipples swelled so large that they threatened with exploding as her cunt started feeling soaked. She focused on ignoring the urge once more, even if she realized that she would need to do something about it sooner rather than later. Instead, she just picked through the contents of her hand, pushing furniture out of it and leaving the half a dozen inch-tall people on their own. She used her fingertip to roll all of them so that they would be looking up at her. Her heart filled with glee when she recognized one of her former bosses, Aaron if she remembered correctly.

This was not the first time she held someone she had known from the past since her transformation. As a matter of fact, the experience with Jennifer had been very rewarding. Having the incredibly scared Aaron in her palm reminded her just how wonderful the feeling was. Being much more self-aware, Lucia understood it better, this time.

“You recognize me, don’t you?” she asked in a soft tone as she addressed the eraser-sized man.

She got her answer through the fear in his eyes. The truth was that she had not had much interaction with Aaron during her short stay at Eternal. As far as she knew, he was not the worst in the management team. But in her mind, he was as haughty and contemptuous as the rest. Lucia did not give him the time to reply before she reached out for him and picked him up between two fingers, plucking him from the rest of her catch.

Moving him aside for an instant, the giantess inspected the remaining contents of her hand and verified that she actually did not know anyone in there. For all that she knew, the five relatively young people, two men and three women, were as unlucky as she had been in landing a shitty job. Her first impulse was to just close her hand and crush them into a gory paste. After all, this was quickly becoming her standard procedure when dealing with people. They never knew how close to death they had been when she changed her mind in the last second and smiled down at them.

“Tough day?” she asked, in the same mocking tone she had been using ever since accepting her new size.

And then, she just moved her hand down and dropped them on the ground, next to her towering calf. Looking down at their startled reactions as they recovered from the drop, Lucia smiled and said:

“Truth is, I don’t give a shit about you,” she said, feeling proud about her display of fair mindedness. “This will give you a great story to tell your friends in the pub!”

They did not waste time in standing up and starting a hurried but not too effective flee. Lucia simply ignored them and focused back on the man in her fingers. Even in his tiny form, she could clearly see that he had wet himself. Lucia twitched her nose as she said:

“Disgusting!”

She was tempted to just smear him between her fingers, but then changed her mind and decided there was no reason he would have a more merciful ending than the rest of occupants of the building.

“When was the last time you were afraid?” the giant then asked.

When the man failed to reply, she simply chuckled and said:

“I remember you used to ignore me, save for the usual glances at my cleavage. At least you did not make comments about it. I guess I was too lowly for you to talk to me. Isn’t it amazing how things can change?”

The man tried to babble, but his squeaky voice was not able to produce any distinguishable words.

“I think I did not realize it well enough, back in the day, but this was where things started going south for me. And you know what? After everything I’ve gone through, I don’t feel very forgiving!”

He did not have time to reply before Lucia reached into the building and dropped him inside. He dropped into his ass but managed to stand up fast enough. Her eyes locked with his as he turned, but she did not make any attempt at picking him up again.

“It’s time to go down with the ship, Aaron!”

Lucia grabbed the tanker and stood up, using her fingernails to easily rip the metallic back open without even chipping them. The hundreds of people inside the building started screaming in a higher pitch when they smelled the easy-to-recognize fuel flowing through the cracks and openings on their high-rise as Lucia poured the contents of the tanker into it.

As soon as it was out of gas, she crushed the tanker in her hand like an empty soda can and discarded it over her shoulder. The screams inside told her that the people had guessed her intentions. She did not mind, since it was not as if they could do anything to stop her.

Bending once more, Lucia reached for a car in the parking lot. She just tossed it at the base of the building, causing the expected spark and lighting the entire structure on-fire in a matter of seconds. The agony coming from within the building came out in the form of shrieks soon enough. All they managed to produce in Lucia was an evil smirk.