Chapter 9

Kingston was a modern city. Lucia never realized how thankful she had to be for that, since she had been enjoying rules of urban design and construction that made her life as a giantess much easier. Streets and avenues were hardly ever narrower than four lanes, with six and eight lanes being actually the most common designs. Sidewalks were wide. City blocks were evenly distributed. Everything seemed well thought to allow a skyscraper-sized woman to move freely and without constraints.

And that’s what Lucia did. Having chosen an almost empty route, the gorgeous giant woman enjoyed several calm steps where her mind could wander into considerations of her transformation other than just the lives she was smashing under her soles.

Of course, streets would never be completely empty. And, of course, not everyone on them would be able to stay away from Lucia’s unpredictable and deadly footfalls. But the random deaths under her feet as she kept going barely registered in the giant’s mind, which was focused on different stuff.

It was amazing to see how not even the tallest buildings could make it as high as her waist, many struggling to reach to her shapely knees. Despite the fact that she was taking it easy, Lucia was moving incredibly fast, looking down at the city to see the unfamiliar view of its roofs rather than the one she was used of its façades. Being the tallest thing around was curiously empowering, making Lucia feel a strange pride at her height.

Almost like a reflex, her right hand reached for a spot to the left of her belly button and found smooth skin where minutes ago there had been a nasty wound. The discovery matched the lack of pain or even annoyance in the area, but still surprised her, making her stop to check with her own eyes that her fingertips were not lying.

“Oh,” she muttered as she observed the barely noticeable remnants of the effects of the rocket that had hit her. It could not have been much longer than an hour ago, so the fact that the burn, which had been bad enough, was basically gone was completely unexpected. She was not going to complain about it, of course! Her mind struggled for a moment, trying to find an explanation, but soon decided that once she was standing taller than the buildings lining down the streets, getting too tied up about this did not make too much sense. Still, it was a very welcome finding, like her enhanced sight or hearing.

Lucia realized that she still had no clue about the reasons behind her growth. Once she had understood that she was not going back to normal, they were less relevant. And still, she felt curious about them. At some point she might have to put some thought into it. This was not the time for it, though. This was the time to keep enjoying what had happened to her, no matter what the cause had been.

She was upon the next crowd soon enough, so she put her thoughts aside to focus back on her immediate surroundings. Now feeling more relaxed and obviously content about her situation, Lucia felt like addressing the mob before having her way with it.

The fact that their type of shock revealed that they had been unaware of her presence in the city until moments ago made it even more compelling. For all she knew, they were looking at her like some sort of Godzilla catching upon them.

“How are you this morning, my cute tiny fellows?” she asked just after stopping a couple of steps before reaching the group. “I’m doing great myself. Of course, the size has to do with it. I’m Lucia, by the way!” she let out.

The only answer she got back were screams, even if they were less annoying when they came all the way from her feet.

“Wanna live?” she asked. “Do as I say and… well, stay out of the spot where I’m going to step and you’ll mostly be fine!”

Almost as if to prove her point, Lucia took a first step towards the crowd. Her left foot landed on them soon after, not giving anyone in the area a chance before increasing her body count by over two dozen. Eventually, someone would recount the victims of her trek; Lucia had stopped the tally long ago.

Not having much alternative, the giantess kept wading into the mob, quickly turning her visit into a massacre, even if she had not been originally interested in that. She would have continued going on if the gleam had not caught her attention.

She found the source of the flash first and the easily followed his pathetic attempt at escaping to the bright green van with a dish on the roof.

“Interesting,” Lucia muttered.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*

“She’s coming this way!” Doug as soon as he got back into the news van. He was puzzled when Amanda looked at him with excitement.

Of course, she was excited! The giant woman was the biggest news ever, and it has happening in her city! Three years after finishing college, Amanda was starting to become frustrated of not having made it further than one of the local news stations in Kingston. When she had completed her degree in Journalism she had certainly aspired to more than covering local news that could get as exciting as the new orca in Sea World or the protests of the neighbors of the Marina district because of the noise they had to suffer every weekend in Kingston’s most popular partying area.

Nothing ever happened in Kingston. Despite being one of the largest cities in the country, it was also one of the most boring ones. The crime rate was low, the city hardly ever hosted any national or international events, no over hyped company had its headquarters around and local politics were nothing but predictable. Life just seemed to find a way to go on, as good for its citizens as uninteresting for the rest of the world.

And now, suddenly, the most amazing event ever was happening in her neighborhood, and the eyes of the world were set on Kingston. Amanda’s excitement had been growing at the same pace as the fear in the rest of the population. Where they saw a threat, she saw an opportunity, a shot to finally do some real reporting and get out of the nothingness her life had become. And then, traffic had stood between her and fate.

There was a reason most of the imagery from the giant after her confrontation with the police came from the helicopters that had been following her. Amanda had cursed when some of the guys she knew from other stations had got to the giantess first, right after she had crushed half a city block under her ass. She knew most of them from covering local events and had even had beers with a few. As amazing as their coverage had felt, back then, it had nothing to do with the new attitude of the titanic woman, who had visibly become more violent and destructive after the unsuccessful attempt at bringing her down.

The latest images from her at street level had been those of her annihilation of the police force. No one had been able to keep up with her after that moment and as soon as she started getting deeper in the direction of Downtown, her presence had had a ripple effect in traffic that had effectively collapsed the city.

And so, Amanda had found herself trapped in the worst pile up in the history of Kingston, unable to get closer to the source of the news, leaving the entire stage to her colleagues in the air, whose job was usually to report on the same traffic that was keeping her away.

She had slammed her palms in the dashboard a few times, kicked a few others and cursed in frustration. Not even the fact that the gargantuan woman had downed five of the choppers that had originally followed her had seemed to change Amanda’s mind or mood. She had barely shrugged at the remark from Doug that one of the confirmed victims had been Bryce, a cameraman they both knew and had hung out a few times with. She was not relieved either by the fact that the helicopter operated by the station she worked for was still airborne and following the massive Latina, even if from a much more prudent distance. Amanda had been eagerly following the images in the van’s screen for a while, but the footage soon became repetitive and uninteresting. She understood that whoever managed to report about Lucia Torres from up close would make a breakthrough and feeling the chance slip through her fingers irked her like nothing else before.

And then, just when she had begun to accept that she would not be able to get to the giantess, the giantess had come to her.

Amanda’s enthusiasm was inversely proportional to that of the rest of people trapped with her in the intersection of Jackson with Fifty-third. It was obvious that everyone else had noticed the developments that Doug had just reported to her, since the panic raised at a remarkable speed, the screams soon filtering through the van’s frame and windows. Car doors started to fly open and those that had been patiently waiting inside their vehicles for the jam to clear soon joined their comrades on the street into a disorganized mob that resembled a stampede.

“We need to go!” Doug said.

“Go?” Amanda replied, taken out of her thoughts. She then looked at the startled expression of her cameraman and frowned. Doug was a nice guy, helpful and funny, just not a great journalist. In his late thirties, he was the kind of guy that was happy enough with his life and just wanted to get through the day to make enough money to go back to his wife and kid. The type of guy who was happy going to Sea World to film an Orca. Amanda’s impulse was to scorn him, but she quickly saw that it would not work. It was preferable to find some way to make him see the light.

“This is the chance of our lives!” she said to her startled companion.

“She is coming this way. If we do not get out of here soon, it will be too late!” he protested.

Amanda looked through the windshield and scanned her surroundings. She mapped it all out very quickly. After all, she had always had a very sharp mind.

“Listen, we drive over there and park the van,” she said, pointing to an alley that was clearly ending in a cul-de-sac. This was probably the only reason no one had tried to use it to flee the scene. “She will never notice us. We must look tiny to her. The spot is good enough to shoot her while she is approaching, get a good closeup of her feet and then continue filming while she is moving away. I’ll report it as you shoot.”

“Why would we want to do that?” Doug asked, obviously more scared than hungry for notoriety. Amanda was thinking how to find something that could appeal to him.

“Because we would be the first! There’s no footage of her at street level. Images from the choppers are getting old. We will make a breakthrough! And I bet there’s good money in it as well!”

“Money?” he asked, taking bait.

“Of course!” Amanda pushed. “Not from our boss, mind you. But everyone will want to talk to us after this, and I’m not just referring to our local colleague’s. I’m talking national networks!”

“I don’t like it,” Doug insisted.

“So, what’s your plan? Running down the street?” Amanda asked. She could see that she had hit the bull’s eye.

A minute later, Doug was driving slowly, using the van’s fender to push abandoned cars out of the way as she attempted to cross four lanes in the direction of a small alley.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Doug still did not know how he had ended up getting convinced by his overenthusiastic coworker. Amanda was not unlike many of the girls that had done the job before her: young, passionate and incredibly ambitious. None lasted more than a couple or three years, so Doug knew that he would soon be working with yet another young girl just out of college. It suited him well enough, even if it also reminded her of the fact that he was getting old.

Doug had no issue driving the girls around and filming them as they tried to report the most boring situations ever as if they were world-changing events. It was easy enough and it paid the bills. After more than fifteen years, the work had become quite routine, and still, he was smart enough to know that there was something different about Amanda. He had a certain weakness for her. Many of the other girls he had worked with had been good looking, but there was something about Amanda’s petite gorgeousness that, combined with her energy, made him too fond of her for his own good. He had known that this would cause him trouble one day. He had not expected that it would be like this.

There was nothing to do about the situation other than keeping his fingers crossed that Amanda’s remark about them being too inconsequential to be noticed would be accurate. Because it was clearly too late to change his mind.

The giant was upon them, and once having reached that point, there was nothing else to do than doing his job. He shot one last glance at the approaching behemoth, took a deep breath and then started looking at her through the lens of his camera.

God, she was huge! Even though she was still half a dozen blocks away, her proportions left no doubt, her colossal figure dwarfing everything around her, including some twenty-story tall buildings that Doug saw in amazement that could barely make it to her deep belly button. The ground had been rumbling for a while, but now it was noticeably shaking. Doug felt his hair standing on end when he realized that the rhythmic pace of the tremors perfectly matched with the movement of her legs and the setting of her feet on the ground.

By now, everyone had heard enough of Lucia Torres, the giantess of Kingston. The world knew about her origins in Southern California, about her high-school years, about her life at College. They had been informed about her amorous life, about her failures, about her lowly job. And they had learned to hate her. She had been called the Monster of Kingston by some. Others, probably farther away and feeling less threatened by her presence, had dubbed her LuZilla.

The debate about her intentions was lively, the arguments about her motives were incredibly heated. If there was one area of her that did not generate any dispute that were her looks. Doug could easily see why. None of the images he had seen on the screen, back in the van, made justice to what his eye could see through the objective. He could not help but agree with everyone else on the fact that Lucia Torres was a ravishing woman.

Quite obviously unconcerned about her full nudity, the giantess was advancing in a calm and sensuous strut that highlighted every asset of her magnificent hourglass figure. Her long silky legs, which now stood all the way up to the rooftops, were both smooth and fit, letting the world know that Lucia had enhanced a blessed genetic heritage with frequent visits to the gym. The last point was further proven by her flat stomach, which was almost model-caliber and that resembled a vast washboard that preceded an impossible bosom. Out of proportion with the rest of her anatomy, the giant’s breasts, which must now weigh several tons each, defied gravity and stood impossibly high and erect in her chest, nipples pointing to the horizon. Her face did not discord with the rest of her, her large dark eyes, high cheeks and full lips, neatly framed by long and wavy jet-black hair, conveying wildness and sensuality at the same time. Doug was almost waiting for her to walk by to check if her ass was as world-class as he expected.

Doug had seldom made an effort to fine tune his shots over these last years. The type of jobs he had done had not required it, making him lazy. It was different this time, and he caught himself adjusting both his position and the settings so that he would offer the audience as good a view as possible of the woman, both trying to convey her beauty and her towering stature. He chuckled when he realized that this was probably the first time in his career he had filmed a nude woman, and that whatever he was recording would probably be aired live by stations all around the world without further consideration on the woman’s nakedness, the ratings or the age of the audience.

“This is Amanda Westwood, reporting from Kingston’s East End,” his young colleague started right then. Having zoomed in a bit in the giant’s face, Doug felt a shiver running down the spine when he irrationally felt as if she would be able to hear them. Of course, she was not. They were way too far and way too small. This was proven by the fact that not a single muscle in the giant’s face even twitched, so gradually Doug’s hear rate went back to normal and he focused back on getting a good shot of the scene. “We are in the intersection of Jackson and Fifty-third and, as you can see, the giant Lucia Torres is heading our way. She seems to be heading Downtown and to have chosen Jackson as her route. I don’t know if you can feel it, but the ground is shaking around us as we are trying to keep our position. Such is the impact this woman is having in our city and the world.”

Amanda had always been creative enough with words. Doug was surprised that, at twenty-five, she could sound so calm and reassured in a situation such as this.

“This woman, who now seems content enough, is believed to be the cause for well over a thousand deaths, including those of the brave officers of the KPD that tried to stop there in Colson. She has not shied away from killing and causing massive destruction ever since, even if her intentions remain unclear.”

The giant had cut the distance with them to less than a block since the moment Doug had started filming her and Amanda had started reporting. Each of her steps was now felt like a mild earthquake, and he had to fight to stay on his feet and keep the camera steady enough.

“Miss Torres has just caught up with the crowd, less than a block away from our position. The panic around me is incredible, like nothing I had ever seen. Everyone is expectant to see what this giant woman will do. Wait… she seems to be stopping.”

“How are you this morning, my cute tiny fellows?” a voice thundered from up above. It was incredibly powerful, but Doug was surprised to feel that it kept its original sensuality as well. “I’m doing great myself. Of course, the size has to do with it. I’m Lucia, by the way!”

Doug understood that she was mocking them and felt a shiver run down his spine. He did not have a good feeling about this. The screams around him were so loud that it was getting hard to think. People were afraid, and they were rightfully so. The only reason Doug did not join them in their fear was that he was too focused on his work and on the incredible visuals of the scene.

“Wanna live?” the voice thundered again. “Do as I say and… well, stay out of the spot where I’m going to step, and you’ll mostly be fine!”

The woman’s foot raised almost right after. Doug followed it with his camera until it stopped, hovering mid-air. Doug’s blood froze when he realized that there was nothing but people right under her sole. The footfall rocked the world around him, making him almost drop his camera. He still managed to keep shooting, though, and so, even if unknown to him, he had got the first closeup of the giant stepping into people. It was horrendous. One moment the people were there, and the next they were not, replaced by a foot that was longer than an 18-wheeler. Doug had caught over two-dozen pairs of hands shooting up, as if trying to stop the deadly foot. They did not manage to slow it down even for a faction of a second. As a matter of fact, not even the road did, since the foot kept going, easily breaking through the asphalt and sinking deep into the ground, cracks forming in every direction around it.

“Oh my God!” Amanda yelled to the microphone. “She is stepping on people. She is doing it on purpose!”

The giant’s free foot then rose. Her movement was even more unceremonious this time, the overall process until it plowed into the road was faster and harsher. And then, there was another step. And another.

“She is killing dozens!” Amanda exclaimed. “She is killing dozens of people almost without a thought!”

The giant’s last step had finally taken her left foot dangerously close to them, barely ten yards from Doug’s position. Neither him nor Amanda had been able to keep their footing anymore, the woman-induced earthquake finally sending them on their butts. The feeling of being dwarfed by a foot, its anklebone looming high over them, was humbling and deeply disquieting at the same time.

By now, Doug was thinking more on his job, feeling the passion for it that he had lost so long ago returning to him, than on the clear danger he was exposed to. After all, Amanda’s assessment felt righter than ever now that the woman’s true proportions were so evident. Half-hidden in the alley, they had to be too small for the giant to notice. He stood up and aimed with his camera, intending to get a shot of her face, of her expression, all the way down from the street.

With the Sun almost perpendicular to them, it proved to be a very bad mistake. The might be inconsequential from the giant’s perspective, but very few things could catch a woman’s attention like a gleam.

Doug felt the weight of the world crushing him when the giant woman turned, and her enormous dark eyes locked on his. His legs were about to fail, but he managed to recover on time to turn and mentally measure the distance to the van.

“Oh God, she has seen us!” Amanda reported to the world just before turning and beating him in a mad rush to the news van.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Lucia easily recognized the news van, with its shiny colors and the dish on its roof. This was not the first time she met one of them in her new condition, but she had been a different woman the last time one of these had crossed her way. She had been ashamed of what she was back then, and the last thing she wanted was the world to know about her existence. How things had changed!

Spying the two tiny figures making a run towards the van and reaching the logical conclusion that they were reporters, Lucia realized that this was the first time her path crossed one of them on the ground since her fight with the cops. A quick look over her shoulder showed her that she kept her usual entourage of news choppers, now at a much more respectful distance, but the attention she had caught in the air had been unmatched at her feet so far.

She felt naturally curious about the journalists. She was not in a hurry to make her mind up, though. Looking at the scene from her vantage point of view, it was easy enough to see that the couple was cornered and that she could take her time to decide. This was, she was finding out, yet another advantage of her size. Her new vantage point of view gave her a great perspective of a wide area around her. Combined with her never ending reach, this conferred her a phenomenal ability to control her surroundings. Nothing could elude her scrutiny, nothing could evade her grasp.

This was not going to be different with the reporters, so the question was not how to get them but what to do once she did. Lucia’s first instinct was just to crush them as a punishment for having spied on her. Her lizard brain, which had become much more violent after the transformation, was telling her that it was the right thing to do. Thankfully for them, now that Lucia was calmer, her higher consciousness prevailed.

Lucia’s emotions had felt like a rollercoaster that morning, but after the initial depression and the subsequent frenzy, she had reached the right level of self-awareness to govern the vast possibilities her new stature allowed. She would not shy away from violence, but she now knew it was only one of the many means at her disposal.

She did not need to kill the journalists. The question, of course, was what to do with them. And then, it struck her. It was the first time the giant overcame the general hate she felt for crowds after she had heard them cheering the attacks on her and started looking at people with regards to the use they could have to her.

The job of journalists was to communicate to the world, and she had a message to convey. Lucia realized that she could have used the choppers anytime for what she had in mind, but somehow, having the news van readily at hand had made it easier to come to the idea. The world had been watching her for some time now, but it was time to be heard.

And so, without further thought, Lucia took a step towards the alley, unconsciously finishing three more unlucky pedestrians, and dropped to a knee, rocking her surroundings. She chuckled as the two tiny journalists got into the van. As if this was going to help them!

She reached for the Hot Wheels van, which looked about finger-length to her, and picked it up with a thumb and two fingers, taking care not to damage it too much since, after all, she needed it working for what she had in mind. Setting the little toy into her free palm, with room enough to spare in all sides, she raised it to face level. She was soon looking through the windshield and to its two tiny occupants.

They were obviously shocked, like most people she crossed her path with. With her enhanced sight, she could also identify the usual mix of fear and admiration in the man behind the wheel. There was something else about the young woman sitting by him.

“Curious!” Lucia thought as she observed the cute little thing. She had to be younger than her, barely an adult, and she was obviously good looking in a girl next door type of way. Along with her pale skin, light brown hair and blue eyes, she made a nice contrast with Lucia’s own centerfold looks.

“Do as I say, and you’ll make it out of this in one piece,” Lucia addressed them in a calm tone that was very threatening nonetheless. The change in the tiny people’s expressions told her that she had been understood.

“Honk once if you can get a live connection,” she then said.

Lucia’s lips curled into a smile when the single honk came barely a second later. Still looking through the windshield, she had seen the little woman moving her hand to the steering wheel to push the horn in front of the man’s lack of reaction.

“Good!” Lucia said, feeling increasingly happy about her idea and how it was panning out. “Let me find a convenient spot, then!”

Lucia stood up gracefully, taking care of keeping the news van level in her palm. She soon found out about one of the problems with her new size. She was so large that there was no obvious choice nearby for what she wanted. She finally identified a potentially suitable candidate building some six blocks away. She knew that once she really got into Downtown some of the steel and glass behemoths there would tower over her, but in the section of the city she was standing in, nothing really made it much higher than her world-class ass.

The building she had spied clearly stood out from its peers. From the distance, Lucia guessed that it was some ten or twelve stories taller than its tallest neighbors, which she thought would be enough.

Her attention was divided between her destination and the van she was holding in her hand, so she barely paid any heed to the lives she snuffed under her feet as she walked four blocks down Jackson before making a left in a narrower street that would take her closer to her destination. Her hips started brushing with the buildings on both sides of the road, sending large chunks of their façades raining down the street as she advanced; Lucia had to stop the natural swagger she had been putting in her walk ever since she had regained her confidence and started walking much more like a tightrope walker as she faced the first real difficulty to fit derived from being much larger than the city had been designed to withstand. She was not able to stay careful during the entire three blocks she had to move down this street, so quite unavoidably a couple more buildings ended up suffering the consequences of her stroll, but she reached a wider intersection soon enough, freeing her from the flimsy concrete prison she had felt constrained in.

Lucia rolled her eyes when she saw that the new avenue she had to take was even more crowded than Jackson. She quickly reasoned that the people in there had not been expecting her, which was the case. After all, it was very hard to predict where a woman of her dimensions and speed of movements could show up. Of course, she did not mind and just resumed her advance. She was beyond the point where the number of lives she took mattered.

She was in front of her target destination soon enough. Her heart filled with glee when she saw that her estimation had been correct and that the building’s height would serve her purposes. The high-rise, which offered a wide and flat roof, reached right under her massive breasts, a perfect height for what she had in mind.

Picking the van up with three fingers once more, she carefully set it on the roof and stooped to look back through the windshield. Her two tiny captives were startled, but fine.

“Get out. Bring your stuff. You are going to work,” she commanded naturally.

Lucia had to suppress a giggle when the door that opened first was the front passenger one. The cute little woman stepped out right after. It took the driver some more time to get out. When he did he was carrying some equipment, though.

In order to make sure that there was no confusion, Lucia pointed at the little woman with a finger that was considerably larger than the person it was trained on.

“What is your name, tiny?”

She was surprised to see that rather than feeling daunted, the woman looked up with a mix of thrill and dare. Lucia took the challenge and pushed her chest out, bringing her massive breasts over the roof and closer to her captives, dwarfing them with teats that weighted hundreds of tons each. This finally had the intimidatory effect she had been seeking in the woman. And yet, it was admirable how quickly she recovered.

“Amanda Westwood,” she finally said with a squeaky voice that she could understand perfectly well.

“Nice to meet you Amanda,” Lucia replied, almost in the tone one would use to address a baby. “I guess you already know I’m Lucia. Who would he be?” she asked the little reporter, guessing that she would be more cooperative than her friend.

“Doug,” the little woman replied promptly.

“Good! Pay attention, Amanda and Doug. I have a job for you,” Lucia said. She could see how the young reporter was immediately interested. She was genuinely curious about her, the first tiny person she had found that aside from the logical fear, looked up at her with something similar to intrigue. “I’ve decided it’s time to introduce myself to the world. You will help me do that. Do you understand?”

The little woman nodded frantically, while the man simply looked down at this equipment.

“Good. Your job is simple, really. Get a live connection. Take a good shot of me. I’ll do the talking. And, who knows, I may even make you famous,” she added with a wink.

“What will you say?” the diminutive reporter asked.

It made Lucia frown. She had never been a woman with patience for nosiness, and her tolerance had shrunk in the same proportion as her body had grown. So, she sounded less gentle when she snapped back:

“What I’ll say is my business. The only thing that should matter to you is to do what I commanded you. Can you do that?”

The reporter did not seem happy. Her eyes betrayed the fact that the thought of challenging her had crossed her mind, but she finally lowered her gaze and nodded. It suited Lucia well enough.

And then, it was only a matter of waiting while the little woman hurriedly talked to someone through her earpiece while the man set up his professional-looking camera in a tripod.

Lucia was about to lose her patience when the cute reporter announced:

“We are ready.”

“Good,” she replied. “Now, get out of my shot!”

The tiny woman reluctantly stepped away from the space between the camera and Lucia while her colleague operated the equipment. Lucia cleared her tongue and smirked before she started addressing her imaginary audience. The thought of the shock she was going to cause in the hundreds of millions of people that would see her from the comfort of their living rooms made her nipples swell.

“My name is Lucia Torres,” she said, starting with a fact she guessed most people would know by now. Anonymity was a chimera under her current circumstances. “I am 27 and, as you all know by now, I am a giant, taller than any of the buildings I have met so far.”

Lucia had not rehearsed her speech, but she knew what she wanted to say, and her confidence was at her peak.

“Yesterday I was one of you, a sorry secretary. Today, I’m better. Those of you watching me at home may think that I’m only bigger. To you, I’d suggest that you ask your fellows in Kingston’s streets. I can do stuff you cannot even dream about. And I make it feel easy. It may take some of you a bit to realize, but don’t worry, I plan on showing you.”

Lucia let the implicit threat linger for a moment before she went on, making sure that the camera was still trained on her. The look of amazement of the young reporter as she stood behind the cameraman almost made her giggle. She managed to focus and keep going, though.

“It took me a while too. I did not realize about how amazing what had happened to me was, at first. I was even begging that I could get back to normal. You should have taken your chance while I was being foolish. Cause I’m not foolish anymore!”

Once again, Lucia stopped just for long enough for people to understand what she meant.

“I tried to work with you, I tried to work what happened to me out. All I got were several attempts on my life while all of you cheered in hatred. I’m here to tell you that I got it. You want me dead. But you’ll need to do much better if you want to prevail. So far, you barely managed to scratch me. You did piss me off, though. And now, you are paying the consequences of that!”

Lucia had never known that she had a talent for suspense, but the way her casual speech was building up she was making her audience’s heart rate keep accelerating.

“The gloves are off, and let me tell you, I can hit really hard!” she said. “So, my message to you is this: the time for self-restraint is over! I was blessed with this size, and I will use it. I will try my power out. I will explore the world from my new vantage point of view. It would be a waste if I didn’t. Of course, many of you will die as I do so. And you know what? I don’t give a fuck. After all, you are helpless to stop me! Wanna try? I dare you to!”

She was happy with how it had come out. If anything, she wondered how many in her audience had wet their pants as she finished her address. Lucia was pleased that she had had the idea to use the press. She felt good about having got her rage at how she had been treated early on off her chest. And she was convinced that her words, angry for the most part, would help her in her new objective of transcending her own life, which was likely to be short.

She was about to turn to resume her trek towards Downtown when she was surprised by a squeaky voice that was starting to become familiar.

“So, Miss Torres, are the allegations about you causing hundreds of deaths already true?”

It took Lucia a second to understand that Amanda, the tiny journalist, was trying to interview her. She was debating between scolding her or ignoring her when a voice in the back of her head told Lucia that she had nothing to lose. So, she just chuckled and smirked at the tiny woman.

“Haven’t you been listening to anything I said?” she replied with a shrug, trying to sound cool.

“How could you?”

Lucia did not like her actions being questioned, so she frowned in response, causing an immediate reaction in the reporter and the cameraman. Still, once she had got into the little woman’s game, she decided to go on.

“How? Well, that was the easy part,” she snapped back.

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Doug felt his legs shiver as he kept shooting the giant Lucia Torres while she threatened the world. Besides her proportions, there was something about her that gave him the chills.  Once her size and obvious gorgeousness had sunk in, Doug felt the giant’s inner self showing up as he tried to follow her speech through his camera’s objective. And it scared the hell out of him.

Listening to her as she addressed the world through the lens of his camera, and feeling her presence way closer than any of the viewers at home could, Doug understood that Lucia Torres was not a mindless monster but a smart woman. But she was also a woman with a deep resentment towards humanity and a woman that had nothing to lose. Combined with her newfound power, this made her terrifying.

Like everyone else, Doug understood that the woman justified her change in attitude in the attacks on her and the reaction of the people to them. There had been plenty of discussion in the media about the appropriateness of the police’s attempt on the giantess, so he guessed that her words would now reignite the debate big time. But somehow, he sensed that this was not all there was behind her rampage. There was something else, a deeper rancor that had been roused by her growth and the attempt to kill her.

He could feel a deeply rooted frustration, a wounded ego finally making it to the surface, boosted by the wondrous power she had been given. And he understood that while the giantess seemed to keep her mental ability intact, reasoning with her was pointless.

Doug’s legs threatened to stop holding his weight by the time the giant woman finished her vindictive speech. And then, right when he was secretly wishing for her to turn and leave them alone as she had promised, Amanda asked her a question.

Doug’s heart stopped as he heard his partner’s query. His eyes had never left the objective, so he could see the surprise in the giantess’ expression, as well as the pondering on how to react to Amanda’s insolence. He felt some relief when the giant chuckled, even if only partial. Her expression softened and, to his surprise, she answered the question. Two answers later he was more convinced than ever about Miss Torres’ total lack of empathy.

Doug then risked a look over his shoulder to see Amanda taking a step to the front, obviously encouraged by the giant’s response. He made sure to focus back on his work, which was no other than to guarantee that the world got as good a shot of the recently labelled Monster of Kingston as possible. This meant opening the frame as much as he could, getting her bare and voluptuous chest as well as her towering face. Quite ironically, Doug had been waiting for some instruction from the central studios through his earpiece asking him to close the frame and hide the woman’s bare nipples. It never came, the exceptionality of the situation having superseded any considerations about morals.

He could feel Amanda’s growing excitement in her voice and her body language. Doug wanted to forget about his camera and stop Amanda in her tracks, to tell her that nothing was worth risking her life. It would have been pointless, of course. He knew her type. She was in front of her chance to become someone in the world of journalism, and he knew that was all she could see.

“You are talking about human lives!” Amanda protested in her cross-examination. Doug saw Lucia Torres arching an eyebrow and realized that she might have agreed to answer Amanda’s questions, but this did not mean that she was taking them well. And while, in general, making the interviewee uncomfortable could be a sign of a good interview, Doug was sure the last thing he wanted was an upset Miss Torres.

“You think I don’t know?” the giant replied in a deep voice that made his bones rattle. Her tone was as cold as her expression. “I just don’t give a damn!” her next words dropped like a bomb.

Even Amanda was shocked at the answer and needed some time to react. Doug wished really hard that she would let go. She did not. But at least, she changed the line of questioning.

“What are your intentions?”

It had been a smart move, he thought, even if he was not sure Amanda had done it on purpose. The giant woman’s intentions had been one of the central topics of debate ever since she had made the news. Miss Torres’ face relaxed visibly, and Doug was certainly thankful for that.

“Well, I thought I had been clear, but let me spell it out for you,” the booming yet still feminine voice of the giantess came back as she even allowed a trace of a smile to form in her lips. “Becoming a giant has been a blessing, and my intention is to make the most out of it. I will use this power that has been given to me without restraint. I will right many wrongs. I will explore. I will make changes. You can be sure I will leave my mark in the world.”

“What would you say to those that call you a monster?” Amanda then asked, making Doug’s hear rate accelerate again when he realized that his partner was not going to give up.

The giant scowled again. Her voice did not leave any doubts to how she had taken the question when she replied.

“I would tell them that they are welcome to come and say it to my face,” Miss Torres said in an icy tone.

Then, a shadow spooked Doug. He realized soon enough what it was. The woman’s hand, which dwarfed both of them with ease, moved up and then towards Amanda. She screamed first and tried to move afterwards. It was too late. Fingers which had to be as long as their van unfolded and reached out for his young partner. She barely had time to turn when the woman’s massive index blocked her way, only for her thumb to come from behind and pinch her between vast fingertips.

Amanda’s scream was blood-chilling as her cute little figure was raised between the massive pillars of tanned flesh, her own pale skin visibly contrasting. Doug’s first instinct was to turn and flee. He felt ashamed of that, but even if he did not leave, Doug did not take the righteous path of trying to help his partner either. He told himself that it would have been no use. But in reality, a voice inside him pushed Doug to keep doing his job and to keep showing the world what was happening, even if what was happening was that the young woman he had worked with over the last couple of years was in extreme danger.

Miss Torres held Amanda in front of her window-sized eyes, inspecting her with a mix of disdain and curiosity. Then her lips parted and her thundering voice came back.

“Then, I would pick them up and I would tell them that a monster is a mindless, ugly creature, and that it’s obvious that I’m nothing like that.”

Lucia Torres’ voice could have frozen the Sahara. Her eyes were narrowed in a stare so intense that for moments it felt as if she were going to kill Amanda just with it.

“I would tell them that I’m a beautiful woman that has become extraordinarily big and extraordinarily powerful. A woman who can now do as she pleases. A woman who expects each and every of her commands to be followed. And then I would tell them that I’m a no-nonsense giantess, someone that has learned that self-restraint is pointless.”

Doug wanted to cry out, to let the anguish he felt inside him out. And still, he could only keep filming the scene. The woman went on, her anger now filtering through every pore of his skin.

“I will crush anyone who does not follow my orders. I will crush anyone who stands in my way, literally or figuratively. I will crush anyone who wrongs me or who wronged me in the past. I will crush anyone I simply dislike. And I will crush anyone who annoys me with stupid questions!”

Amanda’s screams could not be heard over the loud rumble of Miss Torres’ voice. And then, as Doug zoomed into his colleague, still trapped between the massive fingertips, the giant’s voice died and he heard the last and blood-freezing shriek of the woman he worked with. Right after, the giant’s fingers came together in a swift gesture, barely slowing down as Amanda’s body burst in a crimson splash.

“Noooo!” Doug finally screamed, getting Miss Torres’ attention and finally emptying his bladder.

She moved her eyes from him to her soiled fingertips and then back to him. Pointing at him with a red finger, she asked:

“Is that thing still on?”

Of course, she was referring to the camera. Doug promptly nodded, making the woman smirk. He knew he had to leave, but his legs felt paralyzed. Instead, he could just look up at the creature that had just killed the cute young woman he worked with, a woman he had secretly fancied.

“You will find my actions whimsical. They certainly are. Hopefully you will now understand the meaning of true power. Life has been hard on me. It’s time for some reckoning!”

The same fingers that had snuffed Amanda’s life in an instant closed into a fist and Doug realized that this was the end. Even then, he could not get his legs to respond. Lucia Torres’ first hit down like a meteor, vaporizing him at touch, only an instant before breaking through the flimsy roof and the top ten floors of the building. Piles of debris rained into the street below, including dozens of victims of her whim between the rubble. The only consideration Lucia made was that it was a miracle that the rest of the building was still standing.

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Author's note

As I mentioned last week with Chapter 8, I decided to try something new with The Breaking Point. I already completed the story. It features 22 chapters and 130,000 words. I intend to keep publishing one chapter per week (except if I'm out or cannot connect, which happens from time to time). But I usually also get requests to get the full story on one go and requests from people that would like to support me in the creation of giantess stories and have mentioned they would subscribe to my content or buy it if it was commercially available. 

So, I decided to publish the entire story ahead of time, in PDF and Kindle formats. It's available in my Gumroad store, in case you want to either read it before it's posted here or have another way to tell me that you enjoy my work. It's here: https://www.gumroad.com/l/vuVni

To be honest, my main objective is to gauge interest rather than making money. Thanks!