-Prologue-
“Halt, you fiend! If you want to cause trouble in Megalopolis, you’re going to have to answer to ME!”
In the center of downtown Megalopolis, a small crowd cheered at the appearance of Enormica, the busty blonde superheroine who watched over the city. Gracefully sliding from her rocket-powered Sky Bike, Enormica landed in front of the giant robot that was halfway through destroying the façade of the First Bank of Megalopolis. Resting gloved hands on her green-spandex-clad hips, she cleared her throat and called out.
“The money inside that vault belongs to the bank… No, to the people of this city! It represents thousands of hours of hard work and dedication! It would be a travesty to allow you to remove even one cent of it, especially considering what you might have planned! Such misdeeds will never prevail, so long as I’m around! Now…” Enormica turned her head toward the growing crowd and flashed a confident smile, then lifted her right hand and pointed up toward the robot’s gigantic chest, “…surrender yourself to justice, before I squash you like a bug!”The crowd roared at the heroine’s catchphrase, but were quickly interrupted by a loud squeal of audio feedback from the robot.
“Squash me like a bug, you say?” The high, nasal voice that rang out sounded amused. “Just what do you intend to do, if you don’t mind my asking? As you may have noticed, my robot is considerably larger than you are, and its tritanium alloy armor proved a match for even Captain Brawn! It can move at speeds over sixty miles per hour, and can withstand temperatures up to—“
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. It’s a big tough robot… Spare us the technobabble, will ya?” Enormica contemplated the large buttons on her utility belt for a moment, then pressed the blue one and rested a hand over the E-shaped belt buckle. She looked back up at the robot. “This is your last chance, squeaky! Surrender now, and you might have a chance to eat prison food with a fork instead of a straw.”
Rather than respond, the robot raised one of its claw-like appendages above its head, then brought it crashing down. Enormica leaped to the side and pressed down on her belt buckle. “To carry out the will of justice… ENORMISIZE!” The people watching cheered and applauded again, even as they hurried away from rapidly growing woman. Enormica straightened up and flexed her enormous muscles, then grinned down at the robot. She was now more than a head taller than it.
There was another squeal of audio feedback, followed by the voice of the robot’s pilot. “Wha.. What ARE you?! How is that even possible?!”
“Maybe you’d understand it…” Enormica suddenly lunged forward, laying punch into the robot’s chest that caused it to tumble backward, “…if you had dedicated your scientific work to good rather than evil!”
Enormica walked up the fallen machine, smirking at the faint sound of cheering from the streets. She put a foot on the center of its torso and leaned over its faceless, domed head. “So, you gonna come quietly?” The robot’s arm jerked in from the right and planted a solid blow on her head, sending her reeling off to the side. Enormica stumbled back into a tall building, putting her elbow through one of the windows and crushing a small fountain underfoot. Rubbing her cheek, she mumbled an apology in the general direction of the building and extricated her elbow.
The robot was back on its feet and facing her, what looked to be some kind of weapon rising from its back. Enormica slowly circled to the left. “HAHA!”, screeched the voice from the robot, “You may be tough, but let’s see how you handle a little heavy firepower! Take THIS!”
With a loud grinding sound, a missile shot out of the weapon on the robot’s back. Enormica dove toward the bank and snatched her Sky Bike out of the air, then in one fluid motion twisted back toward the missile, the vehicle in her hand transforming to resemble an oversized pistol. With a guttural battle cry, she pulled the trigger on her weapon. A concentrated wave of energy sprang forth, encompassing the missile, which lost momentum and crached to the ground.
Enormica stood up, shaking tree limbs out of her hair. “I guess adding an electromagnetic pulse function wasn’t such a bad idea after all...” She focused her attention on the robot, leveling the transformed Sky Bike as she approached it. “You may have a… A tinctanium alloy, or whatever, but I’ll bet robots ain’t too fond of EMP bursts, eh?”
“Oho, what happened to the strong, hero-of-the-people way you were talking before? Can’t keep it up under pressure? Kehehe!”
“Laugh it up, robot boy, but at the end of the day you’re the one staring down the barrel of a gun.”
The pilot let out another high-pitched laugh. “That may be true, but guns can’t solve… Everything!” On the last word the robot’s claw crashed into a nearby building, and a moment later pulled out three panic-stricken office workers. “Now, let’s seeif you can… CATCH!” The robot flicked its arm upward, effortlessly throwing the people into the air.
Enormica cursed under her breath, pressing a red button on her belt and holding the belt buckle. She rapidly expanded in size, and held her hand under the people, who were still flying upwards. In just a few seconds she overtook them, her hand managing to come up under them before they started to fall.
“Are you guys okay?” she asked, squinting at the tiny people in the palm of her hand. Being smaller than her fingernails she couldn’t hear them, but they didn’t appear to have any broken bones. “Hang tight, you’re going to be okey!” Enormica cast about for a second, then shrugged and carefully set them inside the largest compartment on her utility belt.
“Th-This is ridiculous! H-How can this be?!”
The robot was nearly doubled over backward to take in her new size, the pilot seemingly having giving up on fighting. Enormica frowned down at the machine, which now no taller than her knees. “Do you know how much it costs to make me this big?!” she boomed, pushing the robot over with her foot. “Not to mention all this collateral damage! Do you know how much you’ve cost the city today? What do you even need money for, anyway? If you can build a giant robot just to rob a bank, I don’t think you’re exactly hurtin’ for a payday. We’ll have a nice, long talk about it down at the fifth pricinct, though.”
The pilot seemed to be regaining his composure. “Oh, it’s not money I was after… and I’m afraid I won’t be visiting any precincts, either.”
Enormica bent at the waist and took the robot by the shoulder with one hand, squeezing. The metal groaned and bent, and there was a loud grinding sound as the servos in the arm failed. “Is that so?”
Another screeching laugh from the pilot. “Yes, well. It’s a shame that it had to end like this, as I quite liked this unit, but it would be… Unfortunate, if you learned anything of its construction. Until next time!” With that, the robot went ridgid, and a soft beeping issued from its speakers.
Enormica blinked. She took the robot’s head in her hand and wrenched it off, then looked inside; circuitry, but no cockpit. Swallowing nervously, she got down on her knees and, exerting all of her strength, ripped open the robot’s torso. No cockpit. She sat back on her heels, cleared at a loss. The robot beeped again. Enormica learned forward and looked down at the remains of the robot. Inside the chest cavity, barely visible at her size, was a digital readout showing 00:07.
The giant woman sprang to her feet, eyes wide. “It.. It’s a bomb!” She cast about for just a moment before coming to her senses and hitting it with an EMP blast. The digital display flicked and went out. Enormica breathed a sigh of relief, setting the Sky Bike on the nearest building. The robot began to beep again, this time in quick succession.
“SHIT!”
Enormica, out of ideas, grabbed the robot by its undamaged arm. Hauling up on it with all the strength she could muster, she flung it as high into the air as she could. Less than a second later, an enormous explosion rocked downtown Megalopolis, shattering windows for miles around. Enormica dropped to her hands and knees, breathing heavily. Thousands of tiny people were flooding in from every direction, cheering in the streets. Some of them were even beginning to organize a clean-up effort.
“That was WAY too close…” Enormica muttered as she stood to look for her Sky Bike. Tucking the vehicle/weapon under one arm, she reached for the blue button on her belt. “Oh, wait! Damn, another close one.” She opened the largest compartment on her utility belt and carefully scooped out the two tiny people inside, then lowered them into a crowd below. She smiled at the faint sound of a thousand cheers, then used the blue button to return to the size she was before the robot had taken its hostages. With a flick of her wrist, Enormica changed the Sky Bike back into its vehicle form and set it aside. Finally, using the belt’s green button, she shrunk down to her normal civilian size of 5’4” and was immediately swarmed by the cheering crowd.
I forced myself into a sitting position, groaning. My ears were ringing, and something was on top of my left leg, pinning my foot in an uncomfortable position. With a grunt, I pulled my leg free and shakily got to my feet. A quick survey of my surroundings revealed nothing significant, as the area was pitch black. As I squinted around, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, I stood on one foot and tried to shake some feeling back into the one that had been pinned. Where was I?
As the ringing in my ears subsided, I became aware of a loud noise coming from all around me. It sounded like music playing on speakers with the volume and bass cranked up to max, but lacked any kind of melody. Just as my eyes were beginning to adjust, it felt like the whole world tilted, and I tumbled hard to the right. I found myself planted against a somewhat soft plastic wall, before everything tilted again and I fell to what I assumed was the floor I had been standign on.
“Jesus, what the hell was that! Hello?”
The only answer I got was the chaotic rumbling bass sound, which must have been coming from outside wherever I was. Squinting around again, I could make out several large shapes, each about as tall as I was but far more massive. As I worked my way to the nearest of these objects, I noticed that the ground was almost continuously shifting, like boat moored in relatively calm water.
Reaching my target, I found it to be a foot or so taller than I was. Running my hands over it, I was surprised to find that it was a smooth plastic cylindar, almost like an oversized water slide tube. Was I in some sort of construction warehouse? Or, no, maybe a shipping container on a boat. I rubbed my eyes, groaning softly. “HELLO? Can anyone hear me? Anyone? Urgh, what am I DOING here?” I rested my head against the plastic tube. It was rougher here than the area I had been touching before. I reached up and ran my hand along the rough part: it felt like raised lettering.
Curiously, and with nothing better to do, I stared at the text. After nearly a minute, I was able to tell the dark-colored letters apart from the lighter color that made up most of the tube, and read the writing. “Fine point… Per… Per-ma-nent.. Marker? Huh. What is this, some kind of giant... Prop…”
I stared at the gigantic Sharpie, feeling faint. My memory came flooding back; I had been delivering an order of office supplies to an advertising firm when rumbling and crashing sounds from outside had drawn everyone to the windows. Enormica, the size-changing superhero, was fighting some kind of huge robot. We had been watching for several minutes, cheering at the blows Enormica landed, when the action suddenly found its way directly in front of the building. The majority of the people in the office retreated from the windows, but seeing as the heroine had the robot on the ropes several people (myself included) kept our front-row seats and continued cheering.
The robot’s pilot had then (in true villainous fashion) done the obvious and made hostages of us foolish onlookers, launching us into the air to distract Enormica. She used her powers to grow more quickly than we were moving and catch us, and put us in a compartment on her utility belt.
“I must have blacked out… Didn’t she say something about a bomb?” I mumbled to myself. The concussive force of an explosion could easily have knocked me out. Had the enormous superheroine been rendered unconscious as well? I cast about in the darkness of what I now knew to be Enormica’s storage pocket, then cleared my throat and called out. “H-Hello? Um… It’s me, I… It’s Liam, the… The UPS guy? Is anyone here?”
No response. I swallowed nervously and started to slowly walk around, looking for the (hopefully) unconscious forms of my fellow rescuees. After several minutes of searching, occasionally calling out and listening for responses, I saw a dark shape on the ground. It was far too small to be a person, but about the right size for a human head. I knelt next to it and gingerly reached out, touching it with my fingertips. An enormous (well, relatively speaking) feeling of relief spread through me as I felt the smooth leather of my camera bag.
Overcome by how strange things had been since regaining consciousness, I hugged this one small bit of normalcy I had found tightly to my chest. Letting out a small sigh, I sat down and set the bag in my lap. I didn’t know how I had managed to hang onto it long enough for it to end up in the utility belt, but I was glad. Before I had a chance to do much else, the world suddenly lurched sideways again, and was filled with a blinding light.
“Absolutely, anything for a fan!” boomed the single loudest voice I had ever heard. I squinted into the brilliant light, just in time to see two gigantic black shapes descending into the compartment. They wrapped around the Sharpie, then carried it into the sky before the light disappeared with a loud TUHK sound. Left in the darkness again, I strained to hear.
“So, this is for…?” Even muffled by the soft plastic of the utility belt’s compartment, the voice was incredibly loud. The rumbling bass sound from earlier must have been a crowd of people, talking and cheering all at once.
“For Mary Jane and Peter, my parents,” came another, slightly more distant voice, “They’re HUGE fans of yours! Oh, haha! Huge… I guess you know a thing or two about that!”
“Haha, yeah. Well, I’m glad that citizens appreciate my efforts; that’s all that really matters. Aside from catching criminals, I mean.”
I listened to several similar exchanges, dumbfounded by what sounded like an autograph session. At first I wondered what she could possibly be signing; billboards, water towers, city busses? As more and more people with gigantic voices thanked her for her services, however, I was forced to reach a conclusion: Enormica had resumed her normal size.
“HELP! HELLO? CAN ANYONE HERE ME?!” I screamed, but the conversations outside continued unabated. I felt sick to my stomach. How was this even possible? When Enormica changed size, did everything she had with her change size as well? Her green, black and yellow costume certainly adjusted to whatever size she made herself, but that’s because it was made of a special material, right?
I sat down and put my head between my knees, trying to calm my breathing. There was no use denying or bargaining with the facts; I had been shrunk to less than the diameter of a marker. To make matters worse, Enormica didn’t even seem to realize I was there, and the two people who did were nowhere to be seen. As if on cue, right as I thought that the spandex-clad heroine’s voice spoke out, even louder than it had been
“Excuse me, but how are those office workers doing? The ones attacked by the robot.” It sounded like she was calling out to someone a ways away.
“They’re doing fine,” a deep man’s voice responded. “They’re both still out cold, but the paramedics say they’ll make a full recovery within a day.”
“Oh, that’s great!” Enormica boomed back, doing something to jostle the compartment and make me fall over backwards. “With that, then, I should be going! Crime never sleeps, but I need to comb a few pieces of the Grant Building out of my hair!” The joke was met with thunderous laughter and applause, and once again the compartment lurched and was filled with light. I barely had time to make out her black-gloved hand dropping the Sharpie before the light was gone, and the world immediately began shaking and jumping as she walked.
I started to scream and shout again, in the vain hope that I would somehow get her attention, but I already knew it wouldn’t work. At less than half an inch tall, I would be lucky if she didn’t unwittingly splatter me the next time she reached into the the compartment. I hugged my camera bag tightly against my chest; who knew where I was off to next.