Giantess World
Lexi was no Olympic athlete, and prior to her self-banishment a year and a half ago, didn’t often choose jogging as recreation, since she much preferred to get her heart pumping through sports. Following those tragic events which upended all she knew, however, she’d found herself plagued by chaotic energy, a cutting side effect of grief, that she needed to extract and “put” somewhere, while also experiencing that painful necessity of solitude that prevented her from joining in any team-based contests for a while. It all had to go somewhere. Sometimes this meant a good hard cry, and sometimes it meant a clumsy rage-fueled boxing session against a large red punching bag which bore a curious resemblance to the girth and firmness of Bridget’s fingers. Eventually, though, Lexi had settled on long runs, taking advantage of the quiet and the oncoming endorphin rush balanced against fatigue to distract herself from bad thoughts while also bleeding all those unwanted energies right out of her body.
In a strange way, that inexpert routine of sprinting at full-tilt through near-empty streets in the early mornings, fueled only by a need to purge fitful sensations rather than by calling upon much actual athletic prowess, had trained Lexi for the current activity of charging down the sidewalks of the capital city while she had an honest-to-God hundred-fifty-foot super-being stowed in the stuffy prison of her turbulent footwear. Any endurance she’d built up through those months, plus the duty she felt to complete this task with Bridget slotted below her rapidly-dampening toes, all came to bear now. She’d already run further and faster today than she ever had before without stopping. Tired, rosy-cheeked, and glossed head-to-heel in sweat as she’d become over the past hour of unbroken jogging, though, Lexi had yet to indulge in a rest. Not because she didn’t want one, but because she worried it might be tough to get started again if she stopped, and allowed her mind to catch up with the sensation of the little Omega’s body still faithfully curled beneath her stride, only now practically glued to her skin like a quivery barnacle by the oven-like heat and constantly-refreshed dew of sweat now infesting the sneaker.
Naturally, the Alpha had felt her sister’s shape under her foot for every one of the literal thousands of times she’d stepped on her now, bare and brutal and at high speed. But it was easy enough while moving at-pace to avoid the chance of any sympathy-disgust over the squalid humidity-spiced odor pit the shoe was becoming, not to mention the pounding from every crook and crevice of Lexi’s soft-terrained foot underbelly. Lexi didn’t fear she’d succumb to second thoughts by slowing down and more accurately feeling her adoptive sibling’s twiggy arms wriggle against her sole skin in involuntary protest - the two of them were in this deep, after all, and only going deeper - but it also happened to feel good. Very good, in fact, but specifically in the way Lexi had experienced the release of running alone in that faraway town where she’d retreated, using the limb-swinging exertion to rid herself of those mournful energies that used to make her tremble and verge on tears whenever she sat still too long.
Now, she was literally disposing of those same feelings directly through the puny body of the exact person who had acted as an unwitting instrument of all that injustice. Lexi didn’t exactly think it “right” that she was treating Bridget like a living insole wedge, yet she also couldn’t deny the absolution that surged through her frame each and every time the Alpha’s toes drove back toward earth inside the sneaker: splaying out over the obstruction of the squirming sweat-glommed Omega, and transferring the full force of the temporarily-taller sister’s hurtling form down through that firm region of her sole where Bridget was rolled, until Lexi chose otherwise.
It wasn’t until she’d been running for nearly an hour and a half, out of breath and ignoring the cramps, that Lexi was finally given abrupt pause. Though she registered her surroundings on the path just enough to keep from crashing into pedestrians or walls, she had otherwise let herself lose track of her progress while winding through the colorful well-lit labyrinth of urban walkways meant to safely intertwine the social lives of all size classes. She’d subconsciously clocked the innumerable Alphas and Betas passing her by, plus a few Omegas briefly hogging the whole horizon with their mere presence, but the one thing which finally made Lexi come skidding to a stop was Aegis itself. Which, in fairness, made for a large visual marker, scaled as it was to serve as home base to many of the world’s most titanic beings at once, and hued such a stark obsidian up along its smooth fortress-like yet clinical walls.
Of course Lexi didn’t have to wonder why she was not-so-mysteriously compelled to stop here, as she staggered over to a bench just beside the long walkway leading up to the Alpha entrance of the place. The building had long held a special place in her heart, making her feel warm and safe, seeing as how it was the first place she’d ever truly learned what legitimate familial love could feel like, thanks to the Cades, on that traumatic night she’d escaped Alma. Looking the black cubical structure up and down now, Lexi couldn’t quite find the same attachment in herself for Aegis - like just about everything else, her positive associations with people and places had been hurtfully altered following her imprisonment - but she was still curiously drawn toward it for some reason.
She also felt a second impulse, right then, to speak to Bridget. Make a comment. Crack a joke. Ask another in an endless series of questions about Aegis that her big sister was only ever able to sort-of answer. These were all instincts she’d had to unlearn while alone, when suddenly she couldn’t up from the palm of her sibling’s hand and speak her mind at will. She hadn’t felt that whim to simply chit-chat with Bridget in so long, certainly well before actually reuniting with the Omega in Sanctuary, and not just because conversation would be essentially impossible while the shrunken giantess’s world was currently so limited to the musky summery-sizzling keep inside that old shoe and under her painfully tender foot. It was just a small instinct that tugged at Lexi, but it felt significant to her: a glimmer that somehow or other, things could be the same again.
Just as soon as she finished stomping out all her lingering frustrations and subconscious leftover grudges onto Bridget. And she still had plenty of those to dispose of before they were through here.
Below, with most of the pressure of the run now alleviated from her feet and her passenger, Lexi could feel the girl had quit that natural squirming which came of serving as a much-larger being’s toe cushion in such miserably cramped, wet, ripe, ever-constricting solitary confinement. Not that Bridget had actually resisted a single step of their time together on the town today. Still, during this interim of rest outside Aegis, she could feel the same guilt-riddled tremors that had infected the miniature blonde while taking on the part of Lexi’s chew-toy earlier, only now flinching up against the oily undersides of her toes with self-loathing and tired duty to this insane role-reversal cause. And while Lexi still foresaw nothing constructive coming of Bridget’s inward-facing hatred at this point, she could now at last comprehend why today’s activities were necessary for them both.
Right as the Alpha pushed herself up from the bench again, and by extension onto her sister’s wriggly self, Aegis’s glossy sliding doors parted ways. And out walked a trio of Omegas whose shadows immediately cast across the smaller-class pathways. With every soaring step forward they took, that shade from their bodies combined like clustered downtown buildings traveled faster toward Lexi, who kept her head hung at first - not out of disdain for whichever strange giants she was about to pass by, but to re-center her thinking for the therapeutic yet punishing remainder of this current session to come. Swallowing hard, Lexi knew then (maybe for the first time beyond any iota of doubt) that she’d officially become what Bridget needed her to be, because there hadn’t been an ounce of sarcasm in her head that time, even when thinking of the word “session” with regards to herself as an Enforcer, however brief her informal service in that job title would be.
“Lexi?”
Stopping in her tracks along with all three Omegas, Lexi recognized the owner of that voice before she’d even finished looking all the way up. The juxtaposition of those three highly-distinct giant silhouettes, combined with the sincerity in the young woman’s soft yet piercing tone, told her right away that she wasn’t just passing by strangers.
Closest to the Alpha pathway, and the one who’d spoken up, was Claire Lindon, who bowed her head slowly over Lexi with a reassuring smile, then brushed a hanging brunette strand out of her sightline as she did so. Beside her was the deceptively-waifish Jenna, who studied Lexi with that familiar unhostile placidness shown in her cool emerald eyes from when she’d played her a private violin concerto on the mantel. Behind them both, but still plainly visible for her staggeringly-massive presence, was the honey-haired quintessential gentle giant Melody, who regarded Lexi with some of the same sober pity leftover from their last conversation.
“Oh. Um, h-hey you guys,” Lexi replied in a similarly fragile tone as when they’d all last seen her.
The little Alpha couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that she’d in fact been cured of the shaky-voiced emotional duress that the Omegas might’ve reasonably expected from her, and so her hesitant murmur now wasn’t due to sadness or intimidation, but rather the seething awkwardness she felt at standing before three gargantuan Aegis professionals while a tiny Bridget languished down under her foot at this same moment. It wasn’t lost on her, particularly where Claire and Jenna were concerned, that she was currently attempting to do what they did for a living, only without any of their formal training, and much less of their will.
“It’s really nice to see you out and about,” Claire said. The dark-tan Omega smiled softly, as she held unflinching eye contact with Lexi, and reached for the pendant of a necklace as big as a grandfather clock hand which hung around her neck. She slowly massaged the object between her thumb and forefinger. “Were you… about to pop inside Aegis?”
“Your mom is in there now,” Melody said, thumbing over her shoulder in the direction of the building, and in the process causing her pronounced bicep to swell like a boulder.
Lexi blinked, nodding as she looked toward the monolith-smooth entrance to the humongous black structure. Based on Melody’s upbeat tone, and old-fashioned common sense, of course the Alpha knew in retrospect that she should’ve interpreted this statement to mean that Evelyn was inside the building. Yet because of the emotionally and psychologically foreign territory she’d put herself and Bridget in today, for both of their sakes, Lexi’s mind now went instead to Alma, especially when she looked up at Jenna right as the stern-lipped ginger giantess crossed her arms over her chest.
This was believable, after all, since her birth mother’s sentencing was so close to finished, though Lexi didn’t know the particulars of how long her animalistic creator would remain boxed up under the direct watch of the Omegas in Aegis before she was shipped off for further penalizing in probably-less degrading conditions. Alma could’ve been just resting on Jenna’s desk in that HQ office, like an angry goldfish in her glass tank. Lexi was relieved to find that her pulse no longer leapt to palpitations at the mere thought of Alma being close by, since their previous encounter in the Reynolds’ house had helped clean her out of old fears, both of the monstrous Beta-slaughtering woman herself, and of Lexi’s own family tree inheritances. It was a trick she hoped to pull off twice, only now with Bridget. In spite of that brave progress, though, the young Alpha still felt her chest tighten and cheeks drain at the thought of what Alma might say if she could see the contents of her child’s shoe right now. No matter how badly needed it was for herself and Bridget to go through these trials, it was also painful to realize that she was currently doing something with an Omega which would’ve undoubtedly made her birth mother rejoice.
“Not that one,” Jenna whispered with a frown, recognizing the mistake only a split-second after Lexi’s expression changed and correcting it immediately. “She means your real mom.”
“Oh. Of course,” Lexi said, mustering a nervous chuckle. “I know.”
She could see some rosily embarrassed color tinting Melody’s cheeks now, even though the blame for that little mental side-trip was entirely on Lexi. Anyone who’d known her since the age of ten would’ve known that her “mom” meant Evelyn, and Evelyn only. Nonetheless, the hypothetical of what Alma might say about a shrunken downtrodden Bridget made Lexi’s guts curl even worse, though she couldn’t back down now.
“…but, I… wasn’t going in there,” the Alpha said, knowing it sounded like a lie even as she spoke it. Of course she had no intentions of going inside Aegis, but the thought of her birth-parent’s unwanted approval - and the continued sensation of three-inch Bridget being squelched under exercise-swollen toe flesh - was in danger of throwing her wholly off balance. She took a step closer to the edge of the path.
“Are you sure?” Claire asked with a counselor’s calm. The soccer champ continued rhythmically fiddling with that pendant between her fingers. “If you need to talk to somebody… besides your mom, well… there’s us, obviously, or we can go find you somebody, if you don’t want to go in there by yourself?”
Lexi nodded without answering, indeed touched by the Omega’s continually-flowing kindness, and then looked back and forth to Melody and Jenna again. Suddenly it became obvious why the three were acting so charitably, albeit stiffly. Even though Bridget hadn’t left the Cade house at her natural fifteen-story stature following her secret homecoming from Sanctuary (aside from that midnight arrangement with Kayla), it was probably difficult to keep the news of her return from making the rounds at Aegis anyway. Except Claire, Jenna, and Melody all understandably believed that their coworker and friend Bridget was still holed up in her bedroom, rather than taking action in the most unusual way possible: incredibly small, buried alive in a sweaty shoe, and hidden right below their eyelines.
“I’ll be okay,” Lexi stated, though even she couldn’t be totally certain if this was true, and so knew that the Omegas would probably remain unconvinced by her voice as well. “I just… needed some time out of the house. That’s all.”
The trio seemed to buy this, believing that Lexi was taking a necessary breather away from the mopey presence of her prodigal sister, when in fact Bridget was closer than ever, at least physically. Claire reluctantly appeared ready to say goodbye now after reading Lexi’s mood, even parting her lips in readiness for giving the troubled Alpha her personal bubble back. But then a questioning furrow etched in the titanic leader’s forehead after Lexi took another three self-conscious steps closer to the path’s edge. For the whole run so far, she hadn’t allowed Bridget’s presence down below to alter her posture or foot-slamming pressure. Yet just as she’d feared might happen when she finally came to a stop, standing for sympathetic scrutiny by professional Enforcers right outside a place that held so many partially-soured memories and which now was probably caging her birth mother who’d surely feel greater kinship with her today than ever, Lexi stepped on Bridget with a knee-shivering wobble as though nursing a wound. It wasn’t much, but evidently enough to catch an Omega’s eye.
“Lexi…” Claire drawled, cocking her head slowly and stroking two fingertips repeatedly up the side of her neck while tongue-tapping her inner cheeks in search of the right words. She spoke with a minimal-possible degree of accusation, but still clear purpose: “Do you… have someone in your shoe right now?”
The Alpha’s heart cinched in on itself as if by yanked drawstring. Though a paranoid part of her brain had acknowledged the chance of this exact situation happening while wearing Bridget out, logically she’d still expected it was a very remote probability that anyone would recognize something was off about her gait, suggesting she had a whole person cooped up down there. Now, though, as Jenna and Melody looked at her too with the same patient caution, it occurred to Lexi that she’d either underestimated Omega senses, herself, or both. Immediately a clammier layer of murky sweat poured from the raw underside pads of her foot, re-drenching the shrunken Omega in fresh conflicted moisture worse than the penultimate stretch of the jog. Was there any point in trying to lie, if only to keep this insane scheme with Bridget private?
“I…” she grunted, then bobbed her head. Lexi didn’t break her skyward gaze with Claire, but also knew there was no hiding the multi-faceted phantasm of guilt currently trying to smush her into the ground. “Yes.”
“And, are they there… consensually?” Claire asked in the same vigilant whisper.
Knowing that an innocent person would’ve answered right away with a technically truthful “yes,” Lexi felt her throat catching and her shrunken sibling’s body slicking more egregiously with anxious perspiration as one second extended to three, before seeming to freeze there entirely. What was the “right” thing to do here, let alone her legal recourse? Based on Lexi’s history, even in light of her acquittal, plus her incredibly standoffish behavior right now, she doubted she’d have much of a defense to offer if the Omegas decided to doubt her hesitant answer and then insisted she prove this was all the idea of her underfoot prisoner, who surely had to be a Beta. Running away would only make her look guiltier, and she’d obviously not get far before a giant hand formed a shadow-encasing wall of palm flesh around her, or a set of firm yet gentle fingers like monumental obelisks plucked her clean off the ground. And since Aegis was barely ten steps away for Claire, Jenna, and Melody, they’d likely take her inside the building to debrief. Revealing a bleary toejam-caked Bridget instead of a terrified bashed-up Beta down in the darkness of Lexi’s sneaker would in fact clear everything up, but at what cost? What would these three say? What would any of them in there, including Evelyn, think?
What if Alma saw her, too? Lexi would eventually recover from the embarrassment of every Omega in there learning what had happened today, seeing it with their own eyes when puny Bridget tumbled out of her shoe, but not the woman who’d given her life. Never.
Meanwhile, Bridget had been lying still for the past couple minutes of this encounter, accepting the weight of those soused toes compressing her into the insole like a sinking bog. But despite this lack of fidgeting, Lexi was more aware of her passenger now than she’d been for the whole past hour and a half, which made it seem all the more significant then when the little Omega raised a hand and patted it comfortingly up against the sweat-dewed pink bulb of the Alpha’s second toe. At first it seemed an accident that she was feeling Bridget’s touch right now, a search for meaning or aid in maybe the greatest moment of turmoil that Lexi had felt all day in a day stuffed to the gills with said turmoils, when really it was maybe just the half-conscious twitching of someone who’d just been thoroughly trampled in claustrophobic sun-cooked blackness. But her sister kept supportively clapping the delicate underbelly of her toe, the same body which had been beating Bridget’s invincible mini-self into swarthy submission for so many questionably-helpful hours now, and the Alpha knew for sure it was loving insistence.
“Yes,” Lexi said to Claire after four ridiculously long seconds of quiet, but the surest and most authentic she’d sounded yet. “Yes… she… chose to be in there.”
The Omegas regarded her, then one another for a split-second unspoken conference, and after another moment of kind albeit penetrating study over the Alpha standing in their towering shade, Claire finally unbowed until she loomed above the raised sidewalk again at her full height. Lexi’s heart still had yet to unclench following the Omega’s eagle-eyed awareness, but Bridget’s little hands didn’t stop pat-a-caking her toes in the best possible show of support her elder sibling could muster given the circumstances, which made it possible for her to take another step forward minus that guilty quivering.
“All right, then.” Claire blinked, spun the pendant one once more between her fingers, then tucked it into the neckline of her top, apparently satisfied. “Just remember what we said, Lexi. We’re here, and so are the people waiting in there.”
“I know,” Lexi said. “I’ll remember.”
The minute the Omegas had rounded the block after a final glance over their shoulders, her attention was transfixed back on Aegis’s façade. Lexi could still feel Bridget’s supportive hands on the bottom of her foot, not to brace but to encourage more stampeding, though the sensation turned fainter the longer she stared at that door: wondering at last about the voice of just one living creature in the whole structure. Everything Lexi been through so far, and Bridget’s full support, would protect her from any humiliation or raised eyebrows about their choices today from the caring fifteen-story souls inside. But nothing anyone said or did would ever stop Alma from celebrating, probably crying with laughter near to the point of vomiting, over what Lexi had allowed herself to become even for one sacrificial day. Her birth mother would of course never learn of all the “payback” she’d gotten on an Omega today, because Lexi wouldn’t have gone inside Aegis right now unless Bridget’s life depended on it, but she didn’t have to. Just knowing what might have been was enough of a self-inflicted knife in the gut.
Feeling mortification surge up inside her, Lexi didn’t even stop for another deep breath before reversing course on the path and hurling herself into another full-tilt sprint back in the same direction they’d come. Bridget’s toe-patting became almost imperceptible when the Alpha’s foot resuming alternately flying and then squashing down atop her three-inch form, but nonetheless, Lexi could feel her sister’s grateful little palm taps gently applied even throughout the sweaty maelstrom of blood-pumping adrenaline and rubber-soled impacts below. Despite expending so much energy before on the way here, she moved her fastest yet, letting the city and strangers around her blur together while her body became an efficient machine for Omega-stomping, until Lexi was aware of only two things: Bridget under her foot, and behind her, an encroaching familiar presence that persisted no matter how many steps she put between herself and Aegis. It was the same sickening once-inescapable blight she’d felt chasing her on that night almost twelve years ago, when Alma pursued her outside their home in a rabid betrayed fury. Only now she didn’t fear the woman’s anger, but her approval.
“That’s it, my darling. You’re doing it! Show her what she did to you. What ALL of them did to US!” Alma’s voice spat in her ear, just as Lexi staggered up to the Cade property barely an hour later and spilled onto the front lawn. Panting in desperation, she grasped at the earth and tore up tufts of grass in an effort to keep the tears from coming, while Bridget’s touch never left her toes. “That’s the way!”