My husband promised me that he would be in the hottest man in existence, I was certain he meant that both literally and figuratively. He said this to me after I protested the frozen streets in The Daily Run two days ago, he agreed not to use that trick again and try something more original. Every time he is the designated giant he does something different but sometimes I need to push him to start using different themes. So I was expecting that this time he would use high temperatures to slow me down, little did I know just how far he would actually take the concept.

I dressed in a gym outfit today as I knew that it would be a hot day and I was going to do a lot of running. Tom had just entered the portal a minute ago; we always agreed to enter the portal to start The Daily Run two minutes after the other did. That doesn’t mean that me or my husband only has two minutes to set things up, he, as well as me can slow time inside the other world relative to our own, so he could take two minutes, an hour, a day, even forever if he really wanted to. I spent two hours yesterday and fifteen minutes two days before that setting up my challenge to him, I could only speculate how long he would take but on this side of the portal it is always two minutes and nothing more, so we always make it count.

At the two minute mark I entered and appeared in the usual non-descript office building, this place was always considered off limits to being destroyed. He could have for all I knew have destroyed every single building in the entire city and flattened the remains into dust beneath his non-descript loafers, but this one structure was always inviolate for us. It didn’t harm the portal to destroy the building around it as we have occasionally done, the portal was impossible for even us to change in any way, the rule that the building comes to no harm is just that: A rule for our game to ensure we can get our initial bearings on entering, nobody likes to suddenly appear in a desolate wasteland without at least a minute to get ready. Normally we only used this portal to enter the world, if we wanted to return home or to another universe we had the power to easily summon our own portals anyway.

Now, some of you may be curious, what happens if the rules of these games of ours are broken? The answer is that it depends, if it is something minor like not entering the portal at the correct time then we adjust our times to make up for the discrepancy. If it is a major issue like destroying this portal building, or using blatantly unfair tactics against the runner then a day of being the designated giant may be forfeit, so if my Husband blew up this building I would’ve been a giantess two days in a row. It has happened once when he carelessly stepped on me during a run, it didn’t harm me obviously since we’re invulnerable but the crater was impossible to get out of without using my superpowers, so he admitted fault and forfeited his day, making me a giantess twice in a row.

Conversely, if the smaller partner ends up falling into a hole or something happens to him/her through carelessness then they forfeit a day. This happened to me once, I blindly ran through a crowd and fell into a deep crater, so I conceded and had to watch him be a giant twice in a row. Needless to say I’m much more careful now and so is he. We don’t have any sort of referee in cases where we disagree, so sometimes we might settle it with a coin flip or in some cases we conscript a normal person to be an impartial judge (needless to say the latter is fraught with difficulties).

Once I left the building I knew that the timer would be started for The Daily Run as he could track me and always knew my exact location at any time. Before I left the building I had a look outside for some clues on what kind of obstacles I might expect, but he cleverly left this area of the city undamaged and the damaged areas were concealed by the skyscrapers in front of me. I could see though that hundreds of people were running down the street, screaming in terror, so he was on the rampage at least and not goofing off.

I went outside and I found the air much warmer than it usually is. I was expecting this of course so it didn’t faze me as I started running in the direction of the finish line. I went down the second street to my right and I noticed in the asphalt that there were footprints, normal human sized footprints that left holes in the pavement. As I ran further along the air seemed to be getting warmer although I didn’t know if that was just the air or just my own body heat from all this running. Another street later I found the footprints getting bigger and bigger, leaving increasingly larger holes and I could feel the residual heat coming from them. My husband was melting the asphalt by turning his shoes into giant heating elements, an interesting way of creating obstacles.

At first I could run around the prints easily enough but as I kept pressing on I found it more difficult and I had to make sure I didn’t get too close, not because of the danger of falling into the craters (although that was also an issue of course) but rather the heat just became increasingly unbearable. It was so intense that parts of the streets I was running through had raging fires already just from the radiated heat coming from the footprints. I looked up and I could see Tom, he was well over half a mile high by my estimation and in what I could only assume was silent mockery he was wearing his winter clothing. It reminded me of the time he was only in his underwear after freezing the streets and then telling me it was a “Little Warm”, I admit that I liked it better when he only had his underwear on, even if I didn’t like the frozen wonderland.

I saw that he was standing next to a river that ran through the city, he spotted me, smiled and then lifted a single shoe over the river and pressed down, causing a massive plume of steam to erupt as he began to boil the river. More water flowed in from the ocean to fill the gap my husband created but then he pulled his foot from the shoe, leaving that shoe inside the riverbed to create an endless plume of steam. I knew that that he made sure that the shoe would always retain a fixed temperature no matter how much heat it radiated. The First Law of Thermodynamics was overruled by the Tom Law of Thermodynamics, namely that an object will be as hot or as cold he damn well pleases; a far more sensible law, for us that is.

Nethertheless I pressed on in his direction towards the finish line. Tom’s bigger casual strides easily exceeded my running speed and he vanished from view. I could feel the heat all around me as I got closer and closer, not only were there bigger footprints in the ground but I could see the deformed shapes of skyscrapers that had their steel partially melted. I tried going through the side streets away from where the hottest temperatures were but this was slowing me down. I tried running across the bridge, but the steam made it impossible to see anything. I tried looking for a way to get across and I spotted the open subway station. I ran inside and the air was still hot but less unbearably so.

I jumped over the ticket barrier and run through crowds of terrified commuters, I saw that there was no subway train parked at the station, but there was a hole in the ceiling; I jumped onto the tracks as terrified commuters shouted and wailed. Normally I am indifferent to the shouts of the little people me and my husband play with and break but amidst their voices something stuck out for me “He took the train!” It seems my husband stole a subway train, maybe to get it out of my way, but interesting that he didn’t just crush it to scrap like we do most obstacles in our games. I had no time to think too much on this point, I had to navigate through a dark subway tunnel and watch for any trains that might be approaching, all the while I could feel the rumbling earthquakes above as Tom stomped his way through the city. I finally reached the subway stop closest to the finish line but as I looked for the exit I found it completely blocked, it had been sealed by molten steel that had cooled enough to solidify.

I looked for another exit and thought about running to the next station but then I felt the ground shake again, much louder and stronger this time. The roof began to crack in a shower of concrete and rock that crushed dozens of people as I saw four fingers and a thumb on my husband’s right* hand touch the station’s floor. Shortly after he pulled his hand back again, perhaps you think he might have just tripped and smashed his hand into the subway station by accident, but my husband isn’t a klutz, he did it for a reason and when he withdrew his hand I could see the light of the street above. I took one last look down the tunnel and I saw his face over a hundred feet away, his mouth was starting to glow orange, indicating that this whole place wasn’t going to stay mildly warm for long. I saw an oil tanker and several parked cars slide into the subway station as the roof began to further cave in.

*I saw his wedding ring, which is on his right hand.

I stepped through the rubble and climbed out of the ruined station and what I saw outside looked like Hell. Almost all the buildings were now gone, replaced instead by lakes of molten steel that was frothing and boiling, magma flowed freely from the city park and the vegetation had been completely burned. The air shimmered and the asphalt below me seemed to have boiled away completely, leaving hard rock beneath me, the heat was now painful, though not debilitating and I just sprinted for the last hundred feet, as I approached closer and closer I heard a loud explosion, the ground under me caved in and I found myself dropped in a lake of liquid magma below. It didn’t burn me, naturally, but it was impossible for me to get out of it and after two minutes of useless struggling, I teleported out of it to the finish line. Tom had broken the rules for the second time since we started this game.

When my giant husband approached me, he knew that he had screwed up. “I’m sorry Alice; I didn’t notice the tanker that fell in the subway and exploded from all the heat”. I tapped my foot and poked his football field sized shoe with an accusing finger “You forfeit the right to be a giant for one day, you big dumb oaf” I said. He grinned sheepishly “I concede my forfeiture for the Daily Run”. Satisfied that he owned up to his mistake I started growing myself to his size. “Nice job on the heat by the way Tom. The whole place looks like Hell down there”. “Heat, Alice? My body is at minimum a mere one thousand degrees centigrade, yet frankly I’m not sure how you stand the cold, I’m a bit chilly myself” He gestured to his thick winter wear as he said this. I playfully flipped the bird in response.

He then pulled out a subway train car from his pocket “Here, I brought a toy for you”. It must have been that subway train that went missing earlier. This one he hadn’t melted or damaged too much. I took the train in my hand and looked inside it; there were dozens of terrified people looking at me in abject terror. To have these little people in my hand and to see their fear and awe up close is one of the most thrilling experiences I get from having these abilities, it is a rush of pure, unconstrained power. “Oh, I hope my husband hasn’t hurt you too much. Don’t worry now, he won’t hurt you anymore”. The terror of the people on the train seemed to lessen markedly until I then opened both my running shorts and the panties underneath. “He won’t hurt you, but I will” I then dropped the train inside my panties and snapped shut the waistband of my shorts, feeling the pressure of the subway car’s metal against my two storey house sized vulva. It would’ve felt much better to put a live person inside, to squirm for my pleasure. Well, the day has only just started and there are plenty more cities that have yet to have been graced by our presence so I think I’ll find someone (or a few dozen) for that.

While I was using my vaginal muscles to ‘Play’ with the subway car Tom had found his other shoe and put it back on his foot, putting an end to the otherwise endless rising steam cloud. He restored his body temperature to normal. The entire city was a catastrophic mess, a real Hellscape. Molten steel and lava were now pooling around my running shoes and much of the city was either on fire or being slowly encroached on by the slowly moving lava. “Doesn’t look like there will be much more fun to be had here” Tom surmised as he surveyed the destruction. “Let’s go to a nice beach while this city cools off” he said. I liked the idea of the beach, better still if it could get him out of those ridiculous winter clothes. “Does Manly Beach, Sydney sound good to you?” I asked him. “Manly Beach it is babe”. We then teleported ourselves to Sydney, at normal human size and we used our powers to create swimwear for both of us. I dressed in a matching blue bikini and sandals; my husband only had his red speedos and sandals.