Public Relations

Megan had not expected the cops to be an issue. And yet, having disposed of them with the ease she had was a massive turn on. The titaness felt her cunt wetting again as she stepped over the rubble of the building she had tossed at the police force, ready to keep moving down Anderson Avenue and towards the Seagulls Stadium, where she had told the press to gather.

“God! If my libido keeps at this pace I will need to do half the city’s population by sunset!” she muttered with a chuckle.

By now, Megan was anything but bashful, so she did not mind that half the neighborhood might have heard her words, even if they had only been intended for herself.

The road was still reasonably empty thanks to the efforts of the Stanton Police Department, but from her lofty point of view Megan could easily see that their attempts at evacuation had only achieved so much. Not even a dozen blocks ahead, the crowds were as thick as she was used to. And as was to be expected when a nine-hundred-foot-tall woman was roaming the city.

The Seagulls Stadium was in Stanton’s outskirts, so the giantess had to cross the city to get to her destination. At her current size, this would be merely a short stroll, but with the cops now taken care of, Megan realized that simply walking across a few miles of urban landscape would not do.

Megan was walking in the opposite direction than during her arrival in the city, and this resulted in the buildings flanking her advance getting gradually shorter. By the time she was barely a couple of blocks away from the mob, none of the structures on both sides of the street could make it as high as her clean-shaven and already moist crotch.

She chuckled as she observed the bug-sized people unsuccessfully trying to flee from her down the street.

“Can I give you a word of advice?” she asked in a mocking tone. “I’ve been a giantess for most of the morning, and I’m becoming quite an expert in goddess-mite relationships. And let me tell you: running down the street simply does not work. It’s simple math, really. I can cover, let’s say, three hundred feet with each step. It probably takes you half a minute to do the same. See where I’m getting at?” she teased.

Without further warning, the giantess took two steps in the direction of the crowd. The second one ended with her towering toes close enough to the crowd to bring the panic a couple of notches higher. 

“Now, you could think that you’d rather take your chances. You know, maybe I step where you are not. As a matter of fact, it’s more probable. But you know, this would be a very simplistic view. Because, you see, there’s so much more than a woman like me can do than merely stepping on you!”

Without further warning, Megan raised her right foot as high as her knee.

“Brace for the earthquake!” she mocked an instant before stomping down with all her might.

Megan was already used to the feeling of the road creasing and cracking as she stepped, digging footprints that were as deep as a person was tall. It was very different now. Her sole, driven by her wondrous weight but also by the almost limitless might of her muscles did not simply crease the surface of the road. It went through it and deeper into the piping level, digging a fifty-foot crater that soon filled from the several water mains she had disrupted.

Cracks formed in every direction, some even wide enough to swallow abandoned cars and unlucky pedestrians. No one was there to save them, though. For, everyone a dozen blocks around the humongous foot had been thrown off their feet, driven by the force of a magnitude eight earthquake.

Megan chuckled at the aftermath of her simple gesture, even more when she saw the cracks in the façades of some of the buildings around her.

“Wanna know the worst part around goddess-created earthquakes?” she asked, teasing.

Of course, no one replied.

“The replicas are somewhat whimsical,” she added with a chuckle.

She did not even wait for them to internalize what she had said before she raised her foot once more, stomping in the exact same spot, deepening the crater and widening the cracks. And then she did it again. And again. She stopped four stomps later, when the buildings on both sides of the street could not take the pounding anymore and started to crumble on themselves, burying a still not recovered crowd and sending columns of dust and smoke into the air.

Megan let out a long moan of arousal, the discovery of yet another way in which she could use her prodigious body to torture the crowd working wonders on her. Counting with those in the buildings, she guessed that she had buried a few thousand people without even touching them. With any empathy for the tiny bugs at her feet long gone, the giantess could only focus on the fact that her recent actions had been inspiring and rather amusing.

“Who did ever say that there were no earthquakes on the East Coast?” she mocked. Most of those who could have answered were now dead, lying under thousands of pounds of rubble.

Essentially without anyone to mess in her immediate surroundings, the goddess stepped forward, her soft sole crushing the debris into fine powder under the tremendous pressure of her weight, proving that what was a deadly avalanche to the teeny crowd was merely an inconvenience to her.

With those in the blocks around her silenced for good, Megan enjoyed a rare moment of quiet once more as she sauntered over the consequences of her whopping weight. It was in this sudden silence that she identified the already characteristic sound of the news helicopters, even if it was a bit faint.

It did not take her long to find them approaching through the South-East, coming back from wherever they had gone after she had politely sent them away while she was pampering herself in the river. The truth was that she had never told them when to come back exactly, but she guessed that the fact that she was back on the prowl qualified well enough.

Out of all the tinies in the world, of the billions of people that had suddenly become merely a means for her amusement, journalists were so far her favorite, the only ones she cared to protect as a group. Because, after all, they were the ones that could show the rest of the world her magnificence.

And Megan had to admit that her surge in size had come together with an even more pronounced boost in her ego. Having always known that she was smarter but without the means or the will to let others know, Megan Monroe wanted the world to realize her superiority. It was not enough to use the world as a dollhouse and to get off by doing it. She also wanted people to notice. She wanted them to realize about her unlimited power, about their worthlessness.

Adjusting her position to face them, Megan offered the choppers a warm smile as she beckoned them with her finger.

“Are your colleagues already waiting for me?” she asked. Of course, there was no way for her to get an answer, but she continued anyway: “Have you briefed them?”

She simply went on, as if she had got the answer she was expecting.

“Follow me. It will be a good show from here to the stadium. I’m getting better as a goddess.”

They complied. They always did. As would everyone, soon enough. Megan simply turned to face Anderson Avenue once more and kept going, crushing debris as she ambled slowly down the wide road, her eyes set on the next crowd as she thought on how to torture them in a way that would look good on TV.

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

Lauren Sheridan was nervous, just like every other reporter waiting in the parking lot of the stadium. And, like everyone else, she pretended not to be.

It had taken her half of the morning to accept that the stories about the giant woman were true. Once she had seen her with her own eyes, she had not been able to deny the truth anymore. And now, barely a couple of hours later she was getting ready to report on her.

Lauren had had no doubts when her station had sent her down to the stadium with a camera crew. This was too big, both literally and figuratively, to miss it. But now that she was here, she realized that she had no clue about what she was expected to do. A quick look around told her that, no matter how much they were trying to hide it, her colleagues were having similar thoughts.

“She is getting close,” a metallic voice said through her earpiece.

Almost in unison, the ground started to shake, heralding the arrival of the titaness. Lauren felt a shiver running down her spine. It was the first one. It would not be the last. 

The giantess came into view moments later, the relatively short buildings in that area of the city not able to hide her approach anymore. Lauren’s jaw dropped, the impact of seeing her live having nothing to do with that of seeing her image on a screen. 

For the first time, Lauren understood the sheer magnitude of Megan Monroe, the woman that was terrorizing the city of Stanton. 

“Oh, fuck,” Lauren muttered under her breath as the ground shook with increased intensity with every step of the titaness. She was truly a sight to behold. Perfectly visible despite the distance, the young woman was visibly satisfied with the situation, a permanent smile betraying her feelings.

There was no doubt that the woman was very comfortable with her complete nudity. It was not as if she had anything to be ashamed of, of course. Had it not been for her colossal proportions, Miss Monroe would have not had any issues in finding a job as a centerfold for any online man magazine. Of course, Lauren had seen her pictures from before her growth, but after seeing her towering over the skyscrapers in the city, she was very ready to accept that the once scrawny woman had become much more voluptuous in the process.

Now that the moment of truth was so close, Lauren knew that she should focus on preparing what she wanted to do with this weird opportunity they had been given. And yet, she could not. She was too transfixed with the sight of the strutting woman, her hips swaggering rhythmically as she advanced. The spell was lost when her shins broke spectacularly through a pair of short buildings that she had not realized that had been on her path. A quick look at the giant’s face showed what seemed to be complete oblivion at what had just happened.

“Fuck,” Lauren repeated.

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

The trek towards the stadium had ended up being more uneventful than she had anticipated. Of course, her path had crossed both crowds and inconvenient buildings, but by now Megan had already accepted them as typical nuisances a woman of her station had to face in the city.

Her heart filled with glee when she reached the outskirts of the city and could take her first look at the parking lot of the modern stadium of the local football team. Of course, her almost permanent entourage of news helicopters had already anticipated that the attention would be high, but even after all she had lived during the morning, Megan had to admit that the massive display of reporters in the area where she had told them to gather surpassed her expectations.

This did not mean that she did not understand it, of course. After all, she was the biggest news in mankind’s history. The way she saw it, the world would change more with her presence than it had done in the previous thirty centuries. And for the first time, the cause for the chance had decided to gather the press to let the world know what to expect.

Understanding it did not mean that she did not feel flattered, in any case. For the first time in her life, Megan longed for the attention. And now she had it all.

Aware that there were hundreds of cameras trained on her, the giantess forced her swagger a bit more, showing every inch of her towering body in its fullest sensuousness.

The feeling of having a large group of people not fleeing as she approached felt new. This did not mean that she could not sense their fear. And also their wonder. Not wanting to alienate them too soon, Megan stopped sooner than she normally did, about half a mile from the reporters.

Widening her stance, she placed her hands on her hips and looked down, sizing the crowd and getting ready for what was coming. There was silence for over a minute. Megan let the soft breeze coming from the sea cool her sunbaked skin and tease her long hair. There was little reaction from the journalists aside from the flashes of their cameras.

“Good afternoon,” she started, realizing that the sun had already got over her head and started its descent. The giantess used a soft, conversational tone, even if the power of her voice was more than enough to bring her words to the latest reporter in the group. “Thank you for having accepted my invitation,” she then added, as if she had really given them any choice.

There were some murmurs coming from the group. Nothing she could understand. She just went on.

“I’m really looking forward to having an interesting exchange with you. I realize there is a need for some ground rules, though. After all, this situation is very new. It’s new for you and it’s new for me. But I think I’m in a much better position to arrange things. So, listen up!” 

Of course, she had their complete attention. She decided to start by easing them up. They served a purpose, so there was no point in having them too concerned to do what she needed them to do. 

“First let me repeat what I told your colleagues down at the river. You are safe. I promised that any of you that showed up would not be hurt and I am a woman of my word. I only ask you two things: do your jobs and follow my instructions when it comes to the process. For the rest, you are free. You are free to go anytime you want. And you are free to ask anything you want without fear of retribution.”

As expected, she could sense some skepticism in the group. She was ready to address it.

“Consider this,” she stated. “I have nothing to gain from cheating you. I could very easily force you to do as I pleased. I could threaten you with what would happen if you did not comply. I could even make an example of some of you. God knows there is enough of you that a few less would not make too much of a difference. It would probably be faster and easier like this. But it is in my interest that you do as good of a job as possible, and this means having you relaxed and knowing that you are safe around me. Understood?”

She could sense a slight change in the overall mood, but nothing spectacular. She did not want to waste too much time in the introduction, so she just moved forward.

“Ok, so this is how things will work. I have a simple objective. I want people to get to know me better and to understand how the world is going to work from now on. Your job is to get the best out of me,” she said. 

Megan then cleared her throat and smiled at the awestruck crowd that was observing her at barely half a mile of distance, nothing by her new standards.

“I want this to be interactive. And I want you to be unafraid to ask any questions. I reiterate that I will not punish anyone for any question. And I also promise to answer them all. Now, let’s address the obvious fact that there are a thousand of you and one, colossal me. Here’s where we need some logistics,” she said.

Once more, she cleared her throat, also to give time for her words to sink in.

“I can hold plenty of you in my palm, but not the entire one-thousand of you. So, rather than you coming to me, I will come to you. I will get down to your level to make things more manageable. I will start with a brief introductory speech. Then I will let you ask me questions. Here is where the second important rule will apply. There is no way I can understand you if all of you talk at the same time, so you will raise your hand and I will pick who asks. I’m not in a rush, so don’t worry, you’ll have your chance. Whoever can’t follow this simple rule will be out of the press conference. I will ask nicely, at least the first time,” she said.

She exhaled softly and then added:

“Have you all understood?”

There was a general murmur of affirmation. It was enough.

“Good. Then, I’m coming. Hold your ground,” she said

Without further word, the titaness took a ground-shattering step forward.

 *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Megan Monroe, the Monster of Stanton, turned out to be a smart and educated woman. Lauren, like everyone else, had already suspected that, of course. By now, everyone knew she had been an engineer, and not a bad one. She did not know if these were good or bad news. Undoubtedly, the fact that she was the size of a skyscraper were the worst news of all.

In any case, Lauren had to acknowledge that the woman had set the rules of the game better than most press secretaries she had met over her career. Now, it was a matter of waiting for what had to happen and trying to do as good of a job as possible. She, for once, intended to ask hard questions. Strangely, she believed the giant woman’s assurances that their safety was guaranteed. Her justification was sound, and there was something about the way she had said it that conveyed honesty. And, besides that, Lauren did not know how to do her job in any other way.

Her train of thought was interrupted when a massive footfall shook the ground around her, forcing her to widen her stance to make sure she would not drop on her butt.

She was a mind-blowing creature. Of that, there was little doubt. Lauren craned her neck to see the approaching behemoth as she resisted two more brutal shakings. Her shadow started to cast on them as she approached and, looking up, her proportions started to be lost because of the perspective.

And then, with a speed and grace that felt impossible in a creature so large, Megan Monroe started crouching, her knees landing like meteorites on the road and forcing a few of her colleagues off their feet and into their asses.

She did not stop there, of course. Once her knees were firmly rested in a distance that started to be concerning but did not yet feel immediate, the giantess’ hands landed much closer to where they were standing. Being almost in the front row, Lauren swallowed hard when she saw her fingers digging the warm asphalt of the parking lot as if it were wet beach sand after the tide is gone.

Her mammoth body then kept coming, its immensity testing the limits of the journalists’ courage. Lauren had been an embedded reporter in Iraq once, so she was familiar with the feeling of fighting the urge to turn and flee. She doubted many of her colleagues had had a similar experience before. To their credit, very few of them actually fled.

The last part was probably the most awe-inspiring one, when the titaness stretched her body forward and folded her arms, resting her chin on them like a cute girl tanning on the beach. Her building-sized head took a life of its own as it moved, finding the perfect resting position. Once it did, her bus-sized lips curled into a naughty smile and twin hazel eyes that were the size of billboards focused on them. For an instant, Lauren felt like a deer caught in the headlights, so intense was her stare.

The woman’s lips then parted only slightly. A soft warm breeze soon caught them, ruffling their hair and making an already very hot day even stickier, making most of them sweat. A quick look up at the giant's smiling eyes was all Lauren needed to know that her casual exhalation had been on purpose, like a wordless introduction to the crowd.

“I’m so proud of you,” the titaness said in a soft and encouraging tone that made her bones rattle anyway. “You all stood your ground like champions!”

Lauren noticed that she seemed to be addressing them like children. It was somewhat offensive, but she decided to ignore it.

The giantess sounded cheerful as she addressed them again. 

“So, now, as I said, I will begin with some words. Listen carefully. I will let you know when the time for questions comes,” she said.

Lauren looked at her monitor, which was showing images of the scene as caught from the news helicopter her station had circling above them. It was surreal. Megan Monroe’s nude and picture-perfect body lay face down, highlighting every inch of its sensuousness to the world. If one ignored the surroundings, she looked like a glamour model in the middle of a photo shoot. It was not until one realized about the stadium and the crowd of journalists that she dwarfed that the truth about the situation sank in. The giant’s words took her out of her thoughts and forced her to focus as her powerful voice reverberated inside her head.

“Hello, tiny people of the world,” she started softly. “By now, you should have already seen plenty of me, but I thought that an introduction would be in order.”

Lauren did not have to do much now. Her cameraman was doing the heavy lifting right now, so all she had to focus on were the woman’s words. She devoted her full attention to them, though. After all, her job was to extract the next level of truth once she was done.

“I am Megan Monroe. Yesterday, I was a twenty-six-year-old civil engineer, but if these reporters right under my nose have done their job well, you probably knew this already. I’d rather use the time to tell you about what you don’t know,” the giant woman said.

She paused, and Lauren realized that it was deliberate. She was playing a role, and she had to admit that she was excelling at it.

“By now, you all know that I’m the size of a skyscraper. And you have all witnessed what this means when it comes to the power balance. What you probably didn't know was that I have been dreaming about becoming like this ever since puberty hit. I always wanted to be a giantess, a goddess among men. So, now that I am, you will notice!”

The words, uttered with such casualness, gave Lauren the chills. She had seen the giant woman in action and realized that she was now toying with them. It made her angry. But there was nothing she could do about it aside from listening to her.

“I’ve read every story there is about giant women and their interaction with men. I’ve enjoyed them all, especially those about giantesses rampaging in a city. I guess that you are all doing your research right now, but take a look at Amanda at Large, Monica XL or Enhanced and you’ll have a good idea about my inspirations. And if you are in a hurry, start by Janice in the City. God! You don’t know how many times I’ve done myself reading that one!”

The woman let out a chuckle while Lauren realized that she had probably been truthful when she had promised to answer any question. So far, it was clear that she was holding nothing back.

“Do you want to know what I thought every time I read them, though? I thought I could do better. Janice, Pam, Amanda, Monica, Susan… They are my childhood heroes, but deep inside I’ve always known that if I were given the chance I could be a better giantess than they were. I could be smarter, more original, more destructive, more successful,” Miss Monroe went on.

Lauren did not like where all this was going, but she had no choice but to keep listening.

“So, guess what? This morning, I woke up all hungover and magically became what I have always wanted to be. What you have right in front of you. And now, I finally have the chance to prove myself right, to prove myself and the world that I can be the best goddess ever to roam this earth, either real or fictional. It would be such a waste not to take it, don’t you think?” the woman said, winking.

There was a collective gasp around Lauren.

“As for what it means, well, you have already seen me on TV during the morning, so I guess that by now you have an idea.”

Her last words landed like a hammer on the group. They were not unexpected to Lauren, in any case. The woman’s tone had not deceived her for even an instant. Not when she had seen the casual horror she was capable of, and, more appallingly, her overall cheerfulness about it.

“I think it’s a good time to switch to questions. Ready?” the giantess said. And then, without waiting for any hands, she added: “Blonde guy with the black T-shirt and the jacket in the front row. Your turn.”

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

Megan had enjoyed her speech quite a bit, especially the hardly contained reactions of the hundreds of journalists under her nose. She had a feeling that she would enjoy the questions even more. The guy she had chosen was anything but ready to ask. She still gave him the time to get his shit together and figure a question out. No one dared to interrupt him or skin his turn.

“How… how tall are you?”

Megan chuckled. Wasn’t this a classic? In truth, she could hardly blame him. She had gone through quite a bit of work to find out herself.

“I am about nine-hundred-feet tall,” she said, getting a general gasp from the group. She loved how impressible they were. “Of course, I don’t know exactly. I would love to. One of the first things I’ll do once things are a bit more settled is have someone size me up properly,” she said.

She smiled as she looked at the shocked crowd. Then, she decided to improve her answer.

“Let me put that into perspective for you. I’m about as tall as the Eternis building, one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city. I can wade Stanton Bay and water barely reaches my lower thighs. A city bus is about the length of a finger. I can hold well over a hundred people in my palm. And I can step on plenty more than that. Look, I’ve been dreaming about becoming a giantess for most of my adult life, and even I was not prepared to understand the magnitude of the change. I don’t expect you will. But all you need to know is that I…am…fucking…superlative!”

Megan let a moan out while she enjoyed the groups shocked reaction. Then, she said:

“Next question.”

Dozens of hands shot up. She smirked, realizing that her bet had worked. Then, he chose mentally and said:

“Girl with the short brown hair and the Mickey T-shirt in the third row. You are cute, by the way,” she teased, showing off by giving enough details to make them realize that she could see incredibly well.

“How do we look to you?” the young journalist asked after a couple of seconds of hesitation.

Megan smiled and let out:

“Like bugs. Not very big ones, by the way.”

She could notice the general disapproval at her answer. The expression on the girl’s face showed disgust. She chuckled and said:

“Hey! I promised I would answer everything, not that you would like what I had to say. I’m not one for sugarcoating stuff. And the sooner you learn about the new reality, the better for everyone,” she said.

She offered them an arrogant smile, then looked for more raised hands.

“Boring guy in the gray suit with gray hair. Last row,” she said.

“How did you become so big?” he asked.

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? How does a regular, everyday girl become a goddess? Well, I’m afraid that the answer I can give you is not the one you would expect from an engineer. But as far as I can tell, the reason I’m so impressive is that I wished for it. Very hard.”

She looked at the crowd and saw that more than one of the reporters suddenly had a concentrated expression.

“Are you trying it?” she asked with a chuckle. “I’m not seeing anyone growing, so I guess that this must make me special, does it not?”

Megan kept scanning the crowd, looking for the next person to ask. Her heart filled with glee when her eyes set on the blonde middle-aged woman in the second row.

“Lauren Swanson! What an honor!”

The tiny woman was almost a legend, her hard interviews to public officials having become the standard on how to get information out of someone who did not want to provide it. Her ideas, leaning liberal, had been quite in line with Megan’s before her transformation. She had kind of admired her, back when she could admire someone that was smaller than her pinkie’s fingernail.

She smirked when the tiny woman lifted her face and kept her gaze locked with hers. There was even a bit of defiance on it. Megan liked challenges, and she realized that she was looking very much forward to the exchange with the mythical journalist.

“You are next!” she said cheerfully.

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

Lauren realized that she hated the young giant woman more than she had thought one could. She even found herself regretting having agreed to participate in the charade. Three questions was all she had needed to understand that Megan Monroe was merely playing with them, using them to have some fun while boasting about her villainess.

“Lauren Swanson! What an honor!”

The thundering words caught her off guard, almost making her jump backwards. She wanted to believe that it was because of the sheer power of the voice that was behind them, but she had to admit that having been singled out was somehow uncomfortable.

Lauren raised her eyes. Miss Monroe’s deep hazel pools focused on her, making her feel uneasy. She made sure not to move her glance away though and she could swear that this had brought a smile into the giant woman’s lips.

“You’re next!” the cheerful but thundering voice said.

Lauren was determined to change the pace of the interview, which was being excessively easy for the giantess. The world had already seen what she was capable of, the kind of monster that she was, but she wanted them to hear it too, to see her cornered and to erase that stupid smile from her humongous lips.

“You have killed people,” Lauren stated coldly.

The smile was still there when she replied:

“Oh, yes. I have killed a lot of people. It’s not as if I have been keeping count. It’s kind of worthless when one is as large as I am, but if I had to give you a ballpark figure, I would say that I ended at least a few tens of thousands of lives.”

Lauren felt horrified. She was not expecting a denial. But she had not even tried to justify her actions, tried to offer an excuse for her behavior. She had not even associated the deaths to some ultimate objective. She had simply admitted them. And while doing it, she had even sounded proud about it.”

“You don’t seem satisfied with my answer,” the giant woman said, almost playfully. “Please, go on,” she then said.

“You don’t seem to feel any guilt,” Lauren said.

The giant’s smile enervated her once more. Her tone was as mocking as it had been so far as she replied:

“I think I outgrew guilt earlier today. Along with a few other things…” she said, changing her voice to an icier tone as she started moving.

There was a collective murmur as the woman’s humongous arms started to unfold while her head slightly lifted. Her mountainous breasts soon became visible, the massive mounts of flesh digging the ground as they rested on the warm asphalt. There were some yells as the giant’s right arm stretched and cast a shadow over the group. Many of her colleagues dropped to the ground with their hands on their heads as the arm passed over them. Lauren did not, and could hear some metallic groans on her back as the shadow kept moving over them. It was all over a couple of seconds later. By the time it was, Megan Monroe’s colossal hand was back in front of the group, holding a bright green van with a red ‘Eight’ painted on the side and a characteristic satellite dish on its roof. Dwarfed between the woman’s fingertips, the twenty-foot van looked even smaller than the smallest miniature Lauren had ever seen.

“For the record… I promised to keep you safe. Not your stuff,” the giantess said in her now usual derisive tone. Just an instant later, her fingers came together, crushing the van into a coin-shaped mangle of steel, much to the dismay of everyone around her. She opened her fingers slightly, in a gesture that Lauren interpreted as offering a glimpse of her power to the audience. And then, she just tossed the diminutive piece of junk over her shoulder.

It took her a few moments to get back to her former position, resting her head on her folded arms. No one dared say anything while she maneuvered.

“Was this a good enough answer for the great Lauren Swanson?” she then asked. 

Lauren could feel her colleagues’ eyes piercing her back. She decided to hold her ground and shake her head. It made the giantess smile.

“What are you waiting for, then? Shoot!” Megan Monroe said, eyes fixed on Lauren.

There were some murmurs of protest around her. She understood them. This was a press conference. She had already asked two questions and was getting ready for a third. Miss Monroe cut them right away.

“My show, my rules. Swanson gets to keep asking until I say it’s enough. Anyone that is not fine with the arrangement is free to leave.”

Of course, no one dared to protest any more. No one left either. Lauren could still feel some angry glances as she stole everyone’s thunder.

“So, you are fine with being a murderer,” Lauren pushed. Once more, the sarcastic smirk on the woman’s face pushed her buttons.

“Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god,” she said casually, making Lauren’s hair stand on end. “As you’ll know, the sentence is not mine. It’s from Jean Rostand. I can say that I stand fully behind it, though.”

Lauren’s blood was starting to boil. She did not even wait for permission before letting out:

“Or a monster,” she said. “People are starting to call you the Monster of Stanton!”

The giantess let out a loud laughter that felt like thunder.

“The Monster of Stanton! It doesn’t sound bad, does it? I don’t think it’s fair, though. I look much better than any monster, wouldn’t you agree?”

Lauren could not believe that she could take everything with such levity.

“What are you then?” she barked.

“For lack of a better word, you could call me a goddess,” the thundering voice came back.

“You think that being big makes you a god?” Lauren asked, almost as if she was talking to someone crazy. She could tell that Megan Monroe was not crazy though, even if she had a clear case of megalomania.

“Come on, Lauren,” the titaness said. “Don’t be narrow minded. I held you in higher regard than this. It’s not merely the size. It’s all about the power, in the end. And no matter how much you want to deny it, the balance of power in this world has shifted for good to a situation where I essentially have it and you don’t. I don’t want to get too philosophical, but I think it’s clear that I have the power over life and death when it comes to you. You, on the other hand, don’t even have the power to scratch one of my fingernails.”

There were a few moments of silence. The giantess filled it in soon enough.

“Let me try to illustrate it in a way that you may understand. There are ten million people in this city. If we decided to go for a game of tug of war where I held one end of the rope and the entire population of Stanton was pulling in the opposite direction, who do you think would end up winning?”

Lauren did not reply.

“It would not even last a second,” the giantess added.

“So, that’s it? You are a goddess? So, what do you expect from us? That we drop on our knees and worship you?”

There was a roaring laughter once more.

“Hardly. I’ve never been too much into religion, even less into founding my own,” she said.

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Lauren asked.

“Oh, but you are doing great! I could not ask for anything else than you to keep doing what you have been doing. Running. Screaming. Fighting back. A rampaging giantess could not ask for more!”

As she listened to the sentence, Lauren felt a shiver running down her spine. And then, she said out loud what she had realized.

“You have not made any demands.”

“Smart girl,” the giantess said. “I don’t have any demands. Well. I guess as long as all you tinies keep entertaining me and letting me indulge my fantasies, we will get along just fine. It might not be a long time for you guys but trust me it will be a delightful experience for me.”

Lauren did not know how to continue the questioning after that. Megan Monroe had, apparently, not finished.

“I’m having the time of my life, doing what I’m doing. It’s also a bit of a challenge. I set myself the objective of bringing this entire city down by tomorrow morning, and it’s obvious I’m behind schedule. I know it would be easier for you to understand it if I were merely after something. But I’m not. This does not mean that I’m not going to take over the world, of course. I mean, there is really no other scenario that makes sense other than me ruling, now that I’m here. But I will start thinking about it tomorrow. Today is play day!”

Lauren was too shocked to go on. The titaness seemed to notice, her smirk revealing that she felt she had won the exchange.

“Any further questions, Miss Swanson?” she asked cutely, despite her thundering tone.

Lauren simply shook her head.

“Good. Who’s next?” the thundering voice asked.

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

Megan kept answering some questions for a while. As usual, she was true to her word. The press conference extended for well over an hour, an hour she enjoyed enormously. Eventually, she led it to its ending.

The crowd under her nose shrieked as she moved abruptly and without warning, starting to stand up again. She wanted to be towering over them as she gave them her parting words.

“This has been… enjoyable. It’s time for me to get back to work, but I did not want to leave without ensuring your future safety. This city is about to become a living hell. I should know, since I will be the one turning it into that. I promised you that you would be safe and I intend to extend the validity of that promise up until the point where I’m done with Stanton. I may even give you a follow up press conference, if you are up for it. I can’t do that if you are dead, though. So, here’s the deal: get into the stadium. When it comes to me, the Seagulls Arena is safe ground. I’ll take measures to make sure you are isolated, as well. Your colleagues in the air are also free to follow me without any fear. Stay tuned to the images. I’ll put a good show together!”

Megan waited for a trickle of journalists to head to the stadium gates. Happy with it, she just turned and put some distance with them. Once she was sure that she was far away not to cause critical damage, the titaness stomped her feet on the ground repetitively, digging an impassable trench that effectively cut off the reporters and the stadium from the rest of the world.

Utterly happy with herself, she now knew that she was ready for the next step. First, she would cut any way in and out of the city. Then, she would bring it down. It was simple. But the most enjoyable things in life usually were.