Kellie was feeling pretty good when she got off the bus near her house. She’d had no real trouble at school over her tardiness, and that tardiness had been due to saving lives. Until today, Elevator Girl had only stopped criminals, but today she had been a true heroine, keeping innocent people alive and safe.
Kellie climbed up the steps of the front porch. The house was an older one, but it was all her mom could afford after Dad died. The wooden porch was weakening and should probably be replaced, but it was beyond either of their knowledges or skill sets to do, and there was no money to pay for it. It had cost Kellie money she’d been saving to get the leather outfit she was using as armor as Elevator Girl.
When Kellie unlocked and opened the door, she got a shock. Mom was standing there, holding the leather bustier beside her, the hip boots on the floor next to her. Kellie could tell her mother’s expression was emotional, but couldn’t read what the emotion was.
Trying to buy herself a few seconds, Kellie said, “Gee, Mom, if you’re expecting someone else. I can clear out for awhile.”
“Don’t get cute with me, young lady,” Gemma said. “ I found these in the old coal bin in the basement. What’s the explanation for these?”
“You tell me,” Kellie said. “A costume party, maybe? I hope you’re not planning to go into a new line of work with them.”
Gemma’s face turned purple as she shouted, “Don’t try to make a joke out of this, Kellie! This is no joke! I know who you are! I know what you did this morning! I know … I know …”
Then Gemma collapsed into a heap on the floor, sobbing hard. It sounded like she was trying to say something, but the words were unintelligible.
Kellie shut the door behind her and ran to her mother. “Mom!” she shouted. Kneeling down and placing an arm on her mother’s heaving shoulder, the teen asked, “Are you OK?”
Gemma looked up at her daughter, tears still streaming down her face. “You’re Elevator Girl,” she said. “You’re Elevator Girl. How could you? Why didn’t you tell me? How could you do this?”
Kellie debated trying to dodge, but realized her first move was probably just to try to get her mom back under control of herself. “C’mon, sit on the sofa and we can talk.”
Once they were sitting on the worn yellow sofa together, Kellie asked, “Now, what makes you think I’m Elevator Girl? Not that weird get-up, I hope?”
“I saw you this morning on the TV,” she said. “And don’t deny it. It was you.”
“You’ve seen Elevator Girl on TV and the Internet before,” Kellie said. “If I’m her, why couldn’t you tell it before this?”
Gemma looked at the bustier and boots. “That outfit,” she said. “You move differently in it, and you’d never be caught dead in public wearing an outfit like that. I said she looked familiar, but couldn’t place her, remember? But today you were wearing an outfit that looked more like you. And then you were late for school -- just late enough to have taken on that Betty the Brick chick and then split for the school. And then I started putting it all together, and finally found that costume down in the coal bin. It’s the easiest place in the house for you to get out at night without my seeing or hearing you.”
Kellie looked at her mother’s eyes. “Not just you,” she said. “That comes out at a spot the neighbors can’t see, too.”
Gemma looked at her daughter. “Are you admitting it?”
Kellie put a hand on her mother’s hand. “Mom, I saved a bunch of lives this morning. I figure that was worth being tardy.”
Gemma’s face blanched. “So … you are Elevator Girl?”
Kellie nodded. “Yes, Mom, I am.”
Gemma’s lower lip quivered. Tears hadn’t really stopped flowing from a few moments earlier, but the flow picked up again. “Oh, god,” she said.
“Mom?” Kellie said. “I can usually tell how you’re feeling, but I can’t read you right now. How are you feeling?”
Gemma shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. So much I’m numb, I guess.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Gemma said, “I should probably ground you, y’know.”
“People will still need Elevator Girl,” Kellie said. “If I have to sneak out for that, I will. After all, with my powers, you couldn’t hold me here.”
Gemma looked at her daughter as if she were a stranger. “You’d do that?”
“Reluctantly, but, to save lives, yes,” Kellie said.
Gemma stared at the floor. “Well, I guess I can understand that,” she said. “Kellie, I … How did this happen? I mean, I figured out that you got some kind of size-changer from your Grandpa Blake just before he died.”
“How’d you put that together?” Kellie asked, astonished.
“You said Elevator Man was your mentor, so I looked him up online,” Gemma said. “One look at his picture, and I knew he was your Grandpa Blake -- a lot younger, but him. And he used a device to change sizes, and I’d seen Elevator Girl touch her wrist right before she changed, and you had that private meeting with him the day he died, and Elevator Girl turned up just after he died.”
“You put all that together,” Kellie said.
Gemma wiped away her tears. “Yeah, well, most people couldn’t,” she said. “Your grandpa was pretty much a recluse, and most people don’t know you well enough to know how you move, the little gestures and such. It took a pretty specific set of knowledge to start with to put this one together, and I’m kind of a unique holder of it. Your secret is safe overall.”
Kellie nodded.
“What I can’t understand is why your father never told me about this -- his dad, I mean,” Gemma said. “You’d think the fact that his father was a superhero would be something he might have thought to pass on. We didn’t keep a lot of secrets from each other.”
“Dad didn’t know,” Kellie said. “Grandpa told me that last day. Grandpa gave up being Blake Ross while he was Elevator Man, and gave up being Elevator Man when he took back the Blake Ross identity so he could court Grandma. He was never one at the same time he was the other; that’s why he didn’t wear a mask. The only person who knew about his hero identity before me was Grandma.”
“Oh,” Gemma said. “That’s too bad, really. Frank would have been so proud of his dad, if he’d known.”
Hesitantly, Kellie asked, “Does that mean you’re proud of me?”
Gemma’s breathing said she was near tears again. “You saved lives today,” Gemma said. “How could I be anything but proud of that?”
“Then what’s wrong?” Kellie asked. “If it’s that I covered it up --”
“That’s part of it,” Gemma said, “but not most of it. It’s just that … “ She looked up at Kellie, her lip quivering again. “I’m terrified,” she said.
“Of what?”
“Of losing you!” Gemma shouted. “I love you, Kellie. You’re my little girl, and the only one left in my family. The only one left in my household. I lost your father. I don’t want to … “ She dissolved into sobs.
Kellie put an arm around her mother. “To lose me,” she said.
Gemma, still sobbing, nodded.
Gently, Kellie guided her mom’s face up to look at hers. “Mom, I can’t promise you won’t lose me. Heroing is a dangerous business. But I’m trying to be as careful to stay alive as I can. That’s why I wear the leather get-up. It’s armor. And my powers help keep me safe, too. Besides, I’m Grandpa’s legacy, and Dad’s, too. I owe it to them to stay alive.”
Gemma grabbed her daughter and held her close. They both cried for a few minutes.
Then Kellie pulled back. “It’s probably best you know, anyway,” she said. “After all, there are bound to be times I have to be missing from school besides today. If you know, it at least makes part of my life easier.”
Gemma nodded.
“You OK now?” Kellie asked.
“I’m still terrified,” Gemma answered, “But I’ll help if I can.”
“Thanks,” said Kellie.
“For starters, let’s keep the get-up somewhere other than the basement,” she said. “That moisture down ther won’t be good for the leather.”
“Where would you --” Just then, sirens ran past the house -- a lotg of sirens.
“There’d only be two for a medical run,” Gemma said. “That’s something else, something big.” She ran to the TV and turned it to a local channel.
“We’re live at the scene of an upper-floor skyscraper fire,” a reporter said. “People are trapped in the building’s top floors. Efforts are under way to formulate a rescue, either with helicopters or tower ladder trucks, but the fire is moving fast.
“I know that building,“ Kellie said. “With my powers, I can be there in less than a minute.”
“Go!” said Mom. “We’ll talk more after.”
Ditching her outer clothing to reveal the pink tights, Kellie said, “I love you, Mom.” Then she grabbed a pair of gardening gloves, saying, "I'll need these." She made for the dining room window, situated above the old coal chute, flung it open, dived out and grew to colossal size.
Gemma turned and watched the television. In 57 seconds, Elevator Girl appeared, gingerly placing a colossal finger by the building so the (to her) bug-sized people could climb aboard. Once they were safely on, she lowered them to the ground, then used her colossal gloves to help smother the fire.
I’ll need new gloves
, Gemma thought. Then she saw most of the flames out, and the people on the ground cheering.
“Elevator Girl has saved the people from the upper floors,” the reporter said. “The city’s superheroine has saved lives twice in one day!”
Gemma smiled proudly. “That’s my girl,” she said.
Giantess World
