She wasn’t surrounded by complete silence, but everything was still wonderfully, beautifully quiet.  The warm glow that had surrounded Laurel started to wear away after another moment,, and as she began to feel the cool air moving across her bare flesh, her eyes slowly opened.

The world around her was gone.  Ryan.  Fitch.  Work.  Love.  Fear.  None of that existed anymore.  Laurel’s head rolled back on her shoulders and she took a deep breath, staring into the deep, clear beautiful blue that surrounded her as she wiped away her tears.  She wasn’t part of that world anymore.  Those weren’t things that mattered to her anymore.

Another deep breath steadied her somewhat, and her eyes slowly turned back down towards the ground.  That world wasn’t gone, it was all still there.  The countless minuscule matchbox houses spreading out at her feet were interspersed with a spider web of pavement that spread towards larger concrete veins and led out into the city itself, and slowly Laurel began to recognize and understand everything for what it is.  She could see the streets she drove day after day to take her to work.  She could even see the recognizable cluster of tall buildings in the distance that surrounded her workplace itself, though the smaller, squat structure where her company kept its less-important offices wasn’t visible in the shadows of those greater buildings.

Suddenly, she knew what she was going to do next.  She still had a purpose, and she was going to see it through.  First, though, she needed to do one more thing.  The apartment building she’d burst forth from as she grew and ascended into the heavens lay in ruins, more than half of it reduced to rubble from her rapid expansion.  Still, somewhere inside there were the last bits of Laurel, the timid secretary and frail little woman.  Somewhere inside there was the MARTI.  Somewhere inside there Ryan might still be alive, calling out for help or even stammering his betrayal of her love and trust to a 9-1-1 operator.

Laurel’s colossal foot slowly shifted and steadily rose from the rubble, but she didn’t have to raise it far.  There was no trace of hesitation as she began to lower it back onto the building, shifting the slightest bit to cover the entire structure.

For all the sorrow she anticipated in ending the life of the one man she had ever truly loved, Laurel was wholly unprepared for the electric rush that sent a shiver through her core and danced across her skin once she started to feel the wood and concrete crumbling and collapsing beneath her bare sole.  An entire building, more than a dozen people, she was sure, and now they were all being erased because she’d decided to just fucking step on them.

A  faint, unbidden moan passed from her lips as her heel rose and her toes spread and she twisted her foot, relishing the idea as much as the sensation of grinding everything beneath it to a pulverized mess at the bottom of a crater.  They were gone, just gone, along with Ryan and along with the old, weak, powerless Laurel.

She raised her foot after a moment more and turned it across her knee, examining the unrecognizable powder clinging to the ball of her foot.  A faint, playful chuckle erupted from her lips as she brushed what she could from her sole and set her foot back to the ground, aiming for the street and carelessly crumpling a few cars beneath it as her weight shifted forward.  Her other leg swung through the air and kicked a few more vehicles out of the way, sending the half-smashed metallic hunks and their instantly shattered occupants careening through the air and crashing into the apartment buildings lining the other side of the street.

Laurel had nothing against the cars or the people in them or really anyone who lived out here, but they did happen to be in her way.  After all, it was time to go to work.

*****

Every city and town of note had to be prepared for catastrophes, emergencies and threats.  Reports circulated swiftly, and first responders came rushing to their posts.  Sirens screeched through every corner of the city’s streets, and the choppy buzzing of several circling helicopters, both news and police, helped fill the air in the moments between the sirens’ wails.

There were no guidelines, however, that prepared anyone for the presence of a nude skyscraping goddess purposefully striding towards the metropolitan center.  Fortunately she had chosen to stick to the streets, though they weren’t nearly wide enough to accommodate her colossal feet, and casualties were starting to pile up as buildings and people unlucky enough to be trapped on the road vanished and flattened beneath each of her dispassionate steps.

Terribly few people had ever described Laurel as beautiful during her life, but now, as she towered over the insect-sized population of her hometown, there was no shortage of men that couldn’t resist staring longingly at her from the perceived safety of their windows or through the screens of their televisions.  Maybe it was the seductive sway of her hips as she placed one foot in front of another, keeping to the straight path the streets laid out before her.  Maybe it was the alluring smirk and the majestic confidence radiating from every inch of her towering form.  Maybe it was simply that she so unbelievably huge, but to many, many people that watched her move with such ease and casual grace towards the city, trampling and crushing anyone in her path while wearing nothing but a self-assured grin, she was all that was beauty and power.

When the street became narrower and the buildings a bit taller, Laurel paused at the outskirts of the city proper.  News media was still scrambling to cover the events as they unfolded, but enough stations were carrying live footage of what was being called the Giant Woman Attack that much of the nation held its breath while waiting to see what the giantess would do next.

Laurel’s eyes widened a bit more as she spotted what she was looking for, and her smirk expanded to a full-on grin as she reached out and snatched a news helicopter from the air with all the ease of a girl capturing a fat, lumbering firefly.  Collective gasps rose from in front of thousands upon thousands of television sets as the world marvelled at how something so unbelievably colossal could move so quickly.

America stared through the eyes of the camera and the woman’s face filled the screen, her bright and laughing eyes peering through the souls of every person watching.  So many leaned forward in their seats as they watched her close her eyes and take a deep breath, and when she looked back into the camera, her cold stare was nearly as startling as the way her low, soft voice rolled out through the air like a peal of feminine thunder.

“Evacuate the women and children,” the giantess declared.  “No men leave the city.”

A long, terrible pause followed before her voice filled the air once again.  “You’ve got five minutes.  Cross me and you’ll all pay.”

Despite the harsh warning, even those inside the city limits couldn’t turn their eyes away from their screens just yet.  It just simply wasn’t possible to look away from those huge, dark eyes, but after another long moment they were replaced for the briefest of instants by the sloping curve of her fingers curling in on themselves.  A trio of bloodcurdling screams rang out from the speakers of every observer’s set, but even that was quickly mitigated by the blasts of shattering glass and the screeches and groans of rending and collapsing steel.

Blackness filled the screens as the noise continued for a moment longer.  Far too many found it impossible not to give every iota of their attention to the cacophony sound pouring from their televisions, so when the vile, wet squelches started to join the noise they all experienced them together.

Whatever panic had been building grew exponentially from that moment on.  While the news stations cut away from the static, taking a moment to give their sympathies to the chopper crew’s families and promising their viewers continued live coverage, Laurel opened her hand and let the mass of bloodied, balled up steel roll from her fingers and crash through the upper floors of a small building beside her, smashing and maiming several more as she put the little object out of her mind.

Her entire body was ablaze with passionate excitement and barely restrained lust.  Thousand and thousands of tiny little lives stared up at her, trembling in terror, and perhaps millions more around the world were watching her with their own morbid fascination and fear.  She had power, so much unstoppable power, and everything in her was begging to use it.  Crushing that helicopter in her hand had brought that indescribable rush of sheer exultant satisfaction running back through her body.

Laurel’s eyes dropped to the streets.  She looked out over the cars colliding and the countless tiny people scurrying about in blind panic like so many ants.  Five minutes or fifty, it didn’t really matter.  They didn’t look to be going anywhere, and what really mattered was that she’d given them a chance.  The whole world saw it on TV, and it was going to be her words they remembered.

Besides, why should she be bothered with keeping track of time?  It wasn’t like she was wearing a watch.

Laurel couldn’t resist grinning slightly to herself at that thought, even as she stretched her arm out towards the tallest building in reach.  She didn’t know what it was, but it was prominent, taller than the other buildings in the area, and while it wasn’t rounded in any way, it struck her as rather phallic in the moment.

Wasn’t that what all skyscrapers were?  Steel and concrete dicks raised towards the sky to stroke the egos of politicians and architects and financiers?

Fuck that, she thought as her fingers dug into the side of the building.  In one fierce motion Laurel shoved with all of her strength, expecting to send the tower toppling over, but the glass and concrete and steel gave way far more easily than she expected.  Her slender arm tore most of the way through the structure before it slowed enough to catch on a broad set of beams, and from there its continued momentum simply ripped the top half of the building away and sent it careening down toward the crowded street.

Laurel watched in fascination as the tremendous mass of masonry smashed to the ground.  She’d barely had time to notice how many people were in the shadow of the shattered tower, but as she watched it crash through smaller buildings and explode across the pavement, she was sure that dozens would die, either pulverized by the impact or eventually crushed and suffocated beneath the rubble.

It was so easy, so simple to just smash something so huge and significant.  It was like this massive building that she’d stared up at so many times when driving to her miserable job was made of nothing but tiny children’s blocks, and watching it break apart at her feet was Laurel’s first real indication of just how incredibly powerful she actually was.  It was amazing.  It was incredible.

And it felt.  So.  Good.

Laurel raised her foot and let it rest on the still-settling pile of rubble.  There wasn’t going to be a rescue operation.  There weren’t going to be survivors.  Her head snapped up, dark hair swirling in the breeze as she sought out another helicopter.  Her vision locked on it, the cameras inside letting the world look into her eyes as she started to press down.

The pile of rubble crunched and shifted beneath her foot as Laurel stepped down.  She couldn’t resist biting her lower lip as the ruined mess gave way, compacting and forming itself to the shape of her tremendous sole.  She thought of the people, trapped and pinned in the darkness, and the way they were slowly being flattened and crushed beneath her.  It was so deliberate, so ruthless and cruel.

And she loved it.

It was exactly what they deserved.  She almost certainly wasn’t ending the lives of men exclusively, but all of this was what men had build, and the women who bowed to their demands and allowed everything to come to this point were nearly as bad as the men themselves.

They were all guilty.

Laurel turned from the street, the ball of her foot twisting once more on the impromptu mass grave she’d so casually created.  There was no reason to hold back, nothing to keep her from going straight for what she wanted.

Business men.  Executives.  Fat cats, middle managers, and every prick in HR.  Her toes bulldozed through a few small buildings as she took her first step towards downtown, fully intent on cutting a path straight to the heart of the city.  Nearly every person trapped in that particular church and grocer pulverized without her notice, though the sensation of buildings crumbling beneath her foot was a thrilling new experience.

Her shins smashed through city blocks as she strode forward, though Laurel was in no rush.  Her knee drove through the side of a warehouse, and she took the time to kick her leg out with all of her unimaginable force, sending an explosion of rubble and smashed human debris scattering over the buildings and streets before her.  Her fists swung as godlike hammers, crashing through any structure in her reach too large to simply topple with her legs.  Every one of her limbs smashed through the air as she pushed on, the low grunts and growls of her efforts accompanying the whirlwind of destruction raining down on everything in her path.

That’s what she was here to do.  She was here to destroy.  To break, to smash, to kill, to crush… that was all she had left, but that didn’t matter one bit.  Destruction was all that she wanted.

By the time she smashed her way through to center city, the swirling dust of the devastation began to cling to her body, the dirt obscuring the gleam of her sweat-touched flesh.  Her dusty fingers pushed through her dark, matted hair, clearing her vision as she turned to glance over her shoulder for a moment, looking with satisfaction on the brutal annihilation she’d brought.

Hundreds and hundreds were dead at the very least, smeared into pavement or splattered beneath tons of stone and steel.  Where Laurel had been, nothing was left but ruin and death, and that was only the beginning.