The Star-Spangled Giant (Chapter 6) (Patreon)

Everyone stood, some cautiously approaching the windows for a better look at the commotion. Dark smoke clouded the view of the street. As it slowly cleared, however, the patrons inside and the stunned civilians cowering on the sidewalk could see that the explosion had come from the city’s second-largest bank just across the street and halfway down the block. Flames wreathed the marble entrance, while the smoldering remains left a wide-open hole ripped in the side of the high-rent establishment, revealing a row of steel safes within. While the aftermath of the bombing still rang in everyone’s ears, two armored vehicles rolled up to the bank.

“Uh-oh…” Nate mumbled, still dragged halfway across the table with his necktie in Ann’s grasp. Though her lips remained in a surprised pucker, the woman’s attention was now rightfully aimed at the attack outside. “Uh… duty calls, I’m guessing?”

“Looks like it,” Ann said. Already her voice had dropped its relaxed tone, taking on the focused quality required for hero work. Winking again, she delivered the promised kiss quickly as a wet peck on Nate’s mouth, with less of the passion their make-out would’ve otherwise entailed; time didn’t allow for more. “Stay in here, okay? This could get ugly.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Nate said, while Ann leapt from her chair and raced for the backdoor exit, already unbuttoning her blouse to change. Once she’d vanished, though, curiosity and fear made him approach the restaurant window along with the rest of the diners to observe the chaos.

Men in black body armor piled out of the military cars, close to two-dozen in count, armed to the teeth. Some took posts in the street, threatening civilians with their heavy ordinance, while others grabbed cables from the trucks and ran them inside the newly-blown hole in the side of the bank, attaching them to safes. It was a robbery. Once the cables were attached, the vehicles started pulling in tandem, grinding their wheels and eventually ripping the humongous room-sized safe free from the wreckage. Two cop cars appeared on the scene, drawing their pistols for a fight, but were forced to dive to safety as one of the men whipped out a grenade launcher and turned both police cars into fire pits.

“Everybody stay calm and get the hell back!” barked one of the criminals, apparently the leader. “Let us do our work, and we won’t have to send any of you home in bags. Just-”

The rest of the sentence caught in his throat, and his entire crew halted to gaze in shock at the alley across from them, just adjacent to the restaurant. A long shadow fell across the street, cutting through the smoke cloud and shrouding the carnage. As the silhouette, in the shape of a woman, came closer, it seemed to grow, stretching and widening until it swallowed the whole scene.

When Ann stepped into the street, now dressed in her Overwoman uniform, she stood at twenty-five feet tall. A modest height, really, by her usual standards, but it nevertheless drew all eyes to her like a magnet. Nate’s breath caught in his chest, hoping she’d be safe out of instinct, but also knowing in the back of his mind that, with Overwoman on the scene, the fight was over before it had even begun. He couldn’t help but smile at the swagger in her step and the resolve in her face, not to mention the way that sleek green-and-white costume hugged the sexy contours of her buxom bust, buoyant rump, and athletically toned limbs. Indeed, the suit lacked the generic cut-out shapes to show flesh like Nate had joked to her about, though the skin-tight nature of the specialized fabric may as well have done so. Her every detail was on display in this form, juicy and almost artistic, like a statue of a Greek myth. A real goddess.

“Get back, lady,” the leader warned. He took aim at Ann’s face far above his as the two-story woman approached. “I’m not afraid to use this, and neither are they.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” she snarked.

“You only get one chance,” he growled.

“So do you,” she said. Overwoman posed in a wide stance, her fists planted on her hips and her chin pointed high, while her long hair billowed in the wind. “All of you have exactly one chance right now to set down your weapons and turn off your engines. If you do, we can end this peacefully. If not… well, then you’re all going to end up like a bunch of action figures I played too rough with. So which will it be?”

Nate swelled with amusement and respect for Ann’s wit and her honorable offer of mercy. He knew as well as she did that this chance wouldn’t be accepted by the bad guys, but it was one she always offered nevertheless. Overwoman also always approached sticky situations at this “lesser” of her massive height options, showing a bit more humanity so as not to spook the evil forces into instant action, which is what they usually did if she started off instead with the more colossal, earth-shaking stature.

“You have three seconds to back off,” the leader counted. “One… two…”

“Oh, brother,” Overwoman said, throwing up her hands. Still, even from this distance, Nate could recognize that same twinkle in her eye: the anticipation of fun. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“…three.” The leader and his comrades opened fire, sending a hail of bullets in Overwoman’s direction. By then, of course, the superhero had shrunken down small enough to dodge all the flying metal, and dashed across the concrete at ant-size. While the troops looked on in confusion, along with the gathered civilians and blockade of cop cars beyond, Nate alone knew precisely where this was headed.

When the superhero reappeared, there wasn’t a person within a four-block radius who didn’t notice. Having positioned herself at the center of the robber phalanx while unnoticeably tiny, as was her modus operandi, Overwoman enlarged herself suddenly and swiftly. While the woman expanded, in perfect proportion to her form, Nate witnessed her every shapely feature filling up the spatial real estate. Her feet, clad in those green boots that fitted snuggly around her bare wriggling toes like elastic, ate up space, crunching the concrete beneath her hardened soles until they were the size of the armored vehicles, and then even larger. Her legs reached like pillars toward the heavens, thick and unmovable, displaying the kind of musculature in her quads and calves that could’ve allowed the giantess to sprint around the country without breaking a sweat. The rest of her hourglass figure, now dizzyingly high above, put her luscious curves up like billboard imagery, the growth truly accentuating her bountiful assets, like those hot air balloon-scaled breasts, but especially her butt, delightfully soft and jiggly (as Nate knew from experience) but with iron-tight glutes below the surface capable of demolishing architecture if she sat down too hard. Higher still, and from this vantage point seemingly peaking toward the clouds, the woman’s dark-red hair flowed like galleon sails. Then at last there was Overwoman’s benevolent yet determined expression, sporting a winsome smile on her pink lips while glowering at the gun-toting baddies around her ankles like the bothersome pests they were.

Overwoman now stood at no less than ninety feet tall when she finished growing, towering above everyone present, and even some of the downtown buildings themselves. Her rapid expansion knocked all the armed men off their feet and tipped over one of the armored vehicles just as the safe they intended to steal lurched into the street in front of the bank. The baddies were sprawled in disarray around Ann’s booted feet, much like the abandoned action figures she’d described them as. But Overwoman had far from completed her job.

“I told you so!” she boomed. She balled her hands into wrecking-ball-sized fists, and her biceps tensed beneath the fabric. Hunching over, Overwoman braced her middle finger against her thumbpad, held her in front of the leader, and flicked him. Her giggle echoed through the street. Meanwhile, the head honcho went tumbling like a rag doll, smacking into the wall across the street and going instantly unconscious. Around them, the crew regathered their bearings and continued firing. This time, however, Overwoman stood her ground, letting the bullets ping harmlessly off of her without a scratch.

Ignoring them for a moment, Overwoman lifted her foot up and placed it lithely atop the downed vehicle. Then she began to apply pressure, her leg muscles flexing through the costume while her toes scrunched and her sole crushed the armored husk below. The driver, screaming, dove from his door just as the giantess’s powerful foot bent the vehicle like a tin can and caused it to implode on itself, bowing completely to her strength.

Mission accomplished.