There Goes the Neighborhood (Chapter 8) (Patreon)

“Sassy, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rachel gawped. The woman wasn’t usually one for swearing, but the insanity of the scene called for it. She couldn’t believe her eyes. At a time like this, when the two of them were about to go to war with literal nations, her monumental daughter was actually playing dress-up? Somehow this information was even more difficult to process than the news that Sassy was purposefully bouncing her long, happy feet up and down on Europe just to see what shapes she could make in the flaming rubble.

“I’m getting ready, Mom,” Sassy replied matter-of-factly, in an odd state of serenity. In fact, the girl sounded more at peace than she had in a while. She judiciously straightened the straps of her dress on her shoulders, then set about dragging a comb through her hair. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re trying on your prom dress, which I still say was NOT appropriate for a school dance, when you should be running out of here with me. We haven’t got much time!”
 “I thought you wanted me to stop crushing the little people, Mom? How am I supposed to do that if I go back outside so fast? What’s the deal with all the switching?” Sassy asked rather reasonably, as though her mother was the one making no sense. “Also, I definitely didn’t forget how much you hated my prom dress, so you don’t have to remind me. It was still the sexiest thing anyone was wearing there, and that’s a fact. I think when the whole world sees me in it, they’ll agree.”

The evolution into a hundred-mile goddess had not only made Sassy’s body swell to magnificent proportions, but evidently her ego as well. Rachel was usually glad of her daughter’s self-assurance and confidence, yet this situation was going beyond mere “girl-power.” Sassy was turning herself into something higher, and she had the attitude to match. Suddenly, Rachel realized she was a little frightened of her own daughter and her absolute belief that the world was her playground, even though the mother herself was just as tall if not taller than her child. However, there was no time to argue the point here.

“Never mind that damn dress!” Rachel scowled. She snatched her daughter by the hand and tugged her toward the bedroom door. “We have to leave, because your brother saw a report that they’re getting ready to retaliate against us. They’re going to ATTACK the house for what you did over there on the European coast. Do you understand me, honey? That is why we have to GO, NOW!”

“Mom, I’m pretty sure this house is way too big for them to do anything to hurt us,” Sassy replied, rolling her eyes. Her red high-heel drummed on the carpet with impatience. “They couldn’t even get through the walls if they all shot their teeny missiles at the same place at the same time. Believe me, we’re completely safe. It’s-”

At that moment, there was an anonymous roar from somewhere outside. It reminded Rachel of an old engine starting to life, but there was no machine large enough to generate that sound. Then it came again, and this time, the foundations of the house trembled. Sassy, looking anxious for the first time, clutched her mother’s hand.

“Let’s go. Hurry,” Rachel urgently whispered, and with that, the mother and daughter took off running for the stairs. They barreled for the door, and rushed through, just as another microscopic complement of carpet-bomb nukes hit the wall of the house and set it aflame like a candle.

Bricks and splintered rafters the size of cities plunged from the family home, the fiery debris landing around the site and crushing just as much living landscape below as the oblivious footsteps of its occupants already had underfoot. In the nick of time, the country-smashing parent-child team had run to safety, but stayed nearby, bathed in the balmy heat of the fire and, unknowingly, a side effect that had already begun to transform them again.

Rachel, gasping at the destruction left in the wake of the military’s attack, held her daughter close for support, breathing heavily and trying not to panic, while Sassy herself entered a strange calm. The towering nineteen-year-old regarded the nuclear bonfire of their old home, gradually frowning and biting her lip. She balled her fists until her knuckles popped. Previously, she’d only wished for the speck-sized citizens of the planet to see her in her fabulous figure-hugging crimson dress and spiked ruby heels, to admire and respect her immense advantage over them all. She had believed they’d see her and her mother as their superior, and find coexistence as hundred-mile goddesses above their grateful populace.

Now, however, evil mite-sized men taken away her house, and tried to do the same to her life. Those insectoids down there had actually tried to destroy her, one of the two largest and mightiest creatures to ever walk the globe. Perhaps humanity didn’t deserve an idol, she considered, but instead someone to cleanse them of their arrogance with the holy instrument of her feet, encased in these sexy glimmering stilettos. Rage stirred quietly in Sassy just as fervently as the horror in Rachel, and both giantesses were so overcome with their respective feelings now, it took several moments for either to notice the drastic change taking place.

In fact, mother and daughter had expanded tall as the flaming wreckage of the two-story house before they realized something was happening. Yet despite their emotion, upward they stretched, not just at a gradual pace, but in shooting spurts, doubling and then tripling their heights, while the singed husk of the home glowed with nuclear radiation that soaked into the astronomic women like a suntan and made them grow again. Rachel let go of Sassy, first inspecting her daughter to make sure she wasn’t hurt, then herself, until both women stopped their height-burst when they were each just taller than the chimney of the collapsing house, which meant they had to be close to four hundred miles tall each.