Cleaning House (Chapter 6) (Patreon)

Spying her visage in the reflecting pool of the ocean, the giantess was stopped briefly in her stomping spree. She was used to seeing herself in the mirror, passing a hundred a day while mopping the facility, and could’ve sworn something was different. Her figure, generally average and even on the thicker side, had slimmed into more of an hourglass silhouette; her face, too, normally merely adorable and rosy-cheeked, looked strangely more model-esque, fierce and drop-dead gorgeous. Whatever was happening to her seemingly wasn’t only affecting her physical size; the girl was blossoming into a bombshell of a creature, the sort that would’ve made most men and some women go slack-jawed passing her in the street. Lucy’s self-satisfied laughter boomed and echoed in all compass directions as she thunderously strolled toward her home country. She wasn’t sure which part of the visit she was looking forward to more: her homecoming to show off her new size and appearance, or tracking down her employers’ corporate lab site, where she just might glean even more delicious stature.

Meanwhile Russian military forces had already shepherded their leadership into bunkers by the time Lucy arrived at their shores, but even then the mood was grim at every interlinked command center, barking pessimistic orders to one another while foam islands and mile-long feminine toes bulldozed through centuries-old cities and snowy tundra alike. Contact was previously made with England in hopes of identifying this mysterious titaness, whose face could only be viewed currently through orbital satellites or high-altitude aircraft. However, there was eventually silence from London intelligence, likely because their own bases had been reduced to pebbles, either curb-stomped right into the bedrock, or accidentally taken as souvenirs jammed into the crinkles of the unknown giantess’s sole.

Cursing this loss of information, and knowing the same fate was likely to happen to them soon with the beast’s trail headed straight for Russia, a match to the girl’s countenance was miraculously made from decade-old records: born Lucy Ivanov, a former citizen of the country, a woman from modest means whose last data showed her moving to London and working as a maid in a variety of odd-jobs, never saving much money or living in anything larger than a shack. No one, of course, had any explanation for how this apparently ordinary girl, with no higher connections or even special secondary education, had grown herself into a beautiful, omnipotent, country-wrecking leviathan who put the country’s strongest nuclear armaments to shame with the totality of her destructive motions. The network of underground command centers watched her in awe from planes, choppers, and satellite cameras, even following the social media feeds of terrified citizens tweeting pictures of the once-blue sky turned peachy and amorphous, the clouds replaced instead with flesh-divots constantly sifting while the owner of that godlike foot arched her sole and wrenched her toes, before finally bringing her foot down, making most of those pictures the final posts of the victims caught like mites under her weight.

Even at her slow walking pace, it was tough to keep up with a creature whose height was estimated to level out about halfway through the Earth’s thick three-hundred-mile atmosphere, her every stride covering distances of whole cities at a time. No matter the terrain, ancient stone metropolis or snow-peaked mountain, Lucy’s relentless march cut through the ecosystems and turned them into two-dimensional flatland. Several times during her walk across the massive country, for no evident reason other than pure entertainment value for the giantess, she’d slip out of her shoes to go barefoot for a while, spreading her toes and gliding her ped through towns until they spewed apart and stuck in her tan skin like luxurious beach sand.

Then, throwing down those hell-raining flip-flops again and reinserting her monstrous feet, Lucy resumed her gait with a pounding force that stamped the trademark zig-zagging tread shapes into every occupied province of Russia. On these occasions, she was less gentle than while her feet were naked, foregoing the chance to caress her toes and soles through the environment, and the girl instead began to solo a traditional Russian folk dance, or at least as best as she could remember after her time away from home. This activity was worst of all for everyone except Lucy, who couldn’t have looked more delighted. Each time she leapt into the air to the unheard music of her dance, the landing of her colossal body nearly caused the nation to sink into the ocean, though the girl seemed not to care, continuing her jaunt to her heart’s content, until at last she reached her destination on the eastern coast of the country.

The network went into a frenzy now as Lucy came to a stop for the first time. She was after something, hundreds of intelligence operatives reported to one another on secure channels. What did she want? By their combined forces, the Russian military and anti-terrorist groups determined that an international branch of Lucy’s own employer, a science-and-technology conglomerate, just so happened to be based on this edge of the nation. In fact, the primary facility stood only about fifty miles away from where the gargantuan girl stood.

By the time the Russians determined why she was there, none of their communications, fancy weaponry, surveillance equipment, or collected social media posts documenting Lucy’s unholy warpath could help. It was already too late. Hundreds of helpless government officials watched in abject horror as the deific girl knelt, pinching the entirety of the billion-dollar laboratory campus between the pads of her fingertips until it all vanished, and tossed the crushed flakes of the building onto her tongue. They launched a few atomic missiles at Lucy’s head in a last-ditch effort to prevent her from gulping, but these explosions registered in her mind more like ticklish dandelion petals grazing her cheeks. If anything, they felt good.

Lucy swallowed, smiling triumphantly as she awaited the effects.