Attack of the 200-Foot Cheerleader (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Emma’s memory of the previous night was a hazy blur. This wasn’t totally unexpected, considering what a raging success the post-homecoming game blowout party had turned into. After their victory on the football field, there was laughter, dancing, gaming, and all-around revelry that lasted late into the wee hours, during which the eighteen-year-old cheerleader had the absolute time of her life, socializing and bouncing to the music and enjoying the enraptured attention of pretty much everyone who passed her at the party, given the way her gymnastically athletic physique shined in her white-and-blue midriff-bearing cheer squad uniform. Emma wasn’t exactly stuck-up, or at least she didn’t think so, but it still felt undeniably good to have such princess-like focus placed on her by her school peers, like moths drawn to flame, and she knew how to work that spotlight.

Despite what fun they’d had, however, the girl was certain of one thing: she hadn’t tried any of the drinks or other illicit substances some of her rowdier friends had, no matter their peer pressuring attempts to make her, which might’ve helped explain her fuzzy memory. Because as popular and chased-after as Emma was, she also happened to be one of the school’s brightest academic stars, and there were certain expectations for her future success that were guaranteed with a family of such prestige and old money as hers. For that reason, the girl made sure not to partake in any “activity” that might endanger her good standing, or her ability to study for an upcoming AP exam, no matter what some of the more obnoxious football players had said in attempt to make her loosen up. Emma knew for sure that she’d wandered out of the house party still sober in order to avoid the crowd, had stumbled in the backyard darkness just by the adjoining woodland, and after that, all she could clearly recall was a blinding beam shining down on her from above: a more-literal “spotlight” than the magnetic attention she’d gotten at the party. Then everything went blank after that.

And there was no question in Emma’s mind that her memory was missing some important pieces, because when she blearily awoke to the misty next morning, she was not only located miles away from the house party and lying in the middle of the school football field without explanation, but appeared absolutely humongous, in perfect proportion, as though the world around her had dramatically shrunk. Or, more accurately, as Emma somehow managed to get her bearings despite the impulse to believe it was a dream or simply panic, she herself had grown to a colossal size: two hundred feet tall, exactly, which she was able to determine using the handy yard line markers on the playing field like a ruler. The beautiful ingenious wealthy young brunette, still dressed in her form-fitting squad uniform and white sneakers, with her hair tied back in a ponytail, was literally more than half the length of an entire football field. She checked herself over for any mysterious wounds, but found none, although her uniform was annoying dusty and grass-stained now. Nothing seemed out of place, except for the major shift in her stature, a slight headache, and the lost pieces of her memory. Had someone spiked her fruit punch last night without her knowing? Maybe slipped some kind of hyper-advanced VR goggles over her face, and she didn’t realize it yet? Or, cliché as it was, could this just be a bizarre dream she’d failed to wake up from yet?

No possible explanation made any rational sense, though, especially once Emma reticently stood up to her full enormous twenty-story grandeur and looked down on the miniscule doll-like landscape of her hometown below. It made her feel slightly dizzy at first, to be looking around from so high-up, but the newfound giantess soon got over this sensation, planting her hands on her hips and firmly rooting her gigantic sneaker treads against the field turf until she could feel the soft ground squashing down into cratered depressions shaped like the bottoms of her shoes. Logically, she knew she should have been bewildered and terrified now, and yet something having to do with that mild headache made her feel forcibly calm. Even satisfied with her size.

Granted, being as smart as she was, Emma was indeed made curious by the scientific implications of evolving to such a superhuman scale overnight, and also as something of a queen bee around the high school, she couldn’t deny that being this huge amplified her desire for being watched and adored by her many admirers. It felt good. Nevertheless, this situation was all so overwhelming, that the giantess thought she ought to be either bursting into tears or bellowing angrily for answers from whoever was responsible for this madness. But Emma did neither. Instead, she drew a deep breath, obeying some baser instinct she still couldn’t explain, and took her first lumbering steps forth, barely having to lift her truck-sized shoes to clear the fencing around campus.

Though it was still early morning, it didn’t take long for a girl of Emma’s immensity to get noticed by the public. As she marched down the center of the street, since naturally the sidewalks were far too narrow for someone of her size to fit, the inevitable seismic THOOOM of every cascading footstep quaked and rumbled the surrounding brick-and-mortar buildings like porcelain vases balanced atop wobbly tables. Emma did her best at first to keep from outright stomping her worn white undersole treads into the concrete, knowing the sight of her two-hundred-foot form was sure to shock the populace almost as much as it did her, and she had no desire to terrify them.

But at a certain point she also realized that even the gentlest slow-motion tiptoeing, for a being of her mass and momentum, still triggered imposing shivers across the whole miniature cityscape. It was impossible not to create a disturbance. So, deciding she might as well compromise, Emma began strutting forth with her normal gait as if she was still five-foot-five and making her way through the school halls, not bratty or showy in the way she held herself, but also not sheepish or anxious either. She was simply herself, appropriately proud and knowing her grand worth, albeit large enough now that she could’ve dwarfed the fictional fifty-foot-tall woman from those old black-and-white movies literally four times over. Sure, the ground-roil of her thudding soles might unnerve some people, but she hoped her usual winsome smile might make up for that – plus, she was doing her best not to step on any cars, most of which were small enough to fit several of them beneath her treads at once, and she had a feeling that it would only take one accidental stride to squash the frames into scrap husks like broken Hot Wheels.

As a result of Emma’s booming footsteps through town, which not only tremored the stone-and-steel architecture she now towered so high above but actively crushed impressions into the hardy streets as if they were made of beach sand, citizens began to emerge from their homes and businesses in a bug-eyed jaw-hanging stupor. Curious and amazed crowds, many of whom even thought they recognized this prominent member of the local school’s cheer squad, soon gathered just behind the giantess’s trodden path of thirty-foot-long sneaker prints now caved into the ground, taking pictures and calling out her name and trying to decide how this phenomenon had occurred.