Woke (Chapter 8) (Patreon)

The whole EquiSize chapter, who despite their commitment to justice had only days before had bitterly pondered the impact they could hope to have on this campus, now raised their voices as high as they could. They tirelessly waved their signs, marching in circles, passing more fliers, and again offering mics to the Betas to make their awful tales known. A shared atmosphere of empowered inspiration flowed between them all, fueling their continued efforts. For above them stood the newest and most vital member of the group for spreading the message. She couldn’t actually “march,” since even a single step would carry her far away from the campus’s largest building, but Kayla was egregiously present, ringing out with the same dedication as yesterday and sometimes even matching the fiery zeal of her Alpha and Beta cohorts. Holding a kindly-worded sign that could’ve covered the stadium, the Omega waved her message and clenched fists in midair, sending a flurry of urgent statements toward the board meeting along with the rest of the chapter in a combined voice to shake the heavens. The bricks separating them from the university board members may as well have been made of leaves.

Today adopting a kneeling position, so as to get herself closer to their more focused audience, Kayla used her magnifier app again to spy into the windows. From here she could see an amusing pocket-view of Alpha daily life, classrooms and faculty break rooms and student lounges, all full of miniature people pausing mid-activity and looking bug-eyed at the tremendous outsider. Ordinarily Kayla might’ve shied from this kind of contact, getting nervous and turning away, but today she stared right back. While there was a smile on her face and a sweet-tempered glow in her eye, since the last thing the Omega wanted was to antagonize the very people they needed to convince, the sight of this great being practically hovering overhead and looking in at the lot of Alphas like dollhouse residents was still more than enough to make many spines ice up.

Kayla, blissfully unaware of this intensified effect her probing gaze had on the dwellers within, scanned her view past every window and door, eventually arriving at the longest ceiling-length glass enclosure on the top floor. Sure enough, there was the meeting room, housing a long table stuffed with crusty patrician Alphas who hadn’t been able to get more than a word out to each other before the voices of EquiSize, and one particular member, inevitably snagged their attention. They looked to one another, a few exchanging whispered hisses and writing out messages on paper in terror of being overheard by this physical manifestation of Big “Sister,” but largely all they could do was look on and process the words being said to them. Through the vocal chaos, they received shouts for sweeping change in policy, hideous global stats, and horrific firsthand Beta accounts of crimes committed on this very campus. Every member gradually turned ashen-faced, a few for selfish memories of their encounters with the tinier race, but most because they’d never been this close to an Omega before, let alone one who was here to see them with so imperious a claim.

When the time came, then, the Omega, the Alpha, and the Beta frontrunners of EquiSize marked the cue for the final stage of their protest message delivery. James climbed into Erin’s hand. Erin then loaded them both into Kayla’s, and by just inching her palm a short ways off the ground, the Omega got her fingertips almost perfectly level with the top-floor board room window. Now in view, making a podium out of the ringed texture of Kayla’s bulbed fingertip, Erin and James waved beckoning hands at the board, still amiable yet insistent. The members, feeling they had no choice just by taking one last glance at Kayla’s inquisitive iris staring through the window like a security peephole, rose from their chairs and hustled to the glass.

“You have heard our voices before,” James said through his mic. The stutter had left his voice, and though his heart pounded, the women holding him up gave him strength. “You have received our list of very-reasonable amendments to the university policy, but it went ignored. Yet all we want, our group and my size-class, is to be seen and heard, to be considered equals, and given the protection we need.”

“It’s time,” Kayla said, those two words alone nearly shivering the board members to their knees.

“We demand a crackdown on all Alpha-on-Beta crime. No more blind eyes, no more lost reports, no more loose investigations,” Erin read off a handwritten page, not orating as kindly as her Beta or Omega friends. She meant business. “We demand designated, monitored paths for Betas to access the entire campus, where they can travel and socialize without fear of random attack. We demand special classroom accommodations for all Betas who request it. We demand a more impartial screening process for Betas applying to the university. We demand-”

“You’ll have it all!” a board member chirped. He said it so suddenly the others thought he might be getting ready to retch, and in fact he was. The others, infected by this vocalization of the fear they were already feeling from head to toe, fell in quickly. A rousing din of total agreement something like a boot-licking battlefield surrender filled the board room and even reached outside, causing all of the EquiSize chapter to fall silent in hopeful anticipation, until each and every member inside was waving, violently nodding yes, and plastering on self-preservation smiles.

Not a one could tear their eyes off the towering Omega, whose power and conviction radiated off of her so palpably that the board members might’ve literally turned against one another as survivalists if even one had dared deny these requests.

Kayla, for her part, didn’t notice this mood of defeated panic inside the board room, because she was too busy celebrating with the rest of EquiSize right on the spot. Erin and James exchanged a look, a pair of victorious smiles and only the most fleeting eyebrow-raises to acknowledge the beneficially catastrophic effect which the Omega had missed in herself. After all, who were they to dampen Kayla’s spirits, or anyone else’s, when such a sound triumph for social justice had been staked today? Indeed, change took a little sacrifice, and it was far better to sacrifice the feelings of greedy Alphas than the literal lives of Betas. Never to speak of the good-hearted yet slightly oblivious giantess’s one-woman protest magnitude again, the Alphas and Betas all crowded into Kayla’s open palms and let themselves be lifted toward her face for an impromptu dance party across her fingers, while her gratified smile beamed down on them all.

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THE END