Subversion-Chapter 16 (Patreon)

Vicki backed up another step at the sight of the Scourge punching an 11 mile-wide fist hard into the ground. The blow took out one squadron of fuel air missile-armed drones and leveled trees for 30 miles around. Even Sylvia had not been nearly so terrifying a sight when she was 50 miles tall and much, much closer. “I-I can help.”

“No time. Colin would need to translate. We need him modifying Heather.” She glanced nervously at the collapsed guest wing of the late Overseer’s Mansion. “Assuming they’re alive.” She said, to herself and more quietly, “Please be alive.”

Heather cradled Colin’s head back against her breasts; Lydia cinched the makeshift splint around his left wrist. Heather winced as Colin cried out but kept her gaze fixed on the Scourge, who had lifted a 6 mile-wide chunk of Earth from the ground and flung it, like a meteorite, at a State base in what had once been Montana. She was grateful the titaness hadn’t just beelined for them—she’d have been on top of them already. “Colin, I know you’re hurt. But you need to modify me to stop her. Now.”

Pamela knelt, bent forward, and gently scooped up her seemingly .85”-tall husband from the remains of the escape tunnel on her 4’-wide index fingernail. “It’s time, Ray.” She set him down outside the mansion as he shrank her to her normal height.

Colin and his father both then both began to relate the modifications that had been passed down through the generations.

“Your skin, sclera, and mucous membranes, at their current thicknesses, are as durable as the aromatic polyamide poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide.”

“You are, with your current musculature and skeleton, capable of lifting 100,000 tons without injury.”

“The melanin in your epidermal cells and hair is photosynthetic.”

“The cells in your body can use carbon dioxide for all purposes for which they use oxygen.”

“The mitochondria in your cells manufacture sufficient metabolic water for full hydration.”

“Your upper and lower intestinal tracts can metabolize nitrogenous compounds, nitrates, nitrites, and water.”

“Your bones, if fractured or broken, knit within one second.”

“Your skin, if damaged, heals in one second.”

“During cellular mitosis, the genetic material in your body’s cells replicates without error or telomeric decay.”

At the end of their litanies—which covered matters like heat, cold, and something called “radiation,” and got faster as the tremors from the Scourge’s attacks grew stronger—Raymond and Colin finally delivered their size modifications to Pamela and Heather.

“Pamela, in fifteen seconds, you will begin to grow to 200 miles tall over the course of thirty seconds, and will then continue to grow 200 miles taller over the course of every 24 hours for four days or until hostilities against you cease, whichever is later.”

“Heather, in thirty seconds, you will begin to grow to 200 miles tall over the course of thirty seconds, and will continue to grow 200 miles taller over the course of every 24 hours for four days or until hostilities against you cease, whichever is later.” Colin smirked. “And for every instance that you have physical contact with someone you know to be related to the Travis family, you will grow 30% larger.”

Heather grinned and shook her head at him as she promptly grew to 8’2”. “Think you’re so clever, don’t you.”

“Just following your advice to really make you grow.”

Heather gently handed Colin to Lydia, bent over to give him another kiss, and grew to 10’7”. Her already ill-fitting shirt and pants burst open. And as she stood up, she inadvertently bumped Colin’s forearm with a newly-freed, 45-pound breast.

“Ow!”

Heather shrugged as she grew to 13’10” and tried to maintain a playful tone for his sake (and her own). “You have only yourself to blame.”

Colin’s eyes rolled back in his head briefly as he drifted down into unconsciousness. The pain in his arms was nearly unbearable. “S-stop her for me, okay?”

“I will.” Heather looked up and to her right as a series heavy (and deepening) thuds rumbled through the remains of the house. She saw the rapidly-expanding Pamela starting to run towards the Scourge. “We will.” She turned, leapt over and out of the ruins of the mansion, and started to run after Colin’s mom.

Lydia held Colin close to stabilize his neck. Then, with a few practiced jumps, she imitated Heather and vaulted them out of the remains of the manor She wanted to watch Pamela and Heather grow. Shortly after she landed and set Colin down, however, Vicki’s 30’-high fist closed around her and squeezed the air from her lungs.

Vicki lifted Lydia up 200’ to her face. “You’re going to die, you—“

“Vic!”

Vicki stopped and looked down at Colin. “What?”

“She’s cool. She helped us.”

“Oh.” Vicki turned her hand, palm up, and opened her fist. “Sorry.” She squinted at Lydia. “Wait. Weren’t you one of my dad’s bartenders?”

“Yeah. Once. I’m surprised you remember, given all the wine you drank.” Lydia seemed to realize something and whipped around see Heather and Pamela, who were now each fully-grown at 200 miles tall, running nearly side-by-side, and about to engage the Scourge. “You bitch! You made me miss the best part!”

A widening swath of the populace in what had been the Northeastern United States to Canada did not, by contrast, “miss the best part.” Those who had emerged from their homes to gape up at the Scourge were the first to see Pamela, a fit, pear-shaped, mid-50s woman with graying brown hair and modest breasts, thundering by on ever-lengthening strides as she grew from her normal height to 200 miles tall. One man who witnessed it would for the years to come tell anyone willing to listen about the “MILFnificent goddess” who kept her eyes on the ground and concern on her face as she ran, taking care to avoid stepping on any population centers.

More stories, however, would be told of Heather. Once her growth started, she began to swell nearly 4,700 feet larger per second. Her generously curved thighs flexed as they propelled her long, slender feet over a mile per stride—then four, then 50, then 100, and finally just under 200 miles per stride. She, too, wore a beneficent expression of concern as she kept her eyes on the ground and avoided stepping on any towns or villages. Few saw her expression, however. All eyes were fixed on her enormous, increasingly massive, swaying, unrestrained, 25 mile-wide, 16 trillion ton breasts...and/or her similarly gigantic ass.

A farmer from what had been Ohio stared openly at Heather’s boobs as her 32-mile-long foot impacted the ground just four miles north of him. Luckily, the impact shook him off his feet and down a small slope before he was hit by the shock wave that would have blown out his eardrums. “Damn. She’s even bustier than the one from the other day.”

His wife rushed over and pulled him to his feet. “You idiot! You could be killed out here!” She brushed off his arms and back. “Are you okay?”

He did not answer. He instead stared openly at Heather’s receding-but-growing ass and hips, which were above the clouds, in the cold of the stratosphere, and dimpled with 120’-high goosebumps.

His wife slapped his arm. “You’re fine. Get back to work.”

“The world’s ending! Can’t I at least watch?”

“It’s only maybe ending. People’ll need food if it doesn’t.”

“Yes, dear.”

The Scourge, who had just obliterated another State giantess interdiction base with an eight-mile-wide chunk of Canada, looked up to see Pamela and Heather charging at her. She initially smirked at them. The idiots had grown large enough to challenge her without considering that they would need air to breathe. She raised her fists and bladed her body at Pamela. Her smirk grew into a grin at Pamela’s concerned expression and halting, irregular gait. Her opponent had realized she couldn’t breathe.

Pamela, as she ran, signed, “Stop! You’ll kill innocent people!”

The Scourge’s grin faded immediately. The concerned expression wasn’t about air. It was about people. This woman was a threat to her. And Heather—who had reached 200 miles tall, was only barely trailing Pamela, and was both younger and more heavily-built than either of them—was possibly her equal. She would need to kill them both. Quickly.

Pamela barely had time to get her hands up to guard her face as the Scourge charged at her at 800,000 miles per hour, covering a quarter of Canada in just five strides. She cried out in pain as the Scourge’s 12 mile wide fist collided with her own 64.5 mile long forearm. The blow hadn’t broken anything, but it would bruise her nigh-impervious skin. The only consolation was that if the Scourge could hurt her, she could hurt the Scourge right back. Pamela, who was more commander than combatant, went to throw a left hook. She yelped as the Scourge grabbed her wrist, pulled her off-balance, and delivered an uppercut to Pamela’s chin 171 miles above the surface of the Earth.

The Scourge continued to turn her body with Pamela’s momentum. As she rotated, she squatted, pulled Pamela against her wide hip, and swung the titanic revolutionary into an over-the-shoulder throw towards Heather, intending to bowl over her other assailant.

Pamela felt her feet leave the Earth. She shouted in alarm, even though she knew the Scourge could not hear her. “No! Don’t, please, n—!”

The few survivors of the first State base that the Scourge had obliterated with a chunk of Earth had barely finished crawling out of the ruins when their world went dark a second time. They looked up to see Pamela’s lower back, 40 mile wide ass, and 100 mile long legs descending at them like a planet-killing asteroid. The clouds beneath her were blasted apart by the shock front that formed under her body. Superheated air formed a halo around her buttocks and lower back. Then, from the other direction, the foot of an equally large titaness slammed down an eighth of a mile from their base. The ground under the drone pilots heaved like the swell of a wave.

Heather watched in horror as the Scourge lifted Pamela and swung her down at the planet’s surface like a 200 mile-long club. The impact would kill thousands at least. Heather therefore threw caution to the wind and sprinted at the two of them, ducking as she went. With her left arm and shoulder, she caught Pamela’s lower back to stop her descent. The force of the impact drove Heather’s 11.5 mile wide, nine mile high feet down far enough through the Earth’s crust that she felt the heat of the mantle on her soles. In the next instant, Heather drove her right shoulder hard into the Scourge’s chest. She roared with exertion as she lifted both other giantesses and charged north, toppling the Scourge ass-first into Hudson Bay.

Pamela felt a brief sense of relief when Heather caught her. Then all of them were falling again. As the Scourge lost her grip and Pamela found herself headed Earthward once more, she tried to land on her hands and knees. The momentum was too much. She landed hard on her side and found herself rolling through an ice-cold puddle. She looked down and recognized the puddle as a massive bay she had seen on old world maps her parents had kept in their home. It meant they were close to the Arctic—a battleground that would, at least, be uninhabited. Pamela turned to shout at Heather to move the Scourge north. Her breath caught in her throat.

The Scourge felt her buttocks punch a crater in Hudson Bay to rival the one she had made in the Chesapeake. She also, for the first time in long centuries, felt genuine fear. These fellow titanesses appeared to be modified in exactly the same ways as her. As Heather straddled her hips and locked her thighs down against the continental shelf with her shins and feet, the Scourge grabbed Heather’s jaw and the back of her 29 mile high head. She strained to snap Heather’s neck and began to panic when she realized two things: One, she could barely budge Heather’s chin. Two, and worse, Heather’s body was growing larger and heavier atop hers.

Heather, despite the circumstances, reveled in the sensations of her growth. By catching Pamela, bowling over the Scourge, and then pinning the crazed tyrant down in Hudson Bay, Heather had triggered Colin’s growth condition three times. She was in the process of more than doubling in size, from 200 miles tall to 440 miles tall. Her expanding head was forcing the Scourge’s hands apart, and her lengthening shins gave her the leverage she needed to pin the now-smaller giantess’s thighs tight to the ground. Heather grabbed the Scourge’s wrists and pinned them to the continental shelf. She considered breaking them as retribution for Colin, and leaned down at the Scourge to face her.

For Pamela, and those who could see the spectacle—which was an appreciable swath of North America—the scene stirred a mix of emotions. Many were terrified at these horizon-dominating giantesses. Others were overjoyed to see Heather with the Overlord/Scourge apparently defeated. And some (Colin included, and perhaps especially) saw a prone, 200 mile-tall giantess whose 17 mile high breasts were both pancaked against her chest and dwarfed by the 61 mile high, 60 mile wide breasts of a 440 mile tall giantess with hips wider than what had once been called Long Island. Moreover, Heather, who kept adjusting her body to keep leverage over the struggling Scourge, seemed to be grinding her pelvis against that of the smaller titaness.

Colin, who was watching from the vantage point of Vicki’s palm next to Robert and Lydia, could not help but get a raging erection at the sight. And, because his erection had just recently been 16 miles long, he was naked from the waist down. He tried to shrink in on himself to be less obvious. It was useless.

Robert actually managed to look away from the spectacle of Heather pinning the Scourge, her massive ass and breasts wobbling with each of the smaller giantess’s struggles. “Dude.”

“I know.”

Vicki shook her head without looking away from the fight. “Yeah, she’s, like, your great-great grandmother. You have some serious introspection to do.”

“I know!”

Lydia, for her part, was transfixed by Colin’s penis. She could still remember it towering over her when Heather trapped Lydia’s then-near-microscopic body between Colin’s dick and Heather’s breasts. She swallowed and took a step towards him. “Overlord on a Cracker. Even normal size, it’s like, the size of your whole body.” She gasped and jumped back as Colin’s penis expanded to oblige. “Oh! Sorry! I didn’t mean—“

Vicki propped up Colin’s member with a 25’-long finger so it would not fall over on him. “No, just, put it back, okay?” She felt her nipples get hard at the warmth and heft of it. She was glad Robert was looking away and bit her lip. “Um. Now. Please.”

In Hudson Bay, Heather tightened her vice grip on the Scourge’s wrists and forearms. “Stop. There is no point in struggling. You’ve lost. Surrender.”

The Scourge gave Heather the finger with her right hand. Then she summoned all of her strength to twist her wrist down and through Heather’s grip. Then she punched Heather as hard as she could manage in the solar plexus.

The blow was enough to stun Heather briefly. As she lost focus, she relaxed her legs. Before Heather could recover, the Scourge had pulled her legs up from under Heather’s much larger thighs, coiled them up to her chest, and delivered a double kick to Heather’s stomach that actually managed to launch the larger giantess into the air. Then the Scourge rolled back over her shoulder and stood up on what had once been Southampton Island. It was smaller than she was tall. She realized she needed leverage—and not the physical kind—over Heather. That meant Colin. The Scourge turned to sprint towards the remains of the Overlord’s mansion.

Pamela shouted “no!” and tackled the Scourge from behind. Over one quintillion combined tons of woman thundered into the Earth. The impact melted the ground beneath them, triggered a magnitude 9 earthquake that opened fissures around them, sent tsunamis propagating across the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, and damaged buildings for six hundred miles around. She tried to emulate Heather and pin the Scourge’s wrists to the Earth, but the crazed giantess was just as strong as her—and better-trained. Pamela felt a sharp blow to the side of her head as the Scourge delivered a 4 mile-wide elbow to her temple. Her vision flashed white. Before she could even see again, the Scourge’s hands clamped down on her chin and the back of her head and twisted hard. Pamela tried and failed to pull the Scourge's hands off, or to turn her head back the other way. Tears measuring 800 billion gallons formed in Pamela’s eyes as she felt her neck start to strain painfully and her hands start to tingle. She should have said goodbye to Raymond. She should have made sure Colin was alive, just to see him one last time.

Heather yanked the Scourge’s hands off of Pamela’s head, lifted the more than 200 mile-tall woman up to eye level by her forearm, and mustered every bit of her enhanced strength to toss her sideways towards the Arctic ice shelf. “That’s enough of that.”

The Scourge flew in a sufficiently long arc for a sufficiently long time that she actually worried Heather had thrown her at escape velocity. Then she saw the Earth rushing up at her again, and braced herself as she crashed down through the Arctic ice shelf and into the frigid, mid-pinky-toe-deep ocean. The Scourge felt a rising panic. She knew Heather was now so large and so strong that she could not be outrun. The Scourge’s only hope was to get to Colin, then to a population center, and hold them hostage. Before she had even planted her feet to stand, though, the now 580 mile-tall Heather grabbed the Scourge by the throat, lifted her overhead, and grew to over 750 miles tall. The Scourge was less than a third her size.

Heather stood astride the North Pole with the Scourge dangling 900 miles above the surface of the Earth. She looked back and down at the 200 mile-high Pamela. Colin's mom was barely hip-high to her. “Translate for me. I don’t want any doubt about what I’m going to say.” She looked back up at the Scourge—who, for the first time, looked small, frightened, and weak. “I don’t know whether I can kill you. What I do know is that you can’t kill me. You and I could literally fight forever.”

The Scourge signed, “You have to sleep.”

“Do you?”

The Scourge swallowed.

“We're not even talking your beloved 'mutually-assured destruction.' The best you can ever hope for again is mutually-assured existence. Forever. With me. And every time you manage to escape me, I’ll catch you. Inevitably. And each time, I’ll get bigger.” To emphasize her point, Heather casually tossed the Scourge up with one hand and caught her again by the throat. She grew to 980 miles tall—so large that she had to adjust her grip to hold the Scourge’s neck with just her thumb, index, and 9 mile thick middle finger. “I’ll grow till the only thing you can touch is me.”

The Scourge signed, “You’d kill everyone.”

“You miss my point. I’m telling you what your best case is. But you don't get the best case. You know what’s actually going to happen?” Heather glanced down to Pamela again. “Touch me. Twice.”

Pamela obliged.

The Scourge watched the world recede away from her as Heather’s already-colossal form swelled to nearly 1,660 miles tall. The atmosphere around her had stopped looking blue. The curvature of the Earth was clearly visible. The Scourge felt like she was being held up in the blackness of space.

“You will surrender. Or I will grow just large enough that I can throw you out of Earth’s gravity. You will either plunge into the Sun, or drift forever. You will die alone in agony or live alone for eternity.”

The Scourge tried to contemplate an existence lonelier than hers already was. Tears welled in her eyes but boiled away instantly because of the lack of air pressure. She signed, “No. Please. You can’t.”

After Pamela translated, Heather said, “You tried to kill Colin. I can and I absolutely will. So you have two choices. Surrender, or I throw you into space. Choose.”

“But…what they—what men will do to me if—“

“I will have your choice now.”

The Scourge closed her eyes, nodded, and signed, “I surrender.”

Thirty Minutes Later

Colin and his father both gaped up at the horizon-dominating (and, in the case of Heather’s bust, horizon-spanning) spectacle before them. The still-slowly-growing, still-more-than-200-miles-tall Scourge was kneeling, facing them. Pamela was standing by her side, poised to act if the Scourge tried anything.

Heather had initially placed the Scourge on the ground. Then she thought better of letting go of her and now had the Scourge’s shoulder pinched between thumb and forefinger. She also now stood 2,158 miles tall. She was down on one knee. Her 540 mile-long thigh and shin spanned fully a tenth of Canada. Her 520 mile-wide, 160 mile-high ass overhung nearly as much of the country, and had brought artificial night to the 45,000 square miles of ground beneath it. And her 540 mile-wide, 300 mile-high bust dangled down into the stratosphere above the Scourge. Her nipples had hardened into 17 mile-wide, 30 mile-long, dusky pink columns in the cold air. She was so large, and so close, that Colin could see nothing past her—not that he would have wanted to look at anything else, anyway.

The Scourge leaned forward, slowly and carefully, to bring her face closer to Colin and Raymond. At the sight of Raymond, a wistful, seven mile-long smile formed on her lips. She signed, “You look just like my Charles.” Her gestures stirred up gale-force winds.

Raymond signed back, “I need your code phrase. Or phrases.”

“It’s ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’”

“And what’s your name?”

A look of confusion crossed the titaness’s face. “My God. I haven’t thought to use my real one in so long. It’s…” She paused as her face threatened to break into tears. “…I don’t—I’m not sure. I think it was…Rebecca?”

Raymond nodded. “I think you’re right. My great-great-great aunt Becky was named after you.”

Rebecca sniffed and nodded in genuine gratitude. She could hear Charles’s voice calling her Becky. “Thank you.”

As her body dwindled in response to his dad’s signing, Colin felt a pang of deep sadness for the Scourge—for Rebecca—as it finally occurred to him to see her as human rather than a terror. Yes, she was insane. Yes, she tried to end the world—twice. But she had been so alone with her power and trauma for so long he had to wonder whether the same thing would have happened to anyone.

Vicki took Rebecca by the arm when she was normal-sized again and handed her some clothes. The two of them were the same height. “Here. Get these on.” She glanced down at Rebecca’s ample breasts and muttered, “Showoff.”

Raymond continued de-powering the former Scourge, rendering her mortal for the first time in centuries. When he was done, he signed to her, “You’ll see. We can protect women without fear and oppression.”

Rebecca signed back, “I hope you’re right.” She then allowed herself to be led away by Vicki.

Raymond then turned to shrinking and de-powering Pamela. When she was restored to her normal size, the two of them hugged tightly. Raymond signed to her, “Let’s go home.”

Pamela responded. “Fuck that, let’s go to the Overseer’s Mansion and commandeer the State’s resources and command apparatus for the revolution.”

Raymond shrugged. “Or that.”

Colin, meanwhile, was smiling up at his horizon-spanning lover. She was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, and he had the erection (thankfully with pants on, this time) to show for it. “You’re a hero, Heather. You saved the world.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Colin held up his now-properly-set-and-splinted wrists. “I guess I did have a hand in it, yeah.”

Heather rolled her 50 mile-across eyes. “You really are incorrigible. And I love you.”

“I love you, too. So! Much as I like you like this, should we go ahead and make you an average, run-of-the-mill, 6’4” tall woman with ridiculously huge boobs?”

“Mmm. Not just yet. I think saving the world and overthrowing the State entitles us to a reward.”

“What do you have in—“

“Your erect penis is 500 miles long and 480 miles around.”

Colin nearly blacked out from the g-forces as Heather lifted him by his rapidly-expanding cock (which also caused her to grow another 30% larger, to over 2,800 miles tall). When his vision cleared, he found himself standing on a vast, pale expanse. Then Heather’s 250 mile-high breasts clapped together over his penis. They were all that he could see.

“Here. You play with the biggest tits ever while I give you a boob job. And blow job.”

“T-that sounds great! But, uh…”

“What? I’m laying over the Arctic Circle. There aren’t any people.”

“No, no, it’s, uh—“

“It's not great on my back, though. Like laying on a big inflatable ball. I'd like to do this before it gets too uncomfortable. What's the issue?”

“It’s, uh…your boobs are ten miles away from me.”

Heather laughed, low and deep. The Earth shook with her. “Fair point.” She pinched his glans between her fingers with one hand and held her breasts together with her other hand and forearm. “Say when.” Then, ever so slowly, she pulled him up through her cleavage till his minuscule hands came to rest on the cliff face of her boobs. “Better?”

“Much.” He squeezed her asteroid-sized breats. “So, I’m assuming boob job first?”

“Your erect penis is 650 miles long and 600 miles around.”

Colin shuddered as he felt his cock grow up and out from between her breasts. “Uh. Oh, uh, wow, that’s really bi—“ He gasped and struggled not to cum as her 90 mile mouth closed over his glans and she started to work her 43 quintillion tons of titflesh up and down along his shaft. “B-both, then!”

Ten Months Later

Heather, a perfectly average, run-of-the-mill, 6’4” woman with ridiculously huge boobs, kissed Colin on the top of the head before sitting down next to him in the dining hall. “What’s the paper say?”

“Rebecca cooperated fully with the Transitional Government. Both about the State and its assets and about details of the old world. They’re considering granting her amnesty.”

“Seriously? That seems like a step too far to me. She still oppressed millions of people over centuries.”

Vicki shrugged, then grimaced and adjusted her bra strap. “Well, yeah, but power corrupts. That’s what got Daddy in the end.” She re-adjusted the strap on her new 32K bra and grunted in frustration. “Jesus, this thing is uncomfortable. You could have warned me, Heather.”

“I did warn you! I swear, did you never figure out when you were being jealous of me and I was telling you not to be that I was jealous of you and your perfectly manageable boobs?”

“No? That doesn’t make sense. I wanted them bigger. Why would you want them smaller?”

“Ugh, you’re never going to stop being this way, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Well, fine, then. Just have Robert give you an ass to match, like I have. It’ll balance out.”

In unison, Robert and Vicki said, “No.” Then Robert added. “I prefer her ass as is, thank you. It’s cute and shapely and I like the way it doesn’t overshadow an entire continent.”

Heather muttered, “It was only, like, a sixteenth.” Her face brightened and she waved at Sylvia (who, as she now stood nine feet tall like the rumors about her had once said, had gone from the tallest woman on campus to far and away the tallest woman on campus).

Sylvia waved back, but didn’t come over to join them. Instead, she walked over to one of their male classmates and gestured at the seat across from him. As he nervously agreed for her to go ahead, she smiled and sat down. She was forced to fold her long legs under both the table and her chair. Sylvia brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

Colin kicked Robert under their table. “Isn’t that the guy who always tried to snitch on us?”

“Yep.”

“Should we warn her?”

“Nope.” Robert shrugged in response to Colin’s quizzical look. “It turns out that his macrophilia index was too high for him to be allowed to mate. He was trying to buy favor to get an exception. So, yeah, he was making bad decisions. But he was doing it so he could have freaky giantess sex. Which we can understand, can’t we, Colin?”

Colin blushed. “I guess so.” He grinned as Heather put a long arm around his shoulder and hugged him tight to her side in a way calculated to make him feel small by comparison.

“I’ll have you know that Colin and I are on a break from all that.”

Vicki laughed. “You’re still huge.”

“But not giant.”

“Oh, come on. You basically are. The only reason you don’t feel giant is because your boyfriend could split you apart with that radio tower-sized—“

Robert clapped a hand over Vicki’s mouth. “Nope. Nuh-uh. No. We are not doing that again.”

Epilogue

Todd Lyons glanced at the headline on the newspaper sitting on the inn’s reception desk. The State remnants in what had once been Eurasia had recognized the so-called ‘Transitional Government’ and would cede their resources to it. He made sure his disgust did not show on his face.

“Pretty amazing, huh?”

He nodded to the woman behind the desk. “Yes. Things are changing quickly and in radical ways.”

“It’s really impressive. I’m still surprised that the State turned against the Overlord once they found her out.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You know, I heard that it was a secret police officer who made it all possible. Betrayed the Overlord and everything! Isn’t that crazy?”

“Yes. Too crazy to be true if you ask me. I heard they were all heavily indoctrinated.”

“Well, yeah, probably true. Who knows, though! Crazier things have happened. There’s even a modifiable man, now!”

Lyons grunted and accepted his room key. He made his way up the stairs and down the dimly-lit hallway. He allowed himself to be lost in his thoughts only so much that he could still remain keenly aware of his surroundings. He was a fugitive from both the remnants of the State and the Transitional Government. His plan had failed utterly. He had set out to preserve the State and instead delivered the world to Interim Prime Minister Pamela Travis.

Lyons unlocked the door to his room, drew his sidearm, and quickly did a sweep of the sleeping area, closet, and bathroom. Then he turned on the light and did it again. Once he was satisfied that he was alone and there were no electronic surveillance tools in the room, he finally allowed himself to relax enough to put his gun down. He dead-bolted the door, tossed his bag on the bed, and sat to take off his shoes. The smell of his feet—which were weary from travel—made him wrinkle his nose in disgust. He grunted and shook his head. He had to either risk bathing in a non-secure location (and risk not being able to hear someone enter the room over the water) or appear distinctly unhygienic (and therefore notable to those around him, which was the worst thing to be while trying to disappear). He chose to bathe.

Lyons stripped off his clothes, picked up his gun, double-checked the deadbolt, and went into the bathroom. He locked that door behind him, too. Then he opened the glass enclosure, laid his gun on the metal, wall-mounted soap dish where it would stay dry, turned on the water, and let the shower heat up before stepping in to the stream.

He showered quickly. But then, after he was done with his soap and shampoo, Lyons closed his eyes, tilted his head back under the water to let it run down over his forehead, hair, and shoulders, and allowed himself a moment of true relaxation. He sighed and opened his eyes.

Lydia was standing in the shower facing him. She was naked, already six inches taller than him, and growing both taller and more curvaceous.

Lyons wasn’t even able to open his mouth before her expanding hand clapped over it.

Lydia bent down to whisper in Lyons’s ear as she crested eight feet in height. Her flexing hip shattered the glass of the shower enclosure. “Now, Marshal. It’s your turn to make me feel huge.”