INTRODUCTION
This story follows on from my previous novel, "Love I Can Possess." While it was not strictly necessary to read my first Ginormica novel, "God Help the Outcasts," before reading "Love I Can Possess," this story will make little sense without reading "Love I Can Possess" first. Just in case there are some daring people out there, the first chapter is designed to help remind people what's gone before.
1. Interview with a Giantess
"That," Link said emphatically, shuddering, "was a hell of a mess."
"A gigantic snail exploding all over us? It was a bit," Susan agreed as the monsters entered the common room, now officially renamed the Monster Force Command Centre, a few days later. She inclined her head slightly, remembering, and smiled. "Still, I did get to go to Europe again. Never imagined it would be so soon. France is lovely in autumn."
"So do you prefer Paris to Rome now, my dear?" Cockroach asked from his customary position on her shoulder.
"Paris is… Paris is definitely pretty nice," Susan admitted. "But to be honest, it seems a little, I dunno…. Sterile. Cold. Doesn't have that lovely warm, slightly faded, worn-around-the-edges vibe that Rome has."
"True. And Rome was already at its peak when Paris was little more than a village," Cockroach added.
"I don't care about all that," Link told him. "All I care about is the mess. Yuck!"
"Yeah," Susan said, laughing. "All that way and we didn't even have to do anything."
"Only because the thing exploded the moment we touched it."
"Too much internal pressure. Its skin couldn't support its still-growing mass," Cockroach explained. "Oh well. The French government wasn't to know when they called us."
"And now they have enough escargot to last them the next decade," Link added with a grin as he vaulted to the living area platform.
"It glows, too," Bob added. "Does that make it escar-glow?"
Susan laughed. She sat down and let Cockroach climb onto her hand. She briefly kissed him, then set him on the living area, stroking his arm gently.
"Get a room you two!" Link called. "It was bad enough in the plane, stuck with you two mushy ex-humans. When's the wedding?"
"I keep telling you," Susan sighed with exasperation. "Not until next year. When I finally get out of this damn place."
"I thought you liked living here with us weird monsters. No?" Link asked.
"Oh, I do, of course I do," Susan said, smiling at him with genuine affection. "This place is basically heaven for me. It's the best place for someone like me, really. But I do miss my parents, and my old friends. Say, do you think the General'd let me go home for Christmas?"
"You keep asking that, Ginormica," Monger told her. "And I keep telling you, it depends. Though I can tell you that your performance in Paris was… very commendable. Good work, soldier. Good work, all of you. Now get to your quarters! There's a debriefing session at 08:00 hours a.m. tomorrow morning, before noon!"
"Sir!" Susan threw him a salute as he left, then lay back and turned the television on. She turned to the news, which was just ending.
"Recapping our main stories, there was a battle in Benghazi as crowds attacked the militia blamed for US diplomat's death; Iran's Revolutionary Guard says it expects Israel to launch a war; Pakistan is hit by deadly riots over the anti-Muslim film; President Obama provides land for construction of the new Panthalassan embassy, Earth's first alien embassy; and, on the lighter side of the news, the Monster Force gets egg—er, escargot—on its face in France."
"The lighter side?" Susan gasped, as the screen showed her standing in shock, her eyes wide in disgusted horror and her entire fifty-foot body dripping in radioactive green snail goo. "What are we—a joke now?"
"Better than feared beasts to be hunted," Link told her.
"Yeah, I know. But I wouldn't mind a little more respect," Susan said, switching the news off. She sighed. "Oh well. I mean, after all the things that have happened, I guess plain old earth monsters aren't that big a deal any more."
"Not when we have alien embassies being built, no," Cockroach agreed. "I'm a monster, and I'm more interested in the aliens than us, after all—well, with one notable exception," he added, gazing up at Susan. She went slightly pink, and smiled shyly at him.
"Same here," she said softly.
Cockroach's antennae quivered.
"And I think we should be thankful, too, that we're not getting more exposure," Link interjected. "Like a lot of the recent stuff."
"You mean that I'm not," Susan corrected him. She sighed, and bit her lower lip. "Yeah. They really hate me, don't they? Now I'm a monster to them—a real monster, the scary, dangerous kind people run screaming from."
Cockroach's antennae drooped. "Yes, I know," he said softly. "The media is… capricious. They can idolise you one day, and treat you as a hated terrorist the next."
Susan bit her lip. "But… they're sorta right, aren't they? I did do those things, I am a monster. Nothing can ever undo what I did that night. I'm kinda glad I'm shut away down here, you know. I don't think I could go out in public, not here in the States at least, for a long time. I'd be too scared… afraid of how people would react when they saw me…." She trailed off, and sighed again. "I suppose Link's right. I guess I should be lucky that our first official contact with an alien civilisation is even bigger news than the aftermath of a rampaging giantess. At least the news wasn't going on about how dangerous I was for a change. It's a start, I guess."
"Unfortunately it will take more than one successful mission to redeem yourself, my dear."
Susan shook her head. "I know. I wasn't expecting it would." She sighed again. "It's going to take a lot to get people to trust me again, to stop seeing me as a monster, isn't it?"
"Yes, my dear," he told her, looking up at her fifty-foot frame sadly. "I'm afraid it will."
"Hi Amy," Susan said as the door to the common room slid open a few days later and Monger drove the young girl in. "You're early."
"School got off early today," Amy explained as she slipped out of the jeep.
"I'll be back in an hour, Miss Marshall," Monger said. "Enjoy your visit."
"Thank you General," Amy said, saluting.
"And thank you from me, too," Susan added, also saluting.
"You get one hour for visits a week, so make the most of it!" Monger called up.
"I will, sir," Susan added, looking glum.
"Hey, don't worry about it," Amy said cheerfully as Susan bent down to let the girl climb on her hand. "Whatcha doin'?"
"I was trimming my nails, actually," Susan said with a slight laugh. "It's not that easy."
"No giantess-sized nail clippers, right?" Amy said, grinning.
"Well, it's not just that, it's that my nails are really strong. The quantonium in me also affects my nails. Ordinary blades just won't cut them."
"So what do you use?" Amy asked.
"This," Susan said, motioning towards a device on the platform living area. "Something the Doc came up with."
"They're diamond-tipped osmium boride cutting blades driven by a pneumatic system," Cockroach explained.
"Whatever they are, they work like this," Susan said. She inserted a finger, Cockroach checked its position, and moved a lever. A large curved blade slowly lowered, and Cockroach checked to make sure it was aligned. Then he pressed a large green button, there was a brief hiss, and Susan's fingernail was neatly cut.
"Yikes," Amy said.
Cockroach picked up the four-inch wide clipping, and showed it to Amy. "It'll stop a bullet," he said, tapping it. "I'm researching its potential for body armour. But at this rate it will take twenty months to get enough raw material."
"Never mind that," Susan said, standing up. "We'll do the rest later, okay?"
"As you wish, my dear," Cockroach said, smiling up at her. "You enjoy your visit. Always a pleasure to see you, Amy."
Amy smiled at the scientist, then turned to Susan. "So how was Paris? I always wanted to go there. France is so cool."
"Yeah, it's pretty good," Susan admitted. "Still, one of these days I'd like to go as just a tourist, and have more time to sightsee."
"And less snail on your face," Link added with a grin, sauntering over from his pool.
"Come on Amy, let's go to my room, and I'll tell you all about France," Susan said firmly, giving Link a quick glare and holding out her hand. "Wanna quick trip to Paris? Final call for departures on Air Susan Flight 001 to Paris, France. Would passenger Amy Marshall please report to the boarding hand immediately?"
"Captain Marshall, thank you," Amy said with a grin. "I'm the pilot, and you're the plane, remember? Prepare for takeoff!" The small girl clambered onto Susan's five-foot long hand, and grabbed her middle finger. "We have liftoff!"
"That's for spaceships," Susan laughed, then lifted her hand high into the air. I'm the plane? she thought to herself. She wasn't entirely sure she was happy about that, about being seen as just a piece of equipment, a tool. But Amy's laughter made her forget her concerns, as she swooped and rose, banked and turned. Having Amy around was like playing with the little sister she never had, or the child she never could have. It was a pity her visits were so infrequent.
"Did you get any photos there?" Amy asked as Susan walked carefully to her own room.
"Well, I didn't take any, but yeah, we got some great photos."
"I saw some," Amy said, and giggled.
"I bet I know which ones you saw," Susan said, trying not to grin. "Wolf News really loved that one of me covered in goop." She opened her door and gently set Amy down on her desk, then sat down on her bed next to it.
"How much did it take to get it off?" Amy asked.
"A lot of scrubbing and soap and the local public swimming pool," Susan said, and laughed. "I suppose I shouldn't complain—it was the first proper bath I've had since I became Ginormica. Mind you, it was a little on the chilly side. I had to have people pour buckets of hot water in."
"What, with you sitting there naked?" Amy's eyes widened.
"Before I got in, don't worry," Susan told her. "And I told Monger quite firmly that the Army PR department was not allowed to take any photos of me in my bath. Bubbles or no bubbles!"
Amy laughed. "I wish I'd been there. A whole bubble-bath pool! Was there a diving board? Because I'd love to be able to dive into a pool of bubbles!"
"There was," Susan said. "But as you might expect, I didn't use it," she added with a grin.
Amy looked up at the massively tall giantess. "Did you want to?" she asked.
Susan looked down at her, her face serious. She shook her head. "I'm happy with what I am, really. Yes, there is a part of me that sometimes thinks things could be easier, or more fun, if I was your size, but… but no. I'm happy being this size, being me. I wouldn't want to go back now, even if I could. It's like… it's like…."
"I guess it's a bit like being an adult," Amy suggested. "There's so many things that adults can't really do any more, but so many things that they can finally do."
"That's really perceptive of you," Susan said, nodding. "It's exactly like that. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely grown—and I don't mean physically!" she quickly added, with a short laugh. "I've matured. Or, at least, I hope I have."
Amy smiled, then took something out of her pocket and held it up. "Look what I got!"
Susan bent lower and peered at the tiny object in Amy's small hand. "A USB stick? What's on it?"
Amy grinned. "Mind if I use your computer?"
"Go ahead," Susan said. Amy moved over to the computer terminal and switched it on, then inserted the USB stick.
"Which one?" Susan asked, looking at the files in the folder that appeared.
"That one," Amy said, point as high as she could reach on the huge computer screen. "The one marked 'For Amy'."
"Oh, okay, I see it. It's a video file." Susan used her large trackball to move the cursor to the right place, and clicked the titanium lever. "I broke the old joystick," she told Amy, catching the young girl's glance. "Got a bit frustrated with Google one day, and it, er, snapped right off." She didn't mention that she had gone through three joysticks before Cockroach had finally suggested a trackball. Normally she could control her strength quite easily, but sometimes it got away from her when she wasn't paying attention.
"What is it?" Susan asked.
Amy laughed. "Why not play it and find out?"
"Here we go then," Susan said, clicking the Play button. The file started playing, and Susan gasped. "Oh no! How the hell did you get this? They told me the interview wouldn't be shown in the States!"
"My uncle's stationed with NATO in Germany," Amy said with a huge grin as the French introduction continued. "He sent me the file when it was shown on TV there. You should have told me you were on TV!"
Susan made a slight face. "Yeah, well, it was a bit embarrassing. Two days after we stopped that snail thing, I got interviewed by a reporter, a guy called Andre, Andre… uh, Roussimoff. Or something. From some French television station I can't remember the name of. It was all in English, since my French is limited to 'Bonjour' and 'Je déteste les escargots'."
"What's that mean?"
Susan grinned. "I hate snails."
Amy laughed. "I bet I know where you learned that one! Oh, look, the English section is starting."
"Welcome to France, Mademoiselle Ginormica," the interviewer was saying in slightly-accented English.
"Thanks," Susan said in the video. "I'm glad to be here finally."
"We know you are now famous around the world, and everyone knows you," the interviewer said. "After you saved San Francisco, stopped an alien invasion, saved Rome from being overrun by a huge alien digging machine, then rescued the American President, you became an international figure."
"Uh, yes, I, er, suppose I did." Susan said, shifting her arm awkwardly. Unlike the interview she had done in Washington DC when getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, where they had constructed a special chair for her, here she was lying on her side, putting her head at the same level as the interviewer.
"But this is all the famous things we all know," Roussimoff said. "Please, we would like to know about the real Ginormica, the real you."
"Uh, sure. What would you like to know?"
"For a start, could you explain about your name? Many French people will not understand it."
"Susan? Oh, you mean Ginormica?" Susan laughed. "Yeah. The government changed my name to that when they first captured me. We've got this word in English, 'ginormous,' which is I guess sort of like mushing up 'gigantic' and 'enormous'. It's what kids say when they want to say something is super-big."
"Like you," Roussimoff noted with a smile.
"Uh, yeah. Like me. Anyway, 'Ginormica' is sort of that word made into a girl's name."
"Do you like the name?"
"I hated it at first," Susan admitted. "The General never calls me anything but, but I insisted the other monsters use my birth name, Susan. But you know, I quite like it now. It's a part of me, part of my identity as… as what I am."
"As a monster? I'm sorry, is that term offensive?"
Susan shook her head. "No. Not to me. I guess technically I am a monster. But I'm a good monster. At least, I try to be. I want to be. We're all good monsters. A monster is just something strange and unusual, and most people are scared of strange and unusual things. So they get scared of us. But to be honest, I don't really think of myself—or any of the others—as a monster. I think of them as people, and myself as, well… just a person almost fifty feet tall."
"Not to mention a hero who saved the world, as well," Roussimoff added.
"I… I guess," Susan said, biting her lip. "I don't like to think I'm a hero though. I'm just one part of the team. We couldn't survive on our own—I couldn't survive without everyone. I learned that."
"So you were captured on your wedding day, as everyone knows, when the meteorite hit the town of Modesto, which is near San Francisco in California. Then when you were in prison you were forced to fight this giant robot by the Golden Gate Bridge."
Susan nodded.
"And that's when you first learned just how strong you were?"
"Sort of. I mean, I just thought it was a pretty weak robot at first. But then I caught that power reactor in Gallaxhar's ship. I just reacted, I didn't think. It was only later that Doc told me how much it weighed. I was… yeah, I was pretty freaked out. I had no idea I was that strong."
"Just for reference, gentle viewers, Ginormica could crush a car flat between her fingers with ease. So tell us, how did you learn to deal with this strength?"
"Well, strength isn't everything," Susan said. "Like my friend Mary used to say, power is nothing without control. I learned that the hard way." She took a deep breath. "I… I got a little egotistical. All these people telling me I was so amazing, it sort of went to my head. That affected how I treated my friends. I also had some personal problems—I felt betrayed by a dear friend, someone I had trusted completely. Then I had to stop a runaway train in Las Vegas. That didn't work out so well."
"May we show the video?" Roussimoff asked.
"Might as well," Susan said with a slight sigh. "Everyone else has seen it."
The studio monitor showed the clip of Susan standing across the rails, ready to catch the freight train carrying nuclear waste. Taken from a hovering helicopter, it showed the locomotive plough into the giantess, throwing her backwards, and then pushing her bodily along the rails. Both Susans, the one being interviewed and one watching with Amy, winced.
"I guess that hurt, didn't it?" Amy asked.
"Yeah, it wasn't fun," Susan said, just as her video counterpart said much the same.
"You redeemed yourself later, however," Roussimoff pointed out, showing a clip of Susan carrying the massively heavy lead containers the nuclear waste was stored in.
"The General was furious, though," Susan told him. "And I was pretty mad with him, too, and the other monsters as well. I guess I also felt isolated, being so big. Left out. Except for Mary."
"Mary was the English vampire?" Roussimoff asked.
"Scottish," Susan said with a smile. "She'd hate you for calling her English. Even though she sounded more English than, I dunno, the Queen of England. Yeah, she was the new monster. At first we hated each other. I thought she was a stuck-up bitch, and she just hated being a prisoner, so she hated the whole place. But then we started talking, and I found out more about her, and we just clicked. She became like a big sister to me. Oh, Mary. Poor Mary…."
"And now we come to the incident in Las Vegas," Roussimoff said quietly.
"When I ruined everything," Susan said, blinking back tears.
"Your friend Mary was killed by the police trying to escape, was she not? And then Ginormica carried out a terrible revenge on her murderers."
The studio monitor showed footage of an enraged Susan, dressed in the tattered remains of a white gown, smashing down a pedestrian overbridge in Las Vegas and throwing a van. Susan in the studio looked away, as did Susan watching in her room.
"Want me to stop it?" Amy asked, concern in her voice.
Susan shook her head. "No. It's hard to watch, really, really hard. But I can't run from it, pretend it never happened. I wish I could. I really do. But… I can't. I mustn't."
"What happened after that, however, we still know little about. You fled, then were spotted in Desert Valley by some campers, and we heard a report that you had been shrunk to your normal size."
Susan nodded. "Yeah. I panicked, and ran out to the desert so I couldn't hurt any more people, or get captured. I was so depressed. I thought I'd killed my friend by stamping on him, I was so blinded by rage. I had to get far, far away from anyone I could hurt. Then the Panthalassans, they're the aliens, of course, the same ones as Gallaxhar but not evil, found me and extracted my quantonium. Because it was too dangerous, too powerful, for me to have. And they were right. I mean, after what I'd done with it…. I was taken back home, and then, of course…. Well…. I was arrested." Susan put her hand to her mouth, and looked away.
"Are you all right?" Roussimoff asked,
Susan nodded. She took a deep breath, and carried on. "Of course I was arrested. After what I had done? I rang my uncle, who's a cop, and told him to come and get me. Because I knew I couldn't run any more. I'd been out in the desert, alone, terrified, for three nights. And I did a lot of thinking there. I realised how selfish I'd been. I was turning into a monster, a real monster."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean, you look at me, and okay, you see a giant, a monster. But inside, in my heart, I'm just Susan Murphy. I'm just an ordinary American girl. But in Vegas, I became a real monster, because I didn't care about people any more, I wanted to hurt people. When I got hit with this quantonium, I was taken away from my friends and family, locked up, told I wasn't a person, that I was a monster…. And eventually… I became one. So I was glad when the aliens took the quantonium away. I didn't want to be Ginormica any more; I didn't want to be a monster."
"Yet you are a giant," Roussimoff noted. "You are still Ginormica."
Susan nodded. "When I was small, I realised that it wasn't Ginormica that was the monster, it was me. Being a giant meant I could do more damage, that's all. But the darkness in my soul, the anger, the bitterness—that was all Susan Murphy. And I hadn't realised how much Ginormica had become a part of who I was. I couldn't cut her off, I couldn't run away from her, because she was what I had become. So I had to return to my real size."
"Your real size?" Roussimoff asked, looking confused.
"This size," Susan said with a slight smile. "This is my real size now. I'll never be small again."
"Can you tell us about the crash of the alien spacecraft over Area 52?"
"Some," Susan said. "A lot of that's still classified."
The video image changed to a satellite photo of Area 52, over a large area of which was a fuzzy image of a massive crash. At the bottom was a caption that read "Image degraded for national security reasons."
"This was released by the United States Pentagon," the interviewer explained. "The image is not very clear, but shows what looks like the remains of a huge alien spacecraft."
Susan nodded. "Yeah, the flagship of the Panthalassan fleet that arrived to remove all traces of the quantonium from Earth. It was their excavator robot I had to stop in Rome. Now they wanted the quantonium we'd recovered from that robot."
"We know that the American President was involved," Roussimoff said. "Taken aboard, right?"
Susan nodded. "I can't tell you exactly why, since it's classified, but he was abducted by the aliens, and we—the other monsters, me, the General—went to get him back. We, er, installed a virus or something which disabled their ship. Only it nearly killed us all when the ship lost power."
"You saved them all, however," Roussimoff said. "Look at this, gentle viewers."
A photo flashed up on the screen. Taken by a very long lens, it showed Air Force One dangling out of the landing bay of the massive alien craft, which had tipped on its side. Susan was visible, hanging onto a strut with one hand and the aircraft with the other.
"This is you single-handedly saving the President and everyone on board the plane from falling to their deaths, right?" Roussimoff asked quietly. "And by single-handedly, I mean literally; you were lifting up the plane with just a single hand! Incroyable! Inouï!"
Susan went a little pink. "Well, it's really just a big hollow tube. And it was our fault in the first place. I mean, Doc's computer virus ended up crashing their spacecraft."
"But you saved the President, and then you saved the alien leaders left on the ship?"
Susan nodded. "Well, I couldn't let them die. Not when we'd made their ship crash. They were remarkably understanding about the whole thing, actually. I think they were just impressed that we'd managed to stop Gallaxhar."
"These aliens are the same as he is, right?"
"From the same planet, yes. But Gallaxhar was an insane power-hungry nutjob who blew up his own sun to get hold of some quantonium, and destroyed their planet. So they're really, like really, really angry with him. They were actually pretty impressed that we managed to stop him."
"It seems like, what is the English phrase? All's well that end's well?"
Susan nodded. "Well, I'm in prison now, for what I did in Vegas—only allowed out on important missions like this. But since my prison is Area 52, my home, not much has changed. So yeah, it could have been a lot worse."
"Indeed. You saved your president, and helped establish friendly relations with a powerful, advanced alien race. Once again, you have acted to help the entire planet."
Susan went pink, and bit her lip. "If you say so," she said quietly. "It doesn't cancel what I did in Vegas, however."
"But it helps, I'm sure. I hope you will be able to visit France again when you are free. And thank you very much for speaking with us here today."
"No problem," Susan said with a small smile. "Merci."
"Merci beaucoup, Mademoiselle."
The video ended, and Amy looked over at the giantess. Susan was leaning back again the wall, her arms around her knees, and her expression unreadable.
"Was it… okay?" the young girl asked, a little nervously.
Susan shrugged. "It could have been worse, I guess. I didn't want to do it, anyway. Monger insisted."
"Why?"
"He said it was about image rehabilitation. Humanizing me." She gave a short, bitter laugh. "Humanizing me. When I'm so inhuman." Susan sighed, and smiled weakly at her friend. "No, no, don't worry, Amy. I'm not angry. Not at all. Thanks for showing me the video. I just don't like being on TV. Having the world looking at me. That's the only real thing I miss about being my old size. Just be part of the crowd, comfortably anonymous."
"You don't want to go back, though, right?"
Susan quickly shook her head. "Not for a minute. I'd lose too much."
"Didn't you lose a lot to become Ginormica, however?"
Susan shook her head again. "Not lost; sacrificed."
"What's the difference?"
"Lost means you don't have something any more, and don't get anything in return either. Sacrifice means you lose something, but you get something in exchange."
"I don't follow you," Amy said, her expression confused.
"I sacrificed a normal life, but I have this life in exchange. What I am now is so much more than what I was that it's a bit petty to begrudge what I can't do any more. That's what happened earlier." Susan's face grew sad, and she bit her lip. The screams and cries of the men she had killed still appeared in her nightmares, though less so now as the base counsellor was helping her deal with them. "True, there's loss with sacrifice, and sadness, because if what you sacrifice means nothing, it's not a real sacrifice. But what you gain is stronger and better than before. I'm a better person now than I was a year ago. I'm happy with myself. I really am. Even though not everything's perfect, I'm just glad to be with my friends, and glad to be who I am. And that's all anyone can really ask of life, I guess."
.
NOTES:
Previous readers of my stories will know by now that I like to add endnotes to each chapter to point out the various facts I have drawn on in creating these stories. I like fiction that has a solid basis in fact, and the more facts there are, the easier the fiction goes down. Or sometimes it's just a fun quirk. Like the name of the French interviewer in this chapter: Andre Roussimoff is the real name of the late, great Andre the Giant, Fezzik in The Princess Bride. I thought it would be a nice touch for a man interviewing a giantess.
Other than that, there are no facts in this chapter. The interview format was designed as a sort of "Previously, on…" bit to remind regular readers of the situation and get new readers up to speed (new readers should ideally start with "Love I Can Possess" at the very least. Go read that now, and we'll be here when you get back).
There are a lot of fanfics here dealing with the French snail fight, and I didn't want to retread any of them, so I just made it so swollen and bloated that it exploded the moment Susan's fist contacted it. Very much an anti-climax.
[Edited: 30 July 2014: Susan was in the desert for three nights, not two.]