AN: It's possible that I'm using this story as a coping mechanism to offset the stress of preparing for finals. But also, when I come up with a gag I really want to do, it's really hard to resist the urge to churn out whatever I need to write in order to set it up. Which is...kind of a pain, when the gag comes at the very end of a chapter.
Reaper7: I meant to mention this in the previous chapter, but wow. That's a pretty deep cut for my stuff. Well played. Yes, somewhere in the Acesverse, Sam has had to frantically update her board.
Wolvenstrom: Whaaaaat? Pfft. No, obviously. That's just...crazy talk...is what it is...
"SHOULD...SHOULD WE DO...SOMETHING?" Lincoln asked, gesturing towards the now empty street that the Chang sisters had disappeared down. When he strained his ears, he could swear he could still hear the faint sound of Sid's wailing.
"Don't worry about it," Said Ronnie. "This has pretty much been a daily thing ever since Adelaide got Upscaled. Sid'll put up a fuss for a while, then she and Adelaide will patch things up, get their chores done, and everything will go back to normal."
"REALLY?"
"Well…" Ronnie shrugged. "About as normal as it ever gets around here these days. Also, I don't actually know what goes down between the girls, I only see the part where Sid comes back and isn't crying about the unfairness of life for a while. But I assume there's some kind of reconciliation involved."
"THE GIRLS'LL BE FINE," Carlota said reassuringly. "ADELAIDE'S BECOME A LITTLE MORE...FORCEFUL, SINCE SHE WENT THROUGH THE CHANGE. IT'S GOTTA BE WEIRD FOR A GIRL THAT YOUNG TO HAVE EVERYONE IN CHARGE OF HER SUDDENLY BECOME DOLL-SIZED. BUT SHE AND SID STILL THE HECK OUT OF EACH OTHER, THEY JUST NEED TO TIME TO GET USED TO THEIR NEW DYNAMIC."
"I GUESS SO," Lincoln mused. "THINGS WEREN'T QUITE THAT BAD WITH MY FAMILY. BUT THERE WAS AN ADJUSTMENT PERIOD. EVERYTHING WORKED OUT IN THE END THOUGH."
"Don't take this the wrong way, Lame-o, but I'm really hoping things turn out differently for the Changs." Ronnie wrapped her arms around herself as a sudden, unexplained chill struck her body. "The last thing I need to deal with is a building-sized Sid."
An uneasy silence fell upon the group as that particular thought began to work its way through their imaginations.
"...AND ON THAT NOTE, I THINK IT'S TIME WE HEAD OUT." Carlota sidled up alongside Lincoln and looped one arm around his, before turning back to her cousin. "I'M GONNA BORROW LINC FOR A WHILE, CUZ. WE'VE GOT SOME BUSINESS TO TRANSACT DOWN AT MY OFFICE. SEE YOU LATER!"
"O-OH!" Lincoln suddenly jerked to life, his delayed reaction to Carlota's proximity to him suddenly becoming a lot more proximate, finally working itself through his brain. "ALRIGHT THEN, I GUESS WE'LL...WOAH!"
Whatever response Lincoln had been trying to formulate was unceremoniously discarded as Carlota abruptly started walking, pulling the younger boy along with her.
"H-hey! Wait!" Ronnie called out, but it was too late. Upscale legs could cover a lot of ground in a really short amount of time, and Carlota was especially leggy even by the standards of her kin, so it only took a few of her shapely strides before the pair were well on their way, and far beyond any hope of hearing Ronnie Anne's cries.
"BYE RONNIE ANNE!" Lincoln called back to her, swiftly disappearing into the distance as he was dragged off by the much larger girl that had attached herself to him.
"Dang it!" Ronnie fumed, taking a wild swing at the air that had been occupied by the buck-toothed doofus only moments earlier.
"It's fine," She consoled herself. Though the pair was now out of sight, she could still hear the sounds of their footsteps growing fainter and fainter as they made their way into the city proper.
"It's fine," She silently repeated to herself, just a little more insistently. It was Carlota and Lincoln, for crying out Loud. A pairing that couldn't be more mismatched if they tried. And, on top of that, Lincoln was apparently here for a fashion consultation of all things. Like, how long could that possibly take?"
"They'll probably be back before I know it," She muttered, pushing off the railing and making her way back inside the apartment.
Before his Upscaling, Lincoln had been to Great Lakes City on multiple occasions. As such, the sights and sounds of the city weren't exactly unknown to him. In his current state, however, the experience was quite a bit different.
As Carlota led him along, the street suddenly widened, and the older girl stepped to the side, gently pulling Lincoln with her before she continued proceeding forward. As he complied with her unspoken direction, Lincoln noticed that he was stepping over a thick, red line, which segmented a fairly large swathe of the street between the sidewalk and the rest of the street into its own lane. A moment later, he realized that what they were walking in was a sort of Upscale lane, designed to allow Upscales to move through the busier areas of the city without impeding traffic, and dramatically minimizing the chances of a misstep resulting in property damage, or worse. Royal Woods had adopted a similar practice in recent months, but it was strictly informal at this point. The fact that GLC had already formalized the concept was pretty impressive. And, speaking of which…
"Wow," Lincoln quietly mouthed to himself, as the duo made their way into the heart of the city. At his current size, the city wasn't quite as intimidating as it had been on his previous visits. There were a lot of buildings that still towered over him, which was a novelty he wasn't used to dealing with back home in the suburbs, but the hustle and bustle of city life was, by and large, on a much smaller scale than it had been before, which reduced the inner workings of the city to something that was much more manageable to his small town sensibilities. Simply having a birds-eye view of things allowed him to see how the metropolitan apparatus interlocked together, making the old anxiety he'd used to suffer of getting lost in the "big" city seem laughable to the current him. What was impressive, however, were the others of his kind. The Upscales.
The current Upscale population, being entirely limited to exactly two cities from a single state, located in fairly close proximity to each other, was small when you compared it to the overall population of Michigan, let alone the country as a whole. Even a year later, only a tiny fraction of that human population had been exposed to the life-changing phenomenon, which...as so many things did, rendered his own family a freakish, statistical anomaly due to how many of them had been Upscaled in such a short amount of time. Here, however, in GLC, Lincoln was once again learning firsthand that scale meant everything.
Back home, Lincoln could walk down Main Street and expect to see a few Upscales scattered here and there, and no more than four or so at once in even the most extreme cases, save for those exceptions when his family was doing something together. So was pretty shocking that even in this one part of the city, Lincoln could already see many more Upscales than that paltry amount. And not even as a single group, they were seemingly everywhere.
From his current vantage, he was easily able to spy a block of Upscales traveling along their own lane on the other side of the street. And beyond them, there were others who were lounging around or taking in the sights, and some who were casually interacting with their fellows, and regular-sized people alike. It really showed just how drastic the difference in population density was between the city and back home.
The one thing that was fairly familiar to him, was the sight of hard-hatted Upscales engaging in construction work. That was another thing that Royal Woods had begun to put into effect, harnessing the enhanced physical strength of its Upscaled population to make much-needed repairs and alterations to the local infrastructure for a fraction of what it would have cost to do by traditional means. It simultaneously allowed both cities to make the changes that would be needed to accommodate its giant-sized citizens, while also allowing those same citizens, many of which had been rendered unemployable in their previous fields by their sudden growth, to be gainfully employed while they figured out their new situation. Though, as with all other things, the sheer population density of those working women was significantly greater than it was back home.
...and it was only at this point, that Lincoln noticed just how many of those Upscaled gazes had become firmly locked onto him. He, who undoubtedly stood out here like a sore thumb, was now even more the center of attention than he usually was.
Lincoln's steps faltered as his heartbeat began to quicken, but before things could worsen, Carlota stepped around the boy and gently nudged him to she spot she'd just been occupying.
"Thank you," Lincoln whispered to the older girl, realizing, to his relief, that she had deliberately positioned herself between Lincoln and the lion's share of those curious onlookers.
"No problem," She replied, smiling kindly at the younger boy. "Feeling a little overwhelmed?"
"A-a little," He admitted, with a nervous titter. "It took me a bit to adjust to it back home, but...now it's like I'm starting from square one again. There's just so many more...people...here."
"I get it," said Carlota, giving Lincoln a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. "But they don't mean anything by it. They're just not used to...well, you, frankly. It's kind of a big deal that you exist at all."
"That's something I've had a lot of time to get used to. But back home I had the advantage of knowing most of our Upscales before their change. It made things a lot less awkward. But it's... different...when it's a bunch of strangers, you know?"
"I can imagine," Carlota nodded sympathetically. "But trust me, the girls here are great. We've all had to pull together and support each other, and for the most part, it's worked out great. We're a community, and we've all got each other's backs. Mostly."
"That sounds nice," Said Lincoln, his lips quirking upward into a small smile. "But what do you mean by 'mostly'?"
"Well...you know. You force a lot of people to interact on a daily basis, and there's bound to be some friction. Like, the dating scene has gotten pretty competitive. But…" She nudged him playfully. "I don't think I need to tell you of all people that, right?"
"Err...well…" Lincoln scratched the back of his head nervously. "See...the thing about that is…"
"Oh, right. Your older sisters were also Upscaled. Ronnie mentioned you guys were all living together now." Lincoln's heart leaped up into his throat as the older girl directed a sideways glance his way, her lips pursed thoughtfully.
"Those girls were always pretty protective of their little brother," She mused. "I bet they must keep you on a pretty tight leash, huh?"
"S-something like that," Lincoln replied, desperately praying for something to divert them from this particular conversation—
THOOM
"What the heck was that?" Lincoln asked quickly as he peered around Carlota, silently thanking the universe for providing in his moment of need.
In the middle of the street were two Upscaled women, their stances, and general demeanors clearly indicating that this was not a friendly meet and greet. Presumably having picked up on this, the stream of traffic that had been continuously flowing only moments earlier had scattered and was now wisely giving the pair a wide berth.
It was the larger of the two that caught Lincoln's attention. A brunette, Latina woman, tall even by the standards of Upscales, and wearing a leotard that handily showed off a muscular physique that even Lynn would envy. While her opponent was visibly fuming, compulsively clenching and unclenching her fists, and angrily stomping her feet on the ground as the two squared off. The brunette, by contrast, remained calm and collected, coolly appraising her opponent with the gaze of a seasoned fighter.
Unsurprisingly, it was the smaller of the pair who broke the standoff. With a roar, she charged her opponent like an angry bull, swinging wildly. Whereas a lesser fighter might have backed off simply from the sheer ferocity of the attack, the brunette held her ground, waiting until the last possible second before she sidestepped the blow, wrapping one arm around her opponent and yanking her close. There was a blur of motion, and when Lincoln's eyes had finally caught up with the action, the situation was now very different, with the angry Upscale's face now planted into the street, pinned firmly in place by the other woman's powerful arms.
"Let...me...GO!" She screeched, struggling, spectacularly unsuccessfully, to pull her face out of the large dent it had left in the street. "That little turd had it coming! I'm gonna stomp him into goo! And then, I'm gonna—"
"Today's forecast…" Announced the brunette, cocking one arm back, "Citizen's arrest!" With that, she delivered an expert strike to the back of her opponent's head. The woman abruptly ceased of struggling and crumpled to the ground.
"Holy…" Lincoln uttered, gobsmacked by the scene that had played out before him. He glanced at Carlota, uncertainly. "Should we do something about...whatever that was?"
"Nah, it's all good," She replied. "That's just Blanca, doing her job."
She waved to the older woman, who returned the greeting with a pleasant smile, before flinging the comatose body of the other woman over her broad shoulders, and heading off down the street. Mercifully, in a different direction than the one Lincoln and Carlota were traveling.
"That's a heck of a job," Lincoln murmured, as he watched her leave.
"Well, it's like I said," Carlota replied with a shrug. "Friction is kind of inevitable with the way things are right now. And you've probably noticed that there isn't a whole lot the cops could to do stop Upscales from doing whatever they want."
"I...try not to dwell on that kind of thing," Lincoln said, wincing.
"Me neither. You start thinking that way and...well, it just seems like a slippery slope," Carlota nodded in agreement. "But things are bound to happen, as you just saw. So thankfully, we've got Blanca to help keep the peace."
"She a cop or something?" Lincoln asked, remembering just how easily the woman had subdued the out-of-control Upscale.
"Or something, I guess." Carlota shrugged again. "She gets a little cagey when people ask what she used to do before getting Upscaled. But she's built like a brick shithouse and her moral compass is about as strong as her grip. So we pretty much just let her do her thing."
"Seems like she found her niche."
"Yeah. She's great at putting down Upscales who get a little too rowdy, without causing too much property damage. And she's willing to throw down against Critters when they manage to make their way into the city."
"Critters?"
"You know, animals and bugs and stuff that get Upscaled." Carlota shuddered in disgust. "You couldn't pay me to touch those things, let alone fight them. Ugh."
"Oh," Lincoln nodded in understanding. "I get you. Back home we call them Kaiju."
"The heck is a Kaiju?"
"Literally a giant monster," Lincoln replied. "It seemed appropriate. My sister, Lynn, and her friends usually take care of them. I guess they're kind of our Blanca."
"That's dumb," Carlota scoffed, rolling her eyes. "The name, I mean, not your sister."
"Hey!" Lincoln protested. "It's a perfectly cromulent name! They're giant monsters! Calling them 'critters' makes them sound...cute, or something."
"Whatever," Carlota replied dismissively, playfully tousling the younger boy's hair. "Anyway, hang a left up here. It's not too much farther."
Ronnie Anne sighed as her eyes slid away from the TV, against her will, and towards the wall clock, for what felt like the umpteenth time. She'd been trying to find something to distract her, but with Sid presumably still being busy with her chores, and the rest of her family scattered to fulfill their various needs and wants (Carl, in particular, having beat an especially hasty departure as soon as she'd delivered Adelaide's message), there wasn't anything to keep her from wondering what Lincoln was getting up to with Carlota. And, consequently, nothing to distract her from the agitation she felt every time she wondered what Lincoln was getting up to with Carlota. It had occurred to her that she could just leave herself. Head down to the skate park, or maybe the arcade or something. But if she left, then she wouldn't be around when Lincoln and Carlota got back. Something that was sure to happen...any...minute...now…
THOOM
THOOM
The instant Ronnie's ears registered the telltale heavy footfalls of an approaching Upscale, she was already flinging herself off the couch and running to the balcony. As she threw the doors open, her mind was already racing to concoct a list of all the things she'd totally been doing that hadn't involved waiting for her cousin and the buck-toothed doofus to return...but as her eyes adjusted to the sudden incursion of sunlight into the moderately lit apartment, she found herself staring into a gigantic, gap-toothed smile.
...which...was...admittedly in the same sort of ballpark as the dental condition she'd actually been hoping to see. But in these circumstances it was so, so frustratingly short of the mark. Her good cheer rapidly eroding, Ronnie lifted her gaze a little higher, so she could properly greet her unexpected visitor.
"HEY RONNIE ANNE," Said the exceptionally titanic blonde that was leaning on the balcony.
"Hello...Nikki," Ronnie replied, dourly, her gaze pulled, as if by magnets, several feet lower, to the magnificent set of breasts that were molding themselves around the balcony, barely held in place by the tube top her friend was sporting. Ronnie honestly had no idea if this was a preexisting condition or not, Nikki had always dressed extremely conservatively, insisting on wearing her all-encompassing and figure enshrouding hoodie even when she and her friends went to the pool. But ever since her Upscaling, whatever hangups Nikki seemed to have held about that particular issue had flown right out the door, and she had adopted a much more relaxed approach to her attire thereafter. Which, as a fellow hoodie enthusiast, caused no end of frustration to Ronnie Anne. At least, that's what she told herself.
Tearing her eyes away from her friend's criminally curvy form, Ronnie found that Nikki was staring right at her, smiling expectantly.
"What's up, Nik?" Ronnie asked, trying to interject a bit of good cheer into the question—
"AREN'T YOU GONNA ASK ME HOW'S THE WEATHER UP HERE?"
—but that endeavor turned out to be extremely short-lived. Ronnie's response was a groan of frustration, and a slap to her forehead.
"We get it, Nikki," She replied, tersely. "You were already freakishly tall, and now there's even more of you! Nobody cares!"
The Upscaled girl's eyes narrowed, her smile abruptly changing into a frown. "GEEZE, RONNIE, IT WAS JUST A JOKE. WHAT CRAWLED UP YOUR BUTT?"
"I—" Ronnie stopped herself, and took a breath, which wasn't in any way motivated by the blonde's gigantic hands clenching into fists.
"Nothing," She said, her shoulders sinking. "Sorry Nik, it's been a bit of a day."
Nikki's frown unfolded into a smirk. "THAT 'NOTHING', WOULDN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH A CERTAIN SNOW-CAPPED FRIEND OF OURS BEING IN TOWN, WOULD IT?"
"W-what!?" Ronnie sputtered indignantly. "H-how...how would you even know...about…"
"WORD TRAVELS FAST. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT INVOLVES THE ONLY PIECE OF PRIME REAL ESTATE AROUND."
"Prime what?" Ronnie asked, arching one eyebrow.
"IT'S A...TURN OF PHRASE," Nikki replied, shifting so that her back was now leaning against the balcony, her head gently bobbing from side to side.
"SO...WHERE IS OLD SNOWBALL ANYWAY?" She asked, nonchalantly.
"He went off with Carlota," Said Ronnie. "I mean...I think he might have gone off with Carlota. It's not like I was paying attention or anything."
"THAT SO?"
"Yeah," Ronnie scoffed, waving dismissively. "I've just got so much on my plate, you know? How am I supposed to keep track of Lame-o's coming and going?"
"YEAH? ALRIGHT." Nikki straightened up and stretched out her arms. "WELL, IN THAT CASE, I GUESS I'LL BE HEADING OUT."
"Sure, sure." Ronnie waved to her friend. "Don't let me keep you."
"I WON'T," Nikki replied, directing a wry smile Ronnie's way. "THINK I'LL GO FIND YOUR BOYFRIEND, SEE WHAT HE'S UP TO."
"Sure," Ronnie nodded in agreement. "Go off and...wait, what!?"
"YEAH," Said the blonde, a big grin spreading across her face. "BEEN A WHILE SINCE LINC'S BEEN AROUND. BET HE'D LIKE SOMEONE TO...SHOW HIM THE SIGHTS. LATER RONNIE!"
With that, she began to saunter off, her shapely hips swaying rhythmically, the thin shorts covering them leaving little doubt as to what lay beneath.
"Don't you dare, Nikki!" Ronnie shouted at the departing blonde. "Nikki!? Nikki, you get back here right now!"
"And he's not my boyfriend!" She added, almost as an afterthought.
"THAT'S WHAT I'M COUNTING ON!" Nikki called back, winking at the Santiago girl as she disappeared around the corner.