The Star-Spangled Giant (Chapter 1)

Even a few short years ago, George never would’ve believed it if he had the chance to speak to his future self and glimpse his fortuitous upcoming life. Yet here he stood, with pretty much everything possible falling into place. He’d all but shirked his family’s oppressive influence now and been supporting himself for a while, even if his autism had represented certain obstacles in the way of that liberty. Best of all, he’d been in love for two years with his roommate and more-or-less girlfriend Barbara, a fit black-haired beauty with a certain “old soul” quality that had made her irresistible to George from the moment they met. Everything from her warm kindness to her melodic laugh made him dizzy with affection for her, which was why he’d chosen today in secret to travel to the mall and scout out rings to finally pop the question.

Granted, there were still plenty of aspects in George’s day-to-day life that needed some improvement. Though a big fan of superheroes themselves, he was desperate to escape his G.U.A.R.D. agency-focused government work and become part of the free market, a phrase he’d often repeated to Barbara, which would of course mean some financial instability at first. Thanks to his forward-thinking, though, George had combing the city for banks that could loan him a mortgage payment. He and his bride wouldn’t require anything elaborate, even if he’d originated in the lap of luxury; perhaps a tidy evergreen suburb in Montreal, or if not there, the bustling heart of London, or history-steeped Vienna. The possibilities were limitless for the couple, and either way, he found it hard to choose at times. Even if George’s penny-pinching kin could’ve helped him out, he was determined to keep them out of his affairs. Still, despite those potential stresses, George was riding high, and could contain his fiercely abiding fondness for Barbara no longer. In truth, he saw the proposal as the first step toward that total independence from his old life and this new life with his future wife that he so craved.

The shopping center was humming with life as George marched proudly for his destination. No sooner had he set foot on the glossy tile of the jewelry story, however, when a skull-splitting crash echoed through the mall, followed by a billowing wall of smoke giving way to a freshly-blown “entrance” in the side of the building. As the blast took place only just across the wide hall, George and every other person in the vicinity was thrown head-over-heels amongst the shattered cases.

Pillars were crumbling; the ceiling groaned. In his delirious state, with ears ringing, George managed just enough bleary consciousness to peer through the ashen void of the mall. Unknown figures in tactical gear were sprinting over the rubble. Just when he thought the situation couldn’t get much more frightening, though, a reptile the size of a humble Komodo dragon clambered through the bombed opening, let loose a scream, and instantly swelled to hundreds of times its old size, revealing itself as an honest-to-God kaiju beast. Now bearing drool-dripping fangs and beetle-like armor plating all the way down its spine, the eighty-foot-long chimera trampled ruins and terrified victims alike, making the once-expansive mall corridor look like a tunnel almost too tight to fit through. Overhead, the buckling ceilings began to give way, though the tumbling rafters seemed not to bother the monster. While the structure of the jewelry store held up for now, preventing George or his fellow shoppers from being crunched beneath, he could tell they might go at any moment, especially if the beast’s tail swung hard enough. Even once he got his bearings, the man realized both his legs were pinned under a hunk of the wall, far too heavy for him to lift.

Right as he had reason to believe that maybe karma had come now to collect on his swell life situation, George’s heart fluttered at the sight of armed thugs being thrown backward, followed by another entity charging in from the other side. It was a woman, with shoulder-length raven hair, a cat-eye face-mask, and a belted limb-flaunting onesie, topped off with crimson gloves and azure boots. Big a fan though he was of superheroes, a combination of obscuring dust and general bleariness made it hard for him to identify her. Just when George was wondering how a lady of such human scale planned to stand a chance against these odds, her body glowed and she expanded in perfect proportion. Her limbs stretched and her silhouette filled in, a tone-muscled monument of a woman who now rather looked like a mega-sized athlete trapped in a dollhouse-mall. The stranger commenced enlarging at the exact moment she launched herself from the ground toward the monster’s face, a triumphant fist held aloft, her figure swelling and bulging all the way, and by the time her right-hook clocked the monster across its teeth, she had grown to be eight stories tall.

Of course. How could he have missed it? This was none other than the Star-Spangled Giant, a personal favorite of George’s for reasons of both platonic admiration for her do-goodery and his clandestine fetish surrounding powerful ladies of a certain stature.

Now that the fight was even, the superwoman grabbed the monster around its midsection like she was crocodile-wrestling, holding it back from snapping its deadly jaws at a group of cowering civilians. It proceeded to growl and writhe in the grasp of her biceps, scraping it claws at her thighs, while the woman gritted her teeth and let rip a roar almost as loud as the beast’s. Another potent blow from her fist silenced his razor-pointed thrashing. Their fight toppled yet more pillars and storefronts, though assuredly, the woman’s presence had prevented the monster from crawling deeper into the crumpling mall and gobbling more victims.

Flames engulfed the wreckage. George could feel his awareness shutting down as the crushing weight of the debris pressurized all sensation out of him. So much was happening, yet through it all, the man came abruptly to terms with the fact that he was probably going to perish here. It was a peaceful realization, if a lonesome one. No longer able to witness the battle clearly, George heard a series of thunderous punches, followed by an earth-shaking flop as the silhouette of the beast fell flat as a rug. Blurry though his panged vision had become, the man was sure he could see those magnanimous mega-sized red gloves reaching in between half-collapsed structures, gently plucking tiny citizens and carrying them to safety, until at last those reassuring fingers hovered over George, just as darkness swallowed his periphery.