If there was one good thing about pursuing Brobdingnagians, it was that they were ridiculously easy to track down.
When Jacob crossed over into Lilliputian territory, it was painfully obvious that his quarry had been through this way as well. There were two sets of immense footprints, the area surrounding them reduced to catastrophic ruin. Each Brobdingnagian footfall must have been like an asteroid slamming into the ground and he paused at the edge of one of the colossal prints, glancing down inside. To him, the footprints were as deep as he was tall; to the Lilliputians, they were hundreds of feet deep. He could see the remains of tiny houses and cars, all compacted into the packed earth, and he felt his mouth contort in a grimace of disgust.
The worst part of it was that the Brobdingnagian government probably wouldn’t do anything about it. Heaven forbid that they actually send a few of their own police officers out here, in the middle of nowhere Lilliput. Sometimes, when it got too bad, they would send out some rookie (and usually, the officer ended up inadvertently causing as much destruction as the criminals.) Jacob figured that the Lilliputian army would probably be called in at some point, but usually, there was little that they could do against someone who was six miles tall. So Jacob was the only possible salvation for this Lilliputian city.
Luckily, he was well-armed.
In the distance, Jacob could see thick black clouds of smoke drifting upwards, standing out starkly against the brilliantly blue sky. He was willing to bet that the Brobdingnagians were in that direction and a second later, a deep, rumbling laugh confirmed that suspicion. Despite its deafening volume, the laughter had almost a feminine quality to it. Jill, no doubt. He sprinted in that direction, avoiding the gigantic footprints and the debris that littered the ground.
When he caught the first glimpse of the two Brobdingnagians, Jacob dropped to the ground. He had reached the edge of the Lilliputian city and there were enough tall buildings around that he could hide himself relatively well, at least from the giant and giantess. The Lilliputians probably had spotted him, but they were too busy fleeing the city to care, streams of them rushing past him like mice escaping a housefire. He peeked out from around a highrise, studying the Brobdingnagians.
They had already stripped off their clothes; Jacob could see a lacy bra and a pair of black jeans draped across several blocks, most likely smothering anyone trapped beneath the heavy fabric. Jill (or whatever her real name happened to be) was a breathtaking blonde, probably a few years older than he was. She was sprawled out across the city, the diamond stud in her bellybutton sparkling as she turned herself slightly. Her partner was equally attractive, leanly muscled and with a roguish twinkle in his grayish-green eyes. The giant was crouched down, his hands moving through the streets and stirring up great plumes of dust and smoke. Jacob wasn’t sure what he was doing besides causing catastrophic devastation until Jack lifted up his hand. In the center of the giant’s gargantuan palm were a dozen or so Lilliputian buildings, looking like Lego blocks compared to the Brobdingnagian.
Almost daintily, Jack pinched one of the buildings between his fingers and lifted it up to his mouth. His tongue slid out and he deposited the building on the tip of it. He let it sit there for a second before he retracted his tongue back into his waiting mouth, swallowing the entire structure with a satisfied look. Jacob sincerely hoped that there hadn’t been Lilliputians in that building, but he knew better. So he hoped that they were at least dead before they reached Jack’s stomach.
The giant moved closer to his partner and then began to feed the rest of the minuscule buildings to her, laughing as she ate them like some sort of delicacy. While they were distracted, Jacob took the opportunity to inch his way closer, trying to avoid the Lilliputians underfoot. Already his mind was forming plans and strategies, trying to estimate how close he needed to get before he—
His thoughts were interrupted when Jill moved without warning, sitting up. The violence of her simple movement caused nearby skyscrapers to start toppling and Jacob had to leap out of the way before a highrise that was nearly his height crashed into him. He had one nanosecond to realize that he was out in the open, completely exposed, before the giantess’ bone-rattling voice confirmed that they had seen him.
“Well, well. What do we have here?” Jill asked, reaching for him. Jacob tried to dodge the massive columns of her fingers but the bulletproof vest beneath his sweater and his various weapons slowed him down. The giantess grabbed him and lifted him high above the ground, scrutinizing him with her sapphire eyes. Behind her, Jack squinted suspiciously at him as well.
“What the hell is a Gulliverian doing here?” The giant demanded.
“I dunno. He looks like my old sociology professor from college, though,” Jill replied, bringing Jacob so close to her mouth that he could smell her bubblegum-scented breath. There was another odor as well, slightly rotten, and he remembered that the two Brobdingnagians had been eating buildings full of people when he had first arrived.
“Wanna fuck with him in me, Will?” Jill’s voice rose an octave with excitement. Jacob fought in her hand until she brought one mammoth index finger down onto his chest, the pressure and pain making him stop.
“Jesus, Natalie! I told you not to use my real name in public.”
Jill just continued to press her index finger gently but firmly into Jacob’s chest, making him wheeze. “Why not? It’s not like anyone’s going to survive to blab our real names, anyway.”
Jack grinned fiendishly. “True enough. Yeah, let’s do it. I wanna smash him out of existence.”
“Hey!” Jacob managed to shout, although it was difficult with Jill’s finger pressing down on him. “What if I told you both why I’m really here?”
The giant’s dark eyebrows knitted together as he looked at Jacob first, then his partner in crime. “Yeah?”
Jacob was already fingering the trigger for what he called the Xiuhcoatl, a sort of super Taser that he had invented. The weapon had molecularly-sharpened electrodes made of nanotube-strengthened carbon-fiber, connected via superconducting coil to a pair of ultra-capacitors and was capable of releasing insane amount of energy. As soon as Jill removed her index finger, he pressed the trigger. The result was spectacular, the giantess’ immense hand going rigid as he delivered an incredible amount of electricity into it. Then he was falling, her grip on him lost.
He struck the soft flesh of her belly, bounced once, and then continued to roll down the length of her colossal body. By the time that he stopped, he was on her thigh. Above him, Jill gripped her hand, hissing with pain and disbelief. She was focusing too much on her injury to grab for him, but Jack wasn’t. The giant was already reaching for him, annoyance etched on his handsome features.
Jacob unslung the modified harpoon gun from his back and scuttled backwards, trying to aim for one of Jack’s massive eyes. The harpoon’s head was impressive, its edge was a mono-molecular crystal carbon film, and it was so sharp that it could probably slice a virus in two. It certainly wouldn’t have any trouble blinding a giant.
But he was having trouble aiming, especially with the Brobdingnagian trying to snatch him up. When he fired the harpoon his aim was off and the projectile struck Jack’s cheek instead. The giant blinked, startled. A single bead of blood welled up from the wound and rolled down his cheek like a scarlet teardrop. Jack’s reaction was predictable.
“You little sonovabitch!” The giant howled, his face darkening with rage. “I’m going to tear your goddamn head off!”
But Jacob was already climbing down from Jill’s thigh, moving with the agility of a gecko. Once he hit the ground, he took off, pumping his legs as hard as he could. Jack’s gargantuan fist hammered into the area where he had been standing, obliterating all of the delicate Lilliputian buildings beneath it. The impact nearly threw him from his feet, but he continued running for his life.
Well, he had managed to piss them both off. The question was what he should do next.
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