“Whoa, what happened? She’s huge!”
“Wow, Claire’s a whole mountain now!”
“She’s approximately ten times her normal size. If you needed further precision, my high-end specs allow me to provide between one and eight decimal places.”
Blade rushed to the scene with Earnest and the gang the moment they heard the news. There, they saw the majestic figure of Claire standing tall in the courtyard. From a distance, she looked like the usual Claire, but as they got closer, her new size became readily apparent. Having something to compare it to made matters even clearer—she dwarfed the partially destroyed school building where Eliza’s lab had been, along with the large trees dotting the courtyard. In fact, her shoulders easily cleared even the highest treetops.
“Hey, Claire!”
The group approached her, waving their hands and shouting loudly. But Claire didn’t see them. She just stood there, arms wrapped around herself, anxious and alone. Her body possessed a mass and volume like nothing imaginable, making the trees around her seem like miniatures.
“What a monster, huh?” said Blade.
“Master, that is a disrespectful way to refer to a young woman,” scolded Iona.
Having a former Guardian lecture him about what a “young woman” was struck Blade as rather odd.
“At a ten-to-one scale, she could be described as ‘Mobile Suit’ size. That is what my high-end specs are telling me.”
“What’s that mean?”
“In Mother’s database, there are records of an ancient manned weapon from human history of a similar size. The one put on display in a land known as Odaiba was particularly famous.”
Huh. So people had huge humanoid weapons like this way back in the past?
Of course, size didn’t necessarily translate to strength, so Blade couldn’t tell how powerful such an ancient weapon might be. Could it outclass a champion or even a Hero? Who could say?
“Hey, Claire!” shouted Earnest. “Look this way! Hey! Heeey!”
Claire still didn’t notice. The small animals scurrying around her feet didn’t even enter her field of vision.
“Hey, Earnest? Could you maybe whip up a huge fireball and throw it at her?” suggested Blade.
“What? No, you idiot! I can’t do that! It’d kill her! She’s not you!”
“Nah, at her scale, it’d just feel a little warm, is all. She’s never gonna notice us unless we do something big… Wait, why would you be shooting fireballs at me? Whatever. Hey, Iona, can you fire that proton beam or whatever you call it?”
“Charging energy. Three percent… Five percent…”
“Enough!”
With a loud thud, Earnest’s fists came down on both Iona and Blade. The latter groaned and held his head. Lately, Earnest had figured out how to penetrate his spirit barrier and hit him directly on the skull.
Left with no other choice, Blade called out once more to Claire, who was still towering over them.
“Hey, Claire!”
No response. She still hadn’t noticed them. Being over fifty feet tall made everyone else seem trivially small. They weren’t really small, though. She was just huge. Huge as a mountain, in fact. Claire Mountain, if you will.
Looking up at the giant girl from below, the group could see one thing very clearly. They couldn’t really help it—especially from this angle, where it was in plain sight and completely visible. There, inside her skirt, was a broad piece of white cloth. Since it was now ten times its original size, it was about the length of a sail on a fully decked out sailboat.
“Hey, Claire!” Blade decided to break the news to her. “We can see up your skirt!”
The moment he said it, the previously inert Claire demonstrated a sudden, violent reaction.
“Huh?! Aaah!!!”
A ball of iron fell from the sky. It was Claire’s weapon, a vicious mace bristling with spikes, except blown up to ten times its original size. In terms of mass, it was roughly one thousand times heavier than it had been before. And that object was now descending from the sky like a doomsday weapon. It was as though she’d uprooted a tower and swung it at them.
Ka-blam! Ka-blam!
Ka-blam! Ka-blam!
“Aaah! Don’t look! Don’t look at meee!”
With the force of a natural disaster, she battered the ground over and over. That mace wasn’t just making craters in the ground—it was causing earthquakes. Even far-off buildings shuddered and jolted in the face of such enormous tremors.
“Oof… Ugh.” Earnest got up first and shook off the dust. “Claire, come on! That’s really dangerous! You’re a lot bigger now, all right? You need to use a little more restraint!”
“Earnest? Are you there? Y-you’re all right! I…I think I messed up!”
“Aaah! Stop walking! Stand still! You’re gonna trample us! Stop! Stop!”
“I-I’m sorry!”
Claire Mountain stopped in her tracks, and the little people on the ground exhaled in relief. Being stepped on by someone her size could lead to serious injury, no doubt. Maybe even death.
“Okay, is everyone still here?” Earnest began to take command, as she was naturally inclined to do. “Clay, check. Kassim, check. Yessica, check. Sophie, check. Lunaria, check. Leonard and Iona, check, check. Okay, good. That’s everyone.”
“Hee-hee-hee… She counted us, too. Did you see that, Leonard?”
“Yes, Iona. It’s quite an honor.”
Earnest pointed at everyone to confirm their presence.
Right. Everyone’s here… Or, wait, aren’t we missing someone?
“Huh? Is someone missing?” muttered Earnest.
“Um, Anna,” said Yessica. “I think…he might have disappeared.”
“‘He’? Who’s he?”
“The one you didn’t point at and say ‘check.’”
“Um…?” Earnest looked confused. When they’d heard that Claire and the school were in trouble, everyone had rushed over. Shouldn’t they all still be here? “Oh. I forgot Blade!”
Of course. Blade wasn’t really a person anyway—he was a super-being. What reason was there to worry about him?
“Where’s Blade?”
“In the epicenter…”
Yessica pointed out a gouged-out crater where Claire Mountain had bashed her mace against the ground repeatedly. The large depression appeared empty at first. But then, with a great bang, the earth rose up.
“Ugh! That really hurt, Claire!”
“I…I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Blade! Are you okay?”
The giant creature gesticulated wildly as Earnest, beads of sweat dripping down her forehead, turned back to the rest of the group.
“See? He was just fine! Right? Right?!”