The Great Awakening (Chapter 13)

Even when the semi-oblivious titaness squatted down, the same effect continued, first by the billowing of her high-thighed skirt adjusting to the descent of her colossal legs into a crouched position. The square miles of fashionable fabric undulated and swept, generating wind that bounced and then pushed the Hudson defense forces flat to the ground instead of blowing them into the water. It took place easily as knocking ants off a picnic blanket with one jerk of the cloth, stopping vehicles in their tracks and either swirling ground troops with the effect of a miniature tornado, or simply knocking them hard against the earth. Then Lilly carefully dropped to a kneel, still not wanting to disturb the city across the bay too dramatically before she’d had a chance to set foot on the crunchy urban landscape herself, but again neglected to notice she was in fact already engaged in a “battle” with the first line of defense. This time it wasn’t just a harsh breeze menacing tanks, jeeps, and thousands of troopers below. First one knee plummeted, then the other, finding a comfy pose balanced in the loamy ground near the water which sunk slightly to accommodate the giantess’s immense weight, but didn’t outright crack the coastline either.

            Gentle as she intended to be, succeeding in not disturbing Manhattan yet other than psychologically, Lilly’s change in posture meant a pair of mile-wide rounded forms like broad mountaintops were punching fresh craters into the ground with the strength of a million depth charges. Once Lilly was kneeling in soiled depressions deep and wide enough to constitute new lakes, with her upturned sneaker toe sections molding similar shapes into the ground far behind, she could indulge in a “closer” glimpse of the little mega-metropolis from a mere six miles up instead of ten. Everyone below her knees, whether standing bare in the shadow of her figure or housed in paltry metal husks, was immediately squashed so flat and flush with the bending terrain, their bodies and weaponry became indistinguishable from the dust they joined.

            The battalions posted just beyond the perimeters of Lilly’s legs, meanwhile, were treated to a more prolonged execution. Though the army and national guard were strategically arrayed at first for maximum protective coverage of the waterfront, their ranks were quickly softened at the once the giantess got close, with many fearful newbies retreating, and the tactical layout for a whole two miles surrounding the invader’s body was scattered, with hundreds of vehicles and wailing troopers hurtling through the air easily as blown dust bunnies, thanks to the stormy strength of her skirts and then knees impacting the surface.

            Still this didn’t make Lilly take notice of her attackers. She didn’t spot the blinking flurry of gunfire lighting up the riverside like dying firefly glows, nor did she hear the ugly combined might of a thousand small arms and tank artillery payloads creating a deafening chorus around her calmly folded legs. Among the survivors, sprawling and confused after near-total separation of their units, many lost their hearing during the ensuing din of ten thousand high-caliber rounds blasting in unison, all at the same deceptively soft and silken-skinned yet invulnerable target.

Meanwhile, their foe was free to peaceably observe New York City from afar, though still close enough that she could’ve leaned right across the bay and picked needle-thin buildings from the island spectacle like a sacred flower bed. Since Lilly’s height was greater than the reach of certain cities, even while crouched, her head may as well have occupied an entirely different region than her lower body, so while the panicking army fell into frenzy-firing chaos at any part of those pale creamy legs their bullets could reach, the giantess was having the time of her life nearer to the clouds, squinting in an attempt to perceive the multicolored specks of traffic jams filling the thread-like Big Apple streets, and the sunlit gleam illuminating some of the skyscrapers like ultra-fine diamonds.

            Only after Lilly glided her palms and outstretched fingers down the slope of her nearly-bare thighs closer to her knees, and at last into the range of the helter-skelter ground support, did it even become possible for her to pick up on their all-out assault. It still required five minutes of motionlessly serene rest on Lilly’s part, feeling nothing but soothing breeze and the warmth of the morning sun while she studied New York, until at last the prickle of their collective shrapnel hail across her long digits narrowly distinguished itself from the equally-harmless sensation of zephyrs cooling her skin. Gradually balling her fingers into tender fists to ensure it wasn’t just a phantom tickle, the giantess still felt that not-unpleasant tempting of retaliatory gunfire from a thousand troops and heavily-armored transports, and knew it wasn’t simply the wind.

            Maintaining the same kneeled pose, Lilly delicately arched her back and dipped her inquisitively smirking face as deep as she could without catching herself against the ground. By focusing her attention on the coastal land surrounding where she’d elected to plant herself, and nearly developing eyestrain from the necessity to parse the visual noise formed by forestry patches like moss lumps and buildings too short to be differentiated from ground itself, Lilly finally discovered the source of this mild irritation. Though wildly strewn and enduring massive casualties as a result of Lilly dropping to her knees, the army ranks were slowly regrouping in large enough numbers, akin to clusters of gnats only perceptible due to their buzzing quantities, that the giantess could find them. For the first time, too, she became aware of the legions of muzzle-flashes speckling the landscape, no brighter alone than dying sparks, but noticeable now that she knew where to squint.

            Slowly her fingers unfurled again, sensitively swirling the pad of her thumb in quarter-mile loops around the rim of her forefinger. She didn’t even realize she was absentmindedly doing so until she’d silently examined the ground for several minutes, seeking out the extent of the military response. Once Lilly took notice of the gesture, though, she was stricken by another rampant curiosity. Yesterday she’d preoccupied herself with the game of trying to lift high-rises from the ground in one piece, a task she’d finally accomplished while feeling the vein-like stone tube of Willis Tower pressed against the pads of her finger flesh, only briefly rebuffing the shape of her skin before bowing and snapping like a dry grass blade to the pressure of her squeezed digits. If that was possible, then perhaps she could go further.

What would it feel like, she wondered with a self-satisfied Mona Lisa smile, to try to collect something even smaller, so puny in comparison to her ten-mile body that it should’ve felt like less than air, too infinitesimal to even activate the senses like a speck of dust nestling against skin cells? Probably not much. But then again, if they were so delicate as to be impossible to hold, like crystalline snowflakes that melted to boring water on contact, she still had to know for herself. If such insignificant-sized things were gathered en masse, then she just might feel them for a moment before they split asunder.

            Parting her fingers, Lilly spied the densest nearby crowd of troops and tanks flinging their fiery ordinance, nothing but a blurry camo-hued smattering against the cracked earth, and reached for them, allowing them to see her kind grin distantly widening between the descending curve-horizons of her fingertips.

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            SPC Jeb Brandon believed he’d have longer than two months in charge of his subordinates before they were called upon to defend the homeland, and certainly not to repel an invasion on America soil. Yet here they were, woken at midnight and shipped upstate with hardly a word about the nature of the operation until they were stepping out of Humvees onto the mainland just off Manhattan island and told exactly what they were up again. At first Brandon, sleep-deprived and worried for his green-gilled troops, laughed at what he was told, before the statement was sternly repeated and news footage of the lovely black-haired doom-bringer was shown just before it cut to static, courtesy of the chopper crashing right into the plastic shoestring-loop for one of the giantess’s city-breaking footwear.

            Thus, as confident a soldier as Brandon was, having faithfully served his country over several years now, climbing the ranks to be in charge of his fellow patriots, he found himself pondering his career choice for the first time ever as the visage of the mysterious and beautiful ten-mile-high civilization-stomper approached. The privates under his command were already sweating and whining in panic-attack mode at the first tremors from those earth-quaking rubber soles that vibrated their very bones, but as he was in charge of them, Brandon kept a stiff upper lip and stood in front, with a bazooka propped over his shoulder and full knowledge already that it wouldn’t do a damn thing to slow the skyscraping girl’s peaceful stroll, even if he had unlimited rounds.