The Great Awakening (Chapter 12)

Nothing good could last forever, though, and Lilly found that was the case when, after she’d already either knocked or pinched every high-rise into little glowing pillars, the fires were reduced to ashes and barely-evident glows like the final gasps of coals. This, the giantess realized, had something to do with her own scintillated exhales when she leaned over again for a closer look, but night had fully overtaken now, and even the largest building on Earth shrouded completely in flame couldn’t offer much more than a dying night-light to ten-mile Lilly. When at last there was nothing much left to see in Cleveland, the girl shrugged and released the tensions of a long but wonderful day as a lengthy yawn that moaned and roared in sleepy echo to every mountain and skyscraper for miles around. The force shook loose several rocky avalanches in smaller towns at first fortunate enough to avoid the primary finger-swinging rampage, only to get buried in a landslide.

Though she no longer had camping gear adequately sized to handle her newfound fifty-thousand-foot frame, Lilly was actually delighted at the thought of slumbering in the buff, so to speak, especially because she didn’t have to worry about insects intruding on her beauty sleep. Not at this size. There was no sense in playing with and subsequently demolishing more of the map, either by heel or hand, when it was too dark to see what she was doing, even by miniscule firelight. And Manhattan would still be there in the morning, when she was refreshed. Reposing on her side next to the ember-piping remnants of Cleveland, then rolling over and cratering countless acreage just like that, the giantess shut her eyes, murmured, and found sleep almost immediately in mossy bedding atop once-lively civilization.

Granted, Lilly hadn’t counted on a new kind of insect scaled to her unthinkably-ginormous size, though she was correct still in that she would be less bothered now by the irritations of “bugs” than she would’ve been by mosquitos at human-stature. The United States military had been either unable or unwilling to scramble much of a response in time to help Ohio, especially because Cleveland was already a charred mess by the time the first wave of fighter jets and helicopters even took off. The defense of “key” locations, ironically such as Lilly’s intended destination for the morning, were considered too vital to spare resources, so only reserve units of the air force were dispatched to the Midwest where the beautiful kaiju was last seen.

Long into the night, gunships and bombers zipped and buzzed around Lilly’s conveniently-reclined and deeply asleep countenance. Most of them were given hope, when first seeing her through night vision sights, that their target wasn’t even awake to resist their retaliation for the loss of Cleveland and Chicago. It seemed like taking candy from a baby.

Yet round after round, missile after missile were emptied all over the square mileage of her porcelain-fine face, to no avail. Bombs were dumped in her ear sockets, attempts were made to set her hair and eyelashes aflame, and several brave chopper pilots even landed on the sleeping girl’s cheek like an up-sized Gulliver to manually set down depth charges. Each and every piece of heavy weaponry resulted only in a puff of smoke and a lack of damage to the unblemished enemy. Her skin didn’t so much as get a rug-burn, let alone break, kissably soft though it appeared from a distance.

Occasionally Lilly would dreamily smirk and mutter in her sleep, smacking her lips, at which point the jets tried to fire some explosive payloads into her momentarily-parted red maw, but the effect was just as empty, and the increasingly-disheartened reserve forces realized her nocturnal mutterings probably had nothing to do with them. Or if it did, Lilly only perceived their fiery armaments like the batting wings of a moth tickling her temple. Without a single wound to show for their efforts, and in fact having sustained several fallen troops when Lilly shifted in her sleep to roll over or intake air and either crashed into or swallowed planes, the survivors guiltily retreated, flying off to rejoin the larger coalition just as the first light of dawn broke.

Long lashes bristling, the gleaming pond of a gorgeous hazel iris opened to see the sun. Laugh lines formed at the edges of her eyes when Lilly grinned, her heart thumping with eagerness upon recalling her size, her surroundings and, more importantly, her first visit of the new day. And what a marvelous one it would be.

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            Once the sky-touching insurgent’s path was determined, America’s military had but one night to form a battle plan. Washington DC and other high-value locations received all the fortification that could be mustered, but New York City in particular readied for all-out war, entering martial law in the span of hours. The streets were trafficked with Humvees and tanks, the skies were patrolled by jets and helicopters, and the seas were watched over by aircraft carriers and accompanying fleets. Even every rooftop with the space to squeeze in a missile launcher or portable rail gun was occupied. Though the city was in too much chaos, with too little time, to orchestrate a mass exodus, the city’s population of eight million took shelter in their homes and office basements, glued to their televisions and phones for the first signs of conflict.

            The lovely leviathan’s presence was felt long before her immense silhouette appeared through the fog, as the earth tremored seemingly from its core up to the many inhabitants unlucky enough to have chosen to live in the same place Lilly just so happened to desire visiting on this second day of her surprise uprising. When her approach was only invisibly perceived, it was just trash and the pebbles in aged sidewalks that bounced off the ground, though every trooper and civilian posted in the roads had to steady themselves against a wall to keep standing. By the time the first apparition-like visage of the black-haired doe-eyed beauty in her fashionable garb appeared over the horizon, incoming toward the island city by land, Manhattan felt like a rocking ship on turbulent seas, and indeed made many fearful thousands now trapped in the city they loved succumb to sea-sickness from all the trembling and rumbling courtesy of the girl’s footsteps. Of course, they would have far better reasons for illness in the near future, and as soon as everyone could finally see Lilly with their own eyes, even partially veiled by mist, they understood this apocalyptic inevitability at a subconscious level.

            The toughest and most hardened troopers were given serious pause when they first saw Lilly’s distant body outlined between the concrete canyons of Manhattan. The greener soldiers, naturally, could barely keep hold of their guns at this initial glance up that dizzying landscape of a body, a sight which to many would’ve been a pleasant and highly attractive mirage, if it wasn’t projected on a girl with shoes the size of small towns.

She was trudging toward them at a comparative snail’s pace, barely lifting her sneaker-clad feet off the ground and then tiptoeing forward. Despite her apparent daintiness, the people below experienced every robust quake more percussively now, rattling storefront windows and knocking over vases, and the effect was only worsening the closer she came. Worst of all, no matter how slowly Lilly moved, even her shortest stride carried her miles at a time, which meant the distance temporarily keeping an ill-fated Big Apple safe from her stomp was rapidly closing. Her gaze was pointed at all times toward the grand metropolis, a smile widening on her lips the nearer she came, and briefly the giantess gifted her soon-to-be-victims with foolish hope, when she abruptly stopped moving while just across the Hudson.

The military forces stationed on the opposite side of the waterway, however, felt rather more pessimistic when Lilly’s sneakers slid into place like half-mile-high white tanks, pile-driving many battalions of ground troops and vehicles straight into dense earth with the ease of a hammer mashing nails into soft foam. As the wind of her approaching footwear alone was a force to be reckoned with, a hail of jeeps and earthbound soldiers were sent flying by an oncoming gust, splashing down to their doom in the river. Others didn’t soar fast enough to avoid the rapidly-charging bulwark of rubber sneaker turf, however, and were smashed like bugs on a windshield, joining a decorated mess of smoky destruction already adorning the fronts and sides of Lilly’s towering shoes after her giddy shuffle from Chicago to New York.