The Great Awakening (Chapter 25) (Patreon)

The first things he spotted emerging through the smoke shroud were two marching limbs, bare and smooth, without an ounce of armor or even skin calluses to suggest they would hold up to heavy artillery. This confused the commander, since these twin “legs,” each half a mile long, were drastically shorter than the footage had suggested, while at the same time, it made him grin with pre-emptive satisfaction. If the reports were exaggerated, and she was in fact “only” a mile tall rather than the mythic ten-mile described, then he couldn’t understand the apocalyptic fuss. A being that size could be blown to smithereens, guaranteed. As the tank’s viewer allowed him to spy a two miles down the battered NYC grid system streets, the girl’s marching legs were still quite far off, which would leave them plenty of time to prepare a barrage of fire to knock her flat on her ass. Still smirking, the order was already half-barked out of the commander’s lips for the row of tanks lining the street to load up and prepare for an en-masse shell-hail into those sexy gams.

            Then Commander Baker stopped himself mid-word through “FIRE,” a twinge of doubt forcing him to instead peer back through the porthole right as the ash swirled to clarity when the alleged legs took another lumbering stride, stomping the concrete to crumbs like a goofy rubber-suited beast in a Godzilla movie. It was at this moment the man realized those weren’t feet on the ends of the slender legs, but rather manicured nails curiously unbroken by all the crushing and pillaging they were performing on the hapless community. That wasn’t the lower half of her body walking along the roads, one “foot” jammed in the center of adjoining streets, but in fact the relatively delicate fingers of a petite womanly hand. Up the length of her arm, he saw the “real” target’s seemingly near-infinite body, stylishly dressed and strangely alluring, if it wasn’t for the fact that she was currently picking apart New York like an unruly child in charge of an unwanted toy train set. The reports hadn’t been overblown after all. If anything, they were watered down, and the order to fight back caught in Baker’s throat. Did they even have a chance?

            But there wasn’t time to consider that. Her hand was swiftly oncoming, maybe three steps away from her creamy model-esque fingertips arching up and colliding with close-by earth, either plunging Baker’s entire tank battalion underground, or alternatively, stomping the cracked city geometry just near enough that the street bounced upward below the row of 60-ton tanks like a playground see-saw and sent them all hurtling high above the level of New York’s most impressively tall architecture, high enough probably to get the best glimpse yet of the enigmatic giantess’s beautiful uncaring expression while she crouched above her sandbox city. Baker sarcastically supposed this wouldn’t be the worst sight to experience just before he and the rest of his troops were slammed back to the ground far below when gravity caught hold of them again, but he loathed the idea of going down (or up) without a fight.

            Then, peering again through the window right as Lilly’s middle finger swung forth like a mighty pendulum, kicking its way through apartment buildings lining the path easily as roadside pebbles before denting another unnatural crater in her wake, Baker had an idea during the few-second interval where the giantess’s playfully destructive appendage came to a stop. Her Godzilla-hand was ruthless, but also intentionally slow-moving as those same fictional creatures, taking a leaden step then halting, as if to simply admire the devastation wrought by that single stride, and cruelly build suspense for those soon to fall beneath her finger’s stride.

            Which meant that for a span of nearly a minute at a time, her hand was still, those lovely fingers limply clasped into a partial fist while her giddily bunny-eared index and middle finger stayed rooted in the fragile concrete up to the cuticle. And though the commander had never before had to think in terms of victory as delivered through pressure points and hypersensitive junctures along a single human body, given that he was in charge of a group of tanks which usually smoked out all opposing life an explosion at a time, it occurred to him that the skin around nailbeds was not only very soft compared to, say, the knuckle, but also capable of delivering disproportionate agony for even relatively-small wounds. Not much, in the grand scheme of things, when they still had an entire giantess to down, but Christ, they had to do something, he decided, and currently he had a uniquely sensitive portion of the city-destroyer’s feminine digits motionless and dead-trained in the sights of his trusty tank, along with many others of the same caliber.

            “Fire on the area around the… fingernails,” Commander Baker crowed into his mouthpiece so his confidence projected to every tank with their barrels pointed to the sky. He only briefly choked on the mention of the fact that they were technically fighting a pair of women’s fingers, unusual an occasion though this was, but there was no time for lingering shock. They had to light her up. “Not on the nails: around. Odd-numbered units take the left, even take right. Give this bitch a hangnail that bleeds like a motherfucker. When she takes the next… step, give her everything you’ve got. And, NOW.”

            Right as Lilly’s pointer finger arched forward again, landing close enough that Baker felt the street tremoring below the tank, he gripped the sides of the viewer to steady his vision. An entire column of tanks pulled the ripcord at once, again blocking the view to the girl’s nail with a veil of smoke and flame. The collective impact of every tank’s hardware striking Lilly’s skin around the rim of her shield-like fingernail was immense and very satisfying, especially for Baker, who gripped the inner wall of the tank, then indulged in a knowing cackle while waiting for the dust to settle. Yes, they still had to bowl down the rest of her, but this would be a start. He knew it. Rarely had Baker been so pleased with himself, but this move went beyond the usual cleverness required of his position. Odds were, she’d end up with shards of torn flesh that stung so severely she’d have to retract her hand from the road and stop playing kaiju; hell, perhaps she’d even need to beat a retreat, returning to the ocean to wash out her wound, and by then, the air force and navy might’ve recovered enough to take over the fight again in tenfold force.

            Squinting through the porthole, Commander Baker awaited the first sight of a scar, of drawn blood upon the lovely olive-tan obelisks of those staggeringly long fingers which made even the Empire State and One World towers shrimps by comparison, like chess pieces she could boot over with just a nudge from her fingerpad or the rounded edge of a nail. Long before he could capture a clear glimpse of the tanks’ handiwork, however, he noticed Lilly’s fingers wobbling slightly, quaking back and forth even, as though on the verge of crumpling toward the earth. Like she’d just had a joint snapped.

            Though the idea of the giantess’s entire fist descending on the street would likely spell disaster for most everything in a mile-wide radius, since it would be akin to the girl punching through brittle canvas, it also would be an unequivocal sign of future success: a symbol of hope for the rest of the once-outmatched military forces. If just one row of tanks could make this raven-haired goddess bleed, then they had the ability as a unit to topple her. And Baker was prepared to die for that cause.