Jake loved his job. He had done his time in the Gulliverian special forces, done the hard work as a grunt, and made it out the other side. And his reward? This cushy new role in the Lilliputian reserves. It wasn’t necessarily a popular choice, joining his people’s age-old enemies as a merc. His Gulli friends treated his decision with a mix of derision and envy. But the pay was five times any of the other Gulliverian offers out there, and with the Gulli-Lilli wars long-ended, the “work” mostly consisted of running the occasional battle readiness drill or war game, patrolling the base, and hanging out with the other sellouts whom he had come to know and love. Plus, the Lilliputians had provided all the coolest toys – jet packs that could launch a soldier hundreds of feet in the air, recoilless battle rifles more powerful than anything he’d used in the Gulliverian army, devastating energy weapons mounted on fast-moving battle tanks.
The Lilliputians had wanted to keep their Gulliverian lackeys far from judging Lilli eyes, so they positioned the base miles away from Concordia City, out of sight, deep in a valley out in the desert. They had built the base as its own self-contained and semi-autonomous city, but one ready to be called upon in a moment’s notice. So, for Jake and the others outside the base’s command center, the Alert 1 klaxon came as a surprise, especially when accompanied by a droning voice intoning over the PA, “Alert 1 is in effect, report to ready stations, this is not a drill.”
Within minutes, still clueless as to the source of the alarm, Jake was in an APC heading to what he presumed was Concordia City – after all, Alert 1 only was called if the city was under direct threat. Confusingly, though, the broken chatter over comms seemed to refer to “the target,” singular.
Did some solitary Gulliverian wander into the restricted zone? Would they really call an Alert 1 for that? Jake wondered.
Looking out the side slit windows in the APC he could see battle tanks and other carriers streaming through the desert at top speed alongside his own – it really looked like they had mustered the whole Gulliverian force from the base. How could all this be for one Gulli?
Soon they were slowing, the rear hatch opening with a mechanical whir as the carrier came to a stop, and the call from the officers coming for the company to muster in ready formation. Jake and his fellow soldiers rose quickly and streamed out of the large vehicle, weapons ready, preparing themselves to face whatever lay on the other side.
And nearly froze in shock.
Looming over the horizon, over Concordia City itself, was an immense figure. The soldiers could only see the figure’s back, but it was clear that, even kneeling, it towered hundreds of Gulliverian feet, multiple Lilliputian miles into the sky. Jake could immediately tell it was a woman, long auburn hair cascading across her shoulders, shapely figure clear even as she kneeled, but not much else. And her size – he struggled to keep his jaw from dropping. Even in their begrudging peace with the Lillis, Gulliverians had always been the dominant species on the planet on size alone. She was something else, though. Even at a distance as she was, Jake could clearly see he would be less than an insect compared to such a being. And the Lillis of Concordia City? Almost microscopic.
Orders were being shouted, rousing the soldiers out of their stupor. A unit from an APC nearby launched a green flare, usually used to demarcate an LZ, high into the air, and Jake’s company was pressed forward into the desert scrub brush where they took up position at the vanguard of the merc formation. Were they actually signaling this monster to come over here? Jake thought with a start.
She spared them a glance then, and Jake caught a glimpse of an undeniably pretty face, sharp green eyes flashing and faint freckles dotting a slightly smirking visage. After a brief, appraising look, she turned again and resumed whatever she was doing over the city, and they simply waited, the silence only broken by sporadic bursts of comms chatter, whispered exclamations of “holy fuck,” and “at least she’s hot,” and “how do we fight that thing,” and officers with tight expressions telling them to hold.
Jake still had a vague sense of confidence – after all, the Lillis had defeated his fellow Gullis, and they must have been nearly as large to them as she was to the Gullis, right? But it was tinged with something he hadn’t felt in a long while: real fear. He had, of course, heard of Brobdingnagians, but Gullis couldn’t use the Lilli portals, and no one in all of Gulliveria had ever seen one. Who knew what this girl was capable of?
Suddenly the Brobby girl seemed to say something he couldn't quite make out, the comms chatter increased to a fever pitch, and behind him he could hear the hum of powerful electric motors moving massive battle tanks into position, their turrets turning to and fro as they lined up the giant girl in their sights. He felt more than heard the deep thrum of their primary energy weapons going off. Powerful blasts that he knew could annihilate other Gulliverians without a problem streamed towards the titaness’ still turned back.
If she felt the blows, she gave no initial indication beyond a slight flinch as she was struck. Turning again, she looked back over her shoulder at their assembled might, and where perhaps they had hoped for pain or even fear, he could only see annoyance and frustration etched on those pretty features.
She rolled her eyes, and a booming sigh echoed in the air above them. “So, that’s really how you’re going to play it?” she thundered.
She began to rise, and now Jake could truly take in how massive she was. Long, bare legs unfurled beneath her, each hundreds of feet long, stretching majestically into a pair of denim cutoffs that did little to contain a tight, bountiful ass, bouncing alluringly with her movements and towering far above them. The small steps she took in turning in their direction repeatedly shook the ground beneath his feet, and he saw clouds of dust and debris kicked up around her leather sandals as they landed with booming thuds upon the fragile earth, obliterating whatever happened to fall beneath them. He glanced, embarrassed, away from her mountainous breasts jutting out proudly as she faced them, each likely dwarfing a Gulliverian skyscraper in their enormous size. If he had met this beautiful girl in a bar he would’ve asked for her number, but now the lust he felt only amplified his fear.
After a brief pause to casually brush desert dirt and the remains of powdered city blocks from her knees and legs (this accompanied by another eye roll), she started forward in earnest directly towards them, long strides rapidly eating up the previously safe distance, and increasing manifold the anxiety of the assembled mercs.
If Jake thought the ground shook before, it was nothing compared to the quakes she triggered as her powerful, earth-shattering steps closed the gap between them.
Thoom…thoom…thoom…THOOM, she thundered menacingly across the desert.
The ground now practically jumped with each footfall of those massive, sandaled peds, tanks and equipment swaying and bouncing alarmingly, and he and his fellow soldiers struggled to stay upright in their crouched ready positions, officers still yelling, but now with more than a touch of nervousness and even fear in their voices. The tanks, which had continued firing uselessly at her through most of her approach, now began to fall silent.
She stopped her advance a mere dozen feet from them, the earth mercifully quieting, even as the dust was still rising -- the fractured and churned ground around her feet a reminder of the unimaginable weight that rested upon it. Her sandaled feet had sunk under her incalculable mass into the desert floor, but even still, Jake could see that from his crouched position he could only barely reach the rough leather lip of the sandal, if that. He truly was an insect to her.
White-tipped toes bigger than semi-trucks flexed cutely within their massive leather confines, and Jake wondered absently if she was imagining how he and his fellow soldiers would feel under them. It was only years of military discipline that kept him and his unit from running right then and there.
Looking up at that pretty face far in the distance, he saw the annoyance from before replaced, or maybe just mixed, with a sardonic look, an eyebrow quirking questioningly upwards.
“I’ve read about you Gulliverian mercs,” she said, and Jake could hear the confidence in the tone with which she addressed the armed soldiers gathered at her feet. Her voice alone at this distance was almost painfully loud, a roar of feminine sound echoing in the desert air.
“I’m gonna go ahead and guess you have no loyalty to these Lilli kidnappers. So, I’m giving you one chance to walk away.”
Kidnappers? Jake thought. What had the goddamn Lillis gotten themselves into?
“I’m done waiting around, done taking orders, done being threatened and attacked by puny little people like yourselves,” a pointed look from her at this, “So you have 20 seconds to pack up your gear and go. Otherwise…” she trailed off, simultaneously lifting a colossal sandaled foot straight up in the air. She didn’t even lift it far by her standards, but she brought it down with enough force to level a Lilliputian town.
Jake and his unit were closest to the titanic Brobby girl and took the brunt of the impact, the shockwave of her footfall knocking them physically backwards, the earth heaving beneath them with a violence beyond anything they had felt before. In the aftermath, they struggled to right themselves, coughing and sputtering and caked in dust, seeing lighter equipment strewn across the desert ground from her little demonstration of power.
That same foot began to tap impatiently, the steady booming thud and resulting tremors emphasizing the now ticking clock.
With that simple statement, and without doing much of anything, she had already broken them -- no one seemed to know what to do. Jake saw one unit immediately begin piling back into their APC, apparently more than willing to take the colossal girl up on her offer. Multiple tanks, their commanders clearly seeing the futility of all this, similarly turned to retreat. Yet others advanced forward, firing their rifles in reckless bursts at the long, toned legs of the giantess, lost in the battle lust of soldiers who hadn’t seen a real fight in years. Divisions appeared within the same unit -- a gunner to his right with a tripod-mounted cannon fired ceaselessly into a set of enormous toes, while her squadmates retreated around her.
With a whoosh, a jet-pack wearing soldier blazed by Jake overhead, soaring in the sky, perhaps thinking she was more vulnerable further up. He was followed by two others as they advanced rapidly upwards toward her waist.
Jake himself just froze, now rising from his crouch, letting his weapon hang limply by its strap to his side and simply staring at the chaos around him. Knowing he should move, but not being able to will his body to do so. He saw several of his squadmates in a similar state of shock.
The tapping foot suddenly stopped. He forced himself to look up slowly at the massive girl, and was surprised to see a mixture of puzzlement and disbelief marking her delicate features.
The rat-a-tat-tat blasts of various small arms and the thrum of the one remaining firing tank continued unabated, and as before, she seemed to feel none of it, just kept staring at them bemusedly with those sparkling green eyes, the way one might look at someone knowingly making the dumbest decision of their life.
After another beat, she seemed to make a decision of her own, and with yet another thunderous sigh began to move. First, with a rush of wind, she swiped a massive, manicured right hand through the air by her chest – once, twice. He distinctly heard the explosions of the rocket troops as they were wiped out effortlessly, splattered against long elegant fingers adorned with glinting silver rings. Jake didn’t even see them fall -- they just evaporated with a small puff of fire and smoke. She wiped the deadly hand absently on a colossal breast, smearing imperceptibly whatever remains lingered there.
Next, he heard a loud rustling sound and saw the immense toes to his right begin to wiggle and shake as the titaness slowly slid one gargantuan foot from its equally gigantic footwear. The now-bare foot rose into the air, long, white-tipped toes wiggling and flexing as if enjoying their freedom, lightly reddened and dirt-marked sole rising to calf-height. On the bed of the now empty sandal, Jake could just see over the lip a dark imprint of her colossal foot, each individual toe clearly marked by its own deep indentation in the impenetrable leather. Yet one more tiny sign of the terrible power she wielded.
The crazed turret gunner to his right swung her fire upwards, hypersonic bullets firing many times a second, glancing off the giantess’ warm, soft-looking sole without effect. Her squadmates, now almost reaching their idling APC, turned to yell to their comrade, pleading in raised voices for her to retreat. She paid them no mind, and Jake wondered randomly when she might run out of ammo firing at that pace.
Above, the big toe of the colossal, hovering left foot now flexed downwards. It alone was the size of a house, and with a small movement of the giant leg, it sliced through the air towards the offending gunner, enveloping her in shadow and easily dwarfing the tiny woman. As the gigantic digit approached like a looming storm cloud, the gunner let out an animalistic shout of rage or fear or god knows what before the massive toe came down with a soft thud, driving her into the ground without resistance, replacing her and her weapon completely with a wall of supple toe flesh and expertly manicured toenail.
Jake feared for a moment that she would crush the fleeing APC next, but true to her word, the giantess appeared to let them go before turning to her next victim.
A tank he recognized as McDaniel’s continued to fire at the giantess from its position behind Jake, energy bolts impacting her shins, her thighs, her torso, all with no effect. One errant blast even seemed to strike her in the right breast, right at the nipple, and Jake, in his altered state, wondered briefly if such a giantess might be able to get aroused that way.
This giantess, however, was clearly not amused, and her long left leg, still shorn of its footwear, swung towards the mighty battle tank. Jake nearly pissed himself as the deadly foot sailed overhead but it quickly eclipsed him on its way to its new target. Her long toes pursed upwards as she pinpointed the subject of her ire, and she began to lower her foot as McDaniel tried uselessly to turn and speed away. But instead of simply crushing the, to her, soda-can-sized tank beneath her massive sole, she seemed to simply rest her giant foot on top of it, long toes curling over it graspingly, holding it effortlessly in place even as its motors churned. Jake could hear the nigh-impenetrable armor on the massive vehicle groaning under even this ‘light’ touch, the drivetrain buckling beneath the strain, flexing toes indenting the thick metal with their sheer strength as they curled and uncurled around the turret and chassis, even the smallest of them imbued with unimaginable power. Still, she didn’t flatten the tank, but instead began to drag and roll the huge vehicle back towards herself with her toes, as if she was playing soccer and McDaniel’s tank was the ball. Jake quickly realized the danger he was in as the 100-ton, 30+-foot long tank rolled and bounced over the landscape at speed directly towards him and what was left of his squad. He sprinted to his left, but Rogers and Shields, dumbfucks that they were, in a panic ran straight ahead as if they could outrun this giant hunk of reinforced titanium alloy. Jake looked back just in time to see the tank, miraculously still intact, bounce slightly over a small ridge before slamming down on the not-looking soldiers splattering them unseen across the hull.
Jake, panting, watched as the titaness rolled the tank a few more times back and forth beneath her before stepping off it with a small quake as she rested her toes on the heel end of the now-empty sandal, smooth, long bare sole waving idly in the air and toes continuing to flex and grind together lazily on the soft leather. Anyone inside the still-mostly-three-dimensional and now finally upright tank, if not already broken by the abuse, would not be getting out any time soon.
Or so he thought. With a mechanical clank, he saw the top hatch open, and a bruised and bloodied arm reach up dramatically to let the as-yet-unidentified tanker pull themselves out of their battered death trap. Jake’s heart swelled, maybe McDaniel and his crew were still alive! But just as it seemed the figure was about to make his or her exit, the deadly toes lifted from their sandal resting spot and dropped without mercy onto doomed tank. This time there was no playful rolling, as the ball of the huge foot dropped straight onto the tank, driving with force downwards, crushing the turret and its attempted escapee flat with ease. It seemed to Jake for a second that the hull might offer some resistance, the sturdy metal groaning under the strain of her powerful step, but then he saw the giantess’ athletic calf flex slightly and the heel raise and then lower and that was it -- the whole massive vehicle caved and flattened like the aluminum can it resembled, leaving her enormous bare foot resting fully on the desert floor, a thin sheet of metal all that remained of the once-mighty war machine and its crew.
The battle was over. Jake realized with a start that he and a few other shell-shocked survivors were the only ones left. His APC was gone, fleeing with whatever members of his unit had been smart enough to make their escape while he was standing there in a daze. He would have to hoof it home.
The Brobby girl also seemed to recognize her victory as she slid her murderous foot back into its leather home with a rumble – the only evidence of the carnage a tiny stain on her big toe quickly fading and a thin layer of dust on her sole from the ground she had crushed McDaniel’s tank into. She turned slightly to glance back at Concordia City behind her, and Jake felt a twinge of pity for the residents yet to face her wrath, but little shame for the Gulli mercs’ failure – the Lillis had clearly brought this disaster upon themselves.
He grabbed Smith and Alvarez where they stood nearby, and together they shook themselves out of their shock, and began the trudging walk home. That is, until an oddly feminine voice with the power of a god boomed out above and behind them, “Oh! Looks like I missed you guys.” They didn’t even have to turn back to know that a colossal sandaled foot was being raised over them, they could feel its looming presence, even before it blotted out the sun and enveloped them in dark shadow.
“Sorry, I told you the deal,” she thundered, with a small shrug. Alvarez and Smith made as if to run, Jake didn’t bother. There was nowhere to go. The world turned black.
John and hundreds of his fellow portal commuters were in a state of panic. They had felt the earthquakes, heard the ominous words of the titaness terrorizing Concordia City, and even seen the videos on their headsets and personal devices before they were taken down by the authorities. But still they were being forced to do nothing. Locked doors and armed guards blocked their exit, “for their safety.”
Now in the vast, high-ceilinged atrium of the Central Ave portal terminal they sat on hard wooden benches or on the floor and continued to wait, for what they didn’t know.
Suddenly they heard a familiar hum.
Were the portals being restored? Could they finally escape this madness?
Energy once again seemed to pour from the portals, but it looked wrong – not the usual green, but red, and it seemed to be spreading like a wave over the whole station. John stood shakily, unsure what to do, and then, with a flash, he along with every other commuter, was gone.