City Feet

It started twenty years ago. The sky darkened, eclipsed by a great rift that appeared over the city. At first, only a silhouette stirred behind it, but soon, it sharpened into being, and a column of massive flesh erupted from it. To the people below, they had time only to feel a great gust of wind before their life was snuffed out from under the giant sole that descended. Feet as wide as streets filled the bustling intersection, crushing cars and bodies alike, plastering them into the crumbling tarmac below. The earth buckled under the weight of the 1000 foot giantess, a ring of displaced road mounded around where her foot had stepped on, tossing vehicles around and burying others beneath it.

That was our first contact with them. The giantess looked down upon our city, with barely anything in it that was taller than she was. Each step forward meant an entire block of traffic flattened under her massive soles. The panic was immediate and contagious, thousands ran from the encroaching masses of death, honking horns or running past the inevitable jam on foot. It was all for naught, however, as the feet landed one in front of another, ensuring that an entire mile stretch of road was reduced to nothing more than craters in the shape of feet.

Each step felt deliberate; the heel of the foot would land first, anchoring the footstep into back of the road. Next came the toes, pointed down and crashing through the roofs of the vehicles unfortunate enough to be underneath them. The sole became a canopy of darkness for the survivors still underneath, goading them to scuttle away with renewed haste, or cause them to snap, falling to their knees as they watched their inevitable demise draw closer. The toes would scrunch up the cars and people behind them, grinding them playfully between them and the balls of their feet, feeling the twist of metal and sinew churning inside the gargantuan digits. After a few seconds, the mass of tortured vehicles fell out, and the rest of the foot crashed into the occupied street below.

Whatever she was doing, the giantess was enjoying herself. Those who dared look up at the face of the monster terrorizing the city saw a girlish grin as her feet began wrapping around the tiny objects below. She tried a variety of things; wrapping buses and trains inside her toes, picking telephone poles and phone booths up between them, crushing small buildings with a single step, all with a look of glee or her face.

And as soon as she had came, the giantess was gone. Just as she was about to put her foot into another busy junction, a loud crack heralded the opening of another dark rift, and pulled the giantess through it. With a loud boom, the rift disappeared, taking the monster with it.

Though the destruction had stopped, there was no doubt that thousands of people had died. Twisted lumps of mangled steel lay upon the cratered remains of the streets where the giantess had played and crumbled the cars, with metal sheets like flattened aluminum cans and red blotches littering the places where she had stepped on. Several buildings had fallen over or were caved in, struck by her gigantic hips as she waded her way through the city. The metro along the street she passed had caved in under her weight, caving in a subway and stranding hundreds within. The damage was unspeakable. Many survivors had already been diagnosed with PTSD, seeing friends or loved ones splatter beneath the demon's soles.

We thought this would never happen again, and in a way, it didn't, but in less than six months, yet another rift opened. This time, the giantess was not alone.

It was on the outskirts of the same city where they landed. A dull series of thuds were heard and felt by commuters nearby. There was an immediate call for evacuation. The military scrambled their jets, and saw what their targets were. Three giantesses, all wearing the same purple uniform, stood on an open plain just past the city limits. Slowly, they made their way toward the city, almost like a slow march, with every step taken their feet feet were planted carefully and deliberately, inching ever closer to the city proper.

Cries of terror resounded through the city. The distant figures of the three giantesses loomed over the landscape. The distant thundering of another step taken growing ever louder, sending the citizens into a flurry of hurried panic, desperately scrambling away from the first point of collision the giantesses would have with the city. But just as they were close enough to take the first step inside, they stopped right at the foot of the first buildings, and the middle giantess lowered herself down, placing a massive, papery cone-shaped object onto the open space before them. Several houses were smouldered by the sudden foreign object, but most lay intact. As she rose back to her feet, she said a line in an alien tongue and took a slight bow, the two giantesses behind her doing the same.

The jets screamed towards the trio. Their missile bays opened and were ready to fire, when suddenly, the rift that brought the giantesses here opened once more, taking the gigantic beings with it. A dozen missiles flew past where their targets were supposed to be, detonating in the air as their fuses scuttled the warheads harmlessly outside the city. Once again, the giantesses had left as soon as they had came, leaving nothing but footprints in their path, and an enormous object at the edge of the city.

When the military investigated, they found the object to be a mass of plants bundled together in a papery wrap. A long stems fanned out to the top, where petals of various colors bloomed at the end. It was a bouquet, one large enough to be taller than a house when laid on its side, filled with alien plants of unknown origin. A hazards team cordoned off the area for fear of harmful chemicals, but the residents in the area only noted a sweet aroma in the air in their morning routines.

The message was hotly debated by the leaders of the world. Was this a sign of peace from the giantesses, or was it a declaration of some alien nature we weren't aware of? Whatever the reason, we never saw them again for another five years. The bouquet was too big to be moved, so city had it burnt. Concerns and fear of the giantess's return began to grow, and the countries of the world began amassing their military might...

We call the time five years after the One Hour War. Twenty giantesses, all dressed in purple uniforms but barefoot and in different parts of the world, appeared through the rift simultaneously. The world scrambled their military, and began an immediate offensive. Everything was thrown at them; shells, missiles, mines, nothing seemed to work. The giantess in Moscow simply laughed as explosions dotted her body. The giantess in Tokyo swept everything up with a wave of her hand, trapping the soldiers around her in an anti-gravity field, dangling them helplessly in the air as she went about her business. The armies in Berlin simply marched with the giantess, a ghostly blue aura around her controlling the minds of everything close by. In the Pacific, the navy was helpless as the giantess alternated between walking on water and diving into the sea, the strange performance allowing her to evade missiles above and torpedoes below. Washington was met with something stranger still. There were footprints in the ground, signs that a giantess had come to the city, but one was never seen. An invisible force swept through the city, yet nobody could say when it happened. The remaining giantesses had their own quirks, but not a single country invaded could do a thing.

Though the armies of the world were completely helpless, the casualties were minimal, and what casualties that were incurred were largely the military's own fault. These giantesses had not come with the intention to destroy, it seems, and no military force in the world have yet been able to subdue any of them. Only after a hour of continuous firing, it was clear how outmatched humanity was against these alien invaders, and a ceasefire was called.

Diplomatic solutions were the next logical step, but there was nothing logical about trying to communicate with a being 1000 feet tall, and there was no clear means to even talk to them, as their language was not even known to us. Helicopters were sent, attempts at dialogue were made, but the giantesses only seemed to only regard them with brief curiosity before returning to their own devices. Lights were laid about the city in the hopes that the giantesses would at least avoid those areas, and it seemed that at the very least that that was the one thing they understood.

The giantesses themselves were not doing much, relatively speaking. Their footfalls were still making dishes fall from shelves and any vehicles underfoot were crushed in an instant, but they were careful to move around the city. They only stepped on the most empty areas, did their best to avoid damaging the buildings, and were only about inspecting the cityscape. They collected samples; a motorcycle, a hotdog stand, a mailbox, some dirt from the park, seemingly mundane things. They whisked their samples away with a flick of their hand, summoning the same rift that brought them here into their palm and sending their specimens through. It looked completely trivial to what happened five years ago.

The months rolled by, and there was no sign of the giantesses leaving. There was no indication that they needed food or water, and only a night's rest was required of their bodies. They had kept themselves cloistered within their respective cities, and they seemed content to romp about their restricted areas. The places marked by lights were largely untouched, with a military blockade watching diligently if any areas were breached; none ever were. Soon, the citizens of the city could no longer bear being away from their homes, and slowly, the people returned home in spite of the looming threat of the giantesses.

Reluctantly, life resumed. People who had abandoned their vehicles on the road came to retrieved them, restoring traffic to the streets. Shops dusted off their window sills and schools reopened their gates, and a relatively subdued normality ensued. A good portion of the population decided to remain in other towns, but for the brave few who stayed, their daily lives returned.

Perhaps the giantesses were waiting for this moment, because when the city began bustling again, almost all of them simultaneously stepped across the lights which stopped them, directly into the populated areas. Panic came as their massive feet were planted in the center of an intersection. Again, people ran, the military was scrambled, and the city became chaos once more. But the giantesses didn't do anything, this time. They simply stood in the intersection they occupied, watching the humans response to their presence. No more than half a hour passed did they return to their part of the city.

Again, the citizens waited out the giantesses, but begrudgingly returned. The giantesses repeated the same actions, entering the first intersection they see, and observing the humans beneath them. This went on for an entire year, with nobody able to do anything about it. A small percentage of the remaining population simply gave up, ignoring the calls for evacuation. When the giantesses next entered the intersection, the cars simply drove around their feet, pedestrians hurried their steps, but continued on to their destination. The giantesses observed this, and on each of their faces a smile hung.

Soon, the giantesses were ignoring the lights which divided the city between them and the population, walking right into populated areas. Panic should have taken hold the citizens, but they were already conditioned to ignore their gigantic hosts, driving past their footfalls as if it were only a brief annoyance. By some miracle of the giantess's technology, the places their feet me were always empty, and the footprints they left were shallow enough that cars could still drive right through them. People began getting used to them, and the sight of a giantess became an everyday, ordinary sight. The hood of a car might narrowly scrape the sole of a giantess, or a pedestrian may get caught between her toes, but in the end, nobody was harmed or even remotely inconvenienced.

With their land extending to the entire city now, the giantesses walked freely through the city. Some went briefly through the rift again, returning shortly with a change of clothes. They ditched their purple uniforms for casual clothing, the giantess in Washington sporting a flowing, layered white one piece which billowed with alien geometries that defied physics to create a dramatic flutter. Another in Moscow had tight leather pants and jacket with a fur-like scarf which adjusted itself with the wind and weather, ensuring her neck was always covered sufficiently. More incredible clothing were worn, but all of them still chose to remain barefoot.

And it seemed like the only thing they would use to interact with us was with their feet. Every prod, grab or push was done with their toes, and with practice, the giantesses were even able to single out and pick up individual persons without harming them. They began getting bolder, manipulating bodies between their toes, helping people pick up large objects, sometimes mimicking common actions, like planting their feet next to a bus stop or stopping just before a traffic light. (But with feet the size of the street, they were mostly just creating traffic) This practice of only using their gigantic peds on us have earned them the nickname 'City Feet'.

Now, in the present day, twenty years after our first disastrous contact with the giantesses, they live with us as if they belong to the city. Sitting opposite a park with her feet planted inside a park, (sitting inside completely would displace everyone inside) a large crowd of people were gathered about the Washington giantess's feet. She dug her toes in so that the little people could climb up her instep themselves, and used her free foot to pick up or interact with the people there. Her toes were as big as their cars, but with some delicacy, she was able to grip human bodies with the nail of her big toe and the bottom of her second toe. She'd adjust them so they fit perfectly between her toes, and carry them off to wherever she wanted to put them. With a deft maneuver, she was able to switch them to another pair of toes, letting her hold four people at a time if she wanted to. Being handled by her this way seemed to be a source of amusement for the humans, so she obliged them the opportunity every afternoon in this park. She'd show off her dexterity with a small show, sometimes, twirling a lamp post between one end of her toes to the other, offering to step on willing volunteers to apply her own brand of massaging, and even juggle (relatively) small stone balls with nothing more than feet. She drew a sizable crowd every time she parked her peds in the park, and there were no shortage of spectators.

It was like this in every part of the world. The people had warmed up to their giantess guests and the giantesses were slowly learning the human's behavior. Twenty giantesses in twenty cities, who first came to us twenty years ago. There were still many questions that were left unanswered, like why the first giantess chose to attack the city, what the three giantesses left the bouquet here for, and what the current group of giantesses intend on doing, living on our planet. But for now, humanity enjoyed its peace, living harmoniously with the alien giantesses who seemed content to stay in our world.

In time, a boy named Arthur would change the world we live in, for better or worse, having just moved into Washington, and would be the first person to talk to the giantesses...