Two companies. That was the amount of infantrymen it took to take down a Class Five. The Intelligence spooks crunched those numbers after about fifty engagements with them, quoting the lowest casualty rate and manpower needed to win a straight fight against them. Giant hunters, they were called, and their mission was to eliminate the hundred-foot warriors with nothing more than rifles, mortars and whatever other conventional weaponry which was on hand. 

Two companies were sent to the front lines, giant hunters in all but name. There was nothing to differentiate them from other infantry other than their name and purpose. They were sent to fight off a pair of Class Fives harrying the border patrols, outside the high walls which demarcated the border between humankind and the giants. The defenders of the wall saluted as the giant hunters marched through the walls, to fight the giants in defense of mankind. 

Two companies were sent through the wall. Two companies, armed with guns and bullets and explosives meant to be used against other humans, not monsters. Two companies, with soldiers as green as privates fresh out of boot camp and veterans who've lived through the First Contact War. Soldiers who have never taken life, and soldiers who've seen lives being taken. They marched on, unbeknownst to them what was to come, yet knowing that the worst was coming. 

Two companies were sent to eliminate the two Class Five trespassers. Only half a company returned. 

It was a bloody battle. Standard operating procedure had mortars and snipers attempt to blind the giants to give a chance for the infantrymen to close in on the Class Five to where their guns were effective. The battle had been anything but standard, when the last point of contact with the border patrol was a small gulch, where the Class Fives ambushed them.

It was a quick battle. The giants had razed the leading platoon by jumping out from behind a cliff, crushing a squad of men as they landed. The ensuing melee killed off the rest of the platoon, the Class Fives crushing them with a quick succession of merciless stomps. The first company responded with gunfire, but bullets had as much effect as a nail hitting a building, their lethality greatly reduced with the Class Five's size. They caused nothing more than small prickling pain and minor bleeding, but were otherwise ineffective against their mighty foe. The soldiers knew this, but there was little else they could do but distract the towering figures. Even as they crushed another platoon beneath their soles, the soldiers held their ground, keeping the giants inside the gulch. 

It was amidst the chaos that the whistling sounds of mortars came unannounced. Just as the two Class Fives were about to crush the remaining survivors of the first company, a hail of explosions crashed into them. One struck the head of one of the giants, splattering skull fragments and brain matter across the gulch: an instant kill. The other one had been hit squarely in the chest, the force enough to knock even the gigantic Class Five down onto the ground. Scrambling, the Class Five drew a massive sidearm from its belt and began firing wildly into the distance, where the second company had deployed their mortars. 

The bullet round of a Class Five was equivalent to a tank shell, and it exploded the ground wherever it landed. Several of the second company’s mortar teams were wiped out in an instant, but the remaining teams continued to fire. Round after round, they traded fire, until the commander of the company called for them to cease firing. 

The remnants of the second company made their way to site of impact. Crater holes, both pooling with human and Class Five blood, littered the decimated landscape. The giant, now identifiable as female, lay twitching on the ground, holes blown into her in multiple places, yet still drawing breath. Her eyes had been burnt shut from a glancing blow to her face, and she couldn't even see her foe approach her. The soldiers lobbed grenades at her neck, blowing it open as the last of her life finally left her. 

Two companies were sent to kill the two Class Fives. Less than a quarter of them made it back. As they carried their wounded through the wall, the garrison stationed there immediately attended to them, moving the injured into the infirmary and the rest to spare tents. Those of the garrison who were still on guard duty saluted them, a gesture of respect for the sacrifices the giant hunters had made. 

Twenty-five percent. That was the rate of survival headquarters gave to giant hunters on a successful mission, and the highest number given to human infantrymen fighting against Class Fives. Today, they prove once again that those numbers were right. 

The garrison stirred and quickly came to attention as someone walked towards the giant hunters. Someone far taller than any man, a woman at that, with every soldier coming to no higher than her hips. The Class One commander of the garrison herself, Major Derris. 

"I saw the result myself through the telescope," the towering figure said to the giant hunters as a whole, "Good work."

Derris fired off a quick salute, and the still able soldiers returned the gesture. She turned to speak to the surviving officers of the two companies, debriefing them on their mission. The other soldiers could only look on warily. Though they had made enemies with the giants, some had come to their aid after the First Contact War, after a human victory.

Class One giants like Derris defected at the chance of opposing their greater counterparts. Being the smallest of their kind at around ten feet tall, they were seen as inferiors in the giant's caste of height, and had long wanted a way out from their rule. 

That wasn't to say mankind trusted them. Nearly all defectors were enlisted into the army, a proving ground for their loyalty and worth. Successful Class Ones even make it to high positions just as Major Derris had, but most were made into nothing but fodder for the front lines. The humans were reluctant to accept them, as they had fought not twenty years ago against each other in the First Contact War. Seeing a Class One walk amongst them did not sit well with the giant hunters. 

Still, they stayed from expressing their opinions. Chain of command saw to that, especially since their captain seemed amiable towards Major Derris. 

"The pair of Class Fives were probably survivors of the Frenick Battalion the other giant hunters brought down last week," the captain of the giant hunters reported, "They've got the insignias on their armor, and it's only a day's trek for a Class Five where that fight broke out."

"Understood," Major Derris replied, then turned to the remnants of the giant hunters still milling about the garrison, "What of your own men, Captain Martin? I was sure there were other Class Ones under your command."

"Dead," Martin said gravely, "All of them were in the first company, and the Class Five wasted most of them, including the human infantry."

His eye glinted with dead seriousness as he said his next words: "The survivors kept the Class Fives close, and we bombed them both with mortar fire."

"I see," Derris said with equal deathly seriousness, not a hint of emotion betrayed her voice. She continued, as if dismissive of the news, "Headquarters has called in new orders for your company, captain. Your giant hunters are to return to Demeter One for rearmament and reassignment before oh-nine-hundred hours of the next Monday. You're needed by the military police there to suppress a civil uprising."

"A civil uprising?" Captain Martin repeated with a raised eyebrow.

"More defector protests," Derris explained icily, "You're needed in case the situation escalates to the Class Threes being provoked again."

Class Threes. They stood around forty feet tall and were the largest of the defectors on this side of the wall. They were less than half the size of Class Fives, but one could easily see how they could trouble the five to six foot tall humans. Even with only thirty of them defecting, they caused a great deal of tension amongst the colonies closest to the border. Soldiers were normally stationed in these towns when off the front, but the presence of Class Threes sparked protests within the community, culminating to violence against the giants. 

There was no secret as to why Captain Martin and the giant hunters were being sent to Demeter One: they were there to kill any Class Three who fought back. 

"...Understood," Martin said solemnly, "I'll have my able-bodied men on the march by oh-eight hundred tomorrow."

"Good," Major Derris replied, "Then I'll leave you to your men, captain."

As Captain Martin saluted and turned to go back to his men, Derris walked away, holding her breath as her legs trembled from the effort of maintaining a composed posture. She pushed through the throng of shorter soldiers with little regard, making a beeline for her quarters. In one fluid motion, she opened the door and shut it behind her, locking it from the inside. With no onr in sight, Derris rushed over to her bed, flinging herself onto it, unconcerned about her sheets as dirt fell from her uniform. She buried her head into the pillow, muffling the sobs she had fought to hide from her soldiers outside. 

"Oh, Seris..." Derris said with a whimper. 

Seris was another female Class One, and one who had defected alongside Derris. She had not as notable as Derris had been, remaining only as a lance corporal with the giant hunters under Captain Martin. It was an unwritten rule that defectors were more expendable than human soldiers, and being assigned to the giant hunters meant Seris was in the front with the first company. There were no survivors there in today's skirmish. 

Derris turned around in her small, undersized bed, her legs hanging loosely from the human-sized mattress. Her sobbing had slowed down considerably, although her eyes were still filled with tears for her fellow Class One. Seris was a friend, one whom Derris adored dearly, for they had been together for almost ten years since they escaped. Army life wasn't so bad in the peace which came after the First Contact War, and life had been fair until their ex-nation began mounting their attacks against the border. She wanted to say something important to Seris after her next mission, after holding it in for so long, and Seris promised to come back to hear it. In the end, it was a promise she couldn't keep, and Derris lost her chance to confess her feelings to Seris forever. 

"Major Derris!" A voice called out from beyond Derris's door. 

Derris shot up from her bed, wiping her eyes quickly and hurried to the entrance. She opened the door and saw a young human soldier standing in the doorway. 

"What is it, corporal?" Derris said with unhidden annoyance. 

The corporal fired a crisp salute up at his taller superior, and began his report. "The tower's spotted four Class Fives. They've brought a contingent of smaller soldiers with them, and are setting up a staging point five miles out."

Derris frowned. The Class Fives weren't supposed to move this quickly. The two Captain Martin took care of should have been remnants of an already defeated battalion, and a battalion never had more than four Class Fives at a time. If even more were coming, then that could only mean that they weren't just interested in harrying the borders anymore. 

"Er, major?" The corporal sounded off nervously, "Are you alright?" 

Derris blinked. It was then she realised that tears still streamed from her reddened eyes. Quickly, she wiped her sadness away and faced the corporal again. 

"Tell the company commanders to assemble their men," Derris said, putting on her stony facade once more, "High alert. And bring me Captain Martin."

The garrison was abuzz with activity. Sand bags were being piled on the outside of the wall, and munition after munition was getting moved into the garrison center, thrown into a recently dug up hole in the ground. Derris had ordered the ammo stores to be completely emptied and stockpiled into a single area to be buried. 

"This is crazy," Captain Martin said, shaking his head, "We'll blow ourselves up before they even come here."

"The Class Fives are serious this time,” Derris replied rather calmly, "They would never commit this many soldiers for a border skirmish. They're preparing for war, and our wall is the first thing standing in the way of that."

"So they're planning to take it down," Captain Martin reasoned, "But then we should be putting our bullets in our guns, not in the ground!" 

"The wall will never hold, and it'll be as if those bullets were never spent," Derris said almost dismissively, "We're still here only because the Class Fives never made a move on our fortifications. If they really wanted to, they'd have this wall down within a day."

Derris picked up her telescope from her uniform pouch and looked toward the Class Five's staging point. "And it looks like they plan on making it happen today."

The Class Fives were moving. Derris saw that they carried a massive metal rod on their shoulders, and pointed it towards the wall where she stood. The smaller troops moved first, Class Ones to Class Fours making up the front of the attacking force, all armed with firearms scaled to their size. 

"They're coming!" Derris shouted to the sentries on the wall, "Combat stations!"

A siren rang throughout the garrison, prompting the soldiers to scramble to their assigned posts. The gunners mounted the anti-air guns, the rifleman lined the wall, and the engineers hurried to bury the mound of munitions they had stockpiled. This was it. The battle was about to begin. 

Captain Martin gave a low grunt, turning to Derris one last time. "You know I've only got a quarter of my men, major?" He said with a sigh, "My company can't possibly beat the Class Fives like this."

"You can't," Derris said coldly, "But you know them better than my men. Make sure they don't leave the garrison, captain."

Captain Martin grumbled under his breath, but fired off a quick salute. "Yessir," was all he muttered. 

Derris watched the encroaching army come upon them. Class Ones always stood in front, expendable in the eyes of their greater masters. They were used for nothing more than exhausting the opposing force's munitions before the larger soldiers moved in. Derris resented her kind for putting so little value in Class Ones; at the very least humans acknowledged ability regardless of stature. She was certain that there would be a life with Seris if they came over to this side, but even that was taken away from her by the ruthless Class Fives. She put the blame squarely on her old overlords. 

Today, she would have her payback. 

"Mortars!" Derris shouted. 

The whistling of mortar fire rang through the air as the black shells were launched from behind the wall, dotting the sky with their deadly payload. The first explosions struck the approaching column squarely in the center, scoring the first casualties of the battle. The rest followed, engulfing the Class One's formation in hellfire. Screams and shouts echoed out as the soldiers were struck with a cacophony of heat and metal, shredding those too close to the impact mercilessly. When the bombardment ended, barely half of them were still alive, fewer still willing to press against the onslaught. 

"GO FORWARD!" Derris heard a Class Four commander shout at the troops beneath her. She kicked a few into the air effortlessly, intimidating the rest into obey her. The Class Ones scrambled to their feet, not wanting to suffer the same fate as the unlucky ones in the back, continuing their suicidal rush to the wall entrance. 

Class Fours. They stood between seventy to eighty feet tall, and answered only to the Class Fives. They served as taskmasters to the smaller classes, putting them in line with the wishes of the Class Fives. Often times, they did so with a show of force, making an example of any who were not obedient. For that, the lower classes despised them, and their treatment played a large part in the lower class's motivation for defection. 

"Gunners, fire at will!" Derris shouted. In response, the anti-air guns began firing down into the charging formation below, tearing them apart as they drew closer to the wall. The guns were traditionally used for shooting down aircraft, but with no aircraft on the giant's side and much of their flesh unprotected, these weapons saw new purpose on the battlefield. 

Derris watched with some satisfaction as a hail of bullets made swiss cheese of the same Class Four commander earlier. The Class Ones would have had a chance to regroup and mounted a counter offensive if they hadn't charged forward like that commander had forced them to. They died a meaningless death because of her, much as many others have under other Class Fours. This was to be the first of Derris's payback. 

"Incoming!" A soldier shouted from atop the wall. The stone fortification chipped as bullets began pouring towards the garrison. The Class Ones who survived the barrage had begun their assault. The heavy defenses of the wall brought casualties to a minimum, but some soldiers fell as a round passed through the gaps of battlements, the large bullets killing and maiming them in a single hit. 

"Finish them off quickly," Derris barked to her soldiers, "The Class Fives will be here any second-" 

As if she had jinxed herself, Derris, and by extension the rest of the garrison, felt a thunderous rumbling in the ground which only drew closer and closer to the wall. Derris quickly drew out her telescope and looked off into the distance. The four Class Fives were now only one mile out, having broken into a sprint of considerable speed. The metal rod was still affixed to their shoulders, and it was now abundantly clear what they intended to do with it. 

They were going to ram open the wall with the metal rod. 

"Non-essential personnel, evacuate the wall!" Derris yelled, "Gunners, don't let those Class Fives close! Mortars, bombard two hundred feet in front of the wall!" 

The soldiers hurried down the wall, somewhat thankful that they were not the ones manning the anti-air guns. The gunners gritted their teeth, watching as the massive hundred-foot tall soldiers charged forward, unperturbed by their gunfire and stomping through the ranks of their own Class One soldiers as they readied the metal rod for impact. A hail of mortar fire pelted them, managing to hit one Class Five in the shoulder, sending her to the ground as the other three Class Fives continued their charge. 

Derris was on the ground with the evacuated soldiers when it happened. The wall, the nearly hundred foot tall wall, shattered dramatically inward. Debris flew in all directions, the largest of which fell right upon the garrison below. Several hundred soldiers perished instantly, while the rest were blinded by the dust cloud which resulted from the falling debris. They coughed and gagged, only vaguely aware of the trio of figures which now stood at the fresh opening in the wall. 

"Suppressing fire!" Derris shouted to the riflemen around her. 

The soldiers aimed their guns at the dusty silhouettes from beyond the wall. A hail of bullets only managed to make one of them stir, advancing through the wall unimpeded. A lone surviving anti-air gun swivelled around and fired for no more than a second before a giant hand appeared to swat it off the wall. The crumpled frame of the gun, accompanied by the mangled corpse of its gunner, fell to the ground, just beside Derris. The motion had swept the dust from the wall, revealing the smirking face of a giant woman with short brown hair, clad in a soldier's uniform and armor, accompanied by her two compatriots behind her. 

The Class Fives have come. 

"Fire! Use everything you've got!" Derris yelled.

The garrison forces put bullet after bullet into the Class Fives, but they caused nothing more than a flinch from them. They began their attack in kind, stomping down on the nearest group of soldiers, crushing men by the squad. They were armed with pistols, but saw no need to waste ammo on such weak opponents. The sheer force of their footfalls were more than enough to wipe out these insects. 

"Spread out!" Derris shouted to the surviving men, "Don't let them crush more than one of us at a time! Buy as much time as you can!" 

Derris ran to the back of the garrison, where the mortar team was stationed at. She frowned when she saw that almost half of them had been killed by the falling debris. The combined forces of the garrison now barely matched Captain Martin's giant hunters at full strength. There was little they could do to stall for time. 

"Mortars," Derris cried out, “Fire at the Class Fives directly! We can't risk a premature explosion!"

The mortar teams nodded, and began angling their tubes straight toward the behemoths before them. At this range, they could shoot them like cannons, and with a target of that size, it would be hard to not to hit. 

As the Class Fives continued to mop up the riflemen, a new barrage of explosions took one of them by surprise, hitting him squarely in the face. The Class Five dropped to the ground, crushing some tents as a final death knell, before fully succumbing to having his face blown open.  The other two Class Fives turned around towards the new threat, a look of fury in their eyes. They drew their sidearm, firing a volley of bullets at the mortar teams. Instantly, the gigantic rounds tore through the mortar teams, annihilating them in a flash. The Class Fives emptied their clip into them, leaving only craters and smashed bodies where the mortar teams once were. 

Derris ran forward, back into the garrison where the Class Fives stood. She still needed to buy time, enough to distract them one last time. She looked around, seeing nothing but the deep boot prints of where the Class Fives had stepped, littered within were the grotesque remains of the soldiers unfortunate enough to be under them at the time. In one of them, she saw a grenade which was still largely intact, the grooves of the boot print preserving it even under the Class Five's immense weight. 

Derris rolled into the boot print and picked the grenade off of the soldier's corpse. Sickeningly, part of his flesh still clung on as she lifted the grenade, covering her hand in red flesh and blood. For a moment, Derris was reminded that Seris had met this very fate as well, and a wave of emotions took hold of her. It quickly passed when the stomp of the Class Fives reminded Derris that she was still in the battle, shaking her out of her funk. 

There were no more options left. Derris pinched the grenade pin, her finger too large to fit through its ring, and pulled out the safety. She lobbed it toward the feet of one of the Class Fives, and watched as the explosion elicited a response from the owner of the foot. 

Grenades normally weren't effective against a Class Five's armored boot, but already having two comrades fall to mortar fire made them wary of explosions, regardless of where they were from. Derris pretended to arm a second grenade, throwing her arm back with nothing more than a rock in hand, and she saw, for one horrifying moment, that she had the Class Five's full attention. 

A giant knife struck right through Derris's stomach. She gagged and sputtered as she felt her gut open up, the Class Five's blade cleanly skewering through her. The world around her fell away as she was lifted into the air, to be brought to the face of her assailant. 

"Traitor," Derris heard the Class Five whisper. 

Derris, despite being enveloped in such blinding pain, felt something new spring to her chest when confronted by her tyrants: pure, unfiltered hatred. Hatred for being accused of being a traitor, when it was the Class Fives who failed her and Seris. Hatred for all the misery she and the other Class Ones had to suffer as an expendable existence. Hatred so strong that she found enough strength to grab her own sidearm and put three bullets into the Class Five's eye, causing her to drop her knife and let Derris plummet back down to the ground. 

The impact of the fall was great, and Derris's suffering lasted not a second longer as her body hit the ground, the remainder of her life vanishing on impact. Her limp corpse was splayed out on the ground, leg bent at an odd angle and her abdomen split open by the knife; yet a final, spiteful grin was plastered upon her lifeless face. Even in death, she knew she had the last laugh.

"Reporting in, sir," the signalman said to Captain Martin, "Golf Three has confirmed detonators are connected, and that the Class Fives are in position."

"We'll wait for Major Derris's signal, then," Captain Martin replied. 

"Sir..." The signalman said uneasily, "Golf Three also confirms that Major Derris is KIA."

Captain Martin closed his eyes and sighed. In all honesty, he knew of Derris's connection to Seris, and having to send her to her death knowingly weighed heavily on his heart. He wanted a chance to apologise to her after the battle, even if she was a Class One, but it seemed it was never meant to be. All he could do now was finish the job. 

"Tell them to light it up," Captain Martin said with a sulk. 

The signalman spoke some words through his radio, and three pings confirmed his message. From their vantage point of the hill far behind the Garrison, the wall looked like a fence. The Class Fives were clear as day even from their distance, and Captain Martin saw that they were still preoccupied with whatever was at their feet. 

Without warning, the scene was replaced with blinding light, followed by a loud crack, then an immense shockwave as the munitions buried beneath the Garrison detonated in unison. Thousands of explosives ignited to make a giant fireball, destroying the garrison and all who stood in it. As the bright light subsided, only a column of smoke remained. The only sign that the Class Fives had been standing there before was the red spray of blood against the landscape, though not a piece of their bodies remained. 

"Target lit," the signalman reported. 

"Good, then get me HQ, priority line," Captain Martin said. 

The signalman quickly dialled in a frequency and spoke to the operator on the other end. After a brief exchange of code words, he handed the radio phone to Captain Martin. 

"It's General Goodworth, sir," the signalman said. 

Captain Martin picked up the phone and answered, "Captain Martin Street of the Forty-first Giant Hunters, Second Company, reporting from the wall, sir."

"Give it to me straight, Captain," Martin heard a gruff voice answer him. 

"The first wall has been breached," Martin continued, "There are no survivors in the garrison, but we can confirm that the attackers have been neutralized. The damage sustained in the battle is great. The gate has been split open all the way down the center, enough for Class Fives to walk through without effort. We have a worst case scenario: the first line has fallen."

There was silence from the radio for a while. Martin was nervous now; breaking the wall meant the Class Fives were intent in invading the country, and he had effectively told his general that the Class Fives had started another war. He wasn't sure if he should be the herald of such grave news. 

"Repeat your last sentence, Captain Martin," the gruff voice finally said, "Slowly, please."

Martin cleared his throat before speaking, anything to give him courage to say the next words from his mouth. 

"The first line has fallen, General Gooddworth," Captain Martin said as crisply as he could, "Class Fives broke through the wall and the garrison has fallen, sir."

More silence from the other end. This time, General Goodworth came back sooner than before. 

"Thank you captain, your report has been noted," the gruff voice said, "Your company is to report back to Demeter One as per your previous instructions. Intelligence officers will be there to get the details of today's battle from you as soon as possible. We're sending an auxiliary force to reinforce the broken wall, so get all your men out of there stat. Mercy be with us all, today. General Goodworth, over and out."

Captain Martin breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't noticed that he was holding his breath all this while, not when he risked General Goodworth's wrath at the news. Fortunately it seemed that the general took the news very seriously, and Martin's part in this was over for now. He ordered his men to assemble, and got them ready to march back to Demeter One, away from this now hellish landscape. 

Captain Martin took one last look at the wall before setting out. The garrison had been reduced to a smoking crater, and the green plains beyond the wall were now visible from this side. Many things had happened in the short time he was here, and though he felt a sense of foreboding upon seeing one of humanity’s greatest bulwarks in such a sorry sense, he had no idea of the horrors this would unleash upon the world at the time. 

Unbeknownst to Captain Martin, the gates to the Second Contact War had opened.