Amanda Comes Knocking by Shaman

Emanuel’s POV:

“Listen up, because I’m only going to explain this once.”

Lieutenant Brandis had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing the entire division arrive 15 minutes late. To make matters worse, though this came hardly as a surprise, we all arrived hungover and far from battle ready.

“Normally I would have disciplined you as if this were the Roman army. But sending your asses outside the wall seems like a fitting lesson for you anyways. You will learn what it’s like to be non-combat ready when facing them. You will learn the consequences of shitting all over the trust of your fellow soldier. You will learnthe hard way.”

The Lieutenant was less furious than we’d expected. Probably the knowledge that we would indeed learn it all at once outside eased him.

“Now: meet Officer Kent. He is Lieutenant of the daytime watchmen on the central part of the wall, officially known as the 2nd daytime artillery regiment. His men control the cannons and the mortar on this side and are in charge of spotting danger the entire area with binoculars and spyglasses.”

He introduced us to an early fifty-ish grey man with several medals on his chest. The watchmen regiment had assembled and were working on- and cleaning their thirty or so cannons and the single mortar.

“As you go down to install the turrets, you will keep contact with his men and they will in turn give you a heads up should cannon fire be necessary. And luck’s on your side: unlike you degenerates, these men are professional and highly disciplined. I put all my trust in them that they will not let you down.”

I felt a pinch of shame for our behavior, especially my own. I knew the others did as well, or some of them at least. But more than that, our predicament started to dawn on us. As our faith became more assured, fear became ever more present as a shared energy between the soldiers. All of us had been well trained but had let ourselves go. We were all sure to lose many comrades this day. I had a flashback to the day of the retreat, where I lost four friends and the regiment lost five others with them. I remember the sheer viciousness of the Titans: their cruelty, brute strength, bloodhound instinct and their joy of war, destruction and blood.

The people that we lost at their hands. Even more so those that presumably survived than those who did die – death being the better alternative than to be taken with them as a prisoner. The survivors will be taken to their camps for entertainment for all Giantess sizes, directly sold off to slavers, or taken home by the Titan who captured them as a spoil of war.

There is the danger of the Amazons and Behemoths, of course. These Giantesses were strong and vicious too. They also took prisoners and spoils of war, and you definitely did not want to end up at the hands of a woman twice or four times your size. But at least you had a chance of defeating them, or hiding from them. Titans are deadly efficient and strong, all being a hundred foot tall or larger. But with the artillery support so near behind us, they wouldn’t dare set foot near us.

“Realize that you will be out of range for the cannon and mortar after three miles east. You will need to make your way back if you come up against any trouble. Now, as for the plan. You have been divided into two groups. Each group will go to their designated locations and install the turrets. Then you are to retreat back to base immediately. Is that understood?”

With little motivation and energy, we answered “yes sir.” The Lieutenant sighed, asking himself where he went wrong.

“Realize that the faith of this city, the hundreds of thousands of lives within it and the result of this war lies within your hands. After the turrets have been successfully installed, we will be clear to create some space for our soldiers. With that, we will be able to create a frontier just outside the walls and start pushing back. Let’s make sure that those soldiers who arrived from Japan and Australia yesterday didn’t come here to sit on their ass like you have and that they can start a counter-attack.”

And so we were sent off to the outside. Fifteen members went southeast and the other fifteen members, me included, went northeast, to make a safe line of several miles with these machinegun turrets, which would cut through anyone trying to get near the soldiers. I went out with Marcius, Felman and Maria, while Vinson was placed in the other party.

Together with the man who only last evening lay unconscious on the flour I carried this group’s walkie-talkie, to communicate with the watchmen and the other group. The first two turrets we set in place were still inside the cannon range. I looked at our map and checked the second turret.

“The next one is way outside the three-mile range, isn’t it?” Marcius asked.

I nodded. The turret was to be stationed exactly four miles east, only ten miles away from the nearest Giantess encampment: ‘Paarl’. It was one of the camps I had a look at while looking through the spyglass the other day; the one with hundreds of Titans and thousands of Amazons and Behemoths. I decided to contact the other party.

“Team Alpha, do you copy?” I asked.

After a few seconds of static noise, a voice came out.

“Rick here.” The voice replied.

“How goes the operation on your side?” I asked this ‘Rick’.

Although I knew all of my fellow team members by face, I was only vaguely familiar with their names.

“Steady. We have just crossed the three-mile line, but it looks to be clear on our side.” He replied.

 “Just giving you a heads-up. We will make contact as soon as we see something suspicious.”

I replied. “Copy that.”

I handed the walkie-talkie to the other man, and asked him to keep in touch with the watchmen.

It took our party roughly twenty minutes to reach our destination. Still nothing – it was suspiciously quiet. I tried to reach the other party and the watchmen, but only heard static.

“They’re OK, right?” I asked Felman nervously.

“We’re too far away to make signal. Let’s just install the damn thing and get out of here.”

We placed the turret inside a still-standing house. We were surrounded by a low grass field. Trees popped up every ten yards which gave cover to all of us. They, of course, didn’t appear here naturally. The trees were planted all over South Africa near the cities, when the Empire first attacked over a century ago.

The people back then surrounded the cities with as much forest and density as possible. It had proven to be a Giantess her biggest obstacle. But now that they apparently had mastered the skill of maneuvering, it provided them with little trouble and has only become a nuisance for any sniper or cannoneer on our side. And now we left that open forest into the South African plains to install the final turret on that line.

I relaxed myself a little, as we could see anyone approaching from a mile away.

“This’ll take ten minutes again. Cover the area.” A soldier said.

The rest of us took out our binoculars. First, I stared back at Cape Town, surrounded by the large fortified wall. I looked around the area, and didn’t notice anything suspicious. At least, that was until I saw some strange movement. At first I thought the reflection of the hot summer sun was playing tricks on me.

But then I became absolutely sure I saw something moving over the ground. Something that was keeping itself as unnoticeable as possible. Marcius commented on the same movement and told me he saw it too.

The other soldiers stared at the same spot, not knowing what it was. Several piles of flat sand and dirt… parts of the piles were giving away slight and constant motions… as if breathing. I attempted to make contact with the watchmen again.

“Copy, do you copy? Officer Kent?”

But it was of no use. We were getting anxious. Scared even. The fact that we were in the open -clear in sight for anyone and far away from the safety of the forests- made every second more dangerous than the last one. I noticed every soldier had their weapon drawn and at the ready, all terrified of the openness. The unsafety of it…

“How nice of you to visit us. So you will be our playthings, I presume?”

We turned around and were surprised to see a woman standing 20 yards behind us.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Well, you can call me Mary, if you care to.”

This woman was significantly larger than us. Easily nine feet tall – clearly an Amazon. We had drawn our rifles and aimed it at her.

“Cut the crap. What are you doing here?” Felman asked nervously.

It couldn’t be right for her to just stand there in the open, unprotected. And we knew it. She must be up to something. The thought of taking her prisoner to extract information from her accrued to me. Suddenly loud gunshots and explosions came from behind us. Immediately at that moment, the walkie-talkie managed to get a very vague but hearable signal.

“Get back, it’s an ambush! Artillery regiment, do you copy? I repeat: Officer Kent, do you copy?!”

With lots of shootings and explosions in the background, the same that we were hearing. And then the walkie-talkie lost all connection. 

“I’m distraction you.” She said and smiled, then waved right past us.

I felt an ice-cold shiver down my spine and my face turned pale, as I saw several Titans emerging from the ground. They had covered themselves in sand and dirt to stay hidden. Their bodies were covered in mud as they stood up, wearing nothing more than some loincloth around their crotch; most stood with an open chest. One by one they rose from the ground where, looking at the dryness of the mud, you could see they had resided there for hours.

Their bodies, big and fearsome, covered with scars, wounds, bullet marks and burning injuries, missing fingers, ears, eyes, they turned to our group as they got up. At first a few rose in the distance, but slowly they became apparent everywhere we looked. Surrounding every direction we could hope to run to, these Titans had circled around the checkpoint, cornering us. “How did they know of our plan?” I wondered, when, seemingly, all Titans had risen from the ground.

I had encountered Titans before arriving in South Africa. But I only saw and fought them from a distance, often only for the means of distraction and stalling their hordes. I could swear they weren’t like these though. The ones I fought were fresh to the battlefield. Only just drafted, or hired and filled into the ranks. These women had a warrior’s glance in their eyes, the bodies and scars of experienced fighters on the battlefield to proof it.

They all looked fit and strong, notably their powerful legs and backs. It showed how much they had pushed through the enemy ranks. They were from all ethnicities, giving away Amanda Heuvel’s reach in assembling specific women from all over the Empire. This wasn’t a regiment like most other Imperial or Allied teams, where they had been placed together on account of where they got drafted from, like a certain city, province or nation, where most shared a common background and racial heritage.

All these women looked African, European, Arabian, Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese - you name it. There had to be at least a hundred of them, from what I could see. But knowing they had us surrounded and half my view was blocked by the house behind me, there had to be more.

One of the Titans, a Mesopotamian looking woman with a bare chest, long black hair and a fearsomely capable posture, stepped forward.

“Do not try anything, or you will be annihilated immediately. Do you understand?”

She sounded a lot like our Lieutenant, both in the way she spoke and her posture resembled him, yet spoke softly and her face expressed a certain sense of calmth and control. A sense I had not seen from any of our leaders. All fifteen of us had our Winchester rifles drawn. There was no way to run. Even if we all emptied our barrels on this mutant and killed her, there would be at least one hundred Titans upon us within seconds.

“Toss your weapons in front of you.” She ordered.

All Giantesses took a few steps forward. Now there was no room to escape. The circle had tightened up to the point where their hips, shoulders, arms and legs pushed against one another, effectively creating a Giantess-wall around us, with the Iraqi or Persian Giantess at the center, right in front of us.

Marcius took the initiative and dropped his weapon. I followed, and so did Felman and the others. The guy behind me working the turret hadn’t moved an inch. I wondered if the turret could even be turned on right now. I wondered if it would even give us a chance at that point.

“You’re clear!” She shouted, and took a step back to join the chain circle fifty yards away from us. And then she appeared.

Carefully hidden behind an island of trees, the Giantess stood up from crouching. But she was no ordinary Giantess, not even a Titan. The woman who appeared was covered in green scrub and branches, completely camouflaged. With her came another dozen Titans with the same ‘outfit’ as her. But there was one thing completely off about her.

This woman wasn’t a hundred foot tall. Not in the nearest. This one was double the size of the Titans in front of us. This one had to be 200 foot tall; if not, then bigger. She scraped the leaves, branches and mud off of her, revealing her naked body. Her breasts, her -tanned by the African sun- milk white skin, her blond hair, her muscular and masculine body, wide hips that vibrated and bounced slightly with every movement, full of scars, and her pale, blue eyes. Her enormous size made every detail, every vessel of her body, visible. The blue veins, old and fresh scars, second degree burns, facial marks, the missing of her left ring finger. This demi-God appears to have stopped aging in her thirties, yet the decades of battle and transformations have left their mark on what might have been a youthful appearance. 

The monster came forward, and stepped over the circle surrounding us. The bare-naked Giantess was now, for her measurement, removed only a few yards from our group. We stood motionless; none of us had ever seen a Giantess this size.

“The… the Colossal…” I mumbled.

We could hear her breathing from out of her nose, we could hear the scraping of the sand every time her feet moved an inch, and we even felt her body warmth. I thought of her size and strength, and then of the concrete wall surrounding Cape Town. Could she actually pose a threat to the wall itself? That fort was built to topple the largest Titan – and she might just reach over it. Perhaps she even has the strength to break through the concrete layer.

But that is all irrelevant. At that moment we had an army of Giantesses and a Colossal Giantess to worry about.