Raymund finished his third round of the barbican, from the northwest tower, to the far northwest. The Lions gate was the grand gateway to the city, and since the conclusion of the Civil War, had remained ever open, symbolic of the fresh new future Atlantis had to look forward to. A future of hope, change, and prosperity.

The guard post was the cream of the crop, as far as duty went. Since the separatist revolution had been quelled, there was nothing but the odd crow to watch as it flew over the stone Lion statues that watched over the Goddess trail, the now paved road that lead from the mouth of the Lions gate, to the outer settlements, and beyond that, Tayas Mons, and the great wilderness beyond that.

Avalon was an earth sized moon, with a minuscule population, the Tarsus family for generations protected the moons flora and fauna from outside settlers, while utilizing only the most modern, cost efficient and eco friendly mining practices. This left a vast, thriving and mostly unexplored wilderness, that even Pryvani Tarsus hadn’t even explored in its entirety.

“Anything to report?” Captain Lemon asked, as he dabbled with his rifle scope, polishing it carefully, while reclined in a chair.

“That old scraggly mutt got into the ducts again, can hear it howling from the northwest tower.” Raymund shrugged, disinterested.

“Mmhm.” The captain grumbled, and squinted to get a better look at his rifle scope.

“Only another seven hours till quitting time, at this rate I may just die of the madness.” The guard sighed.

“Aye, well do us a favor, wait until your watch is over before you do eh?” Lemon snickered.

“Real quiet today, remind me again why we still do this? Damn brass knows were the only civilization on this rock, just what are we looking out for? Mammoth stampede?”

Captain Lemon kept quiet, he brought his scope to his scruffy bearded face and blew gently on it, allowing the humidity form his breath to fog the lens, then continued cleaning it off.

“Could be worse I guess.” Raymund lamented. “I could have street detail.” The man laughed, as did his superior.

Both men’s merriment was cut short however, as a strange and distant sound bought their attention.

“You hear that Cap?” Raymund asked, tilting his head.

Captain Lemon slowly put his scope down and focused his attention. “Odd…almost sounds like…”

“Cap?” A startled voice shouted from outside the guard tower. “Come see this!”

Raymund and the Captain both jogged out of the tower, the entire post assigned to the wall were gathered, gawking over the wall.

“Well, I’ll be…that’s queer.” Captain Lemon scratched the back of his neck and watched a darkening cloud of birds in the distance approaching the city.

“Something got em spooked?” Raymund asked.

“Storm comming?” Another guard inquired.

“Don’t know…” Captain Lemon leaned against the stone blocks and tented his hand over his eyes. “Is that?”

Guardsmen Raymund stood beside the Captain, and made a similar gesture, hoping to spot what ever it was the Captain thought he was seeing. “It sort of looks like….”

“Tarsus almighty…sound the bells. Contact Alpha post, tell them we have a Titan approching from north of Lions gate, contact Lysis Xanthopolous and find out if there are any scheduled from Tayas Mons!” Captain Lemon pushed off the wall and jogged towards the guard post.

There were only a small handful of titans who were ever permitted near Atlantis, and even then there was a mound of paperwork and preparations that needed to be addressed. When a Titan went for a walk to Atlantis, everybody knew, and were prepared.

“Captain?” Raymund asked, following after, searching for orders.

“Looks like your shifts about to get a lot more interesting Guardsmen!” Lemon said, as he tore the phone reciever off the wall and shouted into the mouth end. “Lemon here, assemble all available city guards, and contact Stratichos Xanthopolous, we might need the army…I think we got a stray titan approaching from Lions Gate! ETA…” Lemon peaked over to see how much progress the titan had made. To his amazement, she had closed th gap significantly, an could now be seen clearly, even her gender was distinguishable now. “ETA soon! Very soon!”

Raymund stood at the door, as the female titan continued her approach. She had long, wavy blond hair, was dressed in casual, civilian attire, and carried no visible weapons or objects other than her person. He tilted his head to the side, he was curious, but not afraid. She didn’t look menacing, in fact she had a cute, intelligent, almost college nerd look to her. She wasn’t muscular, though at such a tremendous size, it wasn’t easy to tell.

This would be his first titan, the first one he’d ever met. “Sir…” He said, as the impact tremors caused him to grasp at the doorway. “Should I order her to stop?” He asked, amused at the absurdity of his own request.

But Captain Lemon was gone, leaving Guardsmen Raymund, and a small handful of his peers the only officials standing between the titaness, and Atlantis.

***
‎

Rixie walked through the open plain, the dry dirt crunching under her boots and her eyes scanning the ground to the hills in the distance. She’d expected the Avalonians to try something different today but this she did not expect.

There was no sign of them. Their camp had been hastily dismantled and only the bare bones of it were left. There was no sign of any weapons or anything valuable so it had been planned. She’d been walked around the arid plain for nearly an hour now and then only movement she’d seen had been from small (even by Human standards) animals that had been startled out of their holes by her steps.

She was starting to wonder if they’d packed up and gone home and left her to wander around the desert like an idiot.

That was until the sound of her boots compacting dirt under them scared another creature from its hole. The man, with dark hair and wearing brown cameo gear, darted out of a hole in the ground and looked around in panic. Finding himself exposed, with no support he fired off several shots that somehow managed to miss his enormous target and then turned and fled.

A small smile crept up the side of Rixie’s face. The Human was surprisingly quick for his size and was making good progress. Though a few long strides could close the gap between them and she could pluck him up and claim his as a prisoner. She decided not to do that. She followed him at a leisurely pace. He was the only person she’d encountered since the exercise began. It was better to track him and see where he went than claiming a lone captive.

****

Bendrin ran as fast as his legs would carry him.

Every few seconds he had to brace himself as the Titanesses’ footfalls shook the Earth. She could have taken him in under a minute but instead she was following him. Ahead of him he could see the hills rising up in the near distance and only a few hundred cubits ahead of him was a gorse bush. That was what he was aiming for.

Two minutes later he slid in behind the bush, kicking up a small cloud of dust. He ducked into the prepared hole and pulled a dirt covered sheet over him and he waited.

****

Rixie’s brow furrowed as her target disappeared behind a bush. A few seconds later he reappeared two units further away than he had been.

“Hmmm…” she muttered and picked up the pace a little. He looked to be the same man. He had the same brown hair and same cameo uniform.

She kept following him at the same distance, ignoring the abnormality and continuing with her aim of tracking her target to his destination. He wasn’t just fleeing randomly, he was running somewhere. And she wanted to know where.

****
Pontis had always been fast on his feet. He used to run races against the other children in his village around the grain fields and he always won. During the campaign against the bandits and breakaway villages he’d been a runner for Epistrachos Xanthopolous, delivering orders and getting status reports across the battlefield. He’d been good at it. The best. But nothing had prepared him for this.

The ground quaked with each step the terrifying woman took. It only spurred him on. Even though it was only a game he didn’t want to get caught. He had no desire to take the shame of the first to get caught or to be the one that let the unit down.

His feet pounded the earth for minute after minute until his goal came into view. A small ridge with an old, long dead tree stump just behind it. He kept pushing on, his heart beating in his ears and adrenaline surging through his veins. A minute later he cleared the ridge and threw himself into his hole behind the stump.

****

Something was definitely amiss here. Five times now the man she’d been chasing had disappeared and reappeared a little bit ahead. She suspected she was being lured. Her current target was leading her along the base of a ridge about the height of her head. They’d tried fighting her in the open and it hadn’t worked well for them. An entrenched, fortified, fixed position would be an obvious next move. And these men were likely there to lead her into a trap.

A unit ahead the man took a sharp right turn and ran down into a canyon with a cracked, dried up river bed.

As she turned in the canyon Rixie smiled, pleased to see that she had correctly anticipated the Avalonian’s plan. The canyon was more than a dozen units long and just higher than her head. At the end of it was a camp, surrounded by sandbags, barbed wire, trip wires and spikes to make her approach difficult. Behind the sand bags dozens of troops sat nervously, their weapons pointed at her.

She took a minute to work through the best approach in her mind. She’d need to kick away the spikes and watch the trip wires, all while under fire. But the majority of their fire power pointed forward. If she could move down one side quickly and come into the main camp from behind it would be easy to clean up the defenders and claim their flag.

****
“Steady lads, steady…” Eliud whispered to his squad.

He carefully lifted the brown sheet and peered down over the edge of canyon. He could see Palemst Durkos running like his life depended on it down the canyon with the massive Titan woman not far behind.

“Good…” He thought to himself. Her eyes were watching the base at the end of the canyon and the runner in front of her. He was worried that Adoni’s plan wouldn’t work but it was best option they had. It was only real option they had. They’d be decimated each time they tried fighting in the open. It was clear if they were going to win they had to fight on their terms and use their size to their advantage.

He nodded across the canyon to the other team of ‘shadows’ on the opposite side of the canyon. That was another thing Adoni had done. She’d broken them into three types of troops: Runners, who moved quickly and provided distractions. Shadows, who hid and struck when the time was right and then disappeared again. And finally there were heavies who dug in with the heavy weapons that could do the most damage. Alone each group was either vulnerable of ineffective. But together…

Eluid lifted his arm to his side and held up three fingers. His men unclipped their grenades and held them in their hands.

He dropped one finger and his troops pulled the pins from their flash grenades.

Eluid dropped his second finger, leaving just one left and his men pulled their arms back, ready to throw their grenades. He could see the team opposite ready to do the same.

She was almost directly below them now. He dropped his last finger, fully clenching his fist. There was the rattling of metal as his troops pulled the strike lever and threw their flash grenades. A dozen small objects flew from both sides of the canyon towards the approaching Titan.

He muttered a silent prayer and buried his head under his sheet and covered his ears. The noise of the explosions was deafening, even covering his ears. He threw his sheet back and surveyed the scene below.

****

Rixie’s ears rang and vision swam. She’d spotted the team of Humans on top of the canyon too late to realize what was happening. Before she could react there had been dozens of explosions around her head.

She couldn’t see and she couldn’t hear. Instinctively she raised her arms and stumbled forward trying to get a hold of something to steady herself.

Below the ringing she heard a voice. A lone voice. It shouted one word.

“Now!”

****

“Now!” Adoni shouted.

On each side of the canyon floor a unit of heavy Avalonian troopers threw back their dirt covered sheets and appeared from their holes buried in the canyon floor. Adoni remembered the story once told to her by Epistrachos Xanthopolous about a Titan burying herself in the desert on Earth. If a Titan could hide in the dirt, so could Humans.

Almost as one her troops raised their harpoon guns and fired them at the canyon wall opposite them, the hooks hug into the hard rock wall and rope criss-crossed the base of the canyon. Simultaneously their partners lifted a sledge hammer and hammered the pegs at the other end of the rope into the ground as hard as they could.

It only took seconds from the order being given to the trap being in place. It had to be. The Titan couldn’t be given any time to recover or to realize what was happening. The huge woman stumbled forward and the Avalonians rushed to grab the ropes and keep them in position. As their foe lurched forward they held the ropes with all their strength. A flailing boot as long as five men caught under the ropes. Some broke, some were pulled from the ground, sending men flying into the air but some held and the target fell forward.

The whole world seemed to shake as the Titan hit the ground, sending up and huge cloud of dust and causing stones to fall loose from the canyon walls.

Adoni didn’t have the luxury of time to steady herself or to take in the awe inspiring sight of the massive woman that they had felled on to the floor of the canyon. She raised her side arm into the air and fired a single shot, signaling the final phase of the attack.

Bringing down a Titan is one thing. But securing them is another.

As the harpoon troops reloaded another team of troops rose from the dry river bed at the base of the canyon walls. Without instruction they rushed to the legs of the felled Titan and broke into four teams. Each team ran as fast as they could to their objective. One team to each ankle and one to just above each knee where Rixie wore her gravity dampeners.

They set small devices on the clasps of the dampeners, took a few steps back and activated the devices that would de activate the dampners they were attached to . One by the one the gravity dampeners on Rixie’s right leg shut down. It took under thirty seconds from the Titaness hitting the ground to the dampeners being deactivated.

To finish the job off, the harpoon team fired ropes across the torso of the prone woman and hammered them into the ground. That was it. The job was done. The target was down.

(Special Thanks to OHH for his hand in this, as always, his tactile expertise is much appreciated)