A/N So in my craziest idea ever, after watching Attack on Titan I decided to try and combine it with the video game XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It's a really engrossing turn based tactical game in which you lead an organization trying to fight back against an alien invasion. If I wrote this well I'm hoping that no one needs to have played XCOM to get any of this, but we'll see.
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
Arthur C. Clarke
"It wasn't anything anyone expected, aliens from outer space invading our planet. That was kid's stuff we watched and laughed at. Things we shot in video games or marveled at on the big screen. We never expected anything quite like this, anything of this magnitude. On December 7, 2016, humanity received it's grim notice that it was not alone in the universe."
Raleigh Becket, Commander of the 34th Infantry Battalion, Survivor of the Fall of New York
December 7th, Day of Infamy
People wondered why no one saw this coming. In fact some said that perhaps the governments of the world knew all along, and were hiding the coming invasion for God knows what purposes. After all, didn't N.A.S.A. have telescopes that could see far into the reaches of space? Why couldn't they see this, warn people, and save lives? The truth was that no one could have foreseen this. There was no warning, no announcement, no declaration of war or intent. Simply, on December 7, in the middle of the afternoon, a large craft appeared right over the Empire State Building. No one on the ground knew what it was or what to think. Survivors from that day say all sorts of things about what happened next.
What is certain is this; all hell broke loose when that craft dropped it's complement and sped away to parts unknown.
According to most, first came the big guys, current classifications ranged the first invaders at about 3-7 meters. Codename; "Titans", these they arrived in droves and simply began to devour humans. Blood painted the streets of Time's Square before police arrived and opened fire. It was mayhem. The shots seemed to bounce off the usual target points, head, chest, even as heavier weapons such as high explosives and S.W.A.T. teams were brought in, it didn't seem to stop the monstrosities. It would be days, and an untold number of lives, before knowledge that their sole weak spot was the nape of the neck was revealed by a brave soldier by the name of Sterling Archer. As if the Titans weren't bad enough, accompanying them were the "sectoids". Little ugly imp-like things. They looked like the little green men from outer space, just like old 50s movies. Expect these ones were gray, and they were real, and they shot super-heated plasma guns at soldier and civilian alike.
It was as one survivor would call it, "living night and day in the Valley of the Shadow of Death." S.W.A.T., the National Guard, the Army, everyone sent into the "Danger Zone" as people began calling it, suffered massive casualties. The titans would lift around entire armored vehicles like it was nothing, and anyone who attempted to move on their flank was almost immediately placed under fire by the sectoids. The weapons they used were like nothing ever seen before, they ate away at flesh, kevlar, and steel alike with frightening accuracy. Eventually the situation grew bad enough, bombing the entire city was authorized. The planes and bombs filled the sky for the next few days after the green light was given. The light from the explosions lit the skies for miles around and left the world on edge as to what would happen next.
By the end of it, there was nothing left. The once proud skyscrapers that were made generation ago had become charred husks of their former selves. The corpses of titans and sectoids, and anyone else that would have been caught in the blast, filled the streets. Thousands mourned the fallen as men and women attempted to surge into the city to look for relatives and loved ones. The civilians were given several calls for evacuations, and the pictures from the first trucks moving across the Brooklyn Bridge have seen become iconic, yet still no one can truly know how many lives were lost because they never made it to the zones in time.
For about six months afterwards, people mourned, the world tried to move on. Then on June 7th, the International Space Station went out of contact, and not an hour later, Titans began appearing next to Big Ben. This time the attack seemed more methodical and thought out, prior to the attack, police stations, the upper echelons of British Military, and even simple crowds of tourists had been infiltrated. These new aliens came in human guise, not perfect under scrutiny, but sufficient enough to get lost in the crowd. At 9 o'clock in the local timezone, plasma shots were being fired in crowded city squares, and communication between the U.K. and the rest of the world ceased to be a reality. Again a ship came out of nowhere, and then pandemonium.
Response was slow, and the massive hordes of civilians ran every which way to try and avoid being either swallowed whole or shot by green energy. Military response was slow, and by that time the death toll was already somewhere past one hundred thousand. This time though, there was no order for a bomb, no order for a retreat. There was no turning back. Disorganized guerilla-like fighting broke out in the streets and squares as soldiers fought, Titans, Thin Men, and Sectoids from street corners to building tops. To gain optimum position for the defeat of the Titans, a old idea was dusted off for the most highly trained spec operatives. 3-D maneuvering gear, or "web shooters" to some of the more comic book inclined troops, had been devised in the early 1970s as a way to gain vantage points over enemy combatants.
The prototypes had been initially rejected as impractical and outlandish, seeing as how anyone using the gear could run the gambit of being shot mid leap. Yet the web shooters were dusted off as "Spidermen" and "Daredevils" rappelled onto the tops of buildings and through shattered windows to gain a firing angle. Even as green beams of death whizzed around them, some finding their mark and killing the soldiers, the first of the Rangers or "Web Slingers" still found the chance to line their sights, and pull the trigger. As a consequence of this gear, much of the soldier's heavy armor and gear had to be eschewed, but in the words of Steven Parker, one of the first to use the experimental gear.
"There's nothing like being a Web Slinger, feel the wind, the ash, the cold rush of the day hit you like a thunderclap. You can see the city below you and your friends trying to make sure the xenos don't blast you out of the sky. So when you reach your perch and you see the giant bastards trying to take a bite out of your buddies, you know what to do, and you thank God for web shooters as you pull the trigger; and feel the Earth shake as giants fall at your hand."
The Battle of London marked something to the xenos. Perhaps the aliens expected humanity to stand around and be destroyed. Perhaps they never expected we would try and endure, and that for every thing they tried to throw at us, we would keep fighting back. The Battle was fought to a standstill, as Web Slingers and conventional troops worked to fight Titans and Sectoids throughout the city. Groups of refugees were scanned and investigated as Thin Man paranoia shook up the governments of the world. While soldiers fought in the crowded streets and cramped and dark subway tunnels, a massive purge was attempted in defense networks and installations as infiltrators were found world wide.
This was the start of the Skirmishes. When these comparably small forces would try and invade cites to simply attack without purpose. Usually they would be thrown back by a combined arms force of Rangers and infantry.
Humanity got really good at it for a while. Winning, developing countermeasures to Thin Men infiltration, and killing Titans. Yet, things weren't as great as the public was lead to believe, casualties happened, and training men and women to use 3-D gear was a long and difficult process. Resources and old rivalries between nations still festered. All the while the people still tried to live their lives like things were still the same.
It would all change one day, it would all change on Bloody Sunday.
A/N Well, what do you think? Good, bad, should I take this down in shame? Leave a review and if you're interesting in Beta-ing this story please PM me.