Chapter 6: Saki

In just 6 more steps Saki arrived. She loomed over the park, looking down on the hundreds of people she trapped inside. The walls of nanites surrounding the half-a-mile squared area towered at 40ft tall and dug into the ground. While her focus was elsewhere, it seems the penned ‘cattle’ have started to try and climb over them. No luck. The surface was smooth and slippery down to the nanometer with her design. There were no handholds, and its not as though anyone had a grappling hook or something on hand in this day and age.

Nevertheless they were trying. In particular, a few sights caught Saki’s gaze. Even as her intimidating shadow cast over the area, all on the borders of the park were folk pushing against the walls. A few even started to stand on each other’s shoulders to try to climb out, but they kept falling once they stacked too high. That idea actually might’ve worked if any were smart enough to try a pyramid style setup. Panic and selfishness precluded such a strategy.

From below, everyone who wasn’t contending with the walls gazed up at their captor. She was gargantuan. The sliver barriers they were trying to climb barely surpassed her big toe in height. If she wanted to, she could flatten the whole area in just a few steps. She crouched down, getting closer to them. The ground groaned as her weight shifted beneath her feet. The trees of the park rustled from all the shaking.

The news sources and streams had since revealed her name, but it seems she saw fit to introduce herself regardless.

“Hi there!” Saki boomed. She did a cutesy wave with her hand down below, and her smile positively beamed.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of me: Saki Satori. Maybe you’ve seen me around the city perhaps?”, she smiled wider. “I figured we could have some fun talking with each other.” She adjusted her dark hair a bit, pushing it back behind her ears. “Well, mostly me talking to you all, I suppose. Though I can hear you down there: screaming and all that.”

Her eyes zipped around to watch them. Many were running about in a panic, and those by the walls still pounded and clambered to try and get out. Still, most eyes were on her, and she delighted in how people froze up when she’d stare straight at them. One completely broken person was just running around in vast circles. She chuckled, then quickly brought her finger down on them, leaving a 33ft wide mark in the Earth.

“That one was getting on my nerves. Anyways, I was saying, I can hear you: feel you even. Let me explain. To put it simply, I’m better than you! So far beyond you, that you probably can’t even understand the magnitude of the difference.” The omnipresent fear in the crowd became peppered with revulsion as she so flippantly bragged.

“As an example, when I squashed that person just now...” Saki continued, looking at the finger that did the deed, thoroughly clean once the victim’s atoms were processed. “I didn’t just feel them pop like a grape, I felt every single bit of that *squish* down to the molecular level. Even though it took less than a second, I fully discerned every drop of his blood squeezed out from lacerated flesh, and each and every crack of his bones. My sense of touch is that refined. My hearing too! Why, I can even hear that grumpy guy by the tree, cursing my name and calling me a bitch between the pants of his panic attack.”

The man in question turned stark-white pale, still freaking out. His mind raced, torn between the feeling of no-escape at his predicament and rage at this monolithic bitch responsible. He soon slumped down by that tree in a fetal position.

“I’m not just bigger than you, smarter, stronger; my levels of perception are indescribably advanced. And that’s not even talking about the nanites. I’m sure you’ve been trying to climb those walls for awhile now, and you should know what they were made of. Speaking of touch, you know I can feel you there right? Even when I was...”

Saki pointed over her shoulder.

“...Back over there, stuffing a skyscraper down by my foot. Sure they are nanomachines, but they are also me. It’s a funny sensation, to feel something disconnected from your body. Another thing you’ll never understand. Even if capable, you simply don’t have enough time left in your lives.”

She let the moment hang, drinking up their screams.

“Let’s stop climbing on those walls now please~”

At the end of that proclamation, those touching the walls ran into a problem. These slick, smooth faces they were trying desperately to get a hold on were all the sudden grasping *them*. their hands, bodies... anything in contact started to sink into the metallic looking barriers.

It was clear: Saki was breaking down anyone who was touching the things.

One woman screamed as, climbing on the backs of her friends, she found her human-tower leaning forward into the wall. She was dismantled in the span of a few seconds, falling right into the construct. Another man was simply pounding on the wall. In his fervor, he slammed with both hands only to have them swallowed up by the imposing wall at his front. He tried to pull his arms out, but the wall just sucked him in, converting him into more nanites atom by atom at a frightful speed: fast enough to appear unstoppable, yet slow enough for others to soak in the horror.

Saki chuckled. Her voice boomed all around them from up high. Since dealing with all those attempted-escapees, her smile only grew wider.

“You saw what I did to those trucks right? Pretty neat. I’m sure the internet's been saying I’ve been going around assimilating things: but I don’t like that term. Assimilation implies you’re being incorporated as a valuable part: like you have some unique perspective to offer me. In reality, you’re just mass to me: more atoms to convert to nanites. Deconstruction or digestion seems more fitting... maybe absorption if we’re being a bit more abstract.”

Saki tapped her chin in thought while the people still reacted, in absolute terror, to everything going on.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter, but if you find the idea of that horrifying then, well, you better come to terms with it soon.”

She curled her lips into a wicked smile. The walls surrounding the park began to move: inwards.

At this point, panic finally became the norm. She was going to squeeze them all in! All the people still huddled near the walls started dashing towards the middle. People were pushing each other over. Someone tripped and fell into a little ditch in the park, and the silver boundary, traveling oh so slowly, ran right into him. He was sucked in and broken down, then reassembled into ever more nanites.

Saki spoke, there was still plenty of time. The park was pretty big, and she kept the pace of the barrier at a creeping speed for now.

“To think, just this morning I was like you all. Small, limited. I had some unique traits, true. I guess I was smarter than others, probably enjoyed some sadistic fantasies a bit too much for my ‘me-time’. We all have quirks and gifts, but in the end I was really just a well-paid assistant busting my ass for some stuck up executive. I wonder how many of you had similar lives.” Saki broke her rambling to chuckle again.

“Oh to think, she was planning to give this technology to everyone! Not to this full extent I’m sure. I can’t say what her plans would’ve been, but knowing Eirica, she probably would’ve hoarded the best features herself, then tried to control the planet somehow while breaking as little as possible. Such a shame I got this stuff instead of her: or you!” she laughed again, then almost purred. Saki was really drinking in how inferior some of these folk might be feeling.

“I’m the only one who gets to feel a person ripped apart at the atomic level: the *only* one who gets to turn this planet into a personal playground. *I* am the one who gets to experience the pinnacles of destruction and creation themselves. How about another demonstration?~”

Saki had a wry smirk on her face as she leaned in. By now, the walls around the park had closed in about a fourth of the way, so people were much more clumped towards the center. They looked up with dreadful anticipation as they saw 100ft wide lips purse. Saki blew a stream of grew fog from her mouth.

They knew it was nanites. It had to be. Was this it? Were they not even gonna get to struggle till that barrier penned them in and smushed them into ‘the swarm’? Would this wind rip them apart?

Not quite, the fog wafted over them as it consumed the land beneath their feet, coating it and transforming it into... a silvery version of its old self. The grass there was now a shiny grey with a metallic feel. Same for the trees of the place, the bugs in the pod and the water itself. It was all grey now. Her nanites had repurposed all the park itself, then recreated it in a flash. The fog settled and people tried to process this all. It thankfully didn’t seem to eat them up, like that wall did. Although, that impending doom it was still crept towards them.

“Neat right? I made all that, though I copied the design, I suppose. Such is the level of my skills now. With all you stepping on that metal grass, I could probably reproduce each and every detail of your shoe’s sole. Admittedly, it feels a bit odd having you walk all over me. This is like flesh to me. It’s even interchangeable, that’s how I grow, you know. See~”

As another demonstration, one of the silvery trees near a clump of frightened pedestrians morphed into a slender, feminine finger of all things! Still tree height, terminating at the ground, it curled forward and crushed the nearest person before turning back to its silver ‘tree’ self. Saki burst into laughter.

“It only lasted a second, but you should’ve seen the look on his face as ‘my’ finger flattened him. Such a treat~”

Saki played around a bit more with the ‘terrain’ she made. She’d flicker the colors on the grass or a ‘bug’ now and then to make it seem real. She created blocky, polygonal structures that jolted people into the walls nearby. She entertained herself thusly till there was only about a quarter of the space left for people to be safe in. The walls had forced everyone to have only 10 meters or so of space to themselves.

It was at this point the walls began to bend and morph. Towards the front they formed an oval-like shape. The boundary widened at the front, tapered towards the middle, then widened slightly at the back.

The shape revealed itself when they checked the news on their phone. They couldn’t see it themselves, but some scouting news drones up above caught it. She was making the shape of a foot with the barrier now: hers. From a bird’s eye view it looked like a foot-shaped cookie-cutter on the ‘dough’ of the city. It was bizarre as it was horrifying.

Her intent was now clear, and the people within erupted in hysteria. The shape closed in rapidly, and Saki knew there’d not be *quite* enough room for everyone once she brought it to rest. People were shoving each other, instinct kicking in as space got more and more constricted. People pushed each other into the walls just to get more breathing room, subjecting strangers and friends alike to a quicker end than they’d get themselves.

The walls stopped moving, though the occasional panicked movement still sent those by the edges stumbling into the silvery expanse to be dismantled and repurposed.

Saki rose from her crouch and lifted her foot up, hovering it overhead. She wiggled her toes, rubbing in the vast superiority she wielded over them and every other human on this planet.

“I’m sure some of you were recording everything thus far. Well, rest assured that this will be the fate of everyone watching: doom. I’m not some egotistical maniac that wants to have you all worship me like a god. A truly superior being doesn’t need worship. No, I’m gonna use you all up like the toys you are, then recycle you to something better once I’m done~”

The foot lowered. Longer than most buildings and wider than a good sum, it was immense. As it drew closer to the masses, more and more details of that ped became visible. The whorls on her toes and the ball; there were also wrinkles of the arch that one skyscraper’s victims got a view of earlier. Most had no where else to look. It was either up at that foot, down at that silver ground, or the towering metallic walls at their side. Everything reminded them of her. Well, they could turn to whatever stranger or friend or loved one was by their side, but everyone was so despaired it wasn’t a joy to to that either.

Saki’s foot touched at the top, interior edges of wall. The ped shrouded them in darkness until bright lights lit it all up: lights from the nanites for sure. She wanted them to see. They felt the warmth of her sole above them; it was oppressive. Saki’s voice echoed, muffled to their ears as it had to pass through thin spaces between her toes to reach them.

“Hundreds of lives: just raw humanity with no filter. This might be the only chance I get to do this. Let it be known I plan to get a bit bigger after all~”

Without further ado she stomped down, her foot fitting perfectly in that boundary she made.

Saki wasn’t expecting it to feel quite this good, and a decidedly improper grunt slipped past her lips.

“Mmmnf”

Her main body shivered. Every body burst in a warm spray against her sole for just an instant before her sheer weight and strength smashed them into a thin liquid. Her sense of touch was atomic level more or less, so not a single sensual moment of their demise was missed. This was truly one of the pinnacles of her sadists fantasies.

She wasn’t a fan of the wet feeling though, so just as soon as it finished, the nanites of the park got to work collecting up the mess left behind. They swarmed it and themselves back up, then flew back into her body at her ankle. As usual, they passed back inside her form seamlessly.

With an entire park’s worth of mass, and a generous donation of those hundreds of lives, she grew again. All the while, she shivered with a sensation not unlike goosebumps cascading down the back of her neck to her spine.

A proper army had finally reached the boundary of the city. They watched both on monitors and in person as they saw their target grow again. A stocky brown-haired man, General Gigo, looked up from his handheld cam-screen to see that she was over a mile tall now.

And looking right at them.