Chapter 8: EMP

Saki was certain they were coming once they were only a few miles out. She had heard the whir of super sonic engines. She calculated the distance based on how long the sound took to reach her; she figured they were close.

She wasn’t dumb. She was now smarter than any human had ever lived thanks to the nanites improvements. As such, she knew they probably had something big in store. She did too though, and was confident she can handle anything they’d throw at her in the meantime.

Was it nukes? Would those hurt her, even a tiny bit? She bet they’d feel even warmer than those lasers they were using earlier. Part of her hoped it was nukes.

Unfortunately, they had something else in store.

The three jets zipped overhead on their grim task. Flying at over 5 miles high in the sky, they were able to avoid her even if she reached up. Saki was curious enough to not zap them with her new eye beams either.

Their targeting computers let them know when it was time to drop their payloads, and they did.

Whistling through the air came three of the military’s most dangerous weapons in the form of heavily-shelled bombs. Saki looked up at the falling objects. One hit her square on the forehead, the other slammed right about her navel at her taut, fair flesh, and one fell down by her toes.

Each exploded in an enormous blast of blue and white energy. Each grew from the impact sites as great hemispherical shockwaves of electromagnetic distortion that swept over not just Saki, but the entire city of San Jose.

The pulse overloaded every server room in the city; it burst every light bulb on the street and indoors. Billions and billions of dollars of electrical and computer equipment were toast. Any poor soul dependent on machines in one of the few still-intact hospitals in the city soon expired.

It was a great and terrible cost to pay, hence the hesitation on General Gigo’s part. But, any economic and infrastructure damage could be rebuilt. If Saki wasn’t stopped, it wouldn’t be around for much longer anyways. As long as this worked, it’d be all worth it.

Saki’s body was enveloped by the blast of electromagnetic energy. From afar Gigo watched with a plain-old telescope device now that all the drones and copters in the area were toast. Saki stumbled, arms looking numb. Her enormous body twitched as she grit her teeth and fell right over. Another swath of destruction as one-and-a-half miles of giant, nanite-infused woman fell over down across the city.

“Yes!” he cried, unable to contain his enthusiasm. The soldiers were the same, shouting and whooping as it looked like they just saved what was left of the city: and the country itself. Saki was perfectly still, though still breathing, at the middle of the city.

“Let’s move in!” he yelled, and they all got in their trucks and jeeps and drove in to properly deal with the immobilized menace.

If only they had known she was faking it.

Saki was impressed they went with an EMP. It made sense that they thought it’d disable the nanites. Their willingness to cripple Silicon Valley with such a toy impressed her while still failing to surprise all that much.

Like everything else they did against her, it was pointless at best and foolish at worst. Of *course* the nanites were resistant to outside electric interference. Though Eirica never listed such features in the design docs she shared with the government, she wasn’t about to let these things get disabled by an errant solar flare.

Yet, it gave Saki a chance to toy with their silly hopes a bit longer while she got a real surprise ready for them.

And so, when the bombs hit she decided, in a fraction of a second after the blast, to play along. With the control she had over her body, it was a simple matter to seize up her muscles, then render her body limp entirely. It looked authentic because it *was*, at least in a sense of the word.

She looked straight up and just waited. For the first time in quite awhile, her movements didn’t dictate what the city and military did: their actions instead dictated hers.

Saki rested on her back, feet pointed up and slightly to the side as though her legs were lame. One arm was by her side and another splayed out a bit to make the fake paralyzation a bit more realistic: and, a bit more destruction from the splaying was a nice bonus. She focused on making her breathing look strained so they’d have no qualms about getting close.

It only took a few minutes for the army to drive in. This was it. The electromagnetic pulse should’ve taken the nanites out for good, but just to be safe they’d get close and light her body up with everything they had. By orders of the government, General Gigo also had to try and take some small samples of flesh from her body. They had special containment cages for such a thing: a Faraday cage with its own mini-emp generator.

Saki heard them pull up. She spoke, doing her best to make it as strained as possible. Her voice, of course, still thundered around them as even if immobilized she was positively gigantic.

“No, please!” she said, snickering inside--but making sure not a hint of that slipped through.

They formed a circle around her best they could: well her right side anyways. She so was big they just set up there. Soldiers lined up and aimed their rifles at her--again. A few military scientists got out of some trucks parked near her face. They and some soldiers were quickly wheeling over some equipment. Even General Gigo got a bit close, poking his head out of his armored truck and smiling proud.

“Alright, just one sample from her face then we’re taking her down for good. Every one aim and be ready.”, he said through his headset. Orders were followed and she now had all those weaponized vehicles pointing right at her. The laser trucks were since drained, but they had plenty of vehicles with other heavy guns and shells and the like ready to fire.

The military scientists and their escorts got within 100ft of the side of her face. Saki spoke in a trembling tone. “What are you doing? Leave me alone, I beg you! It was the nanites controlling me. I just couldn’t help it!” she said, having to use her body-control to refrain from bursting out laughing. The scientists clearly either weren’t buying it or didn’t care. She waited till they were a bit closer.

“Whatever you’re planning, don’t please. I’m sorry for all the destruction. I couldn’t help myself. You all just looked so... so...”

As she spoke that last word, she spun her head in their direction. Jet-black stands of hair flowed from her shoulders and slammed onto the ground with her cheek.

“Delicious~”, she said. Then, she pursed her lips before sucking that entire scientific detachment up and into her mouth. The suction was certainly enough to rope up their trucks and equipment too.

Saki did an exaggerated swallow and smacked her lips as the army by her side stirred.

“Yummy~”

That laughter of hers returned as she shifted up on her side. Resting her right elbow on the earth and her cheek in that arm’s hand, she stared down at the panicked army. One foot slide against the ankle of another in her lounging pose.

“You didn’t really think that worked did you? That I wasn’t beyond weapons now?” She scoffed, almost spitting at them. The soldiers got the order to fire and started pelting her with everything they had.

General Gigo was incensed. Nothing seemed to be working.

“I never had myself figured for an actress but, when you pretend to enjoy a crummy job your whole life, I guess you just pick it up naturally~”

Saki continued her pose: rubbing one foot against another casually and barely acknowledging their presence. From beneath the entire city, a tremendous earthquake began.

The soldiers started falling over. Trucks overturned. General Gigo ordered another retreat, and Saki overheard.

“I think you’ve drastically underestimated me. Even if you did manage to kill ‘me’ here,” She did an air quote on that last word. “I had a plan B. You didn’t think I was confined to one body did you? No one must of filmed when I dealt with that small city defense contingent back when I was a 20th or so of this size.”

She chuckled.

“Just what do you think is shaking the ground? You’ve nowhere to retreat to~”

As Saki spoke, silver barriers erupted from the ground right behind the army. These were different from before in that they were positively monolithic. It wasn’t boxing just them in: the barriers curved in an oval-like shape to encircle much of the city. They were even encircling Saki herself.

“It was just a small little blob back then: 10 cubic feet or so. But, with it I went down past the city’s underground waterworks straight into the rock of the earth. While I’ve been having fun up here, I’ve also been feasting down there, amassing miles upon miles of mass.”

The walls rose higher and higher as the city, and the ground it was built, on began to fracture. Saki was cool and collected. As they reached about two miles in height, they folded inwards to a point at their center, cutting off outside light for the army, Saki, and much of the city. The only reason they could see at all was the nanites themselves providing illumination, as she clearly wanted them to witness what she had planned.

They were limited though, and couldn’t see outside. Thankfully, there were a few recon planes and drones still flying around the scene. This silver ‘dome’ like construction began to deform and warp slightly. Then, more things erupted from *it*. It was impossible for the pilot’s to describe back to command--they had a video feed, thankfully--but, whatever she was building looked as though she was doing it in a highly efficient way. Myriad tubes drew off from the structure, then split, and then those split and some kept going while others formed other shapes and stretched up or to the side and... it just kept going.

At least until that original dome got itself encircled by its own walls of nanites, 2 miles away from that one. They made their own mess of things breaking up from the crust of the planet, but they seemed to be far simpler. They rose faster and didn’t split as much. They did curve though into a rather attractive shape. Familiar even...

The central military command figured it out before those inside did. She was rebuilding herself with parts of the city inside her! Sure enough, they kept observing and that enormous silvery construct formed a distinctly feminine bust, two arms sprouted off the structure and slammed metallic hands down over several dozen blocks.

Then the neck and head began to form, silvery strands of hair changing to a black shade as the face took shape. She was beyond enormous, and much of this new body of hers was still underground! Hearts dropped among the nation’s leaders.

All the while the smaller Saki was still playing with the army. The ‘dome’ they and dozens of city blocks found themselves in began to get patterns on the wall: wrinkle-like folds. She continued taunting them.

“Nanites and flesh, flesh and nanites, I’m one of the same. You never even had a chance the moment I stepped out of that machine a couple hours ago. You were always outmatched--always my toys, never a threat.”

Strange sounds echoed all around as Saki began to turn miles and miles of her new titanic nanite body back to flesh. They didn’t figure it out yet on the inside, but things sounded strange, perhaps even horrifying in here.

“You know, those few dozen scientists and friends I had were hardly filling. I think this and whatever bit of San Jose’s stuck here with you will make a wonderful snack~”

Lagging behind the rest of her ‘new’ body only slightly, the dome they were in began to fleshify. Those deep folds on the walls, floors, and ceiling of this place turned from silvery shapes to pink-red flesh slimy with a layer of mucus. It was rugae: gastric folds. They were in a stomach. She was rebuilding her self miles and miles taller, and trapped them in the spot she choose for her stomach.

The 1.5 mile Saki stood up and looked around with perverse wonder on her face. All the while, acid began to pour. This miles-big chamber began to grown and roar. The city began melting as the organ stirred. Entire blocks and the foundation beneath them tore from a seismic churn. This now ‘smaller’ body of hers was the largest thing in the gut, and she could perhaps touch the top of the organ if she stood on her tippy-toes when it churned just right.

Saki laughed, both with this little body in her gut and the true, 19 mile tall body ‘outside’, which had sense regained its human-like skin shades and shape. “My stomach looks pretty impressive doesn’t it? They say being digested alive is an awful way to go. Fitting for arrogant folk who just don’t know when to give up hmm? I shouldn’t stay in here, I wouldn’t want to accidentally stomp on any of you and deny my new tummy the right to handle you on its own~”

The soldiers could barely make anything out. The air was torrid and stung their throats. Acid was eating at their trucks. Her digestive fluids were more acidic than a normal human’s and thus worked extra fast. Gigo tried to hold his footing. He looked out with that pocket telescope of his and saw the untold horrors in this distance. An entire stadium, used as an evacuation shelter, was inundated by some drops of acid. The whole building and everyone inside it started to dissolve. Their synchronized screams were heard from here--hundreds of feet away but still in this monster’s stomach.

The 1.5 mile Saki fell into the walls of her stomach, where nanites quickly dismantled this duplicate body’s mass so her new main form could hit the 20-mile mark.

Shortly thereafter, another churn took care of what was left of the army and much of San Jose. Inundated by the acerbic fluids of her digestion, their hope was finally extinguished.