Chapter 12: Stage Fright

Delta had prepared for this day. She had imagined countless ways it could go. She often dreamed about what she’d do if she ever had the power to make it a reality. She’d start at a small size, and grow after crushing a person or two. She’d break more, grow more. Everyone would run, all eyes on her. All eyes on the city’s destroyer who wielded intoxicating and absolute power.

There was a more literal part of preparation though, and that she never considered till she actually gained the GODMODE status key to all this. Before arriving, Delta modified the Nexus real-cams in Central Square. That’s what showed the going-ons in the Nexus Central Square to the outside world. She walked by such a screen whenever she walked home from the convenience store, and there were many others all over the country.

Today the time-dilation feature was added, and time spent in Paradise and the real world was desynced. The current solution was to show the contents of the square to the outside world on a one-hour delay. That gave Delta the perfect cover to edit the real-cams to instead send archived video data out to the outside world. The way, no one would see her foot stomping on the screen. Anyone walking by would think everything’s fine as they watched Central Square footage from days ago or even weeks ago.

Another bit of groundwork she undertook was coding up some growth functionality for herself. Delta normally grew when she felt like it, and certainly still could, but this provided a fun way to gamify things for herself. She couldn’t wait to try it out.

She checked her other preparations. No one could log out of Paradise. To discourage peer pressure to skip work and the like, one couldn’t normally send messages out of Paradise either. So, that was covered. The real-cams were also one way only--that is, you couldn’t see the outside world from within the Nexus anywhere. That was to avoid taunting and the like. Moreover, she had disabled the ability of everyone to warp around the city as they could before.

People realized they couldn’t log out by now: she knew it, as the contents of everyone’s intra-Paradise messages to one another were assimilated directly into her mind. There were also reports of lag spikes across realms as her model city massacre with Bruce demanded lots of resources.

It was time to begin. Delta poofed in smack dab in the center of Nexus’s Central Square beneath a blue sky. People warped to that spot all the time. It was the most bustling part of the Nexus after all. What made Delta stand out was the fact that she stood 50ft tall.

The tan titaness still wore her outfit from Bruce’s realm: short yellow top with green shorts. Her bare feet settled right by two Nexus ‘pedestrians’ that bumped right into the naked things before falling over. Minor cracks rang out from the concrete where those peds shared her weight with the ground.

Her hair was alike with that unique circuit pattern of hers. Green mostly with the yellow lines: bending but never touching.

Delta’s yellow eyes scanned the crowd and she felt something she hadn’t expected. Something she neglected to plan for.

Nerves.

She immediately made a scene. A woman to her front screamed out, though it seemed more out of surprise. Most people stood in shocked silence. All eyes were on her as she thought, but she felt exposed, not powerful. She definitely felt aroused. The scene of this all, the potential: it was overwhelming in that sense. Yet, the sensation was smothered by a new and persistent nervousness.

It was an entirely different thing to be big with one person than many. These were real human consciousnesses expanded from real human minds outside. They weren’t her NPCs. That special “gestalt” she talked about which made them the best toys made their gaze somehow unbearable as a group.

Delta always shunned attention from people before, and now it was all on her. There was something she wanted to do first, but she was too disoriented to remember it. Everyone here was talking about her. She knew the messages being passed around from the gawkers towards those out of her range.

“Omgosh something is going on here.”, read one.

“There’s a giant lady in Central Square!”, read another.

“Get out of your realm and come see this woman.”, read a third.

Her memory jogged. ‘Other realms, that’s right!’

With her access to Paradise code, she ran a function to pull everyone out of all other realms and force them into the Nexus. Another function ran right after--as fast as the computer farm processors would let her--to lock them all in here.

‘Yes, this way their realms resources will all be directed here to the Nexus automatically. Also, everyone who can be *will* be part of my fantasy.’

‘That was the plan. Everyone’s eyes will be on my might. Everyone’s eyes on me.’

The phrase repeated in her mind as the population of the Nexus more than doubled in a flash. The area got a lot more crowded. People asked each other what was going on, but if in sight range the best answer was to simply point at the giant woman in Central Square. A few people called up to her.

“Hey are you ok?”

“Do you know what’s going on here?”

Delta’s breathing increased. If she had enabled it in Paradise, she’d be sweating. Her chest felt hollow as she experienced a constant thrum of anxiety. She felt a flutter of butterflies in her stomach. As if on cue, her tummy let out a gurgle and she pressed her palm to the region.

A moment later and Bruce respawned right in front of her, having finished digesting. His outfit and flesh were back intact, and he turned to run from her, shouting at the others.

“She’s a monster! That woman’s a monster! Run! Get as far as you can. She’s horrible.”

People started to chatter among themselves. She heard it all with her senses and though in one sense she kept up, in another she didn’t. Delta was distracted. Her body began to shake. She took some steps back to steady herself.

The Nexus-goers got their first experience of her tremors as she crushed concrete with her footfalls.

“Look out!” someone called out.

On Delta’s second back-step, her 7ft long foot shadowed one of the virtual city’s many shoppers. The woman screamed, but the giant hacker was too overwhelmed to process that, let alone the influx of coordinate data flooding into her mind. Delta noticed only when the woman popped beneath her sole with an audible crunch. Some blood squirted out under step to drench the people close by.

People started to scream. Some started to cry. Bruce was still shouting out. “See, I told you!” While all this happened, Delta’s growth function triggered and she gained a foot of height. It was a simple bit of code that went off: event driven and just for her.

“

on any virtualDeathEvent:

user.scale() = user.scale() + user.scale() / 100;

“

The growth factor was dynamic of course. She didn’t want to only grow a foot at a time, after all. Each increment to her size would be her current height divided by 50. So, at 50 feet tall, from that one woman’s temporary death, she sprouted up half a foot in height. This did not go unnoticed. She heard the nearby mobs of people.

“Oh my gosh, the giant killed that woman!”

“No, she spawned back. See, over there.”

“Yeah but, there was blood and everything. Paradise doesn’t allow that.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“We gotta get out of here.”

Bruce was talking to the others. “Listen, she’s a monster! She hacked Paradise or something and can do anything. She’s gonna kill us all!”

More and more people started to listen to him. They looked up to Delta. The sensation of crushing that woman titillated her a little out of her anxious stupor. She felt more herself again: the self she was meant to be. Powerful, a titaness.

She looked down at the people who turned to her for answers. She pointed to Bruce.

“He’s right.” she said, then smiled as she lifted her foot up and slammed it down atop a group at her front.

Now, it was unambiguous. Now, people panicked.

Tragically for the masses, Central Square was packed tight. People crushed one another trying to trample out of the densely packed swarm to her front. Pain and injury was enabled for all but Delta, so a few died in the struggle, only to spawn right back in somewhere nearby their demise.

Since her growth triggered on *any* virtual death event, she grew from the fear-driven conflict below. Her toes expanded into the swarm and knocked over some people who she quickly ran over with her feet. Just a slide forward, a *bit* of pressure, and they popped nice and warm under her soles. She shivered with ecstasy, her fear fading.

Delta’s confidence rose. It was going as planned now. They ran. She lifted her foot again and her toes tumbled more people in their passing. While they got trampled, she found a nice dense pack of people to stomp on.

“There~” she said and stomped down. An explosion of gore washed over her sole and the crowd nearby. More people tripped, more got trampled by one another. She grew up 10s more feet from it all before setting her foot over the next batch of people. Her sole remained unstained from the carnage of her steps, but the mere players of Paradise had no such luxury. She edited out their ability to refuse touch, damage, and any stain or the like.

*Crunch*

A dozen or so feet more in height.

*Crunch*

More height still.

At one point she stood nearly still and looked down at the scrambling throng. She moved her right foot just slightly left and right, up and down, and marveled at how much she grew. In almost no time at all people were just barely above her ankles in height.

Delta spotted Bruce again, and went out of her way to flatten him. She didn’t bother talking to him though. He was just one of the mob now. He respawned somewhere out of the square by another mob and got trampled a few times over.

The giant’s libido was out of control. With her anxiety slipping away, lust took root. Her body tingled with sparks of bliss and an omnipresent warmth to accompany her urges. This was beginning to be everything she imagined. Her next step had her cooing. The one after that caught a collapsed and immobile group of 10 beneath some part of her foot. She felt heads crack like eggs under her toes. She wiggled them some and the screams increased. Proof of her power!

Delta moaned, unable to hold it back. The disparity of her to them more than met her expectations, it exceeded them.

Delta’s right hand slipped past the waistband of her shorts. This was better than anything she felt before in her own realm. Ten times over--a hundred times over even. She couldn’t prepare for it. It was an overload of sensations: of possibilities.

Before her fingers even reached her folds she keeled over in a full body spasm. Her knees slammed on more crowd at her front, crushing dozens for another burst of growth that clipped a few with the sides of her legs.

Delta climaxed, hands free, and she hadn’t even left Central Square yet.