Chapter 34: Desync

Delta was reintroduced to the limitations of her physical body as it sat in that buckled computer chair of hers. Here, her hair was black instead of alight in circuit-styled green and yellow. Her eyes were a boring brown. Worse still, she felt some unpleasant physical sensations. Her legs were stiff from staying in one posture so long, and her mouth was dry from not having drunk anything since one Nutri-drink a little over 4 hours ago. She rubbed her fingers through her hair, and felt the gray-square, her headclip, above her left-eye.

‘4 hours.’ she thought. ‘That’s all those years in Paradise were out here.’

She unbuckled herself and stood up for a big stretch. Not just her legs felt stiff after all. Her outfit was on from before: a dark green pair of shorts and a yellow shirt. Aside from some black undergarments beneath those garbs she was bare: feet included.

Delta turned to to her right and grinned at the sight. There were four limp bodies clad in light-gray uniforms with rifles nearby. Small helmets covered their headclips and the yellow-LED shining on them. They were the tactical team sent to deal with her earlier. They’d provide a bit of fun for her, but before walking over Delta grabbed a Nutri-drink by her computer desk.

The walk towards the tactical squad bodies took Delta just a few seconds. Back in Paradise, however, those seconds were *hours*. Delta smiled with both her physical and digital body: as predicted, she was able to comprehend this inequality of time-speed without any issues. Her consciousness wasn’t divided, but expanded. Though her physical body was limited, the mind was not. Her integration with Paradise’s processing resources and the like still left her in a super-intelligent state.

It was definitely an odd sensation being able to level the Nexus city in the time it took her physical form to reach the squad leader’s body, but it wasn’t a painful one. The opposite, in fact. All her city romps had an appeal. The miles-tall digital Delta body finished leveling that city just as the physical Delta body--her original and only real body--reached her target.

Delta set her Nutri-drink down on the floor and crouched down. There were four squad members. They got a little ways into her room before she sucked them into Paradise. They had nearly killed her, and even now consciousnesses copies of all Justice Ministry employees were being tormented in a virtual jar of fire for it.

The raven-haired hacker looked down at the leader: a young blonde woman with a short ponytail and blue eyes. There were three others, each resting by the piles of her clothes: a light skinned man with short brown hair, another tan skinned man with short black hair, and lastly a woman with light skin and short black hair herself. All of them seemed to be mid twenties in age, and were in peak physical fitness.

Delta had a fun idea in mind, but she wanted to try something else first to be sure. She focused and expanded her consciousness to these four bodies as well. In but a moment, Delta wasn’t just in one physical body, but 5. It was as she had coded after integrating with the headclips. She controlled everything about these people now, including their real world bodies and minds. These were empty shells for her to command.

She stood straight up in all four of their bodies. They too suffered from dry mouths and the like, but were admittedly fit and healthy shells. They were still inferior to Delta’s in her mind, of course.

Besides, she herself was fit. Delta may not have been too athletic, but her slight form had its taut light-brown skin with not a single imperfection upon it. She had zero temptation to use one of their bodies instead of her own out in the real world as the ‘main’ physical form. The idea was abhorrent to her ego.

No, all that was just a test of her powers. With each of the squad members standing tall, Delta cloned their consciousnesses from Paradise to their bodies: which she froze of course. She didn’t expand their original consciousnesses into their original, oh no, as the boon of expanded consciousness was Delta’s alone. Besides, their lesser minds probably wouldn’t be able to process desynchronized time like Delta could. She had some predictions on what might happen: none of which boded well for the integrity of their mental states.

The tactical team members found themselves back in their original bodies, with a command on Delta’s end making it clear to them they were mere consciousness clones. It didn’t take long to find out they were frozen, their bodies not their own. They couldn’t even speak, and in fact could only move their eyes and blink.

That team leader found herself face to face with Delta, who smiled with that all-too-familiar smug grin of hers. The tan tyrant chuckled.

“How’s it feel to be back in a real body? Not what you expected I’m sure. I control everyone, both inside Paradise and out. The headclips are such wonderful pieces of tech, able to send and receive nervous system impulses. You’re bodies are just puppets to me now. Toys both inside my reality and out here in this physical world.”

The team leader squinted in anger. Delta giggled.

“You were all so close, so *agonizingly* close to killing me on that mission of yours. That would have prevented all of this! It was *so* delicious to read all your thoughts on the matter team lead. All the regrets, that feeling of failure that never went away.”

Delta licked her lips. Every word she made blasted the team leader with her breath.

“Well, how about a second chance?~”

The team leader’s body moved against her will. She felt its movements, just as she felt the stiffness in her legs and Delta’s humid breath on her face. Still, the blonde woman didn’t control it. Nevertheless, her body reached down to pick up the rifle by her boots and hoist it in her arms. Delta took a few steps back, and the squad leader pointed the rifle’s end onto Delta’s forehead.

The raven-haired hacker grabbed the muzzle of it, helping to hold the rifle’s end steady to her own head. The blonde woman’s gloved fingers moved towards the trigger.

“Go on, shoot me, do what you couldn’t do before.” said Delta, smiling.

The squad leader tried with all her might to press that trigger, but her finger was frozen solid. Tears of frustration began to well in her blue eyes.

Delta shouted, still grinning wildly. “C’mon, do it! You’re letting your team down. You’re letting the Justice Ministry down. You’re letting the nation down. You’re letting everyone down!”

She laughed, then continued.

“Surely you have enough will to overcome one 20-year old’s control right? Was your training really so inadequate?”

The squad leader felt her finger move onto the trigger itself.

“C’mon, just a single twitch is all it takes. Can your really not do that any more? You aren’t that *weak* are you? That *pathetic*?”

The blonde woman’s tears trailed down her cheeks. Her body let go of the gun and it fell to the floor. It didn’t discharge of course, Delta calculated its precise fall trajectory based on the feeling of the apartment air against her light-brown skin--among other things.

The yellow-shirted woman smirked.

“Of course you are. You are pathetic.”

Delta picked up the Nutri-drink, opened it, and brought it to her lips.

“Ah I bet your body feels very thirsty. Four hours is a lot of time to be out. I think I’ll have a drink myself: even such a simple pleasure as a Nutri-drink is something you’ll never get to experience again. How lovely~”

The raven-haired woman chugged the beverage. She made each gulp extra noisy to really rub it in. She finished it off with a nice loud sigh right in the blonde woman’s face.

“Yum~”, said Delta. Then, her stomach gurgled. She pressed her hand to her taut tummy and, with the bio-data constantly feeding in from her headclip, she knew what was coming.

Delta leaned into the squad leader, and belched right in her face. Bits of spittle accompanied the blast of torrid air, which smelt like acrid stomach, Nutri-drink, and the faint hint of digested chips. Delta laughed as the blonde woman couldn’t even turn her head to the side to dodge the blast: she couldn't even blink in that moment, either.

--==--==--==--

The tyrant also laughed for another reason, though. While she burped in the real world, she decided to do so in the digital world as well. Her Paradise body enlarged itself to an even greater size: big enough to swallow the city in a gulp if she so pleased. Her massive naked body crashed to the ground to lay on her front with legs kicking in the air behind her. Then, Delta levitated the city and its foundation up into the air right in front of her mouth. The moment the real-world Delta body belched, this digital body did as well.

Though the burp lasted a second in the real world, it lasted nearly 2-and-a-half hours in the digital world. Delta willed it so, as she wanted the start and end of it to sync.

All that digital city’s population--which included consciousnesses of the strike squad of course--were obliterated in the surging blast of torrid air. It ripped their bodies apart after the bassy thoom of it burst their ears. That same deep bass quality from the gigantic woman served to rip the foundation of their city apart. Chunks of the land fell off. The windows of buildings shattered down to the people below before the structures themselves exploded fractions of a Paradise-second later. Everyone was destroyed in hardly any virtual time.

And then, of course, they and the city respawned back on that floating chunk of virtual Earth. Right back into the stream of the belch, they were obliterated again, then respawned, then again so on and so on until the real-world Delta finally finished burping on the squad leader’s face.

--==--==--==--

The real-world Delta smiled at the end of her laugh.

“So, how does it feel to be so pathetic. Why don’t you tell me in your own words?”

Delta gave the blonde woman the ability to speak again. Not the ability to spit, nor the ability to lurch forward to try and bite at the sadist to her front.

The blonde woman spoke the first thing that came to mind, voice wavering with fear and anger.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Delta smirked.

“Been there, done that~”

The tan woman erupted into another burst of laughter. She took a few steps back and sat on her mattress.

“Ah, still, that was awfully rude of you to say~”

She snapped her fingers and the blonde woman’s skin went red as raw agony surged through every nerve of her body. Delta had messaged the pain center of the team leader’s brain to set things to ‘max’. The woman let out a primal scream that Delta quickly silenced with another command.

“Bit loud don’t you think. Though, it’s pleasing in its own way: titillating, even.”

Delta turned her brown eyes to the other members of the strike team, who she made watch everything thus far. At a thought from her, they too went red with anguish. She turned back to the squad leader.

“As the team leader, it’s only fair your subordinates suffer for your mistakes too, right? Group punishment had been considered a good way to enforce obedience, loyalty, and discipline by some.”

She chuckled, and the laugh trailed to a sultry tone at the end. The coder nibbled her lower lip. Their suffering, her control: it was turning her on. At a thought, she had them all drop onto all fours in a pathetic looking kneel, heads hung low.

Delta laughed again, then in that lusty tone she spoke.

“Come here~”, she said. With a beckon of her finger the squad leader, still wracked with as much pain as her body could comprehend, started shuffling to Delta by the bed. Once there, the raven-haired tyrant lifted her bare foot up. The squad leader looked up against her will and Delta moved the ped’s sole against her face. The toes clenched at the top of her forehead.

Delta gave her foot a bit of a twist and shuddered.

‘I’m amazing~’, she thought. ‘I’m powerful~’

She slipped her hand past her shorts to the inside of her panties and lightly rubbed at herself.

“I think there’s enough time to have a bit of fun before my journey~”, said Delta.