Hellion heaved a small sigh as he drummed his fingers on the console in front of him, being careful not to get too close to any of the buttons. It had only been a few weeks since he had ended up trapped in this game, and he was finally used to things here enough to get bored. His friend and designer of the virtual reality game set at micro scale Emily was no closer to finding out how touching her phone had transported him into her computer, nor how accidentally deleting his data had placed him into the game.

As if that was not bad enough he had also appeared at the size of a Tinykin, an all male race of enemy mobs set to be bug sized to the already bug sized players making him nigh-indistinguishable from them. Only a frightfully narrow close call kept him from being eaten by Emily in front of her friends McKenzie and Lucy, and his status was discovered by Emily herself. Thankfully she had already designed a female avatar for him since the game was meant to be girls only, and she was able to remake “Kyoto” into a mech suit for him complete with AI to run it when he wasn't available.

Now he was able to experience the game through the senses of Kyoto, given partial-Admin powers to help him out instead of just being a member of one of the four schools that were located in the mega-academy the game was hosted at. Before he might have been a member of the Genbu co-ed high school, or perhaps the Byakko college that Emily and her friends attended. He probably would not have been with the Seiryuu Catholic high girls, or the Suzaku Private school girls. Now he was a part of the limited Admin group alongside Emily, Lucy and McKenzie, although only Emily herself knew that he was trapped in the game and that Kyoto was not a real person. Everyone just assumed that she was from one of the other schools brought in.

However even being given Kyoto was not always enough to keep him out of trouble, as while the game was VR it used projectors scattered all around the entire campus to create physical avatars for the players and buildings at insect size. On the one hand this allowed real combat against real insects, but on the other it meant students outside of the game, teachers and any other person wandering by were real dire threats, and since it was a bit of a secret game not everyone knew what was going on. It had been terrifying to be mistaken as an ant while within Kyoto, but at least it also proved that both of them could respawn.

He was currently inside of the command centre of Kyoto, and the reason he was so careful about drumming his fingers across the console was last time he hit a button on accident it had activated the “escape pod” function and forcefully launched him out of the robots head in a sneeze. This might not have been so bad, except Emily had been walking past her at that time and ended up in his escape path. Of course she knew what the robotic mech sneezing meant and had stopped to help her look for him, but that was not of much use considering they were looking on he ground and he had landed in and gotten tangled in her hair.

It had taken over an hour of searching before he was found, and even then that only happened because Emily finally relented and activated her “find player” Admin power to locate him. In the meantime he had been left shouting for attention and trying to get out of the escape pod, the exits snarled shut in long blonde hair strands. He had been swung back and forth like an amusement park ship ride in her tresses, her head turns and tilts while looking for him keeping him in motion.

Eventually in frustration Emily had run her hand through her hair and knocked the pod and Hellion out of there, and the tiny boy ended up falling out of the open pod and down her body before landing in her shirt pocket. It was not long after that that Emily activated the search function, and he was semi-carefully retrieved. A short explanation of how he had gotten there later and it was agreed that something probably should be done to help the unfortunate soul out, so Emily sequestered herself in her lab to begin plugging away at the problem. 

Now it was five days later and Emily finished her first project for Hellion, calling him over to her lab. The mech was busy with a short update cycle anyway, and so was not available. He left her body through the mouth as usual and walked the empty halls of the Admin area to the door to her lab, which had been left open for him. Getting him situated on top of her currently empty workbench, she pressed a few buttons that caused a brief flash of light and then a machine to appear before him. Hellion was briefly confused before its form became clearer to him, and he saw that it was a rather advanced looking wheeled vehicle of some sort. It was fairly large from his perspective, but when he looked to the side and compared it to Emily standing at the bench he saw that it was only half a foot long at most.

The machine did not look exactly like anything he had ever seen before, so Hellion turned towards Emily to allow her to explain. She obliged his silent request, saying “This sweet ride is an emergency measure, for if you ever get caught outside of Kyoto again. Unlike with her you can store it away and summon it out of your inventory like an item.” This made a certain amount of sense to Hellion, and even if it would not have solved the problem from two days ago exactly it still might have helped if he had allowed it to drop out the gap in the door, getting attention by falling and landing at any rate.

Emily continued to explain, even as she gestured the tiny male towards it to explore and examine. “Its six-wheeled design allows for decent traction and some redundancies, and it can run on a few hours of battery power before needing a recharge. I admit that it isn’t a long time, but it IS supposed to be for emergencies and not casual use. If it works out well enough I might look into increasing the battery life if need be.” Hellion finished stepping up to it and began to walk around the exterior, taking in the angled metallic shell and black tinted windows along with some other protrusions around it. Glancing up he checked and confirmed that Emily was currently in her Admin Senses mode, and so could clearly see and hear him. ‘Fascinating. What are those tubes around the outside, and how strong is that armor?’

Emily promptly responded with “Well, I figured if this was for emergencies it would not hurt to be prepared for several possibilities, including being under attack. Those tubes are some basic weapons suites, in case you need to fend off hostile Tinykin or deter some angry bugs. As for the armour, its not invincible but could probably take a hit or two, enough to make retreating a safer prospect. In short it could handle some idle attacks or accidentally getting stepped on once or twice but a concentrated assault by a player would probably spell trouble.” This pleased Hellion a fair deal, and reaching the short steps/ladder leading up to the door he ascended them and entered the interior of the vehicle.

Inside of the machine showed that it was deeply detailed, a back area with some supplies and readouts of the status of the machine visible. The tinted windows from this side were all perfectly see through, and lighting further made everything clear and easy to see. From outside Emily continued to talk, and speakers inside of the walls modulated her voice so that it was both clearer and set at a volume that was comfortable to listen to, as if she was his size and talking right next to him. “Inside everything is temperature and climate controlled, and there are access panels to most of the guts of the machine so you can examine everything if need be. I even included shock absorbers, inertial dampeners, and gyroscopic sensors, so even if it was dropped from a great height or sent spinning you would feel as if it was left upright and you just went over a speed bump when landing. It can even self-right should it end up on its side or back.”

Moving to the front of the machine Hellion saw the console and drivers seat, and taking a seat in it found it to be both comfortable and familiar in a way to Kyoto’s control room. Looking out the large front windscreen he saw Emily looming in front of the machine, expositing with enthusiasm still while a holographic display pinpointed his position inside of the vehicle to her. “You can control near every feature from the drivers seat, from manual or automatic control of the weapons, basic GPS, redundant steering options, and camera views of the exterior so you always know what is around you. Plus of course there are multiple hatches on top, behind, and underneath the floor to allow you to exit nearly anywhere.”

Hellion was now downright excited, and wasted little time in turning the vehicle on and starting to roll it around the tabletop. “Em, you might very well have outdone yourself! This thing handles pretty easily, turn radius is not half bad, and I can control the speed like a dream.” As Emily basked in Hellions praises, the tiny noted to himself that the hum of the machine was present but quiet, and probably would not be heard from outside at all. Still testing it out in the lab on top of the workbench felt like it was too simple, and he really wanted to put it through its paces.

To that end the Tinykin sized player stepped on the gas a little while facing Emily, surprising the girl as he suddenly sped up. Before he hit her however he swerved to the side a bit, missing her and going clean off the edge of the lab table. This made Emily gasp more out of shock, but she calmed down as she realized what her little buddy was doing. The vehicle tumbled a little bit in the air before it landed on the lab floor, bumping heavily on the ground but remaining mostly upright as intended and continuing on across the metal floor without issue. Laughing lightly and shaking her head, Emily remotely opened the door to the lab and said “Go on outside and have some fun, play with your new toy” as she turned her back and headed towards the console to do some other work.

Seeing the opened door Hellion headed straight towards it at moderate speed, but just as he reached the edge of the entryway a mass of brown landed in front of the vehicle, and he lightly crashed into it. This brought the six wheels to a halt, but despite that Hellion was mostly fine, just surprised more than anything. Before he could recover from his shock the buggy rumbled slightly, and was lifted up into the air. The view outside of the windscreen was a brief flash of colors, before he was brought up to a stop in front of the familiar face of Kyoto. The girl appeared to be examining him for several seconds, and not entirely sure what was happening Hellion confusedly waved at her.

What Hellion did not realize was that Kyoto had overheard the last sentence from Emily and had gotten entirely the wrong idea. Thinking that the blonde had been talking to her, Kyoto assumed that the little car in her hand that had crashed into her boot was some new toy that the Admin had created, and she had told her to have some fun with it. The mech had wanted to also perhaps see her Master Hellion again, but with that dismissal she assumed that he must be busy with Emily doing something. As such she shrugged and placed the car at her side, and walked the short distance out of the Admin area and into the guild hall of Seiryuu.

When the vehicle was shifted down to the girls side and began to swing slightly in her grip, Hellion was caught off guard and needed a moment to figure out what was going on. Then the boy recalled how from the outside the windows were all tinted black, and this included the windscreen. The mech had just plain not been able to see him, and was probably curious as to what was going on. Well he would be able to explain in a minute, either escaping her grasp and really testing the evasion potential of the vehicle or getting enough attention that he could talk to her. By now the girl transitioned through the door into the guild hall itself, and Hellion pressed forward on the acceleration to get going.

Only…nothing happened. Hellion was surprised and tried again, only to elicit no response from the machine. Still just a little confused he tried to turn the steering wheel, only for it to barely respond and feel extremely sluggish, nowhere near as smooth as it had been just a minute or to before. One by one Hellion tried various systems, but they all either failed to work completely or barely reacted at all. Then the male took a closer look at one of the displays before him, and saw a clear indicator of the problem.

It was just a simple digital compass, one that in its most basic form would tell him which directions were what and could also be used as a sort of directional finder to point him in the direction of somewhere he had marked. Only it was apparently frozen in place, staying pointing in one direction despite Kyoto making several turns, before it suddenly and jerkily updated a few times, jumping tens of degrees at a time before stalling again. Looking around at more of the console, lights and indicators that he had before seen plinking or changing seamlessly were now also frozen, or updating in slow, jerky fashions like a slideshow.

A slideshow…something about that term tickled the back of Hellions brain, and as he pondered that it came to him in a flash. An animated image on a computer could appear as if it was a slideshow if it was not fully loaded, frames dropped or paused until the system it was on could catch up with the processing. Looking back at the console and then all of the devices and features behind him, it dawned on Hellion that it all looked very good, very complex, very highly detailed.

Emily always was a perfectionist, and doubtless she had put as much detail and features into his machine as possible. The issue was while in the lab the only thing the projectors had to handle was the couple of rooms and select people including himself, meaning there was loads of data and bandwidth to go around. Now however he was “outside,” meaning the system also had to handle all of the other players, the NPCs, the buildings, the quests and event systems, how the data constructs handled real world stimuli, and a dozen other things at least. The simple fact was his machine was so complex and data intensive that it was actively lagging to a fraction of its abilities.

In a desperate attempt to try and remedy the situation Hellion tried to shut down as many redundant and unneeded systems as possible, but it only did so much. He got all of the readouts and most of the remaining systems running and no longer frozen, but they were still operating at that same snails pace and most of the weapons were still locked out. Then Kyoto arrived in the guild’s cafeteria, and Hellion looked back out just as Kyoto was sitting down.

Having taken her seat at one of the long tables, Kyoto looked over the little thing with some interest. Placing it flat on the table top the mech lightly smiled and held it by its sides between her fingers, and she rolled it back and forth across the table. The wheels seemed a little stiff but still rolled, and a small little flick sent it rolling in front of her towards her other hand. She deftly caught it and turned it around to face back the first way, but when she released it the toy began to move a little on its own.

Inside Hellion was lightly jolted by the forwards and back motion, the dampeners technically working but sometimes needing a few seconds to fully compensate and so making for a rougher ride for him. The second time that he was released he turned the wheel on accident, and found that while it was tough he could at least steer a little bit. Further testing of the controls showed that he could also change his speed again, so feeling a ray of hope he turned away from Kyoto and tried to roll away at full speed.

Unfortunately that lag was also applying to his throttle and max speed as well, and to his budding horror Hellion found that his speed, which before had been a solid run by one of the players standards was now closer to “brisk stroll.” Going from race car to go-kart was a harsh drop in capability, and so it was of little surprise that his view ahead was blocked out by fingers from above recapturing him.

Deciding that enough was enough Hellion decided to give up and call the whole thing off, and tried to dismiss the vehicle. It was to his growing displeasure that he discovered a “safety feature” build into the machine that worked against him. It turned out that the car could only be dismissed while he was outside of it, so escaping the oblivious clutches of his own mech that way was a no-go. Moving onto his other options, Hellion got up out of the seat and headed for the nearest exit. It might be a little touch and go, but the mech was probably safe to be seen by and with her focus near here anyway it seemed as safe as it could be.

Yet again the man was thwarted however, as when he tried to open the nearest door, the same one he had entered in it refused to budge. Thinking that it might just be Kyoto’s finger holding it shut he tried another one, stumbling a little as the girl moved his vehicle around. This time he tried the opposite door, and when that didn’t work h tried to roof hatch. This one had a window on it so he saw that it was totally clear, and yet it remained impassible as well. Hellion then recalled the faint hiss he had heard when the door had opened the first time, and he realized that all of the doors were not manual but instead automatic ones. With the system lagging to high hell it either was failing to detect him or was flat out frozen.

Defeated for now Hellion hurried back into his seat to strap in, as if nothing else it would at least be marginally more stable than just walking around. He arrived not a moment too soon, as when he looked out the window he saw the stomach dropping sight of two Seiryuu players walking up and sitting at the table across from Kyoto. Hellion heard the mech somewhat brightly greet them with a soft “Hello,” and the new trio got to chatting. It turned out that one of the girls was a bit of a toy car enthusiast, and as soon as she had spotted the vehicle she had wandered right over.

Kyoto was more than happy to possibly make some new friends, and these two girls were certainly nice enough. The enthusiast asked her a few questions, mostly along the lines of “where did you get this? I have not seen anything quite like this before, do you know who made it?” Kyoto was fairly quick to make it clear that she was not fully read up herself, but she suspected that it was a custom model made just for the game and was likely unique. At the girls request the mech handed it over to her to examine, which she did mildly thoroughly, testing the wheels, flipping it upside down to take in the details of the undercarriage, tapping at the metal construction and solid windows, and so on.

Then Kyoto mentioned that it could also move under its own power, which naturally peaked the girl’s interest. The semi-otaku was so excited as she tried to get up saying “Oh! We should take it out to the courtyard to test it!” that she hit her knee on the table and tripped over the seat. This caused her to fall over onto her friend, who caught off guard likewise fell over letting them collapse into a heap on the floor. Naturally Kyoto got up herself to move around the table and make sure that they were alright, and arrived just in time to see them struggling a little to get up, not noticing the toy vehicle caught between their chests. It was shaken a bit as they tried to separate, not helped by how one girl had landed on her back so the second was all but laying on her.

Eventually they did manage to separate, the car either rolling or driving down the second girls body to wind up on the floor, where its momentum was stopped by the first girl failing to get her feet properly underneath herself making her fall back into a sitting position on the ground, burying the toy under her butt. The otaku made small “ouch” sounds a few times as she massaged her sore knee, while Kyoto helped up the other girl. Eventually the first girl recovered a bit and looked down at her hands, and seeing them empty began to look around saying “where did the toy go?” This made Kyoto giggle slightly, before she pointed down below the girl. Flinching slightly the girl wiggled her rear back and forth a few times realizing the lump, and flushing slightly got up and picked up the toy with her.

For his part Hellion was left briefly stunned staring forwards, slowly processing what had happened in the last few seconds. The experience of being swung and spun in several directions one after the other as the girl examined the vehicle had been bad enough, the rapid changes in direction briefly overwhelming the dampeners. Then her tapping on the windows filled the echoing interior with noise. However then the girl had started to get up while talking excitedly about “testing,” and Hellion winced in dread. That worry was tossed out the window along with himself in a way when he found the buggy suddenly tossed in the air, only to head towards a rounded wall of green dead ahead. The impact had not been that bad, but then he looked up just to see a second wall of Seiryuu green heading towards him, and then things got confused.

A part of the boys mind realized that he was currently being rubbed and tossed around between the chests of the two catholic school girls, and the very idea was a bit of a blow straight to his libido. He was still getting used to this size, and so certain thoughts and sights were still very new to him. When the ceiling above lifted away and the ground began to tilt it was more instinct than anything that had him press on the accelerator, and after some bumpy driving he was back on mostly smooth wood. Then he made the mistake of looking up to check on what was above him, just as a mass of white cotton fabric fell from the sky on top of his vehicle, pinning it in place. He instantly recognized it for the panties it was, and he swore he could feel the heat and pressure of being sat on even within the vehicle. Perhaps one of the things he had shut down was the environmental controls.

Even as the girl stood up holding him his brain was struggling to reboot, the barrage of sexiness remaining overwhelming. Finally he snapped out of it as the girls arrived outside, and the girl holding him placed him on the ground surrounded by grass. Then her voice came down, the speakers clearly informing him of how she was saying “Well, that was a little embarrassing. Still, it seemed to hold up well enough, so why not go a little further? Lets let it start to drive around a bit, and we can try to catch it.” That was ill-boding enough, but then she emphasized the word “catch” by lifting one shoe and lightly stomping it forwards in his direction.

Perhaps it might have been smarter to just remain still, let the girls think that the toy was broken or just had low batteries. Perhaps he should have just drove towards Kyoto and been done with things, considering she was likely the safest. Maybe he even could have just tried to get out the doors again, to flee or even just accept death and respawning. Hellion did none of those things, and instead started to drive and attracted the girls attention like he was a goat and they were three sexy t-rexes. They certainly had the ground rumbling for him, and the images in his rear-facing cameras when he glanced that way often DID seem closer than they appeared.

At least Kyoto had fun for the rest of the afternoon, storing away her new toy in a blazer pocket once the girls had to leave. On the other hand, she got QUITE the surprise when she eventually returned to the Admin area after dinner, and felt really bad once she found out what had happened and what she did. On the bright side, while it was otherwise deemed a failure, she at least got to keep the car.

A week after the vehicle idea was scrapped, the male came up with an actual request for Emily to try implementing for him. He felt like one of the more common issues he had to deal with was what to do whenever he was stuck outside of Kyoto, as it was frankly dangerous to be his size in areas where other people were located. With that in mind he brought up the idea of being able to simply teleport himself directly into Kyoto, either into the command centre or even just the small base inside of her stomach. Emily looked a little uncertain, but promised to give it a try.

It took a further two weeks before the tan skinned girl could get back to him about it, potentially either because she was busy with other concerns, but also perhaps due to how complex the request was. He was no expert in coding, so while the idea of setting up a teleport seemed simple enough to him he admitted to himself that maybe there was some complication that made it harder than it seemed. At last Emily did call him into her lab room, and if he was of any guess based on her slightly tight expression and frazzled appearance, it was likely that the issue was indeed more complex than anticipated.

Taking a moment to gather herself, Emily took a deep breath before speaking. “Okay, this thing has been a real bitch and a half to try and pull off, and this far in I had to partially throw in the towel. I tried lots of things, but I am just unable to connect the quantum coordinates properly to the transference matrix without risking a cascade fragmentation of the bit-codes.” Hellion nodded along in understanding on her table, despite not understanding a word of what Emily had just said. The blonde looked down at him for a moment before saying “You didn't understand a word I just said, did you?” Hellion just continued to nod in confirmation. This made Emily snort in amusement, before she tried again.

“Pft. Okay, basically the game code is unable to allow you to teleport to a location that is able to move, and while the spaces inside of Kyoto do not move she DOES, so I can't make a safe landing point. However!” here Emily looked brighter, and noticeably happier. Pressing a few buttons she produced a small oblong object to hover in the air in front of Hellion, and when he grasped it he found it to be a small remote of sorts, with a display, dial, and large button. “That did not mean I was unable to come up with something. While Kyoto is not an option, I WAS able to make a device able to connect to multiple stable teleportation points. Just turn the dial to your chosen destination, and a single button press will send you straight there. I would not use it inside of Kyoto except maybe her mouth just to be safe, and it only works for you, not her, but otherwise it should be just fine.”

Hellion thought that this sounded pretty neat, and even said “Huh, yeah this is pretty cool, is it alright to try it out now?” When given the nod of approval from Emily the faux-Tinykin turned the dial until the Admin area showed up, and activated the remote. In the space of a moment he found himself arriving outside the room on the main arrival point, and he stayed where he was as he heard Emily approaching. He figured she knew where he would be and would likely be coming to check on him, so there was no reason to move away from the clearly marked circle. As predicted the girl did walk over to him, and he accepted the offered hand. “I gotta say Em, this seems to be working a treat. Good job!”

Emily just ate up the praise, visibly preening a little and more stress leaving her face. Only somewhat modestly she deflected “Oh, do go on. Really it was a worthwhile project not just for your sake but also the game as a whole. I figured out a number of good tricks, and given time I could scale this up to something useful for everyone playing the game.” Emily was telling the truth, so Hellion felt less bad about the time he might have taken from her to do this for him. If this was also able to be classified as work for the game then he could even feel good about helping to further it a little. At least it would be better than being salty about it still keeping him trapped in it with no escape in sight.

Hellion did not get a chance to test out his new ability seriously for another four days, not really feeling the need to do so after the initial test worked fine, and spending most of the rest of his time inside of Kyoto doing some exploring around the campus. They had did so a fair amount already, but it never hurt to find out more about your surroundings and alternate routes you could take to reach the other three guildhouses aside from Seiryuu where she had started out. For now travel between the four locations was minimal aside from using the special doors in the Admin area and thus out of reach for most players, but that was likely to change eventually.

Currently Hellion was exiting Kyoto in the Seiryuu guild house, wanting to do a little exploring on his own again. Some might call his desire to leave the safety of Kyoto and put himself at risk when he complained so much about how dangerous it was counter-intuitive, but the guy just had that wanderlust that could not be contained. Well that or he was just an idiot, one of the two. Regardless of his reasoning for doing so, he told Kyoto to head back towards the Admin area or just go out for a bit on her own, her choice, and to not wait up for him in this semi-isolated room. With Kyoto accepting this and stepping out Hellion brought out his remote and began to click through the options.

After a minute or so he decided upon visiting Suzaku, partially because it was the last of the locations that he had managed to reach and so was the least explored for him, and also for the slight chance to see his sister and eavesdrop a little on how she was doing. Dialing it in he activated the remote, and found himself instantly transmitted to his destination without error. He arrived on the familiar red carpeting, and took a minute to look around and see where exactly he had ended up. Almost right away he was distracted by a slightly gruesome sight, the only partially intact corpse of a Tinykin. The naked male humanoid was smashed pretty badly, limbs half gone and dark blood spilled out around it in a faint image of the treads that had done the deed, also imprinted on its back. Thankfully it was laying on its front so he could not see its face, as inevitably they always showed some amount of terror when in this state. It was a horrible image indeed, especially as he had ended up perishing in a similar manner several times in the past.

Shaking his head and moving on, trying to ignore the near mindless NPC mob, Hellion focused again on his surroundings. It seemed that he had appeared at the entryway to the guild hall, but the exact location was bothering him. It was familiar, but he could not quite place the exact spot. He mused that it seemed a little odd for Emily to have placed his teleport beacon on the ground, instead of somewhere safer, as indicated by the stomped Tinykin nearby. Then he continued that line of thought, and asked himself why he was assuming that he had personal teleport locations. Wouldn't it make just as much sense to use pre-existing assets and locations for this? At least that might be what Emily was thinking at the time, stressed at her failure to meet the primary objective.

Sadly for Hellion he reached the last piece of the puzzle just a moment too late, as at that instant a figure appeared just behind him, and he looked up when cast in shadow just in time to see an approaching foot. Instantly the boy found himself pressed down into the carpet, his back being forced up into a tread on the shoe as the girl walked on. Between steps Hellion was able to call out, not to get attention but to just vent his frustration. “Oh damn it Emily,” STOMP “you set my teleport locations” BOOM “to be the same as the log-in platforms!” THUD.

Unaware of her passenger, the Suzaku cleric walked through the entry hall towards the infirmary ward, as that was where several cleric only quests could be found and she wanted to see what might be new. As she arrived however she was greeted by the sight of three players hanging around the infirmary, followed closely by a fourth spawning in. She knew that this was where players and NPC's who had died in the game respawned from, so she had to ask “Oof, all of your party died huh? What was the cause?” To her mild surprise one of the girls looked at her and laughed, saying 'Ah, we are not really a party, there was a rumour about a Mantis appearing somewhere and people gathered up with some NPC's to try and take it down. The thing is damn tough though, so we probably wont be the last.' As if to punctuate this an NPC guard spawned in, and the sight made the cleric take a step back.

Down below Hellion was listening with only half an ear, being more concerned with trying to free himself. In this position he could not reach the remote to teleport, so a more manual escape was required. However he did this at just the wrong time, loosening himself just as the girl took her step back, and he fell out from under her shoe just in time to catch it on the way down, and actually be crushed this time. He expected to reappear in the Admin area as was normal for him, but unfortunately an unremarked or documented feature of the remote did its job. Since it was connected to all of the teleportation locations, this included “teleporting” respawning characters to the designated spot. Once he had gotten close enough the Suzaku infirmary had become his “default” spawn location, and so while he was still surrounded by white walls, Hellion also found himself surrounded by a pair of legs stepping away.

The boy was caught off guard by this unexpected minimal location change, and so did not react in time as another girl spawned in. She landed with a minor drop as per usual, and it was just Hellion's bad luck that he was right underneath her foot when this happened. He died again, only to respawn back in place before another girl appeared. This time he narrowly dodged out of the way, only to be caught flatfooted as ANOTHER recently dead NPC came in. Desperately he tried to run forwards, only to be kicked by the NPC moving quickly out of the way, making him land sore on his front. This meant he did not see nor could react to the girl wearing heels walking off of the platform, her heel perfectly landing on his back and basically turning everything but his head, arms, and legs to mush.

When he appeared on the platform again the tiny almost started to run forwards again, only to spot the small series of red circles left behind by the heel of the previous girl leading away from the platform. This made him hesitate, just long enough for a flat to come down and squash him again. If it was not for the platform also being predominantly red, some of the women might have started to notice something, but it was not the case, even if they did look down. When he came back Hellion tried something different, running backwards behind the platform to get out of the walking path of everyone. This very well might have worked, if not for one of the next girls to have been so shocked at her sudden death that when she respawned she fell backwards, unawarely landing on top of Hellion.

Hellion survived this, barely, but he was badly hurt and stuck to the girls panty clad rear as she got back up. Her plush rear had only just been soft enough on the near-miss to keep him from dying, but now he wiggled a little bit as she strode away. There he might have stayed, if not for one of the girls teammates also stumbling forwards when she respawned, knocking both of them over. The second landing was no softer than the first one, but this time they ended up with one girl laying on the ground and the other half-sitting on her back. They got up quickly and out of the way, but in that initial fall and landing Hellion had been subject to the second girl landing on top of the first girls rear, meaning he was obliterated between their butts. One of them would not even notice later, as her underwear was red.

This process continued for another three deaths before Hellion thought to use the remote, and even when he did since he had not dialed anything in it defaulted to the last viable location, also known as still the Suzaku infirmary. Only another near miss as he got over the shock gave him time to think, and he rapidly spun the dial and pressed the button just before another boot would have crushed him. For a moment when he saw Infirmary walls still around him he feared it had not worked, but then when silence reigned he realized that he was in a different infirmary. A quick check of the color of the surroundings showed this was Byakko, so now he knew where he was.

Hellion took this moment to catch his breath and actually process exactly what had just happened to him, as it honestly was a lot to take in. He still had the clarity of mind to first get off of the respawn platform just in case, but happily for him he was not interrupted. He was no stranger to death in the game, that much had been made clear within just the first few weeks, but it never seemed to lose its sting to him. Something about being fully “in” the game and not just playing in an avatar made it impossible to distance himself from his fear and self-preservation, even if in the back of his mind he “knew” that things would be fine if he died and would respawn without issue. Dying so many times in the pace of a few minutes was another thing entirely however, and the flashes he had seen of his scared face reflected in shiny well polished black shoes was a haunting memory.

The good news was that the guy was able to mostly sort through these odd feelings over the next few minutes, but the bad was that he failed to consider that even when not directly “in use” all infirmaries were never unoccupied. Hellion heard a slight gasp followed by a voice saying “Oh no, a Tinykin got into here. I better deal with the problem quickly, I will harbour no vermin in my infirmary.” The little male turned and saw that he had been spotted by the NPC nurse, and so had to put his feelings aside and book it as soon as possible. He guessed correctly that if he died here and now then it was likely he would simply pop right back up on the nearby platform, and with the nurse so close and actively looking for Tinykin he might be in danger of entering a very brutal loop. Not wanting to be a one man infestation he promptly booked it for the door, and made it just before the woman caught up to him.

Unfortunately this was not the end of the boys troubles, as when he exited the infirmary it was to the sight of one of the maid NPC’s sweeping the hallway in his direction, her eyes focused on the ground just in front of her. Having already met his end several times to their flats Hellion wasted no time in running in the opposite direction, forced by circumstance to head towards the cafeteria. However as he did so he was met with a very much unwanted sight, a second maid rounding the corner likewise sweeping, leaving him boxed in from both sides. Reaching down he grabbed his remote and started to twist the knob to get out of there, but just as he started he heard the maid behind him say “Eh? Is that a bug?” This made him flinch, and unintentionally he pressed the button.

The teleport was as expected instantaneous, and as he looked around Hellion saw that since he had only just barely nudged the dial before teleporting the destination chosen was simply the entrance platform to Byakko. This would have registered as not a problem, except after a few seconds the tiny guy noticed the tell-tale build up of light that indicated a person was logging on and thus about to appear on the platform. He scrambled forwards off of the target area, only to notice a moment later that at the same time two girls were walking towards the same platform, about to step on it to log out based on the distance.

It took some fancy footwork, but Hellion was able to avoid the oncoming trio of girls by moving a bit further away from the log-in/out point to avoid the arriving girl, then moving back sideways to where she had just been to evade the other two. Unfortunately that ended up just being a preview of what was to come, as the moment the last two logged out several more lights of log-ins flashed into existence, and a whole crowd of girls turned the corner seeking to exit the game, apparently for a club meeting if their overheard conversations were any indication. Hellion immediately prepared to try and warp out again, only to realize that when he had found himself surprised by the three girls around him, he had dropped the remote in shock. He was able to see it on the ground, but by then it was too late and the world seemed to fall upon him like a meteor shower.

The next few minutes were like the world's most extreme game of Frogger, and Hellion was the unfortunate sprite. All around him feet thundered to the ground, one moment a sextet of loafers coming in a line from one direction, the next a wall of boots filing past cutting off half the walkway to him. More than once a near miss sent him sprawling to the ground from the air pressure, and the ground was in a constant state of shaking and rumbling making footing unsure. At one point the miniature person even had to risk dashing underneath the raised heel of a mage to avoid an oncoming lancer’s extra-large flats. The chaos was so bad and the ever shifting patterns of swinging legs so dense that he even lost track of which way was which, the only thing missing to make it worse being dust or smoke clouds.

Finally the crowd began to thin out, but likewise Hellion was feeling exhausted. Then as some of the last few stragglers prepared to leave, one of the girls standing behind another moved to the side to get around the slightly slower girl and reach the platform at the same time. Just a moment before that the faux-Tinykin had at last spotted the remote again, visibly a little beaten up and dirty but still intact. In his mentally drained state, Hellion simply ran towards it and took hold of it, just as the impatient girls shoe tip landed upon him. The guy found himself slightly pinned to the ground, and knew once the girl prepared to push off her show tip would press down and crush him. Thus in desperation he just slapped the wheel to make it spin and activated the remote’s button. If had taken the time to look closer he might have noted how freely the dial was spinning and how beat up the button looked, but he simply did not have that time and so had left his fate up to chance.  

Thankfully Hellion disappeared before the girl began her next step, so he vanished as desired, but when he reappeared he noticed that the location dial was still spinning, and the button for activation looked half-depressed still. He had no time to contemplate this as almost immediately he was cast into shadow, and a high heel shoe landed over top of him placing him between the sole and the heel. His instinctive flinch made him depress the button again, and he teleported only to arrive back in the Byakko infirmary. There the same nurse as before was still hunting for Tinykin, and so when she spotted him she made a sound of disgust and stomped over, visibly raising her flat over Hellions head.

Without even touching the button Hellion teleported again, this time seeing the green of Seiryuu for a moment before a maids wet mop swiped across the floor and into him, picking him up for a ride. The tiny had just enough time to see himself be lifted up in the air tangled in the mop strands as it was brought over the bucket of steaming hot water before he vanished again. Several times in quick succession the boy found himself appearing on the front entrances to the guild houses, just in time every time to see a color coded sole matching the location about to idly land on top of him. He arrived back at the Genbu entry hall just behind a vanishing player, and tried to get the remote to stop. Unfortunately the button still seemed to be stuck down and the dial free-spinning, and in addition it also seemed to be getting noticeably hotter.

When the uncontrollable teleportation activated next Hellion found himself not on the ground, but instead a short distance in the air. This would have been mostly fine as it was not a great distance, except he ended up at the perfect height to catch the toe of a players shoe as she walked across the Suzaku Infirmary, and he was kicked away just to land spread eagled sideways on the back of another girls boot. Then the teleport happened again, to the same location, and the man found himself at knee height instead, as illustrated by the same girls’ knee hitting like a train and sending him away, to teleport in mid-air.

The next few unwanted relocation's were much the same, some more at knee height to start with. Hellion was not knee’d again, but he was left to fall all the way to the floor several times, and on some others landed atop a shoe in motion and in one miserable experience actually fell down the interior length of a slightly opened boot. Then Hellion ended up even higher as the remote got warmer, up to thigh height where he was forced to grab onto the bottoms of skirts, end up sandwiched between closing thighs, and of course left to fall most of the distance to the ground, and sometimes and then some painfully. That was followed by waist height, where more than once the male was made to rebound off of a plump rear, or just plain got rammed into a crotch.

The moment Hellion ended up unstoppably appearing at stomach height was almost a relief, as here the worst he had to deal with was narrowly missing backs, lightly bouncing off of tummy’s, and the inevitable long falls to the ground. However this time he often did not have time to reach the ground, so more often than not it was just a really long freefall. The tiny was not entirely sure how to feel about this though, as he had no idea how much longer this would last or how much hotter the remote could get. He was unable to fix it during all of this, and it was starting to produce a slightly arid smell. Frankly if he had not happened to be wearing gloves at the time, he might have been forced to drop it by now such was its heat. At long last the remote gave out a harsh beeping sound and emitted some smoke, and Hellion could tell that it was giving up the ghost just as one last teleport happened.

When Hellion appeared for the last time he was briefly surrounded by light, but he also saw white walls. For a moment he thought that it was an infirmary room again, but then he saw the slight difference. This was of all places the Admin area, perhaps the safest of all. It was perhaps bad luck that he had not ended up here before, but at least he was here now. All of this thinking happened in the space of a second or so, but then the light around him solidified into something much more solid, and Hellion found he could not move.

Looking around he saw pink walls all around him, soft and warm to the touch. The male got a sneaking and sinking suspicion, and when he looked up towards the only visible light source his growing fear was proven correct. He had ended up at chest height just as a girl was logging in, and now was caught right smack dab in the middle of her cleavage. The angle was a little difficult, especially with his arms pinned as they were, but Hellion was able to make out a pale face framed with dark hair up above. Considering that this was the Admin area and only so many people could actually be here this severely limited the possible pool of suspects, and with the hair clue Hellion did not even need to see the glasses to recognize Lucy.

Lucy finished logging in and looked around the Admin area to see if anyone was around, and was secretly not all that surprised to see Kyoto walking out of her room. It was strange at times to see her logged in so much, and sometimes it felt like she never left. However Lucy put that out of her mind as nonsense, and just gladly moved forwards to accept a greeting hug from the brunet. If the intellectual girl had been paying more attention she might have noticed a slight tickle in her chest, but she was not and so subconsciously just adjusted herself a little, minutely tightening her cleavage up and hiding it a bit more.

Hellion had not been prepared for the hug and the pressure involved, and so had valiantly tried to struggle to either escape or at least garner some notice. However instead the boobs closed in a bit tighter, and the pseudo-Tinykin just found himself totally pinned and put in the dark as the gap of light pouring into the cleavage was blocked by Lucy tightening her clothes a bit more. Somehow Hellion could just tell that this was going to be a long wait before he was freed, especially when he heard Lucy mention she was not looking to quest today, but to instead just hang around the guild hall. One thing was for sure, Hellion made a vow to himself to just stick to the Admin room portals from now on.

On the two month anniversary of his entrapment in the World Online Hellion inside Kyoto was in the middle of fighting a particularly ornery wasp, one of a group of several that she and a mix of NPC's and Suzaku players were attempting to fight off when they started to look around their guild hall a little too closely. Kyoto was there as a bit of a mini-campaign to make herself known among all of the guild houses, to ensure she was welcome in all of them if need be. Sure she technically by all rights was allowed because she was a part of the admin group, but building up some good will never hurt anyone. Unfortunately the battle was going a bit poorly, the aggression and flying maneuverability of the wasps making fighting them tricky. It did not help that some of the healers and magic users had gone down early, leaving them at a greater disadvantage. Still it might not be too late, as Kyoto charged forwards and prepared to slice of her targets wings.

At the last possible moment Kyoto suddenly got a call from Emily, the unexpected ringing and pop up in her face catching her completely off guard and making her stumble. She tried to recover, but the wasp shifted slightly so her sword blow skidded off its carapace and missed the wings entirely. Forewarned now the insect turned to face Kyoto even as she accidentally hit “accept,” and Emily's face appeared on the screen continuing to block her view. She only had time to hear Emily say “Hey, I hope you are not busy, I have something for you in the la-” before the wasp swung its lower body forwards, spearing Kyoto through the chest with its stinger. Her vision went black, and she felt herself despawning.

A few moments later she awoke in the Admin Area, briefly feeling herself over in shock before letting out a sigh. If she was of any guess the extermination team was probably fucked unless some unexpected reinforcements appeared, so this either was a problem for later or they would have to wait for the wasps to just leave. Well that or have Emily “personally” deal with the issue out of game, but that hopefully would not be needed. Emily liked her game to run without outside intervention as much as possible, at least by people in the know. Accidents from oblivious students and teachers were another thing entirely as far as Emily was concerned.

On that subject Kyoto walked over to Emily's lab since she was here anyway, and when she opened the door it was to see the blonde haired girl looking briefly confused at the communication screen and the unexpectedly dropped call. Hearing the door open Emily turned around and saw Kyoto standing there looking unimpressed, and came to an incorrect conclusion. “Oh, you were here already. Silly of me not to have checked first.” Briefly Kyoto considered correcting Emily, but on Hellion's side he decided it was not worth it. Instead the mech and boy pair just let out a sigh and listened up.

“Anyway I was thinking about things, and I came up with a new idea to make things better for you. Can you step out for a moment Hellion?” Not having a reason to refuse the male did so, climbing out of the head command centre and down to Kyoto's tongue where her mouth was opened and her palm awaiting to receive him. Walking out onto the uneven platform Hellion watched as Kyoto brought him away from her face and to a position more centralized between her and Emily, the latter fiddling with the settings on a virtual screen again. After a few moments a series of rings formed around the male's feet before rising up one by one, going above his head before vanishing. Seemingly satisfied the tan skinned girl then said “And done. You can go back inside now Hellion.” This all seemed very odd to the guy but he complied as Kyoto brought him back up to her mouth, as nothing seemed to have happened.

This seeming lack of anything continued all the way until Hellion arrived back in the command centre, and at last asked through Kyoto “Okay…so what did that accomplish exactly?” Both he and the mech were honestly confused at this point, and privately began to wonder if perhaps something had gone wrong with the supposed upgrade. This question made Emily giggle a bit into her hand, before finally the Admin decided to explain herself.

“Kyoto, if you open up your menu and look at your status you should notice something a little different.” Silently the mech did so, and was surprised to see that her stats were a bit higher than they were before. Some further investigation of her menus finally revealed the big secret, as on her equipment screen there was her usual load out of items, but there was also a special indicator over her head/helm slot labelled as ‘Hellion.’ With her admin access Emily was able to basically follow along with the revelation, and so could continue. “There you have it, I gave Hellion the properties of an item. Now when he is inside of you Kyoto he will boost your stats by a percentage, so the stronger you get the bigger the boost. This should make things a bit easier, no?”

Kyoto agreed that this did indeed sound pretty good, and thanked Emily profusely. The girl slightly basked in the praise, and rubbed the back of her head. “Yes, yes, I am very generous.” Silently the mech and boy thought about the battle they had just lost, and how things might have been different if this had only come an hour or two earlier. They were slightly knocked out of this musing by a beeping noise coming from Emily, and her opening her own menu to look at something. “Shoot, I need to run, I have an appointment to get to outside the game. Feel free to test things out a bit, and have fun.” With that the blonde walked over to the log-out platform and did so, leaving the pair alone.

Seeing no reason to hang around the Admin area and just watch a few numbers go up, Kyoto exited it and entered the Suzaku guild house lobby. Listening in to the conversations of some recently revived players as expected the battle against the wasps had been a total rout, and plans were being drawn up to gather a larger force up to try again the next day. Striding towards the exit and by extension the front gates Hellion elected to avoid the area where the wasps were and just stick to the safer areas of the lawn, when Kyoto herself piped up with a request. “Master Hellion, if you do not mind could I perhaps take control for this? I am feeling some…annoyance at our defeat and would like to personally do some fighting.” The boy considered this and agreed, letting the mech take the lead on this and just sitting back. He was still providing help in his own way now anyway.

Kyoto walked out and idly searched the tall grass for a little bit, eventually coming across an ant. Seeing it was just a basic worker and that it was beginning to work its mandibles threateningly, the girl sprung into action. The fighting was fairly straight forward, and was also extremely cathartic for the AI. However as she did battle with the insect, she felt like not much was really all that different from what she was used to. Dispatching the ant before doing anything else, Kyoto opened her menu and looked over her stats before figuring out the “problem.” Hellion was raising a stat, but it was in Magic Attack of all places, when she was primarily a sword fighter and did not have any particularly good combat spells. A bit of an oversight on Emily’s part perhaps, but before she declared the upgrade pointless the girl considered something else.

“I wonder if I can…” Swapping over to her equipment screen Kyoto focused on the Hellion marker over her head, and with some anticipation swapped it over to her chest/body armour slot. To her pleasure Kyoto saw that the move worked, and gave a small jump and clapped her hands. “Yes! That is good, but did it…” The mech switched her menu display back to her status, and was pleased to note that her Magic Attack had reduced down to its previous low level, and in return her Defences had gone up a fair amount, likely as they were higher to begin with. “Wonderful! Now to try it out.” Very pleased Kyoto moved through the grass and located another ant, oblivious to the situation she had left her Master Hellion in.

The effective Tinykin had just been relaxing, safely strapped into his chair and watching Kyoto fight and defeat the ant. When she opened the menu and began to look things over regarding himself he was effectively right there with her in cringing at the stat he rose, and was also interested in seeing if his effects could be placed elsewhere with different results. However as soon as Kyoto finished dragging and dropping his icon into the new slot he suddenly found himself rapidly changing locations, his surroundings a blur for a second before solidifying into a place that was very clearly NOT Kyoto’s command centre. On the other hand, this did not mean that he was away from Kyoto either.

Instead Hellion found himself dangling in the air by the back of his shirt, facing out into a familiar massive landscape writ large. He impotently struggled for a few seconds before looking up, and there he saw the very tip of Kyoto’s face from below as well as the menu screen. As the girl flicked through seeing she now had higher Defence, Hellion took in the fact that somehow he was hanging off of one of the buttons on the front of the girls admin uniform, just a little below the swell of her chest and so out of her line of sight. It then dawned on the guy that this was likely caused by shifting him from her “head” where her command centre was to her chest, literally ON her chest.

Then as the tiny person was processing all of that Kyoto began to move, and Hellion felt like he was about to fall off. Desperately he reached his hands up and grabbed onto the button above him, trying to keep a hold of it as he was bounced up and down with her steps. He had never before been so aware of the faint jiggle of the mech’s chest when she was simply walking, and it was like being on a ship in a storm. Then Hellion saw the ant in front of the girl, and he started to call out to try and get her attention before this situation went even further south.

Sadly for him Hellion’s voice was drowned out by the hiss of the ant and Kyoto’s own battle cry, and she charged forwards into combat. The sudden jolt of her bursting into action was too much for him to handle, and Hellion found himself slip and fall off of the girls front, heading towards her churning legs below. However before he even fell so much as a foot on Kyoto’s scale down, Hellion found himself suddenly warped back up into place, hanging off of the button. Shocked and wanting to test this Hellion forcefully pulled himself away to drop, and like before he was put back into place. Apparently once “equipped” he wasn’t going anywhere. Then he had no more testing time, as battle was joined.

Kyoto was starting out suitably cautious, but she was at near full HP even after the last fight and was raring to go. She did some good damage to the ant, but at last it slipped past her and landed a solid bite to her front. Pleasantly despite it being a direct hit the girl could tell that it felt more like a glancing blow, and a scan of her open menu showed she had indeed taken barely any damage. As such she felt more confident and fought just a little more recklessly, taking a further two hits but emerging victorious.

Below her head Hellion had been helplessly screaming his head off, the already huge ant gargantuan compared to him and all the more terrifying for it. There was unfortunately nothing he could do but trust in Kyoto, a trust that was seemingly broken when the ant’s bite came right for him. However just as it was about to land Hellion felt a good deal of pressure coming from the mouthpart hitting him, but no physical damage was done to him. It was more like being hit by a pillow the size of a building, and thinking things through he recalled how in the game armour and such did not have durability ratings. This must mean that since he was technically an item right now, he also shared in that damage immunity. It was still far from pleasant, especially when the ant came in again and hit him. Even the third attack which did not physically hit his body seemed to ground out at least a little through him.

When the battle ended with the ant losing its head, Hellion took a moment to breathe a minor sigh of relief. He might still be clinging to the front of his mech's shirt, but at least things were marginally more quiet now, and he could have the chance to get her attention and have this sorted out. Opening his mouth the boy took a deep breath in preparation to shout as long as he could, and so missed what Kyoto was doing with her menu. Suddenly Hellion found himself surrounded by darkness, and a quarter second later felt a massive amount of pressure on top of him pressing him down into a somewhat soft surface. The air was mostly forced from his lungs, and he had to fight to keep his breath as he tried to figure out just what the hell was going on.

His answer came a few seconds later when he heard Kyoto's voice, muffled and high above him but still audible. “I see, so when he is in the boots slot, my agility is raised instead.” As soon as it was said Hellion recognized the feeling of the texture of the object pressing into him, and likewise why the ground was slightly squishy. Above him was Kyoto's foot, encased in a fresh sock and shifting slightly as she did, while below was the sturdy insole of her boot cradling his body slightly. Some good news was that in the game “death” respawned a person with perfectly clean clothing, so everything was as clean and fresh as it could have been, especially after the epic battle earlier.

This was regrettably only a small comfort for Hellion, as Kyoto wasted no time in testing out her agility boost. Naturally this was coming in the form of testing her running speed first, her foot rising and falling upon him like an industrial piston. Again and again the socked foot steamrolled over his position, pressing him down into the insole and gradually increasing the side of the dent he was making in it. The single good thing was that the motion of running was keeping him in place, it was just he was under the ball of the foot. Not as much pressure as the heel at least, but he was still leaning on that item invulnerability. Unfortunately Agility was not just in running speed, it was also general mobility.

Without warning Hellion suddenly felt his world turn upside down as Kyoto tried out a front flip handspring, and it worked just fine. Then once she was upright again, she began to test her general footwork with some side to side motions and general dodging moves. This was a change in situation for sure for Hellion, as while before he had been fairly firmly planted on the sole of the boot, now the different motions had the sole of the sock as a viable sticking point, and he was helplessly tossed around under the foot, often landing in new and more painful positions as the foot landed to reassert its weight and stability.

Kyoto was noticing nothing wrong at all, the bump under her foot not even registering to her one bit. A part of her might have been curious as to why Hellion himself was not commenting on anything, but it was possible since he was letting her take the lead on this he had retired to the base in her stomach area to rest. Either way she was happy with the agility boost, as it could really help her in combat easily. Still there were more places to check the results of, like the legs/pants slot. Manipulating the menu to make it so, she checked and saw that while her agility had indeed gone down, it was still higher than it had been before. Apparently more than one stat could be raised, as in addition to the agility she was also seeing bonus defence as well. Deciding to see how this combo did on combat, she spotted a small fly buzzing nearby, and went after it as a worthy challenge.

At first when the change in equipment position happened Hellion did not notice, as he was still feeling compressed and left in the dark. However soon things began to not add up, like how he was closer to being a mix of horizontal and vertical in position instead of straight horizontal, and the feeling of the materials on his front and back were different. The material behind him was soft but in a way closer to how the sock had felt, while above it was squishy direct flesh. It was only when Hellion started to feel around a little more of what was above him and felt the slight folds and faint smell that he realized where he was. In the front of Kyoto's panties, right smack dab over her crotch.

This position was admittedly in some ways a vast improvement over the interior of the girls boots as she wore them, the pressure being less and him not being literally trampled, but in others it was just as bad. More specifically it was worse on the embarrassment scale, especially if Kyoto found him down here. The mech had admittedly been a little receptive to a few overtures he had made when they were confirmed alone in the admin area, some she had made in return over the months, but it had always been much more chaste and less explicit.

This was not to say that the embarrassment was the only thing unpleasant about the situation, Kyoto was unawarely supplying some of her own herself. Her faster movements meant his position was unstable and shook around a fair bit, and he could feel the gradual temperature increase from her active movements clearly. There was also the fact that her thighs made the shaking worse, and at times seemed to threaten to catch him in a fold of flesh and crunch him more painfully. Finally Hellion was in a near constant battle himself to avoid being drawn into the chasm of the vaginal opening, as if Kyoto felt him down in there then he might end up in deep trouble. Getting found was one thing, but being found down there was another entirely. 

It was almost a relief for Hellion when he found himself shifting positions again, after feeling Kyoto still he worried that she might have felt something was off. Instead he heard her say the words “Gloves next...” before he felt more flesh on one side of his body and fabric on the other. However this time the fabric was much less soft, although not rock hard or rough either. Feeling the flesh beneath him also told Hellion that this spot was a bit more robust as well, and it was slightly moist from perspiration. Indeed it was clear enough that he had ended up on the palm of the mech's hand, which was annoying when he had been hoping for another outside placement. At least then he would have been more visible.

Lamentably the Tinykin did not have time to gripe on this or act to try garner attention again, as Kyoto was suddenly beset by an angry beetle. Normally the insects tough shell would have made this a more long and drawn out encounter, but the girl now had a trick up her sleeve so to speak. Namely when she looked at her stats her attack power had received the full boost, and so she was ready for this. Launching herself into battle her hand gripped her sword tightly, crunching her partner/master in between the hilt and her palm. As soon as her blade hit the shell of the beetle she marvelled a little at how much easier it was to break past its defences, like hitting a softer shelled aphid.

The battle was thankfully short enough for Hellion, as the rigours of it had Kyoto adjusting and shifting her grip several times, just sending new waves of discomfort through him. Plus at one point a squirt of insect ichor landed on the girls hand, lightly soaking through the glove material and getting Hellion wet with it as well. Then when he thought that might be the worst, once the beetle was dead Kyoto clap-brushed her hands together in victory, and then seeing the bug guts still on them idly wiped them off, placing more pressure on Hellion.

Before the small male could think to try and get her attention again, the hand began to swing around and shift positions in several small but quick motions. Hellion recognized this as the girl starting to mess around the menu again, and so tried to shout or hit the palm to get her to stop. Sadly Kyoto was just a little too fast for him, plus the way she flexed her hand the moment he tried the glove grew tight over him and kept him pinned in place long enough for his next destination to be selected.

When Hellion finished the relocation of being equipped into a new slot and found himself somewhere warm, slightly humid, dark, and had him pinned tightly between two walls of flesh, he groaned out loud, muffled by that same flesh. Knowing his luck he figured that there was only two possible places he could have ended up now, and considering when he took a tentative sniff of the air the smell was nearly pleasant he figured out he was at least not in the worst of the two. Still being pinned in the middle of her cleavage, while admittedly pleasant, was also not conductive to a good following few minutes.

Hellions judgment was correct as Kyoto moved on, her steps making her chest bounce and jiggle around him, minimally crushing him again and again between them while he was pinned tightly enough to be unable to move. From above and closer than ever he heard Kyoto's voice, loud and slightly echoing from not only his proximity to her head but also from her lungs and voicebox nearby in her torso. “Ooo! Now this is nice, placed in the necklace slot has it provide a small boost to all stats.” A part of Hellion was annoyed that Kyoto had already degenerated enough to be associating the source of the stat boosts as an “it” instead of him, but he was more concerned by her starting to speed up. “Short of the attack boost this does seem like the best one so far.”

Every motion of the girl was transmitting to the guy between her tits, her turns making them swing him as well before the limits of motion were reached and then it was a one-two punch as he slammed into the one in front and then the trailing breast hit him from behind. Moving forwards or jumping the cans had a tendency to slightly separate just enough to nearly let him move or fall just to press together all the harder. Even his attempts to just crawl up were of no use as the skin remained too smooth to get a grip on, and the one time he did make some progress he just snapped right back down into the titty-sandwich. While this was not technically the first time he had been in this situation, always before it was either met by a swift crushing death, or on one actually nice occasion it was just Kyoto laying back for him.

At last Kyoto tried something new, but as Hellion was about to find out it was to be perhaps the worst thing of this entire debacle for him. Above and behind him he heard Kyoto say “Well that seems like everywhere, so I should consider asking Hellion if...wait, what about THAT?” Then as Hellion tried to figure out just what “that” was supposed to mean, there was the familiar sensation of transportation. However this time he did not feel flesh or fabric touching him, restricting his movements. In fact nothing was touching him at all, and he had fully free range of motion. However it was still dark, not a speck of light anywhere. Hellion turned around confused, trying to figure this out, when it dawned on him just how completely “free range” his motion was.

He could not feel any ground beneath him, and yet he was not falling. He rotated in place, and yet there was no wind. It was not hot, or cold, no smell touched the air and nothing could be heard. He was the only point in a seemingly infinite dark void, devoid of anything that was not him. He tried to open his menu but could not, something blocking him and leaving the man utterly alone and isolated. He had no idea how much time was passing, and the only sounds he could hear was the thundering of his own heart in his ears, pulsing louder and louder as he tried to figure out what had happened. Had he been trapped in here for a day, a week, a month? Had he somehow been deleted, Kyoto making some mistake and this was what he had to look forward to now, an eternity of nothing? Hellion could not help it, he screamed.

Kyoto hummed to herself as she fiddled with the menus, wondering out loud “Why does Emily have the weapons and armour equip screens in different windows? Oh well.” With that she finished moving the Hellion marker out of her inventory, where it had been for 10 seconds as she menu swapped before she put it on her sword. To her pleasure the equipping worked, although she did notice quickly that something was a little different. Her stats appeared to have been lowered back down to their previous level, but she did clearly get something from her action. A quick check showed a new attack was available in her skill listings, so clearing this was the boon provided by equipping Hellion there. Now she just had to test it, and lucky her another ant had strolled up.

Hellion continued to scream for several more second in silence, before he realized he was no longer in that infernal abyss. He was back outside and in the grasp of Kyoto, who seemed to be holding him. Hellion almost leapt for joy at this, save that for some reason Kyoto seemed...smaller than usual, if still bigger than him, and he felt like he could not move. It only took him looking over himself to figure it out, somehow he had been turned into or at least melded with her sword. The many, many questions that this state of affairs raised would all have to wait however, as he found himself speeding through the air as Kyoto swung him into the carapace of an ants head.

At first Kyoto fought no different than usual, testing herself and figuring out roughly her usual combat level including her older special attacks. This only lasted a little bit, especially after she noticed her fighting had attracted a second ant to join the first. Focusing on the new skill, the mech let it flow through her and found her sword crackling with energy, before when she swung it a visible streak was left in its wake, and it nearly split the first ant in two. This seemed like a very good skill, and so she wasted no time in trying it out again on the healthier ant. This time it did not instantly kill it, but she did do some serious damage to it, and even knocked off one mandible. Finally she delivered the finishing blow by stabbing her sword in through its mouth, spearing its brain and slaying it.

On Hellion's end this was only a marginal improvement over the dark space that he was starting to suspect might have been the girls inventory, as every hammer blow with him transferred painful vibrations all through his body, and he was slowly getting covered in guts. The old special skills were really just more of the same, but then “his” skill was activated and things that already seemed like they were at rock bottom revealed they had brought shovels. The energy build up was being channelled directly through him, and it was not unlike getting tasered when all your limbs were asleep. Worse the sensation lasted until the technique was ended, and then Kyoto used it again for testing purposes. The final nail in the coffin was when he was stabbed into the last ant, as he could feel all of the juices and material of the brain all over him even as he was withdrawn.

All in all Kyoto was feeling pretty good about the use of her pilot as an item, and had no major complaints at all. Perhaps later she could talk to Emily about it, refine the process and see about shifting things around a little. Idly and mostly because it felt like a good thing to do, bringing things full circle, Kyoto removed the Hellion icon off of her weapon and by way of having both screens open, transferred it back into the head slot. She prepared to continue on, maybe fighting a few more bugs, when two seconds later she felt her body freeze up, the sign that Hellion was taking direct control. Not that bothered she prepared to greet him, before he somewhat harshly said “No. Home. Now.”

Kyoto was at first very confused at Hellions foul mood as he all but frog marched her back towards the guild hall and the door to the admin rooms, but that did not last long. Hellion had responded to her asking what was wrong by descending into a frank and at times rather intimate description of EXACTLY what he had gone through. By the time he finished they were back in the admin area, and for her part Kyoto did not blame him. It was still only the early evening, but she remained in their room contemplating what she had been told while Hellion went to bed for a well deserved rest. Two things were for sure, firstly she was not touching upon the concept of using Hellion as an item ever again, and secondly when he woke up she could try to lighten the mood by asking how he liked reaching both second AND third base.

Hellion walked over to Emily inside of Kyoto, having been called over by her yet again for another attempt at improving his situation. This time Em had told him that this was an upgrade for both of them, which since it was a change of pace made him a little more optimistic of his chances with it. After Kyoto cleared her throat Emily turned around in her chair in a dramatic way, her face smiling with self-assurance. “Ah, excellent, you are here! It’s all done, but to better show it off we need to have a bit more room…” Taking the hint as the blonde stood up Kyoto walked over to the teleport pad in the room and waited for Emily to join them, and once she did a quick command from her had them both disappear.

Reappearing just outside of the guildhall the duo moved a touch further away from the tiny building at Emily’s insistence before she stopped and handed over a yellow orb to Kyoto. As soon as she took it in hand Hellion found an identical one appearing in his own hand, a neat trick that likely came from how Kyoto and himself shared an inventory to an extent. Emily was all grins as she said “I was watching a few videos of old games when I was hit upon by an idea. Just squeeze the orb and be amazed.” Kyoto did so and watched as suddenly around her a yellow field appeared, rapidly expanding around her and forcing Emily to move backwards out of the way until it stopped, a near perfect sphere the size of a building appearing around her.

The voice of Emily then came from all around Kyoto as she used her Admin Voice, explaining “This is your Safety Capsule. If you look around you can see that it is furnished with basic provisions, healing items, and so on, all while allowing you to see outside through the one-way walls.” Emily shifted the “view” of the screen from her face to show the capsule, and it was revealed that while Kyoto could see out through the walls mostly fine aside from a yellow tinge from the outside it was a mostly opaque yellow. Emily then returned the view to her own face, and continued. “The outer walls of the capsule are slightly flexible but rigid, so it can compress slightly for initial shock absorption and then remain whole. Nothing can break the seal from the outside, and it's large enough that no insect could hope to move it.”

Kyoto was suitably impressed at this, but Hellion had a concern of his own occur to him. Through the mech he asked “That all sounds good, but once it is deployed how do I escape it? Wouldn’t this trap me inside of it too?” An indicator showed Kyoto was a little surprised that she had not thought of that, but Emily just looked proudly smug and let out a small self-satisfied snort. A second window popped up displaying more information, and Kyoto was able to follow along as Emily explained.

“Not to worry, that issue technically came up with the inspiration for this device, so I made some adjustments to the concept. Firstly, you are able to dismiss the construct yourself, you merely need to squeeze the secondary orb three times in rapid succession and say the pass-phrase ‘exit Safety Capsule.’ Secondly even if you are somehow locked inside of it the power supply only remains active for 12 hours, after which it will automatically shut off and dismiss the shield bubble freeing you.” Kyoto had to admit that it sounded reasonable, being able to see all around to know when the danger had past, having supplies to heal and wait things out until then, and redundant methods to leave it to avoid being stuck.

“Alright, I think you have us convinced, we will give it a go.” What proceeded was an hour or two of testing it out, the activation and dismissal functions working flawlessly and quickly. Emily and Kyoto took turns attacking from the outside and inside to test the durability, and as advertised it took anything that they could throw at it and more. Emily even used a few Admin commands to give herself and Kyoto boosted magical skills and all of the spells to see how they fared. No matter if it was fire, wind, earth, light, or any of the others in the game, the capsule did not so much as ripple. The same things applied to when Hellion stepped out to try it as well, not even the double team of Emily and Kyoto trying to both step on it at once made it flinch. In the end the satisfied mech and pilot thanked Emily, even as they joked that hopefully this would not be needed.

A couple of days passed without incident, Hellion being sure to test out his personal Safety Capsule both inside and outside of Kyoto just to be safe. The device activated as intended for him, and when he tried it inside of Kyoto it worked inside the stomach island but not in the command centre. Instead the barrier formed around Kyoto herself, and a quick question sent to Emily got the response that it was another safety feature keyed just to those areas inside of the mech where there was not room. It would not be a good idea to form a massive solid object inside of the corridors and rooms too small to contain it after all, and none of them wanted to find out how much damage could be done if that had happened.

Currently Kyoto was making her way through the dorm hallways, searching for some loose strands of hair. The guildhall was running a little low on that particular resource, so Kyoto had taken up a quick quest to acquire a few lengths to pass the time. She had nearly gotten the requested amount when she suddenly heard a slightly muffled shout, and she turned towards it just in time to recognize that she was next to Emily and her roommates room as the door was flung open. Kyoto instinctively looked up just in time to see the flash of orange that indicated that it was McKenzie who was the source of the shout, before the girl in a rush exited the door and turned in her direction. Suddenly faced with an oncoming shoe in a momentary panic Kyoto activated the Safety Capsule just in the nick of time.

The yellow orb expanded outwards as intended, and the impact of the sole of McKenzie’s shoe upon it made it flex but not break as it was designed to do. However this had the unfortunate side effect of being a round object underneath a foot that was seeking a stable landing, and so both Kyoto and McKenzie suffered for it as the schoolgirl found herself falling over and the mech was sent rolling inside the shelter as it slipped out from under the foot. For the next few seconds McKenzie finished falling down, her bag opening and dropping several of its items on the floor, and the Safety Capsule rolled into a wall and ricocheted back, ending up stopping somewhat abruptly as it ran into a pile of dropped fabric. Not knowing what had exactly happened and assuming that she had just slipped on the floor in her haste, McKenzie mindlessly gathered everything back up into her bag and resumed running.

Kyoto had not expected the sudden extreme movements of rolling on the floor, and so had been unable to brace herself before she was sent bouncing around the interior of the capsule. Thankfully that same elastic resilience that protected the outside also affected the interior, and everything else was firmly attached or strapped down so the only thing bouncing around was Kyoto, and even then little real damage was done to her. Unfortunately she was briefly rendered dizzy and stunned by the event, and so was unable to react before McKenzie swept everything including the capsule into her bag. Left in the dark and amid the clutter Kyoto elected to keep the capsule active for now, as she couldn’t see what if anything might be being held up by the capsule or what was beneath her and so dismissing it prematurely might lead to trouble. She recalled seeing at the very least a very large, very full water bottle, and that was something she wanted to be very sure of the location of before she did anything else.

Several mildly bumpy minutes later Kyoto heard the sounds of some other voices nearby, muffled to illegibility due to the distance and fabric around her. She was able to more clearly make out McKenzie nearby saying “Sorry that I was late, I lost track of time. My bad” before there was a sudden dropping sensation followed by a solid thump as the bag was dropped. Then there was light coming from above as the bag was zippered open, and the face and hands of McKenzie reaching down to rummage around the bags interior grabbing something large. She then began to withdraw it, making more items in the bag shift as it pushed them out of the way and let them settle back down.

That would have been fine, but then McKenzie’s other hand not holding the slightly thin, oblong object reached down and wrapped around the Safety Capsule and began to remove it from the bag as well. Kyoto had clearly seen that McKenzie was not confused or interested before her palm covered the top of the sphere, instead seeming to be fully expecting the yellow orb to be present, which just left the tiny girl more confused. As McKenzie finished pulling the yellow orb out and began to quickly walk with it at her side, Kyoto had a few moments to look around past her fingers to take in some sights. They were outside on some sort of smooth field, and there were other girls around wearing mostly white. A glance back at McKenzie showed that she was also in white, something that Kyoto had missed before in the brief time she had seen her. A few more seconds of observation had it coming to Kyoto, this was the tennis courts, so McKenzie was just going…to…practice…!

In great alarm Kyoto jumped up and scrambled for the release orb, but it was too late. McKenzie stopped moving as she got into position on one of the courts, entering a ready stance facing the net and her teammate/opponent standing on the opposite side, equally ready. As was her habit McKenzie firmly tossed down the “ball” in her hand, and it hit the ground where it flexed slightly before rebounding back into shape, naturally bouncing back up towards her hand. This process repeated two more times, Kyoto inside being also bounced off the “floor” and “ceiling,” the release orb flying out of her hand on the first impact and half rolling half bouncing around the interior as well.

Her pre-game ritual to get used to the bounciness of the yellow “tennis ball” ready, McKenzie tossed it lightly up into the air before rapidly swinging her racquet to intercept it on the way back down in a skilled serve. Upon impact the sphere was sent flying across the court, spinning and bouncing as it landed on the other side where it was intercepted by the other girl, her own racquet sending it right back on a new spinning and bouncing trajectory.

Naturally this was a little slice of hell for Kyoto, as she was spun, bounced and generally tossed around the inside of the Safety Capsule like a leaf in a tornado. It was soon discovered if robots like her could be made to vomit, and the answer was no, but the wild and rapid shifts in her gyroscopic data mixed with minor impact reports created enough junk data and strain on her systems that she sort of wished that she could. Hellion was equally not as lucky but in a different way, as his chair in the command centre of Kyoto’s head was strapped down tightly enough that he stayed in place in it. This was of little comfort however as he COULD get sick and did so, very soon coating just about every surface including himself in it.

Furthermore while everything was securely fastened inside of the capsule so it was not swirling around with Kyoto like shrapnel, that did not prevent her from being smacked into them, adding further pains to the situation. Finally, there was still one other loose object in the interior of the sphere, the release orb itself, and while it was just as slightly squishy as everything else that still meant it was effectively a tennis ball hitting Kyoto all over. The girl could not even hope to grab hold of it to release herself, damn the other consequences, as it moved too fast and erratically to track, much less catch. Even the all too brief periods of relative calm when the “ball” flew out of bounds or into the net for points had it annoyingly get caught somewhere or another, so even if Kyoto could recover quickly there wasn’t enough time to grab it before the game started again.

An hour and a half later McKenzie and her opponent finally took a break, their best of three set ending in victory for McKenzie. The orange haired girl took hold of the ball and walked over to the side of the court, where she idly tossed it into her bag as she grabbed a bottle of water and towel. Drinking it slowly to avoid cramps the girl then reached back towards the ball, only to not find it at first. A few seconds further groping around her bag she found it, or perhaps one of the others she had brought, and took it back out. Briefly she looked at it as something had been bothering her about it before, something like there not being as many white stripes as she remembered and it feeling weird. However on closer examination it looked like any old tennis ball in her hand, so she shrugged it off and began to wipe herself down.

Inside of the bag a very tired and thoroughly beaten Kyoto groaned and panted as she lay down, her pilot and herself glad that it seemed to be over. Mercifully as she was dropped into the bag the release orb FINALLY rolled to a stop next to her, and wasting no time while McKenzie was drinking she had grabbed it and all but shouted “exit Safety Capsule!” The yellow globe then vanished, and she was left alone as the tennis player reached around in the bag and grabbed an actual tennis ball. In the end the small girl jet let out another pained groan, before saying “Ugg, so mark this one down as another problematic solution. At least the worst is behind me.”

Naturally as she finished saying that McKenzie finished wiping herself down with the sweat towel, and tossed it back into the bag where the moist fabric landed on top of her, engulfing her like a parachute. If nothing else it would serve as a very firm reminder to keep her mouth shut, for multiple reasons. Inside Hellion was silently glad that at least he was only getting sight and sound, as well as orientation from the mech, as what had just happened was nasty. Silently of course, because he was smart enough to not say it out loud where Kyoto could hear. Unfortunately for him, he also discovered that the air filtration had its limits, as the unpleasant odour invaded even this sanctum. Hellion had to fight back his coughs, even as he doubled his efforts to try and guide Kyoto out from under the rag.

Eventually after a few minutes the girl managed to extricate herself out from under the moist cloth, which ended up being not a moment too soon as McKenzie then reached down and picked it up again, threatening to bring Kyoto along with it. Even as the small girl did so however, the danger did not pass as the orange haired tennis player dropped her mostly empty water bottle into the bag, and Kyoto was forced to run like Indiana Jones to avoid the crushing weight of the rolling cylinder. At the last moment she was able to get close enough to the top of the bottle that the narrowing mouth made it so that it passed her cleanly by.

With things calmed down again Kyoto took a moment to pant a little bit and catch her breath, trying to ignore the slightly stale smells all around her coming from the bag. Before when she had been in the sphere the air had been clear and everything going on out here was blocked out, but now the girl was receiving all of the lingering smells from months of an active girl who believed in making sure her clothes and uniforms were washed but bags carrying them between said washings not so much. At least the zipper was still wide open, so there was still some general hints of clean air, with occasional bursts of even fresher stirring things up from breezes and things moving overhead.

Sadly this state of affairs was not to last, as practice was indeed over now and McKenzie was just finishing off the last of her cool down stretches. She was liable to feel some of this tomorrow since she had not gotten the chance to limber up before hand, but that was the price she paid for nearly forgetting in the first place. Once it was time to hit the showers the girl briefly considered just going to her dorm room, but decided that the ones near the tennis courts were good enough. Plus it would let her change quicker. She tossed her racquet and sweat towel into the bag but did not bother to close it again, as the locker and shower rooms were just a hop and a skip away anyway.

For Kyoto she had to deal with the sudden return of the two objects to the bag, the cloth thankfully landing further away but the racquet landing closer simply due to its raw size compared to her. Its face alone was bigger than a tennis court to her, so there was plenty of real estate to avoid. She managed it well enough, but then came the lifting of the bag and the wild ride of McKenzie walking. Some of Kyoto's fears from before and why she had kept the capsule up were coming to pass, as the wall of the tennis racquets handle swept across the surface she was walking on, and that was followed closely behind by the water bottle tumbling over from where it had been resting.

Mercifully all too soon the minor admin felt things calm as McKenzie dropped the bag again, but that mercy only lingered long enough for Kyoto to fully regain her footing and start to try and come up with a plan before ramming full speed into the wildcard factor that was McKenzie. When she arrived in the change room the girl had wasted no time in starting to strip, and once she was done she reached down into her bag to pull out her showering towel. Seeing that it was at the bottom she decided to go the extra mile, and pulled out not just the towel but also her school uniform she had in there as well. This caused a massive shift in the bag, and Kyoto found herself falling down right to the bottom of the bag as the ground was literally ripped out from underneath her.

Even then the girl might have recovered, if not for McKenzie noting that she really had everything out of the bag that she needed, and the towel she was using to shower with was a school one that got washed twice a week for free. As such rather than leave everything scattered around the girl elected to simply load up her bag now. Before Kyoto could get up the relative giantess rained down her sports gear and everything else she wasn't going to be walking out wearing into the bag. Socks, undergarments upper and lower, and white Tennis Uniform all cascaded over top of the brown haired tiny girl, and then to make sure it all fit McKenzie stuffed them all in roughly, sandwiching the girl in between the layers. Finally she zipped it all closed, and walked off to take her post-game shower.

Kyoto was not having a good time at all, but was making promises to herself about what she was going to do once she got out. It only took a couple of minutes however before it occurred to the girl that now that everything was packed away in her bag, there was no reason for the girl to actually OPEN the bug until such time as she did her usual laundry on Saturday. It was just a real shame that today was only Thursday...

After the tennis incident concluded with a somewhat daring escape from the sports bag before laundry day, Kyoto was of the opinion that she wanted a break from leaving the safety of the guild hall on top of the dorms, as well as trying out any of Emily's latest “fixes.” To that end she stayed cooped up for a good two weeks, split between the absolute safety of the Admin area and the relative safety of the guild hall buildings. However eventually the energy and wanderlust that came from both the robots own developing curiosity and Hellion's boredom grew to be too much, and she decided to go out a little.

However the girl desired to ease into things for once, and so limited her scope of wandering to just the slightly grassy rooftop instead of down into the dorms. Looking through the available quests Kyoto found one that was a fairly simple defence patrol, joining a small group of lower ranked guards in doing a basic sweep of the local area to ensure nothing major was happening, like an ants nest or larger creature coming around. Kyoto was merely joined by a few NPC's on this particular quest, as all of the actual players were in classes due to it being the middle of a weekday.

The actual patrol was downright pleasant, the NPC's being decent company and their combat prowess being enough to make clearing things easy. By this point Kyoto was downright over levelled for the zone and could solo any of the usual suspect insects that lived here, and nothing more dangerous than a particularly ornery stink bug was encountered. All in all it was a fairly relaxing little trip, and Kyoto was feeling a fair bit better about things. The fresh air, sun and getting to really stretch her legs was doing her some real good.

On the way back towards the guild hall however the situation changed somewhat, and in the distance there came the somewhat familiar and dreaded sound of the door to the roof being opened. From their position in the grass the patrol could not get a clear view of the location, but all of them knew that it usually meant trouble, as it meant a Titan (regular human) had entered the roof area. As such they were a little bit tense as they continued to move onwards, Kyoto possibly more than any of the others. Eventually they caught a glimpse of the titan through the canopy of grass, and unfortunately by bad luck it seemed that she was between them and the guild hall. However while the five NPCs began to debate if they should go the long way around or make camp and wait for the Titan to pass, Kyoto relaxed a bit.

While it had been brief, Kyoto had spotted a flash of yellow hair and figured that it was Emily having come up early to do something, perhaps to check on the area around the guild hall looking for any negative signs. As such the partial Admin piped up and said “Hey, not to worry. I recognize this one and I am pretty sure she means no harm. She probably won't bother us, and worst case scenario we could probably sneak past.” The others were skeptical, but on the other hand Kyoto was fairly well regarded in the guild, and her previous work with the likes of Annie the NPC guard gave her words some weight to them. In the end they agreed, and Kyoto led them all closer to the girls position.

The journey was not overly long, all of them well experienced by now in navigating the short but dense lawn of the rooftop. Privately Kyoto, or rather Hellion wondered a few things, like what Emily was doing here at this time of day and how she might react to seeing her. Further more, how would Emily play things off, would she be friendly and helpful, or pretend to think they were just pests? Kyoto hoped that it was not the latter, as it might hurt her credibility a bit.

Kyoto was so lost in thought that she briefly did not realize how close they all had gotten, at least before one of the NPC's in the front rounded a large tuft of grass and called out that they had reached their destination and to slow down. Taking the lead Kyoto moved forwards to take in the sight of Emily and plan her next move, only for her voice to die in her throat and instead a sound more akin to a squashed rubber duck to come out. This was because the woman before them was NOT Emily.

She did have blonde hair this was true, but it was a different shade than Emily's and the hair style was completely different. Instead of tanned skin the woman's complexion was paler, and she was notably a few years older than Hellion's friend and Kyoto's creator. Despite not being Emily however, Kyoto still recognized her very well, not a surprise considering the first impression the woman had made on her. Said first impression being her at first inadvertently saving Kyoto and some NPC's from a large spider, and then mistaking them for ants and cruelly crushing them one by one under her feet. Standing before the patrol was the towering form of Sabrina, a worker at the company Emily's mom worked for and one of the people helping to run the server and hardware the whole game was running on.

Not currently wearing her usual white lab coat, shirt and black skirt, Sabrina was instead wearing a near equally form fitting set of leggings and top ending in sneakers rather than low heels. Under her arm she was carrying a fair sized rolled up tube of foam material, and she was looking around at the clear sky and bright lawn. Her voice came down from above with the familiar boom of size difference, and her words only filled Kyoto with dread. “Mmm, perfect. The weather is just right for this, and I should still have an hour to do this and another half hour past that to clean up before Emily finishes class.” With that said the older woman removed the tube from under her arm, and raising it high with a slight whipping motion she rolled it out in mid-air, revealing it to be a yoga mat.

This was bad enough, but Sabrina had opened the mat above the position of the patrol, and the practical hurricane force winds kicked up by the action blew the six person party around and scattered them. The three in the back were hit the hardest and were sent flying back the way they had come from, but they were the lucky ones. The other two NPC's and Kyoto had been partially sucked upwards by the initial unfurling of the mat, and thusly been left at the mercy of the chaotic winds as everything settled down. Their landings were soft and cushioned, but only because due to a quirk of fate they had ended up on top of the yoga mat itself, just as Sabrina began to get onto it herself.

One of the guards was located somewhat centrally on the mat, and so ended up in a sort of safe zone between the woman's legs as she settled onto it in a sitting position. For her part after Kyoto got over her brief freezing up due to Hellion slamming on the proverbial gas she realized that she was in line with one of the woman’s approaching sneakers, and she needed to get up and dodge out of the way. She barely managed this feat, rolling to the side and feeling the breeze of displaced air push her further, but it just put her into position to look across the width of the mat to see the third tiny on the mat. The second NPC was struggling to get up after a harder landing than the others, and failed to do anything before a legging clad knee crashed down from Sabrina kneeling and turned her into a red splotch.

Somewhat above the blonde woman was oblivious to the life she had just taken, and even if she had noticed would probably have not minded as it was just a bug she had smashed. Once she was in a seated position the woman began her private yoga routine, secure in the knowledge that there would be no males coming around to the roof of a female dorm, and all of the female students would be in classes. This meant she would be undisturbed, and she began to relax as she performed some stretches with her outstretched legs, reaching down and over to grasp the toes of her shoes. In doing so she loomed over the pair of tinies stuck on her mat, boxed in by her legs and her torso blocking out the sky.

The two tinies quickly managed to convene next to each other, mostly because they were so close to the woman's crotch that even bent over they were literally beneath her notice. As soon as she was next to the surviving NPC Kyoto admitted slightly panicked “I'm sorry! This Titan is not who I thought she was, I confused her for someone else. We are in serious danger here!” The guard readily agreed, as she had also seen the other woman vanish beneath the knee. “Argh, and right now we can't risk running out the only open path, as that will put us right under her point of view. We need to wait for her to move...”

Saying this was perhaps easier said than done, as the stretching woman shifted slightly in place with every movement, filling the air with the sounds of her leggings and the mat stretching and flexing all around them. The air was also gradually warming up from her active body heat, trapped and building up due to the only air flow coming from a single direction towards her feet. At last Sabrina finished that particular stretch and moved into another one, but the situation was not much better for the pair of tiny girls.

Rather than fully get up and take a new position, Sabrina instead stopped bending forwards but remained in a seated position. She then began to bring her legs together, pressing them into each other before separating and repeating the process. At first Kyoto and the NPC thought this might be a chance to escape, but a closer look showed that Sabrina was bringing her shoes together with each motion, a minor impact for her but a smashing gate for the two of them. That was not an option, but staying still was dangerous as well. The woman's thighs did not always come fully together, but even so her position shifted slightly in both directions. For now they were moderately in the clear in her thigh gap, but all too easily her stance could change and they would find themselves steamrolled under one of them. To that end their only hope was a dangerous path, climbing the woman's leggings to escape this inconsistent crusher.

Kyoto ended up picking the right thigh to climb while the NPC took the left, and both waited for a moment the thighs were close together so that they had the most possible time to jump on and climb up out of the danger zone. Kyoto scrambled with all she had up the fabric, but Sabrina was simply too fast and they came together before the mech was more than halfway. However Kyoto was in luck, as this particular time she had been a bit close to the woman's knees and so the pressure was not so great, along with the press not being a particularly tight one. The tiny was briefly squeezed between two plush thighs before the legs pulled apart again, and she wasted no time in heaving herself the last of the way up, above the level of the crush zone.

Flushed but pleased Kyoto turned and looked back once she could stand up, intending and hoping to see her counterpart doing the same on the other side. Sadly, when she looked across the shifting gap there was at first no sign of the other female, at least until Kyoto looked lower down. There she saw the NPC guard still on the thigh, alive but not moving. A closer look showed that they were caught in some loops of thread on the leggings, likely due to the NPC having climbed a little closer to the fork of the blonde’s legs and so had been under greater strain. Kyoto could only helplessly watch as the thighs came together again and again, visibly sapping the energy of the other woman until she too was reduced to a red splotch by Sabrina.

Before the small girl could mourn the (admittedly temporary due to respawning) loss Sabrina again began to move, swapping her position yet again. This time however she was full on turning over, and Kyoto briefly held onto the fabric below her as it became a wall before she realized that this was perhaps not the wisest course of action. By then however it was too late, and the girl lost her grip and fell down towards the mat as Sabrina reached her side. Thankfully the soft foam still was able to cushion her landing, but Kyoto had other problems to worry about. Sabrina was still rolling over, and being underneath her legs was not a good place to be. The route down her turning body was blocked by her knees and lower legs, and her hands planting on either side made the quick route off the mat not viable. So Kyoto's only choice was to run up the length of the mat.

The desperate dash of the small woman was in many ways like a cinematic run, the massive danger over her head seeming to collapse slowly so that it was always landing just behind her. In actual fact it was just the blonde woman above finishing turning onto her front and holding her upper body up with her hands, slowly starting to lay down so that the pivot point of her knees was followed by her thighs, then waist, and so on. Perhaps if she had been a little faster Kyoto might have made it to safety, but just as she was passing under the lowering torso a rounded wall fell in front of her. It did not take a genius to recognize that the wall was simply the woman's chest hanging down from her top, the modest bust size still enough to reach the ground before the rest of her torso. Kyoto was forced to stop running lest she run into it, and she closed her eyes as darkness enveloped her, waiting for the pain of crushing.

It took a few seconds for Kyoto to realize that she was fine, and as she opened her eyes she was able to see that she was currently in only semi-darkness, the ceiling above her rippling slightly. Taking in the sight in confusion, the girl was eventually able to piece together what was going on, mostly due to the faint light only coming from either side and faintly revealing the fabric wall of Sabrina's chest in front of her. When she had laid down Sabrina's chest had as said landed first, but that also meant it was able to act as a small crutch, holding the rest of the torso up. Kyoto survived because there was a small triangular gap between the woman's chest, mat and upper stomach.

Above Sabrina continued her routine, flexing out her legs and upper arms and neck as she let the stress just flow out of her. The sun continued to warm her, nicely counter-balancing the slight breeze up here and the near silence caused by a lack of other people. A few more flexes and she was ready to move on to her next set, lifting and placing her arms down on either side of her body. In preparation for pushing herself up she slightly bowed her back and pressed down with her whole body, to better spring smoothly up. As she did get up she did not notice a small speck clinging to her small top, seeing as it was located just a short distance below her boobs.

As she clung to the fabric of the workout top, Kyoto cursed her instinctive reaction when the ceiling came down atop her. The girl had been walking towards one of the side exits to avoid running out when something could fall from above, and so had not expected Sabrina to lower her body further. When the wall came down Kyoto had grabbed onto it, in some vague attempt to perhaps push off of it or pull herself along. Then when Sabrina had gotten up, Kyoto was taken for a bit of a ride along with her, until she was dangling under the shadow of the woman's chest way too far above the ground below. It was all that the little person could do to hold on, and then Sabrina began her actual movement.

The stretch was a fairly simple one, starting with Sabrina's feet firmly planted on the ground. The woman tilted her body to one side while her hands remained on her hips, and once she was at a good angle she began to shift to leaning backwards. This made the angle Kyoto had to deal with much more manageable, but then the rotation continued to the other side, and then forwards. Sabrina stretched out her waist and some of her upper body with the motion, at times shifting to begin rolling the other way. Kyoto was left hanging and at times full on dangling off the face of her torso, and if this kept up who knows what might happen to her once her grip faltered.

To that end Kyoto decided to do something about it, and whenever the woman was tilted back the brown haired girl climbed upwards, starting to mount over one breast towards the less steep fabric above. Things became harder on her for a time, the sports bra within the top not containing the blondes mammary enough to prevent all motion from it. Kyoto was swung left and right when the woman tilted in those directions, and the bounce from when the chest dropped down when she was leaning forwards was nearly enough to toss her off multiple times. Almost as bad was the heat and slightly stuffy air, the workout providing the former while hints of the woman's perfume explained the latter.

Soon despite all of the adversity in getting there Kyoto finished mounting the swell of the older woman's chest, and things at last became marginally easier. As if to commemorate or reward the occasion Sabrina then stopped her movement, and her next stretch was a simple breathing exercise involving breathing in deep while drawing her hands up away from her body, and then exhaling while gliding them down. Kyoto was out of the danger zone for that one, and so had an actual chance to rest and think things through instead of just reacting.

Now that she had her own breathing room, Kyoto realized that while she was not at this exact moment fighting for her life, she was still not out of the woods yet as she was now comparatively hundreds of feet up in the air just barely evading the notice of someone who was distinctly unfriendly. At the moment Sabrina was staring straight ahead so all Kyoto could see was the underside of her face, but once glance down at the wrong time and she could easily spot her. To try and make things easier on herself Kyoto began to climb up higher, soon reaching the upper levels of the woman's chest and the top edge of her collar.

Just then Sabrina caught the girl off guard by out of nowhere moving onto the next yoga motion, this one a fairly simple side to side twist. Sadly being caught off guard also meant she lost her grip, and Kyoto began to fall. It was just bad luck that the twisting motion had briefly pulled Sabrina's top a little bit away from her skin, and the angle enforced by her bust meant Kyoto fell down into said opening. Once inside the girl picked up momentum on the smooth slightly moist skin of the woman, and the back and forth jerking twists had the tiny also sliding side to side as well as down.

The ending point of the girls slide was perhaps slightly predictable, at least if one took into account the luck of her current pilot. Gradually the slope she tumbled end over end down turned and changed direction, and Kyoto found herself plummeting right down into the middle of Sabrina's cleavage. Once down there the constraints of her sports bra held her boobs close enough together that it put a stop to her fall fairly quickly, and the tiny was pinned in place by a pair of jiggling walls on either side of her. Naturally Kyoto tried to climb out of this death trap, but that same smooth skin and small layer of sweat combined with the sharp angle and lack of room to move was a disastrous combination.

The final nail in her coffin was the movement the woman was repeating over and over. Her swift sideways turns had her breasts swinging as well, and the walls would slam into the micro person from one direction and then the other. It took a minute and several repetitions, but eventually Kyoto slid deep enough and the hits were hard enough that she could not breathe and passed out. The ending where Sabrina took a break and briefly towelled herself off, pressing her breasts together firmly one last time was just the icing on the cake. Sabrina did not even know what she had done, the trio of stains upon her person wiped or washed away over time by her workout, and even then had been small enough that she might have missed them anyway.

Kyoto and Hellion awoke a few minutes later in the Admin area, freshly re-spawned and good as new. Neither said much for the first few seconds, just taking their time to process exactly what had just happened. Finally as one they both agreed that the whole experience sucked before Hellion re-entered the mech. As soon as he was back in the command seat they received a phone call, and answering it revealed the source to be Emily. Smiling brightly down at her phone screen and getting a look around the two, she said “Hi Kyoto, Hellion, how's it going? Still cooped up I see. You really should consider going outside more often, it'll be good for both of you.”

Emily thought that it was really very rude of them to both hang up on her abruptly after that.

Despite the unfortunate events regarding Sabrina and her private yoga session eventually Hellion and Kyoto did return to going outside normally. This mostly came down to them discussing things with each other and deciding that these things were going to happen regardless anyway, so there was not much point worrying about it and it was best to just get on with their lives. However it also had to do with how their constant turtling up in the Admin area was drawing concern from McKenzie and Lucy, and Emily was threatening to teleport them out at random times to waylay suspicion.

This day Hellion was actually hanging back in the Admin area alone without Kyoto, mostly because some Genbu players had volunteered to try out a new bathhouse/spa simulation cooked up by Emily and invited her to join them. Hellion had seen many mildly lewd things since becoming trapped inside of the game including a by now nigh uncountable number of panty shots, but intruding on girls literally in the bath without their knowledge and when he could prevent himself from doing so was a step too far even for him. As such he had disembarked for now, letting Kyoto have some fun.

His slightly bored watching of a television show was interrupted by Emily entering the room, and by now long experience had taught him to pay attention to her until she was settled down instead of focusing on the screen. He did not want to end up in her popcorn again like the last time he had relaxed too much. Helpfully her arms were empty and she was actively looking for him, so there was minimal danger of a repeat performance as she walked up to him. Solidifying his relaxation was the visible Admin sight in her eyes, and how they were locked onto him. So Hellion felt secure enough to stand and wave at her with a genial “Hey Em, what’s up?”

Taking a seat on the couch next to his position on the endtable, Emily smiled at him as she spoke up. “Hi yourself Hellion. I’m almost surprised to see you still here, I thought I heard about ‘Kyoto’ being invited to try out my mountain spa program and didn’t think you would want to miss it.” Having said this Emily kept a straight face for a few seconds before bursting out laughing, prompted by the visibly flat look Hellion gave her combined with him crossing his arms unamused. Thankfully this was a controlled laugh, no fist pounding on the table involved. Hellion replied with a simple “Are you done? Is this what you came to see me about?” and in response Emily composed herself while maintaining her grin.

“Ha, no, no, I actually do have another reason to be here besides teasing you, fun as that is.” The Admin raised her hand and called up her virtual keyboard, pressing a series of buttons that initiated the deposit of something into Hellion’s right wrist. Looking down the tiny male saw that it was a silver wristband of some sort, one with a slightly raised circular opening on the “hand” side and a large left hand imprint/reader on the top side. As he looked it over Emily explained her thought process. “So my last few upgrades for your protection were sort of duds, so I decided to try something a little more drastic: Active Shrinking.”

Those last two words shocked Hellion out of his interested examinations of the new accessory, and he all but jumped as he rapidly turned his attention up at Emily in confusion. Seemingly paying the tiny no mind, the tanned girl continued to explain. “Now to be clear I don’t mean shrinking yourself, that little doodad is for shrinking other people. It’s become abundantly clear over time that for you the greatest danger to you outside of Kyoto is not the few insects crawling around that get past the players and NPC’s, it’s the other girls themselves. So if you wanted to have an emergency option this might be the next best thing. Just point the emitter at your target from close range, about three or so of my feet and activate the palm sensor and it should solve the problem, or at least bring it literally down to your level.”

This was rather unprecedented for Emily, and Hellion figured that this was a rather clear sign that Emily really was concerned for him and wanted him to be happy. Of course he still had questions, but as usual Emily was a step ahead of him. “Now obviously there are a few caveats to this, I want this to be legitimate emergency’s only and not you running around shrinking people all willy-nilly. I will warn you that I put a counter on it with a punishment if you abuse it too much in one day. In addition do keep in mind that your current status is still meant to be a secret, so I programmed the NPC’s to think you are also just an NPC if you shrink them, and I ask that you do likewise with any players who stumble across you. Also for what I should hope are obvious reasons, this only works on NPC’s and players. Real live people and bugs are immune.”

As Emily talked about the features and limitations of the shrinking gauntlet, Hellion was listening but also getting a bit of a wicked idea. He nodded along as he pretended to go back to looking over the silver band, before turning his hand just so to point it at Emily. Then moving quickly he placed his hand on the activation pad, and a small beam of light shot out and hit Emily in the chest. However to his surprise nothing happened, beyond a recording of Emily’s voice coming out of the band saying ‘Invalid Target.’ The mischievous boy looked back up at Emily, who had clearly seen his attempt, where she was looking down at him with a self-satisfied smug expression.

“Oh, you little sneak. Heh heh, well as I was about to inform you another limitation I built into it is that all Admins, myself and Kyoto included are immune to the effect. I do respect that you had the balls to try though.” The girl highlighted this by reaching over and placing a finger on top of his head, and with a bit of pressure rubbed it slightly back and forth in what might be called the worlds largest noogie. Hellion was nearly pushed off his feet but held firm and took his punishment like a man, accepting that it was the cost of his failed prank.

An hour later Hellion was alone again, having left the lounge room in the Admin area behind as Emily had co-opted the remote to watch a soap opera he held little interest in. His sister was also a fan of it and he had experienced enough storylines of amnesia, long lost twins, faked deaths, and the faked deaths of amnesiac long lost twins for one lifetime. After getting an assurance that his failed prank would not count against his new daily shrinking counter because it failed, he wandered off towards Genbu to see about finding a good target to try it out on. Wanting to avoid being in the danger zone in case of a misfire, he climbed up onto a tabletop and waited for someone to approach.

The false Tinykin did not have to wait long, as soon enough a few people did come by, but none of them came close enough to hit just yet. Eventually one of them, a mage if the orb topped staff on her back was any indication did move closer, and as she did Hellion prepared to strike. This seemed like the best opportunity, as when the girl shrank it would also be away from him, so there would be fewer awkward questions. Sure this might be a bit of a stretch to call “an emergency,” but he had to actually test it at least once, right? However even as he prepared himself, a complication arose as he actually recognized this particular girl.

Her name was Mikoto, and while he would not have called her one of his friends back when he was not yet in this game he had known her fairly well by reputation alone. The black haired girl was well liked by many people for her willingness to tutor and help with nearly any subject, and Hellion had been one of the ones to get her help with a particularly tricky mathematics assignment. He just did not feel right hitting her, and so lowered his arm and prepared to just let her pass by. Sadly, this did not end up happening.

Instead the mage paused by the table, as one of the other girls in her party piped up with a “By the way Mikoto, how many mana potions do you have? We plan to be out for a while and I don’t want you to run out.” This query prompted the girl to open her inventory and start to pull out several items from her pockets, placing them down on the convenient tabletop and nearly squashing Hellion. The tiny had to dodge around several bottles, a spare wand, and some utility items before she stopped, and he had the chance to catch his breath as the barrage stopped. He was so busy breathing that he missed her answer, but what he did not miss was Mikoto electing to just sweep everything back into her inventory.

This involved her more or less just dragging her hand across the table to push everything into her pocket where it would vanish into her digital inventory. This unfortunately included Hellion himself, as he was caught between two potion bottles and dragged along for the ride. The good news was that Hellion was no longer counted as an item after the first time, so he was not dragged into the actual inventory. The bad was that he was still dropped into the actual physical pocket, and when Mikoto was done she let it close back up, trapping him at her side as she began to walk with her party.

The interior of the Genbu mage’s side pocket was a bit tight and warm, not helped by the bouncing involved from every step she took. For his part Hellion was unfortunately in a bad position, upside down and pinned in place by the material being stretched a bit tightly by the way the girl was moving. Being inconvenienced like this was enough to have him get over his aversion to reducing her, but that did not mean it was a solution right now. Since he was in contact with her body he was not sure what the effect would be on him, but more importantly he could not actually fire the thing. His hands were being held apart from each other by the pinning fabric, so he could not reach the trigger panel to activate the beam. A bit of a flaw in the design perhaps, but on the other hand it was preventing an accidental discharge so the boy supposed that made things more even.

Hellion was stuck in this position for a fair while, forced to listen to the chatter of the party and endure their actions. It was quickly clear that they were out doing some adventuring or questing based on their comments to each other, and he also felt the sudden jerks and fast movements that indicated combat was occurring. The male had to suppose that there was an advantage to being trapped on the squishy mage, in that she was remaining in the back and was not being actively attacked. Eventually he felt the girl stop walking, and from outside he heard the leader of the group talk about “splitting up to search.”

Hellion faced a minute of silence and more walking after that, but he also noticed that the sounds from outside were different. The footsteps from below sounded more solid somehow, like walking on hard stone instead of dirt, and there was a faint roar or rustle in the distance that did not sound like the wind on grass. He did not have long to wait to figure out these mysteries, as he heard Mikoto mention “I could probably use a top up” before light entered his position. The magic user reached down into her pocket and pulled out a mana potion from her inventory, the bottle of liquid forming underneath the tiny’s position and unexpectedly dragging him up and out of the pocket.

Of course smooth glass does not make for an ideal surface to cling to, so naturally the little guy slipped off once the angle became steep enough. The girl noticed nothing as he fell down the length of her legs, and he impacted the ground harder than he expected. Slightly sore but otherwise fine the tiny man got up and looked around, taking a moment to try and make sense of his odder surroundings. He was laying on a vast mostly smooth plain of stone, all a uniform color and stretching out in all directions. Two of them seemed to go on for a long time, but one direction led towards the grass, while the opposite was a massive uniform lake of water. In fact there was water everywhere, pooled up chaotically. It was that last thought that stuck in Hellion’s mind for a few seconds, before he recalled what was around the Genbu guild house area. This must be the side of the school pool!

Hellion was so proud of figuring this out that he temporarily forgot what had brought him here, at least until he heard a sigh of satisfaction coming from above. He looked back to see Mikoto had just finished draining her potion, and so was ready to go again. Looking around she was clearly searching for something, and Hellion recalled hearing about a resource gathering quest involving ‘special water.’ It was thus clear that Mikoto and her group were here searching for that resource. Once again Hellion became distracted figuring this out, that he missed Mikoto glancing down and seeing an out of place spot on the pool tile. The boy was dragged out of his musings by a “Ugh! What is a Tinykin doing here?” from above, and he saw the girl lifting her foot to crush him.

At this moment in time Hellion was not thinking clearly, and so reacted on instinct as he swung up his arm and pointed it at the girl, slapping the other hand onto his wristband. The beam shot out and hit the girl, and in a brief instant she shrank down to Tinykin size. However, she was not the only one. At that same instant Hellion suddenly felt himself feeling strange, and he too suddenly had the world expand out around him. As he tried to process this he became aware of his wristband lighting up, and Emily’s voice coming from it like before. However this time it was not an error message about an invalid target, but something worse.

“Okay, you used the Reduction Beam for the first time today. You should have four more consequence free shots on the counter, but one should be enough.” “That was your third shot today, either you are really unlucky or you are pushing your luck too far. I would advise getting somewhere safer.” “Well that was your fifth and final shot. Honestly this seems like a bit much, I mean why would you need to shrink 5 people in one day? No more mister, get home.” “Really Hellion? You had to push it? The beam worked but now you get to suffer the consequences. You like shrinking people so much despite being so small yourself? Well what goes around comes around. Oh, and also the device is offline for a week or until I think you deserve it again.”

It took Hellion a few moments to parse what the hell just happened, but then it dawned on him. He knew he had only fired the one beam, and yet all the messages had come up one after the other. He recalled a year or two back Emily working on programming a robot to do tasks in order, but when she turned it on it did them all at once with no break. Later she had told him that upon examining its code, she found out that she had forgot to input a number into the timing position, so everything had fired off all at once. Taking into account the mention of a counter and the exact order of the warnings given, it was clear that Emily had made the same mistake and failed to set his number of “allowed shots” as anything, meaning it defaulted to zero!

As Hellion mumbled to himself about giving Emily a piece of his mind about making the same mistake twice he became aware of two things. The first was that he had never actually been told how LONG the shrinking lasted, or indeed if it even would end. Normally he might have assumed that there obviously would be an answer, but considering the error Emily made it was not out of the question that she might have made more and that there WASN’T a way to end it. The second and more pressing issue was that Mikoto was getting over her own dazed confusion at what had happened and was looking around in abject confusion.

Mikoto finished blinking her eyes and tried to comprehend what had just happened. She had been about to step on a disgusting little pervert of a Tinykin when a flash of light had blinded her. She stopped looking down as she tried to locate the source of the light, only to find herself in a landscape more alien than usual. Thankfully for her she was moderately quick on the uptake, and so while it was strange and unexpected the mage was able to realize that she had somehow been reduced in size. “Well, reduced in size even more than I already was” she muttered to herself. The Tinykin had been quite sent out of her mind as she saw the poolside from yet another new perspective, and so she did not look down as Hellion scrambled up onto the rim of her shoe.

Being aware of what had happened did not bring the girl any closer to figuring out How or Why, so she began to walk to try and figure things out. She soon found navigation tricky, as the water that had been on the pool deck before was currently a wild array of large walls towering over her head, whereas before they were merely waist high ponds to wade through. Still she tried to find her way out of this micro labyrinth, even as her steps threatened to toss her hitchhiker off. On the bright side for her, this was still a new and novel experience, like starting the game all over again, so maybe things would not be that bad?

Almost as soon as she thought it Mikoto and Hellion heard a dull roar in the air, for the former a simple mystery at why the noise was familiar and for the latter confirmation in his mind that the girl had probably just taunted Murphy. Both were proven right when the noise came again, and they recognized it as Mikoto's name being shouted. The girl turned to face the direction of the call, nearly whipping Hellion off of her from the sharp turn. Looking down the deck Mikoto saw her party members walking in her direction, so she smiled and waved while shouting in turn for their attention. Hellion just groaned to himself as he heard the now Tinykin sized girl call out, knowing from long long experience that her strategy was not going to work and that she was making a rookie mistake. Then again not every player had encountered a non-playing student before, so she might be forgiven for not knowing how much danger she was in. On the other hand her being in danger was putting Hellion in danger, so he wasn't really feeling all that charitable.

When the other four girls did not immediately answer her Mikoto was not all that worried, assuming that they just could not hear her from that far away and would spot or hear her once they got closer. That confidence slowly began to drain out of her however, as the quartet drew closer and closer and showed no signs of slowing or looking down. Just as concerning was the rumbles in the ground and faint ripples in the nearby water, chaotic due to the number of different footsteps and looking like great waves to Hellion. Soon the girls were nearly upon them, and both Hellion and Mikoto could clearly hear them talking about “-we got all of the water we need, so where is Mikoto?” “Maybe she had to leave?” “Or she got into a fight and died without us. That is why I say we should never split the party.”

Now Mikoto began to realize just how deep over her head she really was, especially when one of the other girls idly kicked a small bead of water to her, only to make a huge splash in the direction of the tiny mage. Once more the girl turned around nearly losing Hellion, only this time it was away from the other girls and involved her running for her life. A sentiment that Hellion appreciated even as he had to cling to her sock like a barnacle, but he feared it might be too little, too late. The girls were moving fast by dint of their greater size alone, but they also were able to walk more or less straight in a way that Mikoto could not. The smaller black haired girl had to juke around beads of water the size of a swimming pool to the tiny on her foot, locate and navigate a pathway of potential dead ends, double back points, and split intersections. The girls four former party members were soon upon her, and Mikoto was left scrambling to avoid them.

Hellion could not help but compare the quartet of titans to some of the other people he had seen, the micro person actually not that unfamiliar with the sight. While it was always awe inspiring in some capacity, the digitized male had seen girls as large as the other players were right now, on those unfortunate occasions that he saw a regular student or teacher when he was outside of Kyoto. There were honestly few things like seeing a sole the size of a building coming down towards you, and heads far enough away that they began to grow fuzzy just from the raw distance involved. However while he might be an old hand at this due to months of experience for Mikoto it was her first time seeing someone so much larger than her, and so she was freaking out.

The girls green eyes were wide in panic and slightly stained with tears as she looked around, her four friends unintentionally boxing her in as the leader walked ahead of her and stomped her booted foot on the one path forwards. Meanwhile behind her another girl was standing on one of the paths she had taken to even reach this point, while another girl had pressed through a larger water drop scattering it, washing away other, alternate paths she might have taken. The cherry on top was the last girl, the healer of the group nearly hitting her with the bottom of her healing staff when she placed it on the ground nearby, and knocked her off her feet just by stepping on either side of the girl. Falling into a sitting position half on her back, Mikoto began to swear to be nicer, to never hurt a Tinykin for as long as she lived. A touching sentiment in Hellion's opinion, if he forgot the danger she had already and was continuing to put him in.

In fear and desperation Mikoto walked over towards the nearest of her group cleric's feet, and began to bang on it. This elected no response at all from the enormous girl, and Mikoto found it to be like hitting a brick wall. She still continued to try to damage or get through the leather, even kicking it a few times which Hellion did not appreciate as he was on said foot. Finally she hit upon the idea of using her magic, but as she said so Hellion felt a small pang of pity. He had tried something similar once in Kyoto, and knew that at this size difference the magic was too weak to matter. Not that the girl got the chance, as before she could she was interrupted by a quake more massive than any others. Not that she was alone, as while it was cataclysmic for her and felt apocalyptic for Hellion, the four players were also nearly sent off their feet, feeling it as merely disastrously strong.

With mounting dread the six humans present all turned their heads as one to look in the direction of the quake, and all of them beheld a simply bowel-emptying terrifying sight. Normally the appearance of a girl wearing a uniformly black bikini would not have been a cause for concern, and would even be a welcome sight to Hellion and only of the girls who swung that way, but this was far from a normal circumstance. Quite frankly the sight of a perfectly normal and thus continental to Hellion sized girl walking in the direction of everyone, still dripping wet from the showers was just about the worst thing to possibly see in this situation, even for the still “full sized” players.

The four players were briefly stunned at what they were seeing, all of them likely also only seeing people so large at their scale for the first time. This gave Mikoto time to act, as while she was shocked as well the adrenaline surge she had felt from running from her friends already meant that she was fully in “flight” mode and not the “freeze like a deer in the headlights” state. She started to flee in the opposite direction, rounding the shoe in her way and moving towards the leader blocking her main path. Mikoto had a hunch regarding what was about to happen, and she was right as the leader stammered out a “N-no, it's too early!” before backing up a step clearing the way for Mikoto, and then starting to run herself.

As Mikoto was snaking her way around the puddles of water and the quartet of players were getting over their own stunned reactions, Hellion was mentally starting to check out a bit. He was well and good used to giantesses being around him, and the monolithic twice over giantesses that usually would have been simple students he was familiar enough with. However this was an absolute titaness thrice over, and he was just a bit overwhelmed at this point. Her bare feet slapping the pool tiles could have filled city blocks, and her knees were visibly grainy from the raw distance involved, much less her face. Put simply, the boy who was currently bug sized to a bugs bug could hardly comprehend something that large that was not a mountain, much less it moving so fast a plane would have been overtaken.

Heedlessly walking closer the swimmer gave a shake to her long damp hair, sending water droplets cascading down in buckets and swimming pools to the girls below. The slaps of her feet on the pool deck were utterly deafening to them all, and they could hear nothing else. Mikoto could not even hear the moment the other girls started to run, so her only warning was the more minuscule rumbles in the ground indicating their steps between the swimmers walking pace. She was lucky enough that the shoe of one of the girls narrowly missed her, even as it almost sent her sprawling into the path of another girl. Complicating matters was that as the four players fled the approaching titaness their feet and legs kicked and stepped on more water, making splashes all around Mikoto that made her own fleeing more difficult.

Finally the girls were past her position, but the straggler of the group slipped a bit, and as she stumbled she sent one last wave backwards. It hit Mikoto and nearly blew her back, but she managed to just barely keep on her feet. The same could not be said for Hellion, who was washed off of the girl's sock by the force of the wave and left spiralling in the middle of a bead of water. From in here he was barely able to watch as the four players managed to find a clear patch off to the side, and managed to successfully make a break for the edge of the grass and escape the pool. However Mikoto was not so lucky. She tried to follow after them, but the swimmer was faster and reached her first.

Hellion managed to barely breach the surface of the water droplet and get some air, just in time to be looking upwards as the girl in a bikini walked over him. She had never needed to alter her course for obvious reasons, and just strolled on while Hellion was staring up at her. This close she truly was a mountain to him, even as he could faintly see the outline of the crotch of her bottoms and faint jiggle of her ass cheeks as she stepped over him. Then the water cascading off of her hair and body started to literally rain around him, and he had other concerns. The water splashed and gathered everywhere, and Hellion found himself being washed away in a mini-river of water, following the faint slope of the pool deck and the groove between tiles until he saw himself approaching the waterfall that was the edge.

As for Mikoto, she was also affected by the walking girl, and could only watch as another shake of her hair sent a splash of water down, blocking the route her friends had taken and turning it into a flowing lake for her. The mage had no choice but to turn away and search for a different path, even as the swimmer thundered around her making things ten times worse. At last the swimmer passed the Tinykin sized girl a little, and Mikoto seemed to find a plausible looking route. Sadly for her the opposite was the case, and as she tried to follow it amidst the literally changing tides formed from the water and footsteps made by the swimmer she instead found herself herded towards the edge of the pool.

Mikoto was left panting at the edge of the pool, needing to catch her breath after all of the running she had done. A glance over her shoulder showed that the swimmer had stopped, so at least there were no more tremors. The green eyed girl began to try and come up with a plan, to wait for the swimmer to move on and then backtrack, perhaps then finding a new route away from here. This lasted a few seconds before the thundering slapping footsteps of the swimmer started up again, and Mikoto turned her attention back to her only to freeze.

The swimmer had now turned towards the pool, and walked the few steps towards it until she reached the edge. A normal sized player could easily have gotten away from her, or at the very least garnered some attention, but such things did not apply to Mikoto at the moment. The poor shrunken girl could only watch and then scream as the swimmer lowered herself down to slip into the pool, her hand landing on the far side of Mikoto as she tilted and adjusted herself. The last thing that Mikoto saw before the darkness of death was the bikini-clad rear of the girl as she sat down on the edge of the pool to dangle her legs and feet into the water.

Hellion had found himself washed down the width of the pool tiles to end up dropping down a waterfall, landing himself in the vast ocean that was the school pool for him. Thankfully despite the power of the water making steering nigh impossible, he was able to keep mostly near the surface as the water was only a little broken up. He was able to barely tread water for now, even as it did get harder from the waves formed by the swimmer placing her legs into it comparatively nearby. On the bright side the waves also pushed him further away from her a bit, so he at least got a better look at her. Then from the heavens her voice boomed loud, and the words filled him with utter dread as he at last recognized her.

“Alright everyone, glad you could make it. I want to see some good hustle today!” Hellion recognized this girl as the captain of the swim club, which also put into some perspective Mikoto's teammate's comment about “too early.” Based on the evidence, it was time for practice, meaning...Hellion turned himself in the water and looked back towards the change rooms and showers that the team captain must have come from, and as suspected saw just under two dozen more girls walking out in various swimsuits. This pool was in a very short while going to become very, very chaotic, and he was stuck right in the middle of it. The question now was not “if” he was going to die, but instead “how.” In a final moment of levity at the situation Hellion gave himself decent odds at drowning or being crushed in someone's cleavage, but he was not ruling out being kicked or swallowed. 

Thankfully when Hellion inevitably met his end when he respawned in the Admin area it was back to his “original” Tinykin size, and the same thing applied to Mikoto as well in regards to her “normal” scale. She was very confused when she came back to life, but some quick thinking on the part of Emily once Hellion explained the situation had her thinking that it had just been a temporary glitch and that it had been patched and fixed. Technically the truth as well since Emily scrapped the whole idea and removed the ability. Apparently she had not been a fan of the idea in the first place and trying to correct it was actually more complex than just increasing the shot increment. 

After that Emily was quiet for a week or so, and might have been longer if not for the tiny boy offhandedly mentioning that if he just had some more protection then things might be fine. That comment sent off a brainwave for the blonde, and she hurried back to her coding lab to whip something up. The next day she returned and hurriedly borrowed Hellion from Kyoto and took him into the lab to talk and show her newest innovation to him.

The act of getting practically stolen from his protector was slightly disorientating for the boy, but at least Emily was partially careful so the actual trip was not so bad. She held him close to her body so the bouncing was manageable, but the visible jiggle of her chest this close was also distracting. When she arrived in the lab and set Hellion down on her workbench she at least had the decency to look slightly abashed, and apologized with “Heh heh, sorry about that. I was working really hard on this for most of the night and I am running a little low on sleep. I was just too excited to get it implemented once you put the idea in my head.”

With that said Emily brought up her console and pressed a few buttons, and then Hellion received a notification that he had just gotten several items deposited into his personal inventory. Opening up that menu he searched for a few seconds and saw that what he had gotten was several pieces of armor, a full set for his head, body, arms, legs and feet. Taking the hint as Emily rolled her fingers, Hellion began to equip them from the menu and noted that his stats did indeed seem to be going up by large amounts with each one.

Once he was fully equipped the tiny guy moved around in the full body armor, and found that it while a touch bulky was also so well fitted and designed that it seemed to not be hindering his movements at all. All the while Emily was explaining “You had talked about wanting more protection, and that got me to thinking. The vehicle armor and Safety Capsule had their good points to them, but why did they have to be so large? Now you will have your protection on you and just you, and it will keep you safe.” Then as if to demonstrate, Emily without warning lifted her hand and brought it down hard on top of him in a great slap.

While this had shocked and completely caught Hellion off guard, when the actual impact came it was more like a slightly forceful shove down onto his back, with only a little actual discomfort and next to no pain involved. Considering that before such a blow should have reduced him to a red smear on the blonde's palm and table top, and to be fair that had happened before at least once, once he was over his initial shock Hellion was more convinced. A glance at his still open menu to stats showed but a single point of damage done to him, a most ringing endorsement.

Of course that did not really excuse the fact that Emily had slapped Hellion without warning him first, and as the palm retracted the tiny looked the girl in her eyes about to tell her off. However he was caught off before he could even begin when he saw just how tired the girl actually looked, and he began to suspect that her “working late into the night” might have been code for “worked clear through the night never sleeping.” If such was the case than Emily running low on sleep was an understatement. This was just highlighted when the girl while smiling down at him was interrupted by a jaw cracking yawn. To that end Hellion just shouted “Well, the armor seems to be working great, any other features I should know about before you turn in?”

The head Admin grinned down at her friend, and said “Not really. All of the bonuses go into defence making you nearly indestructible while wearing it, and besides you shouldn't be fighting outside of it anyway so agility and attacks are not needed.” Hellion nodded along with this, it made sense to him and after the previous experience trying to deal with a player outside of Kyoto he was in no mood to try anything hostile again for a while. Then Emily fought off another yawn, and glanced at the console showing what time it was. “Oh? Is it that late already? Damn. You just hold on tight here, I think I'll go grab a drink from the cafeteria here and then log out, I should really take a nap or something...” With that said Emily idly swiped away the console from the air to dismiss it, but in her tired state she did not notice the rapid action had created a gust of air that hit Hellion and blew him backwards.

The small boy found himself unexpectedly falling off the edge of the worktable, the armor not actually adding any real weight to him like normal metal would have. He hit the ground and rolled a little, but again his new protection meant he was fine. He started to get back up, just in time for a shadow and pressure to fall upon him. Unfortunately long experience allowed Hellion to identify what happened within the space of just a few seconds, and it became clear to him that Emily had just stepped on him, briefly wedging him in the treads of her boots. In a near exact mirror of what happened to him on his first day in the game he was dragged out of the Admin area, Emily's lab even, and into the front hall of the guildhall before falling out. The only difference was this time it was Emily doing it and not Lucy.

Hellion watched as Emily walked off towards the cafeteria leaving him behind, and let out a small sigh. This was rather annoying, but he was willing to put it down to just an accident due to Emily's tired state. Still it would be nice if this sort of thing happened less often, although he supposed that this was why he had wanted these improvements in the first place. At least unlike that first time Emily had adjusted the Admin doors to recognize him even at this size, so he was not locked out and could return to safety soon enough.

However as he turned around to do so, he was interrupted by the door seeming to anticipate him and opening before he was ready. This was odd, at least before Kyoto materialized through it stepping into the hallway explaining it. She looked around briefly and then downwards, after a moment locking eyes onto him. Hellion was not worried however, as after a few early incidents involving mistaking him for a random Tinykin Kyoto had learned to always check with her Admin senses before attacking to ensure it was not him. Thus he naturally expected the same thing to happen here, and it was a nasty shock to see an expression of confused interest come across her face followed by her saying “Hmm? I did not know Emily was implementing new bugs.”

This shocking statement caused Hellion to actually look closer at himself for once, and his second sweep of his appearance made him realize the rather important thing that Emily had overlooked in her design frenzy. The armour he was wearing was predominantly black, and slightly bulbous in the torso and legs to protect the limbs while also allowing for ease of movement. Finally the face concealing helmet he wore was partially inspired by Samurai ones complete with ornamental “horns” on the top. It all certainly looked very cool, and just so happened to make the wearer look rather like an insect when seen from further away where finer details were blurred. When Kyoto had spotted him she had not seen him or even a Tinykin, she just saw a regular “bug!”

This horrible revelation stunned Hellion for a few seconds, which was plenty of time for Kyoto to lift up her boot to prepare to stomp. Hellion of course shouted for her to stop, but it fell on deaf ears as he saw her Admin senses were currently turned off. After that he had to start running, and an all too familiar chase scene ensued. This was bad enough considering it was supposed to be his protector doing this, but since she had just come from the Admin area she was chasing Hellion away from it, and as it was the middle of the day and Byakko's guild hall there were plenty of NPC's and Students alike wandering about. Most were just content to let the girl vent her frustrations or have some fun going after what they at first assumed was a Tinykin, but a couple girls decided to join in, and their incoming assaults were not lessened once they found out that it was just a “bug” instead.

Hellion had run through these hallways before outside of Kyoto, and had managed it usually well enough, but the situations then and now were different in a few key areas. Firstly he normally had only been out and about when the number of people in the building was low due to classes and such, but right now was a time when the player population was higher so there were more people meandering around making the floor a small gauntlet of shoes and boots. Secondly he had always either been sneaking around or just dealing with one girl, but now he had multiple on his tail. Eventually these factors combined to cut him off, and Kyoto successfully caught up to him when he needed to stop and backtrack away from a girl exiting a room right in front of him.

The girl's boot slammed down with great force, and Hellion closed his eyes in preparation for death and respawning. However that did not happen, instead he was just placed under pressure and darkness under the foot. Then Hellion realized that the suit was doing its job of protecting him, and he was still in very high health. He only realized the downside of this when Kyoto raised her foot to look at the “corpse,” only to see a fully intact body below.  As such while muttering to herself about “Oh? It's a resilient one I will give it that” she simply lifted her foot and stomped down again. And again. And again.

The girl stepped and stomped on the boy several times in a row, practically making him bounce a little in place taking new positions as he rebounded off the floor just to be caught by another step. By now the other girls had caught up as well, and the group circled around the unflattened bug before starting a bit of a stomp party. Boots and shoes from them lashed out from all directions, stepping on Hellion over and over leaving him no time to get back up before another one would smack him back down. In the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of his health bar, and saw that while it was high it was also slowly draining. Each “attack” might only be doing a single point of damage but this was a lot of attacks hitting him one after the other.

Finally as he began to wonder if this was going to continue until he finally died, one of the other Byakko students tried something a little different, stepping on Hellion and instead of withdrawing her foot she ground it back and forth on top of him. This did several points of damage in semi-rapid succession, but still was only enough to get him to a bit above half his health. Then when the girl stepped back, he found himself stuck under her treads, wedged in place amid a bunch of red paste. For a moment Hellion was just a bit grossed out, and that revulsion increased when he saw the stump of an arm embedded next to him and he realized that what he was stuck in was the remains of a squashed Tinykin.

Above he heard the girls talking, mentioning the smear left where he had formerly been laying and how at last the “bug” had been crushed. Apparently when she had ground her foot this girl had left some of the Tinykin remains behind, which was enough to convince the girl and everyone else that he was dead.  Then the girl lifted her foot containing him up high and behind her, so much so that he was facing upwards and was briefly blinded by the lights above. When his vision cleared he saw the girl looking over her shoulder at his good covered form, and she said “Ugg, gross, its stuck to my foot.” The girl then proceeded to firmly put her foot on the ground and slide it forcefully back, doing some more damage to him but leaving him behind on the ground.

Thinking of his situation Hellion remained still in the Tinykin goo, as he was still being looked at and if he moved now then the girls would see that he was still “alive” and the whole process would just start again. So instead he remained as still as possible, limbs slightly splayed out and him covered in Tinykin paste. His ruse worked as the girls soon lost interest and started to walk away and disperse, but he did hear one of them, possibly even Kyoto mention “I'll spread the word to keep an eye out for some new black bugs.” Still there was nothing that he could do about that, so he stayed prone on the ground with the intention of getting up in a minute and making a break for an area he knew was probably less inhabited.

As it turned out this was a half a minute too long to wait, as he was interrupted by the arrival of a maid tutting about “such a mess.” Then before he could get up the generic brunette reached behind her for a pole she had been dragging, and lifting it up and swinging it forwards more or less dropped a wet mop head right on top of the boy. She then began to swirl the cleaning implement back and forth, swiftly removing the guts off the ground but also picking Hellion up for the ride. Almost instantly the poor tiny was tangled in the strands of the mop and dragged across the floor, swirled around at speed while the NPC above was oblivious. Then the woman lifted the mop and returned it to its bucket of hot soapy water, and Hellion was splashed down below its surface.

Hellion desperately struggled to get some air, swimming up to the surface even as he felt the rumble of the mop bucket being wheeled to its next destination. He reached the side of the bucket and tried to climb up, but the water level was too low and the side too slick. Then the bucket stopped washing him back towards the centre from a momentum wave, and the mop being lifted up out of the bucket snagged him again. The maid had several more stops to make to remove stubborn stains on the hardwood and sometimes stone floors, and Hellion was present for each and every one of them as the water became dirtier and dirtier.

Eventually the woman finished this cleaning cycle, and Hellion was left floating in the murk of her bucket. He was currently discovering that while he was still only taking a single point of damage at a time, as the hits continued without healing they were gradually becoming more and more painful just as an indication of how his health was still decreasing. Now just a bit below half, he waited for the maid to dump the bucket into a sink, only for her to instead open a door leading outside and draining the bucket there, washing Hellion into the grass of the courtyard.

The by now tired boy coughed and spat up dirty water, kneeling on the ground as it absorbed the water and began to grow muddy. Starting to get up he began to look around for the driest route away, not wanting to plunge into any puddles or mud pits. Sadly for him almost right away came a short stream of girls, all of them players going out for a bit of practice. The first girl's foot landed on top of him, pressing him down into the soft mud at the bottom of an imprint of her foot. Then after she stepped off the next girl walked on top of him, skidding briefly on the mud and him in her flat before she stabilized herself. The process repeated for each girl in the line, every single one of them by pure happenstance stepping directly on top of him, leaving him in a new humorous pose each time. Finally the last girl exited the building, and this time he stuck to her sole thanks to the mud.

The faux-Tinykin had to endure several long painful steps, until the girl stopped moving standing on the grass. Above his head and muffled Hellion heard the leader of the group talking about combat drills, practicing new moves before putting them into direct effect. As this happened the girl standing on him shuffled her foot a little, and he was scraped off by the grass to end up deposited in the midst of it. As he got lower in health, he dimly noted that the view was not all that different from being outside of some of the other guild halls, tall grass and towering girls included.

Then the training started, and Hellion had other things to worry about. The girls were remaining in the same general area, and so he had to avoid falling boots and flats everywhere. The combat manoeuvres involved charges and quick movements in all directions, and with the grass cover all around him Hellion had little to no idea where anyone was or what direction they might come from. More than once he was nearly stepped on or actually stepped on, and unfortunately one of the girls was a melee fighter with a very heavy hammer, one that she loved to hit the ground with making it quake underneath his feet. He even had to avoid falling into some of the craters left behind by those strikes, and one time was even at ground zero for one meteoric hit. This hurting like hell but still only draining a single point of damage just further highlighted the downside to this state of affairs, as his suffering was just being drawn out.

At last Hellion reached a new clearing, and the trampled and ripped grass allowed him to better see what was around him instead of just randomly running around. Unfortunately for him this just meant he was out in the open when one of the girls who before now had been mostly passive decided to test out one of her combat spells. Hellion's only warning was a series of blue lines appearing all around him at ground level, glowing brighter and brighter over the space of a second indicating magic was being cast. The boy had no time to get out of range of the circle, which was probably the point as when it fired the air around him became absolutely frigid, and massive sharp spires of blue ice formed all around him.

Naturally one of said spires also began to form underneath him as well, and it was only the wind whipped up by the rapid temperature change of the spell sending him flying that he avoided becoming encased in the deadly frost spike. As it was he was chilled to the bone, and he discovered both that his defences applied to magic damage and that there was such a thing as frostbite damage over time. Hellion flew through the air until he saw a wall of blue and black rapidly approaching. He hit the black portion below the blue and remained in place, and it took a moment where he just hung there to realize that he had still been wet from the bucket and mud not so long ago. When hit by the ice spell the liquid had become supercooled, and as soon as it hit the new surface it had frozen solid. Now he was stuck to wherever this was, and as he looked around he had to suppress a groan. 

The blue wall fluttered down to cover the path he had taken before, and now that he looked at it closer it was not just blue but also slightly checkered as well. The blue and black walls extended in all directions, but straight down there was light revealing the back of a pair of legs and shoes. The wind had not only blown him away, but it had also made the skirt of one of the girls flutter, briefly revealing her black underwear where naturally Hellion had impacted and frozen to, meaning he was stuck to one butt cheek of an unaware girl.

This was just confirmed when he heard from above “Brr, watch where you are aiming those Susan, I caught some of that!” Then the girl began to move, and the male was slightly bounced around in time with her ass cheek as she moved around through her own drills. Thankfully for once he remained stuck to the rear through it all, not falling below where he might get trampled again. Even better the training session ended soon after that, and the girls stopped moving so rapidly and headed inside at a more sedate pace. Feeling the ice now starting to slowly melt, Hellion began to actually feel a sliver of hope, just in time for the girl he was on to reach the cafeteria, flip her skirt up out of the way, and take a solid seat down on a chair, crushing him.

The pressure was immense on the little guy, and a glance at his health was showing that it was finally actually getting to the “critically low” range. If he could just mentally endure this for a little longer he might get out of this soon, and the time that would take very rapidly began to shrink as the girl was not one to sit very still for long. The girl bounced up and down several times on the hard chair, the reason for it being perhaps excitement about the groups new moves, Hellion being an uncomfortable lump on her ass, or both. Each movement was like being crushed by a house, and just drained more and more HP. The girl even wiggled back and forth a few times, grinding Hellion hard and painfully into the seat, lending credence to the discomfort idea.

Eventually as Hellion at last saw his health reduce to the upper teens level, he anticipated at last getting a break from this nightmare. However as if summoned by his thought, the girl remained still for a while, only occasionally moving and slowing his health loss to a crawl. The boy had to endure a further hour of this, likely while the girls ate something, before at last she got up. As she did so Hellion noted two things, the first of which that while the ice had at last melted he was temporarily sticking to her black panties, mostly due to a mixture of lingering moisture and being under the pressure of her plump rear for so long. The second thing was that the back of her skirt caught on itself higher up, leaving him and her ass exposed for all to see.

As it turned out both problems were resolved in short order, as one of the other girls glanced in her direction as she too got up and saw the fashion faux-pas. The girl could not see Hellion himself, as his black armour matched the shade of the girl's undergarment, but that mattered little if the slightly evil grin on her face meant anything. As she took a step closer and Hellion's host was pushing in her chair, the other girl said “Man Amy, I knew you could sit for a long time without getting sore, but I always wondered how you could do it. Now I think I know.” As she had said the last few things the girl had drawn her hand back, and as she finished she whipped her hand down and forwards to give the other girl's rear a hearty slap that also knocked the skirt down while saying “I mean, if you are going to show it off like this...” The girl jumped in shock, but based on her blush she also did not mind very much.

Not that Hellion was really aware of that last part, as when the girl had slapped the rear her hand had impacted him directly, and with the follow through the male was sent flying off of the cheek and through the air. He helplessly screamed until he landed somewhere, although splashed down was probably the more accurate term as he had ended up in the midst of a white lake studded with floating yellow orbs. Hurting and stunned from the slap hellion tread water for a few seconds, before looking up and getting a major shock.

Sitting before him was Emily, the blonde looking much better and less tired, without the bags under her eyes. Feeling some relief he waved up at her, only to feel rapidly growing dread as she continued to look straight ahead, well above Hellion's position. Turning in place to look he was shocked again to see Kyoto sitting across from Emily, further away from him and looking at Emily in return. Trying to figure out what was happening Hellion turned back towards Emily where he received yet another big clue. The girl was wielding a massive silver spoon, and as he watched the blonde plunged it into the white lake he was swimming in and scooped up a bunch of the yellow masses. Of all places to end up, he had landed in Emily's cereal bowl!

Desperately Hellion turned around and tried to swim for the far edge of the bowl as he heard the crunches of Emily chewing above him, but even from here he could see that this was likely hopeless. It was a bucket situation all over again, the sides likely too smooth and slick for him to ever climb, and the liquid was chaotically swirling around making swimming difficult. Then the whole thing became moot, as the next plunge of the spoon managed to whack Hellion on top of the head, and dazed he just floated for a second before washing onto the eating utensil. In a last ditch effort to get attention Hellion called out, but the general din of the cafeteria patrons easily drowned him out.

The spoon, cereal, milk and Hellion were shovelled into Emily's awaiting maw, and the boy saw a few strands of clinging saliva and felt a wave of warm breath wash over him before the lips closed blocking out all light. Heedlessly the tiny man was dragged off of the spoon and onto the girls tongue, and he did not register to it as anything more complex or interesting than a fragment of a cereal piece. As such he was swirled around with everything else, the darkness preventing him from seeing much of anything. In fact all he could see was just his HUD, showing him at just over 10 HP. This number dropped again as two cereal chunks pinned him between them harshly, and yet again when the tongue rammed him and the cereal from the side.

At last he came to a stop again, but instead of soft tongue or semi-soft palate he was resting on top of something hard and uneven. It only took a moment to realize what this meant before the ceiling collapsed on him, being of similar texture as the floor below. That last tongue lashing had pushed him and the cereal onto Emily's molars, and now she was chewing them and him up. Again and again the boney protrusions came down, the pain at his low health threshold terrible to behold. They shifted up and down and forwards and backwards, never letting up. It might very well have broken Hellion mentally, if not for the fact that it broke him physically first.

Maintaining a shred of sanity left, Hellion's eyes never left his HP display, at last showing a single HP point remaining. Briefly light entered the mouth as Emily opened up her mouth again for another bite, and beaten and torn the way he was now Hellion was almost eager knowing that in a moment the teeth would come down and this would be over. He looked up at the molars hanging above in the light, and he grinned in acceptance and anticipation. Then he frowned, and wondered out loud to himself “Wait a minute...if I wanted to die, why didn't I just take off the armor and reduce my defence? OH I AM SUCH A MORO-”

CHOMP!

Kyoto perked up a little from her seat in the Genbu cafeteria as a notification in her ear rang, the distinct chime of Emily going admin to contact her. Putting down her mostly finished sandwich the girl started to get up before pausing, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. The blonde had been slightly cagey and busy the past few days, and it had been a while since the last upgrade debacle. Not wanting to jump to conclusions the brunette opened up the chat with a slightly cool “Hello? Yes Emily?”

Emily appeared in a private screen before the eyes of both Kyoto and Hellion within her, which was all the confirmation that they needed and so their expressions soured. For her part as she saw their expressions Emily frowned and pouted, defensively saying “Eh? Wow I can really feel the love guys. What has your panties up in a bunch?” Kyoto just maintained a flat expression on her face, while Hellion heaved a sigh.

“I think you can guess Emily. You only ever contact us like this when you have another update you want to roll out, and long experience has shown your track record for them has been...less than stellar.” At that Emily just pouted a bit more and looked put out, making Kyoto sigh along with Hellion before she began to move. “Yeah, yeah, we are on our way. Be there soon.” Moving with a general lack of enthusiasm Kyoto made her way back to the Admin area, where the update would take effect.

Arriving at the destination, Kyoto paused by the door to the lab and knocked. Chances were as usual that this would be for Hellion alone and so she would be removing him from her body, but then to her surprise Emily called them both in. Kyoto was not quite sure how to take this, as on the one hand it was nice to be included but on the other hand the one time she had been involved in these upgrades had resulted in the Tennis game. Emily focused once again on her sour expression and scoffed, saying “Honestly, it can't be that bad. Anyway, just hold on while I toggle the settings.”

This statement elected a pair of raised eyebrows from the targets, as this was admittedly a bit of a change. For once it seemed an item was not going to be involved in this. A few moments later there was a ping, and both of them received a notification of “Faction Status Updated.” Nothing else seemed to happen at first, but then they noted that Kyoto's clothes had changed style slightly to more closely resemble that of the Genbu guildhouse. A part of Hellion suspected that similar changes would have come over him as well, if he was not already wearing the uniform. After a few seconds of nothing else apparently happening, Kyoto turned her attention back away from her clothes and to Emily.

Glad to go over her latest idea, Emily explained “Considering all the trouble you had with activating and using items before, I decided to try something that should probably be fool proof. I know that it's a little against my usual feelings regarding game balance, but to be honest I am starting to run a little low on ideas. Simply put, I have given both of you 'Highly Valued' status with the Genbu Faction, beyond what a player would normally be able to achieve through quests. All NPC's will have max affinity with you, placing greater value on you.”

This sounded interesting to Hellion, but he could not help but feel that he was missing something. Sure having maximum affinity might look good on the faction page and would lead to the best discounts, but he was not sure how that was really going to benefit him in the long run. Thankfully when he raised this concern with a direct “Em, that sounds good and all, but what is that really going to change for me?” she was able to answer straight away, showing that she Had put some thought into this.

“Well its actually kind of brilliant if I do say so myself. I checked and double checked just to be sure, and in the current system reputation has a higher priority than basic checks, at least when it comes to ranks high enough to have titles, like you do now. Every Genbu NPC is going to become aware of your position as soon as you enter the same room or get within 20 feet of them.” The blondes words filled Hellion with growing panic, as it meant there would be no hiding from them at all any more and-

Emily cut off his worries by speaking quickly, spotting and correctly guessing the source of his widening eyes and paling expression. “Wait, calm down and let me finish. They will know where you are, and more importantly instantly consider you in the best possible regard. No accidental or purposeful crushes, you are exempt from the usual anti-Tinykin responses as a sort of Mascot. Actually, that's kind of your title right now.” Hellion wasted no time in reopening his inventory screen and checking his status, and found that she was indeed telling the truth. Sure it was a little degrading to be relegated to mascot status, but considering his other option was to remain in the realm of ‘pest’ he would take it.

Seeing the boy calm down on her screen, Emily relaxed too and continued to calm his fears. “The same thing is even going to apply to the players too. While they obviously won't be able to detect you unless they specifically look at their maps, you will have the title displayed front and centre marking you as allied and not to be harmed. Of course I can't really promise much about how the players will react, but as an added bonus since you will be officially marked as being on their side you are also immune to their attacks. Friendly-fireproof for the win!”

As before Hellion considered the information that he had been given regarding this upgrade, and found nothing seemed to be glaringly wrong at this moment in time. Of course also as before he was aware that there was probably something about it that he was missing, some lost detail or unexpected caveat that was going to blow back on him, but considering he could not think of it there was not much point in arguing about it. If/when this inevitably blew up in his face he would point out the flaws as usual, and checking with Kyoto he was glad to find that she was agreeing with him on this as well.

The overall point being there was no reason to worry until there was reason to worry, so he simply said through Kyoto “Thank you Emily. I know it's annoying to compromise your sense of fairplay like this, and I do appreciate it.” These kind words were followed up by Kyoto giving her a hug, an action that Emily took smiling and returning it just as hard. With that there was nothing else for it but to try it out, starting with just Kyoto for safety. Emily stayed behind, mentioning that she needed to finish off preparations for an upcoming event for the game. Returning to the Genbu guild hall the woman was met with a hearty greeting from the first maid that she passed, as well as a follow up from a patrolling guard.

Kyoto had gotten some of these reactions before, but it was still nice to see and felt good to be acknowledged. Walking around some more showed that as advertised all of the NPC’s were reacting accordingly, and the players were able to see Kyoto’s title indicating her high value status to the guild and asked what she had done to achieve it. Kyoto deflected the questions as best she could, saying that it was a bit of a secret that she could not share. This annoyed some of the girls, but they accepted it regardless.

However for all that was good, they still needed to perform the main test of the updates viability. To that end Kyoto entered the washroom and removed Hellion from her body, holding him carefully on her open palm. She confirmed with him that he now indeed did have a title indicating his status, but now was the moment of truth. Stepping out into the hallway, almost immediately the mech nearly ran into another girl, and Hellion was shaken a bit by the sudden jerks and had to take a knee. He turned his gaze upwards to see a face framed in black hair looking down at him, and he gulped as her expression screwed up first in suspicion but then confusion.

After what felt like an eternity but was likely just a few seconds the girl at last responded, saying “Genbu…mascot? Huh.” The girl's expression relaxed into a more honest confusion and interest, which made Hellion relax a bit internally as well. Thinking quickly he adjusted his kneeling position into a more relaxed and comfortable sit, not reacting overmuch to the girl and trying to seem non-threatening and unbothered. This un-Tinykin behaviour combined with Kyoto cutting in with a quick explanation/story about him being a newly implemented feature and connected to her own high rank waylaid her confusion and distrust.

The girl looked thoughtful for a few moments, before shrugging and adopting a small smile. “Well, I suppose that’s cute enough. If it stays as well behaved as this unlike the other one’s then I have no problem with it.” It irked Hellion a bit to be referred to in such a diminutive way, but if it kept him from being smashed than he supposed that it was a small sacrifice to make. “If nothing else it’s an interesting change of pace.” With that said the girl walked off, continuing on her way and leaving behind a spark of hope in the mech and tiny boy.

With that initial reaction out of the way Hellion's spirits and hopes were raised, and this upwards trend only increased as the pair entered one of the rest lounges in the guild and came across a trio of NPC cadets. As soon as they entered Hellion and Kyoto were greeted by a mild exclamation of “Ah! Miss Kyoto is here and she has our guild mascot.” Hellion indicated to Kyoto to bring him closer to the couch the trio were sitting on, and as he was approaching the girls their expressions of mild glee seemed to indicate that this was working properly as well.

Without a hint of distaste or hostility on their faces the cadets simply sat and awaited his approach, and once Kyoto was in range all three of them let out small squeals of “cute.”  The leader of the group, sitting in the middle and with a pair of long green braids then leaned forwards a bit, her hand reaching out palm up until it was right next to Kyoto. Taking the hint the mech likewise offered her palm, placing it so close that it was possible for Hellion to walk over. It was a risk to be sure, and many things could go wrong, but Hellion still held out hope that perhaps this time things would go well, and so took the metaphorical and literal step to wander onto the NPC’s palm.

As soon as she had possession of Hellion the girl carefully moved her hand to a more stable position, and Hellion was able to easily enough lower himself to keep from falling over. The two girls on either side of the green haired cadet moved forwards a bit so that they could get a closer look at Hellion, and the boy was briefly reminded of his first day in the game where something like this scene occurred between him and Emily, McKenzie and Lucy. However unlike that time instead of him being lifted up and dropped into the girls mouth, her other hand rose up from the side with one finger extended.

The tiny might have worried at this, except he was familiar with the action from it occurring a few times already with Kyoto. Instead Hellion tilted his head in the right direction, and was rewarded with a mostly soft fingertip landing on top of his head and rubbing back and forth. As he was petted he noted that the girl to the left had her hands gripped tightly in front of her chest, visibly trying to not squee, while the other just tilted her head making an “aww” sound. Even Kyoto was not unaffected, as while she was keeping an eye on him she was also thinking that the scene was pretty wholesome.

Eventually and to minor protestations from the NPC cadets Kyoto retrieved Hellion and left the room, holding him close to avoid any accidents in the halls. Once they were more alone the tiny piped up, saying “Okay then, both the NPC’s and players are reacting like Emily hoped and intended, and this has not backfired yet. Still these have just been two semi-isolated events, should we go ahead and stress-test this a little by going to a more populated area?” The mech looked thoughtful for a few seconds before nodding in agreement, and proceeded to head to the cafeteria.

What followed was a solid two hours of good times, for once Hellion getting to experience them as himself and not just through Kyoto. There had been a few more girls in the room than anticipated, but enough NPC’s were present that their positive reaction to the tiny in Kyoto’s hand informed more or less how the players treated him. There was a fair bit of cooing and ahhing, as apparently just being labelled as a “mascot” was enough to overcome by now dislike or apathy for most Tinykin. A few times a new comer would walk up wondering what was happening and take a swipe at him, but that was put to a stop quickly enough, especially once word began to spread more quickly.

There was at times a bit of a barrage of unsolicited pettings and grabs for him, and more than once Hellion was subject to an unexpected hug into a soft bosom, but over all things were kept to a reasonable level. The tiny even got to eat loads of actual food offered to him so that others could watch him eat, something he could only occasionally do with Kyoto and no one else in the safety of the Admin area. One near miss with Emily and a bowl of cereal was enough for him.

In the end both Hellion and Kyoto were able to leave so that the latter could “log out,” in actuality just returning to the admin area tired but happy. When they arrived they found Emily had already logged out so they could not tell her the good news, but they shrugged it off as something that could wait until tomorrow. Before they turned in for the night, Hellion entering Kyoto so that he might rest on the island in her stomach, they spoke to each other about how this seemed to be going rather well. Now Hellion might be able to safely get some actual sunlight for once, and not just experience it through Kyoto or artificial sources.

The next day dawned and the pair woke up nigh simultaneously, faint lights in front of them distracting and disturbing them as they opened their eyes. In a bit of eerie synchronization they waved their hands in front of their faces to try and remove the distraction, which unfortunately for them dismissed a system message that they probably would have wanted to see. They did not notice what happened however, and simply went about their morning as per normal.

Once they were ready they decided to go out again, once more having Hellion outside of Kyoto. Partly it was perhaps pushing their luck, but a part of it was also both of them subconsciously thinking something was going to go wrong eventually, and so they might as well milk this for all it was worth. Leaving the admin area to Genbu academy, they noted to themselves that the NPCs and students were looking a little tense. They decided to perhaps question it later, and left the confines of the guild hall for the courtyard in front of the main gate.

As they arrived they saw a few players huddled near the gate, and overheard on of them saying something about “-ollage is getting hit by the red coats, so maybe we should…” Confused Kyoto walked over to the group, and asked them “Umm, excuse me, what is going on?” The girl who had been speaking, a blue haired former/current classmate of Hellion named Hinako seemed to slightly misunderstand what the mech meant, and so summarised “Just catching everyone up on the current status of the PvP event. The private school girls are hitting Byakko pretty hard, so we were thinking of going after them while their fighters are away.”

Hinako continued to speak about her budding plan, but by now Kyoto and Hellion were not really listening. As one both of them looked at each other, Kyoto down and Hellion up as their simultaneously said “PvP Event?!” Then almost as if summoned by those words, a mass of green came out from behind the grass just outside of the gate, and resolved into a small battlegroup of Seiryuu students wielding their weapons.

With a battlecry from the tens of throats of “Crusade!” the Catholic School girls streamed in through the gates, catching the Genbu students off guard and forcing them to briefly retreat to form a battleline. Kyoto was also forced to hesitantly do so, and considering her fighting style was purely melee with Hellion in her hands she was temporarily defenceless. While she did that Hellion just tried to hold on, all while quickly opening his menu and scrolling through it until he found the announcement he had accidentally dismissed just this morning.

As Kyoto managed to get away from the initial charge her master called up, quickly summarizing the reason for this situation now that he was informed. “Ah shit, this isn’t good. Kyoto, Emily and the other game masters came up with a new event due to some player feedback, a massive free for all. The usual pacification fields around the guild houses have been turned off, and points are being awarded for player kills and raiding the guildhouses. Damages will be restored at the end of the day, but for now it's going to be a warzone out there!”

Kyoto nodded along in understanding, realizing that in this chaos things could go south quickly, and so it would be best to get her master safely in her command centre sooner rather than later. She opened her mouth and raised her hand to it in preparation for getting Hellion inside of her, but she was interrupted by a shout from one of the Seiryuu girls. “Hey! That girl is marked as super high ranking and important, let's get’er!” With that a surge of players in green charged towards the mech, and she was unable to get Hellion inside of her. The Genbu students tried to rally, but the concentrated push shoved them aside, and Kyoto was laid bare. She did try to fight back, but a particularly speedy enemy managed to tag her with an explosion from behind, and she was sent sprawling.

Hellion was launched out of the mech's grasp when she fell, and was briefly sent flying through the air before landing on the walkway in front of the guild hall leading to the gate. He turned to see Kyoto struggling to get up and fight back, which to her credit she was doing, but it was hard going. Then a shadow fell over him, and instinctively he rolled to the side and barely managed to avoid ending up underneath a black loafer belonging to a Seiryuu student. However there was no follow up stomp nor sight of her moving away, instead the girl was standing over him looking down at his prone form. Then a devious smile crossed her face, and with a voice that might as well have been the keel of funeral bells she said “Hey…if this is the Genbu’s mascot, imagine how many points it must be worth!”

Hellion felt his stomach drop out beneath him, as he did recall something in the announcement about how more valuable items being raided were indeed worth more points. So here he was officially marked as a faction’s “mascot” in the middle of a pitched battle. He tried to get up and run, but in a swift movement the girl simply crouched down exposing her panties briefly before snatching him up. Surprisingly this was not followed up by the sensation of popping, although the pressure was there.

It turned out that when making the event, there had been some worries about items being destroyed or wrecked during the fighting, and the stress that might put on the restoration servers. As such a temporary fix was put into place, wherein items above a certain “rarity/value” and below a certain size used in the game were made nigh-invulnerable, and it just so happened Hellion fit into both of those categories. As such he was technically safer than usual, not that he knew that.

Instead Hellion was left shouting his head off in fear, not that anyone not named Kyoto or Emily would have heard it as anything other than squeaking. The girls grip on him was too strong, and since her weapon of choice was clearly magic based on the bolt of ice launched out of her free hand she was not hindered in combat like Kyoto had been. However then things took an unexpected turn for the little guy, as a fist seemed to come out of nowhere and clock the mage girl upside the head. As she stumbled and started to drop the fist opened and grabbed onto Hellion, ripping him out of the Seiryuu girls grip and into another.

Hellion looked up slightly dazed and saw the visage of Hinako looking at him in determination, the boy a little unsure of just what was going on. That mystery was soon answered as the pale eyed girl looked out over the battle and brought Hellion in her grip to her chest, nearly burying him in her abundant cleavage. “Come on girls! Fight them off! We must protect our guild and precious mascot!” The sentiment was in a way kind of sweet, if not for how Hinako jumped away from another attack while still holding him to her chest, making her boobs bounce and bash into him a few times.

Things remained chaotic over the next few minutes, the two sides continuing to fight as weapons, fists, projectiles and magic flew everywhere filling the air with the din of battle. During this time Hellion was fiercely fought over, Hinako eventually literally tossing him to one of her classmates so that she could have both hands free to fight. Most of the time Hellion was in the grasp of Genbu, but sometimes an assailant from Seiryuu would get a hold of him. During all of this the tiny tried to keep an eye out for Kyoto, as for obvious reasons he felt safest with her.

At last things seemed to take a turn for the better, a Genbu healer grabbing Hellion and moving in the direction of Kyoto who was visibly hurt but holding on, dispatching an opponent by the gate. Looking around the mech spotted Hellion, and he could not help but wave at her as he came closer and closer, and her eyes widened in happiness. Then they widened for an entirely different reason, as she stiffened up considerably and looked down to see the spike of pointed metal protruding out her front from her back. Before she could do anything else the sword was withdrawn and she collapsed, revealing the sight of a girl in a white uniform looking slightly smugly around the battlefield.

“Hope we are not too late to the party” the redheaded Byakko student smirked, before more of them moved in through the gates next to her and joined in the battle. As they fell upon the alright slightly tired sides like the tigers of their school seal, Hellion could only stare as Kyoto vanished in a flash of light like every other defeated avatar. This situation just became much more complicated, in more ways than one.

The crusade of the Seiryuu group was caught between the defenders of Genbu and the hunters of Byakko, but they certainly put up one hell of a fight. Fighting with a light hearted religious fervor the girls in green stood firm, and it was clear from the banter flying around that for all the viciousness this was all still in good fun for all sides. Now with the greater chaos Hellion was shuffled around all the more, sometimes even ending up dropped on the ground and blinded by the kicked-up dust of so many feet running around.

It was on one such occasion that things came to a head, as his running path looking for ANY sort of cover was cut off by a wall of black, and the nominal Tinykin and mascot looked up to see the long white hair of one of the lead Seiryuu girls looking down at him in triumph. Before he could do anything another foot smashed down behind him, and a glance showed Hinako squaring up for a fight. Then the trifecta was achieved as the redheaded Byakko leader stepped in as well, boxing Hellion in between a triangle of slightly bloodthirsty girls. Taking it all in, Hellion could not help himself, and cried to the heavens “Oh lord, could this get any worse?”

Just then a shadow fell across Hellion, but he was not alone. The trio surrounding him were also left in the dark, and in fact the entire battlefield was. This confusing turn of events led to most looking around and then up to locate the source, and then all fighting dying down as the cause was taken in. Standing above everyone was a girl, her red uniform clearly marking her as a Suzaku private high student, and she had her hands on her hips and a smug look on her face as she leaned forwards to look down on everyone. Still smirking the girl said “Well hello everyone, lovely day for a fight isn’t it?” She then proceeded to lift up one leg and hover a foot over the scene of chaos below, and continued “I didn’t see any rule about needing to be logged into the game to participate!” Naturally the air quickly filled with desperate shouts of foul play, unfair and above all cheating, but as the foot slammed down like a meteor Hellion only had one thing to say.

“That was not a challenge God!”

Emily sighed deeply to herself as she sat alone in her room, her real world room, idly drumming her fingers on her desktop as she was deep in thought. Hellion and Kyoto were still a fair bit salty about the results of the Factional update, and both of them had flat out declined to even come in to see her newest plan for them. Not that she could really fully blame them, considering the over half a dozen times the previous attempts had backfired one way or another. On the other hand there also were not any real lasting consequences, so wasn’t it a bit of an overreaction of them to scream when she started to tell them and then run out the door? She might have even gotten more offended at their obvious excuse that they needed to go and help some new players clear out a new aggressive anthill, if it wasn’t for the fact that they were actually following through with that, and would be busy for the rest of the day clearing tunnels.

The blonde continued to sit in silence as she glanced at her computer and headset. The more she thought about things the more she felt like the pair were blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Yes they had encountered difficulties before, but surely it could not all have been just bad luck? They had to at least partially take responsibility for what happened to them, as it strained credulity that so much could go so wrong so fast. On the other hand, upon self-reflection Emily had to admit that she might not be looking at things from the right angle. She always had her full Super Admin powers available right at her finger tips, while Kyoto and Hellion were much more limited.

“Looking at things from the right angle…” Emily quietly spoke the words out loud to herself, something about them sticking in her mind something fierce. The programmer spun the phrase around in her head several times before it came to her in a flash of insight, a way to perhaps get a better perspective on things, literally. Like lighting the girl straightened up at her desk and woke up her computer, eyes flashing as she looked over her previous work. Checking and double checking things she selected the programming for emergency reduction that had resulted in Hellion’s poolside adventure, and made some simple modifications.

This time the creation and coding process only took an hour or two, mostly because the bulk of the work had already been completed in the past by her. Emily just needed to adjust the targeting parameters and ensure all of the triggers and timers were showing the correct values. Finally her latest work was complete, a single use item that would reduce her in-game avatar down to the size of a Tinykin. This way she would be able to experience her world the same way that Hellion did, and to make the experience as authentic as possible she was going to be disabling all of her Admin abilities, immunities and powers. Of course not being an idiot she also made sure that the effect would end after two hours time had passed, or if she should happen to die.

With everything set Emily made preparations to enter the game, firing off a quick text to Lucy and McKenzie about how she was going to be busy testing things for the next few hours and to not be disturbed. The girl even prepared herself to test out the new boon for Hellion and Kyoto herself, to prove that they were blowing things out of proportion. Just before she pressed the button to enter the game a spark of insight made her freeze, and she slowly thought about what she was about to do. More specifically she thought about that upgrade, and for once followed through on assuming a worst-case scenario.

The plan had been to grant Hellion/Kyoto an in game pet, a digital cat with basic AI that would seek to help and protect Kyoto loyally. Not very powerful or capable of true combat, it was programmed to seek out Tinykin and remove them, making areas safer for Hellion to be in. The trick was she had programmed it for Hellion/Kyoto, so if she Emily was in the same area as it when it was active, it would see her as just another Tinykin and react appropriately. That would end up…messy. In fact, while it was true she had registered Hellion as one of its owners, had Emily actually put in anything about that fact that would override its reaction to Tinykin? The admin stretched her mind but realized that she actually had not. “Well…consider THAT bullet dodged…” the girl said to herself before disabling the pet and THEN pushing the button to enter the game.

Briefly Emily considered conducting her test of what it was like to be a Tinykin out in one of the guild halls, but she discarded that idea after a few minutes thought. Her reasoning was two sides of the same coin, wanting to avoid trouble and not wanting to skew her results. It was to her just common sense to not turn herself into a near helpless tiny target within range of people who had been all but Pavlovian trained to smash things like that, which raised some interesting questions regarding why Hellion did it. On that note and the reverse side she wanted to prove that if you were smart and careful you could avoid danger even at this small size, and so if she went out asking for it then it would defeat the purpose of this test. As such Emily logged into the Admin area, and walked herself over to one of the more comfortable lounges before pulling out the item.

With it in one hand she opened up her menu and flipped over to the new page she had made for herself, the one dictating what size she would become, for how long, and the condition that death would end it no matter how long was left on the timer. She had even given herself a backup in the form of a delayed command to grant her Admin rights again. Should she end up stuck in two hours and five minutes she would be granted Super Admin status like she already had, and it was not a toggle so getting it when she already had it would not turn it off, instead just doing nothing. Using the item was as simple as giving it a firm squeeze, and in a flash of light Emily began to glow and shrink.

Emily had purposefully made the process a little slower, and so she was able to watch as the comfortable looking room expanded all around her bit by bit, and she could not help but feel excited. She really had a major interest in shrinking and giant mundane surroundings, which was part of the reason she had made the World Online the way she had. She had of course explored the schools and their grounds a bit as a part of the game, but between bug fixes, event planning, creating the special boons for her friend and searching for a way to restore him, she had not gotten the chance to see as much of this sort of thing as she would have liked. Perhaps that was part of the reason she was even willing to try this.

At last after a minute the glow around Emily stopped, and she was able to take in the enormity of the room. It was honestly a fairly small one, just a table, two couches, a television stand and other such furniture on carpeted floors, but for her now it was a stadium. The tables legs were like monoliths, and the couches vast edifices with dark shadowy undersides. One might worry about hidden insects under them, but contrary to the rumor started by the time Hellion had gone out in the near invincible armour Emily had no intention of actually making any “small” bugs, and beyond that she made sure no hostile mobs could spawn in the Admin area. 

Emily walked around a bit on the carpet, taking the chance to look around with glee. Being under a canopy of grass or the vast open sky was always a treat, but getting to see massive furniture and carpeting up to her shins was a rarity and all the more valuable for it. The girl did not put much care in her path, wandering around the room away from the furniture out in the open. The temporary Tinykin was all grins as she looked around, and voiced out loud with confidence “I really do not see what Hellion's big problem is. This is amazing, and if he was just a little more careful than nothing could possibly go wrong.” That confidence took a rather major hit a few seconds later, and her smile grew slightly more forced when suddenly the door to the Admin area opened up wide.

Striding into the room with confidence was the less than expected figure of Sabrina, the older blonde followed and then flanked by McKenzie and Lucy. Emily had not been anticipating seeing Sabrina in particular because quite aside from the woman not having the most time to spend entering and “playing” the game the last Emily had heard Sabrina had been busy dealing with a complex issue at her mothers company. Her two friends and roommates were easier to explain, as there was nothing stopping them entering the game and playing without her, and they often did so, McKenzie more often than Lucy.

The miniaturized girl’s confusion at their presence was then echo’d by McKenzie, who asked “So anyway Sabrina, what did you want to see us about?” Emily was momentarily distracted from listening to the answer, as she was a bit more focused on the trio in front of her. Emily had seen enormous girls before obviously, it was nigh impossible not to do so when not all of the various student bodies were aware of the game and even the ones that did still had to go to classes and lived on campus, yet this time was different. Emily actually knew these girls, and gazing upon them from this lower angle sent small thrills up her spine.

Obviously Sabrina was front and centre in more ways than one, the tallest of them all and standing out from the other two because of her usual lab coat and skirt instead of the Admin uniform. She had a presence about her that spoke of confidence bordering on arrogance, and her pale face framed by her light blonde hair gave her an almost divine quality. This was not to say that her friends were not fascinating to see in their own rights. McKenzie exuded a sense of energy and slight menace, while Lucy seemed more solid and imperious than ever. Plus their features that she recognized when full sized, facial expressions, bust sizes, and length of their legs just felt like “more” than she ever expected. She supposed that there was a difference between seeing someone you did not know as a massive giantess compared to a person you were familiar with.

Emily was shaken out of her slightly dazed musings by two things, the first of which was Sabrina’s reply and the second was the fact that the three were still walking into the room and she happened to be in the middle of the floor between them and the table. Feeling a rush of energy and thrill entering her body Emily instinctively teleported away, or rather she tried to. That feature was tied to her admin status and so since she did not have that currently it resulted in her just standing there. Emily looked up to see Sabrina step on top of her, only she was between the womans low heel and the sole so while it was very close, the darker blonde survived. Above she heard the older woman say as she stepped down and then past her “I was able to resolve a bit of a complex issue at work, confidential so I can’t give you details sorry, and decided to celebrate a little. It’s a shame that Emily is busy, I would have invited her too. At least I talked to you two first so I didn’t bother her.”

Emily was left alone on the floor as the three giantesses walked past her, and looking forwards then back she could clearly see the imprint of the woman’s shoeprint in the carpet, slowly rising back up into place as if it never existed. Turning her attention back to them and catching solid glimpses of their underwear and rears, the tiny girl could only have one reaction. “That was AMAZING!” Emily was slightly flushed from the experience, her adrenaline running strong and lightly reveling in the rush of the close shave. Unlike Hellion or to an extent Kyoto who would have been feeling dread or fear, Emily was a bit different, and it was only making her more excited.

Still, for all that her judgement might have been slightly clouded by the excitement Emily was also self-aware enough to realize that her experiences and reactions might not match up with other peoples. She could at least see how Hellion might not have enjoyed what had just happened as much as she had, and after taking a moment she calmed down slightly and moved on. Logically the best course of action now would be to keep out of the trio’s way, and much as she would like to bask a little more in their enormity she did like to think of herself as better than that. On the other hand this was an opportunity, and so moving towards one of the couches Emily hurriedly scaled up the front side of it until she reached the top on one cushion.

Standing on one side of the couch, Emily looked around and enjoyed the view from this slightly elevated position. The trio of other females in the room were just as fascinating to watch and observe as they had been from below, and Emily planned to keep out of the way a little bit while keeping a close eye on them. She even made sure to stay away from the side of the couch Sabrina was nearer to, just in case. Of course this perfectly good plan of action was more or less thrown out the window when Sabrina said “Alright then, so let's get this celebration STARTED!”

Too late did Emily see the open holographic screen in front of Sabrina, as she pushed the last few buttons. Within the space of seconds the entire room changed in a ripple outwards from Sabrina’s location, foodstuffs appearing on the table, some streamers hung across the ceiling, music playing a touch loudly from materializing speakers, and shreds of digital confetti drifting down through the air towards the ground. The main programmer realized that Sabrina had co-opted one of her own special programs, a minor birthday celebration for Hellion actually, but at least he and Kyoto were not here to see it and ruin the surprise.

However that was quite distinctly a secondary concern at the moment, as the three women began to move around the room to enjoy it, Sabrina moving to take a seat on the couch, Lucy grabbing some food, and critically McKenzie wanting to dance to the music. Sabrina suddenly dropping onto the couch caught her off guard, and she was sent flying off of the furniture as the far side of the cushion she was on was consumed under Sabrina’s ass. The tiny girl was flung through the air towards the open space by the door, and as she got up she felt the thundering approach of McKenzie.

The orange haired girl moved deceptively fast, and Emily had to move quickly to get out of her way. Then the little girl had to keep moving quickly, as unfortunately the song playing was a fast one and McKenzie’s feet were more than up to the task at hand of keeping up. The entire portion of carpet where she was standing was rapidly trampled down, and while Emily was not a coward she also did not want her experience and fun to end early. At one point Emily thought that she was far enough away, only for the booted foot of McKenzie to smash down not all that far from the tiny’s position and prompt her to keep going.

Her unplanned dash ended up bringing her closer to Lucy and Sabrina, the blonde woman in particular. Perhaps it had been a more instinctive choice, either out of genuine interest or just subconsciously thinking that boots were more dangerous than heels, but that was how things worked out. Emily found herself panting a little bit as she slowed down near the couch, a little surprised at how much the running had taken out of her. She realized that before she was almost always just walking when she was out questing in the game, and that was when she was not cooped up in the lab working on things. Frankly if it wasn’t for her somewhat infrequent baseball practice she might even be worse off. Even the couple of times when greater speed might have been desired when a student came around while she was out of the guild halls she had usually just accepted the death and let herself respawn.

Still not everything was bad about this, as with Sabrina seated Emily felt safer approaching her heels and getting a closer look. Striding closer to the other female, now so close that she could not see her face or upper body due to the couch being in the way, Emily was able to marvel at the appearance of the shoe writ large. The tanned girl could see every minor imperfection, few as there were in the surface of the shoe, small bumps and micro-scratches only barely taking away from the overall smooth surface. The black leather was polished to a near mirror shine, and in fact once she got close enough Emily was indeed able to see a faint and distorted but visibly present reflection of her face. This was to say nothing of the size of it all, seeing it from this close made it seem even larger than it really was, and if she listened closely the girl could hear the low sounds of the leather flexing or nylon strands stretching.

Emily was so smitten and focused on the majesty of the heel that she failed to pay it due heed or give it ample space, and so in hindsight what happened next was honestly her own fault. Getting comfortable Sabrina lightly crossed one foot over the other after she picked up a drink, and in the process the tip of her shoe hit Emily and launched her away, sending her flying under the table. The little girl was winded but fine as she came for a rolling landing, however as she stopped and looked up she saw that she was not out of the woods just yet. She had landed just to the side of Lucy who was still munching away, and then the glasses-clad girl turned slightly to the side to see and greet McKenzie as she walked over. The formerly dancing girl asked her “So what is good in the spread?” and retrieved her own plate to start loading up.

Below Emily found herself between all four of their feet as they faced each other, and not direction seemed to be safe as they shifted their positions and stances to reach for various items on the table next to them. Emily was left scrambling around a bit in front of their boots, and this lasted a minute or two before Lucy bit into something a little stronger than expected. Her sudden cough and full body shudder made her relax her grip on her plate just a little, and a few things fell down to join the confetti and Emily on the floor. In particular a glob of thick dip dropped down and landed on Emily’s head, burying her in it and briefly rendering her stunned and immobile.

Luckily for the now tasty girl Lucy was not the type to reach down and eat off of the floor, and while McKenzie might have been a bit of a proponent of the 5-second rule she wasn’t going to do it in front of her friend, especially when it was not her food to begin with. This did not mean Emily was not at risk though, as the viscous goop was sticky and difficult to escape from, which was not idea when you were on the ground between a quartet of booted feet. Still Emily gave her very best of it, even as the sounds of crunchier snacks turning into crumbs under treads filled the air around her, and she noted to herself that the dip could use a little less onion.

Finally after several close calls including one moment where the edge of McKenzie’s tread touched the opposite side of the drop before sliding away in the opposite direction Emily managed to free herself. Again out of habit she tried to will herself clean, but once more that was an admin power that she did not currently possess. As such she had to make her own way out of the splash zone, feeling heavy and just a little smelly from the lingering dip soaking her clothes. Another thing she had to note Hellion needed to deal with more often than not, at least for her it was just dip and not something worse.

Having had enough near-death experiences for the hour Emily made her way under the nearest couch, chosen both for its close proximity and also because it was not the one currently being sat upon by Sabrina. It took another minute but the girl made it, only to discover the unfortunate results when one entered a notably dusty environment when one was covered in something sticky. In short order Emily resembled not much more than a mobile dust bunny, mostly because she had dripped over a tiny rock and landed face first in the dust. Holding back a sneeze or five the girl turned around and looked out at the group, who seemed to be winding down a bit from the revelry.

Sabrina laughed as she walked around the side of the table, grabbing one last drink off it and downing it. The simulated world really was something else in her opinion, able to do things like make a soda that tasted perfect while remaining cold and just the right amount of carbonated. She might not have moved much from her spot on the couch, but that was fine as the two young women sharing the little celebration with her were energetic enough for all three of them. Plus after the running around she needed to do at the company, getting the chance to just sit back and relax really was her idea of a good time at the moment. Besides, it was fun to watch the two girls interact and telling stories about various subjects including the missing Emily did not require standing.

Still she only had so much time to spare, and standing before the two girls she said “Thank you so much for joining me, this has been wonderful. However I do sort of have to go, but its been nice seeing you both. Tell Emily I said hi.” Based on the conversation that McKenzie and Lucy were having they agreed that since it was just the three of them the half-hour party was good enough, and that they should get going too. However there was still the issue of the spilled food, confetti everywhere, and general light disarray of the room to deal with, but Sabrina was prepared.

Emily breathed a small sigh of relief as she heard the trio getting ready to leave, and then coughed once or twice from nearly inhaling more dust. Still, the miniature university student figured that despite this hiccup, things were not all bad. Once the three were far enough away she dashed out towards the table, thinking it would be safe out in the open now seeing as no one else was nearby. “They are leaving, so I will be left alone here amid the remains of the party safe and sound. Maybe I can even snag some of the dropped food? I mean the worst is behind me surely.” As she finished speaking Emily heard the sound of Sabrina talking above, and what the woman said had Emily cursing herself out about “Me and my big mouth…”

“Alright, let’s head out now. Don’t worry about the mess, I activated the cleaners.” Sabrina was satisfied as she started to head towards the door, prompting the other two to follow in mild confusion as to what she meant. They were answered when the door to the room opened up, and a quartet of NPC Maids walked into the room carrying or pushing cleaning supplies, and as one they all curtsied in greeting. “Excellent. Okay ladies, I want you to give the room a good cleaning top to bottom.” Command given the blonde walked out the door, followed by the other two girls leaving the maids to their work. As she turned towards the log out panel Sabrina thought that it was a real shame Emily could not have joined them, it would have been nice to see her.

Back in the room Emily was feeling a number of different things, some mild interest in seeing the maids she had designed like this combined with worry regarding what was going to come and finally a sense of mild annoyance that she was not going to be getting any food. Turning to run the little blonde haired girl only barely managed to get away in time, as while the maids spread out one headed straight towards the table. Brandishing a cloth she began to wipe off the top of the table, sending more crumbs and such falling to the floor around Emily. On top of that the loafers the maid wore as part of her uniform came far too close to Emily for her liking, although the chance to glance upwards up the skirt before she was too far away was a minor upside.

Emily might have liked to return to the cover under the couch, but that was not an option as one of the other maids moved to the couch to adjust and neaten up the cushions. Her legs were carrying her all around the front of the couch as she made adjustments here and there making everything perfect, and brave as she might be Emily did not want to risk that particular guessing game. Instead the temporary Tinykin was left running away from the door and most of the furniture, realizing just a minute too late that there also was not any particularly good cover in this direction. Hearing the sounds of a third maid moving off to the side the girl looked that way wondering if she might have already been spotted, or if she was about to enter an impromptu game of Red Light, Green Light. Neither was the case, but that was because the truth was arguably worse.

The maid had just finished moving a machine towards the corner of the room, and now that she and it were in place turned around and turned it on, starting her particular cleaning task. To Emily’s silent horror, she watched as the maid turned in her direction brandishing a large upright vacuum cleaner that roared louder than a hurricane. Naturally the girl turned and bolted straight away, but it was no use. The strides of the maid moved her and the vacuum at a solid pace, and tiny little Emily found she was slowed down thanks to a mixture of the heavy dip and the shin high carpet. Covered in dirt the way she was, Emily was dismissed by the maid as a simple dust ball, destined to be tidied up. The cleaning woman even could tell where she had and had not been due to the confetti being eaten by the machine.

Emily gave it her all in her run, she truly did, but right now she was brought face to face with the fact that at this scale even moving your fastest was sometimes just plain not fast enough. The edge of the vacuum nearly caught up to her, and Emily felt the wind start to pull her back before the machine was pulled away. It then came back and she had only moved so much forwards, and this time the suction was enough to bring her to a stop and pulled her feet out from under her before it left. Emily never got the chance to even get back up off her knees before the vacuum was pressed forwards for the last time, and feeling like a leaf in a tornado the girl was yanked off the ground and up into the dark interior of the vacuum.

By some miracle Emily survived bouncing around the interior hoses of the machine, and she ended up inside of the canister hopper. Her every thought was nearly drowned out by the roar of the winds of the machine, and she felt like she was being beaten by countless rocks as the dust and everything else swirled around. By some stroke of luck she managed to end up landing in a small recess, and managed to wedge herself there so at least she was not flung around any more. However Emily could tell that this was only a minor upgrade, as more and more dust filled the air, and she just knew based on the spilled food and the underside of the couches holding so much dust that this place was going to fill up quickly.

As she began to contemplate how the remainder of her hour before her admin privileges came back would go, if she even lasted that long that is, Emily also went over everything that had happened since the idea to try this had occurred to her. Her idea regarding the pet cat in hindsight also would have had flaws that eventually would backfire on Hellon, just like every other time. She had shrunk herself down in a safe place, only for Sabrina, Lucy and McKenzie to unexpectedly enter said space. She had only narrowly avoided doom several times at their feet and other parts, more luck than anything. Then once she had thought the danger had passed an entirely new threat had emerged, trapping her in this position. She had been more or less careful, and yet everything had spiralled out of control and barely let up on her for a moment.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, but as a scrap of confetti whipped through the air and briefly wrapped around her head, and she felt the dust build up starting to consume her feet, Emily came to a conclusion. “Okay, maybe Hellion DOES have a point about how dangerous things are at this size, and that it isn’t all his fault.” The next moment the girl was even more glad that she had merely thought that realization and not spoken it, as in that time the maid moved the vacuum over the spot where the food had fallen, and she ended up getting another glob of dip smacking into the back of her head.

This whole process continued for another quarter hour, more and more dust and debris piling up in the machine and slowly forcing Emily to crawl upwards to avoid becoming fully buried in dust and dirt. Just as she began to worry that she might end up running out of room and ending up suffocating the roar of the winds died down, and everything at last calmed down. Emily did not breathe an actual sigh of relief as the settling debris were still nearly chocking the air and she was almost up to her armpits in the dirt anyway, but the intention was there. The girl then felt the contraption be shifted upright, and a few seconds after that the hopper was pulled out of it. Then Emily felt the maid start to walk with it, obviously intending to head towards the nearest disposal area.

Perhaps thankfully while there were a few trash bins in the Admin area none were particularly big, and as such were never meant for dumping a full vacuum load into. As such the maid left the admin area to one of the guild houses, in this particular case Byakko. The female NPC walked with a steady gait towards the main trash receptacle, where upon being dumped it it would all be deleted and removed from the game. Thankfully before that happened the predicable movement patterns gave Emily an opportunity. Grabbing some of the longer and more sturdy bits of trash she was able to construct a makeshift ramp/tower to get to the top of the nearly full canister and jump out the side.

The miniature person's fall was not the most pleasant but was also serviceable, the corridor at the moment being mostly empty and her leap to the side bringing her away from the pounding footsteps of the maid. Instead she landed mostly safely on the carpet out of the way, and watched as the NPC continued to stroll away not knowing anything was wrong. Taking this opportunity Emily checked herself over, and was less than pleased at her current state.

Her entire body was covered in gunk and dust, loose hairs lightly wrapped around her limbs, dirt staining her entire body splotchy colors, and perhaps most devastated was her hair. Normally in moderate control and a vibrant blonde, after everything it had gone through her tresses were in complete disarray, strands poking out in every direction, clumps half-fused together by slowly drying dip, and most of it rendered a sort of moulted grey and black from everything all over it. Finally she checked the time, and saw she had just passed the half hour remaining mark until she could put this whole experiment behind her.

As she finished seeing this, the tiny girl became aware of a set of approaching footsteps. Bracing herself and turning towards the source, Emily was ready to start running if she confirmed it was an NPC or player. However she was pleasantly surprised to see that the person approaching was Kyoto. The only person right now with access to the heightened Admin senses needed to see and hear her clearly, the mech was a sight for sore eyes and so Emily started to approach her, waving her arm above her head to garner her attention. This seemed a good course of action, as the girl was even seeming to be scanning the ground. Perhaps Hellion had gotten lost, and she was looking for him? If so that was perhaps just as good, as it would be nice to Hellion at the same size again.

The first inkling that things were not going to go to plan was when Emily noticed that Kyoto seemed to be talking softly to herself. Her voice was low that most people would not be able to overhear what she was saying, but Emily could hear it just fine due to the lower volume. Thank goodness she had never programmed in temporary deafness due to loud noises, otherwise the vacuum would certainly have qualified. Once the taller girl came closer, Emily was able to make out “-est is cleared out, we might as well plug away at a few other Quests. I agree, we do have a few outstanding ones to work on. What about the one for the Cafeteria Matron? Ugg, you know I don't like doing those...but I suppose we might as well.”

This odd method of speech and even slight alterations to her voice and cadence between sentences confused Emily, until she realized what was happening. Clearly Hellion was not out and about but instead inside of Kyoto in her command centre, and they were just talking directly to each other. Perhaps Hellion had left the transmit button on, or just felt like being heard out loud. Regardless it did tell the admin what they were doing here, but some of their conversation was still a little cryptic. Why would Hellion have a problem with any of her quests, and why was he scanning the floor with Kyoto's eyes?

The reasoning hit Emily all at once from three different directions, facts coming together to smash into her like a train. Hellion was not a fan of quests that might put him in danger beyond the usual amount going out and killing bugs, and only one type of quest filled that criteria. Emily had made a number of different quests for the game, but the Cafeteria Matron always had a particular type as a repeatable task. Finally they were talking about a quest while scanning the ground, inside the guild house where only one type of mob could spawn. The duo were talking about Tinykin squishing, and wouldn't you know it here she was in front of them and the correct size.

Still Emily had a little hope as she called out and waved her arms in the air, and as she watched the eyes of Kyoto flicked over and locked onto her. Yes this looked a little bad, and she could feel the metaphysical weight of the gaze upon her firmly in a way being ignored never had, but she had confidence. She was dressed in the Admin uniform and her blonde hair was fairly distinctive, she should be just fine. Then as she waved a dark strand drifted across her vision, and unintentionally her eyes focused on it. It was several strands of her hair, grey with picked up dirt. Rapidly Emily recalled her previous inspection of herself just a minute ago, her uniform and hair in such a state of filth that the details she had just been banking on for identification were utterly obscured.

Emily's growing worry was confirmed as Kyoto spoke, and the former blonde was so briefly shaken that she was not sure if it was Kyoto or Hellion who said “Ah, there is one. That should make 9.” Abandoning the idea of identification quickly as the giantess lifted her boot and turned slightly to aim towards her, Emily turned and started to run down the hallway, Kyoto and Hellion in hot pursuit. At least, it was a hot pursuit for for Emily, for the mech it was closer to a slightly fast walk.

Sprinting full tilt as the booms of the bootsteps became louder and louder behind her, Emily reflected on how this might very well be karma. Hellion had expressed disapproval of her questlines involving killing Tinykin, but she had dismissed him mostly out of hand. She had admitted that he did have a vested interest in the subject, but in her opinion he always respawned so it was no big deal. Besides, he had only been hunted down and squashed by players two dozen times, and only three of them had been at her own hands/boots. The number of such events had even gone down the past few months, so it was no longer a big issue. (In fact the actual numbers were closer to fifty and fifteen respectively, and had never slowed down, Hellion just had stopped bothering to tell her).

At last the events of the past hour and a half caught up to Emily, along with Hellion speeding things up a little bit as he did not want to play with his “prey.” The shadow of Kyoto fell over Emily, and she stumbled in exhaustion just enough for the last few steps needed. Nervous but also a little curious Emily turned her head back and up, gazing upon the full length of Kyoto's body before the view was blocked out by her boot. The treads were deep and detailed, but Emily could see it moving into a position where there would be no escaping. The last thing she heard before the sole came down and introduced her head, torso, arms, legs and pelvis to her feet was Kyoto/Hellion saying “Sorry little guy, if you want to blame anyone, blame Emily for making this quest.” As she blacked out before the respawn and restoration of her Admin Powers, Emily could not help but appreciate the irony.