The Commander had just arrived at the city when disaster struck. Out of nowhere, an ominous red cloud appeared in the sky, swirling and billowing bigger and bigger with each passing second. The cloud descended onto the city until no one in it could see anything but red. Then darkness took the peopleas one by one they passed out.

The Commander awoke later with his head throbbing. He pushed away the pain to stand up, knowing that his first priority had to be figuring out what happened and call the base for help if necessary.

The red fog was gone now, and he could see everything clearly. It seemed the locals had all been knocked out too, as he saw a bunch of them stirring on the ground or else slowly standing up or helping others to wake up. They looked around warily, as confused as himself as to what had happened. At a glance it didn't look like anyone was hurt, unless you counted the headaches that everyone seemed to share, but it would take time to make sure.

He thought to question some of them to confirm that they'd all seen the same thing as him, but something else caught his attention. With the state of his mind after awakening, it had slipped his notice until now that there was something off about not only the lighting but also the sky itself.

The sky above held no trace of that cloud's ominous red tint, but neither was it the blue of the daytime sky, nor any other natural hue he had ever seen the sky take; it was white, and not the white of cottony clouds either, but a perfectly flat and even white, matching the unnaturally colorless light shining from the sun.

But then, that was no real sun, was it? No, its light was much too weak and didn't hurt to look at like the sun's did. It was hard to believe, but the more the Commander saw, the more it became clear that the “sun” was a mere lightbulb and the “sky” a mere ceiling, if anything of that size could be called a “mere” anything. Indeed, he and the entire city appeared to have been transported to some truly gigantic room, likely a bedroom judging from the colossal furniture. And, maybe it was his imagination, but he felt that there was something disturbingly familiar about the room.

The Commander tried to phone the base, hoping they might be able to help him make sense of all this, but the call never went through. In fact, none of his calls went through except one to a local contact who didn't answer the phone. He wasn't able to connect to the internet, either. Whatever was going on, it appeared to have made the outside world unreachable. “Things just keep going from bad to worse,” he muttered. At least it was clear now that everyone was fine, aside from a few accidents from when visibility had been lost in the fog.

After spending some time thinking things over, the Commander decided that the best course of action would be to meet with the city's authorities to discuss the situation with them, but before he could even look for them, he noticed that the locals had gone quiet all of a sudden. They seemed to all be listening for something. He stopped and listened along, unsure at first what he was meant to be hearing. But in time the noises took shape for him, and he distinctly heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, beyond the bedroom door.

The steps grew louder and louder; whoever they belonged to, that person was definitely approaching the room. All eyes were on the door then, waiting to see what manner of being would enter. Soon the door was pushed open, and a giant person was seen standing in the doorway—one the Commander knew all too well.

It was Laffey, one of the shipgirls under his command, who pushed open the door to her bedroom, totally unaware of the millions tiny souls who now found themselves stranded on her bedroom floor. The whole city watched in horror as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The cute and dainty shipgirl, white-haired and red-eyed and with a pair of bunny-ear accessories tying up her pair of pigtails, was huge beyond human comprehension; bigger than all their buildings, bigger than any mountain. The ground shook under her thigh-high white boots with every step she took, each impact thundering over their minuscule little ears.

It boggled the mind to see her moving—nothing so immense should be capable of such speeds! It felt as if her very existence shattered the laws of nature into a million pieces. But that wasn't even the worst of it. No, the worst part was looking at her and understanding just how pitifully, insignificantly puny they, and indeed their whole city, were. They were nothing; a mere spot of dirt on the floor. All their lives, these people had felt themselves—their jobs, their friends, their dreams, their families—to be the most important things in the world. Now Laffey's mere existence seemed to have rendered all of that meaningless. What else could they conclude when their lives, all their efforts, everything they ever valued, could all be snuffed out with a single step from this girl? She would annihilate their city without even knowing what she'd done.

And, in fact, it seemed that's just how it would go. Laffey walked towards her bed with a BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, each new step driving her closer and closer to the tiny city, and bringing those million frightened souls closer to their annihilation. Apocalyptic earthquakes dominated the city, forcing countless people to their hand and knees, as if Laffey's mere presence were forcing them to kneel and worship her. “Laffey! Stop!” the Commander shouted, hoping against all reason that his words might somehow reach her before she crushed the whole city—in reality, they didn't even reach his own ears, the booming of her steps totally overwhelming the pitiful squeaks he produced.

The seconds seemed to stretched into minutes once her boot's red sole appeared over the city, calling to mind the red cloud from before; they had survived that one's descent, but it didn't seem they would live this one. By then almost every throat in the city was wailing screams of hopeless terror, as everyone felt this must be their end. Most shut their eyes the instant her foot began to fall, refusing to see their impending doom, but the Commander forced himself to keep them open and watched every single inch of its descent until...

BOOM!

The sound deafened everyone in the city. A powerful gust of wind blew over the city, picking up everything that wasn't bolted down and everyone who wasn't holding on to something and throwing them back until they hit some wall. The ground and even the air itself shook with an apocalyptic intensity, shaking everybody down to their very cores. They lived, but for the next few seconds, they were so numb that they didn't quite realize it. And all that from Laffey stepping one whole inch away from their city, or several miles away from the tinies' point of view. It seemed a miracle that everyone survived, and that the buildings were all still standing.

Blissfully ignorant of the massacre she had almost caused, Laffey walked past the city and stopped between her bed and her drawers, where she took off her battle gear and stored it away. She took off her boots too, and stripped off the fluffy white socks she was wearing, leaving her feet free to enjoy the fresh air.

Normally at this late hour Laffey would have jumped into bed for a nap, but not today. Instead she pulled out a fresh volume of her favorite manga. She had just discovered this series a couple weeks ago, and she had been hooked on it ever since. Much as she would have loved a nap, she decided it could wait until she had finished with this latest volume, so she walked back around to the front of he bed, almost stepping on the city again, and stopped at her favorite reading spot, the comfy white rug at the foot of her bed. There she lay face-down, holding the book open in front of her while her legs stretched back over the wooden floor.

The city now found itself between the shipgirl's big toes, each one a colossal mountain in and of itself. The air became steamy, filled with the heat and sweat from her feet, to say nothing of the smell, and as it came into contact with the cool surfaces of the floor and of the city, the humidity formed countless tiny droplets of water over everything. It started out innocently enough, with droplets only the size of a fist, but as more and more spawned they started joining together. Soon they were as big around as a man was tall, and they only kept getting bigger from there, taking over houses and buildings and even whole city blocks, growing unstoppably huge like blob monsters from some old horror movie, spreading over and sucking in everything they came into contact with.

Laffey hadn't even touched the city, and already she was drowning them in her sweat.

The Commander managed to find safety by climbing in his car and shutting everything tight. Even when it had been sucked into a colossal droplet the water still couldn't make it inside. Other people who had the same idea, or who had sought refuge in some building, were similarly safe, but just on this street he could see hundreds more who were now swimming in these droplets, desperatey flailing their arms and legs to swim to the surface. It was no use, though; the people were at the mercy of the microcurrents in these water droplets, and even when those currents led someone towards the surface, surface tension prevented them from breaching it.

The Commander tried to call Laffey and tell her to move her feet away, but even now his call didn't go through; he could only assume that his signal was too weak to reach her from this distance. In the end all he could do was watch as those hundreds of people drowned, one after the other giving one last dying spasm before falling still.

It was a few more minutes before the droplets all evaporated , shrinking back down and releasing their captives bit by bit until there weren't any left big enough to hold a man. The Commander and many others who had survived hurried to try and resuscitate those who lay unmoving on the streets, forcing the water from their chests, pumping their heats to beat again, breathing air into their lungs. There was some success, thank goodness, but for many others it was too late.

It was perhaps the worst massacre of civilians the Commander had seen in all his years of service. To think that innocent little Laffey was responsible for all this... No, not even Laffey; more like the heat and sweat radiating from her feet. So pathetically small was the whole city now that her body was like a force of nature, an unstoppable power bringing death and destruction without any ill intent.

Now more than ever the Commander knew he needed to contact her. He hadn't been successful yet, but maybe if he got closer to her phone his signal would reach her. Possibly there were better plans, but it was the best idea he had, and he knew that time was of the essense if he was going to save everyone's lives; the longer it took to find help, the greater the odds that something would happen to the city. That they had survived the cataclysmic impact of Laffey's foot nearby suggested to him that their shrinking had made them relatively more resistant, but clearly that didn't stop them from drowning in her sweat, and it might not help them survive being stepped on either.

Before he set out, the Commander called the city authorities to tell them his plan was, and suggested that they try contacting Laffey themselves in the meantime. Then he started his car and left the city.

The wooden floor of Laffey's room seemed smooth at a normal human scale, but at this size it was the worst terrain the Commander had ever seen. The car would not stop bouncing while he drove out from between the shipgirl's feet. Still, he just gritted his teeth and resigned himself to a lot more of this.

His plan was to round her left foot and drive up along her body, even walk if need be, until he was close enough for his call to reach her. He figured the trip would take hours either way, but since this was Laffey he was dealing with, there was a good chance she would fall asleep before then and stay asleep long enough for him to finish it.

The Commander had only reached Laffey's second toe, however, when she suddenly pulled back her toes to prop up her foot. Soon her entire sole was on display for him and the city to see, towering over the land. As soon as it had gone up, though, it started coming back down. Her toes slid forward along the floor, even passing their previous position as she stretched her legs out a bit further and right towards the Commander.

Even at top speed and with a minute's head start, the car would never have gotten him out of the way of those massive toes. He could only hope that is relative sturdiness would let him survive them sweeping over him. Luckily for him, that's just what happened; when the vast wall of pale pink skin that was the shipgirl's second toe passed over his car, the Commander found himself swept up into a tiny groove of her toeprint and spared from any deadlier pressure. By the time her feet were stretched out again, his car was on its side but still intact.

The Commander got out and with some effort managed to get the vehicle back on its wheels, after which he started driving out of this groove and up the slope to the ridge of Laffey's toeprint. Though the distance wasn't that long—“only” a few hundred feet—he believed it would take a minute to get out because of how steep a climb it was. Once he started driving, though, he found it didn't feel steep at all. It felt like driving on level ground, and the feeling persisted even once he got off the slope. He realized that Laffey's skin must be exerting some kind of pull on him, as though it had a gravity of its own on par with the Earth's. A small advantage of his new size, he supposed, even if it only reinforced how insignificant he'd become.

On the ridge, the Commander could see all of Laffey's sole stretched out before him, while behind was a big drop to the floor. He considered driving back down to go on with his original plan, but something told him it might be better to make the journey over Laffey's body. After all, even if she did stand up before he could contact her, at least he'd still be on her body instead of stranded on the floor. So he drove up the seemlingly-endless series of hills and valleys that were the tiny ridges of the shipgirl's footprint, and the bigger mountains that were the wrinkles of her sole, avoiding sweat pores the size of small lakes, specks of dust the size of small mountains, and tiny fibers left over from her socks that were like monstrously gigantic white snakes. With the uneven terrain it took him a whole hour just to reach Laffey's heel, from where he tried once more to contact her. Predictably, he still wasn't close enough.

From this height, the Commander could look back and see the city lying between Laffey's toes, for the first time getting a better sense of their new scale. The city was small enough to fit in its entirety under Laffey's big toe. It couldn't have been more than an inch in real terms, though he remembered seeing on the map that it was normally some ten miles from end to end. Doing some simplified math in his head, the Commander estimated that Laffey's foot was likely some eighty miles long from heel to toes. And Laffey as a whole? She would be more than six hundred miles tall—big enough that her body could be its own country.

Even with those numbers he still couldn't fully wrap his head around her sheer immensity, and had no desire to try, but at least he had a sense of how much further he had left to go; not as much as he'd feared, but not as little as he'd hoped.

He didn't waste any more time, driving further along Laffey's heel until he was down on her ankle, and soon driving along her calves. The terrain her was smoother than back on her foot, and he made better progress, every so often trying again to reach out to Laffey, who he was pretty sure had fallen asleep by now. She rarely stirred, and even when she did the microscopic forces of her skin ensured it didn't hinder his journey, but even so the Commander could feel the immense power behind every movement as the whole barren landmass of the shipgirl's leg shifted and wobbled at even the smallest twitches of the muscles lying under the surface.

As he approached Laffey's hips, still with no success, the Commander considered for decency's sake trying to continue his journey driving over her skirt, but he was forced to discard that option once he was close enough to see what impossible that incomprehensible tangle of red and white fibers would be. The fibers themselves were actually big enough for him to drive on, but if he started following one there was no telling where it would take him, and hopping from one to the other would be almost impossible. He had to drive under her skirt instead, and by the same token, once he reached her panties he had to drive under them too.

The fabric of said panties made for a dark, stuffy labyrinth that threatened to keep the Commander wandering around inside for ages. With hardly any more visibility than that provided by his headlights, and facing what looked like the same exact tangle of white threads at every turn, he had to trust that his sense of direction would keep him from getting turned around or going in circles or, worse, ending up somewhere he really shouldn't be.

It was starting to feel like the Commander had bee wandering around in there for days, and that he would spend many more lost in that labyrinth, when he finally reached an end to all those white threads. After that, making it out from under Laffey's skirt and onto the small of her back was a relatively simple affair. He was still under her top then, but at least with better visibility, and from there it was a relatively easy ride to finally reach the open air out on her shoulder.

By then the sun was starting to rise, as he saw from the light seeping in through the curtains. He had spent all night traversing Laffey's body, and even then only up to her shoulder. Making it all the way up her head would probably have taken him half a day total.

At least the Commander could see his target now. Laffey's phone lay on the floor , half-covered by the manga volume she had fallen asleep reading. Was he finally close enough for the signal to reach it? He drove all the way to the very top of her shoulder before trying, since his phone battery had been running out for a while now and he wanted to conserve it as much as possible. He was so relieved when the call went through and her phone started ringing.

It still took a minute for Laffey to wake up, but finally she grabbed the phone and answered it, without even raising her head. “Hello? Commander?” she answered.

“Oh, thank goodness. Laffey, first of all, I need you to stay very still!” he said, hearing is voice echoed through the shipgirl's phone. “Listen carefully. There are lives at stake, and we can't afford to waste any more time.”

“Okay, okay,” Laffey yawned, still not lifting her head. Away in the city, where most of the survivors had long since fallen asleep hoping that the nightmare would be over come morning, hundreds of thousands of people awoke to find that it was still ongoing, as they heard her voice booming in the distance and felt the earth shake as the shipgirl carelessly stretched her feet, threatening to crush them all with but a twitch. “Where are you, anyways, Commander? I heard people you disappeared or something.”

“This is going to sound strange, but I'm right here on your shoulder.”

“My shoulder?” Laffey finally raised her head and turned to her left shoulder, where the Commander was standing. Only, as soon as she did, she yawned again, sucking in air at suck speeds that the Commander was blown right off her shoulder and flung into the deep, dark cavern that was her mouth. He and his car landed on her tongue, splashing into a vast ocean of shipgirl spit and sinking down to settle between a pair of giant taste buds. “Hello? Commander? Did you say something? I don't get it. What do you mean you're on my shoulder?” she said, never suspecting that every letter she pronounced the tiny little speck of a Commander stuck on her tongue was sloshed around between her taste buds, or thrown against the roof of her mouth. Still nice and dry inside his car, he barely managed to hold on to the phone and speak into it as soon as she had stopped talking.

“Laffey, I need you to gather all the saliva in your mouth and spit it out on your hand. I know this sounds strange, but I'll explain everything as soon as you do this, okay?” Laffey didn't answer, but after a pause the Commander felt everything moving again. In the total darkness he couldn't make out what was happening, but he heard some really loud wet noises and his car started floating up. Suddenly Laffey's mouth opened up and he found himself falling together with an immense volume of spit, finally splashing onto the shipgirl's open palm, under her curious gaze. As soon as he had settled down, he hurriedly recorded a video with his phone, briefly describing what had happened while showing off his view from inside the car as proof.

He sent it to Laffey, who listened to it all without a change in her expression, then turned to look curiously at her hand. It made the Commander feel a bit uneasy, truth be told. “So... are you safe now?” she asked once he had finished his tale.

“Yes, for now. I'm still stuck in your spit, but it might be better to leave it alone until it evaporates.”

“Okay. In that case.... I'm going back to sleep. I'll talk to you later, Commander.”

“Wait. Laffey! You can go to sleep but make sure the city's safe first! And tell someone else about– Hello? Laffey?” The Commander swore once he saw that she had hung up on him, and though he tried to call her again, she had turned off her phone so he couldn't bother her. And so he was left to wait for the colossal shipgirl to wake up again, hoping that this time she would be more inclined to help.

Waking up for the second time that morning, Laffey rolled onto her back and stretched, giving a cute little yawn when she finished and putting a hand over her mouth. The commander was then treated to another close-up view of Laffey's gaping maw, with its glistening white teeth taller than mountains, a tongue that seemed a whole landscape in itself, and a throat big enough to swallow cities whole. Her soft breath blew across the hilly land of her palm, rocking his little car and threatening to send it flying.

“Hm? Why does my palm feel sticky?” Laffey thought, and after yawning she looked it over, trying to remember what had happened to it. She had a sense there was something important she was forgetting, but as her eyes passed over the Commander, failing to see him or his little car, she shrugged it away. “It'll come back to me eventually,” she thought, and sat upright with another yawn.

Stretching out her legs, her feet once more came to rest near the unfortunate shrunken city on the floor, and the hundreds of thousands of microscopic humans there looked in fear and trembling at her looming soles, whose every twitch sent tremors to rock their tiny little world. But Laffey knew nothing of their plight, and she calmly picked up her phone and turned it on so she could start the morning with some cute animal videos.

She thought it strange that it had been turned off, but she dismissed it from her mind until she got a call from the Commander; then everything came back to her. “Huh. I guess it wasn't a dream,” she muttered as she opened her hand again and looked at it with fresh eyes. “Good morning, Commander,” she answered the call. Despite knowing all about his situation, and that of the tiny city on the floor, she sounded no more concerned than she had moments ago.

“Laffey, please tell me you're finally done sleeping.”

“I guess I am. Why do you ask? Oh, wait, you wanted me to help you and the city, right? Where is the city, anyway?” She looked around, following the Commander's directions, until she noticed the small grey spot, no bigger than an inch, on the floor at her feet. Laffey scooted closer to it, bending her knees to keep her feet flanking the little thing, laying her soles flat on the floor. “Is that it?” she asked, turning her hand up-side down so he could see it.

The commander stayed on her palm thanks to the microscopic forces that bound him to the shipgirl's skin, his stomach lurching as he watched the whole world turn upside-down. “Y-yes, that's it,” he said, fiercely gripping both the phone and steering wheel to deal with his nausea. “Please move your feet away from it. We don't want anything to happen to it.”

But Laffey had put down her phone to focus on that patch of grey before her—that little spot of dust where, according to the Commander, almost a million tiny souls were standing. “What a tiny thing,” she mused, noting how easily her toes dwarfed it in size, and especially in height. The city seemed almost flat from her perspective, its tallest buildings not even reaching the height of a single grain of sand. “I wonder, if there are really humans down there, can they really be considered people at that size?”

Laffey meant no harm by it, but at her immense scale, her words held a threatening tone to the tiny people beneath her, especially when she turned her feet on their sides and tented them over the city. Her soles now cast their shadows on the tiny city, threatening them with annihilation. Even her tired red eyes, half-lidded with the shipgirl's usual lethargy, seemed to radiate an ill-intentioned glow as they peered down on everyone.

The city awaited its destruction with bated breath, but the disaster that struck next wasn't the one they were all expecting. As she contemplated the tiny city, Laffey softly wiggled her toes and slid her big toes against each other, sending down a shower of dust particles and dead skin cells, microscopic to Laffey but gigantic to the people below. The dust floated gently downwards, yet to the shrunken humans it seemed to fall with meteoric speeds to crash violently onto the ground. The smaller specks, about the size of cars, landed with little damage, but there were others that wreaked havoc on the little city, flakes of dead skin as big as their tallest buildings. Laffey could never have imagined what destruction that little toe-wiggle was causing down below, and even the Commander could only guess at what effect the presence of her colossal feet was having on everyone else.

“So what should I do with it, Commander?” she asked into her phone.

“The first thing to do,” he began, “is to make sure the city stays safe. It would be ideal if we could move it off the floor, but we'll probably have to settle with putting a glass cup over it or something.”

“Okay, got it. I'll try to pick it up,” Laffey said, and put down her phone before she could hear the Commander shouting at her not to do so.

The shipgirl lay flat on the ground, resting her head right next to the city so she could look closely at it, then carefully slid her hand nearer, stopping once the city sat between her thumb and forefinger. She curled her fingers so that the ends of her fingernails lay flat on the ground, and with a look of great concentration she started sliding them together.

Down below, thousands were screaming at the approach of her monstrously enormous fingers. Even her nails alone were thicker than any of their buildings, and as those huge walls of hardened keratin reached the outermost city blocks, everything they touched was instantly bulldozed and pushed along as a growing pile of debris. People, cars, houses, even the street itself—to Laffey, they were nothing but the finest dust, effortlessly swept up by her nails. Yet, even when those nails came together, all they did was crush everything caught between them, leaving a terrible scar that cut the little city in half.

Laffey huffed in annoyance at her failure, the puff of wind from her lips blowing away much of the destruction her fingers had wrought, and tried to think of some other way to pick them up. She licked her fingertip and held it over the city. Her spit would definitely hold at least a good chunk of the city, but to the micro humans' great relief she moved her finger away without doing anything—even she could tell that she'd just crush everything if she tried that. Maybe she could make them climb on a piece of paper and then lift them up.

No, not a piece of paper. Something like that could get blown away, and then what would become of the tiny people? She had a someplace better for them in mind. Sitting up again, she brought a single foot up close to the city, resting her heel on the floor but hovering her toes over that little grey patch. Then, splaying her toes wide apart, she carefully lowered her foot until her big and second toes landed gently to either side of it.

Nothing had been crushed, this time, but it was a close call. In many places, the outskirts of the city stood under the curvature of her toes, and the people there found that Laffey's light pink skin now took up most of the sky. A mere twitch of her toes would suffice to wipe out half the city or more, but Laffey kept them still. Even so, a rhythmic tremor could be felt all over the city, one caused by the pulse of blood rushing through her sole.

Like mortals at the foot of a divinity, they awaited their judgement in silence, anxious to know if they were to die today. Laffey said nothing either, just looked at them with the same sleepy stare she'd been wearing all along. Finally her words boomed down on them. “Are you humans climbing yet?” she asked with a little wiggle of her toes that flattened dozens of city blocks

The people screamed and shouted while her toes thundered around them, but when they settled down again and everyone could think back to her words, they began to wonder if they'd heard her correctly. “Climb”? Climb what?

The people looked at her toes, towering monstrosities that stood ten miles tall, dwarfing even Everest with their might. Did she really expect them to climb those things? And how? The people were so tiny that they could walk for hundreds of feet under the curvature of her toes without actually coming within reach of her skin, and even when they did reach it, it would be more like a ceiling than a wall to them. Even an expert mountain climber couldn't hope to climb something like that in any timely manner; what hope did the rest of them have?

Still, some desperate few did go out to try it, thinking it better to take a chance on her foot than to stay down here to be crushed like the thousands that her nails had felled. They walked deeper and deeper under her toes, or towards her sole. The atmosphere of her foot became stronger and stronger with every step they took. Even back in the city everyone could feel the heat radiating off her skin and catch the scent of her foot in their every breath—thankfully softer than last night when she'd first slipped off her boots—but here under her toes the intensity of it all was doubled, and doubled again when her skin finally came within reach.

One after the other, the humans reached up to grab ahold of Laffey's skin and pulled themselves up with surprisingly little difficulty. Then, as the rest of their bodies came in contact with her skin, they repeated the Commander's discovery that the microscopic forces of her body pulled them to her in defiance of gravity. It was as if Laffey, and not the Earth, was now their world.

After getting on her skin, they walked further up, wondering at how this young shipgirl's foot seemed transformed into a whole new landscape to them. Soon they could be seen even by those who had stayed in the city, and who were no less amazed than them by it.

As awareness spread, more and more people went to join them in leaving their city for Laffey's toe. This great migration took place right in the shipgirl's sight, her eyes shining down like moons on the city, yet Laffey could see none of it. Even looking directly at the huge masses of people moving through the streets, she was left to wonder if the humans were climbing her or not. Already twenty minutes had passed, and she was starting to get hungry; she decided to give them ten more before she went to get breakfast and calmly waited for them all, resisting the urge to tap her toes.

“I'm getting up in one minute. Hope you're almost finished,” she said, and started counting down from sixty.

Her announcement spurred the people closest to her to start running, but those who were further back turned around and ran from her toes. When she reached “zero”, everyone on her foot threw themselves on the ground. Their stomachs lurched and their hearts almost jumped out of their chests as Laffey lifted her foot. Even though they were all kept safely in place, still the sense of speed was intense.

It was amazing, too, to see the world beyond Laffey's foot go sideways and then flip over as the shipgirl grabbed her foot and turned it around, peering at the space between her toes. To her it looked no different than before, yet it held more than one hundred thousand souls. Man or woman, young or old, every one of them gazed in awe at their host's titanic red eye—a new sun to them all.

Laffey put down her foot and turned her attention to the city now. She figured half an hour should have been enough for everyone to leave it, so surely she could clean it up now, right? She didn't want to leave it dirtying her floor, after all.

Again she licked her fingertip and held it over the city, and the half-million people still standing down there screamed in terror. One quick swipe was enough to clean it up in its entirety, leaving only some errant bits of rubble floating in pools of her saliva, while everything else was glued to her fingertip by her spit. Some did survive—after shrinking, they were all more durable than they looked—but it was less than one percent, and all of them were buried deep under the remains of their city, caught under the rubble and often drowning in Laffey's spit. Yet Laffey was sure there was nothing on her fingertip save the grey dust of the shrunken city, and in her curiosity she brought it to her mouth for a taste.

As her fingertip sank into the plush field of her tongue, the city's remnants were washed away by the ocean of spit. The tiny humans were freed from the rubble as everything dispersed into her saliva, but they were still helplessly drowning in her mouth, trying desperately to swim for a the surface. But soon her finger retreated and her lips closed behind it, and the humans were left in utter darkness.

Laffey's tongue then stirred, carrying the city's remnants upwards to be savored, churning the ocean of spit in which the tiny humans floated. Those who weren't crushed by the limber landmass were spread out to every corner of the shipgirl's mouth, hanging from the roof or oozing down her inner cheeks, smothered between taste buds or underneath her tongue.

But despite the half-million bodies, living and dead, now in her mouth, despite the countless tons of concrete, asphalt, and more, Laffey found to her disappointment that she couldn't taste anything at all from the city. Even a single grain of salt would have had more taste. She swallowed, sending some survivors down to meet their end in her stomach, but many more still hung out in her mouth, slowly drowning inside her.

“Mission accomplished, Commander,” Laffey said to her palm. The Commander had seen none of what had happened, and he could only imagine what she meant by those words. He tried calling her again, as he had been for half an hour now, but she had long since silenced her phone to keep him from disturbing her.

“I'm going out for breakfast now. Talk to you later.” She pulled on her socks and her boots. Down on her foot, the tiny humans were thrust into total darkness, and when she stood and her sole clapped against the floor, a powerful BOOM reverberated all throughout the inside of her boot. Now Laffey softly splayed her toes and looked down at her foot. She hoped it wasn't too stuffy in there for those little guys. “Maybe I should have thought of a better place to put you guys,” she muttered. Now she wouldn't be able to wash that part of her foot again, at least not until she could figure out something else to do with them.

Well, that was a worry for some other time; right now, she was just focused on getting breakfast, and she left her room on the way to the cafeteria without sparing another thought for the thousands at her feet.

Though no one was hurt by her walk, still the thundering booms of her steps was terrifying. Their instincts screamed at them to run for cover, but in this utter darkness they were blind as bats and couldn't run for more than a few steps before the fear of running to their deaths paralyzed them. There was nothing for them to do but to lie or sit on the ground and huddle together for comfort, praying for their lives to be spared. Some silently stroked the warm, leathery ground, as if in doing so they could transmit their pleas of mercy to this girl whose foot was now their world.

By the time Laffey had reached the cafeteria and sat down with her meal, finally giving the humans a break from all the booming, her foot had warmed considerably and was starting to sweat. Only in little droplets, easily absorbed by her fresh cotton socks, but between her toes it spread all over her skin, becoming a growing swamp of sweat and dirt to hold all the tiny humans. It was only ankle-deep when she stopped walking, and didn't grow much higher while Laffey was sitting still, but the threat of it pushed the humans to look for safety, and using their phones as flashlights they figured out which way was up and started trekking that way, to the top of her toes where there would be less sweat to worry about.

After some ten minutes they were wading knee-deep in Laffey's sweat, but it only grew shallower from there as they reached an area with lower sweat gland density. Even so, the air was growing warmer and more humid by the second, sapping away their strength, so with their last bits of phone battery the various groups of shrunken humans made their way into one wrinkle or another of Laffey's skin to seek shelter there. And as, one by one, the lights went out again, they were left to contemplate what the future held for them on this shipgirl's foot.

The Commander, meanwhile, was still sitting in his car on Laffey's palm, waiting for his chance to reach her again. He'd put away his phone for now, not wanting to waste the last sliver of battery on a bunch of calls that Laffey was likely to hang up on. She said she would talk to him later, so he'd just have to trust that she remembered this time. And, luckily, she did.

After breakfast, when Laffey set foot inside her room again, she held her hand open. “You can call me again now, Commander,” she said to it, and after a little while he did.

“Laffey, you said you took care of the city, right?”

“That's right. You want to see all the people?”

“No, that's alright. I trust you,” he said. In truth, though, he feared the worst and was too scared to see what destruction Laffey had wrought. He didn't want to learn that the shipgirl had crushed half the city or more—what good would it even do to know a thing like that? It wasn't like there was anything he could do to change it. All the other shrunken victims would just have to take care of themselves. “Listen, now that they're safe, I need you to go to our scientists and tell them what happened to us. Promise me that. I'm almost out of phone battery; I probably don't have enough to explain it all to them, so you'll have to do it for me. They need to know what happened to us. Even if they can't grow us back”—it scared him to think that he might spend the rest of his life like this, but he couldn't pretend it wasn't a real possibility—“maybe they'll be able to prevent something like this from happening again.”

“Will do, Commander. Is there anything else?” Laffey asked.

“Just... whatever happens, take care of me and the others, alright?”

“Alright. I'll go tell the science team, then,” Laffey said. There was still no hint of urgency in her voice—she probably couldn't even imagine what it was like for him and the others to be so utterly tiny—but at least she sounded sincere about doing what he asked. And, as his phone finally gave out, there was nothing left for him to do but to wait.

-----

Laffey greeted the soft morning light that filtered through her bedroom curtains with a yawn and a stretch. She opened her eyes to stare sleepily at the ceiling, then rolled onto her side, snuggling back into her pillow. Her hand lay on the bed on front of her, and as she looked at the center of her palm, she gently curled her fingers over it, as if to hold something unseen. “Good morning, Commander,” she whispered to it, then splayed and softly wiggled her toes on her left foot. “Good morning, everyone.”

A year had passed since the tiny city had appeared in her room. True to her word, Laffey had informed the science team about the Commander and all that had happened to him and the others. No one believed her at first, but when they finally looked at her palm through their microscopes and found a speck-sized Commander standing there and waving desperately at them, their eyes almost bulged out of their heads. At once they started trying to figure out how this had happened to them and how to reverse their shrinking; in the meantime, it had been decided that the Commander and all the other shrunken humans were to be left in Laffey's care, as it was too dangerous to move them elsewhere.

From that day forward, protecting those people was Laffey's only task. She no longer had to take part in combat or even training since it was considered too dangerous for the tiny people. She was free to do whatever she pleased, which basically meant a lot of napping, playing games, browsing the web, and reading her manga—in hindsight, maybe it had been a stroke of luck that the tiny people had happened upon such a sleepy person as their caretaker.

Slowly she kicked the covers off her leg and brought her foot around to peer at it. She could see nothing still, at least not without the powerful magnifying glass the science team had given her to help keep track of her tiny guests, but still she liked to look at her toes and wonder at how many people now called that place “home”. The humans, for their part, welcomed the warm glow of her eyes. After living with her for so long, they were no longer as frightened of their colossal caretaker as they once were. They had long since grown used to the sight of her immense body, the earthquakes from her wiggling toes, the all-encompassing smell of her foot, and the booming of her voice. It had been hard to adjust, but now life went on as it had before. People ate and drank what they found on her skin, went to work, and even started families, most of them having long since resigned themselves to their new existence as germs on the shipgirl's foot.

Only the Commander refused to give up, trusting that his science team would one day find a way to fix this and give him back his life. Why, just last week he had heard them say they were making progress. Of course, they had been saying the same thing since they first started researching it a year ago... but that simply meant they must be getting close now, right? Of course. They had to be, he thought, standing in the shadow of Laffey's fingertip and looking out at her looming face

Because if they couldn't put him back to normal—if he knew that he had to spend the rest of his life on this endless expanse of skin, hiding out in the recesses of Laffey's palm with no more company than that of her godly, looming face hanging over him or towering over the horizon—he was starting to think he might just go mad.