Safety Testing (28 cm)

-----

(Side - Taku: Takumi Endou)

-----

Takumi wished he had gotten a warning. When he was sitting in the Compression Chamber, he was suddenly blinded by bright light. In his surprise, he backed up and stood up; however, he was even more surprised when he found he did not hit his head.

“Did it work?”

He heard a voice. It was Makoto’s. That much was obvious, but something sounded off. Makoto had sounded a little… distant…

“Hey, Taku. You alright in there?”

“Yeah. Just wish you had told me about the blinding flash,” Takumi replied. He was still rubbing his eyes. His vision was still very blurry. He took some time to get adjusted to the darkness again, but it did not help him see again. After all, everything inside of the Compression Chamber was pitch black.

“…Hey Taku! You alive?”

Had Makoto not heard him? “Yeah. Just fine, Neko. Can you open the chamber now?”

“… I’m opening the chamber. You may want to cover your eyes.” There was another pause in Makoto’s speech, as though she was waiting for him to answer. Again, had she not heard him? Still, Takumi did as advised. He was still trying recover from the previous flash of light anyways.

Vrrrrrrr!!!

The noise of the Compression Chamber opening seemed louder. This was probably because he was inside of the chamber. Takumi waited with his eyes closed until he heard the noise of the chamber opening was finished. In the meantime, he was thankful to be in the light again.

“I can’t believe it. Wow. This worked. It seriously worked,” Takumi could hear Makoto say. Again, her voice sounded distant, though it also sounded louder as well. “How’s it feel to be one-sixth of your height, Taku?”

A sixth? Finally opening his eyes, Takumi fell backwards onto the ground in reaction to what he saw.

Takumi was in the center of an expansive stage the size of those he had seen at an idol concert. The stage was the very same cramped platform of the Compression Chamber he had been sitting in just moments earlier. The ceiling that used to be within jumping height was now the distant sky above him. His friend Makoto, much like the platform and the ceiling, had also changed.

Two dark pillars in the distance rose upwards toward the sky.  He did not recognize what he was looking at until his head tilted up even higher and saw a familiar pattern: the striped maroon and black colors of his school’s uniform. He was looking at Makoto’s skirt and the pillars had been Makoto’s pantyhose clad legs.

“A- A skyscraper…,” Takumi muttered as he looked up above him. He had to continue tilting his head backwards to see Makoto’s white dress shirt and the bulging chest that she had pushed against him earlier. He fell backwards when he reached her head. Looking down at him was the surprised face of his friend who was formerly 15 cm shorter than him. She was still 152 cm, but the size difference between them had changed greatly.

“I was worried about smaller sizes, so I just set it as 1/6th normal size. Still, how does it feel to be compressed?”

Makoto took two steps forward onto the platform and knelt down to get a better look at her friend. To her, it was a simple action, but to Takumi, it was far from simple. At 1/6th his normal height, he was reduced to roughly 28 cm, which meant that Makoto looked 6 times taller to him. Her foot was nearly the same size as him for crying out loud. Though not as tall as the 50 foot woman in an old American movie he had seen, Makoto was approaching that height. She was maybe two-thirds of the way there.  In just two steps, the mighty pillars of Makoto’s legs easily cleared the distance to Takumi and shook the platform he was standing on. If he were not already on the ground, he would have been knocked down again. As Makoto knelt down, Takumi could feel her comparatively massive weight move the very air and the metal of the platform downwards. The compressed boy wondered if those fast but overwhelming motions were how his favorite mecha from his favorite anime would turn out in real life.

“Taku?” Not hearing him speak, Makoto called his name again. Hearing her friend’s voice from such a height and volume surprised the boy. It was like hearing her through a concert speaker system. However, hearing the concern in her loud (from his size) voice calmed him down. Adrenaline was running through his body from the shock of seeing everything from a different scale, but hearing Makoto reminded him that he was testing Mayumi’s machine. There was no need to worry.

“I’m fine, Neko!” he stood up and shouted at his friend. He assumed she hadn’t heard him earlier because of his size.

“Pfft,” Makoto attempted to not smile but was unable to do so. “Well, don’t you sound cute…  You look like a doll like this.”

And she looked like a building, though he wasn’t going to just say that. After having calmed down, Takumi took a moment to process his situation. He had been compressed, but felt no issues whatsoever with his body. He could move without issue and he believed his brain was still processing as it usually did. At the very least, his reasoning and behavior didn’t seem to change.

“Oh man. This is unbelievable. Being able to reduce people in size with no repercussions is an incredible feat. This is in complete violation of the laws of physics the school teaches. Mayumi-san could win a Nobel Prize with this machine. I seriously need to figure out what that Dual-Structure Layering is. The papers used words like dimensional and relativity, so maybe quantum physics is involved?”

Takumi did not realize he was speaking aloud. He was lost in thought in awe of the successful run of the Compression Chamber. His tiny body paced around the platform as he pondered and mumbled.

“Hey Taku, what are you doing?”

“That flash of light was so sudden, I didn’t have time to think about what it was. I hope there wasn’t much radiation or anything from it. Knowing Mayumi-san, it should be fine, but I had to have been exposed to something. Whatever it was must have caused the compression. Oh, I wish I paid more attention. Mayumi-san’s a genius.” 

“Seriously, even at this size, you still have the ability to gush over Mayu-nee?”

“I can’t wait to tell her about the experience. Everything looks so different like this. It’s a little terrifying, but it doesn’t feel bad at all. I can move and talk like I always do. Though it looks like my voice doesn’t reach that far at this size… It might be good to consider a communication method before continuing testing with people. I wonder what Mayumi-san could design for that. Maybe I should break open a few microphones and amplifiers to find a way to help out…”

“And Micchan wonders why I get all pissy… Hm…”

“Let’s see, I brought along a few batteries, wires, and circuit components… No, nothing I can use to make an amplifier. The only other things in my bag are my changes of clothes, wallet, and phone… Which I’m a bit glad I wasn’t wearing when I got in the chamber… It’d suck to lose those while compressed… Oh wait, my phone has-”

Wham!

A sudden loud thud from the impact of something heavy hitting the ground right next to him interrupted Takumi and knocked him off balance. It was Makoto’s foot. Turning around, the compressed boy saw that his relatively big friend had stood up again. The action of her standing was more than enough to knock him over.

“Taku, I hope you didn’t forget we did this to get some data for Mayu-nee,” Makoto reminded him. 

“Y-yeah. I remember. What tests did we have to do?” Takumi stood back up and realized that Makoto’s knee was above his eye level. Looking up, he got a clear shot of her panties under her skirt. At his height, it was impossible not to.

Makoto did not seem to notice. She couldn’t hear him properly either.

“You’re going to have to speak louder, short stuff,” the high school girl took the opportunity to poke fun at his height. “How about we start with the durability tests? Don’t worry. I won’t bite.”

“Durabi-”

Before Takumi could complete a word, his building sized friend quickly knelt down and placed her hands on both sides of his body. Her hands moved under the boy’s arms and picked him up by his armpits to try and lift him without hurting him. He wasn’t even on the level of a baby to her. She lifted his light body up with ease.

“You’re so light. I actually think my old dolls are heavier than you,” Makoto remarked. She moved slowly to bring Takumi up to her height. Slowly to her, however, it felt like a rough elevator ride to him. He understood that his friend was trying to be as gentle as she could, but he didn’t think the size difference would make her actions that much more noticeable.

Takumi could not shake Makoto away as his friend’s hands wrapped around his arms. He was dangling what looked to be three stories high in the air with his friend’s face peering at him intently. He noticed the anxious smile on her face. Was she also nervous about the tests?

“I don’t want to get too rough from the start, but it’s a good idea to figure out how strong you are at this size,” Makoto told him. As she spoke, warm air from her mouth blew onto his body. Takumi had to cover his eyes to not be assaulted by the light wind. “I know the reports said the mice were… what’d she say… incredibly resilient, but I want to make sure slowly.”

“So how are we going to measure this?” Takumi asked. He didn’t realize he had a fear of heights until he started looking down below at the floor far beneath him. “A clamp and pressure gauge?”

Makoto shook her head, an action Takumi could feel through his body. “We’re just getting some ballpark data. I’ll start by just tightening my grip.”

“Eh?”

To Takumi’s surprise, Makoto effortlessly changed how she held him. Her fingers were big enough to him that his small hands would be unable to wrap themselves around her pinky, and they moved with such speed and dexterity that they went from wrapping around both of his arms to covering his torso without shaking his body around.

“Okay, so this is holding you with no effort at all. Are you ready?”

“Hold on. Let me just prepare myself,” Takumi wanted to make sure he was not going to be caught off guard by Makoto’s test. “This isn’t going to hurt is it?”

“I’ll go as slowly as I can. Let me know when it starts to hurt and I’ll stop.”

“… Okay. If that’s the case, we can start.”

“Roger.”

Takumi could feel Makoto strengthen her grip the moment she started. The warm hands wrapped around him twitched before they began. Makoto slowly started to squeeze him. At first, he felt he was being wrapped around by a loose but thick rope, like those used for tug of war at the athletics festival, but as Makoto steadily increased her strength, he could feel the thickness of her fingers press into his body. It was by no means pleasant, but he couldn’t say that it hurt. As Makoto squeezed harder, he did feel the pressure on his chest, but it was light. The best comparison he could make would probably be the feeling of being coiled around by a boa constrictor, but the boa constrictor was not making any effort to constrict him.

“I can go a little further. Does it hurt yet?”

“Not really… It doesn’t seem so bad for now,” answered Takumi.

“Here I go then.”

Makoto gave him a squeeze. Takumi did not feel enough to warrant telling his friend. She did so again, and Takumi tried to shrug while in Makoto’s grasp but while he couldn’t budge, he did not see the need to speak up. Makoto’s third attempt, however, was accompanied by a sudden twitch of the girl’s muscles. Suddenly, she gave Takumi a strong squeeze. He could definitely feel something from that. The air in his body was squeezed out. Takumi let out a strong gasp for air to reclaim his breath. 

“H-Hey! Did that hurt? Sorry, I think I went with all my power there.”

Makoto loosened her grip on him, but she was not scared enough to drop Takumi. She gave the compressed boy a moment to regain his composure before he could answer.

“Wow…, I expected broken ribs or something like that. It wasn’t too bad,” Takumi winced. He was not putting on a strong face. He had been surprised by the sharp increase in pressure, but his body’s pain receptors seemed to hardly take notice. “Can you put me down? Let’s check for bruises.”

“R-right.” Makoto agreed. She loosened her grip again and knelt down to place Takumi on what little free space there was on the wood floor of the guest room. When she let go of Takumi, the boy was free to move his body again. That freedom felt fresh to him and was well welcomed.

“Let’s see here,” the boy spoke aloud as he stretched his body. Despite having been held and squeezed for several minutes, his body didn’t seem to be injured. Actually, he felt just fine.

Makoto got down on her stomach so that she was more eye level with Takumi. She was still looking down at him, however, because she did not want to press her breasts deeply into the floor. Her forearms and body made an enclosed ring around the boy who still had to look up to meet the gaze of her deep brown eyes.

“So are there any bruises?” she asked. 

Takumi turned around so that he wasn’t facing Makoto. While he wasn’t too comfortable with taking off his clothes in front of his female friend, he was also concerned with how his body had endured the test. He unbuttoned his uniform’s dress shirt and then took off the gray T-shirt underneath.  

From a cursory inspection, he couldn’t find any marks. His skin was as pale as it always was.

“Wow,” Makoto’s loud voice alerted the half-naked Takumi to turn around. He saw the girl’s curious eyes. “I guess even my strongest squeeze didn’t mean much. Sis was right about incredible durability.”

Makoto was right. Though both of them were worried about how much he could take, it seemed Mayumi’s notes on the durability of compressed things were spot on. 

“I wonder if it affects the nerves too because it didn’t feel that bad to get squeezed so strongly. I thought my body was going numb with how little I was feeling when getting squeezed,” Takumi began to think about the device again. “Is it just my nerves though? I feel like the machine can’t be that selective in what it numbs out… How did it suppress my pain receptors?”

Poke!

Interrupting Takumi’s thought process again was Makoto. She had relaxed a little knowing Takumi was fairly durable. That relief could be seen by how she rested her head on her left hand while she mischievously poked the 28 cm high school boy on his side with her right hand. Her long index finger, with its recently filed nail playfully poked at him repeatedly, nudging him bit by bit around the floor.  It felt like getting jabbed in the side with a blunt pole-arm.

“H-Hey, Neko! That’s not funny!” Takumi shouted. “I was in the middle of figuring out how the machine works.”

“Hey, I’m glad you’re fine, but at least put your shirt back on first,” Makoto advised him. Takumi was too preoccupied with having his body poked to register that the girl’s cheeks were flushed pink. With a pinch of her index finger and thumb, she collected Takumi’s dress shirt and T-shirt and held them over the boy before dropping them on his face. “We’re still not done testing yet, y’know?”

Takumi did not respond immediately. He took the time to put his clothes back on properly. Although wearing his dress shirt when it was finally the holidays was stuffy, there was no telling where his clothes could end up when he was compressed.

“I guess there are more tests to go through, but can’t you give a guy a break? Let’s get back to normal size and rest up before we continue this, Neko.”

“Eh? Well… I would but…,” Makoto was surprised by his request and searched for an argument. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea to have you compressed, decompressed, and compressed again. I think we should blast through these tests before we get you back to normal. If anything, we could take a break after the next test.”

Takumi paused to consider his friend’s explanation after he had readjusted his clothes. “You have a point… I may be fine at this size right now, but it is a little worrying thinking how constantly changing sizes might affect my health.”

Those words might have been something Makoto was hoping for because the moment Takumi agreed, she clapped her hands together, making a noise akin to an industrial sized balloon popping. “Great! Since we’ve made sure you’re fine after slowly getting squeezed, we can up the difficulty for the durability tests.”

Takumi opened his mouth to ask what else had been planned for him but promptly closed it when he saw Makoto use her hands to press down onto the floor. She pushed herself up with her arm strength which pushed the very floor he was standing on. In doing so, her large breasts, which had been lightly pressed against the ground the entire time, had been freed. They shot forward and bounced up, following Makoto’s momentum as she used her pushup to stand up. Takumi was still within half an arm’s reach of Makoto the entire time, so when Makoto’s breasts moved, he got a front row seat. Mere centimeters from Takumi’s scale, millimeters in Makoto’s scale, were how close she was to hitting him with her exercise ball sized (relative to him) breasts.

Makoto did not seem to take notice of how standing up had nearly made her hit Takumi. She did notice that he had nearly fallen again, but she seemed to be more interested in the next test. Standing at full height, she placed her hands on her hips and looked down at the doll-sized Takumi. He, too, looked up at the building sized figure that was his mentor’s younger sister.

He was not going to get used to tracing a pair of nylon clad legs up into the sky to a pair of panties. At one-sixth of his regular height, it was the first thing he would see of Makoto when trying to look up at her face. Was she aware that he was able to see?

“How’s this next test going to work?” Takumi shouted so that Makoto could hear his voice.

“It’s simple, really. Hold on. Let me just put this on the ground,” Makoto grabbed her uniform blazer (which she never used because she always wore a mint green cardigan in place of her school blazer) and folded it into a neat rectangle. She placed it on the ground near Takumi, who noticed that the blazer, even while folded, almost reached his knees in height. “Can you get on this?”

Takumi complied. Getting onto the cotton jacket was like walking up a large stair step, but it had a lot more give to it than concrete or wood. His foot sank in, pushing the blazer down. He felt as though he were standing on play dough with how each step he took on the material made him sink down.

The size of the folded blazer was another matter. From his compressed size, Makoto’s folded jacket was yet another stage to him. It definitely wasn’t as big as the platform of the Compression Chamber had been that he compared to an idol concert stage but it was still around the size of the raised section his high school gym had where the principal often gave his speeches.

“Hey, Neko! What exactly is going to be next?” Takumi questioned. He was used to volunteering to be a guinea pig for Mayumi, but she at least told him what would be going on beforehand. Neko being the tester did not scare him, but not knowing what to expect made him anxious.

“This is level 2 of your durability test. I think my jacket should be a soft enough surface to make sure things aren’t too tough. Let’s see how your body can handle more pressure,” a smile crossed Makoto’s face that Takumi realized was the same entertained expression she had while playing video games.

“More pressu-?”

Takumi stopped talking again when he saw Neko’s right leg rise up. The 28 cm of his height were nothing to her foot which hung what looked to be half a meter over his head from his perspective.  The mild scent of nylons and foot sweat wafted down onto the small boy who instinctively held his breath. While it wasn’t too strong from that distance, it was difficult to ignore.

Unfortunately for Takumi, having to hold his breath lowered his guard enough that he did not expect what would happen next. The 23 cm pantyhose clad foot descended on him. Though Makoto moved slowly, Takumi felt like he was hit by a car. He was knocked flat on his back and found the girl’s foot covered most of his body. Makoto’s heel was in between his legs and acted as a massive divider that forced him to spread out his body. His arms were in the same predicament thanks to the ball of her foot on his torso and her five toes, the biggest being almost the size of his head, within mere centimeters of his head. Takumi could only look up at the ceiling.

Makoto had not yet started applying pressure. She had merely rested her foot on the boy.

“I’ll start off strong since you were fine with the other test. Here we go.”

Takumi chose not to speak. If he did, he’d have to breathe in the smell of his friend’s tights. The smell of feet and sweat was stronger now that Makoto’s foot was on top of him. He could feel the curve of her arch along his lower body and was grateful there was less pressure there than on his chest… at least until Makoto started pushing down. The compressed boy began to feel a massive weight push down on him. Makoto’s foot was the size of a car and, now that she was pushing down on him, he could feel the weight of a car.

“How was that? I don’t think I can hear you well from down there so just give me a ‘thumbs up’ if it doesn’t hurt and a ‘thumbs down’ if it gets too bad.”

Takumi gave Makoto the thumbs up she asked for. It may have been his pride in wanting to further Mayumi’s research or it may have been the fact that his durability made him more tolerant, but he let neither the pressure of Makoto’s crushing foot or the stench stop the experiment.

Up above, Makoto saw the boy’s small gesture and grinned knowing that she could continue. She scrunched her toes together and began to lean her leg forward to be able to put more weight on Takumi.

Makoto’s motions permeated through Takumi’s entire body. By scrunching her toes, her nylons and the watermelon sized toes inside rubbed against his chest. He could feel the sticky sweat seep through the material and soak his shirt. He could feel the friction of the nylons rubbing against him generate heat and scratch his body like rough sandpaper. He could feel his body push into the cotton surface beneath him and knew Makoto’s blazer was the only thing between him and the hardwood floor.

When Makoto leaned her leg forward, what seemed like a negligible change in position from her point of view sent vibrations down into Takumi’s chest. He could feel the enormous pillar of her leg tilt like an enormous tower before a collapse. She had adjusted her center of mass to be above him, meaning more of her weight was focused directly over Takumi to push his body deeper into her blazer and closer to the floor.

“H-heavy,” Takumi muttered under his breath. The only parts of his body that he was able to move were his head, his hands, and his feet. They were the only parts of him that weren’t covered by Makoto’s foot. Though he said that, heavy was an understatement. Much like when Makoto was squeezing him earlier, Takumi was unable to struggle. He felt as though he was buried under a boulder… a really pungent boulder.

Takumi was so focused on maintaining his composure that he did not realize his hand was still in the thumbs up position.

“Still no problems, huh?” Makoto hid her smile behind her hand. She was ready to press down even further. To do so this time, she completely stood up on one foot. Now, all of her weight was focused on her right foot and on Takumi. 

Takumi felt this change instantly. Makoto may not have realized it, but suddenly forcing all of her weight onto a single foot sharply increased the pressure on him. She had been slowly applying more and more force on him but now, there was a sudden shift in the load he had to endure.

“Gwahgh!” Takumi’s entire body was pressed into the blazer and floor. The foot on top of his body was crushing him. Being squeezed in Makoto’s hands earlier did not hurt too badly, but being stepped on under her full body weight was incredibly painful. It seemed even the effects of the Compression’s numbing had its limits. Not only did the air get forcibly squeezed out of him, his bones and organs were straining to maintain their shape. To make matters worse, because Makoto had adjusted her footing to stand on one foot, the ball of her foot and her toes had moved forward. His right arm was freed, but he had a face full of pantyhose and Makoto’s big toe. To reclaim his breath, he was forced to breathe the sour and musty air. Sweat and nylon fabric entered his mouth when he made the foolish mistake of using his mouth to breathe. To be suffocating while his body was flattened was a huge leap from what he went through in the previous test.

Takumi struggled to clench his fist to alert Makoto, but he was not in the position to recall what hand sign he had to make for her to notice him. He was desperate to end the test. His free right arm swung into the right foot that was pressing down on him. He pounded on Makoto’s big toe with his fist, wanting to get her attention as quickly as he could.

“Huh?” The test subject high schooler was successful in getting Makoto’s attention. Though they were light taps to her, it was enough to cause her to notice the panicked frenzy Takumi was in. “Oh shit!”

Makoto put down her left foot and got her right one off of Takumi as quickly as she could without placing any extra pressure on him. Takumi was only grateful when his body was free again. He could finally breathe again without anything pressing down on him.

Takumi did not move from his position. He didn't have the energy to do so. All he could do was stare up at the distant ceiling in wait for his pulse and breathing to get back to their normal rhythm. 

On the other hand, Makoto needed to take a closer look at her friend and so had to lie down on her stomach to get her face close. She leaned in close and looked at her exhausted friend from above.

“Did I go overboard? I totally thought you’d be fine with that.” Makoto asked with concern. Her enormous face breathing warm air down on him was not welcomed by Takumi. After breathing in the stench of pantyhose clad feet for so long, all he wanted was cool fresh air.

“Can I have… a break now…?” He struggled to wheeze out a request. Makoto was only able to hear him because her ears were close enough, but she, too, agreed after seeing her pained friend. 

“That’s probably a good idea…”