“Okay, your total will be 54.33, and did you know that if you pre-order Pokemon Legends: Arceus, you get a free-”

“Nah man, I’m good.”

This was a typical exchange at the Greenstowne, Indiana GameStop. Anna did her best to suppress a stutter as she was interrupted by the dudebro across the counter: an Under Armour tank, Oakley Sunglasses lazily hanging off the back of his snapback hat, and practically pre-pubescent levels of scraggly facial hair- though this guy couldn’t be a day under 25, by Anna’s guess.

“Are you sure? The pre-order bonus is a free poster of the Sinnoh Region, and we’ve got a midnight release too?” she cringed and forced a smile. Mr. Under Armour didn’t seem to take the hint. He leaned forward onto the counter, pushing his full body weight- and his face- towards Anna. She could smell the all-too-familiar hint of Taco Bell on his breath.

“Look, lady, I’m just here to get my little brother some V-Bucks. He doesn’t play any kiddie shit like Pokemon or whatever. Am I good to go or what?”

Anna quickly finished bagging the dingy little plastic Fortnite cards and stuffed them in a branded bag, doing her best to avoid eye contact and to hold her breath.

“Here you go man. Uh, have a good one!”

Under Armour just snorted, aggressively yanking his bag off the counter. 

“Sure.”

He turned and made a quick exit out of the store heading into the Chick-Fil-A parking lot across the street, no doubt to get his fill of as much homophobic chicken as he could muster. As soon as she heard the door ding on his way out, she flipped him the bird with both hands. Good thing the windows were shaded.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck you, you stupid fuckhead, you goddamn literal chode,” she sang under her breath jovially to the tune of Roger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!. It was stuck in her head today, for no real particular reason. The Greenstowne GameStop was never busy, and traffic was always terrible considering the line to the Chick-Fil-A next door. Under Armour was the only customer she’d had today, and her manager was on vacation, so it was just her, the games, and a host of ugly Funko Pops to keep her company.

Anna impulsively checked her reflection in her phone’s camera. She was tiny for her age- 5’0” at 23- which made running the store by herself even more anxiety inducing. She had short, shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes, and a face covered in freckles. In true GameStop fashion, she’d wing-tipped her eyeliner, generously applied purple eyeshadow, and was currently wearing a Rocko's Modern Life t-shirt with her black jeans. It was the only remotely nerdy shirt she owned, but hey! It fit the dress code, so why not. 

The day was slow, as she expected. Anna tuned out the endless GameXplain trailer analyses, and the droning music of the Sonic demo playing on the Switch in the corner. She had her usual small crop of guests over the next five hours or so: the sugar-crazed Fortnite kids, the confused Moms trying to buy Mario on the PS5, the local cat-piss neckbeards who knew her by name. She didn’t care for any of them. Mostly, she was bored by this job. She didn’t care that much about video games, and could give less than a shit about “nerd culture.” It was a minimum wage job that gave her good hours and wasn’t a complete nightmare during its busy seasons. She smoked weed and listened to 100 Gecs, which was apparently on brand enough to get her the job, so she wasn’t complaining.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. She blinked and it was 9:30- just half an hour before closing. Thank God. She didn’t see any cars in the parking lot which was a great sign. And no manager to oversee things? Looks like GameStop would be closing early tonight. It was a Tuesday, the perfect night to get blazed out of her mind in her apartment and binge episodes of Fraser. She turned to lock up the remaining games and to count her cash drawer.

“Hiya!” called a voice from behind her without warning.

Anna let out a small yelp. Christ- she must have just completely missed the doorbell going off. Another customer. Great. Looks like Fraser, Niles and her weed stash would have to wait. She turned to see an all-too-familiar sight: the type of person Anna had come to call “the complete package.” The woman in front of her had straight, bright blue dyed hair with bangs, and a nose ring along with an eyebrow piercing; she was wearing a Minecraft Creeper hoodie, thick aviator glasses, camo cargo shorts, and chunky blue flip flops. Her forehead was dotted with mild acne, and worst of all, she could swear she could make out a Five Nights at Freddy’s tattoo peeking out just under the woman’s collarbone. The girl was taller than Anna, but not by much- she was probably 5’5” or so, and rather stocky. Probably her age. She wore a tremendous, enthusiastic grin- triggering Anna’s passive misanthropy.

“Yeah, hey. We were actually just about to close-”

“Oh, sorry, LOL. Not me ruining the end of your shift!” The girl laughed to herself, but Anna wasn’t quite in a laughing mood.

“No, no it’s… fine. I can help you really quick,” Anna said, making a herculean effort to enter customer service mode.

“Do you guys have any Deltarune Chapter 2 Funko Pops?”

Anna wanted to die in that instant, but held it together for a few seconds more.

“Uh, no actually! I don’t think any have been… made? Yet? As in, I’m not sure there are any. Like in existence?”

“Oh, seriously!? Crap! I have a ton of Funkos at home and was hoping you guys would have some. Sad Pepe,” the girl appeared to be genuinely a bit upset, which triggered a small amount of empathy for her if only for a brief moment. Perhaps she had been too quick to judge.

“Yeah! …Sorry. Deltarune is a cool game, I’m sure they’ll make some soon!” she lied. There was a light at the end of the tunnel!

“Really?! You’ve played it? POG.” Before Anna could even so much as pretend to muster a response, the girl was off to the races. She couldn’t be sure that the girl was talking about anything remotely coherent. Fan theories, her favorite parts of the game, what she wants in Chapter 3- it was all on the table, all discussed at length. “Ralsei” this, “Lancer” that; at one point, the girl even started singing one of the boss songs a cappella. This continued for a solid ten minutes as Anna made an attempt to lock up the store. She slowly counted her drawer, politely nodding and “hmmm”ing and “yeah”ing along with the woman’s story, but her patience was wearing thinner by the second. She had finally done everything but lock the front doors and hit the lights, and the girl was still talking.

“So, I PERSONALLY think that Metaton from Undertale is supposed to parallel Spamton, right, because if you look at the way they’re animated? It’s the same-”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Anna through gritted teeth, “but- what was your name?”

“Isabella!” She grinned, putting out her hand for a shake, “But all my friends on Discord call me Bella!”

“Great. Isabella,” Anna said, briskly ignoring the gesture as she finished locking the till drawer, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got to close the store. Maybe we could take down your phone number and, maybe, call you if we get any of those Funko Pops in stock?”

Something slightly shifted in Bella’s demeanor then- Anna could barely pick up on it, but there was a glint in Bella’s eye that caused Anna to cringe involuntarily. Bella took in a shallow breath as she approached the counter again.

“You’re saying… you want my number, right?” Bella’s grin of enthusiasm quickly grew coy. Anna could feel herself going red in the face. This couldn’t be worse.

“Uh, no. I don’t- I think you’re misinterpreting- I’m asking you if you want us as the store to take down your number and call you if we get those figures in,” she said, trying to maintain composure. Bella’s grin didn’t didn’t subside in the slightest. She leaned on the counter and kicked one of her legs back behind her, toes curled in their flip flop. 

“Sure,” she murmured, reaching directly across Anna to grab a pen from behind the counter, “I’ll just leave my number with you and you can do what you want with it… baka,” Bella scrawled her number on to a promotional It Takes Two flyer and shot her a wink. Anna’s jaw, she realized, was hanging wide open. She pulled herself together and reluctantly took the number from Bella- she had drawn a heart around it. Horrifying. 

“Thanks. We’ll give you a call.”

“Epic. And we can talk some more about Deltarune. Or Minecraft. Or…whatever,” Bella bit her lower lip and winked again. 

“...Right,” Anna forced a final smile and watched Bella make her way out of the store. 

The instant she was gone, Anna sprung into action, fully leaping the counter and racing to the back to slam off the lights. Her shoes screeched against the tile as she raced to close the store- there was still hope! The clock read 9:45- just enough extra time to stop by Taco Bell on the way home. She flung her bag over her shoulder and burst from the front doors. Wrestling with the keys, she just managed to lock the front doors when she realized something brilliant was being reflected in the store window. It was so intensely luminous that she had to look away from the store’s window- but as she did, she realized she had turned directly to the source of the light. It was pleasantly warm, she found, but it was also enveloping her entire body. Her first guess was that someone in the lot had left their lights on, but as soon as she opened her mouth to speak, no sound came out. 

Panic set in. Something was happening to her. She could feel every nerve in her body start to tingle with a warm, prickling sensation. It didn’t feel bad, but combined with her inability to see, speak, or even move, it was terrifying. Her head instantly felt extremely light. Her eyelids grew heavy, and the glistening radiance faded- along with the rest of the world.

The first thing she could discern as she started to awake was music. Muted, but still very loud. There was a drumbeat- rhythmic, fast, and giving her a massive headache. The lyrics sounded foreign- was it… Japanese? No, there was an English-sounding word in there… wait. 

Wait. 

Was someone playing Caramelldansen?

Anna’s eyes fluttered open. Her headache pounded mercilessly, and her vision was blurred and incoherent. There were some minor body aches to contend with, but she felt… safe, somehow. And warm. That’s weird. She shouldn’t- she just blacked out- but the ground felt soft and kind of cozy, too.

Hold on. That’s not right. The ground’s not supposed to feel like that. Not the whole ground.

Anna’s vision came into focus. Anna realized the ground was no ground- it was a pillow. A colossal pillow. A pillow that must have been the size of a house, sitting on top of a couch the size of a mountain, in a living room the size of a small countryside. Anna wanted to puke. So much for feeling safe. She screamed at the top of her lungs- well, at least her voice was working again. This wasn’t right- it shouldn’t even be possible. Was she asleep? This had to be a dream!

Looking around, Anna realized she was in an exotic environment. The walls were plastered with K-POP posters and wall scrolls of Naruto and Inuyasha characters. Bookshelves lined shelf to shelf with manga, comics and graphic novels sandwiched a TV stand between them, on top of which was a flat screen TV and an Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch, covered in etsy stickers. The entire room was warmed by a dull pink glow from LED strip lights that lined the corners of the cieling. 

Anna didn’t see an easy way out of here. Even if she got down from the mountain of couch she was on, there was no way she’d be able to open a window or a door. She swaddled in her little blanket, hyperventilating. What should she do? What COULD she do? 

Wait. Who left me this blanket? Upon further analysis she saw it was no blanket, but a small glasses cleaning cloth that had been gently wrapped around her, with a Hello Kitty design printed across it. It was surprisingly comforting considering the circumstances.

Thunderous, earth-shattering steps shook the air around Anna and threatened to knock her off her perch on the pillow. The muted music grew in clarity and volume for a split second, then quieted. Someone had left their room and was heading this way.

Isabella. It was the girl from the store, and she was titanic. She was the single largest living thing Anna had ever seen. As the giantess casually waltzed down the hall, Anna realized her footfalls alone were causing her entire body to shake. Bella was already the taller between the two. Now, Anna was an insect to the woman, who, as she approached, was grinning hungrily right in her direction.

Isabella stopped in front of the couch and kneeled down, her immense, sky-scraper scale form descending before Anna’s eyes. The tiny woman scrambled backward, but it was no use: a face as wide as her entire frame of view now occupied her vision. Her stark blue hair and aviator glasses framed rosy cheeks and pink lipstick. Isabella’s eyes were a light hazel, matching her hair. Her grin widened as her voice echoed through the air around Anna:

“Good morning little pogchamp! You feeling okay?” 

“WHAT IN THE FUCK DID YOU DO!? WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!?” Anna wailed at the giant. Bella’s eyes widened.

“Ah! Ummm… nothing?” Bella grimaced uncomfortably, distraught. 

“WHYINTHEWHOLEFUCK AM I TINY!? WHYINTHEGODDAMNSHIT ARE YOU HUGE!?”

“Oh. That. So… I like… I was going to leave the store after I gave you my number but then as you were leaving, I was sitting in my car and I saw a super bright flash of light kind of like… eat you? I guess? Which I thought was sus. So I ran over to where you were standing and there was no one there. And I was like- what the fuck? And I looked around for like 10 minutes and I didn’t see you in the store and I was pretty sure for like a hot minute that I was on Jackass or something or like that one show with Ashton Kutcher? Punk’d?”

Anna started weeping. Of all the times to get shrunk by supernatural and unexplainable forces, this had to be the worst.

“Oh my gosh I’m sorry don’t cry! I was just going to say- I waited around for a while and I thought about maybe calling the police and then I sat down on the curb and realized there was something on the ground where you were- and I guess that something was you? But you were soooooo little, like so ridiculously little, like,” Bella held her pinky next to Anna’s quivering body, “like smaller than my pinky! And I was scared something bad would happen to you… so I put you in my pocket, drove you home superfast, like Mario Kart 200cc fast, and, well, here you are!”

Okay. Okay, this was salvageable. Isabella was at least in sound enough mind to keep her alive. And she did give her this nice blanket… and thinking back on it now, she was kind of cute, but…

Nope. Nope. That all needed to be put out of mind. Anna was two inches tall on the couch of a terminally online dork. This could be a matter of life and death.

“Isabella. Um,” Anna wiped the tears from her face, and took a triumphant sniffle, “Thank you. Thank you for saving me. I… I’m sorry, this is just so weird. I’m still not sure how this is even physically possible.”

“Yeah me neither!” Bella laughed loudly, forcing the tiny girl to cover her ears lest her eardrums shatter, “Maybe aliens did it? Or like, extra dimensional beings trying to test something? WAIT. Have you read string theory?” Bella encroached even closer now, laying her arms flat on the couch and perching her head on top of her hands. She was giving Anna a doe-eyed look that was triggering… something in her. If Bella wasn’t the size of a football field it might have even been cute. But she needed to put it aside.

“Isabella, please. I need to get to a hospital. I need to get back to my normal size. Maybe the doctors could do something,” she pleaded with Bella, resting a hand on her right thumb. Bella’s nails were a glossy blue color- they matched her flip flops. Anna could see her own reflection in the nail. She looked pathetic. Her hair was frazzled, her eyeliner was running, and she was pale as death. 

“Um… what? Why would we go to the hospital?” 

Anna’s heart stopped for a beat. “Because… because I need to go back to normal, Isabella. I have a job, and things I need to do that I definitely can’t do at the size of your pinky.”

“Right. But like. Wouldn’t it be cool to like. Hang out for a little while? As a tiny person? I bet you’re the only person like, ever to be shrunk by a weird white light. So that’s kind of pog,” Isabella smiled awkwardly, “Plus, the government is cringe and super fucked up, and would probably do all kinds of weird tests on you. But I’m like, based as fuck and will totally, uh, take care of you. If you’re cool with that.”

Anna wanted to scream, to fight her argument. To call her an idiot. To say, no you can’t take care of me you fucking psycopath, I’m a person not a god-damned gerbil from PetSmart. But the problem was that on some level, she knew Isabella was right. Who would be able to fix this? She lived alone and didn’t exactly have anyone to turn to to help her with this. And if people ever found out about her, it’d be a crisis. She’d be a media sensation, and probably the target for all sorts of insane weirdos.

Then again, there was the kind-of-insane weirdo right in front of her to deal with. But the more Anna and Bella talked, the more she realized she was much sweeter than she had initially given her credit for. Despite the weird flirting stuff, she seemed to have her head on straight. And the flirting stuff wasn’t… that horrible. In retrospect.

…What the hell was Anna thinking?

“Okay. Okay, you’re, ah, right. Thank you… Bella. I’d love to stay here with you for a while. If I’m not too much trouble.”

“YESSSS!” Bella jumped up with sheer excitement, quaking the couchtop that sent the miniscule Anna hurdling downward off her perch. The bright fluorescent pink pillowcase she had been standing on must’ve been made out of polyester, because she suddenly came to terms with the fact she had absolutely no purchase with which to hold on. She thrashed violently trying to grasp something, anything at all as she fell. She fell below the pillow’s expanse, tumbled across the couch, and began to sink into the deep, pillowy crevasse of the space between the couch cushions. She sunk in head first, inky blackness devouring her vision. With every further flail of a limb, she could feel herself sinking deeper.

In an instant, she felt a tree-trunk sized protrusion brush her side. It was warm. Bella! Anna threw all four of her shaking limbs around it, giving it a warm embrace. Light graced her eyes once more as Bella pulled her 2-inch body from between the cushions with a single index finger. A major headrush overwhelmed her as she rocketed up, attached to the finger, abruptly finding herself right in front of Bella’s face. 

“EPIC FAIL!” she bellowed in a deep, goofy voice, snickering at her own joke again, “Remember epic fail? MAN that was such a simpler time. Or Dr. Octagonapus? Or TROLOLOLO? Or…”

Anna’s heartbeat was racing. That laugh was so… sweet. It was so genuine. This girl might have been a total dork thanks to her devotion to meme culture and nerd properties, but there wasn’t a single cynical bone in her. And she protected her. She saved her life not once now, but twice. Being this close to her skin was doing something to her. Something physical. Oh, god. Her face was heating up. It was getting really hard to breathe. Oh, god, oh god, oh-

“Um. Anna? Are you okay? Oh jeez, you aren’t going into shell-shock are you?”

“NO. NO, I’M NOT. SORRY,” she croaked, her voice cracking, “I just… got really scared back there. Thanks for being chill and not letting me die?” Now she was the one to giggle at her own words, but Bella joined in. Bella’s already rosy cheeks deepened their color and she bit her lip again. 

“Don’t sweat it lil’ scrub. You got a pro gamer on your side. Sorry for the… uh, heart attack. Maybe we could watch something to cool you down?” Bella gently laid her forefinger into the palm of her other hand, letting her step down into the soft skin. She sat down in her hand, feeling Bella’s pulse flowing through her hand. Woah. Bella was too busy poring through her collection of DVDs to notice.

“Let’s see… Rocky Horror? Cat in the Hat? American Pie? OH OH OH! LORD OF THE RINGS MARATHON. It’s only 10:30,” Bella said, cupping Anna in her hands and lifting her to the thick, special extended-edition covers of Peter Jackson’s trilogy of fantasy legend, “If we start now we’ll be done in time for lunch tomorrow!” Anna was a little taken aback by the time commitment, but she had to admit that sounded kind of fun.

“Actually, that sounds great! My Dad loved those movies, we used to watch them together when I was a kid. I could use a little nostalgia right now, considering the trauma of being cockroach sized.”

“SICK. Wait on the table,” Bella said, setting her down on a small coffee table in front of the couch, “I’ll make us some p-corn!”

“P-corn?”

“Yeh. P-corn. P’corn. …Popcorn. …Nevermind. LOL.” She flew into the kitchen with speed, disappearing from sight.

Anna could feel butterflies welling up in her stomach. She danced around nervously on the wooden coffee table, shaking out the excess energy. What the hell was happening? She thought this girl was an idiot an hour ago. Was she making that up? There was something infectious about her now, something transcendent. Anna had to try and suppress it. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She didn’t even like girls! 

…Right?