The Cheerleaders Town

by

Lookup

Since we discussed this on the boards, I hope any writers include the Town Council Inauguration Ceremony (members spanked and breastfed), of course the 'Football' Team of 11 guys whose job it is to make love to the Cheerleader, and a coach with a playbook that resembles the Kama Sutra, the Cheerleader's numerous menages and many efforts to make, break and repair marriages and relationships, and maybe government invaders finally making their way to the town and shrinking the cheerleader in a bid to 'free' the inhabitants, who most assuredly don't want their freedom. Other than that, take the story and run with it! Have fun!

Chapter One
The tanks were old and rusted from years of exposure to the elements of harsh winters and steamy summers. Oxidation had brought them to the edge of giving way. Almost forgotten, the leftover of an abandoned government project, there was no one to tell the authorities that one of them was about to go. The bad tank finally opened up a small leak and released a cloud into the atmosphere, on an early September morning in the Alleghenies.

The cloud drifted lazily from the unmanned tank site down the Huktawautcha River valley, over meadows where daisies and daffodils were in full bloom, over forests preparing for their first turn of fall color, over farmland with berries blue and red, before settling into the town.

The town of Dupuy, Pennsylvania was about as isolated as a town could be in the eastern United States. It was nestled in the same valley as those tanks, at the downwind end. It hosted about two thousand souls, not counting the two thousand or so undergraduates who had returned for classes at Dupuy College, a small private institution with just enough young men to put together a Division IV football team and enough young women to form a cheerleading squad.

Dupuy was bustling when the green cloud arrived, or at least it was doing as much bustling as a small town could muster. Cars were rolling to work, school buses to school, trucks were shuttling deliveries on the one major road that went through the town. In a third-floor room at the women's dorm at Dupuy, 21-year-old Stephanie Searfass slept through what passed for rush hour in Dupuy. Her sleeping brain knew it had no reason to awaken until cheerleading practice at 10:30 a.m. The five foot eight blond had just enough cushion on her well-developed thighs to make them interesting, and was just young enough for them to be cute. She had pale blue eyes and a complexion not untypical for the Pennsylvania Dutch stock from which she came. A real Central Pennsylvania milkmaid, her mom used to say, just like she herself was. Her personal space was defined by a certain uber-girlish outlook: plenty of plush toys and such.

Those who were awake when the strange fog enveloped their town later recalled feeling a chill. At first they thought it was a taste of fall air, but then a tingle built that swept through their body. Those who were young adults at the time remembered some feelings of arousal. Many gasped when their clothes began to collapse around them. The cars and trucks and buses that made up Dupuy's rush hour began to slide out of control as their drivers became too small to hold the steering wheels. Soon the main road was blocked with the wreckage of smoking hulks, some about to catch fire, with their drivers stuck inside.

At the fire station south of town, the volunteer firemen heard the crashing and crunching sounds coming from town. They were sliding down the pole at the vintage firehouse when the green cloud sailed overhead.
Piles of firemen's uniforms gathered at the bottom of the firepole, providing a cushion for the naked, six-inch-tall, confused volunteer firemen who were falling to the ground, having lost their grip on a pole that seemed to have grown to a circumference of fifteen feet or more.

In a small white house near the fire station, Marjorie LeBlanc was trying to get her son Daniel, an 18-year-old high school senior, off to class. 'What's that green fog in the backyard, Mom?' Daniel asked as he looked up from his breakfast. 'Don't know, son', was Marjorie's reply. The divorced mom was about to reach under the sink to dig out some cat food to feed a starving tabby named Graycat when her clothes started to slip. In just a couple of minutes, Marjorie was covering herself with her panties, while Daniel was tearing out a piece of his shorts to create a loincloth. He couldn't understand how they had gotten so small, nor could he understand why he felt a bulge in his loins as he shrank, one that his loincloth was straining to cover. Gray, unaffected by the green fog, was still hungry...

The quiet Pennsylvania countryside seemed even quieter to Stephanie as she stretched herself awake around 9 a.m.. She quickly showered and slipped on her cheerleader's outfit. Normally she would change when she got to practice but for some reason she wanted to show how good she looked in the forest green dress with gold trim, green, gold and white socks, and golden panties.

As she headed out the door of her room she heard screeches from next door. Did some animal get into an open window overnight? She opened the door to find her dormmate, 19-year-old Sandy, or else someone five and a third inches tall who looked like Sandy, struggling to make her way out of a pair of gray shorts with the legend 'DUPUY COLLEGE' in green letters across the backside.

'Oh my god, Steph!' Sandy screeched as she exited the shorts to find the cheerleader towering over her, each leg as wide as a tree, leading up to golden panties that looked like a tree's bough in autumn, waiting to drop its leaves. 'You're huge!'

'Well... you're small!' Stephanie exclaimed, amazed as her tiny neighbor covered her ears. She knelt down and whispered. 'I'm sorry, Sandy, I didn't mean to hurt your ears.' Sandy trembled nervously. Without thinking, Stephanie scooped up the nude Sandy into her hands and brought the smaller woman to her face. Many years later, Sandy would tell her grandchildren that Stephanie, the woman they knew simply as 'The Cheerleader', had a look about her that she had never seen before, up to that time. 'It was as if she was in the role she had always been meant to play.' Stephanie spoke softly to Sandy, 'I promise that whatever happened to you, I will take care of you. I won't leave you. I'll be your protector.' Then, surprising herself, Stephanie softly kissed Sandy's back. 'Now tell me', Stephanie whispered, 'how did you get so small?'

'I don't know, Stephanie.' Suddenly Sandy felt a little strange referring to this golden-haired goddess by her first name. 'I was getting ready to leave, and there was a green cloud outside, and... I got all tingly and then I shrank.'

Stephanie's lifetime of volunteering, usually done to get herself to the center of attention, came to the fore. 'I've got to go out and see if the cloud made anybody else get small.' She unzipped her gym bag and gently placed Sandy in amongst her change of clothes. 'Sandy, remember, I'm here for you and anybody who got shrunk.' Then she kissed her dormmate again, and all but closed the zipper. Soon Stephanie was running all over town, rescuing people trapped in piles of clothes, then pulling shrunken residents out of wrecked and sometimes burning cars. All were grateful, and many awestruck, to see the blond giantess appear to save the day. But Stephanie's gym bag was filling up with people who had minor injuries. She had to leave the uninjured victims on the sidewalk while she rushed to assist others. 'I've got to find somebody big to help me help these people', Stephanie thought, not realizing that she had used the term 'big' instead of normal to refer to her own size, unconsciously accepting what had occurred as creating a new normality.

'Maybe at the fire station. Surely there's someone there who can help me', Stephanie thought. She walked into the firehouse and found a half dozen naked firemen and paramedics trying to make sense of things. One of them, Stan Schuldrecher, later recalled for the town's historian: 'I had fought nasty fires in warehouses and things that would scare the hell out of any sane person and it hadn't bothered me. I felt pretty confident of myself. But here I was standing naked on the floor of my own firehouse and this incredibly tall woman strolls in, her skirt blowing in the breeze like the sail of a great ship, and I'm a little scared. I'm covering myself with my hands out of modesty, but I'm also a little frightened. It's as if some great force intervened in the scheme of things, to put the Cheerleader over us in every way.'

Stephanie walked up to Stan, not knowing his name but assuming he was a firefighter, and asked: 'I have some injured people in my gym bag. Could you help them?' Stan nervously nodded, then motioned to Stephanie. 'Oh', she blushed. Thinking quickly, she grabbed a first aid kit from one of the fire trucks, cut a piece of gauze bandage, and gave it to Stan for a loincloth. Then she unzipped the gym bag and gently lifted out the wounded. After the injured were 'airlifted' by the cheerleader's hand, out popped Sandy, wrapped in one of Stephanie's scarves. The first person she saw was Stan, who would become her future husband. They were the first of many couples who got to know each other thanks to Stephanie, and who for that matter got to know Stephanie as well.

'Sandy, I'm going to need to leave you with these firefighters while I look for more people who need help. Excuse me, firefighter, what's your name?'

'Stan.'

'Stan, this is my friend Sandy...Stan, do you know if there's anyone in town who's still big?'

'All I know is there was a green cloud that drifted over us, like something toxic. We had just heard some crashing noises down the road and figured there was one hell of an accident. We were sliding down the firepoles to respond and suddenly everything got big, I mean, we got small. The only big person I've seen around since early this morning was you.'

'Is there any way to get help from out of town?'

'The phone's over there on the desk, but we're too small to get up there and use it.'

'Let me try.' Stephanie found herself mildly amused at her newfound status. She could now accomplish tasks that were too big for beefy firemen to handle. The cheerleader picked up the phone.

At that moment, several bureaucrats in Washington, some wearing military uniforms and some wearing short sleeve shirts and pocket protectors, gathered around a video display showing a remote camera pointed at the rusting tank in Pennsylvania, leaking out its green fumes.

'What are your orders?' said one man with plenty of rank to his superior, a well-dressed senior member of government.

'Bomb the tank site with cryogenic foam. Send in robot techs to shut off the leak. And seal off the valley. Close the roads in and out, pull the telephone and internet links.

'Seal off the valley? But several thousand people live there.'

'Have you heard anything from the valley since the leak?'

'No, sir.'

'Given what we know about the stuff in that tank, they are quite probably dead now, or in the last throes of an agonizing death, their bodies literally dissolving in contact with that substance. We'll send in robots to scan the city later, but we will quite probably not find a single survivor or even much in the way of corpses -- just piles of clothing, a lot of wrecked cars and an empty town. There's no point leaving their relatives out of town with unanswered ringing phones and shreds of hope that their loved ones are still alive. What's more, we don't want terrorists to know the power of this substance and how easily it can be used against a civilian population. We need to keep this quiet until we can come up with a way of dealing with this issue. Pull the plug, General, and place an RF blanking field over the valley to prevent any communications below 3 gigahertz getting in or out.'

At that moment Stephanie picked up the phone. She got a dial tone, but whenever she tried to dial a number out of town, she got a recording saying the lines were busy. Local calls all went unanswered or rolled over to voice mail. 'I can't reach anybody', she sighed.

'The radio!' Stan shouted up at the cheerleader towering above him. The more he looked at this giantess, the more he got the feeling that she was some kind of omnipotent being, almost a goddess. 'Use the radio to call the state police in the next county!'

Stephanie went over to the radio, which had a microphone with a push-to-talk switch. She pressed the switch and began to talk. 'Hello... Hello... This is the fire station in Dupuy, Pennsylvania. Can anyone hear me?' She released the switch. Noise. No answer. She repeated her call, and repeated it. Still no answer. Finally she sighed in frustration. 'What's happened? Has the whole world gotten small?' She turned to Stan. 'It looks like we're on our own. I'm going to check around town for people trapped in their houses. If I find any who need medical treatment, I'll bring them back here.'

As Stephanie turned to leave, she allowed herself to think for the first time. 'Stan's cute. I could take him.' Then came the next thought, one that had only become possible minutes before. 'I could take every fireman in this building if I wanted to.'

The giantess strolled down a residential street west of the fire station. Normally it would be full of children playing, but today it was eerily silent, except for cats trotting up and down the sidewalk. That sight gave Stephanie the creeps as she came to the first house on the block, the white house belonging to the Leblancs.

Stephanie rang the doorbell. 'Anyone home?' She tried the knocker. No answer. Time to practice amateur burglary, she thought. The cheerleader found a bedroom window open. She climbed in and made her way to the kitchen. There she found Daniel Leblanc, wielding a paring knife as tall as he was, fighting off Gray as his mother recoiled in horror.

'Scat! Shoo!' Stephanie stomped her feet and the feline scampered off.

She ran to the Leblancs and knelt down. 'Are you guys all right?' She blushed at her lack of civility. 'Oh, my name's Stephanie.'

Mrs. Leblanc came forward. 'I'm Marjorie, and this is my son Daniel.'

Stephanie waved from above. 'Hi, Daniel.'

Daniel's loincloth was starting to feel tight again.

Having rescued the Leblancs, Stephanie got a bad feeling about what might be happening around town. Sure enough, there seemed to be a lot more cat traffic on the streets than there should be in the middle of the day. Stephanie glanced at one orange cat with a catch in its jaws. She looked again and saw that the catch had two arms and two legs. She screamed and ran toward the cat. The shocked feline dropped its prize and ran.

Stephanie saw that the victim was a boy of about fourteen. He had suffered several deep wounds. She cradled the body in her hands and gently looked for signs of life. He was breathing, thank goodness. The cheerleader ran with the boy back to the fire station. As she ran, a plan formed in her mind. After dropping the boy off at the firehouse, she ran to a nearby discount store. There were about a dozen shoppers and employees, all confused at events but fortunately none in need of medical attention. Stephanie grabbed a shopping cart and cleaned out the 'Barbie Accessories' section. As she wheeled the cart out the door, Stephanie felt a pang of guilt. Technically, she was shoplifting. Breaking the law. She was tempted to throw her credit card over the reader to stay legit. Then she smiled as the realization hit her: I am the law, unless and until some other big person gets here to say otherwise.

Her next stop was a small shop at the edge of town that sold dollhouses and doll clothing. The owner was nowhere to be found. Stephanie stripped the shop clean and loaded her 'purchases' into another shopping cart, tied to the first.

Wheeling her carts full of Barbie items and dollhouses through the streets, Stephanie went house to house, using her charm to persuade the inhabitants of Dupuy to leave their houses and to come live with her in the women's dorm at Dupuy College. There was resistance at first, until shocked residents turned on their satellite dish receivers (the only TV still viewable in Dupuy because of the RF blanking field) and discovered that they had been written off by the government. Despairing, and fearful of becoming meals for the unfed Fluffys of the town, they willingly accepted Stephanie's invitation to a new life, whatever that would be, inside the dorm. The resistance would come later, after the emergency had apparently passed. The way Stephanie dealt with it helped transform her from lucky survivor into a sort of goddess and bombshell, the overwhelming political, physical, social -- and sexual -- force in her small town.

Several days later, a robot swept through the streets of Dupuy. It checked the stores, the police station, the fire station, and many of the houses. It found wrecked cars, piles of clothing, empty buildings, and no people. For some reason, it did not check out Dupuy College, particularly the dorm areas. 'Clearly the toxic cloud killed all of Dupuy's inhabitants' was the conclusion of the official report, which recommended sealing off the site for 150 years to prevent anyone from accidentally becoming contaminated.

----

A hundred years later.

Mike, a 6'1' Penn State senior on summer break, decided to try something risky. It was so dangerous he didn't tell anyone -- not his friends, and certainly not his parents -- what he had planned. He was going to try to enter the Huktawautcha Site. Since the disaster of a century ago, it had been sealed off by the government with fences and concrete barriers. The government said anyone who went into the area would die. Over the years, about a dozen people who had told friends they were going to try to enter the site had disappeared. Everyone assumed they had died from exposure to the still toxic area inside. What Mike planned to do was foolhardy, and he knew it. That didn't stop him. He had heard about the ghost town of Dupuy, inside the valley, and wondered if it still stood intact. A town frozen in time. What would it look like? Would he see artifacts, a clock stopped at the moment the cloud hit? Curiosity gave Mike enough courage to give it a try.

Being pretty well-built, and accustomed to hiking and roughing it, Mike had no problem getting through the barriers. The concrete walls were beginning to crumble. He just looked for a weak spot and pushed through. He climbed to the top of a mountain. He could see the valley below, including the buildings. He took a trail down the slope, and within a half hour he was at the southern outskirts of town, near the fire station.

Mike was amazed at the sights of a city that had not existed for a hundred years. He was even more amazed to be alive. Maybe the poison worked like insecticide, and killed you just when you thought you had escaped, Mike thought. Collecting scores of pictures on his digital camera, Mike decided to check out the area just east of town that looked like the former Dupuy College. His great-grandfather had been one of the last Dupuy alums, graduating just weeks before the disaster.

Mike scoped out the old campus buildings, the clock tower, the football stadium, and found nothing human. Just remnants of the past, cobwebs, and the occasional mouse. He went to the men's dorm. Nothing. The last building he decided to visit before leaving was the women's dorm. It was a sturdy brick building, built to survive for centuries. It already has, he thought.

With a bit of effort, the creaky old door finally gave way. Swinging it open, Mike was amazed at what he saw. Along each side of the hallways were tiny buildings, many of them a deep pink with labels like 'Barbie Supermarket' or 'Barbie Fashion Store.' The floors were covered with what appeared to be tiny dolls, or people. The mature men and women, and their school-age offspring, were wearing what appeared to be antique doll costumes. The younger men were wearing T-shirts and casual gear of the type Mike had seen in pictures from a hundred years earlier. Some of the younger women were wearing old-style cheerleader outfits. As one bent over, Mike noticed that she wasn't wearing anything underneath. The other young women wore old-style party dresses that barely reached the top of the thigh -- and sometimes not even. The tiny crowd milled around the giant in their midst, unable to speak. Finally, Mike heard a tiny screech from one of the inhabitants: 'Somebody summon the Cheerleader!' A few moments later, a woman his own size, appearing to be about 23 years old, wearing a green and gold outfit with the block letters DUPUY and the smaller monogram 'Stephanie', approached from the opposite end of the hall. She walked up to Mike and looked him straight in the eye. She looked as though she hadn't seen a man in a hundred years, Mike thought, and she looked as though she hadn't 'had' a man in a hundred years (which was only partly true). The tiny people in the hallway all went to their knees as she approached, some fell prostrate.

'Hi. My name's Stephanie.' The giantess flicked her hair, trying and failing to hide her jitters. Oh, please, let this one stay big, she thought to herself. Don't let him shrink like all the others who've wandered into town.

'Hi.' Mike answered back. 'So what is this place?'

'It's... Dupuy.'

Mike was stunned. 'I know... but everybody died in Dupuy a hundred years ago. So are you a ghost?'

Stephanie had nothing to fear if she answered his question, and she knew that. But she knew from past experience that any man who wandered into town would begin shrinking within a couple of minutes after encountering her, quickly attaining the size of the town's other inhabitants. Not that he wouldn't be cute at that size, Stephanie thought. If she was wrong, and Mike didn't dwindle away like all the rest, she could deal with the embarrasment of being so forward. But if she were right, she'd miss a chance to at least....

Mike was surprised again when Stephanie stepped up on tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, bent his head down, and liplocked for an intense, passionate, hungry, desperate kiss.

Not knowing what to say, Mike caught his breath and flashed a smile at the young woman in the old-style clothing. His manhood responded to the expression of interest. Then he felt a tingle, and he noticed that the smiling round face of the cheerleader was even with his, and getting higher....

Chapter Two

The glow in Stephanie's eyes and the smile on her face faded as Mike began to collapse into his clothes. Damn, she thought. Just like all the others. A hundred years and still no one who had come to town was man enough for his size to survive an encounter with her. Sure, she could try to leave the town, but who's to say she wouldn't cause guys to shrink out in the world? Not to mention, she couldn't leave these people behind. Not after a hundred years. These were the great grandchildren of her roommates, fellow students, friends and neighbors. The grownup ones were her lovers -- all of them. She couldn't leave them unprotected. She wouldn't.

Her disappointment lasted only a moment. I'll get my satisfaction with him inside me just the same, she thought. We'll see how well he does in my pussy. If he's good, she reasoned, perhaps the coach can be talked into putting him on the team.

It was not the first time Stephanie had seen mighty men from the outside swept down and made tiny. Was it still something left behind from the cloud? Had its reductive properties become a part of her own physical being? That was what she told her people. There was a time when she was naive and still as young as she looked, when she believed that brutal honesty was the good and deception totally evil. But trying to tell the people she knew and loved, not to mention their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren that they were merely the victims of government bungling granted no dignity to their struggles, no honor to the new town and the new world they had built in the reflected brilliance of her golden panties. That was part of the reason why she always wore one of her cheerleader costumes in public, when performing her ceremonial duties. It gave the people a tie to their past, to their heritage. Indeed, although the now-tiny man at her feet didn't know it, neither Dupuy nor Dupuy College had ever gone out of business. Like ancient Roman towns that fell to barbarians, they simply realigned their identities under a new monarch, a new set of names for the stars in the sky.

Gawd, he was so cute. Even if he couldn't take her like a man, Stephanie thought, she could still love him in the plush-toy sort of way she loved all of her subjects. Since she couldn't have pets, lest the tiny humans be endangered, she made her people her pets.

Disoriented, Mike climbed out of the pile that had been his clothing. People were standing around him. He recognized them as the dolls who had been at his feet a moment ago. Looking into their eyes, more or less level with his own, the recognition hit him; he was now one of them. He felt a sudden vulnerability, like the baby bird climbing out of the egg, made more intense by the realization that he was naked. He pulled up the collar of his shirt, now seemingly ten or more feet around, to cover himself from the miniature people who were now his equals. This must have been the effect of the cloud, he speculated. This was why these people were here now. The cloud didn't dissolve people; it shrank them.

Then his eyes trailed upward. To the gold-trimmed green shoes. To the pink calves that were ample, but defined and athletic. To the knees whose perfect shape and lack of blemish bespoke a timeless simplicity. To the towering thighs, muscular enough to be those of a cheerleader yet soft enough to be the yielding flesh of a woman. To the hem of a dress that floated four or five stories above him. To the crotch of a pair of panties that actually seemed to reflect light. To the heaving midriff, the mighty breasts, the chin, the eyelashes, the waves of blond hair atop the head, and beyond them a hallway ceiling as high as a cathedral. Mike wanted to fall to his knees just like the other tiny people around him, and would have were he properly clothed. As it was, he wanted to sink into the earth. But the giantess who now towered above him would not grant him that option.

The Cheerleader slowly knelt down until her face was just three stories above Mike. Her hands slipped around and beneath him, gently inviting and demanding his presence. The fingers seemed somewhat knobby to Mike, with stubby fingernails, a small concession to humanity in the body of a titaness. But they were warm and welcoming, and he rode with their momentum as they swept his feet off the ground, and brought him slowly into the air to meet the giant round face above him.

'Whoooaa' was the reaction of Mike's stomach to the upward trip. A moment ago he had been comparatively as tall as a ten-story building. To his new peers, he must have seemed godlike. Now he felt mortal, very mortal, and feared for his life. This girl.. this woman... this goddess... could do anything to him she wanted. When his eyes met hers -- again -- Mike found it hard to believe what his own knowledge of history told him must be true, that his reduction in size was an aftereffect of the long-ago cloud, not the will nor the unconscious effect of the sexual chemistry of the woman who now held him in her palms.

As Mike arrived at the proper level, the hands that were cupped around him increased their angle. 'Stand', the Cheerleader commanded. At least, to Mike it could be nothing short of a command, the breath and sibilance hitting him with such force. He managed wobbily to raise himself up to an erect posture. In spite of all that had happened, a certain part of his anatomy had no problem standing up straight.

The titaness smiled at Mike's unconscious greeting. Turning her back to her flock so as not to reveal her new subject's naked form to innocent eyes, the Cheerleader flicked her tongue at the sensitive organ in front of her, then whispered, 'Before you ravish me, the least you could do
is tell me your name.'

'M-m-Mike. Mike Kruger' was his answer. Ravish her? Me ravish her, he thought to himself. More likely the reverse, he thought. That thought was a little arousing, then a little scary. How could he make love to this goddess? His manhood would be lost in her, in fact all of him would be lost... oh my -- is that what she wants me to do? How would I survive? What a way to go!

Stephanie called the tiny man's thoughts back to his current status. 'A hundred years ago all of the people of this town were made small except for me. I told every one of them that I would protect them and love them with all of my heart, all of my mind, and when the time is right, all of my body. I loved all of them, and their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I'm telling you the same thing. I will give you love that is deeper and broader than anything you ever imagined. It is the same love that built this place, the New Dupuy. It was fate that brought you here and you were given to me by the power I possess simply by being. You are one of my people now, and like all of my people, you will find your new life, as my people have found a life and happiness, living beneath the hem of my dress.'

She turned to the subjects below her. 'My people', she shouted, quieting the din from below. 'You have among you a new citizen. His name is... Mike Kruger. As your Cheerleader, I bid you welcome him.' From a small (to her) purse, Stephanie whipped out a golden silk robe and gave it to Mike to put on. As he got the belt tied around his waist, the Cheerleader was lowering him to earth. She placed him next to her high priestess in training, Kathleen, a 20-year-old chestnut-haired, freckle-faced descendant of her old roommate Sandy Schuldrecher (to use her married name). Kathleen was wearing what would have a century earlier been called a party dress, except that this little black number was so short it allowed the last inch or so of Kathleen's buttocks to be plainly visible. The Cheerleader then turned to the crowd.

'Say his name! Say his name!' The crowd began to move in rhythm as Stephanie went into a routine that normally bordered on the lewd. She kept it on the tame side, though, since there were families in the audience. 'M - I - K - E, M - I - K- E...' The routine ended with the cheering crowd in the hallway (for all practical purposes the New Dupuy Mall) roaring their approval.
Stephanie then turned to Mike and Kathleen. 'Kat, I need you to get him ready... for the Welcoming.' Kathleen's face flushed, and her eyes brightened. Before he knew it, Mike was being tugged down the hall and up some very tall stairs, to the third floor suite of converted dorm rooms that was the Cheerleader's Palace.

'You know we don't have to take the big stairs. Those were made for the old world', Kathleen chided her charge. It was rough going, mounting stairs that were slightly taller than they were, requiring a slight jump at each step. But Mike wanted to do it, as if to get a feel for just what had happened to him. Just to their left, a set of stairs for the little people snaked up the center of the stairwell, positioned just so they could look up and see if the Cheerleader was wearing her ceremonial undies today. Theirs was the path less traveled; except for the cheerleader's own footprints, the steps were coated with the dust of decades. After making it to the second floor, Mike and Kate were thoroughly exhausted. At last, he agreed to follow her up on the wee folks' stairwell.

As they walked along the third floor corridor, there were lines of offices and workshops. One got the sense that this was where the business of New Dupuy got done. Inside each normal-sized room, offices snaked up the walls for several stories. There were enough stonemasons in Dupuy after the disaster to build fine buildings from tiny bricks. At the end of the hallway, three rooms with unbroken ceilings that extended to the sky formed the Cheerleader's Palace. Kathleen's role was well known to the guards, who waved her past security clearance. At last, they arrived in the Cheerleader's boudoir. It seemed like a movie set, full of giant century-old props, as if they were doing a period piece with faeries.

The most private of private places, Mike thought, as he looked at the great Bed with the royal green cover. His thoughts were disproven when he looked up again, to see what looked like grandstands on either side.

'What-- what are these?' Mike said to Kathleen as he pointed at the grandstands. 'Is Stephanie an exhibitionist or something?'

Kathleen responded with a short, stinging slap to Mike's face. Then she looked apologetic. 'I'm sorry, you're new here, you're unfamiliar with our customs. But we don't refer to the Cheerleader by her first name, none of us. The only time you can address the Cheerleader by her first name is when you're making love to her, or are being intimate. She likes that, because it helps her to feel less powerful and more like she's the one being taken by her lovers. Now to answer your question, this is the practice field for the team...'

'The team?' Mike responded. 'You mean they play football on this bed?'

Kathleen gave him an utterly puzzled look. 'What is football?'

It was Mike's turn to be baffled as he described the venerable American game. 'Well, there are 11 men on the field, and they have to score a touchdown...'

Kathleen's eyes brightened again. 'Oh, of course! See, you outsiders are not so different from us after all. That's just like our game. But tell me, in your 'football', the cheerleader must be ten times as big as our cheerleader, otherwise how could the giant men score?'

Mike's face went utterly blank, then he scrunched it up, trying to understand what Kathleen was saying. 'We don't have one cheerleader in football, we have several.'

The light of false understanding went on again in Kathleen's head. 'Oh... so the football players and the cheerleaders go one on one and...' she blushed and flicked her hair nervously, and the rhythm of her breathing broke a little bit... 'It must be awfully hard for the people in the stands to see any of the action.'

Slowly, Mike began to get what Kate was saying, and he drew in a breath. Ooooh, so she thinks the football players and the cheerleaders... well, maybe underneath the stands after the game, but not in front of the CROWD... Mike's eyes widened as he began to comprehend just what was meant in New Dupuy by 'the team.'

'Well, we can talk about that some more later', Kathleen said as she turned her back to Mike. "Time to get ready for the Welcoming." She opened what appeared to be a trunk -- actually a small hope chest from the old days -- and lifted out a jar full of a viscous fluid. Handwritten on the jar's label were the letters 'HOMEMADE K-Y.'

'Okay, Mike, time to get naked', Kathleen chirped. 'Unzip me.' Mike's breathing began to get labored again. These Dupuy customs were getting weirder and weirder, but the 21-year-old man was in no position to question them. He unzipped Kate's party dress and found her wearing nothing underneath. To his quizzical look, she responded, 'Grown women don't get to wear panties except during our periods. That is until menopause or until our first child. That's so that if we're acting bad or silly, the Cheerleader can always spank us.' To the excitement building again in his loins, Kathleen answered: 'Better keep that on ice. The Cheerleader won't be happy if you waste it looking at me.'

Mike thought about baseball. Hard. If he had thought about football, given that last conversation, he'd still be hard himself.

Kathleen was now totallly nude. Pert, attentive nipples complemented her chestnut hair, and a fine rump offset her swimmer's physique. 'Your turn, Mike.' A moment's hesitation caused Kate to add, 'I don't think either of us wants the cheerleader to catch us with our clothes on.' Mike hurriedly disrobed. 'Now I need to lube you up. When I'm finished, I want you to do the same to me in case I need to go in and rescue you.'

Go in and rescue me? Mike thought. That's it. The Cheerleader really IS going to put me between... oh, no... oh,yes...

Mike had never seriously thought about being immersed in a woman's womanhood before; it had never seemed possible. Now that it was not only possible but likely, Mike was suffering from two conflicting emotions: scared shitless and horny as hell. Kathleen's sensuous massaging of what appeared to be a lubricant into his flesh didn't help him maintain calm, and when she asked him to do the same to her... It was all Mike could do to maintain a grip.

Mike was just finishing Kathleen when the mighty door opened and in walked the Cheerleader.
She walked over to the floor where the two were preparing and cooed over her high priestess in training and her newest pet. 'You are both a-DOR-a-ble', she smiled. 'Hmmm... looks like Mike's all juiced up and ready to go in...'

'Yes, Cheerleader', Kathleen replied as she curtsied to the object of her worship. 'Well', the Cheerleader responded, 'grant me a moment to prepare, then you may join me on the Bed.'

The two watched as Stephanie performed a slow striptease. After her shoes, cheerleader costume, and bra went away, the last item to go was those iridescent panties. As they slid down, a silk thong was all that protected her womanly within. Wiggling and wriggling, Stephanie was at last free of her last stitch of clothing. She playfully tossed her thong at Mike and Kathleen. Her aim was perfect, and it landed with Mike standing in one leg hole and Kathleen in the other.

'Mmmm... smells like the Cheerleader', Kathleen said to Mike. 'Better get used to it, it'll be a lot stronger in just a minute.' Kate took Mike by the hand and walked him to the Bed. There, a staircase led up to the mattress. Above them, Stephanie was fingering her nipples and working her labia with her free hand.

By the time they got there, Stephanie was on her left side. Mike and Kathleen stood between her legs and her exposed and rapidly engorging pussy.

'OK, Mike, I don't know what your sexual experience is, but follow my lead', Kathleen whispered.

'Uh... in this kind of sex, I'm a total virgin', Mike replied.

Kathleen knelt down in front of Stephanie's pussy. She began stroking the labiae lightly, then increasing her rhythm and intensity, sliding an arm in and out to coax the clitoris away from its sheath. 'Mike, get in here and help me', Kathleen ordered. Together, she and Mike pushed rhythmically in and out. The Cheerleader's first moan and shudder startled Mike. After several minutes, the palm-sized clitoris was now in view. 'Okay, Mike, tap it.'

'Tap it.'

'You heard me.' Mike tapped the clit. He reflexively screamed when the giantess shifted above and around him. 'Mike, grow some balls', Kathleen chided. 'You're a man and she is a woman. Don't let yourself be pussy whipped.'

'Uh, Kate, if I go inside the Cheerleader, that's exactly what I'll be. Pussy whipped.'

Kathleen pulled Mike to face her. 'Let me tell you one thing. The cheerleader respects any man willing to go inside her and take a risk to give her pleasure. She does not respect any man who runs away in fear. If you try to avoid this, you will never be able to look yourself in the mirror, and your life under the Cheerleader will be worse than hell. You will be a non-person. Be a man.
Make love to a beautiful woman who loves you with a gigantic heart.'

Seeing no alternative, and frankly not wanting to see any alternative, Mike agreed. Feet first, he slid gingerly into Stephanie. A shudder greeted his feet. Nervously, Mike pushed farther and farther in. 'Rub against her clit! Rub against her clit!' Kathleen shouted. Mike wiggled to put as much of himself in contact with Stephanie's love button as possible. He almost slid out when the giantess bucked and thrust in pleasure.

'Now try to get your feet in line with her G-spot! It's about six and a half inches back, so if you slide your head just past her entrance, you should be able to reach it!' Kathleen instructed.

'HOW DO YOU KNOW?' Mike shouted. 'ARE YOU A LESBO?'

'I'D SLAP YOU IF YOU WERE OUTSIDE', Stephanie replied. 'NO, IT WAS MY UNBIRTH.'

'YOUR WHAT???'

'MY UNBIRTH. THE HIGH PRIESTESS IN TRAINING GOES INTO THE CHEERLEADER'S WOMB FOR TWO DAYS AND NIGHTS TO HEAR THE SECRETS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. ON THE WAY UP I BRUSHED AGAINST HER G-SPOT, AND SHE WAS PRETTY HAPPY.'

I'll bet, Mike thought. Gotta find out more about this 'unbirth' business later. 'OKAY, KATIE,
I'LL TRY TO HIT THE SPOT.'

Wriggling inward like a snake moving backwards, Mike tried to get his feet in line with the magic location but it was no use. Stephanie's G-spot was just too far back.

'MIKE, I'VE GOT AN IDEA. WORK YOUR WAY BACK OUTSIDE.' Mike tried to get his body back to the outside world, but Stephanie's contractions were making that much more difficult than getting inside was. Mike had to time his manuevers between Stephanie's squeezes.
At last, he plopped his slimy form in front of Kathleen.

'Mike, here's my idea. You need to go in head-first.'

'HEAD FIRST!' Mike shouted. Kathleen shushed him. 'Head first? I'll suffocate in there!'

'Not if you breath between her vaginal muscle contractions. You're young and strong. You can hold a breath long enough to get it done. You'll have an easier time finding her G-spot with your hands than with your feet. Just feel for a spongy spot and then work it as hard as you've ever worked anything in your life. The Cheerleader's getting frustrated. Now GO!'

Mike hurled himself back into the trembling womanhood. Every millimeter forward was now a struggle against a mighty vise that pushed good air out of him, only to be replaced by the stale air of the vaginal barrel. From inside, Stephanie's moans and groans were devoid of consonants and sibilance, leaving only the warmth of tone and vibration. He thought he heard the Cheerleader call Kathleen's name.

'MIKE, SHE'S CALLING ME. I'M GOING TO WORK HER NIPPLES WHILE YOU LOOK FOR HER G-SPOT. PLEASE HURRY, AND MIKE... TALK TO HER! SAY SOMETHING NICE!
SHE CAN HEAR YOU IN THERE!'

'OKAY! UH... CHEERLEADER, I LOVE YOU.'

'NO, MIKE, ADDRESS HER AS STEPHANIE! YOU'RE MAKING LOVE TO HER! I HAVE TO GO. DON'T LEAVE UNTIL YOU'VE HIT THE SPOT!'

Mike was near asphyxiation when he found it. A spongy part of the vaginal wall. Summoning all his remaining strength, he pressed his hands into the sponge. Stephanie's moans stopped and she fell silent, unable to speak from the intensity of her pleasure. Mike thought this latest crush would be his last conscious moment. Somehow he worked his way out of the steaming womanhood, and collapsed, gasping for air, before falling unconscious.

As he came around he could hear Kathleen talking softly to the Cheerleader. Stephanie was speaking quietly as well, but given her size, she couldn't keep so quiet that Mike couldn't hear her. '...yes... going in head first showed a lot of initiative... I respect that in a man...' Mike took inventory of his physical state. Nothing was broken, but enough bruises to keep him busy a while, plus a feeling of being quite winded.

At last, Mike saw legs fly above him. The Cheerleader got up and was now sitting up on the bed. 'Approach me, Mike Kruger.' He stood before Stephanie's cross-legged nude form. 'You did well for your first time in me. I'm going to talk to the coach about putting you on the team.'

'Thanks', was all the reply Mike could muster.

'And now, since you've been such a good little doll, I have for you a present. I know that a man needs his release, and I KNOW you're a man.' The cheerleader giggled in a girlish way. 'And I KNOW it's hard to get off inside me, 'cause I'm working so hard on getting myself off!' Stephanie's giggle became a room-shaking laugh. 'So I'm giving you a gift.'

The Cheerleader picked up the still-naked Kathleen and held her out to Michael. 'My high priestess in training finds you very interesting, and would welcome a night with you.'

Mike would have said something, but despite all the weirdness, he was still horny enough never to look a gift high priestess in the mouth... except to kiss her...

It was a glorious night that extended into a long and blissful morning's sleep, interrupted when a large (six and a half inches tall) middle-aged man slapped a clipboard down on a hard surface next to Mike's head and shouted.

'MY NAME IS COACH CALDWELL. AM I GIVEN TO UNDERSTAND YOU WANNA PLAY ON THE TEAM????'

Chapter Three

The Coach's authoritarian greeting shook Mike out of a post-conjugal bliss. Gathering his wits as Caldwell talked, he realized that his partner for the night, the high-priestess-in-training Kathleen, had long ago abandoned his little bed. Little. That reminded him. Everything came back, the experience of coming into the valley, of walking into the women's dorm, of encountering the cheerleader, of being shrunk. Being shrunk. Oh my Gawd...

The flood of knowledge accompanied a dull ache, which reminded Mike of his other big adventure of the day. Through the ache, Mike heard the coach's theatric declamations. 'I'VE SEEN OUTSIDERS LIKE YOU COME IN BEFORE AND TRY TO MAKE THE TEAM. I REMEMBER THE ONE WHO CAME IN TEN YEARS AGO. HE THOUGHT HE COULD HANDLE THE CHEERLEADER EASY. HE STUNK THE STADIUM UP SO BAD, THEY RAN HIM OUT OF NEW DUPUY. LAST I HEARD, SOME CAT GOT HIM FOR LUNCH ON THE OUTSIDE. IT TAKES A MAN TO PLAY BALL WITH THE CHEERLEADER!'

Mike rose from his internal haze to confront this challenge to his manhood. 'I did all right in the Welcoming. The Cheerleader told me so herself'.

'WELCOMING! HA!', the coach bellowed. 'THE CHEERLEADER AIN'T PLAYIN' REAL BALL DURING THE WELCOMING! SHE HOLDS BACK 'CAUSE SHE DON'T WANT TO SCARE ANY NEWBIES! The ONLY thing that's GENTLER than a Welcoming is when she deflowers some pathetic pansy-boy that didn't get laid by his 19th birthday or something.'

'LET ME TELL YOU, when the Cheerleader is playing competitive ball with the team, she doesn't hold anything back! There are 11 men out there working every orifice and body part you can think of! If your position is on her foot, she will KICK you. If you're working her thigh she will SQUEEZE you and your ears will leave little prints in her flesh! If you are working her mouth she will BITE you, and if it wasn't for the teething ring you wear around your body, she would be swallowing half of you right down her gullet before she even knew it! SHE GIVES YOU EVERYTHING SHE GOT, and if you are not in shape and don't know your playbook, she will EAT YOU UP! If a girly-man like you ever got lucky enough to play quarterback and work her pussy in a REAL game, she would use those slick muscles and break every BONE in your body if you don't know what you're doing!'

'What a way to go', Mike said though a devilish smile.

'YEAH, WELL BOY, YOU'RE COCKY ENOUGH, I'LL GIVE YOU THAT. I'M GONNA NEED SOMEBODY COCKY PRETTY SOON. MY QUARTERBACK IS 36 AND HE AIN'T GONNA LAST FOREVER.' He whipped out a playbook and slapped in into Mike's hands. STUDY THIS AND BE AT THE PRACTICE FIELD AT 2:30. THAT'S OUR AFTERNOON PRACTICE.'

Mike thumbed through the playbook. It was like nothing connected to any kind of football he was familiar with. A series of plays looked like the Kama Sutra, with detailed manuevers of how the fullback (the player stuffed between the Cheerleader's buttcheeks) and the quarterback (the player inside the Cheerleader's vagina) would move while the halfback (the player standing outside the vagina) would stroke and caress the labia and coax out the clitoris. They were joined by two breastmen, who worked the Cheerleader's nipples; the footmen, who worked her feet; the three facemen, one of whom sat with half his body inside the cheerleader's mouth, with only a sort of teething ring around his midsection to protect him from a deadly chomp; and a 'reader'. Mike couldn't tell what the reader did.

As he walked down the main corridor of the New Dupuy Mall, formerly the first floor hallway of the girls' dorm of Dupuy College, Mike continued to thumb through the playbook. Since there were no other teams to play, only the cheerleader, there was no fine for losing the book, but Mike was careful about how he carried the back. Of course, with its explicit pictures of various 'plays' to be executed on the Cheerleader's fine body, it was excellent reading from an entertainment perspective, with some of the plays depicted with foldouts. 'I think these were called 'centerfolds' on the old-fashioned men's magazines of the 20th century,' Mike thought. So engrossed was Mike in the playbook that he all but bumped into Kathleen, the high priestess in training, wearing a red dress that, like the previous day's black counterpart, ended the miniature equivalent of an inch or two above the point at which Kate's buttocks met her thighs.

'Am I going to get an earful because I didn't call you? It's not like I know what you use for communication. Everything here's stuck in the twenty-first century', was Mike's opening gambit.

'It's not necessary for you to call me. I did what I did last night because my Cheerleader told me to. As high priestess in training, I must follow her orders. Last night meant nothing to me.'

'What's this robot act? You certainly didn't feel this way twelve hours ago.'

Kathleen repeated her mantra. 'I was merely fulfilling the duties imposed by my job as high priestess in training for the Cheerleader.'

'Suit yourself', Mike laughed, refusing to betray any emotion. Maybe Kate wasn't willing to admit her attraction because of the way they were brought together, but he was willing to bet on its existence. His next move was to change the subject. 'So which Cheerleader is this? Is she the third or fourth, and how do these giant chicks get pregnant?'

'She is the first. She hasn't been pregnant.'

'Okay....' Mike responded, while inside his brain was going 'uh-oh, another thing about this place to weird me out.'

'So, Kate, that would make her well over a hundred years old, and let me ask you, how many a hundred plus year old women have you seen who looked as good as THAT?'

'The Cheerleader is special. Her body processes are not the same as ours. That is another sign that she is a superior being. For example, her womanly cycles occur only once every four years.'

'Once every four... YEARS!?' Mike exclaimed. 'When they do come, it must be hell.'

'In a sense, yes. We call the month leading up to her period the 'red month.' Everyone stays away from her as much as possible and tries not to anger her during this time.'

'I can see why... and where is she now in the cycle?'

'Her next period is over two years away... we believe that she is near the ovulation part of her cycle, so she has been especially flirty and sexual.'

'Oh, well, I'm glad this isn't her normal behavior,' Mike replied sonewhat sarcastically.

'No you're not! Admit it, Mike, you're enjoying all the attention and you never thought you would ever have the kind of sex you can have with the Cheerleader. But if you only realized, it's so much more than that. Like, when we were younger, before we knew anything sexual, the Cheerleader was this great shining example of how powerful a woman could be in the world. When we were in fourth grade, the teachers would take us to the Cheerleader's Palace, and she would take each of us in her hands, and tell us how special we were, and she would tell all the girls that they should all strive to be great in everything we do because we were all going to be miniature versions of her. It was so inspiring...'

'Kind of a giant Xuxa towering over the class, exuding a power they don't quite understand yet', mused Mike, whose last class before break at Penn State had been '20th-Century Brazilian History and Pop Culture.'

'Xuxa? Who or what is that?' Stephanie asked.

'Uh... never mind', was Mike's reply.

'Listen, why don't you come to the Inauguration Ceremony for the Town Council. It's at noon today. It'll be over in plenty of time for your team practice.'

Mike shrugged his shoulders, to indicate that resistance was futile. He did want to know all he could about this place, as it might offer him a chance to escape. Maybe there were details that went out into the woods to hunt for food. What was scary to Mike, was that half of him wasn't sure he wanted to escape this place.

Most everyone in New Dupuy crowded into the center of the mall for the ceremony. The new members of the council stood atop a raised platform. They were mostly in their 30's to 50's,
wearing what was considered professional attire for men and women a century earlier. As the
great grandfather clock, sixty feet high on the Dupuyans' scale, struck noon, the Cheerleader strode down the great staircase to play her part in the ceremony.

'So what role does Steph--', a dirty look and the anticipation of a raised hand changed Mike's utterance in mid-thought, 'So what role does the Cheerleader play in all this?'

'It began in the Old Time,' Kate answered, 'not long after the Great Reduction. Most people understood that they were put beneath the Cheerleader so that her love would be great enough to encompass and strengthen the whole community.'

'They were not 'put' anywhere for any reason. It's in the history books outside. It was all a government screwup', Mike interrupted. 'The only reason it hasn't been challenged is because everyone outside thinks the whole town died a hundred years ago.'

'This is what the Cheerleader told me during my unbirth. If you challenge it then you are calling her a liar. After you see the ceremony you will understand why that is not a good idea', Kate hissed. 'Anyway, the people who had held power before, in the Town Council, and those who followed the Old Religions--',

'You mean like Catholics, Methodists, Orthodox, Jewish and other faiths that don't believe a
hottie in a short skirt created the world in six days?', Mike interjected as his sarcasm took over again.

Kathleen refused to yield a beat to her impertinent interrogator. '-- those people did not want to admit that a Cheerleader could be their Supreme Mistress, Lover and Guardian. They did not want to see a woman or women have that kind of power. They wanted to maintain the old patriarchy--'

'Sounds like another one of my Penn State courses', Mike mused. '20th-Century American
Feminism. But as I recall, those women weren't into porn fantasies and hated the whole cheerleader concept.'

Kate continued, '--so the Cheerleader had to display her power, but in a gentle way, so she would not turn them or the people against her. She didn't want to hurt the Council, but she had to embarrass them so she could establish her authority. The way she did that became the ceremony that you are about to see.'

A large partition was raised in front of the platform. Kate told Mike that the more innocent pairs of eyes were kept behind the platform so as not to observe the racier parts of the ceremony.
'Everything in this town seems to be R-rated', Mike observed to himself.

The Cheerleader sat cross-legged next to the raised platform. One by one, the council members got up from their chairs and stood to face the Cheerleader. They began shaking their fists and denouncing her, in a ritualistic sort of way. 'Harlot! Jezebel! We are not your lovers! We are not your toys! We refuse to worship you!'

Stephanie then rose to her full height, towering over the Council. 'I saved the people of this town from destruction. I love you more than anything. My love for you is boundless and unyielding. But for my love, I demand your obedience and allegiance.'

She then knelt down, all but her head slipping beneath the huge partition. Behind that partition, the Cheerleader picked up each of the council members, lifted their suits or dresses, dropped their pants and underwear, and began to vigorously, but lightly, spank their behinds. As each one's cheeks reddened slightly, they began to cry out. The Cheerleader then said to each one, 'I did not wish to hurt you, (name of councilor). Swear allegiance and obedience to me and I shall never treat you in such a way again.'

Each council member then repeated an Oath of Obedience and Submission. Then as a gesture of reconciliation, Stephanie held each member in turn to her breast and gave them a taste of her milk, not such a hard task, as their tiny cries
sounded like a baby's squawling to her comparatively gigantic ears. The ceremony ended with all the councilors sitting on Stephanie's knee, bottoms still bared, holding each other and singing something that sounded like an old 20th century song called 'Kumbaya.'

Even after all that he had seen, this latest ceremony left Mike utterly slack-jawed. All he could say to Kate afterwards was, 'You people really are f-ing crazy.'

The grandfather clock rang out. Mike looked up. It was half past two. 'Damn!' he yelled. 'I'm late for practice!'

Chapter Four

Even dashing up the stairs, Mike was five minutes late to practice, held in the palace area in the practice field. Coach Caldwell was already talking to the players inside a small room just off the Bed. When Mike showed up, Caldwell waved him off. 'YOU'RE FIVE MINUTES LATE, KRUGER. GET YOUR ASS OUTA HERE.'

'I was tied up at the Inauguration', he replied.

'YOU MEAN YOU WERE TIED UP WITH THAT MINI-PUSSY THE HIGH PRIESTESS WANNABE. NOW LISTEN TO ME AND LISTEN GOOD. WHEN YOU ARE ON THE TEAM THERE IS ONLY ONE PUSSY THAT TAKES PRIORITY, AND THAT IS THE ONE THAT IS GOING TO BE ON THE BED ABOVE US ON SATURDAY NIGHT. THE ONE WE CAN CLIMB INTO. IF ANY OF YOU LETS ANY MINI-PUSSY GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR DUTIES ON THIS TEAM YOU ARE GONE!! MY RULE IS, NO SEX THE NIGHT BEFORE THE GAME!
YOU SAVE YOUR LUST AND TURN IT INTO A LUST FOR VICTORY! DO YOU UNDERSTAND!'

'Yes, sir', was Mike's defiant reply.

'NOW SIT YOUR ASS DOWN AND OPEN YOUR PLAYBOOK TO PAGE 36. The Coach picked up where he had left off, outlining a series of plays for Saturday's game. Just like football, it required a lot of coordination and a lot of practice. He ended with the player assignments.
Mike was a bit put out when he learned he would be one of the footmen, working the Cheerleader's right foot.

When Coach Caldwell finished outlining the plays, he led the team out onto the practice field. This time, instead of the Cheerleader, a life-size (her size) inflatable dummy took up the Bed.
Of course, Mike understood the whole point of this exercise to be lust, but it was hard to feel lustful working the feet of a giant dummy. Mike's task was to tackle the foot, while assistants pulling strings made it 'kick' back at him. After a few swipes, Mike was a little woozy.

'That foot ain't nothin' compared to what the real thing'll do to you in a game', the coach roared.
'Kruger, why don't you take a few reps at the quarterback position. I want to see what you'll do in that hole when you're not gettin' the baby treatment.'

Now comes the strange part, Mike thought. Of course, everything's been strange since I got shrunk and got here, he ruminated. Mike left his foot position and walked over to the giant dummy's pretend-pussy. Here the assistants had rigged lubricants to simulate the Cheerleader's own bodily fluids (like the Homemade K-Y Mike had encountered the other day), as well as motors to simulate her crushing vaginal muscles. He called the play as best he could based on his quick read-through of the play book. All he could remember was that the first number in the sequence was '69.' On the third 'hut', the halfback was supposed to tap a make-believe clitoris, and the fullback (the only player who could use his penis in regular play) penetrated the dummy's backdoor.

(As one can imagine, the demands on the fullback are considerable. During the game, Mike learned, pills are often used to ensure libidinal performance, a fact no one seemed to be shocked about. It also came as no surprise that the fullbacks tended to be the youngest player on the team, and that the oldest in team history was a mere 28.)

Unfortunately for Mike, the team got the signals wrong, and the fullback penetrated before the halfback could tap the clit. Coach Caldwell came running out onto the Bed with clipboard flying frantically. 'WHAT KINDA S#!T IS THAT?!' 'Mike the Outsider got the signals wrong!' the fullback yelled. 'Gawd forbid I should ever have to throw you into a game', Caldwell seethed, then stormed off the field. Practice went like that for the next several days, and Mike had no reason to believe he would ever serve as anything other than a footman on Game Day.

At last it was Saturday night. The main stadium on the first floor, formerly a laundry room, was spacious and had seats for every adult in New Dupuy. As he undressed in the locker room, Mike
tried not to think about how strange it would be -- trying to get passionate with a foot that was taller than he was. Not to mention the scoring system. Totally subjective, up to one judge -- the Cheerleader herself. Seems she was always mad about those gymnastic competitions where judges had the final say, as opposed to a scoreboard filled by objective accomplishments as in a team sport. So she got to hold up cards with her scoring of the performance of the (to her and the outside world) tiny men around and inside her.

A roar rose from the crowd as Mike and the others, not wearing a stitch except for the facemen, who would sometimes work in the mouth, ran out onto the field, or more accurately, up the steps and onto the Bed. The team lined up on one side and awaited the arrival of the Cheerleader. To their right they heard the sound of a door opening. The team turned as one and caught the cheerleader, in her de rigeur Dupuy College outfit, entering, swaying her pom poms and encouraging the cheering of the miniature masses that adored her, or were at least afraid of her. It seemed to Tom that the display was as much about her getting worked up as it was about the 'fans' getting worked up. In a sense he was right. Stephanie's round face took on a certain glow and her smile became broader. Then she began a slow striptease, zipping down her cheerleader's outfit and nonchalantly folding it into a pile and placing it on the floor. This left her in a frilly pair of panties and a bra. She twirled around, giving the fans an adequate view of both her front and back. Then the Cheerleader slowly reached behind and undid her bra. She was facing away from the audience. She then turned, arms folded in front. Then she smiled and let her arms down, proudly showing off her tits. It didn't matter that they weren't the biggest in existence. They were the biggest ones in Dupuy, and they had held firm for a hundred years. Stephanie then leaped onto the bed. The other team members and the officials had crouched, waiting for the jump. Mike, who was unprepared, flew what seemed to him to be five feet in the air before landing on the mattress.

The ref blew his whistle, and the team members assumed their positions but did nothing. On a second whistle, the quarterback called a play. Mike began massaging the ball of the right foot with one hand, and worked between the toes with the other. A sweet giggle came from above, and a mighty kick sent Mike sprawling. Clearing his head, Mike rushed back to the foot to continue the play. A giggle. Another kick. Mike reassumed the position. Another giggle. Another kick. A woozy Mike went back for more. He wasn't getting kicked around for nothing. His
foot activity was allowing his teammates to use the element of surprise, touching the Cheerleader in places in which she didn't expect to be touched, at least not at that moment. During one of his
kick recoveries, Mike caught a glimpse of the 'reader.' He was standing next to the Cheerleader's right ear. Using an amplifier to simulate the deep voice of a full-sized man, he was reading passages from a century-old romantic novel, to stimulate Stephanie's libido, as if it needed any stimulating.

Things continued this way for several plays, as Mike played hurt, or at least less than optimal.
Late in the second half, Mike heard a muffled 'aaagggh' coming from the Cheerleader's vagina. The coach ran out onto the Bed. A few seconds later, paramedics followed with a stretcher. The quarterback had suffered a broken back inside the Cheerleader. As the team swarmed around, the Coach turned to Mike. 'All right, kid, I know you're not ready. I don't want to hear about not ready. You're going in.'

'ME?' Mike screamed.

'You scared of a little pussy, boy? Now GET LUBED UP AND GET IN THERE?'

Mike ran to the sidelines and rubbed himself in an open jar of lubricant. Then he ran out onto the field to cheers from the crowd. He crouched before Stephanie's pussy. Unlike the Welcoming, the giantess bucked and strained as he entered her. Inside, it was even hotter and steamier than the other night, as the first-string quarterback had been warming things up. Mike was making little progress moving things downfield. From between Stephanie's labia, a hand motioned for timeout.

'YOU'RE STINKIN' UP THE GAME, BOY', Coach Caldwell yelled up the Cheerleader's vagina at his new field general. 'Coach... I have an idea. Let me call a play.' 'ARE YOU NUTS, BOY?'
'Let me try it, Coach, I swear it'll work.' 'YOU CALL SOME STUPID PLAY THAT THROWS US FOR A LOSS AND I'LL HAVE YOU UNDER THE CHEERLEADER'S FOOT NEXT TIME, WITH HER STANDING ON THE FLOOR!'

Mike was sure he could score a few points, if he could stimulate the Cheerleader's clitoris and G-spot at the same time. But it would require the moves of a contortionist. Any vaginal contraction would break it up. He called a play requiring the fullback to use his penis to penetrate the Cheerleader's anus. This would cause the muscle to lock in spasm. According to the playbook, this little known fact was one of the Cheerleader's quirks, making her different from other women in ways other than scale. When he gave the next signal, the fullback would pull out, releasing the spasm. If he timed it right, the fullback would pull out just as the G-spot and clitoris were stimulated.

'53', he yelled. The fullback went in, and Stephanie's muscles locked shut. Able to move, Mike stretched his feet, straining to get a toehold on the G-spot. A fingertip tugged toward the clitoris. Mike felt contact with both. '47!' he yelled, then squeezed the clit and kicked the G-spot for all he was worth. At the same moment, the fullback pulled out of the Cheerleader's anus, and Stephanie went crazy.

Mike emerged into the world sticky and smelly to an arena full of cheers. Above him, a smiling cheerleader held a card with the number '28' on it. Enough points to win. The rookie quarterback had pulled out the game.

Coach Caldwell, sparing in his praise, was beaming when he walked into the showers and told Mike, 'THE CHEERLEADER WANTS TO SEE YOU. DON'T BOTHER GETTING DRESSED.'
Mike went back out onto the field. The stands were empty. The Cheerleader, still proudly nude, was holding an 80-year-old man who wore a bathrobe, kissing him gently. When she saw Mike, she whispered to the man that his time was up. The senior citizen, his moment of bliss and return to forgotten youth having passed, picked up his cane and slowly walked off the field.

The giant saucer eyes of Stephanie gazed down on Mike. For some reason she felt compelled to explain her interlude with the old fellow. 'I remember the day that man was born. He was the first son of my friend Sandy. I saw him grow up. When he was old enough, he was on one of my earliest teams. He was one of my best quarterbacks. He went on to lead the Town Council. He gave so much to my people. His wife died a year ago, and I told him to come over if he needed the companionship of a woman.' She paused and leaned her face closer in, till it was almost at eye level. 'Do you know what it's like, to see people born, grow up, start families and grow old, to spend all their lives with you, and yet to hardly age a day yourself? To see generations come and go, to pile up a lifetime of wisdom, and yet still look like a twentysomething?'

'Of course not', Mike replied.

'Do you know what it's like to see your friends and professors and neighbors suddenly shrink to the size of dolls and have to depend on you for everything?'

'I know what it's like... from the other end,' Mike answered.

'Do you know what it's like to try to hold together a society of two thousand or so people who would be absolutely helpless without you?'

'No', Mike shot back.

'Then', Stephanie reared back, 'Why do you continuously attack the society we've built here at New Dupuy?'

'Because it's built on a false premise. The people here aren't tiny because you're some all-powerful, all-knowing goddess. They're tiny because a hundred years ago the government screwed up and let some toxic gas out. It was covered up for a long time, but it finally came out.'

'Then why doesn't the government come in and rescue everybody?'

'Because it thinks everybody died a hundred years ago.'

'Exactly. We were abandoned by our own people. That is why all the tiny ones turned to me. I was their ONLY hope. I used my sexuality and my lust for life to hold this town together. I admit that. I don't think it's bad at all. I am the personal glue that has held every marriage together since the Great Reduction happened a hundred years ago. Every man can gaze on, and even touch, the body of a goddess, and his wife doesn't see that as cheating. The men in this town are the most sexually fulfilled on Earth -- and so are the women. Besides, I'm a woman too. Can you imagine never having a man who can fill you up, who can hold you in his arms, who can overpower you? Can you imagine living that way for a hundred years? An appetite that can never be truly satisfied? Do you see why Dupuy is the way it is, and I am the way I am?'

'I see it, but I don't support it.'

'Just know that I won't stand for you opposing it. You're my quarterback now, which makes you the center of my sexual culture. For that reason, I won't harm you, but I warn you, don't press your luck.' The Cheerleader's demeanor changed. With a girlish giggle, she kissed Mike, then turned around so that she could wiggle her butt as she hopped off the bed to get dressed and go back to her palace.

Mike knew what he had to do. Sooner or later, he had to leave and warn the world of this place. He had to free its people.

Chapter Five

Never mind that it did not seem as though all of its people wanted freedom. Mike had decided to get out of Dupuy, first for his own survival; he did not trust Dupuy doctors, operating with techniques a hundred years out of date, to repair him if the Cheerleader's vaginal muscles ever twisted him the wrong way; secondly, to get help to free the town, and perhaps to restore its inhabitants to a normal scale, so they could be part of the wider world. As for the Cheerleader... Mike found it hard to imagine a place for her in all this.

Mike squirreled away bits of food in his backpack. It would take a long time at his size to get to the outside world. But fortunately, at his size, a little food went a long way. He spent his days using his publicity clout as the new star quarterback, chatting up the 'utility' people -- the people who actually made New Dupuy run, from the firefighters who spent most of their time acting as the Cheerleader's personal bidet service (not to mention collecting her various bodily fluids to sell as home remedies) to the water and sewer engineers, to the guys who patrolled the cracks and crevices of the old dorm building, looking for mice, spiders and other invaders who could wreak havoc with the miniature society of New Dupuy. During one of those visits, he discovered a little-used, unguarded passageway that led to the outside. It passed through the greenhouse, which was the only safe way the Dupuyans could grow enough food to support the town.

It was late on a Thursday night when Mike made his escape. The passageway was covered with slime and mud, and Mike wondered if he'd encounter a rat or worse, a cat at the other end. At last he arrived at the exit, on the north end of the greenhouse. Carefully, he crept out through a pipe that appeared to him to be seven feet wide. He thought he was free and clear when loud bells and lights went off. Mike had somehow set off an alarm.

A searchlight swept the grounds in front of the greenhouse. Mike ran, zigzagging, dodging through piles of leaves and brush. He narrowly missed a tripwire that appeared to be connected to some sort of trap. 'If this is paradise, why would they need to keep people from leaving?' he mused. Dashing into some bushes, he kept moving, watching for huge predators that could scoop him up in an instant. In his own scale, he had covered ten miles. On the scale of the Cheerleader and the outside world, it was more like a mile. Finding an unused burrow, Mike
decided to grab a few winks.

He was awakened by the sun streaming in, and the loud cries of Stephanie, calling his name.
She couldn't have been standing more than a couple of regular-sized meters away from the burrow. 'Mike?' 'Mike?' 'Oh, MIIKE.' 'Mike, don't leave us. You won't survive a day out here. You've been in my body. You're my prize quarterback. You belong to me, now. MIIIKE! Don't leave! Don't ruin it! Mike... All right little man, may your demise be quick and painless', Stephanie turned on her heel and left.

After waiting a time to see if Stephanie really had left, Mike hit the road again. He tried to follow his original route into the valley, dodging and weaving to keep predators from tracking him. At his smaller size, it took him all day to reach the top of the mountain. He simply walked through a crack in the concrete wall just big enough for a six inch tall man to slip into. As he passed over the top, Mike wondered if he would now grow back to his original height. He didn't. Oh well, at least they'll have a reason to believe my story, Mike thought.

Darkness was starting to fall when luck went Mike's way. He made his way to a small, isolated convenience store that was about to close for the night. The fiftysomething woman who managed the store was loading up her minivan, and a bag of her personal groceries sat on the ground. All Mike had to do was climb in.

After screaming and nearly fainting, the woman agreed to call police. The next morning, Mike stood on a desk, telling his story to federal agents. The man and woman who took down his statement must have felt like those old-time investigators of another century, Scully and Mulder.

The male agent led off. 'So, you say that instead of killing everybody, the toxic gas caused everyone to shrink to five or six inches in height...'

'Yes..' Mike responded.

'Everyone EXCEPT a cheerleader who is still alive a hundred years later and still looks 22?'

'Yes', Mike answered.

The male agent tugged on his trousers. 'Look, kid, the only reason I don't put this down as a prank and put your ass in jail right now is the fact that you really ARE six inches tall. Clearly YOU got shrunk. But how do I know you were in the valley? Maybe you got shrunk as a prank by some grad student studying advanced biotech at Penn State. I'm going to need some proof of there being a whole community in the old Dupuy site worshipping a cheerleader.'

'Then why don't you send a robot with a camera into the Dupuy Dorm and see for yourselves?'

'If there are six-inch-tall people in there, a six foot tall robot will scare the hell out of them.'

The female agent interjected. 'Uh, Doug, maybe we can rig up a six-inch-tall robot that can be disguised as something they'd see everyday, like a...'

'Like a sex toy used by the Cheerleader.'

'Like a sex toy used by the....' Doug the agent stopped repeating Mike in mid-sentence. 'I may STILL toss your ass in jail, kid.'

'Doug', the female agent cautioned, 'that might just work. I think I can...help with the design. Let's get a vibrator with wheels and roll it by remote control into the valley.'

The agents got their lab to rig up a vibrator that could stand up and roll. A larger robot was used to take the toy into the valley. Late at night, the robot rolled as close as it could, then dropped the vibrator off near the greenhouse. The tiny robot rolled past the detectors, which were set to detect people going out, not vibrators rolling in. It was morning rush hour when the device rolled up the main street of New Dupuy (formerly the first floor of the dorm). Passers-by pointed and laughed at the sex toy on wheels. 'Ha ha, I see the Cheerleader's got herself a new boyfriend!' 'Guess she needed something extra now that her quarterback has escaped!'

The laughter stopped when the Cheerleader arrived on the scene. Towering over the crowd, she bent over the vibrator. 'Ooh, looks like our engineering department has come up with another way to make the Cheerleader happy!' Giggling, she lifted the vibrator up into the air, examined it, and took it upstairs with her.

The tiny camera inside the vibrator transmitted a weak but sufficient signal to a receiver mounted at the top of one of the hills that boxed in the Huktawautcha Valley. Attached to that receiver was a relay transmitter that boosted the signal and sent it down to a truck in the next valley, where the two federal agents watched on a monitor.

'Are we sure the scale is right on that camera?' Doug asked his female counterpart.

'Absolutely. That's calibrated for the camera's small size. Those people really are six inches tall.'

'That huge face has to belong to the Cheerleader?'

'Has to be.'

'Let's run that face through the database and see if it matches anyone...'

'My Gawd, she's taking the vibrator and...'

'We're definitely getting the gynecological view here. Should have put windshield wipers on this thing. Wonder if this is what it was like for Mike, playing quarterback and all that,' Doug mused.

The female agent blushed, as if her mind had opened to a possibility heretofore unimagined, exacerbated by the fact that Doug was doing the imagining. 'The database shows a match for: Stephanie Searfass, Dupuy College cheerleader, born...' the female agent gasped, '...120 years ago. Disappeared believed killed at the time of the Dupuy Incident.'

'Can we be sure it's not an error.'

'It's based on stored facial dimensions. It's virtually as accurate as DNA testing.'

'That cinches it. The kid is right. That also means we have to call in our superiors, because we have to go in.'

'Why? What has she done that's a crime?'

'Mass false imprisonment, mass sexual assault, mass lewd and lascivious, over a hundred years... you name it.'

'How do we manage to get agents in there without their getting shrunk?'

'We work up some protective gear, and we cook up an antidote that we can give to anyone in the field in pill form, and that we can also flood the building with to unshrink all those people.'

'But what if they don't want to be unshrunk?'

'Huh?'

'They all worship this cheerleader. Maybe the guys like the surplus sex, and maybe the women figuring the guys having a giant cheerleader as an outlet discourages any real hanky-panky. They've lived this way for a hundred years. It's their culture.'

'It's not their culture. It's been imposed on them by a manipulative young woman who has held to power for a hundred years.'

The agents met with their supervisor in Washington, bringing Mike along as real-life evidence of the strange civilization of Dupuy. Mike surprised all assembled when he blurted out, 'you're going to need me to go back in there.'

'We can't put a civilian at risk', answered Doug's boss.

'These people know me. I can keep them calm while they're getting unshrunk.'

The agents debated Mike's point for some time. At last, Doug's boss reluctantly agreed. 'It's against my better judgment, and if this fails, they'll have my head... but go in.'

Chapter Six

The robot took advantage of a blind spot in the view from the dorm. It rolled up late at night, at a spot not well lit. The reason was obvious; who other than the Cheerleader was tall enough to climb ladders and change light bulbs? A door swung open and out popped Mike. Carefully, he glanced around and overhead, looking for would-be predators and perhaps a stray guard. Satisfied, he dashed to an unguarded entrance to the dorm -- actually a small hole gnawed into the greenhouse by mice many years before. 'What am I doing?' he thought to himself. 'If the Cheerleader gets hold of me, no telling what she'll do.'

Morning found Mike asleep in a corner of what had been the dormitory basement. A sharp ZAAP
startled him awake. He opened his eyes and found a guard pointing a taser-like device at him, trying to prod him awake. There were other guards standing around him, then, towering in back, he saw the reproving face of the Cheerleader.

Stephanie carried the six-inch-tall Mike to what was obviously her bathroom. She took out a plastic bottle from the cabinet and squirted a gooey substance onto the bathtub. The Cheerleader then placed Mike on his back in the goo. Mike found he could not lift his back out of the sticky mess. He was face up on the bottom of the tub. Stephanie sat down on the edge of the tub. Then she lifted herself up slightly and removed the golden panties that she wore for public appearances. The Cheerleader lifted her green skirt and moved her buttocks so they were directly over Mike. 'This is it', he thought. 'She's going to crush me. I had to insist on coming back. Now I'll be a bloody stain in a bathtub.' He struggled harder to escape the goo, but found it held him firmly in place.

The gigantic buttocks reared back. Instead of feeling their crushing weight, Mike was surprised when a yellow stream shot forth. He covered his face as best he could as Stephanie softly lectured him from above. 'That was a very bad thing you did, running away from us. We were all very worried about you. But somehow, I knew you would come back. The world is a big, nasty place when you're six inches tall without the protection and comfort of your Cheerleader.' Stephanie sighed. 'Usually we would take a prodigal like yourself and bump him down to the lowest rung of society. But since your skills inside me are so well developed, we're giving you another chance. Consider yourself very, very lucky, Mike, that you have so many people here in New Dupuy who love you -- including the most important of all, me.'

The yellow stream stopped, and Stephanie released him from his glue bondage. She ran water in the sink and lifted Mike up there for a bath while she simultaneously scrubbed out the tub. Mike wondered to himself how long it would be before the raiders arrived. Probably the next night.
He tried to imagine how the people of Dupuy would react to being unshrunk, to know that they could go out into the wide world without fear of small animals or fear of the Cheerleader. But as he scrubbed at the stench covering his flesh, one thought at this moment was crowding out all the others: 'WHY, OH WHY, DOES THIS CRAZY BITCH HAVE TO PUT KINK INTO EVERYTHING SHE DOES?'

-----

The streets of Dupuy had been quiet for a hundred years, thus it was a major event when assault vehicles rolled down its cracked main streets. Knowing that any rumble could attract the Cheerleader's attention, the vehicles moved as stealthily as their construction permitted. A half mile away from the Dupuy College campus, the vehicles stopped, and several men and a few women in protective suits got out. Several carried canisters of a carefully concocted unshrinking potion, designed to wipe out any residue from the long-lived toxic gas. They had to sneak up on the women's dorm, and on foot was their best chance.

Fortunately, the air conditioning equipment was in a little used corner of the roof, on the opposite corner of the building from the area the Cheerleader used as her palace. The operative in his protective suit stood ready and waiting for his cue. At that moment, the main force lobbed a distraction grenade toward the building. It created a noisy explosion just outside the Cheerleader's window.

Stephanie woke straight up out of bed. Rushing past the two tiny men who had been her designated companions that night, the Cheerleader ran downstairs and out the door to find the source of the commotion and protect her people if necessary. Bright lights blinded her. 'WE ARE FEDERAL AGENTS! STEPHANIE SEARFASS, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! PUT YOUR HANDS OUT, TURN AWAY FROM US, AND WALK BACKWARDS TOWARD US!'

The Cheerleader quickly regained her composure. As she complied with their orders, she lectured them. 'Whoever you are, whatever you're trying to do, it won't work! In just a minute or so, you'll all shrink down to a nice comfortable size of five or six inches in height, and then I'll just pick you up and take you to my dollhouse upstairs. You'll like it up there, more than you might think. But if you don't want that fate, I suggest you leave now.' The feds didn't move. They wanted her to filibuster, to allow time for Part B of their plan to come off.

Startled awake, Mike heard five raps on the roof -- the technician's signal that he was about to deploy the unshrinking gas. He ran to the apartment of high priestess in training Kathleen and rapped on the door. She lived on the fifth floor of a multistory building with external stairwells, home to about 50 singles and a few childless couples. 'What is it... YOU?' she sneered at the former runaway. 'I don't have time to explain. Get out of your apartment NOW and help me get everyone else out, otherwise their homes will explode around them.'

'What, are you insane?' Kathleen responded. 'Get out of here before I call the Cheerleader's Guards...'

'The Cheerleader and her guards can't do anything about this. You're about to be free, Kathleen. Federal agents are storming this building and they're going to unshrink everybody.'

'That's crazy. They'll just shrink down like everyone else who's ever wandered into Dupuy...'

'No they won't Kate. They have special protective suits. For the last time, get out of your apartment NOW before...'

Mike stopped when he heard the hissing. He wouldn't take another no. He grabbed Kathleen by the arm and ran with her down the steps. Kathleen began coughing. 'What's happening?'
A strange vertigo was overcoming her. Mike was noticing the same thing, but wasn't as affected because he had been warned by the Feds. To Kathleen's shock, the nightgown she was wearing began to feel tight. 'I'm... I'm growing...' Her shoulders soon tore out of the gown, leaving its remnants hanging limply at her waist. Her expanding hips soon popped those rags aside entirely. Kathleen covered her private places and breasts, an odd position for the High Priestess of a religion that seemed to emphasize exposing those regions at every opportunity. Mike, coming from a more conventional background, had no trouble with the idea of covering himself as he expanded. Complicating matters at the same time was the fact that all of Kathleen's neighbors
were also growing.

Outside, Stephanie continued to deny reality, even as the feds were putting handcuffs on her. She was sure that her captors would soon shrink to a manageable size, just as every out-of-town arrival had for a hundred years. When they walked her inside, the Cheerleader's heart rose. Inside, where the gas was strongest, they would surely dwindle in moments. Stephanie was totally unprepared for what she saw as they opened the doors.

Hundreds of people, the same height range as Stephanie and the agents, mostly naked except for the bits of their clothing and of their houses strewn about their flesh. Most had literally exploded out of their homes in the middle of a good night's sleep. The first look on their faces was one of dazed weariness, but as they saw Stephanie in handcuffs, another look took over, one of despair and betrayal.

'Cheerleader! What has happened to us?' one voice shouted.

'We've destroyed our own homes! Help us!' another demanded.

'You're our protector, Cheerleader! Please help us!' came another voice.

The shocked masses of New Dupuy heard no answer from the stunned Stephanie. Her federal captors walked her to the former office, where they would continue their interrogation. Mike caught up with the agents, naked as the rest of the Dupuyans. He recognized Doug and his female partner, whose name he now knew was Melissa. 'Hey, guys...' Mike stopped self-consciously to maintain his feeble modesty...'Got anything I can wear?'

'Try this.' Doug tossed Mike a black robe with the caption 'FED' on it. 'These guys think of everything', Mike mused. 'You're going to need about two thousand more of these, otherwise the Cheerleader's compound is going to turn into a nudist camp.'

'There's been enough perversion in this place', Doug answered as Melissa's eyes rolled. 'We'll get some clothing here right away.' He closed the door to the office as the Feds prepared to interrogate the Cheerleader, now just plain Stephanie Searfass, age 120, facing multiple charges.

As the now-robed Mike made his way through the crowd of people, he looked into their faces.
There was anger at losing their homes, but just underneath a boiling resentment that their world had turned upside down. Mike began to wonder if he had done the right thing in selling out the Cheerleader.

The halls were packed. Two thousand tiny people could fit comfortably into a dorm built for four hundred normal sized women. They couldn't fit so well at normal size. One voice seemed to follow the onetime quarterback as he made his way through the crowd. 'Mike... Mike... Quarterback... Did you betray us Mike? Did you do this to us...?' Mike didn't answer.

Chapter Seven

Mike ignored the taunts and the occasional bumps he would get from the Dupuyan whose house now sat on top of their head. He made his way to a spot where the feds had set up a decontamination chamber. Various agents were stepping in and out wearing their protective gear. He found Doug and Melissa out of their suits and wearing 'FED' caps, T-shirts and jeans.
'Congratulations, guys.'

'Congratulations to you as well, Mike. I don't think we could have pulled off this raid without your assistance.'

'What happens to the Cheerleader now? Do you take her to the Pittsburgh FBI office or something?'

Doug drew in a breath. 'There may be some trouble with that. Washington hasn't given the official word to the public that there were actually tiny people living in Dupuy all these years. As you can imagine, there would be an incredible outcry from the families of these people, their distant cousins and such. Not to mention the outrage we'd have from the religious community if they found there was some Cheerleader-worshipping sex cult going on here all these years. The lawyers have to digest potential liability issues on the part of the government, for shrinking these people and allowing them to be subjected to what constitutes mass rape...'

Mike began to wonder about this. Granted the people were under the cheerleader's control, but most of the 'victims' were male, and seemed to like it when they weren't getting hurt...

Doug continued...'So for the time being, we're keeping Stephanie in one of the rooms here while we sort things out. We'll have to keep the former shrinkees here as well. None of them have lived in the outside world, or know much of anything about the past hundred years.'

Mike countered, 'You can't keep two thousand people cooped up in a building meant for four hundred people.'

Doug looked Mike square in the eye. 'We don't know the extent of gas contamination in the other buildings. If we put any of the Dupuy people in there, they could shrink right down again. Look', he said to Mike, 'why don't you leave? You've got a family and school to go back to.'

'I feel like I owe it to these people to see that they get their new lives off to a good start.'

'In that case, stay the hell out of our way and let us do our jobs.'

Mike walked away from the feds' decon center. The Dupuyans now had robes to wear, but their other needs were hardly being met. The feds had a truckload of food shipped into Dupuy, but it was proving inadequate for the population.

'It's so weird. This blueberry is no bigger than my thumbnail', Kathleen mused. 'How can you make one of these last at this size?'

'You don't. You eat them by the handful', Mike replied.

'How can you possibly feed yourself at this size? At our old size, you need two hands to carry a nut. Now I can chomp it to pieces in two seconds.'

'We do okay', was Mike's response.

'Our people aren't doing too well. It's hot, it's overcrowded, and they're crowded and homeless. Their homes just exploded all around them. They look at peaches that used to be as tall as their bellies and now they're no bigger than peas used to be, and they wonder how they're supposed to get by.'

'You just eat more peaches!' Mike exploded. 'What is WRONG with you people? Many people out in the world have it far worse than your Dupuy people--'

They were interrupted by a crashing sound. A group of Dupuyans, angry at the lack of food and housing, had rushed some federal agents in an expression of anger. Somebody grabbed at a weapon. Bad move. Before it was over, 18 Dupuyans were dead, dozens moe were wounded, and the Feds had forced everyone back into the dorm, including Mike.

'It looks like I'm as much a prisoner as you are now', Mike said to Kathleen. 'They said it was protective detention, but really what it is is, they've just committed a blunder on the scale of their Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents back in the 20th century, and they don't want anybody to know about it. So far they've managed to keep the media out, because everyone is certain they'll get killed if they come anywhere near this place. I don't know what to say...'

'How about saying you're sorry for bringing this curse of enlargement upon us and bringing these federal agents down to execute us.'

'I'm not sorry for trying to bring you freedom.'

'You call this freedom, compared to what we had before? Before we had all the food we needed, a strong community of people who cared for each other, and a big, real-life goddess who was right there, not up in the sky someplace, to take care of us. You think it was just one big orgy, and it was not. Anyone could go to the Cheerleader. People who had lost loved ones, who were having a hard time, would go and the Cheerleader would comfort them, let them rest on her tummy. Tell me where you get that kind of comfort out in your giant world where one peach is a moment's snarf instead of enough to feed a whole family. Now our faith, our community is all shattered, thanks to you, and 18 people are dead. You can't say 'I'm sorry' for that?'

Mike stood silent.

'Now, I'll tell you what I am going to do. I am going to find a way to free our Cheerleader, to get these federals out of here, and get back to something like a normal life. You can join me or not, but if you don't, you'd better find someplace to hide, because there are people who don't like what you did and wouldn't mind paying you back for it. There used to be peaceful people here, before THIS happened. They aren't peaceful anymore.'


Mike kept telling himself it wasn't cowardice that found him accompanying Kathleen as she made her way through air vents, trying to find the room where the Feds were keeping the Cheerleader.
After a lot of thinking, he concluded that he had to do what he had to do. He helped make the mess, he was going to help clean it up. But how could he ever return them to their old lives? He couldn't make them six inches tall again. Could he?

Of course, the Dupuyans knew the air vents by heart, because when they were tiny they could just walk up and down the vents. Now Kathleen marveled at having to wiggle herself through them. She stopped in front of a vent where she heard sobbing.

'Care to give me a hand, Mike?' Mike took out a screwdriver and began manipulating the vent.
He managed to pry it loose, and together they squeezed through the opening. Inside, they found the Cheerleader, in a lit room, handcuffed to the chair. Kathleen was awed, as she was able to stand next to the woman who had been her goddess, and see the part of her hair.

'Don't speak loudly', Kathleen pleaded. 'Oh Cheerleader, it hurts me to see you and not have to look up to you...'

'It's not necessary to worship me', Stephanie whispered wearily. 'It's all over. I am a criminal and must pay for my crimes. Do not address me as Cheerleader. I am only Stephanie, and I am sorry I hurt you for so long.' For the first time, Mike thought, Stephanie sounded all of 120 years old, even if she still didn't look it.

'You are not a criminal! You gave us our lives and our hope! You taught us the meaning of love and made it the center of our lives! The criminals are those agents who shot our people.'

'Are not the criminals allied with people like.. this one?' Stephanie sneered at Mike, who spoke up. 'I did the wrong thing, and now I have to make up for it somehow.'

'Mike has their trust', Kathleen added. 'And he has a plan...'

'Uh, yes', he stammered. 'Uh... the reason that the people of Dupuy shrank originally was that some gas was released from the tanks near town. So, what if some of that toxic substance is still there? We could use it to overcome the Feds.'

'You mean shrink them and then take them out? Oh, that's brilliant. And then we could return everyone in Dupuy to their normal sizes...'

'I don't even know if it could work, if people could be shrunk after being unshrunk. Even if it could, I wouldn't do it unless the people of Dupuy decided that's what they wanted to do.'

'Of course', Stephanie answered. 'The will of the people must come first.'

'I have a requirement of my own before I will help', Kathleen said. She knelt down and looked the handcuffed Cheerleader in the eye. 'As high priestess, I speak for the women of Dupuy. Many of us have seen the men of Dupuy enjoy many years of pleasure with you. The women have longed to have the same privilege, to enjoy a night in you without having to have a man with them. You were more powerful than any man, and that power built in us a great attraction and desire to give ourselves to you. If we restore your rightful reign, and we find a way to return to our normal sizes, will you grant to the women of Dupuy the right to make love to you, and for you the duty to make love to them, as you have the men?'

Stephanie drew her breath back. 'The women of Dupuy are supposed to be the glory of the Cheerleader in miniature', she said, speaking of herself in the royal third person. 'I had never.. wanted any of you inside me without a male lover. But if it is desired by my subjects, than they shall have it. You see, Mike', she said as she turned to her former quarterback, 'my sex was never just about fulfilling my desires. Those all came true long ago, with one exception. As I have been given youth and stamina far longer than the average woman, I feel it is my duty to give it back to all who need it. The women of Dupuy need me, and I shall be there for them.'

Kathleen then leaned into Stephanie's face and gave her a kiss that would have qualified for any video music awards show.

'And one more thing', Stephanie whispered as the two turned to leave. 'If we do find a way to return everyone to their proper sizes,' she paused to savor the thought, 'before it happens, I want Mike to make love to me, as a giant man makes love to a giant woman. That should be enough to get me through the next hundred years or so', she smiled. 'Then, I want you two to get married.'

'Get married?' Mike blurted. 'We don't even get along. And who are you to meddle in our private lives?'

'You two have a certain chemistry. And who am I?' Stephanie looked up at the ceiling, her sense of self stronger than at any time since the raid. 'It's my job to meddle. I am the Cheerleader.'

The End