Anthony returned to the white, metal fold out table as the sounds of eager and excited adolescents called along after him, his two youngest nieces chasing him back over to where he was sitting next to Mira, Kyle, and Allison. The two small girls of about six years old bounced and hopped energetically, asking him frantically to continue wrestling with them in the grass as he had been for the last ten minutes, the smiling young man holding his hands up, waving his open palms down to them in mock surrender.

“No, no! No more!” He said with a smile and laugh, “Uncle Anthony’s all burnt out!”

The little girls pulled and tugged at his arms and his sides, both of the kids blonde and about the same height, full of life, laughter, and the brightest form of happiness imaginable. Anthony glanced over to Mira who caught his eyes for a brief moment, she had her cheek resting on the back of one of her palms as her elbow kept her attention raised up and over to her roommate, a smile on her face as well, as she beheld his adorable, father-like maternity toward his small nieces.

The pair of girls finally were distracted long enough for Anthony to shuffle them away, the two heading excitedly back to some iron playground equipment not far off into the lush green grass, as the rest of the man’s family mingled about and swapped laughs and stories amongst each other all around, his young cousin’s casual party in full swing.

The four young adults sat couple across from couple, the remains of party snacks and food before them on disposable plates along with red solo cups of soda matched up with each table member as they continued to talk.

Mira had held a conversation with Kyle as she watched Anthony play carefully with his young relatives, the two talking about what the pair of them had done recently after the basketball game in the gym, as well as some small pieces of her crush’s backstory.

“You sure do seem popular,” Mira said with a chuckle, sitting back up straight and plucking a few pieces of grass from Anthony’s shirt, as he himself brushed his arms off.

“Yeah, they’re great. They don’t get to see me as much anymore because I don’t babysit them like I used to when I lived back with my parents. They’re always fun when they get together, though.”

Mira spotted a long stalk of grass in her human pet’s hair, narrowing her eyes and trying not to smile as she picked it from his scalp, she flicked it into his face with a toothless smirk she just couldn’t manage hold in.

 
“You’re great with kids,” she said to him as he paused, looking over to her for a second as he then reached for his drink and took a gulp of sugary soda, taking the compliment and enjoying her subtle appreciation for his good-hearted nature.

“So how long have you guys been seeing each other, anyways?” Allison chimed in as she bumped torsos with Kyle casually, for some reason giving off the impression that their pair also, had some form of romantic intent or underlying tone.   

Anthony hesitated for a second, the two hadn’t talked in the ride over about getting the details of their, “relationship,” straight for conversations or questions such as this, and he was slightly startled by the question posed by Kyle’s apparent date. Allison, a friend to Kyle and more of an acquaintance to Anthony, was an inch or so shorter than her male counterpart. Like the jokester, however, she had green emerald eyes and hair bright like the vast, golden, wheat fields of Italy, her straight and well-kept strands of blonde, long and flowing with an appealing glow.

Anthony didn’t know what to make of her, she was quiet but clearly intelligent, whenever she spoke she was smiling, and whatever came out of her mouth, her voice deeper than Mira’s by a few tones, was smart and often to the point. He’d known her, well, of her anyways, throughout the entirety of his high school career, but had never interacted with her more than in simple passing. Allison had been an avid member of several fairly exclusive clubs where they’d gone to school, she had even risen to chapter president at one point of the Future Business Leaders group. She’d also been a successful academic to boot, and played more than a couple of sports, one during just about every season. It was odd to him that they had never really hung out; Kyle had been with or around her a lot during those four years, as he was involved in a lot of physical extracurricular activities that she had been a member of. Anthony had never really gotten to the point of asking if his best friend had ever been interested in her romantically, it never really seemed like it, but of course, he knew, in reality, things like that were always difficult to understand by someone on the outside looking in.

Mira cut ahead as Anthony met her eyes and resigned the answer to the blonde girl’s question to her instinctively, trusting her to always take the lead, take control, or indeed just have a plan in place whenever he did not.

“Well, we’ve only been actually seeing each other just recently, but we met about a month ago,” she had turned to regard the pair awaiting an answer to this all-important question, but as she continued she glanced back to face her pet human continuing while staring at him. “He hadn’t gotten the specifics of our homework one day and he asked me about it as class ended, you should have seen him,” she looks back to Kyle and Allison who are smiling well and truly interested, “he was like an adorable lost puppy, all worked up and nervous about talking to a girl.”

All of the group laughed at the description of the pair’s meeting, all except for Anthony as he rolled his tongue in his mouth blushing, smiling a little despite the embarrassment. Mira had retold the story honestly exactly as it had occurred, and he marveled at her ability to blend fiction and truth, though as he began to realize, he concluded that with the exception pertaining to the exact context of, “seeing each other,” she hadn’t actually lied. Mira had, so far, been completely genuine to the young couple sitting across from them, and also to Anthony’s parents who earlier had a few questions of their own when meeting her. That conversation had been so supremely uncomfortable, and so nerve-racking, that if Mira hadn’t been holding him by the arm and gently caressing him reassuringly with her hand, he probably would have said something harmful or incriminating, entirely by mistake. He hadn’t though, and the party was actually going very well, everyone was having a great time from how things seemed, and he couldn’t wait to get home and talk with Mira about what she thought of everything. He loved the way his new roommate smiled, she seemed happy to be around him and everyone else, and inwardly, he wanted more than anything else to have a million more days just like this.

+    +    +    +    +

Anthony closed the door behind Mira and himself, walking back into the apartment as the pair continued a conversation they had started in the car ride back to his overnight residence.

“Look, all I’m saying is that she’s weird alright,” Mira said in a casual voice, heading over to the couch and tossing her purse to the opposite, matching piece of furniture.

“She came off as strange to me; don’t you feel even remotely the same way?”
The young man rounded the side of the longer couch, sitting down and taking off his shoes as he responded decidedly unconcerned, though trying to display support and understanding.

“Well, I don’t know much about her other than what she was like in school, and she didn’t seem off to me today. What was it about her that made you feel that way?”

Mira glanced down and over to her roommate as she paced her hands on her hips, pausing for a moment and shifting her jaw as if in contemplation. It was obvious to her something wasn't right, as if the sky was painted a different color than blue, but she simply couldn’t describe that color to Anthony, partially because he was human, and partially because she wasn’t completely sure about it either.

“If I tell you, promise not to think I’m weird?” She said without a shred of anxiety, though only because she was very good at hiding it.

Anthony ruffled his brow and nods reassuringly with a quick shrug of his shoulders.

“Yeah, of course.”

Mira turns her head away and narrows her gaze slightly, as if trying to see something far off into the distance away from them. She speaks again, this time quietly.

“…She smelled differently…Different from the rest of you…”

The man slouching on the couch suddenly becomes very curious as Mira sighs and sits across from him, flicking off her sandals and laying her legs over in the direction of Anthony, the soles of her feet displayed before him and her body leaned up against the opposite arm of the seat. The half-human rubs an index finger of her hand against her face as she tries to formulate how to explain that further, Anthony understandably giving a reaction as if he doesn’t know what she means.

“It’s like, I could just tell there’s something off about her. Like she’s not everything she seems,” she says with vague certainty.

There’s a half heartbeat of silence that abruptly brings coldness to the conversation, something that needs to be asked, though is a question few would be comfortable receiving an answer to. Anthony voices what’s on his mind though, hesitantly.

“Do you…Do you mean to say she might be like you?” He asks with a cautious move forward in the conversation.

Mira slowly shakes her head and hasn’t raised her stare to meet his own, still lost in her private thoughts.

“No, she’s different, but I can’t figure out why. She talks normal, acts normal, and even in some ways, “thinks normal,” like I do. She can hide in plain sight, just like I can.”

Anthony shifts his body so that he’s facing directly across from his gorgeous, pseudo-partner, still bedecked in her pristine and mesmerizing attire he’s quickly fallen head over heels for.

“Should we be worried? I mean, just because you never really got into what’s really out there in the world. The black demon-guy seems to be evidence there’s other things that might be a good idea to watch out for.”

The demonette reclines back slightly and gets comfortable, looking now towards the ceiling, considering everything that’s being brought into the discussion.

“I’m not sure. No matter what though, I want you to stay away from her.”

“Well, that’ll be easy,” Anthony says with a chuckle and a smile, looking away, “I didn’t hang out with her in the first place. This is the first time I’ve seen her in a couple of months. We only have one class together and we never talk.”

A thought for some reason rolls slowly into the young man’s mind just then, and as it materializes, he turns his head to regard Mira, expecting her to be looking towards the white popcorned roof still. She’s not, however, and her eyes instead are fixated on his as they are uncomfortably seized the instant they meet.

Anthony is surprised by the look she’s giving him, one that almost says she’s caught him in falsehood.

“W-what?”

Mira hears him, but says nothing, instead tilting her head back what seems like half a degree, staring through his words, his mannerisms, and as he can sense and understand clearly, his silent, unspoken thoughts.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Anthony says defensively, a crack of anxiety forming.

“Like what?” Mira responds flatly, without any unnecessary spice to her words as they leave her lush, feminine lips.

As the pair stare over at each other, that strange earlier thought resurfaces again within the human male’s mind, something that, curiously enough, he doesn’t hesitate nearly as much to finally divulge. 

“Mira…” he starts at a regular voice, then as he continues it drops to a near mutter, “Are you…Jealous?”

The girl sitting across the couch is silent for a second or two, looking over at him without an expression, her face nor eyes betraying anything of her true feelings. Her feet rub up against one another as if to scratch a tiny itch that has arisen from the silence, one leg over the other she thinks about how to answer.

Mira is in fact, totally and genuinely, feeling the blooming blossom of jealousy. Allison is pretty and smart. She seems to have all her life’s ducks in a row, and the woman even seems like she comes from an upper-class, loving, well-off family bloodline. The dark beauty for some reason finds herself comparing her own life and looks to the blonde newcomer, as if sizing up her odds at defeating her in some form of combat later down the line. By human standards, at least in terms of everything besides looks and intelligence, she seems to have Mira bested.  Does something like that threaten her though? No. Truthfully, it really does not. It does, however, threaten Anthony though, and while he’s vulnerable for understandably one half of the day, this Allison, girl, whoever she was, was someone that Mira didn’t trust, either with his life or with him alone.

The half-human girl pondered for a second that this wave of jealousy was something that she’d never experienced before in her life. Mira had never taken to a boy, ever, and she had never dated in any serious context except in the woefully bad few incidents where she needed to in order to snare a victim. She was protective of Anthony, and more and more, given the recent social gathering, she was discovering something new about herself that would only ever come up should she decide, like now, to place her claim on somebody for good; she was territorial.    

“Yes,” she said suddenly, bluntly transparent like the round front end of a brutal warhammer made of glass, “she was looking at you in a way that I didn’t like.”  
Anthony blinked in surprise, taking in her reply. Mira was, to his shock, being very honest about something that could, in some cases, be construed as a weakness of character, and though Anthony understood she was not a person of negative types of self-esteem, he was completely taken aback at her casual admission of an apparent fault.

“Well, I mean, you don’t have to be-“ he began, trying to ease her feelings, but she cut him off.

“You don’t get to tell me what I should and should not be, pest…” She said labeling him as less than human once again and laced with an intent to intimidate him, the look in her eyes aiding in that typically easy endeavor, though this time, interestingly, not finding purchase as effortlessly as usual.
Anthony boldly shifted his body forward and maintained the stare she was trying to push his resolve down with.

“You don’t have to be jealous,” the young man said firmly, “I’ve known her for a long time, and we can’t even be considered friends.”

That, actually, was one of the reasons Mira found her new emotion steadily rising; this girl had known her precious Anthony longer than she had, and anything like that, when it came to her favorite living toy, was strangely an insult, or an affront to her. The brown-eyed demon knew she trusted Anthony, he was hers, and he was slowly coming to understand that, but she sure as hell didn’t trust anyone else with him, let alone some girl who, regardless of why, may have unconfirmed interests in the man. 

As these new feelings and emotions shifted and turned inside her mind, Mira began to think to herself, as she did with all things, how she could use it to her advantage. Anthony seemed to get immediately defensive at the idea of another female encroaching on her human possession, and as that fact became evident, she devised an exciting, delicious new plan on how she could have fun with and exploit that to a satisfying degree.

“So you’re saying, Anthony Drewgann,” she said using his proper name, just as a mother would scolding her misbehaving child, cementing the fact he was in trouble, “that this, Allison, is no threat to me…?”

“Of course she isn’t, why would she be, Mira? I don’t even know her!”

Mira was silent as she kept her eyes on him, the noiseless air between the couple drawing out at her behest, the demon-girl’s ability to manipulate conversation, personality, and interaction sharpened to the fine point of an almost tangible weapon.

“I don’t believe you…,” she whispered out to him, lying of course, but knowing she could hide it with little effort due to her prey’s instant mental unrest that immediately followed.

“W-what? Y-you think I’m lying?! You can’t be serious!” Anthony blurted out, his mind racing and simultaneously panicking at this accusation.

“What was she to you before? Before you met me, ant-boy?”

Anthony’s mouth dropped and no words came out, he was appalled that Mira would think he’d ever lie to her, especially about something as…well…as deathly important as this.

Without warning, but only taking one of the pair by surprise, Anthony doubled over and rolled into the couch onto his left side, his head landing where Mira’s body ended. The man’s stomach stabbed with pain as he was forced to clutch his abdomen in piercing agony, his teeth being clamped shut together, and his breath rasping out in response to the hot, invisible wound. Anthony’s knees came up and buckled against his chest of their own accord, a ringing in his ears making his eyelids seal off the light of the living room and shrouding his vision in darkness. 

Anthony began to cough and take in sucks of oxygen with his deprived lungs, now, unfortunately, significantly reduced in size as the rest of his body, and his surroundings, were revealed to his eyes as they slowly opened back up again. The small man, now insignificant, and directly before the bottoms of Mira’s towering soles, growled out a curse through his slightly bloodied teeth, rolling onto his hands and knees, a string of crimson saliva trailing down from his lips onto the cushions of the sofa as he gasped and coughed.

The tiny man wiped his mouth on his wrist and muttered lowly to himself, not knowing Mira’s inhuman sense of hearing could pick up his complaining.

“Why does this shit always hurt so much?” he said shaking his head back and forth, both frustrated and trying to banish the fading pain in his lower intestines as his voice came out through panting gasps.

He glanced over towards where he remembered Mira was laying, doing a quick double-take momentarily surprised, forgetting about her drastic shift in size that always accompanied his own. Her back was propped up against the arm of the couch, and her feet, massive and unblemished, rose up before him not far away, filling his heart with dread and anxiety at being reminded of what they looked like from beneath. Due to the distance from the bottom of her relaxing posture, Mira couldn’t train her eyes to where he had reduced instantly in height, but she fixed that problem a moment later, trying her best to appear cutely dominating.

The woman flicked her left foot aside, which was resting beneath her right, her legs crossed as she sat relaxed and casual. Anthony came into view as her vision was unimpeded, and as he looked up to notice the motion of her foot moving, he flinched ever so slightly in response.

“God this is intoxicating,” thought Mira within the corners of her inhuman mind, the girl’s command of life over death returning with the man’s consistent, daily change in stature.

With just a careless tap of any one of her toes, or with only the slightest shift in her body’s weight, something as strong, as defiant, as noble as her little Anthony could be destroyed utterly like he was nothing to her. It was as if he were an individual grain of sand to her, not in literal size, but in the context of his existence being meaningless by comparison to the veritable goddess that she was, stretched out before him without a care in the world, he in turn presented with the ever-constant possibility of a violent demise at her whims. Mira inhaled deeply at resisting the urge to make him feel just as he was, horrifyingly insubstantial in just about every way physically possible. She then exhaled heavily, almost as if reluctantly releasing the temptations she was having in her mind, and kept her stare aimed at him as her eyes narrowed, a smirk creasing one side of her face. She reveled in this. Mira loved, almost as much as Anthony, the way he made her feel after 7 PM every, single, night when his little secret returned to bless his minuscule life.

“Answer the question, insect.” She breathed out again, her voice teasing sensual, but still keeping a darkly promising tone that reminded Anthony that she could kill him without hesitation should she decide to for whatever passing reason.

The inch tall man gulped nervously down the remains of coppery saliva and stood up straight, fists balling as he reflexively crossed his arms over his chest, trying to keep his fear, and his anger under control. The pain of the change was influencing his mood slightly, but he was actually a little thankful for it, it gave his nerves something to bite onto in the face of such a terrifyingly large person.

The small man frowned over to the face of the lazily relaxing demi-goddess, looking past her legs, and the round mountainous curve of her chest’s glorious rises, she was giving him a smile that could be, in addition to its obvious poetic description, one to die for.

“She is nothing to me. We aren’t even friends, Mira,” he says out to her with conviction.

“Oh yeah?” Mira replies while arching her soles and stretching the dangerously large muscles of her feet.

“Then why was she looking at you? What aren’t you telling me,” she says accusingly, purposefully trying to make him less comfortable. He responds with growing agitation, and alarmingly, she is suddenly pushed beyond playing because of it.

“I haven’t left anything out; I don’t know why she’d look at me! We were all talking together you know, that might have something to do with it! People look at each other when they talk!” He coated his rising temperament in a sarcastic retort, though it is at once noticed, and repaid in turn by the laying monster with something appropriate.

The frighteningly huge vixen begins with deliberate slowness, exaggerating her movements, to roll in sequence the toes of both her feet, as if to not just tease her little pet’s lewd fascination with her body, but also reminding him that any part of her massive existence would love to have its chance to play with his life.
“Don’t you dare.… Raise your voice to me again…. You insignificant thing.”

Anthony took a step forward, surprised by his own courage as he ground out the next words that came out of his mouth, the syllables hard with emphasis, and reinforced by a defiance he had never before known himself capable of. 

“Or… You’ll… What?”

The tiny man’s eyes narrowed with anger at the whole situation. He was being accused of something he wasn’t guilty of, in addition, he was fresh from a blast of pain that had his senses acting uncharacteristically of his normal self. Mira, despite being the one he always wanted to obtain the approval of, had been today the party who had brought his loyalty into question with her obviously loaded inquiries, and despite even that, he refused to back down from anyone, including herself, suggesting he was not devoted to her.

The woman suddenly became motionless, eyes fine like the killing edge of an executioners axe, staring over to him, now, for the first time, genuinely angry at his attempt to stand resolute.

Without warning, she pulled her feet up and away, rotating her body and legs, but keeping her eyes locked on him as if she were a cat trained on a wounded mouse, the sofa-ground undulating beneath Anthony with the goddess’ shifting weight. Her feet impacted the floor with a dull thud, and she placed both her hands flat against the soft couch cushions under her abdomen, leaning her torso down before him with a clear display of effort. She lowered her head over towards where he stood, as far as possible so that her face, and especially her eyes, were level with the pathetically tiny human. Mira’s chest was visible for a small moment as she changed position, the tops of her breasts for a fleeting second on display, but their pleasant outline was replaced immediately, as she came to rest directly in front of Anthony only a few of his feet away, by the stone-cold visage of her face. 

She filled his vision. Mira became in effect, his entire world in a literal sense. Her eyes weren’t narrowed anymore, the playful entertainment of her usual mood was gone, almost as if forever, like her eyes had only ever learned to brandish a menacing intimidation that was beyond human understanding. The sheer size of her pupils, the way her lids were widened with anger, and the utter lack of motion anywhere else in her entire body made Anthony so absolutely afraid of her, he almost lost control of his bladder. The lips and expression of the dark goddess were maddening neutral, and because of that, she palpably radiated a sense of barely restrained fury. She wasn’t blinking, she wasn’t moving. Mira was simply and unflinchingly, staring. 

The human male breathed harder, trying in vain to control his rising fear, it was travelling up his throat from his gut as if it were a chokingly acidic liquid, and as he reflected on how complete and total his terror was, he realized it might actually be in reality, bile coming up from his stomach. Mira was enormous. Her hair drooped lazily before her alarmingly large visage, the strands of her pretty natural brown usually accentuating her beauty, now, however, they only aided in petrifying him with how they complimented her mood, the tips of her hair pointed and thin. 

Mira watched him, closely, in every definition of the word. She could faintly smell the sweat his body was producing, could just barely hear the minute thumps of his racing heart. The demonic woman, merely inches from his body, could even taste how afraid he was as his trembling muscles exuded his capitulating nerve.

There was something though, just below his barely contained horror that she could feel growing. Not his love for her, or their mutual attraction. No, that was a gorgeously pure and indescribable emotion. She could sense instead, a feeling like…like she couldn’t describe with a word, or a typical label of psychology…it was something that could only be quantified as a color, of all things. The color red.

Mira wanted to know more, this irresistible flame within Anthony was coming out, she could feel it like it was water beginning to encompass them both, rising up and touching her skin, registering to her physical sense of touch. 

“Time to get a better look at this new spark,” she decided without speaking words.

Mira, with a slowness that was supremely uncomfortable to the silent Anthony, turned her head so that her left eye was completely centered on his outline, opened fully with its huge iris focused on his meager existence. She was like a dragon who was trying to get the best look at a tiny silver knight who had foolishly quested to hopelessly try and slay her, her inhuman curiosity briefly peaked, and her urge to devour him temporarily pushed away.

Mira didn’t blink, she didn’t even move as she whispered out her final, horrendously dark challenge to Anthony as he resisted every sane part of his mind that was screaming within his head, pleading with him to retreat from her or submit to her ominous presence.

“…Try it…” she said simply, her tone devoid of anything save for a strange, sinister form of confidence.

“…I fucking dare you…”

Anthony felt a chill run up his spine, the muscles of his backbone’s ligaments twitching beyond his control to stop them, his dread rising and composure weakening. Mira’s eye was so close to his body, examining him coldly as if he were a germ beneath a microscope, that if he took one, maybe two full steps, he could reach out and touch the dark brown of her dilated pupil with his minuscule hand. He was still standing before her, the reason behind that decision entirely lost to the tiny man before this giant demon, all his thoughts nearly blotted out like an eclipsed sun, except for the practically absolute feeling of trepidation that gripped his fragile heart.

Mira stared at him sharply, waiting and searching for any semblance of resolve or resistance, any tiny hint that may suggest he wanted to continue to stand up to her, that he meant to actually challenge the massive girl for control of their relationship’s throne of authority. If he really sought to somehow, insane as a thought that it was, to try and surpass her and become the sole alpha member of their partnership, he would have to do the impossible; contend with not just her incomprehensible size, but Mira’s sheer, inhuman will to dominate.

The red thirst for approval was rising within Anthony, he had no idea why, or how, but he could feel suddenly as Mira gazed motionless and unblinking into his soul, that he was face to face with his chance for her personal validation. She was, “humoring,” his play for power, at least in the context of not immediately crushing him to paste for daring to back talk to her, and as hilarious or unlikely as it was, on the other end of the spectrum, for the first time in Mira’s life someone was standing up to her.

The small man could feel his adrenaline starting to pump throughout his veins, chemical responses in his body had failed to convince him of flight, and so instead, as if before a choice that meant life or death, it surged within his muscles the urge to fight back, a refusal to back down. Mira was truly amazing, and though she was probably right now resisting the temptation to annihilate his life in vast multitude of gruesome ways, he could not help but be drawn to her. She was, in truth, just about everything he could have ever wanted in another person. The demon woman was no longer playing around though; Anthony wasn’t certain what would happen if he escalated the confrontation, he could not be completely sure she was in enough control of herself that she wouldn’t heedlessly act out of anger in response to a real, sincere, challenge to her spot at the top of the food chain.

This situation the pair was in, was in the purest form of the description, unique. Anthony knew in his irregular heartbeat that this was his first and perhaps only real chance to prove himself to Mira. To prove to indeed himself that he was worth her affection and worthy of her companionship, that he was different from all those who had come and gone before him, destroyed or cast aside like toys that had failed at keeping her entertained. He had been given an opportunity to be what he knew she had always secretly wanted, and though it seemed like she currently was trying to rebel at the thought of that reality, he could see the truth through her eyes just as she could his. All he had to do to make that happen for them both, was shout at the devil, and that, in addition to possibly his death, was a small price to pay he concluded.

And well, that settled it.

Anthony took in a deep breath to focus his efforts, though trying and failing not to make that obvious to the huge girl before him. His arms slowly came unlocked and his hands dropped to his side, balling into finger-tightened fists of defiant courage. The nostrils of the small man flared as his brow angled downwards in anticipation, the words he knew he was going to utter next rising from his vocal cords, no longer choked or afraid, but given strength by this insane decision he’d come to make. Anthony’s upper lip arched up, his mouth opening as he raised and pointed his finger at Mira’s dragon-like eye, his first and possibly last syllable his voice would ever utter coming up his throat to growl out with an animalistic certainty, his daring response.

Mira, taking note of his body’s movements and his rise in temperament, still didn’t move, nor did she make a threatening gesture of any kind. She could smell something approaching, and it was about to interrupt them, unfortunately, but she honestly was getting more excited and impressed with Anthony despite her settling anger at her tiny pet’s silly attempt at contesting her position of power. She could see it now, as clearly as a dying black rose in a garden of new buds, right this instant, the beauty of what Anthony truly was on the inside. His mysterious tattoo, the look on his face in the locker room after he’d shrank for the first time, his reaction to almost being devoured with bits of sugary cereal and how he had brought her back from the brink. Anthony was a fighter, and god she loved the thought of a man who believed, no matter how hopelessly untrue, he could be considered her equal through sheer willpower alone.

A ring around the apartment sounded out like the great echo of a cascading avalanche of audio punishment, forcing the tiny man’s hands to his ears and closing one of his eyes in a flinch of pain. Mira, still unmoving somehow, slowly allowed a tiny smirk to crease the right side of her face, along the side of her lips that were turned slightly away.

“...Saved by the bell…” She said whispering cutely, the short sentence that was as genuine a promise as she could make, alluding with certainty that he had been just that, spared her vengeance due to the apartment’s doorbell, which Anthony now realized was the source of the sharp racket.  

Anthony’s demeanor and mood shifted abruptly from terrified to relieved, and though he knew Mira saw it as well, he knew they had both come frighteningly close to an event worth remembering and he had at least acquired a shred more of her respect for not backing down.

Mira blinked and rolled her eyes, smiling slightly as if her tiny pet’s veneered fear had entertained her sufficiently enough to dissuade her from not smashing him to wet goo between her fingers.

She began to rise back up and said lowly down to Anthony as she plucked him by the back of his shirt between her index finger and thumb, picking him up and moving him to the floor next to the leg of the sofa.

“Under the couch,” she commanded simply, as she rose up to her full, towering might, stepping away and around the furniture and making for the door. She figured no matter the possibilities of what was going to happen next, that Anthony would be safest under there. She had considered placing him within her dress in between her breasts, but she knew herself better, and understood that that was far too easy to bump or brush and result in an unfortunate end for her little roommate despite the temptation of that pleasurably sensitive area.  

 
Anthony quickly scrambled into the darkness that was the underside of the couch, sticking to the shadow and glancing around to the new undecorated wooden ceiling for anything like a predator, feeling now more than ever, very much like an insect as Mira had always loved to label him. The inch tall man crouched low and looked up and away towards the door, staying well away from the edge of the sofa, as well as the well-lit, open floor, using geometry to his advantage to retain sight of his roommate and the door. 

  
Mira reflexively glanced back to where she could smell Anthony, her heightened sense of sight picking him out immediately in cover as she made a mental note of where he was hiding on the floor.

Turning back around Mira opened the door after unclicking the pair of locks, readying herself in case the encounter for some reason was hostile. She never received visitors, and it was her personal rule to never give her address out to anyone she didn’t intend to kill, so this was an event that garnered a response of justifiable caution.          

The door opened up, and Mira’s sense of smell had its suspicions confirmed by her sharp eyes as it did so.

“Hey, Mira! How’s it going?!” A perky, but lower toned voice came.

Allison was standing outside, holding a phone in her hand and wearing what Mira swore she knew was a fake grin of white teeth. The girl in the sundress was leaning against the open door and opening it only halfway, hopefully not seeming like she was deliberately trying to hide something, but of course doing just that.  

“…Fine,” she said attempting to hide her annoyance, “what brings you here?”
“Well, Anthony forgot his phone on the table, and Kyle had already left when I found it, so I followed you guys here, but I got stuck behind a train down the road.”

She was lying... Mira could tell as easily as if she were brandishing a brightly flickering sign on her hand. The half-human decided to counter her answer, confident that there was no way she had simply followed them home.

“How did you follow us to my apartment? There’s 75 units in this complex.”

“Oh, well I asked the manager which apartment you were in, did I catch you at a bad time? Is Anthony not here?”

She was still lying, but she was good at it, and furthermore, she had thought well ahead about being scrutinized and planned accordingly. Mira could keep pressuring her, but realized here and now was not the right situation to do so. If something were indeed to happen, she would want Anthony at his full height, and less vulnerable to whatever could transpire. The demon girl concluded she could also leave off an impression within the blonde human that her suspicions weren’t peaked, ergo not setting off any alarms within her schemes or ideas, hiding the fact that Mira was onto her.

“No, he's not here,” she said feigning acceptance, “he dropped me off and went home right after.”

“Oh, so he left his car here then?” Allison came back immediately, trying herself to breach the calm and calculated lies of Mira, who kept herself unfazed like the golden-haired human.

“Yeah, but I can give him his phone, I’ll see him first thing tomorrow. He said he was going to crash out when he got back anyways.”

Mira reached out and took the phone from Allison, the act itself slightly rude, but forcing the blonde woman to literally relinquish her remaining cards.
“There was also one more thing, if that’s ok?”

Mira regarded the other girl and remained silent, giving consent for her to continue with her lack of a response.

“Do you have a bottle of water or something, I’m really thirsty, and I still have to drive by the bank and stuff before I go home.”

“Nice try slut,” thought Mira silently. Allison was trying to gain entry into the apartment, though Mira reflected, a better lie would have been asking to use the restroom, that’s something that’s a lot harder to form a genuine denial for, and its what she would have gone with had the situation been reversed.

“Sure, but wait here, the place is a mess.”

Mira didn’t like the idea of leaving the living room, and particularly Anthony, alone for any amount of time, and though it would only be for a few seconds, and the girl would remain outside, she hurriedly made for the refrigerator intent on finally leaving no excuse for Allison to remain at the small home.
Anthony watched as Mira turned and left walking away, her bare footfalls resounding out with a heavy crash of echoes with each step as she went. He was suddenly feeling very worried and alone, and found himself anxiously watching her as she left his vision towards the other side of the apartment.
Turning his attention back to Allison, his eyes switched back to the half-opened entrance of the living room, and as they did, the tiny man felt his heart drop in an instant.

Allison, towering off into the distance, the cool rush of outside air accompanying the coldness of her green eyes, was staring right at him as his small head had finished pivoting towards her. Anthony gasped and fell back onto his back onto the carpet, his legs and hands scrambling trying to find purchase and propel him away. The girl waiting outside hadn’t found him by accident, nor was she squinting or straining, trying to determine if he was a bug or not, she knew, exactly where he was and exactly what he was. In the next moment, Allison simply let a tiny smile creep to one side of her face, though the rest of her body held rigid to the pose of indifference, she was letting him know that she had found him, and she was telling only him.

The green pupils of Allison tracked back and her smile fluttered away as Mira came back around the corner, carrying a water bottle in one hand and Anthony’s phone still in the other. She handed the other girl the plastic bottle and replaced her now free hand on the door handle, ready to close it.

“Hey thanks, have a nice night Mira!” Allison called as she turned to head away, “Tell Anthony I said, “hi,” tomorrow!”

Mira didn’t say goodbye as she forced one last fake smile away, then closing the door, relocking the tumblers as the outside air ceased its invasion.  She stayed standing at the door, rolling Anthony’s phone in her hand and wishing it was him instead, all the while thinking about the entire encounter and trying to understand Allison’s angle or motives. She asked questions to herself at a rate that was quickening with every passing second, but each one lead to another and each was more and more worrying than the last.   

Had Anthony really left his phone there, or had she taken it at some point? What was the true method she used to find her there? And why had she prepared her answers and indeed her questions so perfectly that she almost caught Mira off balance?

Mira sighed and closed her eyes, tired and worried about the whole night, whereas before she had felt the glorious brush of infatuation and positivity at enjoying the party, now she was pessimistic and annoyed.

Anthony rushed out from under the couch and into the light of the apartment, his tiny body carrying him at his full speed of maybe two inches a second at full sprint. He made it to out in the open, equal distance between the couch and the monstrous girl as he began to shout up to her as he ran.  

“Mira! MIRA!” he panted as he slowed to an abrupt stop, her head casting around and her somewhat dismissive eyes finding him at once rotating to a low, downward angle.

“Mira…” He gasped catching his breath, momentarily forgetting how mind-jarringly huge she was by comparison, her height teasing his various emotions with fear and somehow simultaneously, tantalizing interest.

“She, I mean Allison,” he continued looking up at her as she raised an eyebrow, “She saw me! She knows!”   

       
Mira’s mood changed as soon as the words left the tiny man’s mouth, her eyes narrowing and her lips creating an angry frown. Of all things that could have happened tonight, this was the last thing she had expected, or wanted. Whoever this green-eyed serpent was, she was clearly dangerous, and now to compound all of that and everything else, there was a possibility she knew about this deathly sensitive information?

“What do you mean, “she saw you?” Mira said with low growl, turning her body and getting ready to walk over to the ant of a man exposed and defenseless on her carpet.

“No no, I mean-“ Anthony stammered trying to explain, having gotten his words and the context of the problem jumbled with his sudden panic at her reaction of anger.

“She found you? After I specifically told you to hide under the couch, you idiot!”
Idiot? That came suddenly, and hurt more than the usual insults. It wasn’t a play on his obvious problem concerning stature, it was a word honed to a point just now, hurled at him intending to cause him harm.

“Idiot?” Anthony stammered out, a growing sense of tribulation in his heart.
Mira took a couple of short steps towards him as her great strides covered the distance to where he stood in a few equal seconds. Anthony took an involuntary step back as his breath caught in his throat, the sheer skyscraper of the gorgeous woman’s body rising over him and eclipsing his life without even trying, the titanic booms of her feet as they impacted the floor jarring his bone marrow as they fell.

Mira glared down at him from high above, the curve of her chest concealing her chin and neck as she placed her hands on her hips, and Anthony in between her uncovered feet, the fabric of her garment dangling free and waving.

“I-I,” Anthony bumbled, his nervous fright increasing now, though he was unfortunately transfixed on something else, combining two completely opposite compulsions as the female demon’s temper flared.

“What the hell were you thinking? What did I tell you?!” Mira said loudly down to the pathetic human cowering before her wrath.

“Mira, I-“ he tried to continue a second time, but the eyes of the gargantuan beauty fixed him hard as her voice bellowed once more, silencing him yet again.

“You what? You what, insect?” She said with mounting frustration. Mira was starting to feel more and more like lifting her foot, and slamming it down onto Anthony’s meaningless existence. It would solve a whole lot of problems and take virtually no effort, and regardless of how quickly she was sent to hell, at least she would get one hell of a flush of pleasure before she was doomed to an incomprehensibly horrible fate. She wanted to feel his bones crunch beneath the soft, cruel embrace of her sole, to feel the warmth of his blood on her skin again for the second time, and she was finding it hard to remember a moment where she wanted it more than right now, and the only thing keeping that gruesome event from transpiring was her affection for him.

Anthony gulped and took in a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment to gather the bits of his composure. He had just about fallen onto his back as his neck craned upwards trying to keep Mira in view, however, at the present moment, something else was, and he found it necessary to point that out, hoping it would diffuse the current tension. In short, it did not.

The microscopic mant on the floor, worryingly in range of virtually any method Mira could employ to inflict on him bodily injury, almost whispered out his next sentence with a cocky, half-smile.

“…I can see up your dress…”