Shrinking

Victoria Rigel - Galaxy Girl

Using Olivia’s ancestral connections, it hadn’t taken long to find out more about the tournament, and after just a few more hops, and collecting several more tributes for her binder, Tori had landed on a planet chosen for the devil’s competition. But she wasn’t prepared for what this looked like; at the edge of the city stood two immense demons, one of them literally being a horned, winged, blood-red monster. She along with a more unassuming blue-robed giant were setting up a large ring, which after asking around among the locals, turned out to be some form of portal for contestants. At that point the initial plan was to just jump through the tournament portal as soon as it opened, but while getting closer to the scene, Tori noticed something peculiar about the woman in the blue robes. Staring at her, and the thin purple thread running through the giant woman, Tori quickly realised the potential this monster held. Somehow, she could forge paths through the universe on her own. Using Olivia’s ancestral lineage to walk along the dimensional paths used by the Gods in the past was very efficient, but if Tori could capture this beast, she’d be able to make her own way, teleporting across the entire universe with no problem! Not wanting to lose any time trying to find some hotel room for her backpack, her collection of humans, Tori teleported onto the woman’s shoulder. She had to make sure that if this monster were to run, she’d be taken with her. Hiding among her long hair, ‘Galaxy Girl’ stretched out her hand to do the impossible – she would defeat this giant by shrinking her down to the size of a doll.

--

Being bored, Fiona’s Succubus was leaning against the ring while staring up at the shimmering purple barrier in the sky, “How long do you still need. My Goddess can’t keep us concealed from her sister forever. And you know that if this planet’s owner finds us, neither of our Goddesses will come to rescue us!” Not letting herself get distracted from her work, the blue-robed Watcher just rolled her eyes, “I’d be done a lot quicker if you wouldn’t keep nudging the portal. Stitching secret holes into the fabric of space and around another Goddess’s protective spell is hard enough as it is, even without your constant interruptions.” The Succubus suddenly cocked an eyebrow while staring at her colleague, “Are you okay? You seem … smaller?” The Watcher just rolled her eyes again and tried to ignore the dumb blabbering of the other woman, who must have been suffering from oxygen deprivation or something to come up with this nonsense.

--

‘Galaxy Girl’ was struggling to keep everything around her under control. Not only was it difficult enough to keep a steady grasp on the hair holding her in place while keeping her other hand pointed at her shrinking target; but now she was already running out of energy after barely shrinking the woman at all. It was easier to do with a mere mortal, but this beast was just too large to shrink down efficiently and quickly. Add that to the other giant seemingly having noticed something already. Trying to maintain her composure and deal with the situation, Tori bit into the hair she was holding onto, while reaching the freed-up hand into her backpack. She dreaded how it’d feel to do this ‘live’, but if she wanted to have the powers of this woman, she’d have to siphon more energy from her collection, while continuing to shrink her victim. With the binder wedged in place with one arm, and her other arm wrapped around the hair again, while holding onto a corner of the book, she also began to focus on the little screaming humans. At first, she struggled to keep concentrating on both, but when she was about to sigh in frustration, she suddenly felt the life force getting pulled into her open mouth, rushing through her body, and then immediately flowing into the fingertips of her outstretched arm. And it was working! She could feel the woman shrinking quicker, the hairs in her hands thinning more rapidly. And yet, she was also assaulted with the shrieking, crying and screaming from her book. Though it sounded different than usual. More agonising accompanied with weird popping and squelching sounds. The longer she kept going, the more uneasy she got, with more and more energy rushing through her open mouth. But she couldn’t afford to look down and lose concentration! She was getting so close!

--

“What the… No, you really are shrinking! Look at yourself!”, the Succubus grabbed her colleague’s hands, interrupting her work, and stepped closer to her. Only when Cassi’s Watcher saw that she was staring squarely at a pair of barely covered breasts – at eye level – did she realise that something was wrong. “How… how did this happen?!” The Watcher lifted her arms and began to spin around on the spot, trying to see if any of the mortals below were doing anything to her, but she was stopped when she felt the bosom of her colleague coming to a rest on top of her head. The succubus was leaning forward, partially to look down herself, but also to tease the shrinking woman, “You mean, how is this happening? You’re still getting smaller!” The voice of the smaller Priestess was trembling as she began to break out in panic, “Nononono! This can’t be happening! I can’t go back down to the mortals! They’ll tear me apart! Fuck! You have to do something! Please!” Unsure how to deal with this, the Succubus just grabbed the now child-sized Watcher by her torso and lifted her up to her eye level. “Yeah, I don’t know. Should I call for Cas-“, the red-skinned woman stopped as she noticed a little figure tumbling down from her partner’s shoulder and vanishing in her cleavage. “Eh, yo. I think you have a bug between your tits. Do you want me to…” The still shrinking woman just began to scream while wildly flailing her arms around, “Get it off! Get it off! …”

--

Tori had lost her balance when the winged demoness lifted her victim into the air, but even after getting smushed slightly by two still surreally large mounds of soft flesh, she managed to keep a grip on her binder and still cull this woman’s height. Though it was odd, feeling all this skin shifting around her, rubbing against her spandex suit as the larger woman kept on shrinking. Tori noticed how she threw herself around, trying to get a hold of the little invader underneath her shrinking robes, though by now ‘Galaxy Girl’ was large enough for her legs to dangle freely below her bra-strap, which gave her the option to kick the shrinking woman in the stomach. To her surprise this actually sent her flying, landing on her back with a painful groan. Tori meanwhile was becoming large enough for the bra that still kept her upper body in place to snap, while also forming a considerable bulge underneath the blue robes. She was basically sat atop her victim by the time she burst out of the demon’s clothing. Glancing around she noticed the red demon looming above them with a bewildered and yet amused expression; she was seemingly holding both of them in her hand. Meanwhile the now-nude woman beneath Tori was trying to pull punches, but the athletic superheroine quickly dodged them. Still, not wanting to take any chances, Tori put an edge of the binder in her mouth, biting down to keep it in place, while pressing both her hands against the smaller woman’s torso. With a final push of her power she quickly reduced her to a size that easily fit into her hand! But at the same time, she noticed the larger demon’s hand coming for her.

She was about to jump away, while tightly gripping onto her captive and the binder in her mouth, but she suddenly felt herself repeatedly being pulled through the world without her control, landing in random places like shops, homes, high up in the air, and several other locations. It quickly dawned on her that the tiny woman in her hand was trying to teleport away, but Tori was pulled along every time. Wildly throwing her hand around she eventually managed to hit the tiny woman’s head into a shelf, causing her to pass out, and the teleporting to stop.

--

Tori had moved herself to a hotel on a different continent, evading the other demon who was surely looking for her. Though while calming down she had noticed that all the people in her collection were unresponsive, even after gently nudging the binder a couple of times. She dreaded to think about it, and didn’t dare to look, but she had that stomach-knotting feeling that they were probably all dead. Though luckily, she didn’t have to think about it! With the unlimited power of the shrunken demon in her hand she could go wherever and complete her mission! The … only … problem now … was to find a place to keep her. As ‘Galaxy Girl’ she would definitely need both her hands free, but her spandex suit didn’t exactly have pockets…

She was pretty embarrassed about what her mind was suggesting, but not wanting to give up now, she pulled down most of her suit and lifted the elastic band of her underwear. The little demon was still unconscious, so at least Tori wouldn’t have to endure any comments from her captive during this. Carefully she lowered the woman into her underwear, but this wouldn’t be enough; Tori had to make sure she wouldn’t be crushed by an unfortunate fall or something similar. Going into a squat and using her other hand, she spread herself before gently nudging the unconscious woman inside her. As a virgin she struggled a lot with easing the limp body further inside without losing control of herself, but even as she was breaking out into a trembling sweaty mess, she kept on pushing. She was on a mission, and she wouldn’t let herself be distracted by these shortcomings! And just a few minutes later only the head was sticking out, which meant Tori could comfortably pull all her clothes up. Although she needed a moment before her shaking legs could stand again. Taking one deep breath, ‘Galaxy Girl’ slithered her hand down along the outside of her skin-tight suit, until she felt the head of the demon underneath her fingers. Connecting with her powers, she closed her eyes and vanished from the room.

Her sisters were unbelievable. Their lack of respect for human life was disgusting, especially seeing how they all used to be just like the people they were toying with now! Theia wouldn’t admit it in front of them, but she had looked along their timelines, studying how virtually all of them were decent beings once, kind-hearted, hard-working, respectful! But as soon as they received as much as an inkling of power they all went mad. And now, with a near infinite amount of it, they had become completely unhinged, and began to rampage through the universe with no regard for anything but themselves; Fiona and her hideous tournament were just another example of their deranged morality. Theia couldn’t watch on, as the carnage unfolded around her, and so she left, quietly wishing she could pull them all back in time, to show them how they were before all of this.

With a defeated sigh she stepped into the empty void of Purgatory, her home, though before she could make her way to her desk to continue the development work around this galaxy she was greeted with an odd sight. Directly in front of her – at eye level in mid-air – stood a tiny burning soul, though it looked off, tattered, as if they were a wet painting that someone dragged their hand over. And just as she was about to reach out and touch it, it vanished. Theia looked around and spotted several of those apparitions floating around her void; something must have been very wrong with how these mortals died. Glancing down at the end of the queue of dead people she spotted what was probably the source of these scattered souls; a whole group of the tattered beings, standing at the back, frequently flickering in and out of existence. Kneeling down, Theia reached out to them, freezing them in place so she could follow their timelines closer, but as she was looking them up and down, she found herself skipping through a jumbled mess of future memories that couldn’t have possibly happened yet, mixed with childhood moments that were all in the wrong places. And in-between she kept seeing flashes of a different time, one where a giant woman in a purple suit was staring down at them? It was hard to make out, but while cross-examining all their timelines, Theia eventually pieced together that they had all been in touch, no, been held captive by this woman … who then slowly ate up their time? And yet she always seemed unwilling to harm them? This was … strange to say the least. But messing with the time of the universe could cause serious consequences; Theia conceded that she would definitely have to put a stop to this. Or at the very least find out more about this girl.

It took the Goddess of Destiny a while to find a good reference point since the girl’s timeline kept eluding her, but after searching around for a while she spotted a few others that hadn’t been completely ripped to shreds yet – ones that were still going on. And as she traced them across the universe she eventually found them sitting in a hotel room on the planet Ovis, which was an even more concerning development for Theia. With a flick of her wrist she willed herself to the place, only to find it deserted. At least the weird girl wasn’t here, but in a binder on the bed she spotted the few remaining timelines that were still ongoing; picking it up and sitting in a large armchair by the window, she opened the folder to be greeted by a horrifying sight. Little humans, all taped into place to form a disgusting collection. It didn’t help to see that most of them were missing their eyes or were generally covered in blood.

Theia was drawn back to reality when a little female voice began screaming up to her, “Oh by the Goddess! Please! You have to help us! This monster has been holding us hostage!” Looking down at the last few filled slots in the binder, Theia spotted a sharply dressed blonde woman trying to get her attention, “Who has been holding you hostage?” The girl began crying tears of relief as she was being noticed, “I don’t know! Some crazy girl, thinking she’s some sort of superhero! She’s says she’s trying to hunt down the Gods or something! Please you have to get us out of here before she comes back. She can shrink people!” Theia was looking the little woman up and down before spotting something really interesting in her distant past. She was related to Alyssa! Some great-niece or something! Getting a relative to talk to the insane Goddess of Death might actually bring her back to reality! Oh this would be glorious! “Of course, I’ll help you, as long as you’re willing to do me a little favour as well! Though, beforehand I need to make sure that your kidnapper won’t be able to do this again.” The little girl began crying even harder, “Oh by the Goddess! Yes! Yes, I’ll do anything you want! Just please, don’t let her get you too! I don’t want to die here.” The Goddess gave the little woman a reassuring look, while letting her eyes flare up with purple light, “Don’t worry, I know how to defend myself.” Theia already knew almost everything about her, but in an effort to calm her down she tried make conversation, “Anyway, what did you say was your name again?” The little girl was drawing short, interrupted breaths while trying to stop herself from crying, “I’m- I’m OIivia!” Theia smiled at her, “It’s nice to meet you Olivia. My name is Th-“

The Goddess stopped. Something was wrong. Her hands were trembling. Something was pulling at her. She dropped the binder. Something caused her immense pain. Something was stopping her. Something.

Victoria Rigel - Galaxy Girl

Tori didn’t realise how much time she had invested into capturing the little woman who was now trapped inside her, but when she arrived, the tournament had already been going on for a while. She didn’t exactly know what to expect on this world, but it certainly wasn’t this; a nightmarish red hellscape with thin, impossibly shaped mountains touching the sky, a deep ravine separating her from larger, smoother mountains near the horizon, burning hot air, and molten earth flowing over a ground, that felt unnaturally smooth and soft. Tori wouldn’t realise she was actually standing atop a devil’s left hand until later. Still, while taking in her odd surroundings she spotted some sort of immense viewing platform up in the star-filled sky, and along with it a couple of prominent purple strands flowing around it – if she could see these threads from this far away, some very powerful beings must have been up there; maybe even the Goddess Herself. Although it also seemed concerning that she could feel a connection between her captive and whatever was looming above. Regardless, Tori was interrupted when she noticed someone beginning to growl behind her. Those grunts turned into blood curdling screams when Tori turned around; running up to her was some primitive looking cavewoman, wielding a large club. At near superhuman speed, she rammed into Tori with her shoulder. With the air knocked out of her, the little superheroine fell on her back; screaming in panic, she pinched hey eyes shut and held her arms out in defence against the muscular woman that was about to bring down her club on Tori’s head with all her might. Though that scream petered out when several seconds passed without anything happening.

Tori opened her eyes again; to her bewilderment the woman had seemingly vanished. In reality though, Tori had unintentionally zapped her attacker with her power, shrinking the feral woman down to the size of an ant. She had defended her ‘territory’ rather well throughout the game; taking down several more advanced contestants, who underestimated her raw strength and agility; but now she was afraid, afraid of a girl that went from being a full head smaller to her to the size of an oblivious mountain. She couldn’t help but run away as this mountain began to shift while Tori was getting up to her feet.

Meanwhile Tori had her eyes fixed on the viewing platform again; and with a nudge against her captive she was quickly teleported up to it. Although once there she immediately felt her knees buckle – her captive must have been slowly waking up, her subtle little movements sending shivering jolts up to Tori’s head. Clenching her legs together, she just stood there for a few seconds until the movement inside her subsided again. As she was catching her breath she began to take in her surroundings – which were an odd thing to behold. Seemingly floating in the starry night of space was a sofa with just one of the devils sat atop – she was devouring crowds of people by the handful as she watched down to the tournament world, which revealed itself to be the body of just another devil lying atop a world of lava. Tori’s stomach began to turn at the display of carnage all around, but she managed to compose herself by looking off into space. Her gaze swept over another, smaller woman, lying naked at the foot of the ridiculously large couch, with a leash around her neck. She looked bruised and tormented, but as Tori was intently staring at the woman and her thin purple line, she felt her good nature radiating off her. Since she was sleeping, Tori felt confident enough to walk up to her and place a hand on her cheek. With compassion in her heart, she promised to help her as soon as she had found the Goddess. Although that promise was quickly followed up by curses as Tori noticed a large pool of drool gathering by her boots. With a start she tried to jump back, but that put her squarely out in the open. She had realised her mistake, even before a mesmerising display of blue flames began to encircle her. They would have been pretty, if it weren’t for the fact that they were also obstructing her vision, and thus leaving Tori uncertain of the movements of the large devil on the couch, or generally an escape route. Suddenly, an all-encompassing voice boomed down to her, “Who are you?” As this devil was trying to speak down to her, Tori noticed the thin purple line behind the veil of flames beginning to pulse; this must have been the devil using her powers! Feeling a bit confident having overcome her trickery so easily, Tori stared up to the line and proudly proclaimed, “I am the one who will stop you!” Though then again, Tori quickly remembered that this woman was still a lot taller than her, so before she could just get up and step on her, Tori quickly brought her hand down to the woman inside her underwear to teleport back to her hotel room.

The Goddess that had arrived on the world of Ovis just a few moments ago suddenly collapses on the ground. Clawing at her chest she tries to figure out what the pain’s source is; she quickly realises that this is the progression of time, as it is tied to her heart, being pulled at from a distance, but she would never realise what the actual cause is. And yet, this reason is already well known; in that moment Goddess Sarah had just erected her time shield around the unassuming world of Gwental Minor. She wanted to buy herself more time, before her sister Cassi would catch up with her, but she wouldn’t realise who would have to pay for her expenditure until much later. And much later, when it would have had been painfully obvious what she was doing, she will have already given her Insight away to her daughter.

If done properly, the threads of destiny would have been delicately woven, allowing for the flow of time to concentrate on Sarah’s point in space, however given her untrained, unknowing nature, it was more like Sarah grasping several million strands of time and forcefully pulling them in her own direction. Now, they all spool through Theia’s heart, which, as the Goddess of Destiny, is the catalyst for the progression of time in this universe. As the amount of threads being pulled through becomes untenable, painful even, time begins to be ripped away in other parts of the universe, effectively bringing them to a temporary standstill. This is most visible around Theia, who by now has lost control of her powers. Her temporal vision is flickering on and off, her eyes emitting a strobing purple light, intermittently blinding her by a fog of divinity shining from within her. By now she is ominously floating in the middle of the room, hoisted into the air by the invisible strands of time pulling her in all directions. She is trying to scream but there is no sound.

A Goddess of Destiny, Fate, Purpose, Time or whatever their title may have been through the ages; really any of them could have easily identified the problem, pulled back, and rearranged the flow of time to compensate for Sarah’s meddling. Theia however is pre-occupied with trying to deal with the godly wounds inflicted on her mortal mind – her choice to feel like a mortal was her downfall. Her heart works diligently to mend the broken pieces of time in the universe, filling both the demand for Sarah’s time, as well as the surrounding universe, but to do so it is blindly pulling at the next closest source of time; Theia’s own divine timeline, which is slowly strangling her, taking her breath away. As she is acting on pure instinct and blind survival she tries to grasp at the strands of time flowing past her, but they just burn through her hands. She reaches a point where almost all her divine powers are acting uncontrollably. Once unable to steer her body, she begins to explode to divine heights, obliterating everything in the vicinity.

Her holy light shines through her eyes, mostly blinding her to the world, but still allowing her to see glimpses of the travesty her gaze causes; anything falling under her shining glare was trapped in time, remaining untouched by the devastating throws of her giant body. From the outside it looks like a saving grace, keeping anyone inside from being crushed by her expanding body, but in these places, time begins to jitter, quickly jumping back and forth from one second to another, and back again. Anyone inside is trapped there for an eternity after which they’ll eventually succumb to mortal deterioration - countless souls turn to dust, just to feed the hole left in time around Theia.

As she reaches a height, that was tall enough to make her visible to half the continent, her thrashing body produces earthquakes that can be heard and felt around the globe. The ground beneath and around her begins to splash like water, forming a crater wall almost as tall as a country can be wide. The wave of shifting landmass is large enough to uproot entire mountain ranges and blasts unimaginable amounts of debris and earthly rubble into space. Some of it leaves the planet forever, but most comes back as burning rock, that collectively heats up the atmosphere, causing firestorms immediately around the Goddess’s body. The mix of debris, smoke and ash of burning life, rises into the sky and blocks out the sunlight with a thick layer of clouds. The temperatures around the globe fall drastically, killing almost all life on the surface that had managed to survive so far.

But to the Goddess time has lost its meaning, for her everything keeps happening quicker and quicker. Even at a point where millions of years pass, no life ever re-emerges due to her continued presence on the planet – an everlasting disaster. At her scale the only thing she still manages to identify through the fog of her gaze was the ocean, and her own reflection within it. She feels her body twitching uncontrollably, and yet her reflection laid perfectly still, calmly staring up at her. Theia thinks her mirror image would speak to her again, as it had done so many times in the past already, but she remained silent forever.

And just as the expanding sun evaporates the oceans and consumes this world, she is back in the hotel room, still hanging in mid-air, trying to claw at her problem. Theia is literally bleeding time, and her heart tries to make up for it by resetting the world around her. She will have gone through the cycle several times; expanding, killing the world under her, and landing back in the hotel room. By now the room has been drenched in so much of her own time it had become a constant in the universe, painfully poking into her body every time she outgrows it.

And yet she never stops lashing out, desperately throwing herself around, she tries to grab onto anything she could. And once, several second-long eons later during one of these attempts she gets hold of something hanging above her, something she has never seen before, something she was never meant to see; her own thin strand of time, stretched out infinitely long, and entangled with the golden thread of her divine essence, just as she has seen it on her sisters. The pulse of time is squeezing her own timeline and constantly loops back in on itself in a desperate bid to make more time for the universe.

In blind agony she wraps her hand around the golden line, and rips at it. It brings paralysing pain with it, but she also felt something in the distance; there it was, years into the future, the feeling of relief coming towards her if she had continued to pull. As the two lines are almost completely separate, she feels her own timeline rip apart. For her the world has had gone black lifetimes ago; her strand of time shrivels up and was immediately consumed by the divine essence, feeding it back into the universe, allowing it to continue ticking.

Several worlds at the rim of the universe were still slowed down to compensate for Sarah’s time dilation field, but overall everything will have had been okay. Meanwhile, ages ago on Ovis, Theia’s body falls to the ground of the once again re-emerging hotel room. She was lifeless, and with her soul consumed, nothing could ever bring her back. In her hand she held a large purple gem, which was encircled by trailing lights at varying distances away from the crystal centre. It almost looked like a beautiful miniature star system, she would have thought. But the Goddess was dead.

Victoria Rigel - Galaxy Girl

Tori felt herself jolt backwards, as was usual when she tried to teleport into a space that was occupied by something; and so instead of landing inside her hotel room she stumbled into the corridor in front of the door leading to her room. She was immediately concerned about someone having found her out and prepared herself to shrink whoever was behind that door down, but before she could think further she noticed how odd the world seemed. The bit of floor she stood on was seemingly the only thing left of the hotel on this side of the door – it was just floating in the air, along with a few other bits of debris here and there. Looking up, Tori spotted flaming rocks just hanging still in the air, illuminating everything in a hot red light. And the world around her wasn’t any less bizarre; halves of crumbling skyscrapers just stood frozen still, while the other sides seem to have collapsed and were grown over with plant life that must have had decades to develop. In the streets she spotted several people just standing there, also frozen still, while screaming into the sky forever. In the distance a huge crater wall was stretching out high into the sky, forming an inexplicable, impossible mountain range, that seemingly tried to hold pitch-black storm clouds at bay. And from behind there, an ice-cold wind was carrying snow over to the city.

Tori felt the sudden urge to leave, but a flickering light coming from underneath the door drew her attention back – she still had to get all her belongings. Taking a deep breath, she balled her fist and tried to will herself to the other side of the door. She shrieked in horror when she landed immediately in front of the silently screaming face of a colourless woman suspended in the air. Her eyes were the source of the flickering light, but otherwise she remained perfectly still; almost like the people outside on the streets, only she seemed paler, almost transparent; like an image of something. The terrified girl inched along the wall of the room to get out of the grey woman’s face, which is when she spotted another body lying on the floor, just underneath the ghostly image. With the colour in her hair, Tori quickly realised that this must have been the Goddess she was looking for, though when looking at her she felt nothing. Generally, there was nothing in this world; usually everything and everyone was entangled in those little purple lines that came as part of her superpowers, but this world seemed devoid of them.

By now Tori was standing by the armchair in the corner, which is where she left her backpack, but as she looked down, she just spotted the open binder by her feet. As she picked it up, she noticed that one of her little humans was still alive; Oliva, with her head turned away from the dead body in the middle of the room was just lying there, quietly sobbing with her eyes pinched shut. Tori carefully closed the binder before continuing to look for the rest of her belongings. As she got down on her knees to look underneath the bed she spotted a sparkling light emitting from the half-closed palm of the lifeless Goddess. Curious about what it might be, Tori carefully moved in closer, constantly expecting the body to jump to life and startle her. Up close it looked like an enchanting little gem; it was so pretty Tori couldn’t help but reach out and touch it; but when her fingertips were just inches away from the electrifying surface she hesitated.