Lucas was in peril. He was always in peril, but this time moreso than usual. He was being pursued by a mighty new foe, an archvillainess with the terrifying ability to grow into a giant. She called herself the Empress. A presumptuous name, to be sure, but perhaps not for long. The Empress sought to expand her power, and cement herself as lord of all the world and beyond. She hunted Lucas for his own power, a hidden potential that he was unable to use; he was merely the lockbox that kept that power safe from the forces of evil. 

He felt her approach with each titanic footstep, as the entire weight of her massive body shattered citystreets and sent shockwaves for miles in every direction. He looked out the window of his highrise apartment and nearly screamed. The Empress was coming. Her black hair billowed in the wind like a menacing dark flag of an approaching pirate fleet. Her laughter seemed to emanate from every surface, making her seem to be everywhere at once, truly inescapable.

She stopped and sniffed the air. Her keen, huntress senses were honing in on Lucas’ scent, miles downwind, in what was a seemingly impossible demonstration of olfactory acuity. The sniffing stopped, and a wry grin of triumph arched across her beautiful and wicked face.

“I can smell you, Lucas,” she hissed, her sonorous voice once more echoing in ubiquity. “And I can hear your little heart beating, and now... I can see you.” Her dark eyes, fifty stories high, locked with microscopic precision through his window and onto his tiny little face.

Lucas screamed and launched himself away from the window. He blasted down the hall toward the elevator. He had to escape, his hidden power could never fall into the wrong hands. He stumbled several times as he raced down the hallway. His panicked brain thought at first he was tripping over his own feet, when in reality, it was the steady rumbling of the approaching titaness drawing him inexorably to the ground.

But Lucas wasn’t without hope. In dire times he had a friend, someone who would always arrive just in time to thwart evil. Lucas couldn’t be sure that his giant friend would be big enough to match the scale of the Empress, but there was only one way to know. He reached into his pocket, and withdrew his trusty whistle, its call would never fail to summon the great hero. He put it to his lips and blew. Lying on the floor, he became suddenly aware of a second set of distant, rumbling footsteps. 

He closed his eyes and awaited the titanic struggle that would soon unfold between the two giants. He expected a cacophony of violence to erupt, but instead, was met with silence. Sensations of periodic warm breezes washed over Lucas’ body. He thought he could hear someone breathing.

He opened his eyes, and screamed at the horrible, beautiful visage that greeted him. The Empress, her face so large and so close, obscuring his entire field of view, utterly dwarfed him as he found himself lying in her palm. He was her captive, and soon she would extract his secret power, and use it to become a wicked goddess beyond all challenge. 

“Please don’t eat me!” he screamed. The Empress laughed at first, surely delighted at his suffering, but then her face turned somber.

“Shhh, hey guy, it’s okay!” she whispered. Her face hadn’t changed at all, but her identity had come into definition. Lucas’ gigantic captor was Katherine. He must’ve been startled out of a dream, he figured, a stupid dream of those comics he used to draw as a kid. He appeared to be in Blake and Katherine’s bedroom, although Blake was nowhere to be seen. The early morning rays of sunlight cast their marks midway up the bedroom wall. Lucas thought he could smell pancakes.

“You alright?” she asked, with genuine concern in her eyes. She pet him gently on the head and told him repeatedly that everything was fine and he was safe. Aside from a headache, he did feel fine. He felt even better under Katherine’s protection. There was something about the way she looked at him, her eyes barely visible under her long, dark eyelashes, that was deeply soothing. 

“It’s all real,” Lucas said, as if he’d just learned that aliens built the pyramids or reptiles control the Pentagon.

“Yeah, sorry Luke, I think we broke your brain last night,” Katherine said, smiling warmly. “Blake wanted us to take things slow and like... Shrink a chair or something... And then you’d be like ‘Oh wow do me next,’ but I was like... If he’s gonna freak out he’s gonna freak out, let’s just shrink him if he wants it, and anyway here we are.”

“What?” Lucas said, still not fully comprehending his own circumstances. His mind was overburdened with too many questions. “How... I mean... How long have you two been planning this? I mean... I don’t even... Just...” The backlog of questions was proving too big. Frustrated, Lucas threw his tiny hands in the air. “Just start at the beginning.”

“Well,” Katherine began, taking a big breath, “A couple months ago Blake and I were fucking,” she paused, lifted her free hand against the side of her face and muttered privately to Lucas, “(That’s what big people do for fun, you’re too young to understand)...”

“Thanks,” Lucas said curtly.

“Anyway, Blake, like, outta nowhere, he just starts to get smaller. And he was freaking out about it.” Katherine rolled her eyes like it was no big deal.

“Drama queen.”

“Oh, like, of course. Always,” she said, smiling along with her tiny toy friend. “Anyway, for about a week he was a few inches tall and I didn’t know what to do about it. So... I might’ve kept him as a pet. You’d understand if you were there to see him. He was so adorable!”

Lucas was starting to recall a couple weeks when Blake wouldn’t return his texts and Katherine insisted he was on “vacation.” He interjected, “You didn’t...”

“Oh I totally did,” Katherine said with playful cheer. “He was kinda mad at me about it but I did all the things I could to make him happy. And make me happy too.”

“...You used him...”

“He will pleasure me at any size,” Katherine said with faux seriousness.

“Right...” 

“Anyway, somehow he got big again and he escaped out of his shoebox.”

“Shoebox?!”

“Mmhmm,” Katherine continued, brushing past that detail. “He must’ve figured out how to control the whole shrinking thing because then he shrank me, and lemme tell ya, I spent the whoooole next week on ‘vacation.’”

“Uh huh,” Lucas said, recalling Katherine’s momentary disappearance. “I just hate it when couples fight.”

“Not that I didn’t have a little fun with it, lemme tell ya!” Katherine blinked a few times like she lost her train of thought. Finding it, she resumed her story. “Aaaanyway. I also figured out the whole... Shrinkgrow thing, and I got back to normal. And he didn’t want to be little and I didn’t want to be little and we just declared a truce right then and there.”

“So you both can do it?” Lucas said. “...How odd,” he muttered, trying to work out how such a thing could be possible.

Katherine shrugged. “I gotta tell you Luke, this whole thing, was like, a bomb went off,” she said, flitting her fingers outwards of one hand in demonstration. “We had some fun being small, y’know, but really both of us fucking. LOVED. Being big. I mean LOVED it. I can’t even... Like... I never even knew how much I loved being bigger than everyone until I had a little person to do with whatever I wanted. Same with Blake. It was like... Like a...”

“Like a drug?”

“Yeah, addictive or whatever. And once we were both at our normal sizes we knew. We just knew.”

Lucas pondered for a split second before he figured out what it was they both knew. He was the perfect fit for their desires: lonely, small, and judging by his litany of psycho exes, Lucas was clearly submissive. How obvious was it? And what if he’d refused his friends’ offer? Did he even have a choice? Did he want a choice? 

“Well. I just discovered how much I loved it. But Blake told me he had this fantasy for a long time,” Katherine continued, almost babbling. “He wanted to be some kind of supergiant or something, really got off on it. He told me that you used to draw these comics when we were all growing up where he was a giant hero who always saved you from monsters and space nazis and stuff.”

“Big Man,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, Big Man! ...Kind of a dumb name,” Katherine whispered conspiratorially.

“I was kind of a dumb kid.”

“Well,” Katherine began again, tossing her inky hair over one shoulder, “You should’ve done a comic starring me.”

“...You were in a few,” Lucas mumbled under his tiny  breath.

Katherine’s eyes went wide with surprise, she shook her shoulders gleefully. “Go onnnnnnnn....”

“You were... In just a few of them,” Lucas repeated, shaking two parallel palms in front of his face defensively. “... As the villain.”

Katherine tilted her head downward, revealing her stunning black orbs of eyeballs, arching one eyebrow with piqued interest. Lucas felt breathless just looking into her gorgeous eyes and mesmerizing smile. 

“Whatever! When we were kids you were big and scary and...” Lucas blurted, trying to find the right words to hide his embarrassment, “...and a GIRL, and confusing and-”

“Intimidating?” Katherine offered. She made a point to loom over him, arching her chin and giving Lucas a ground-eye view up her nostrils. 

“Yeah.”

“You’re cute,” was all she needed to say, and the conversation was over. Had it gone further, Lucas would have been at risk of disclosing the dozens of comics he drew in private when the trio entered high school. Big Man lost. Lucas did too. The Empress stole his secret power, and became the God Empress of the universe. She preserved Lucas in a mason jar, occasionally letting him out to worship her feet. She dined on humans, those foolish few who dared rebel against her will. She was cruel and lovely all at once. Lucas lost the will to resist her, and utterly worshiped her. Growing up with Katherine was confusing.

“Sorry, is that bacon I’m smelling?” Lucas said, changing the subject.

A large finger gingerly pat Lucas on the head, returning his focus to the goddess who held him captive. “Blake thinks you have a foot fetish. Is that true?”

Lucas blushed. He realized he wasn’t so much an open book as a drive-in theater. Was everything about him so obvious to his friends? His silence was the only answer Katherine needed.

“That’s good. Because, lemme tell ya, my feet have a lot of needs,” Katherine said, pointing an authoritative finger in the air. “Big feet need more maintenance, but when you run and play sports, keeping them from getting dry or just rough... Let’s just say, I am glad you’re here. Tending to them will be your full time job. And don’t even get me started on my nails. I drink a lot of milk but they’re still brittle and the paint keeps chipping off and every day I need to apply a new coat.”

Lucas grew harder immediately at the prospect of serving her feet. She could see on his face just how elated he was at the idea.

“And Blake’s gonna be so happy. He has the same problems. It’s a fucking job, Luke. We needed you a long time ago.” She looked at his small, beaming face. He was so ready to serve them, such an obedient, willing pet. Katherine smiled, and planted a great kiss on Lucas’ face, leaving him damp and sticky with her saliva.

“You made the right decision,” she said. “You’re going to love being our pet.”