Gripping the metal key still, Anthony smiled past his fast-beating heart. As terrifying as the experience had been so far, he had not only survived, but scored points against an "adversary" who was millions of times his size. He almost felt like gloating, were she not still just as capable of eating him. 

Not long after, the waitress returned. She smiled down at the tiny man. "Congratulations!" her voice boomed, "Your time was nine minutes and fifty-three seconds, giving you six hundred and seven points!"

Ann, listening to the explanation toward her table, dropped the sushi she was still working on, leaning closely to the same spot, her eyes finally spotting the celebratory speck. "What?" She nearly shouted.

"One moment." The waitress interrupted, continuing her speech, "That's one point for every second under twenty minutes. You also get the bonus five points for your win, and another bonus for a close-call! In this case, you were never in her mouth, but her tongue did touch you, so just another five points this time!" All of this information was new to Ann. Finally, the waitress turned to her. "I hope you enjoyed your first course." She bowed, afterwards taking the tray in her hands. "Will you be continuing the game?"

Ann tilted her head. "What do you mean? Like continuing to the next round?"

The waitress nodded. "You'd be surprised how often we have couples play round one, then The Eater requests to forfeit the challenge by eating their partner immediately. Happens so often that we ask now, and we'll even box up your leftover appetizers." This option wasn't exactly popular with the tiny man standing on the raised tray, looking his colossal fiance in the face.

"Hmm..." Ann pondered, directing her gaze to the speck on the tray, "I doubt I'll get through all three courses... but I think I'll just be sure to eat him in the main course." She smiled, ensuring she showed her teeth. 

"Alright," the waitress began, continuing to clear the table, "Just to let you know, we are required to still include a key somewhere in the dish to give him a chance, and of course we will stop you and end your game the second he drops into your stomach, as we normally do during gameplay."

Ann nodded. "Sounds good."

The waitress gave a slight smile and turned on her heel, heading through the kitchen door once again.

Anthony was half-blinded once again by the fluorescent lights of the kitchen. He stood anxiously as the world around him moved before he was plucked off the tray by two giant fingers. The waitress gripped him in her hand, nonchalantly dropping him into a small tube near the preparation area at which he had first seen the kitchen.

As he fell through the tube, jets of hot, soapy water blasted the tiny man. It was like being pulled through a car wash at the speed of sound. He was hit with tons of different hoses, as well as loud dryers, before the mechanism finally spit him back onto the tray with the large plastic table number. Off in the distance, two voices shouted at each other, but the exact argument was too muffled to make out.

Eventually the waitress approached once again. "So, what did you think of round one?" She crouched so slightly, it was almost comical how far above him she still stood. 

Anthony ran to the back of the plastic card to find the speaker once again, depressing the small button to speak. "It was terrifying..." he began, pausing for a second "but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun." The waitress cracked a smile before turning as the distant yelling grew louder, a male voice and a female voice competing in volume.. Anthony pressed his button again. "What's going on?" He asked. 

The massive figure shook her head, turning back to the tiny man below to answer. "Well, when a customer comes in alone, we rarely have another line customer for them to play with, so lone men get shrunken down and play three rounds in the meals of whichever waitress is up for it, but with lone women, we need to get one of the guys who works in the back to jump in her dinner. Well, the only guy on staff right now is Jacob, and he's just mad because the last lady who he played with kinda screwed him over." 

"What do you mean?" Anthony asked slowly, trying to listen over the muffled yelling.

The waitress rolled her eyes. "You know how I told you the shrinking is timed? Well the last woman he played with grabbed him in like... her second bite. Now normally if one of our guys gets eaten, they get brought back up as always, and just need to call a cab home from the Eater's house. Being brought back up takes around an hour, and then another couple hours to get to full size again. Easy enough. This lady though... She ate Jacob and then caught a plane. She didn't seem to understand the situation either, so while boarding, he was in her mouth again, ready to leave and she just swallowed again. She flew across the country, swallowing him over and over until he finally got out of her body when she fell asleep in her hotel room. I'm not sure if she just didn't pay attention during our presentation, or if she had bad intentions, but either way, it was a huge hassle to get home, so Jacob doesn't want to play the game anymore."

"Wow that's--" Anthony started, interrupted suddenly by the door being slammed open. The yelling had since gone entirely silent. 

From the doorway, a flustered woman in the waitress get-up entered, immediately stomping her way to the post-shrink trays. Raising her arms up, she quickly unscrewed the cap to a bottle of diet soda, putting the spout under the tube of the tray next to Anthony's.

"May!" Anthony's waitress shouted, grabbing the soda bottle away from her.

The other waitress snickered. "Oh come on, it's a joke... even if he really deserves it." Seconds later, a small man fell forth from the same tube, May catching him between her fingers. "Welcome back!" She said sarcastically to the man in her hand, "I'm guessing you're done yelling?" She scoffed and dropped the man back onto his tray. She turned her head, speaking up toward the cooks. "What's the ETA on the first course for mr. mouth-off here?"

The stoic main chef turned her head, glaring angrily at the sassy waitress. "The customer called ahead. It'll be at least an hour and a half." Seeing the smile on the waitress' face, the chef took a step toward her. "You're not eating him in the meantime."

"Oh come on." May said once again, "Didn't you hear how he spoke to me?" Indignance filled her voice. 

"Actually..." the chef stepped closer again, a low growl filling her quiet voice, "I heard both of you. All of us heard you, including other customers. I have half a mind to shrink you as well, and drop the two of you under my boot."

May was unimpressed. "Well isn't it so sad that you can't just shrink a woman then?" Her smug tone only served to worsen the oncoming storm.

"Really now?" The chef growled, taking another step closer, practically standing on the toes of her opposition, "So it never occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, the women who started this company just preferred the roles to be this way? It never occurred that maybe a company that hires almost entirely women and only uses men as back-up food might just make up a reason why it has to be that way?"

May didn't break eye contact. "You don't scare me. You're not much more than a bus service for specks." She motioned to the chef's stomach, undoubtedly filled to the brim with coworkers needing a ride, "You can act all tough and pretend you're able to shrink me, or that you could hurt me once you do, but I'm not buying it."

The chef smiled. "Interesting. So you really want to call my bluff?" 

May scoffed. "I don't need to. I've seen how it just shuts off when a woman stands in it. We all have. It's something you try on day one."

Her smile widened. "Alright then, why don't you show me?" The chef turned on her heel and, alongside the waitress, made her way through the same doors she had entered from.

"Huh." Anthony finally said, breaking the awkward silence among the rest of the kitchen dwellers. "Do you really think..."

High above, the remaining waitress interrupted. "Carrie is basically a veteran here. If anyone had special admin access to the shrinking booths, it would be her..."

"Does this... happen a lot?" Anthony asked, feeling terribly out-of-place.

"May has to butt heads with everyone." The waitress rolled her eyes, "She's usually smart enough to avoid pissing off the kitchen staff though..."

After a moment, Carrie returned alone, picking up May's soda bottle in one hand, and the shrunken Jacob in the other. She dropped the tiny man inside and held the spout under the shrinkie tube, eventually seeing a second splash in the bottle. "Guess I wasn't bluffing" she said toward the bottle, lightly swirling it in circles, "Now here's the deal. You're both fired." Without another thought, the woman threw back the bottle, swallowing the contents in a series of fast gulps. When she finished, she stepped over to the same tube Anthony had been sent through and spit, the shrunken May and Jacob landing on the tray again once cleaned. "Well little ones, I hope you're prepared for a full digestion, because the customer will be getting one."

May scrambled to her feet, breathing rapidly as she ran to her table card, pressing the button and yelling, "You bitch! How could you do this?!"

Carrie approached the tray, not leaning forward as Anthony's waitress had, but instead lording high over her victims. "I will not tolerate fighting like that in my kitchen. You're lucky I don't drop you both into the fryer."

May was shoved away as Jacob forced his way to the microphone. "Carrie! What about the guys in your stomach already?! You just drank soda!"

The chef's face didn't even flinch. "Perhaps you should've considered them before embarrassing us all in front of paying customers."

"Chef." One of the silent cooking women called, "The customer called. Her plans have changed and she asked for take-out. I've prepared her meal." The girl presented a set of take-out boxes, each containing a myriad of fresh hot foods. 

Carrie smiled, scooping the two former employees up between her fingers. She found an open crab rangoon and dropped Jacob inside, massaging the side to ensure the appetizer consumed him fully before closing the take-out box lid. Her attention turned to May. "You're going to get a little extra time to think about what you've done." She said before plucking the stem from a cherry atop a slice of chocolate cake. She dropped the tiny girl inside and pressed her body into the berry by replacing the stem.

The containers were loaded into a bag and the remaining waitress carried it off. Upon returning, she addressed the pleased chef. "What are you going to do about the guys in your stomach? You can't really digest them, right?"

Carrie smiled. "The soda was flat, and there wasn't a lot left. Nobody is actually getting digested. You'd need a fresh soda for that. Really strong carbonation." The chef returned to her station.

"But..." the waitress hesitated. "Why bother going through all that trouble? To scare them?" Anthony was thinking the same thing.

Washing her hands, Carrie sighed. "Those two do nothing but bicker. If I'm going to fire them, they deserve a little scare on the way out. What better scare than thinking someone who doesn't know you exist is about to have you for dinner?"

"Aren't you worried..." Anthony spoke up through his speaker, "That a customer might testify against you if they sue?" 

The waitress shot a glance at the tiny man as if to say "don't get involved."

Carrie kneeled, her head level with the tray. "Every person we shrink signs a waiver, and it's pretty extensive." The cook said, her head tilted threateningly over the tiny man, "Everything from injuries, being served to the wrong table..." She was counting childishly on her fingers. "Or even if a particularly loose-lipped shrinkie gets... lost in the kitchen."

"What... are you saying?" Anthony muttered, taking a step back after releasing his speaker. 

She continued. "See the girl at the end of the line?" She pointed to the farthest cook, a short plump girl in her mid-twenties. "She loves the waiver." Carrie teased, causing the short girl's face to flush with shame, "Kitty there got a bit playful with one of the customers and accidently dropped him into scorching-hot soup she was making. He was alone, but obviously she couldn't serve a burned and injured man to the restaurant, so she let him cook and ate him herself." The head chef's smile got devious. "But Kitty didn't expect how good a cooked shrinkie would taste... We had to take her off the main lines and banish her to the dish room when we found out how many boyfriends met a similar fate..." By this point in her story, 'Kitty' had returned to her cave of solitude, upset. "Long story short, little guy, it's probably best that you keep your mouth shut before we have to tell your girlfriend that you tripped, fell, and landed in the soup of the day."

Anthony was afraid, but couldn't break the feeling that he could easily reveal this all anyway when he's full-sized again. He didn't take kindly to threats, even from a figure large enough to inhale him. He nodded and stepped back.

Carrie chuckled. "It's all part of the experience, little guy. Come here, get scared, go home. This is all just theatrics." The chef walked away.

Anthony was taken aback. After all he had seen, was she calling it an act? Was she just covering her ass? He pressed his speak button, shouting at the back of the tower traveling what seemed like miles away from him. "What the hell does that mean?" 

"It means you aren't actually going down the dishwasher's throat." Carrie called back, "It was all something to get your heart racing for the next round."

He was not convinced. "Everything? Everything that you've done was acting?"

The second chef, leaning back behind Carrie, ignored him. "The main course for table eight is ready."

Before Anthony could continue his interrogation, he was pinched between the small tongs he had been scooped with in the first round before suddenly being pushed deep into a yellowish sauce, a scorching pool of thick cheese. Everything was muffled as the tray was hoisted into the air. "Carrie, you're ridiculous." The waitress said, exiting back into the dining area.