“Aaaand she’s not here. Perfect.”

Shaking his head to himself, Apollo Justice drew a cell phone from his pocket, briefly wondering if he might have missed a message of explanation from his absent co-worker, but nothing appeared on the screen. He sighed, stowing the phone away again.

It was quite warm outside today, and he didn’t feel any special inclination to hang around out in the sunlight, so he stepped inside the front doors of the familiar police precinct alone. Inside, he approached the desk sergeant, who appeared focused on her computer screen. She raised a hand for him to stop, still occupied.

“What’s your-…” She looked up, and her expression changed. “Oh, it’s you, Justice.” she said, her hand moving to gesture back over her shoulder instead. “Alright, you don’t need my help. You know where to find her.”

“Thanks.” Apollo replied. He moved past the front desk, the sliding door to its right letting off a small beep as it opened for him.

“Hey,” the desk sergeant added, Apollo halting in the doorway to listen to her, “No one’s with you today? Wright’s kid? Or the redhead?”

Apollo looked back at the doors for a moment. “Well, Athena will be here at… some point.” he said, shrugging. He still saw no sign of his co-worker outside.

“Hm. If you say so.” the desk sergeant replied. “I’ll wave her through. Later, Justice.”

Apollo nodded, and stepped through the sliding door.

A few years ago, Apollo would have walked through the precinct nervously, twitching slightly at every glance he received from any of the many officers present, and trying to move to his destination by as efficient a path as possible, so as to avoid any chance of being stopped, or asked questions. It wasn’t as if he’d ever had much reason to worry, but his struggles with first impressions had always been something that made him nervous whenever he needed to come here. Today, on the other hand, he moved comfortably, familiar with the station and many of its usual occupants. He wasn’t certain of how common it really was for a defence attorney to visit this precinct or any other, but his presence seemed to be accepted by this point.

He passed by a familiar office, which would have been his stop in the past. Now, however, things had changed. He left the vicinity of the offices used by the many detectives present, heading instead for the short hallway that led to both the evidence room and the forensics lab, the latter being his destination.

He raised a hand and knocked on the door once he arrived.

“Yeah, yeah, two seconds…” a muffled voice sounded from the other side. As he waited, Apollo smiled at the name plate attached to the window immediately next to the door. Footsteps could be heard a moment later.

The door swung open, revealing the lab’s familiar occupant.

“Hey, Ema.” Apollo said, offering a smile.

Ema Skye, former homicide detective turned-forensics division head for the precinct smiled in response to the greeting, though she didn’t look entirely happy.

“Yeah, hey, Apollo.” she said. Glancing past him, she added, “What, no Athena?”

Apollo shrugged. “She’s late, I guess. Wouldn’t stop hounding me about getting here on time, too…”

Ema smirked, stepping aside to let Apollo enter the lab.

Apollo had been inside this lab a small handful of times before. It was a much better workplace for Ema than the cramped office she’d previously occupied in this precinct, back when she’d been a detective in the homicide division. It wasn’t a secret that forensics had always been her passion, and Apollo had been thrilled for his friend when he learned that she’d finally secured her current position as the head of the precinct’s forensics division instead.

“So, you didn’t trip over any new clients on the bus ride over?” Ema asked, closing the door and passing by his side.

“No, not today, anyway.” Apollo answered. “But hey, who knows? Maybe Athena passed by a murder scene.”

“That would explain why she’s late.” Ema said with a shrug of her own. “Anyway, I’ve got a copy of everything you need on my…” she trailed off, looking at her desk. “Wasn’t it just…”

“Something wrong?” Apollo asked, watching as Ema stopped at her desk, shuffling through the mess of papers and equipment covering its surface.

“I just… ugh, where the hell are you…?” Ema leaned forward, reaching for the back of the pile of clutter.

Apollo waited, watching Ema’s search. She appeared to have lost the documents he’d come by to pick up. His gaze drifted a bit, and he felt his face heating up a little. Ema’s posture, leaning across her desk, was causing her to unwittingly stick her backside in his general direction quite noticeably. Even wearing her usual white lab coat over her stylish outfit, Apollo couldn’t help but find Ema’s rear rather hard to ignore. Her shamelessly tight pants did nothing to help his bad habits.

He wasn’t staring, he was just…

Fidgeting uncomfortably, he forced himself to look away, very pointedly avoiding the view any longer. Instead, he looked over at the table near the centre of the lab. There was a device of some kind resting on its top, which he thought he recognized. He stepped over toward it, still hearing Ema rummaging through her papers in the meantime.

He was almost certain that he recognized this device now, but he didn’t have the faintest idea of what it was. It was about the same size as the average desktop printer. A slight layer of dust was visible on its exterior, roughly a third of which was covered by various metal plates. Traces of marks left in the dust by Ema’s gloves could be seen scattered across the plates, indicating her previous work in examining the device, whatever it was.

It took him a few seconds, but recognition finally hit Apollo. He did remember this machine; it had been resting on a workbench in another building that last time he’d seen it.

Two days prior, Apollo and his co-worker Athena Cykes had brought an end to a trial surrounding the apparent disappearance of a noted researcher who lived within the city. Dr. Levi Loft was a 38 year-old man whose brilliant mind was tempered by his unfortunate tendency to lose focus in his research and experimentation, often spending quite a lot of his time and resources on aimless endeavours that spiraled away from what he was actually paid to work on. Still, he was capable and reliable enough for his work to afford him a modest apartment and a fairly large building to use as a personal laboratory. A few weeks before the trial, Dr. Loft had gone missing, which was eventually reported by his colleague and on-and-off work partner, Dr. Verity Stager. The initial investigation had progressed slowly, but eventually led to Dr. Stager herself being arrested for her colleague’s apparent murder. Stager had contacted Apollo’s workplace, the Wright Anything Agency, requesting their services in her defence in the coming trial.

Apollo, Athena, and their employer, Phoenix Wright, had met with Dr. Stager, the trio agreeing that she seemed quite genuine in her story. She had firmly denied killing Dr. Loft, insisting that they had always been on good terms, and that she had reported his disappearance solely out of concern for his well-being. The motive described by the police and prosecution on the case had been an alleged grudge Dr. Stager had against her colleague, following an incident from two years before the disappearance, when the two had both aimed to secure a contract from the same firm, with Dr. Loft ultimately being the victor. Dr. Stager admitted that she had spent a short time angry over her own failure, but she hadn’t blamed it on Dr. Loft, and had instead offered to join him in his research, caring more about the success of the project than her own notoriety.

Ultimately, no culprit was found in the ensuing trial, but Apollo and Athena had succeeded in clearing the charges placed against Dr. Stager, at the very least. They hadn’t seen her since the end of the trial, leaving Apollo to occasionally wonder if she was still being considered a relevant witness in the continuing investigation into Dr. Loft’s disappearance.

His reminiscence concluded, Apollo took a step around the table, still looking over the strange device with interest. He hadn’t gone near it back when he and Athena had investigated Dr. Loft’s lab for themselves. The device appeared unfinished, and it lacked any clear identifying features. The inside was a mess of electronics he had no interest in messing with, and the exterior was mostly loose metal plates, with an inactive LCD panel, a row of unmarked buttons and lights, and a small port that looked somewhat like a camera lens.

“Mind not touching that?”

Apollo jerked in surprise as Ema appeared, raising an arm to place it between him and the device.

“I wasn’t!” he said defensively, taking half a step back. Ema frowned.

“You were thinking about it.” she said, gesturing for him to step away properly.

(No, I wasn’t!)

Even so, Apollo obeyed, giving the device plenty of clearance. Ema lowered her arm, letting out a sigh.

“I can’t find the copy I made.” she said. “Sorry. I must have switched it with something else by mistake right after I brought it in here.”

“Oh.” Apollo said. Ema moved, starting to examine the device on the table for herself. “So, what is that thing, anyway?” he inquired, curious.

“Good friggin’ question.” Ema said, sounding slightly bitter. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out all day.”

She glanced back over her shoulder, noticing that Apollo had leaned forward again, still somewhat interested in the device.

“Can’t take ‘no’ for an answer, huh?” she jibed. “Fine. Here, look at the display.”

Apollo circled around to the table’s other side. Ema was pointing to the LCD screen attached to what he assumed to be the device’s front.

“I can get the thing to power on, but that’s it.” Ema said. “I don’t have any idea what any of the code that comes up on the display means.”

She tapped two buttons, and the LCD lit up. Apollo looked on as a jumbled wall of text appeared, scrolling along too quickly for him to read it, much less make sense of it. When it stopped, the screen was displaying only a placeholder interface of some kind, with unlabeled buttons and unidentified symbols.

“Whatever it’s supposed to do, I don’t think its functions are fully set up yet.” Ema went on. “The mad scientist who programmed it could probably tell me, but since he disappeared….”

“Hmm.” Apollo continued to watch as Ema tapped a few of the buttons beneath the LCD, which caused the display to change slightly, but didn’t appear to do anything else. “You think it could help you with figuring out what really happened to Dr. Loft?” he asked. Ema nodded, but didn’t say anything.

He moved back around to Ema’s other side, looking at the small lens installed on the device’s opposite side. To his surprise, he thought he saw a light flashing from the space that held the lens, but when he looked closely, nothing seemed to be happening.

“OK, satisfied?” Ema asked him. He nodded. “Good. I’m gonna go and make you a new copy. Get comfy; I’ll be a few minutes.”

“Got it.” Apollo agreed, nodding again. He dropped into a cushioned chair, and Ema circled around the table to leave the lab again.

“Don’t touch the Amazing Whatever Machine, OK?” she requested. Apollo nodded again, and Ema opened the door, leaving the room.

Twenty seconds passed. Apollo sat in silence in the chair, drumming his fingertips against its armrest. He could still hear the rumble of voices from the precinct’s population, muffled by the walls of Ema’s lab. He idly wondered what could possibly be keeping Athena for so long. She had been planning to meet with him here so they could pick up a number of documents related to Dr. Stager’s trial, which Ema had prepared for them. Apollo had been over at the courthouse, with Athena back at the Wright Anything Agency. The trip to the precinct wasn’t that much shorter from where he’d started, so he had no idea why Athena would be taking so long to arrive.

Another sound met his ears, making him blink in surprise. It was a soft hum, like an old television might have made. He glanced around, listening as the humming grew slightly louder. It seemed to be coming from the unidentified device on the table.

“Uhh…” he mumbled, somewhat concerned. Ema had said she couldn’t get the device working, so what was it doing now? He sat back, hoping to just ignore the little worry in his mind, but as the hum from the machine continued to grow louder, he couldn’t help himself anymore. Getting to his feet, he stepped back over to the device. Drawing closer, he picked up another sound, this one a faint rattling noise, like there was a loose part shaking around in the device’s frame somewhere.

He didn’t want to upset Ema by messing with the device, but if it was going to explode or something, he really didn’t want to just leave it be and continue sitting here.

Apollo couldn’t see it from his position, but on the device’s LCD screen, a list of information was being produced, detailing the results of a scan of some kind.

Trying to track the origin of the rattling sound, Apollo leaned over the device, one hand flat to the tabletop, careful not to touch the machine itself. He thought he had found the general area the noise was coming from; a small, circular component was shuddering slightly in a compartment near the bottom of the device. Just before he could properly examine it, two things happened at once. A brief hiss sounded, and a brilliant flash of light filled the room. Apollo flinched, making a surprised sound. He moved a hand to cover his eyes out of reflex, his vision blocked out by the blinding flash.

He suddenly felt strange. Air was rushing forcefully against him, like he was standing in a wind tunnel. He jerked in place, his vision starting to clear up.

He was falling.

The air could be felt rushing over him again, a blur of colours filling his view. What in the world was going on? He was airborne, his body totally removed from the solid floor he’d been standing on. He struggled to take in a breath, the air in his lungs being ripped away as he opened his mouth. He only just retained enough of his breath to gasp in shock as he spotted the ground rushing up toward him at a terrifying speed.

-WHAM-

…

Pain struck. He’d come down on his front, a solid surface meeting him as he hit the ground, his fall instantly halted. He gasped, air flooding back into his lungs. What was going on…? He rolled onto his back and sat up, blinking at the strange sights around him.

As this was happening, the rattling noise he’d been hearing finally stopped. Something could be heard clattering to the ground and starting to roll for a moment. The device’s hum ceased as well, near-silence returning to Apollo’s surroundings.

Regulating his breaths again, Apollo took in his environment. Everything had been normal fifteen seconds ago, but now…? Now, he found himself sitting on the ground, in the middle of some wide-open space, with strange objects rising into the air overhead all around him. A wall surrounded this space, several feet taller than him, by the look of it.

“Wh-what’s… where is this…?” he wondered aloud, turning around on the spot. A large structure appeared in his view, and he staggered back, feeling stunned. “N-no way…”

He was looking at the very same device he’d just been examining, but it was no longer sitting on a table before him. Instead, it rose something like two hundred feet into the air, towering over him like a city building. Staring in disbelief, Apollo felt a creeping realization settling in over his mind.

The device hadn’t moved; he’d simply joined it, up on the table. But if that was the case, then it meant…

(Did… did I just shrink…?)

Taking another look at his surroundings, Apollo felt a chill all across his body. It appeared he was right; he was looking at the top of Ema’s work table, but everything on it seemed to have grown in size tremendously. Or, rather, he had been greatly reduced in size…

Shaking out of his frozen state of disbelief, Apollo started to move. He ran forward, heading for the wall that surrounded the area. Ema’s work table had a ridge running around its outer edge, to prevent anything falling to the floor. He’d just been seeing it from a normal view a minute ago, and it had only been around an inch in height. Slightly less, he guessed. But, if that was right…

He stopped, placing a hand against the wall surrounding the tabletop. It was over three times his height, looking to be more than fifteen feet high.

“I’m... oh my God…”

His body felt normal, and his clothes were all intact, but by his best estimate, he couldn’t have been much more than half a centimetre in height now. Not even a quarter of an inch… Whatever the exact number was, he was absolutely tiny…

He turned back again, looking up at the device. It seemed to have gone inactive, just silently sitting there again. Was it responsible for this? Had it caused him to shrink, somehow?

He spotted something strange; a slight trail of steam or smoke was rising from an open port of some kind on the device’s underside, drifting into the air. He couldn’t tell the cause, but it looked to be the same place he’d seen the rattling component he’d been hearing from his chair. The component itself was missing, like it had popped loose and fallen somewhere.

This entire situation was so hard to take in that Apollo could barely think straight. He checked his whole body over, pinching himself and shaking his head, trying anything he could in the hopes that he might wake up and find himself lying in bed, with everything perfectly normal again. To his dismay, however, nothing changed, no matter what he did.

He jumped at the sound of a distant noise, echoing through the vast space around him. It sounded like a door handle.

Another chill ran up his spine. He spun around just in time to see the door leading out of the lab swinging open again. He took in the astounding sight of Ema, standing there in the doorway, visible only from just below the chest and up from his position. She almost looked normal, but taking in the sheer, unbelievable scale of her body, Apollo could feel only amazement. Sure, Ema was two or three inches taller than he was normally, but this was something entirely different.

Apollo froze up completely.

Off in the distance, Ema was standing in the doorway, a look of confusion on her face. She looked around the room uncertainly.

She was looking for him, obviously, but the Apollo she expected to see here in her lab was normally-sized, not shrunken down to a size competitive with insects…

“Apollo…?”

He flinched. Ema’s voice was loud. She had only called out to him at just slightly above a normal speaking volume, and yet the echoing sound had sounded more like it was coming from a full set of speakers.

She started to move, and Apollo frantically darted toward a nearby object on the tabletop. It was a little container of some kind. He didn’t really care what it was, so long as he could hide behind it. He paused, wondering why he wanted to hide in the first place. It had been something like instinct, but wouldn’t it be better for him to stay out in the open, where Ema could see him?

Ema first checked back outside the door, then entered the lab proper, closing the door again.

“Where did he go…?” she wondered to herself. She approached, and Apollo huddled in close to the bit of cover he’d chosen. For some reason, he felt too scared to emerge. Ema was a good friend of his, and she wouldn’t hurt him, but still, he somehow felt… intimidated, seeing her at this astonishing scale. She rose above him like some gigantic creature of myth, her features all magnified twenty times over. She paused, almost directly in front of him. “Hmm…?”

Apollo watched in amazement as Ema reached forward, across the table. Even just her arm was incredible in size, stretching over his head with a hand larger enough to land a small plane on.

“No, no, no, seriously…!?”

Ema stared at the device on her work table, disbelief creeping up in her mind. The device was inactive, and she could see a faint trail of what looked like smoke or steam rising from it. She threw down the stack of freshly-copied documents she was holding on the table and leaned over to examine it properly. Was it so much to ask that Apollo manage to just sit peacefully for five minutes? Had he seriously tampered with the machine while she was out to run to the copier?

“Apollo, you son of a-…”

She made a low noise of frustration. This would at least explain Apollo’s sudden absence. Ema was perfectly aware that Apollo was rather afraid of her temper, and right now, he was certainly pushing her in that direction.

Pressing one of the buttons on the device’s front, Ema stared at the LCD display. It lit up as normal, but she noticed something unfamiliar. A small warning of some kind had appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen. It consisted only of a standard exclamation point in a bubble, so she didn’t have any idea of what it meant, aside from it seeming like a negative change.

On the table, Apollo watched nervously. Ema was looking all over the device, much too focused to notice him here, beneath her left shoulder.

He spotted the documents she’d just dropped onto the table, and an idea came to mind. Maybe, if he ran out of cover and positioned himself on the pages, he could improve his chances of being noticed and rescued? His red suit would certainly stand out against the plain, white pages, even at this tiny size.

It was a better plan than just cowering right here. Darting out of cover, Apollo took off at a run once again, moving past Ema’s shoulder, then her chin…

He saw something else unusual, turning his head as he ran. A loose object of some kind was lying underneath the strange device, which he suspected hadn’t been there before. It was just a small cylinder, not much bigger than he was now, but it drew his suspicion, all the same. He remembered the small component that had been audibly rattling, as well as the small opening that had been letting off the trail of vapour into the air. Was that little cylinder the same component…?

He spotted something else, as well. Another compartment had opened up on the device, this one larger. He could only see it from behind at this angle, so he couldn’t tell what was inside it. Taking note of these changes, he thought to tell Ema about them, but given his current situation, that wasn’t really an option. His first priority needed to be getting himself noticed, identified, and rescued from this tabletop. Giving Ema his input on her investigation of this strange machine could wait until after that.

If he was right, and the device was the cause of his abrupt reduction in size, he could only hope that it could reverse the change, restoring him to his original height. If not…

(No, no. Don’t think about that. Worry about the crazy sci-fi machine later.)

Shaking his head and looking forward to the papers lying on the table, Apollo got his mind back on track. He had to keep a level head, or he would be in even deeper trouble.

Panting with exertion from all the running he’d done since finding himself stranded on the table, Apollo finally reached the small stack of papers, hopping up onto the topmost sheet and moving a short distance out onto it. The lettering on the page looked quite bizarre underfoot at this scale and angle.

(OK, that’s step one out of the way. Now…)

A sharp sound of knocking made him jump in surprise yet again. He looked up, seeing Ema do the same.

“Uh-… yeah, hang on…” Ema’s booming voice called out. She backed away from the table, heading for the door. Apollo watched, still stunned -- and definitely intimidated -- by how incredibly fast Ema moved, in spite of her comparatively gigantic size.

Ema opened the door. There, Apollo saw another familiar face. Athena had arrived, at last.

“Hey, Ema!” Athena said brightly, her own voice just as loud as Ema’s. She looked… warm, like she’d been out in the sun for much too long. Her breathing sounded just a little bit on the heavy side.

“Uh, hey, Athena.” Ema responded. “What kept you so long?”

“Oh, it was horrible.” Athena said, putting on a mock expression of despair. “I was back at the office. Everything was totally fine, but I was in such a hurry to get going that I forgot my phone, plus, I was attacked by a crazy magician when I tried to get out the door!”

Ema managed a small laugh. “Trucy wanted your ‘help’ again, huh?” she inquired.

“Yeah,” Athena replied, rolling her eyes, “Since Apollo was already out, she decided I needed to help test the newest addition to her act.”

“Do I even want to know the details?” Ema asked.

“Well, that depends.” Athena answered. “Are you as flammable as I am?”

“Uhh…”

“That’s a ‘no’, then.” Athena finished. “Just trust me on this one.”

Ema laughed again, although her frustration was still plain in her voice. “Well, c’mon in, anyway.”

Athena peered around the room. “Where’s Apollo…?” she asked. “I thought for sure he’d be here already.”

“Well, he was…” Ema grumbled, shutting the door once again.

Down on the table, Apollo suddenly wished he had something to hide behind again. If it was possible, he felt even more intimidated, now that there were two gargantuan young women here in the lab with him. Athena was almost exactly the same height as he was normally, but given his present situation, she looked just as unbelievably gigantic as Ema did. Her long, red ponytail swayed with her movements, its vast size making it look more like a massive pillar of flame than just the overlong hair it really was.

Ema was sounding more frustrated now, describing her impression of the situation. As Apollo had feared, Ema had come to the conclusion that he’d tampered with the device in some way, and then bolted from the room to avoid having to explain himself to her when she returned.

“Really…?” Athena inquired, sounding quite surprised.

[What a total jerk!] chirped the synthesized voice of Widget, the spherical A.I. computer Athena wore on her necklace. Athena frowned at the little device, looking mildly annoyed by the outburst.

“No, no, I’m with Widget on this one.” Ema said, rolling her eyes. She moved a hand toward the table. “Here, I’ll give you the copy I just made. Everything you guys need should be on there.”

Apollo tensed up. Ema’s enormous hand was approaching. Her huge fingers closed around the edge of the pages he was perched on, and then he felt himself being whisked away into the air, a startled noise escaping his throat. He fell to the ground, the pages supporting him, at least. This hadn’t been his plan. His heart hammering in his chest, he tried as hard as he could not to move, terrified of being tossed from the pages and falling the immeasurable distance to the hard floor far below.

“Sit down, if you want. You can look everything over, just to be sure.” Ema offered. Apollo closed his eyes, becoming too dizzy to keep watching the scene unfold now that he’d been forced to take part in it.

“Thanks!” Athena said cheerfully. Apollo felt the papers shudder underneath him as Athena took a hold on them. Then, he was hurtling through the air again, now in Athena’s grip instead.

Athena grabbed the small stack of papers, flashing a grateful smile. Ema was gesturing toward a chair, so she stepped over, about to sit. Just before she dropped into the chair, she spotted Ema returning to the centre table. Whatever the machine on the table was, it sounded like Apollo had screwed it up somehow. That seemed uncharacteristically clumsy, even for him.

As she stood there, Athena’s arm dropped to her side, carrying the stack of documents with it. Unbeknownst to her, a tiny figure perched on the pages slipped into motion as a result, its safe platform suddenly falling away.

Apollo screamed for all he was worth, falling through the open air once more. The world spun wildly in his view, turning into a blurred mess of colours and shapes. Athena had shaken him loose without even realizing he was there, and now he was falling out of the sky, all the way down to the unforgiving-

-WHUMP-

He choked, landing on his back and bouncing slightly. The impact stunned him for a moment before he started breathing again. He was alive.

Forcing himself to his feet, he stood up to figure out where he was. He wasn’t so dizzy this time. He saw a cushion of some kind, spreading out all around him…

(Th-the chair!)

He’d landed on the very same chair that he’d been sitting on just a few minutes ago! The cushion had spared him any possible injuries from landing, mercifully. He was facing the chair’s back at the moment, and he turned around.

“A-ack-!!”

A strangled noise sounded from his throat. Before him, he had a view of two towering, violet-coloured pillars, which rose up to disappear into a massive, yellow canopy. He was staring right at Athena’s skirt from behind, her thighs and rear hovering right before his position.

For a moment, he was just embarrassed to be staring at a friend’s rear once again, but then something else hit him. Athena obviously had a reason to be standing in front of this chair, and there was really only one possibility.

“C-crap…!!” he stammered, staggering into motion. Athena looked to be at least half a kilometre in height at this scale. To put it bluntly, her ass was the size of an office tower. If she sat down on this chair right now, and dropped the full weight of her rear on him, there wasn’t likely to be much of “him” left.

He needed to get the hell out of her way, and he needed to do it right now. Breaking into the fastest sprint he could, he tore across the stitched surface of the cushion, knowing he had a few seconds at best to escape Athena’s landing zone. Far ahead, he saw her knees bending, and he screamed, closing his eyes and running whatever else he could. Adrenaline surging, he fell to the ground on his front, expecting to die under a million tons of crushing weight at any second.

-BOOM-

Apollo’s scream broke off. A mountain of weight slammed down on the cushion all around him, the force of impact knocking him right off the ground. He spiralled through the air for a second or two, and then flopped onto his back, stunned once again. He felt like his lungs were on fire, his throat raw and strained.

“H-… ho-ly shit…” he breathed. Every muscle in his body was tensed and ready to fight for survival, but as far as he could tell, the danger had passed. It had been close, but he’d made it. Narrowly escaping by a margin of seconds, he’d managed to dodge the apocalyptic impact of Athena’s rear as she sat down, her weight coming down like a meteor.

So, he wasn’t dead. He’d come incredibly, terrifyingly, heart-stoppingly close, but he wasn’t dead.

Finally, his heightened senses began to relax. He wasn’t sure of how long he’d been lying down when he pushed himself back to a sitting position again. Shakily, he got to his feet.

At his sides, Athena’s legs ran along the surface of the cushion until they fell from view past the edge. Her thighs rose up around him like high canyon walls, each probably at least sixty feet high from his diminished perspective. He looked straight up, and could see Athena holding the papers Ema had given her.

He had been so caught up in his terrifying past few experiences that he had momentarily forgotten his goal. Giving himself a firm shake, he tried to plan once more. He couldn’t do anything from this chair. Ema and Athena would never notice him here, and getting himself left behind wouldn’t do him any good.

… He had one idea. It was bad, if he was honest, but he could probably stomach taking one bad idea, given the circumstances.

“Sorry, Athena…”

The first part of his new plan was fairly simple. Right now, he was trapped on the chair, directly between Athena’s thighs. While he could wait for her to get up, that would only result in him ending up stranded and alone, so he would instead try and climb up the fabric of Athena’s violet leggings to get himself up on top of her leg. From there, he would have a lot more options. Planning further ahead would probably be better, but he doubted that he would have a lot of time for that. So, approaching Athena’s right leg, he simply tried his best to steel himself for the climb.

On the way over, without thinking, he glanced off to his right, and in doing so, immediately found his vision filled by a rather jaw-dropping view straight up Athena’s skirt. In spite of himself, he halted in place, shamelessly staring for several long seconds.

He twitched.

(What the hell are you staring for? Move, idiot!)

Athena was one of his closest friends, but even she would probably punch him square in the face if she caught him deliberately staring up her skirt. Raising a hand, he slapped himself firmly across the cheek, giving his head a solid shake. Focusing was going to be impossible if he didn’t rid himself of that memory entirely. He would just purge his mind of any thoughts relating to the visible outline of Athena’s panties against the violet fabric of her leggings, as well as any memory of her unmistakable camel-toe-…

His other hand slapped against the opposite cheek.

“… OK. Time to move.”

Reaching upward, he took a fistful of the fabric that made up Athena’s leggings. Beneath the thin layer, her muscular legs were as solid as a rock face. Muscle tone was visible on every inch of her leg that Apollo could see.

(Stop that, moron.)

He tested his grip. It seemed stable enough, even if he wasn’t especially skilled at climbing. He raised his other hand as well, seizing another fistful of the violet fabric.

Athena flipped to the last page of the documents Ema had given her, humming to herself as she looked them over. So far, everything looked to be in order. Once she tracked down Apollo, she could go over them again with him. Paperwork was probably her least favourite part of this job, but she could stand it. She had a great place to work, filled with people she loved, and whenever she was seated at her desk to fill out the many, many stacks of paperwork that came with her work as a defence attorney, she always had Apollo sitting right behind her at his own desk, in the perfect position for her to spin her chair around and strike up a conversation about whatever meaningless subject had just popped into her mind.

Things had been harder for her during the months when Apollo was away overseas, but now that he was back, Athena felt once again that her life was nearly perfect.

She was nearing the bottom of the last page.

“Looks great, Ema!” she said, smiling brightly. Ema looked up, still examining the device on her work table with care. “Thanks a bunch!”

Ema managed a small smile in return. “Any time. Uh… sorry for kinda ranting at you about Apollo.” she said.

Athena waved a hand, replying, “Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure to give him an earful for ya!”

The pair laughed.

“Ohh, boy…”

Apollo had finished his climb, crawling up onto the peak of Athena’s toned thigh, and had just enjoyed a brief moment of rest, but by the sound of it, Athena was about to get up and leave. He’d hoped to have more time to think out the next part of his plan.

Thinking quickly, he looked around. His face lit up. He hadn’t noticed before, but Athena had a shoulder bag with her, which was currently draped over the armrest of the chair. He could jump straight into it!

… Come to think of it, that wasn’t a terribly safe plan, but there wasn’t really time to debate the positives or negatives. With one quick glance up at Athena’s face high above him, he took a running start and jumped.

Arms flailing in the air, Apollo almost immediately regretted his split-second decision. He hurtled forward, the opening of Athena’s bag drawing closer and closer. It was only sheer luck that it happened to be close enough for him to make the jump, considering his utterly puny size, but that was of little concern to him.

Well into his descent now, Apollo braced himself, tumbling straight past the opening of the bag and falling into its interior. He came down against an inside wall of the bag’s main pouch, sliding along until his feet struck something stable. He wobbled, but managed to stabilize himself.

“J-jeez…”

That might have been kind of thrilling, if he wasn’t so scared for his life. He collapsed against the inner wall of the bag, letting out a sigh. For the first time since he’d found himself shrunken down on the table, he could finally relax, safely secured inside Athena’s shoulder bag. This wasn’t his original plan, but it would be acceptable. If he could get Athena’s attention at any point, she could help him get back to Ema. For now, he was ready for a rest.

He dug his cell phone from his pocket, blinking in shock at the time its screen displayed. Had it really only been fifteen minutes or so…? He stowed the phone away again, making himself comfortable. He couldn’t really see what he was resting on. It was comfortable enough, and that was all he cared about for the moment. Before him, there was a partly-emptied water bottle resting in the bag. Once again he felt intimidated by the sight of something so mundane making his minuscule size seem so insignificant. This was just an ordinary water bottle, and yet it now had to be several storeys high by his measure.

As long as he didn’t get near it, he was fine. Being crushed to death by a water bottle wasn’t something he wanted written on his tombstone.

Satisfied, Athena hopped to her feet, boots coming down on the solid floor in perfect sync. She scooped up her shoulder bag, slinging it back into place.

“OK, see you later, Ema!” she said with a bright smile, waving as she headed for the door. Ema waved back, still fixated on the device on the table.

Athena headed out the lab door, rolling up her stack of papers and stuffing it into her bag as she went. For a moment, she thought of Apollo again. Where in the world was he? It wasn’t like him to just vanish, even when he screwed something up. She wished she hadn’t forgotten her phone back at the office.

(Well… maybe he’s back there already…?)

Strolling back through the precinct, Athena made straight for the doors, waving cheerfully to the desk sergeant as she left. The older woman looked mildly confused for a moment, but waved back and let her go without any further exchange.

Stepping out into the sunlight, Athena sighed. She hadn’t taken the bus to get here, or driven for herself. Traffic in the city was such an unbearable pain, and she loved exercise too much to pass up the chance, so she’d just come on foot, running all the way from the Wright Anything Agency to the precinct in what she thought might have been record time. Admittedly, her suit jacket, tie, skirt, and leggings weren’t the most practical outfit for running that she owned, and she was feeling a bit sweatier than she liked, but she managed well enough. She reached into her bag, producing her water bottle and taking a lengthy sip. It was about half-full now. That was more than enough hydration for her to run all the way back to the office. With just a moment to slip the bottle back into her bag and tighten the strap, she set off, her bag bouncing against her hip.

Unnoticed by Athena, there remained a passenger stowing away inside her bag. Apollo had backed up to dodge the water bottle as Athena returned it to the bag near him, and now found his previously-relaxing ride to be getting considerably bumpier. Was Athena running?

… Of course she was. Apollo groaned, adjusting himself. This was going to be a long trip.

Working as a young defence lawyer was not usually an easy experience. Apollo was in the fourth year of his career, and had seen considerably more than what he considered his fair share of rough trials and troublesome investigations. His chosen career path had actively endangered his life more than once, directly and indirectly. He was used to all this.

The experience he was caught up in right at this moment, however, while similarly strenuous for him, was something new, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to tolerate as time went on.

Earlier, for a few wonderful moments, he had called his current furnishings within the confines of Athena’s shoulder bag “safe”. Even “comfortable”. Now, on the other hand, he had a very different opinion. Thanks to Athena’s active and energetic running pace, the entire bag was swaying wildly on her shoulder, thumping against her hip again and again as she made her way back to the Wright Anything Agency from the precinct, and this motion had quickly proved to be nearly unbearable for her unnoticed passenger.

Awkwardly lurching back and forth, struggling to stay away from the dangerously heavy contents of the bag, and becoming dizzier with every minute that passed, Apollo was deeply regretting the decision to stow away with Athena’s belongings at all.

Every time she slowed down or stopped, Apollo would desperately hope to himself that the trip was over, but it never seemed to be. His dizzying ride just dragged on and on, seeming endless. He could hear the rumble of the city’s population and traffic all the while, making it even harder to get anywhere near a state of relaxation.

After what felt very much like an entire day spent being jostled around in the bag’s dark interior, Apollo finally felt Athena come to a complete stop, and heard the sound of a door being opened, all other sounds falling away shortly thereafter.

Athena sometimes dragged him along when she went out for a run in the city, and Apollo had never liked that experience to begin with, but he had now learned that going along with her as a shrunken passenger in the depths of her shoulder bag was no better at all.

By the sound of it, his torment was finally over, at least. Letting out a long groan, he flopped face-first against some unidentified soft surface, hoping he might finally be able to rest for a short while.

To his continued dismay, he realized a moment late that he’d forgotten about the stairs. As soon as Athena hopped the first step, Apollo found himself rolling helplessly along, tumbling deeper into the bag.

Athena ascended the flight of stairs that led up to the Wright Anything Agency’s main interior, leaving Apollo somewhere near the bottom of her bag when her movement slowed again.

“Oh! Athena!” Trucy Wright called out, a wide grin appearing on her face.

“Hey!” Athena called back, smiling for herself. She looked around, and her face fell slightly. “Uh… no sign of Apollo?”

“What? Isn’t he with you?” Trucy asked, sounding puzzled. Athena shook her head.

“I got to the precinct, and Ema said he’d stopped in with her, but then he left while she was busy with something.” she replied, moving into the main room of the office. She was getting a bit concerned.

“… That sounds kinda weird.” Trucy remarked. “Polly usually makes sure to explain why he’s going somewhere, if he needs to leave.”

“Yeah…”

Stopping in the middle of the room, Athena rested one hand on her hip, the other digging into her bag to retrieve her water bottle again. She took a lengthy sip, thinking this over. She didn’t really have any idea of what her co-worker might have been up to, if he had suddenly dropped off the radar. She spotted her phone resting on the edge of one of the couches, and picked it up.

“Guess I’ll just text him…” she said, switching the screen on. She momentarily hoped that she might see a message from Apollo, but none appeared. She typed out a brief message to him, simply asking for a reply whenever he had the chance, and tucked her phone into her pocket.

Standing indoors like this, she suddenly felt very warm, and uncomfortably sweaty. She’d been running for somewhere close to an hour since leaving the Agency to see Ema down at the precinct.

“Hey, do you mind if I take a break upstairs and have a shower?” she asked Trucy.

Trucy shrugged, smiling. “Sounds OK to me! I’ll just tell Daddy what you’re up to if he asks.”

“Great, thanks!” Athena replied. She didn’t normally make requests like this, but today felt like an unusual circumstance. She watched as Trucy briefly stepped out of the room, hearing a rattling noise a few seconds later. Trucy returned, and to Athena’s surprise, she was carrying a familiar set of clothes. Athena kept a spare set of clothes in a small locker here at the Agency, identical to her usual work attire. She would most likely have gone to grab it for herself, but now she was just confused about how Trucy had retrieved it instead. She had picked out a pretty nice lock for that locker. Was it really so easy for Trucy to break in…?

She sighed quietly, moving forward to take the outfit from Trucy.

“Thanks.” she said again, deciding to shelve her questions for now. “I’ll be back down in a little while.”

Back inside the bag, still hanging from Athena’s shoulder, Apollo was crawling his way back up to the top of the jumbled pile of loose items stored with him. Athena didn’t seem to be moving much right now, so he finally had a brief time to enjoy an environment that wasn’t plagued by constant shaking. He could hear Athena’s voice, as well as Trucy’s, coming from outside the bag’s fabric walls.

Unfortunately, due to his inability to piece together exactly what the girls were saying, he was once more caught off-guard when Athena began to climb up another set of stairs. Was she going up into the Wrights’ apartment now…? Why?

He at least managed to maintain a grip this time, avoiding another fall back into the dark depths of the bag. Athena’s movements settled again. Several seconds passed, during which Apollo simply wondered what his redheaded carrier was doing.

Athena entered the bathroom in the third-floor apartment that belonged to Trucy and her father, switching on the lights and sighing to herself. Their shower wasn’t incredible, but it looked nicer than the one back in her own apartment, at any rate. She glanced past the curtain. Body wash, soap, shampoo -- she was all set, and reached down to start the shower. Approaching the mirror as the water began to heat up, she slipped her boots off, setting them at the door and closing it. She took her bag off her shoulder, dropping it solidly onto the countertop. Her other hand held the spare outfit from her locker, which she set on the counter as well. It was time to finally ditch these sweaty clothes and get herself cleaned up.

Reaching up to her shoulders again, she slipped out of the yellow suit jacket she wore, folding it on the counter next to its replacement. Next came her white top, blue tie, and yellow skirt, the single glove she used to interact with Widget’s holographic display, her violet leggings…

Once she’d folded everything up and set it all in a pile on the counter, she was left in only her underwear, her enormous quantity of hair still tied up with its blue ribbon as well.

One last catastrophe had struck Apollo not long after Athena got off the staircase. She’d apparently removed her bag, dropping it carelessly onto a solid surface, and the impact had caused an avalanche of her various belongings, subjecting her shrunken friend to another few terrifying moments, scared that he might be crushed in the collapse.

Fortunately, he instead found himself lying on the cloth surface of the bag itself, free of everything else stored within. He groaned, just lying there for a half a minute or so. He thought he deserved a short break, after everything he had just been through. He would attempt an excursion out of the bag after he had a moment to rest.

…

(OK, time’s up.)

He groaned, his whole body feeling a bit sore. Pushing off the floor, he stood up. After a moment spent testing his limbs and finding nothing broken, he started forward. He just needed to poke his head outside and see what was going on. Planning his next move could come right afterward.

The bag was technically still closed, but he was easily small enough to walk out of it anyways. He saw a plain-coloured floor beyond, the light a bit difficult to adjust to after so long in the darkness of the bag.

He stepped outside.

“Whoa…”

Blinking in the harsh light, he saw something huge being set down on the same surface he was standing on, a massive hand retreating after leaving the object in place.

“I-is that…”

The size was disorienting, as usual, but the object looked a bit like someone’s…

He turned his head to the left, and he once again froze up completely, his mouth falling wide open.

He was looking at Athena, directly in front of her. He was on some kind of raised surface, like a table or counter, but this wasn’t the cause for his sudden stop. He stared in frozen disbelief, taking in the unbelievable sight of Athena before him.

She was totally nude.

He almost didn’t believe that what he was seeing was real. He blinked a few times, his mouth still open wide. His position left him roughly level with Athena’s stomach, her toned abs taking up all the immediate space before him. Her skin was practically shining with a visible layer of sweat, clearly indicative of all the running she’d been doing to get here. Above her incredible abs, his view was filled by the awe-inspiring sight of her bare chest, her breasts completely exposed to him.

Athena was a strikingly well-endowed young woman. Apollo hadn’t exactly failed to notice that in the few years he had known her. At a normal scale, her breasts were quite obviously above average in size, and right now, they looked absolutely staggering, standing out from her bare chest like entire feminine mountains, taking up more space than he could believe. Hanging heavily from Athena’s chest, her breasts looked to be three-… no, four times the entire height of the Wright Anything Agency. By his diminished scale, they were over a hundred feet high, no doubt. Even just the cute nubs of her nipples looked big enough to crush him, each of them comparable in size to an entire van.

Apollo stepped back in surprise as Athena moved. Somewhere in all this awestruck staring, he’d realized that he and Athena must have been inside the bathroom of the Wrights’ apartment. Athena was looking into the mirror, totally unaware that she had an onlooker. She lifted her hands up to the side and back of her head, the motion finally drawing Apollo’s gaze away from her breasts, fixing instead on the prominent muscle mass of her bare arms. She was fiddling with the blue ribbon that held her hair in its massive ponytail. It came loose, Athena’s red hair tumbling into a vast curtain behind her back. Athena tossed the ribbon onto a pile of clothing on the counter. The object she’d been setting down right as Apollo crawled free of her shoulder bag had been her bra, he finally realized, watching as the ribbon draped across the undergarment.

One of her massive hands approached, reaching past him to retrieve the water bottle from her bag again. Finally, Apollo shook himself out of his stunned reverie, ducking to avoid Athena’s hand. He felt a deep sense of shame welling up inside him as he glanced down, realizing that his right hand had been unconsciously moving closer to his crotch, and was now mere inches from closing over the extremely prominent tent that had developed in the front of his suit pants.

(Yeah, scratch what you said earlier. If Athena knew you what you were doing right now, you’d be in a full body cast for the rest of your life.)

Athena took a sip from her water bottle, leaving Apollo to once more begin staring at her breasts for a moment, his shame not quite enough to override his arousal. Once she set the bottle down, she turned around.

Apollo made an uncomfortable noise. While it was partly obscured behind the unbelievably long curtains of red hair that hung down Athena’s back, he could see her ass now, just as toned and attractive as the rest of her exposed body had been.

Only once Athena had stepped into the shower, disappearing behind the curtain, did Apollo at last properly wake up again. His face was burning a deep red, and he could barely process so much as a thought that wasn’t occupied primarily by the unbelievable sights he had just been graced with.

He stood there for the better part of a minute, then turned around, looking at the large sink set into the counter he was standing on. Still filled with an intense degree of arousal, he’d suddenly had a deeply questionable thought; would anyone really be likely to notice if he… relieved the tension he was feeling over in the sink…? He was incredibly small, so he doubted it.

He bit his lip, glancing back at the shower. He couldn’t see Athena any more, save for a vague silhouette against the curtain, steam gently rising up to the ceiling above her position. A few seconds passed.

Still feeling a considerable amount of strain being placed on the front of his suit pants, he began to move toward the sink.

…

It was difficult to feel anything besides shame for what he’d just done. Apollo did what he could to clean his hands using a few stray droplets of water on the porcelain of the sink, zipping his suit pants back up. He would definitely need some clean underwear once he was done with all of this.

Athena was still in the shower, softly humming to herself over the sound of the pounding water. Apollo sighed.

(It’s gonna be pretty hard to ever look Athena in the eye again…)

He needed to get back to solving his problems. Sticking around on this countertop wasn’t really a good plan going forward, so he needed a way of getting Athena’s help.

He took a look back at her bag, which was still resting on the counter a short distance away, as well as the piles of clothing she’d set down before hopping into the shower.

He briefly entertained the idea of finding some safe place in Athena’s fresh set of clothes to hole up and wait, but discarded the thought quite promptly. A plan like that could go wrong in about a thousand different ways. He could end up being crushed by mistake, dropped to the floor, or get himself stuck somewhere in the depths of Athena’s outfit, trapped while she carried on with her day, and even if he was still alive after an entire day spent as an accessory stuck to Athena’s clothes, there was no guarantee he would even succeed in drawing her attention at all.

Another idea occurred to him. He remembered some of the loose objects he’d moved past to get out of Athena’s shoulder bag right after she’d set it down. There had been a hairbrush right next to the bag’s exit.

Athena had a pretty ridiculous amount of hair. No doubt she would want to spend some time drying and brushing it once she finished with her shower. If he caught a ride on the hairbrush…

(This plan is sounding dumber by the second…)

Still, it was something. Standing here on the counter and waving his arms wasn’t going to get the job done.

He set off, jogging back to Athena’s bag. He quickly located the hairbrush, which was lying on its side, easily accessible.

“Perfect.”

He had a plan, so now he just needed to wait a bit more.

It wasn’t too long before Athena finished her shower. Apollo was sitting just inside the shoulder bag, almost nodding off. He shook awake, looking up as he heard the shower switch off, the water slowing to a drip.

A rattling noise sounded, the shower curtain being dragged away, and Athena emerged.

Apollo felt his stomach turn over, once more taking in the sight of his redheaded friend totally nude. The view was actually even better now that Athena was a few wide steps away. Apollo tried to stop himself, but before he knew it, he was staring at the features of Athena’s body that he couldn’t see earlier.

Her thighs were just as toned and muscular as the rest of her, loose droplets of water sliding down her bare legs and out of view. Apollo’s throat was feeling very dry as he watched her movements. Between her legs, he saw the slightest hint of her vagina, though his position on a raised surface above that point made it difficult to spot. Just above that area, he could much more clearly see a neatly trimmed patch of red hair, its colour matching perfectly with the voluminous curtains of hair draped all the way down Athena’s back and over her shoulders.

For a moment, he almost wished that Athena was in more of a habit of coming to work with her hair down.

“Ngh…” he grumbled, giving his head a shake. This was about the worst time to get himself distracted, and especially aroused again.

Pushing against the fabric beneath him, he shuffled backward into the bag, moving closer to Athena’s hairbrush.

The wait was a bit longer than he’d expected, but then again, given the incredible length of Athena’s hair, drying it was probably quite a task. He could see her pausing to take a sip from her water bottle periodically. It was almost empty now.

By the time Athena finally reached toward his position, he had settled into lying on his back, immediately next to the enormous hairbrush. Loose strands of red hair could be seen stuck to the brush here and there.

He scrambled upright, hastily clambering onto the brush. Athena’s gigantic hand approached, closing over it. Apollo made a nervous sound, clutching at one of the brush’s bristles. Even its thin frame was almost as wide as his entire body at this size.

He hugged at the bristle, already regretting choosing a plan this dangerous. Athena lifted the brush from the bag, and Apollo found himself airborne, rising up into the sky with Athena’s movement. His hands were shaking. Fortunately, Athena happened to keep the brush oriented in such a way that he stayed mostly upright.

“A-Athena!!” he yelled once he was level with her face. Her hair was still hanging heavily all around her face, framing her in a massive curtain of red locks. Her features were incredible to take in at this size, stretched in every direction to a size that made her look like a living cliffside. Shaking like mad, he raised one arm to wave for attention. “ATHENA!!”

She had extremely sensitive ears, so even with his utterly puny size, she ought to hear him, right? He took a deep breath, ready to scream even more loudly.

Instead, he let out his breath in a startled yelp. Athena had abruptly twisted the brush around in her grip, and now Apollo was suddenly upside down. His eyes widened, and with a horrible lurch in his stomach, he felt his grip on the brush slip loose.

“N-no-…!!”

He was falling. He screamed, his voice echoing in his ears. He could only stare back up at the retreating hairbrush, picking up speed as he dropped out of the sky.

Another surprise struck a moment later. He felt something soft against his back, and the whole world disappeared into a flurry of red. A cool sensation on his back, he slipped downward until he came to a stop, finding himself entangled in a vast jungle.

He’d fallen right onto Athena’s head, simply disappearing into the endless depths of her red hair.

A breathless laugh escaped him. He had been expecting this fall to be the one that killed him, and yet he’d lucked out once again, making a soft landing without so much as a scratch.

His heart was still hammering in his chest. This might not have been the worst possible outcome for this situation, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

… Actually, he seemed to be very deep in the woods. Athena’s hair was unbelievable; all around him, a dense tangle of nothing but red filled his view, stretching as far as he could see. It was impossible to tell just where on Athena’s head he had ended up. Hopefully it was close enough to one of her ears; he didn’t like the idea of starving to death, lost in a jungle.

Testing his movements, he started to crawl forward. He could only guess at an appropriate direction and get moving.

A shadow passed overhead, and Apollo froze, watching Athena’s hairbrush pass over him. She was hard at work by now, taming her vast quantity of hair. Apollo couldn’t help but feel like a louse, crawling around on his friend’s head without her knowledge.

He pushed through lock after lock of the dense tangle, starting to worry that he might end up going in circles. Maybe it would be good to rest here. He didn’t seem to be in much danger, and Athena was going to need a fair while to finish brushing.

He bedded down. Aside from the nearly overwhelming scent of shampoo, this was a pretty comfortable place to camp for a while. Athena could be heard distantly, still humming softly to herself as she worked through her incredible locks. She was probably going to tie up her usual ponytail once she was done, so that would be a good time to get moving again.

Apollo waited, glad for a chance to rest his sore body. He’d been through quite a lot since accidentally ending up shrunken down.

He nearly fell asleep once or twice, hastily shaking himself back to reality. Catching a nap was appealing, but it would be way too dangerous.

After a considerable amount of time spent relaxing here, he decided to get moving again. Resuming his crawl through the vast depths of his unwitting host’s hair, he was still running through what his actual plan was for getting out of this. He’d mostly been improvising, and while it had kept him alive thus far, he hadn’t really even come close to actually fixing this situation yet.

“Wh-whoa…”

He’d moved onto a slope. Was this Athena’s forehead…?

He got an idea. Carefully moving along, he lowered himself down to get into the vicinity of his friend’s bangs. This was definitely the closest he was going to get to her eyes, so maybe he could get into view after all.

He emerged from the tangle, seeing the bathroom again for the first time in quite a while. Athena looked strangely normal in the bathroom mirror. She’d put on most of her clothes already, and was just smiling serenely at her reflection, eyes tracing over her hair as she brushed away. Apollo couldn’t quite make out his own exact position, but he guessed himself to be just above Athena’s bangs now.

She was almost finished with the hairbrush. Apollo waited in place, thinking this over again. Would it be best to make his move right now? He could get pretty close to Athena’s eyes from here.

She moved, reaching over to her water bottle again. There was only a small amount still left, half of it vanishing as Athena took another sip from the bottle. Apollo swayed in his perch, tightening his grip to avoid being dropped.

He was quite damp from moving through this jungle right after Athena had showered. He wanted a drink for himself, but as he briefly imagined the idea of trying to draw water from Athena’s damp hair, he was glad not to be quite that desperate just yet.

He decided instead to retreat a bit, watching Athena inspect her hair. She set down the brush and retrieved the blue ribbon she liked to wear. Apollo backed off, vanishing back into the depths of her hair while she tied up her favourite enormous ponytail. She was going to be moving again.

Athena folded up her sweaty clothes in a bundle and stuffed them into her bag. She could get everything washed up at home. Snapping Widget into place, she finished tidying up and turned to leave the bathroom. Getting cleaned up felt fantastic after all the running she’d done today.

She still wondered what Apollo was up to as she left the bathroom.

“Hey, any word from Apollo…?” she asked, spotting Trucy. Seated on the couch, Trucy shook her head sadly.

“This isn’t normal for him.” she said, frowning. “Polly can be a bit weird, but he doesn’t just run off without telling anyone. Daddy’s out for a bit, but I told him to let me know if he hears anything.”

“Good.” Athena replied. “Keep me posted, too.”

“I will.” Trucy said, nodding.

Athena left the room, heading back down the stairs to the office. She had really been hoping to look over all the documents Ema had given her with Apollo as soon as possible, but if he was going to keep up this vanishing act, that part of her work day would just have to wait.

“… Huh…?”

Fingers fumbling against the tabletop beneath the device for a moment, Ema took a careful grip on the tiny object she’d spotted, extracting it to look it over.

Growing ever more frustrated with her inability to figure out anything even remotely useful about this device, Ema had been nearing the verge of giving up entirely, but now, she put her irritation aside for a moment, examining her new discovery. She was fairly sure that this tiny little component hadn’t been lying here earlier.

“Wait…”

She frowned. Was this the reason that Apollo had taken off in such a hurry earlier? Had he broken this piece off? Ema already had a strong desire to give her friend a slap across the face for causing her so much trouble, and that urge was only getting stronger.

With extreme care, she tilted the device over, examining the underside to try and pinpoint where the dropped component had come from. She blinked in surprise, noticing a small hatch she’d never seen before, which was hanging open. It housed several more individual components that appeared identical to the one in her hand. They didn’t look like they were attached to anything, so were they some kind of power cells? She hadn’t ever noticed a port for anything like that before.

Pleasantly intrigued, she gave the device’s entire exterior another once-over. Her face lit up at the sight of an opening she was certain hadn’t ever been visible before. She set down the loose component and grabbed one of the others from the open hatch, carefully inserting the cell into place and hoping for the best.

Inspiring the first moment of delight she’d experienced since acquiring this enigmatic piece of machinery, the LCD display lit up on its own, running through its usual jumble of code.

(Batteries. Those are batteries!)

It was small, but still, she’d actually discovered something clear about this device, and that was incredibly satisfying after so much time spent mystified by its design. Out of habit, she watched the LCD, expecting the usual vague interface to appear, but instead, a new readout took its place. She squinted, surprised once more. The screen was still displaying plenty of unclear information she couldn’t parse, but for once, it also included plain English, and she wasn’t about to miss any information that might help her. Mumbling under her breath, she read the display over to herself.

“One subject logged, biological, approx. 165 cm, 0.71 kg attached, whatever that means… let’s see, logged for future reversal… process success, target scale reduced to approx. 0.29 percent original, activation time-…”

She paused, eyebrows raised.

“But that’s…”

The readout was displaying a time, down to the second, and to Ema’s confusion, it matched almost exactly with the time she’d been down at the photocopier, making a new set of documents for Apollo and Athena. She remembered seeing the time displayed exactly on the photocopier itself.

She looked back over the previous data again.

“Target scale reduced…”

Feeling apprehensive, she pushed one of the buttons to advance the display. Further data appeared, and as she read it through, a very strange idea began to develop in her mind.

As unbelievable and downright crazy as it sounded, the data almost seemed like it was trying to suggest that this device could change the size of things, like some cartoon scientist’s shrink ray.

“… No way.”

She looked through the data again, but nothing else she could imagine seemed to make sense. But that was ridiculous, right…? It wasn’t physically possible.

“A hundred and sixty-five-…”

Staring blankly at the display, Ema’s mind slowed to a stop.

“... Oh my God.”

That couldn’t possibly be what it meant. There was…

“Apollo…?”

Ema still wasn’t fully prepared to believe the idea that was now creeping to the forefront of her mind, but she just couldn’t seem to interpret the information on the display any other way. If what she imagined was right, then…

It was starting to sound very much like this machine had shrunken Apollo, reducing him to 0.29 percent of his regular height. Running the math in her head, that worked out to somewhere around half a centimeter.

Frozen in place, she let out a slow breath.

“A-Apollo…?” she asked aloud, her voice shaky. “A-are you in here…?”

Flopping down at her desk, Athena gave a sigh. She set her elbow down, resting her cheek against her hand.

Where in the world was Apollo? Had he gotten himself caught up in something? It just wasn’t like him to disappear without warning, and he should’ve replied to a text by now.

She picked up her pen, starting to look over the documents from Ema once more. She could try to pass some time by just jotting down a few personal notes. That could save a bit of work later on, once she and Apollo got the chance to read them through together.

Unnoticed by Athena, Apollo was still perched on her head, moving carefully through the damp tangle of her hair. He could really only compare it to a strange jungle, his gigantic host’s red hair rising into the air like innumerable trees and vines, twisting around one another in every direction.

It looked like Athena had settled down, and Apollo was getting the urge to try and draw her attention again.

Heart rate picking up, he crawled toward Athena’s bangs, planning to try and maneuver himself downward until he got into her view. Her hair was long enough.

He could see Athena’s desk below, and felt a bit anxious about the possibility of falling. He’d already spent some time on Ema’s work table since shrinking, and being there hadn’t done him any good; it was hard to feel like Athena’s desk would be any more helpful.

Athena’s subtle movements made the hairs he was clinging to sway, like ropes dangling in the breeze. At his scale, her individual hairs could measure a couple of inches across, making them feel incredibly alien, in spite of his knowing exactly what they were. Apollo tugged a small group of hairs together, wrapping himself around them, and began to slowly inch his way down, gradually descending Athena’s forehead. He just needed to get himself low enough to reach her eyes…

Up close, and at his pathetic scale, Athena’s blue eyes had to be twenty feet high, at least. They too looked unbelievably bizarre like this, all the comparisons he could think of sounding more like something he would expect to read in a sappy poem. Athena’s eyes resembled entire pools of blue, deep enough to drown someone his size.

(… Yeah, I kinda doubt anyone would be jumping to read that poem…)

Athena’s gaze was fixed firmly downward. Shimmying down to as low a point as he was comfortable with, Apollo locked his ankles tightly around the lock of hair he’d chosen and shakily raised one arm, waving to Athena.

“H-hey!!” he called out. “Athena!!”

He yelped in panic, hugging the cluster of hairs as tightly as he could and closing his eyes. Athena had moved again.

Athena’s pen was loose in her grip, grazing over the paper on her desk. She’d faintly registered something strange in her line of sight, and glanced upward. It looked like she had a bit of lint or something stuck in her hair.

“… Huh?”

The lint was moving.

In the space of about a second, her mind ran a sprint from “lint”, to “ohmygodit’sabug”, and finally settled somewhere that made her lock up entirely.

Nearly cross-eyed, she could still see the tiny thing moving, and it was beginning to look startlingly familiar.

Her sensitive ears pricked at what sounded entirely too similar to a voice.

“Athena…!!”

She jerked in place, almost causing her chair to topple backwards. The tiny figure caught up in her bangs dropped, and without even thinking, she rushed to catch it, hands cupping together just below her chin.

“Oof!!”

Apollo groaned, rolling onto his hands and knees. Athena’s enormous eyes had fixated on him, making him hopeful that she’d spotted him at last. It still seemed like he was right, but instead of a comfortable moment of recognition, Athena had jolted in place, causing him to lose his grip and fall. Fortunately, she’d been quick to catch him well before he could slam down against the desk, or fall even further.

“H-holy…”

Hearing Athena’s loud voice, he looked up. She was staring right at him, blue eyes wide with shock.

“A-Apollo…!?”

He felt like collapsing with relief. After hours of stress and repeated near-death experiences, he’d finally done it; Athena had recognized him, and that meant he was safe at last. He opened his mouth, but for a moment, his voice wouldn’t come out. Clearing his throat, he tried again.

“H-hey, Athena!!” he called out loudly. She nearly fell over again.

“A-Apollo-…!?” she repeated. “B-but-… how did… why are you-…”

Athena fell silent, until-

[EXPLAIN!]

The simple outburst from the device dangling from Athena’s neck broke the tense pause, making Apollo laugh. When he stopped, Athena was still staring at him. She’d moved him closer to her face now, raising her hands a bit.

“That’s a… really long story.” he said, his whole body shaking with relief.

“I’m listening.” Athena said simply, starting to sound desperate for any explanation.

…

“And that’s where we are now.” Apollo finished. He’d run through a -- carefully abridged -- explanation of how he’d been meeting with Ema, only to be accidentally shrunken down after she left the room, and how he’d wound up being carried out of the precinct by Athena without her knowledge, eventually ending up here, dangling from her bangs to try and draw her notice. Athena had interjected a few times, but mostly just sat in silence, stunned by what she was hearing. Apollo couldn’t blame her.

“… Do I even want to know how you got into my hair…?” she asked, making him freeze up for a moment.

“U-uh…” He felt horribly unsure about answering that. There were several things he’d seen since shrinking that he really didn’t feel Athena needed to know, at least until he was back to normal. He felt much too vulnerable to harm right now to risk it. “No…?”

Eyes locked on him, Athena paused.

“Well, OK.” she said, in a tone of voice that seemed to make it clear this subject was never to be brought up again. Apollo sighed under his breath. It felt like he’d just dodged a particularly painful bullet.

“So, you said it was Ema’s machine that did this, right?”

Caught off-guard by the subject change, Apollo nodded.

“Yeah. I… don’t know how, though.”

Athena sighed, anxious.

“I sure hope Ema does…”

Around twelve minutes later, Athena was waiting at the bus stop half a block from the Wright Anything Agency. She kept nervously glancing down at the pocket of her white blouse, where she’d chosen to store Apollo. He was so incredibly tiny that nothing felt properly safe; it was like trying to safely transport a single, particularly important ant.

(I hope he’s comfy in there… it’s gotta be really weird. And there’s lint!)

The bus came into view, and Athena straightened up, trying not to look suspicious.

When she left the office, she told Trucy that she’d finally heard from Apollo, and was off to meet up with him again. It wasn’t really a lie, but she felt bad for hiding several key facts from her.

She boarded the bus and headed straight for a lone seat, keeping her movements as gentle as she could, so as to avoid any undue discomfort for her tiny passenger. She just needed Apollo to stay safe and unharmed until she got back to the precinct.

Once the bus got moving, every bump and shudder made her nervous. With other passengers present, she couldn’t try and communicate with Apollo, so she remained quite anxious throughout the entire trip.

Halfway there, she realized something; Ema probably wouldn’t appreciate having such bizarre news as “your crazy science machine shrunk Apollo” dropped directly into her lap without warning. Digging up her cell phone, she dialled Ema’s number.

…

“Athena?” Ema immediately inquired.

“Hey, Ema, are you-“

“I-is Apollo with you…!?” Ema cut in, sounding more frantic than Athena had ever heard.

“U-uh…” she stammered. “W-well, yeah, he’s-…”

“He is!? Put him on!!”

“Um… well, I can’t do that, Ema-…”

“Why not!?”

Athena nervously glanced around the bus. No one was looking at her. Keeping her voice low, she spoke up again.

“… Ema, you know that weird machine you’ve got in your lab…?”

“I know, listen -- is Apollo OK…!? It’s totally my fault if he’s-…”

“Ema, hold on.” Athena interjected now, taking another quick glance around to check that she wasn’t drawing attention. “That machine -- this is gonna sound crazy, but-“

“It shrunk him, I know!!” Ema cut her off, voice firm, but clearly filled with panic. “Is - he - al - right!?”

Athena paused.

“… Yes. He’s not hurt. Just… really, really small.”

A very loud sigh could be heard from the other end of the line.

“Oh my God, Athena, why didn’t you just start with that!? Look, come back and see me right now!!”

“We’re already on the way! We’ll be there in a few minutes.” Athena replied, trying to sound reassuring. She kept shooting nervous glances around the bus, but fortunately, her call was still being largely ignored.

“Thank God… OK, I’m going to keep working on this damn thing over here, just don’t stop anywhere.” Ema said. “Later.”

“Bye!” Athena answered, hanging up. She stowed her phone away, looking out the window. She’d never heard Ema that concerned about anything before. She usually kept a very cool head, and even when she got worked up over anything, she was usually only grumpy, if anything. Concern and panic were strange, coming from her.

Hopefully she wouldn’t reach the precinct only to find Ema losing her mind entirely. It was hard to tell what to expect.

Finally, Athena hopped off the bus, a short walk from the precinct. Her first instinct was to run, but she caught herself just in time. According to Apollo, he’d already experienced one extremely dizzying trip as a passenger with her while she enjoyed a jog, so it would be better to spare him a repeat.

Walking instead, she approached the building and headed inside. The desk sergeant looked a bit surprised to see her.

“You lose something?” the older woman asked. Athena nodded stiffly.

“Yeah, I need to see Ema again.” she said. Fortunately, the sergeant just nodded to her.

“Alright, go on.” she said.

Athena wasted no time in reaching the forensics lab. Ema was waiting inside, standing against the wall. Concern was written all over her face.

“You’re here, thank God…” she said, stepping forward. Athena shut the door and walked up to the table. “Apollo?”

“He’s right here, one second…”

Very carefully lowering her hand into her pocket, Athena let Apollo clamber up onto her index finger. It felt very strange, even now. She extracted him, then set her hand on the table so he could hop down to solid ground.

“H-holy shit…”

Ema was in awe. She’d never seen anything like this, and until an hour ago, she never would’ve believed it possible. Apollo was standing before her, right on her work table, looking quite shockingly normal, aside from the fact that he was smaller than a grain of rice. All of his familiar features were there, in spite of the astounding reduction in size.

“So you’re… you’re OK?” she asked, breathless. “Nothing’s broken? You can move around perfectly…?”

Apollo was clearly speaking loudly when he replied, but his voice was so tiny that it was barely audible.

“Yep! I took a couple of nasty falls, too, but nothing hurts too badly!”

“That’s… that’s amazing…!”

A considerable sense of cognitive dissonance was setting in. On one hand, Ema was utterly amazed by this discovery, and her mind was running wild with speculation and questions, wanting to learn everything she could about Apollo’s situation. There could be days, if not weeks’ worth of experiments to perform. On the other hand, this was Apollo she was talking about. He was one of her closest friends, and there was no way she could just leave him in this state, even if she wanted to research everything she possibly could about it. She wasn’t a physicist, and she didn’t know anything about medicine, but still, this was easily one of the most incredible scientific breakthroughs in modern history, and she couldn’t help feeling like she needed to do something with it…

“So, can you fix this…?” Athena asked, making her look up. “Apollo’s not gonna be stuck like this, right?”

Ema bit her lip.

“Uh…”

She glanced at the machine on the table. She remembered it saying something about “reversal”, but that was the only hope she had. If it had been what caused Apollo to shrink like this, then it was her only hope of fixing his situation.

“I’m giving that a ‘maybe’, with a side of ‘God-I-hope-so’.” she answered. She stepped to the side, looking at the LCD again. She’d tinkered with it a bit, and had some idea of what to do, but it was only a guess.

“Uh, Ema?” Athena prompted her. When she turned, Athena was pointing toward Apollo on the table. “He’s saying something.”

“What’s up?” she asked, leaning close. Apollo’s voice was still barely audible, even like this.

“Back before it happened, I remember a light flashing from that lens on the side of the machine.” Apollo said, gesturing with his tiny arm. Ema followed his gesture and located the familiar lens.

“Hmm…” She looked it over, then gestured to Athena. “Here, run the screen for a sec’. There are just a couple of buttons to press."

“… OK.” Athena said, sounding a touch uncertain. “I won’t screw this up, right?”

“I doubt it. Just press the first button there whenever a prompt comes up.” Ema instructed her.

She dragged a few books across the table, setting them in a stack in front of the lens.

“C’mon up, Apollo.” she said, lowering her own palm to him. Apollo climbed onto her fingertips, and she moved him to the stack of books. “Stand right there.”

Apollo got into position.

“OK, hit the button.” Ema said. “What’s the screen say?”

Athena looked it over.

“It says… ‘subject locked’.” she answered. “And… ‘begin reversal’. Is that good?”

“I think so. Hit the button again.”

Athena did so, and the machine began to hum softly. Tension was starting to fill the air. Ema kept glancing back at forth between the device and Apollo, anxious. If this didn’t work, her friend could be looking at spending the rest of his life as the world’s tiniest defence attorney…

The humming sound picked up, and with a sudden hissing sound, matched by a flash of light, the machine activated.

…

“Wh-whoa!!”

-CRASH-

Momentarily covering her eyes, Ema heard a gasp.

“Apollo!!”

She looked, and a relieved smile split across her face. Apollo was lying on the floor of the lab, looking like he’d just fallen. The impact had sounded quite painful, but after he’d had a second to get over the shock, he scrambled upright. Ema made a surprised noise as Apollo suddenly lunged forward, grabbing her in a hug.

“Uh-… Apollo?”

“E-Ema-… oh my God, Ema, thank you…!!”

Nearly hysterical, Apollo held a shaky grip on her, Ema returning the hug after a few seconds. She frowned, spotting Athena’s smirk. She could tell she was blushing a bit, and she hated knowing that Athena had noticed. When Apollo stepped away, Ema looked him over.

“You look OK.” she said. “Your whole body’s back to normal, right? You should check.”

“I… I think so…!” Apollo said, practically ecstatic with relief. He patted himself down, still shaking a bit.

Athena darted forward, tightly hugging him as well.

“Well, good!” she said brightly. “I can’t have a defence partner the size of a bug!”

The group simply enjoyed the moment for a bit, overwhelming relief sweeping over all of them. This situation could easily have been an utter disaster, and if Ema was honest, Apollo was lucky to be alive. She didn’t know how she would’ve reacted if her negligence had gotten him hurt or killed, and she didn’t want to think about it.

“… OK, enough!” Athena piped up. “We’ve still got a buttload of paperwork back at the office, Apollo! You’re normal again, so let’s move!”

“B-but-…”

“Nope! You’re still on the clock, and Mr. Wright’s not paying you to hang around here and hug your friends!”

Apollo sighed.

“You’re the one hugging me…”

Within a minute, the two defence lawyers were out the door again. Ema sat down on the edge of her work table, eyes fixed on the strange device. She knew what it did now, so by the books, she was supposed to write down everything she’d learned and prepare a report. She would get to it at some point, but…

Well, if she was honest, she was feeling quite a lot of good, old-fashioned curiosity right about now. Her report would be even better with more detail, so there was time to… experiment a bit, right…?

BAD ENDING #1 - Chapter Two

(As Apollo is hiding from Ema’s view on the tabletop, thinking his options over.)

“No, no, no, seriously…!?”

Ema stared at the device on her work table, disbelief creeping up in her mind. The device was inactive, and she could see a faint trail of what looked like smoke or steam rising from it. She threw down the stack of freshly-copied documents she was holding on the table and leaned over to examine it properly. Was it so much to ask that Apollo manage to just sit peacefully for five minutes? Had he seriously tampered with the machine while she was out to run to the copier?

“Apollo, you son of a-…”

Down on the table, Apollo was watching nervously. Ema was looking all over the device, clearly much too focused to have any chance of noticing him hiding just off to her side.

Ema made an irritated noise. Her temper was frightening normally, but now? Apollo didn’t want to imagine how much trouble he might be in if Ema got angry at him while he was this ridiculously small.

(Maybe I should just run out and try to get noticed now…? If she thinks I messed that machine up, then took off, she’s only gonna get angrier…)

He hesitated, but decided to go for it. He needed help, and Ema was looking right down at the table at this very second. This was his best chance to get himself noticed, and it might even be possible to soothe Ema’s mood a bit if he could explain his perspective on what had happened.

Darting out from his hiding place, he took off at a run, heading straight for what looked like the centre of Ema’s vision.

(Ema didn’t get into forensics by missing details; she has to notice me moving around down here…!)

As it happened, Ema did notice something moving around in the corner of her vision. Her teal eyes flicked downward for a moment, looking away from the front face of the device, which she’d been carefully examining for any possible sign of damage.

Unfortunately, between the angle at which she was leaning over the table, and her current mood, spotting something moving around on its own in her workspace did not make her feel immediately inclined to examine it closely.

“Wh-… oh, ew…”

Frowning, she moved a hand off of the device before her, sweeping her palm along the tabletop in the direction of the tiny thing she’d spotted scuttling along there. The tiny figure froze up for half a second before her palm collided with it. With a firm swipe, she batted the tiny invader off of her work table, sending it spiraling toward the floor.

Dazed, Apollo shook back to his senses, once again finding himself hurtling through the air. He screamed, unable to do anything to control his fall. Had Ema knocked him off the table? He could see the blurred image of her legs passing by as he fell-

-WHAM-

…

His ears were ringing, and his vision was little more than a blurred haze. He groaned, unable to move. He thought he might have ended up on his back, but where was he…?

A faintly familiar blur was visible overhead, but then it was obscured by a solid ceiling that had seemed to fly right in from nowhere and take up his entire view. He was stunned, still struggling just to regain his senses as the ceiling came rushing toward him, and then everything ended.

-crunch-

“Ugh…”

Ema had batted the invasive pest she’d spotted down to the floor, following it as it fell, then without delay, she’d snapped the toe section of her heeled shoe down on top of it, crushing it right into the smooth floor without any difficulty.

She always tried her best to keep this lab clean and sanitized. That was essential to her work. She hadn’t seen any bugs in weeks, but she supposed that record was wasted now. With an irritated sigh, she put the recently-crushed insect out of her mind, returning her focus to the device on the table. Once she’d determined all she could about its condition, she would need to take a minute and clean the floor. Maybe she would put in a word of request for the space outside her lab to be cleaned, as well. She couldn’t be too careful.

(Apollo, I swear, if you broke anything in here, these shoes are going up your ass…)

END

BAD ENDING #2 - Chapter Two

(While Apollo is stranded on the chair in the lab, just before Athena sits down.)

“C-crap…!!” he stammered, staggering into motion. Athena looked to be at least half a kilometre in height at this scale. To put it bluntly, her ass was the size of an office tower. If she sat down on this chair right now, and dropped the full weight of her rear on him, there wasn’t likely to be much of “him” left.

He needed to get the hell out of her way, and he needed to do it right now. Breaking into the fastest sprint he could, he tore across the stitched surface of the cushion, knowing he had a few seconds at best to escape Athena’s landing zone.

His heart practically stopped as his shoe snagged against an uneven stitch in the ground beneath him. A strangled noise of alarm escaped his throat, his whole body hurtling forward, balance completely out the window. Just before he faceplanted against the cushion, he saw Athena’s knees bending in the distance, indicating exactly what he was so afraid of.

He collided with the cushion, awkwardly rolling forward and coming down again on his back. A shadow loomed over him. Above, the canopy of Athena’s skirt had overtaken him, and with it, an enormous shape completely filled his view, looking like a pair of twin violet-coloured meteors about to crash down on his position.

He opened his mouth, but there wasn’t even time to scream.

-WHUMP-

Dead-centre in Athena’s landing zone, Apollo was instantly buried beneath the mountainous shape of her rear, which sank comfortably into the seat cushion without slowing down for even a fraction of a second. Apollo’s reduced size was so pitifully small in comparison to Athena’s body that he might as well have been a grain of sand, for all she noticed him.

Remarkably, the earth-shattering impact didn’t kill him. Not instantly, at least.

Apollo couldn’t tell his precise location. He was under Athena, obviously, and the crushing mass pressing him down had to be her leggings, but that was all he could determine.

He couldn’t move a muscle. He tried, straining his trapped body with all his strength, but it was a wasted effort. Athena weighed as much as a mountain from his diminished perspective, and there was no possible way to move her. Breathing was nearly impossible, too. He could faintly smell some kind of fabric, and a light trace of what he thought might be sweat, but he couldn’t get in so much as a single breath of oxygen.

Comfortably resting on the chair Ema had offered her, Athena looked down at the first page of her fresh set of documents. The first impression was promising. While she didn’t like paperwork, having Ema prepare everything she needed so neatly made it less of a pain.

Reading in peace as Ema returned her attention to whatever she was working on, Athena didn’t notice that she’d dropped her rear on top of a tiny, familiar figure on the chair when she sat down. The puny figure was trapped somewhere beneath her crotch, totally obscured from view, and with her leggings and the panties beneath providing an insulating layer from the contact against her, she didn’t even realize she was sitting on anything more than a comfortable chair.

Unnoticed by either of the room’s other occupants, the helpless struggles of the ant-sized attorney wriggling under Athena’s crushing mass slowly became weaker and weaker, until they stopped entirely. Cut off from any source of oxygen, Apollo hadn’t lasted long beneath his co-worker’s rear.

END

BAD ENDING #3 - Chapter Three

(While Apollo is staring at Athena, nude in front of the mirror, transfixed.)

His mouth feeling very dry, Apollo simply couldn’t tear himself away from the spectacular view Athena was inadvertently providing to him.

He watched as his gigantic friend took a brief sip from her water bottle. When she set it down again, she began to turn around. Just as she got moving, however, she paused.

“Hmm…”

(I wonder…)

Athena glanced up at the top of the mirror fixed to the bathroom’s wall. When she’d checked the shower, she’d noticed that it was currently a bit lacking in soap. No doubt the Wrights would have an extra bar somewhere around. Up on her toes, she spotted what she was looking for. There was a fresh bar of soap, wrapped in plastic, sitting right on top of the cabinet that the mirror was attached to.

Stretching upward, she reached out to grab it.

She let out a tiny gasp as her left foot slipped. She’d accidentally stepped on her dropped panties, and the undergarment hadn’t provided her with any grip on the floor. Her underwear sliding along the tiles and bringing her foot with it, she flailed for a moment, trying to catch herself and prevent a nasty fall.

Down on the counter, Apollo had still been staring, his eyes shamelessly exploring every inch of Athena’s body he could see. He had just been admiring the cliff face of her abs again when her entire body shuddered. He heard a startled noise from above, slowly looking upward.

Athena was toppling toward the counter. Coming down entirely too quickly for him to react, the landmasses that were Athena’s breasts quickly filled his entire view, eclipsing the light from the ceiling.

“Wh-wha-…”

Before he could even get a word out in reaction, Apollo’s world vanished, his comparatively puny body crumpling in an instant beneath the meteoric impact of Athena’s chest. He stood no chance against the devastating mass of her right breast, and in a fraction of a second, he was gone.

“Ugh-… oww…”

One leg still awkwardly stretched behind her, and her arms clutching tightly at the countertop, Athena made a pained little groan. She’d managed to stop herself falling to the floor, or hitting her head on anything, but she’d been too slow to prevent a fall entirely. Her chest had come down hard on the countertop, a firm slap sounding as her breasts made impact. It hurt.

Kicking her dropped panties away across the floor and getting her balance back, she straightened up. With a frown, she reached up to check her chest over. It was going to be sore later on, she was sure.

Gingerly lifting one breast upward a bit and examining it in the mirror, Athena let out another displeased groan. There was a tiny, but very visible trace of blood on her skin, just an inch or two below her areola. She hadn’t noticed anything sharp on the counter, so she couldn’t imagine how she could possibly have managed to cut her skin, but she could plainly see the smear of blood, so there was no point in arguing.

(I hope that just washes away once I’m in the shower…)

With a sigh, she reached up again to retrieve the soap bar, and unwrapped it, discarding the plastic covering.

While Athena remained totally oblivious, her clumsiness had just unwittingly crushed poor Apollo out of existence, his shrunken body reduced to nothing more than a faint smear of blood, shared between the underside of her breast, and the countertop.

END

BAD ENDING #4 - Chapter Three

(While Apollo is perched in Athena’s hair, waiting for her to leave the bathroom.)

Apollo’s clothes were feeling damp. He watched Athena take a sip from her water bottle, which was nearly emptied by now. Distracted for a moment, he observed the remaining water splashing around inside the bottle, wishing he had something to drink as well. This was feeling like a very long day.

Unexpectedly, Athena’s head moved. Apollo shifted forward, his grip on the lock of hair he was holding loosening. He tried to adjust himself and tighten his hold again, but instead, he only found Athena’s hair slipping right out of his grip.

“W-wait, wait-…!!”

With a sickening lurch, he lost his grip entirely, wobbling for a moment, and then he fell. Leaving the red jungle of Athena’s hair behind, he dropped right off of her head, gravity taking hold.

Initially too shocked even to yell, Apollo looked downward, his arms flailing helplessly through the air. He was dropping like a rock, tumbling straight toward the very same object he’d just been looking over. Athena’s water bottle was coming up fast.

“No, no, no, are you kidding me…!?”

Helpless to stop himself, Apollo hurtled downward until he passed right through the bottle’s opening. High walls of plastic suddenly surrounded him, the warped sights of the bathroom visible beyond. He screamed, his voice echoing strangely in the claustrophobic space.

Just swallowing a sip of water, Athena twitched. A strange sound had just reached her ears for a moment, but then it was gone. She glanced around, startled.

“… OK…”

She set her water bottle down, getting back to what she’d been doing. She was almost ready to leave and get back down to the office.

She didn’t notice the faint sound of a splash as a certain tiny figure dropped straight into her water bottle just before she set it back on the counter.

Resurfacing, Apollo gasped, coughing out a mouthful of water. He splashed frantically on the surface of the deep pool, trying to calm himself down. It wasn’t easy.

Not long ago, he hadn’t been able to swim at all, but in the aftermath of a certain incident, he’d seen fit to take some basic lessons. He could tread water now, though not for all that long, and he definitely wasn’t used to being fully clothed when he was in water.

This was bad. He’d fallen right into Athena’s water bottle, and at his pitiful size, the bottle was the size of a city building. More than a hundred feet over his head, the only exit was completely out of his reach.

“… Athena!!” he yelled. His voice echoed, but judging by Athena’s complete lack of reaction, it didn’t reach even her sensitive ears. “ATHENA!!”

… Nothing. Athena didn’t even glance in his direction.

His breathing becoming increasingly panicked, Apollo splashed his way over to the bottle’s edge. There were grooves in the plastic, so he could at least rest there. Still, that was only a small comfort, given his current predicament.

He was freezing. Athena’s water wasn’t ice-cold, but it definitely wasn’t warm, either. His clothes were totally drenched, and they were weighing him down. Clinging to the plastic of the bottle’s inner wall, Apollo shuddered, closing his eyes.

“ATHENAAAA!!”

… That as loudly as he could possibly yell. His voice had cracked, he’d pushed himself so much, and yet, to his growing dismay, Athena didn’t seem to react.

A shape approached the bottle, and Apollo was knocked away from the wall by a heavy impact. He splashed backward, flailing in the water to keep his head from going beneath the surface. All around him, the pool splashed against the edges of the huge bottle. Athena was holding onto the bottle again, and there was really only one reason he could imagine for that…

Apollo’s expression turned to one of utter horror. Athena was bringing the water bottle up to her lips again, and she still had no idea he was inside of it.

“W-wait, Athena…!! ATHENA, I’M-“

His words were blocked out as the bottle rocked into motion, the movement throwing him beneath the water. He flailed, blind and terrified.

The current was dragging him along. After a second spent hurtling through the cold depths, Apollo splashed free again, tumbling out onto the ground. The air was unbelievably humid, and he choked on his first breath.

(I-I’m in Athena’s mouth…!!)

Damp and shuddering ground under him, Apollo tried frantically to stand. There was no way in hell he wanted to stay in here for even a second. His vision was a bit blurred, but he could see the opening of Athena’s lips, the water bottle still perched there. He staggered into motion, only to slip, falling onto his front against the enormous carpet of his friend’s tongue. Desperate, he tried to crawl, but as he looked up, he saw Athena’s lips closing, leaving him in complete darkness.

Then, a horrible noise sounded from behind him, and he was forced backwards, Athena’s tongue shuddering under him and buffeting him and her mouthful of water along.

Draining the very last remaining sip from her water bottle, Athena closed the cap and tucked it back into her bag. Totally unaware that her mouth currently contained anything other than ordinary water, she swallowed. Smiling into the mirror, she gave herself a final check. She was ready to head back downstairs. Maybe Apollo would be back by now.

She folded up her clothes and tucked them away, snapping Widget back into place around her neck. Getting herself cleaned up was a wonderful comfort after how active she’d been today. With all her belongings in order, she headed for the door, completely oblivious to the fact that a certain terrified defence lawyer was currently experiencing a one-way trip to her stomach, unnoticed in her sip of water.

END

BAD ENDING #5 - Chapter Four

(While Ema is setting the size-changing device back up to help restore Apollo’s size.)

“Here, run the screen for a sec’. There are just a couple of buttons to press." Ema instructed Athena, who looked the LCD display over.

“… OK.” she replied. “I won’t screw this up, right?”

“I doubt it. Just press the first button there whenever a prompt comes up.” Ema said. She was dragging several books across the tabletop, setting up a position for Apollo to stand in. “C’mon up, Apollo.”

Athena kept her eyes fixed on the screen, anxious. There was a lot of text flashing by.

“Stand right there.” Ema said. Athena glanced over for a moment, seeing Apollo’s puny figure moving onto the books.

She was surprised to see a message of some kind on the screen. As instructed, she pressed the first button on the device. More text began to flash by, and the device began to make a faint sound.

“OK, hit the button.” Ema said.

“I did.” Athena replied.

“What’s the screen say?”

“Uh… there’s a lot of text zooming by…” Athena watched, waiting until the rapid scroll of text finally stopped again. “OK, it says… one subject registered, biological, 172 cm, 0.96 kg attached…”

“Great. … I think. Hit the button again.” Ema said, looking between the stack of books Apollo was perched on, and the lens on the device. Athena did so, and the device began to hum noisily. Athena stepped back. After a moment, Ema froze up. “Wait… did you say a hundred and-“

A sudden hissing sound cut her off, accompanied by a flash of light that made Athena yelp in alarm. The device had activated.

Ema blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. Why hadn’t Apollo warned her that the flash would be that bad…?

The blurred world cleared up, and she found herself looking at her shoes. She lifted her head.

“Apoll-…”

She froze, her whole body tensing up. Something was wrong. Before her, she saw the magnified image of the books she’d been setting up as an elevated perch for Apollo. Why were they so huge…?

Her mouth fell open.

“E-Ema…!!”

She looked up at the sound of a voice, horrified. Apollo was looking down at her from his position on top of the books, a state of alarm plain on his face.

She’d shrunk, too.

A shadow loomed over the pair, and Ema let out a startled yell.

Athena came into view, one of her hands resting on the edge of the table. She was an unbelievable sight, all her features magnified a hundred times over. Her blue eyes were scanning the tabletop, widening as they found what they were looking for.

“EMA!!”

She winced, covering her ears. Athena was incredibly loud like this. Was this really what poor Apollo had been dealing with for the last few hours?

Ema’s heart accelerated again as Athena’s other hand carefully lowered toward Apollo, and he clambered into her palm. The massive hand approached her next, Ema hesitating as Athena’s fingers stopped before her.

“C’mon!” Apollo called, reaching a hand out to help her up. She took his hand, climbing onto Athena’s palm for herself. “E-Ema, what went wrong…!?” Apollo stammered.

… She didn’t know.

Athena’s massive palm carried her two friends up to her face, which filled their entire range of vision in one direction. Ema was still frozen up in disbelief, panic starting to overtake her mind.

“Wh-what do I do…!?” Athena asked next, her booming voice echoing in Ema’s ears.

Again, she had no idea. Something must have gone wrong with the device, but she didn’t have any idea of what, or how to fix the mistake.

“Ema…?” Apollo prompted her.

“I… I don’t have any idea…” she said, her voice faint.

“B-but…”

“But, Ema…” Athena said, voice filled with concern, “I can’t just start messing with this thing again! What if things get even worse and I shrink, too, or something…!?”

“I just…” Ema was nearly shutting down. She’d been confident that she had the means of reversing Apollo’s condition figured out, but instead, she’d botched it, ending up making the entire situation even worse.

“Ema…?” Apollo inquired again.

She tried to respond, but only managed a despairing gasp.

“Uh… w-well, hey!” Athena spoke up again. She was clearly struggling to sound comforting. “I can… I-I can just take care of you guys myself! Yeah! Um… you’re super-tiny, but we’ll figure something out! Trucy can help, too!”

Ema still couldn’t respond, the reality of this situation simply too much for her to process right now. She and Apollo were stuck at this size, somewhere around half a centimetre in height, and unless they could somehow figure out a fix for this mistake, they were going to be relying entirely on Athena for the foreseeable future.

“Um… so, you guys want to share one of my pockets…?” Athena asked, biting her lip.

END…?