On Saturday, January 13, 2029, a space plane was perched upon a launchpad at a spaceport in California's Mojave desert. A new Aerospace company called "Future Shock" was entering the commercial space arena with a top-of-the-line space plane affectionately known as the Thunderbolt. Four men and two women were going up on the Thunderbolt's maiden voyage from the Mojave desert to Oahu.

Captain Leo Tanner was retired from the United States Air Force, and he was the pilot. The co-pilot was Mason Lewis, an African-American pro race car driver who parlayed his wealth into learning to be a pilot. The four passengers were made up of a husband and wife and a man and his sister. Tyler Chen was a Chinese-American pro tennis player who became a multi-millionaire before the age of 30. His wife Carmen was Mexican-American and in her mid-20's. Nolan Ward was a part Native-American, part Mexican-American, and part white concert promoter who won two tickets to this maiden flight from a radio station he does business with. He got into an argument with his girlfriend, so he brought his half-sister Natalie Red Hawk. Natalie is half Native-American and half-white. Nolan and Natalie have the same mother, but different fathers.

Leo greeted the four passengers individually as they carried their luggage onto the space plane. There were overhead luggage cabinets, and Mason the co-pilot made sure the luggage was secured inside the cabinets. He also made sure the passengers were strapped in correctly. Before long, they were ready for takeoff and the countdown began. When they were cleared for takeoff, Leo activated the thrusters and the space plane took off into the sky. It was daytime, but as they gained enough altitude, the sky outside the windows appeared to grow dark as they reached sub-orbital space.

Meanwhile, a universe away, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 21-year-old female college student named Darian Wagner was viewing the Thunderbolt on a scope. Beside her was her 18-year-old assistant Zima Zamora, a Latina with brown hair and brown eyes. Both women were dressed like schoolgirls, complete with white socks and Mary Janes. These were the standard uniforms for their all-female college known as Crestwood University.

"I found a suitable target, Zima!" said Darian.

Zima began rubbing her hands together with excitement. "How small are they?"

"From our perspective, a man from their reality who stands six feet tall would be exactly one inch tall! They're tiny enough to be easily handled, yet not too large that we couldn't swallow one of them to teach them discipline! They will be perfect subjects for my junior thesis!"

Darian pushed some buttons on the control console beneath the viewing scope, and pulled a lever.

"I'm initiating a space warp that should pull their space plane into our reality!" said Darian. "I will also control their vessel, to ensure that it lands where we want it to, so it can be easily retrieved!"

Back aboard the Thunderbolt, a hazy vortex of bright colors opened up in front of the space plane.

"I can't avoid it!" said Logan. "We're being pulled right into it!" Leo slammed his fists into the control panel and shouted, "The controls won't respond!"

The passengers saw all the colors of the rainbow outside their windows as the space plane lost altitude, plummeting downward toward the southern hemisphere of the planet below.

"You're coming in too steep!" said Mason.

"I can't help it!" Leo shouted. "It's like the space plane has a mind of its own!"

"It looks like we're heading for that wooded area!" said Mason as he pointed at a group of trees in the distance.

They came in for a landing, and the space plane glided to a stop in a clearing between some giant trees. Leo got on the intercom and said, "I don't understand what just happened, but everyone just stay seated while my co-pilot and I go outside to figure out where we are!"

Leo and Mason opened the door hatch and exited the Thunderbolt. What they saw astonished them. Trees stretched up into the sky, dozens of times taller than they should have been. The foliage and the rocks and debris on the ground were all on a more massive scale than normal.

"It looks like we've been shrunk down about an inch tall!" said Mason.

Meanwhile, back at Crestwood, the all-female University, Darian and Zima watched the Thunderbolt and her crew on the viewing scope.

"I'm going in my shuttle cruiser to go retrieve them!" said Darian, as she pulled a flash drive from the viewing console. "Stay here and watch the scope and keep me posted if any of them get away!"

Darian got into her shuttle cruiser and put it on autopilot. She instructed the navigation computer to fly to the coordinates on a flash drive she pulled from the viewing console where she left Zima. When the shuttle cruiser landed a few minutes later, Darian disembarked.

Leo and Mason looked up to see a giant Mary Jane fall from the sky, attached to a calf that was higher than a four story building. They looked up and saw Darian for the first time. Had she been normal size, she would have stood about five feet five inches tall, but because everything on this massive world was colossal, the young woman stood about 390 feet tall.

"Welcome to the planet Thanatar!" said Darian. "You must be the crew. I am Darian Wagner, and I will be your captress from this day forward!"

"Captress?" Leo asked.

"What's the meaning of this?" Mason asked. "Did you bring us here?"

"Yes, and all your questions will be answered shortly when we return to the University!" Darian activated a robotic assistant to lift the space plane and carry it to the shuttle cruiser, with the four passengers still inside. Darian collected Leo and Mason and carried them to her shuttle cruiser. She carried them snug in her fists, Leo in her left fist and Mason in her right fist. When she boarded the shuttle cruiser, she dropped Leo into a cup holder that was six inches deep on her scale, then dropped Mason into a second cup holder the same size.

Darian used autopilot and the shuttle cruiser was back at the University within minutes. The robotic assistant carried the space plane carefully into the lab where Zima was manning the viewing scope. The Thunderbolt was placed on a table, and Darian deposited Leo and Mason onto that same table.

"You can tell your passengers it is safe to disembark," said Darian.

The passengers heard this, and climbed out of the door hatch without being told. When all six of them were assembled, Darian and Zima stood over them excitedly.

"My family was never wealthy enough to own tiny people," said Zima, "but with the help of this University, I'm able to possess some of them!"

"They're not your tiny people, Zima!" Darian reminded her. "They belong to me! But if they are good on the game board on Arcadia, maybe we can win some other captives that you can own!"

"I hate to interrupt you," said Leo, "but can you tell me who the hell you people are and what the hell is going on?"

"Gladly!" said Darian. "I am Darian Wagner, and this is my assistant, Zima Zamora. You are on the planet Thanatar, in a universe that is parallel to your own. Everything here exists on a scale 72 times larger than anything in your universe. For instance, I stand five feet five inches tall by our standard of measurement, but to you, I tower over you at 390 feet tall!"

"How long are we going to be here?" Leo asked.

"Indefinitely!" said Darian. "I need to use the six of you for my junior thesis project here at Crestwood University."

"Do your laws allow that?" Leo asked. "To just imprison innocent people, without due cause?"

Darian tilted her head back and laughed. "There are no laws on our world that protect people your size! There are a nearly infinite number of alternate realities where we can acquire captives, and most of them are taken to Arcadia!"

"Arcadia?" Leo asked. "What is that?"

"It is a massive space station where tinies are taken to play games of skill. A lot of betting goes on there, our economy relies on the games! Any tiny person who loses a game is won by the owner of the winning tiny person."

"It would really help us if one of you had a skill that could help you win at the games!" said Zima.

"Do any of you possess special athletic skills?" Darian asked.

"No!" said Leo. "All of us are just regular average people! We're a waste of your time!"

"Leo's right!" said Mason. "You should just send us back to Earth!"

"Your little ruse won't work!" said Darian. "The process that brought you here was very expensive, the only way I was even able to do it was because I was using University equipment. You will play in the games, like it or not!"

"You're just game pieces to us!" said Zima. "You can be bought, sold, and traded like toys! And if you don't do as you're told, you might end up in someone's belly!" Zima rubbed her belly to emphasize her point. "Maybe you should do a mind scan and find out if they're lying about having athletic abilities!"

"I don't have time to rent out the mind scanning equipment right now," said Darian. "I'm just going to take them all to Arcadia right now and use the first captive who volunteers!"

Darian went and got a container and set it down on the massive table the captives from Earth were standing on. She activated the outer door, and it slid open. The door was on the same scale as the Earth people.

"Everybody into your habitation module!" said Darian.

"We may as well obey her," said Leo. "It would be futile to resist!"

All six of the captives marched into their habitation module. There were furnishings built into the walls, so the furniture wouldn't move around when the habitation module was moved.

"These couches look old and stained!" said Natalie Red Hawk.

"I agree!" said Carmen Chen.

Darian peeked through the transparent ceiling and said, "There is food to eat if you're hungry, but while you eat, everyone strap yourselves in! I'm taking you on my shuttle cruiser to Arcadia!"

The six captives did as they were told, and Darian carried the habitation module to her shuttle cruiser, with Zima following her. All six of them ate some of the food that was on their scale: protein bars in metallic wrappers with bottles of water.

Darian strapped herself in, and Zima strapped herself into the passenger seat. The habitation module was on a console between the two giant women. Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser up into space, and on the view screen, they could see a massive space station spinning in the distance. It had a central axis, while two spheres on either end of a long shaft spun around in circles to generate artificial gravity.

Darian parked her shuttle cruiser and walked into one of the arenas with Zima, as she carried the habitation module. The two women set themselves up in some seats where owners of game participants were meant to be seated, and Darian opened the top of the habitation module.

"Do I have any volunteers?" Darian asked. "They're having car races right now, are any of you skilled at racing? The loser will be executed in this game!"

"I'll volunteer!" said Mason. "I'm a pro race car driver back on Earth!"

Darian scooped Mason up and set him in a simulator to get him accustomed to the controls of the vehicle he would soon be driving. When he was ready, Darian set him in a race car next to another driver, and the two cars took off when the light turned green. Mason's car flew around the track, and it soon became obvious to Leo and the other captives that Mason's opponent didn't have any skills or experience with racing; at least, not as much training as Mason had.

Titans who were spectators in the audience placed bets, and the cars completed the necessary number of laps, and Mason was declared the winner.

When the loser was presented to Darian, she lifted him to her mouth, and swallowed him whole. She licked her lips and looked at her captives.

"That could easily be you if you dare to defy me! Understand?"

The captives nodded their ascent, and Darian commanded them to return to their habitation module, and after Darien collecting her winnings, she and Zima returned to the shuttle cruiser and flew back to Thanatar.

Once back at the University, Darian and Zima placed the habitation module on the massive table and said goodbye for the night.

When the giant women left, Leo looked at their surroundings. "I think we can escape!"

Leo pushed on the door. "Mason, Tyler, Nolan! Help me push this door open!"

The three men pushed on the door, and it slid open. All six captives exited the habitation module.

"That window is open!" said Leo. He pointed at a device that looked like a telescope, but it was actually the device that had opened the space warp that pulled them into this alternate reality.

It took the better part of an hour, but the captives were able to scale the equipment next to the wall and make their way up to the window, and they climbed out and used a power cord to climb down the outside of the building. Soon, they were on the ground on the planet Thanatar at night. They were on their own, but they were free!

The group of six former captives made their way along the side of the building to the front, and saw the quad of Crestwood University. Huge concrete walkways stretched from a central point and fanned out to form four diagonals. There was a water fountain in the center of the quad.

"It feels warm here for some reason," said Carmen.

"We were pulled into the southern hemisphere of this planet," said Leo Tanner, "so the seasons must be reversed, just like Australia is back on our world. It was the middle of Winter when we left Earth, so it must be the middle of Summer here in this region of Thanatar!"

"You're the boss, Captain Tanner!" said Nolan Ward. "What should we do?"

"Call me Leo! We're all in this crazy mess together, so we might as well be on a first name basis. We need to see if we can get to a secluded wooded area."

"Then going across the quad doesn't make much sense!" said Nolan. "I think we should go to the back of the campus and try to find our way off campus that way!"

"I agree with Nolan," said Mason. "If this campus is anything like Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, we might find a stream near campus that should lead us to a rural area. I know when we were descending in the Thunderbolt, this town seemed more medium-sized, not huge like Los Angeles. And I do recall seeing some streams winding through the town."

"I think we should break up into two groups," said Nolan, "because the odds of our capture are higher if we're together!"

"I disagree," said Leo. "We need to stick together! I'm going to find a way to get us back to Earth, even if it means I have to stay behind. When Future Shock hired me, I pledged to look after my passengers under any circumstances, including something as crazy as this!"

"I agree with the Captain," said Nolan's half-sister Natalie Red Hawk. "If we split up, we wouldn't be able to communicate with each other."

"Mason said there's a stream cutting through town," said Leo, "I think if we head South, we should get there and we can follow the stream."

All four of the passengers decided to follow Leo and Mason. It was night time, but Leo and Mason each had a small flashlight they could use.

"I've got an idea," said Leo. "If we set out in one specific direction without knowing where the stream is, we don't know where we could end up. I say the four passengers stay here on campus behind the building we escaped from, and Mason will head west and I'll head south, and we'll meet up here at daybreak. One of us should've found a stream by then."

"Sounds okay to me!" said Nolan, as he sat down and reclined against the school building with his arms behind his back.

"If we're not back within a half hour after daybreak, assume we've been captured and try to evade any giants!" said Leo, and he turned and walked away with Mason. Leo headed south, and Mason headed west.

Mason did his best to stay away from spots where he could be easily seen. He walked in the gutters and under shuttle cruisers. Soon, he came to an area where some college students were having a party. Since he was still close to the University campus where Darian went to school, he had inadvertently stumbled onto a sorority house where the party was in full swing.

"It must be Saturday night here on their world, too!" said Mason to himself.

Meanwhile, Leo found a radio tower that served as a communications nexus for the college radio station. He easily walked through the chain link fence and made his way to the tower.

"If I can climb high enough, I should be able to see where the streams are in this town!" said Leo.

Climbing the tower was easier said than done, however; Leo could see an area about fifty feet off the ground where there was a grid built into the tower that had rungs that were small enough for him to grab onto, but the question was how to scale those first fifty feet.

Back at the sorority party, Mason was trapped. The drunk women in their early 20's stumbled around the front lawn of the sorority mansion carrying their cups of beer, and some of them stumbled into the road as Mason hid in the gutter beneath a shuttle cruiser.

"Damn drunk bitches!" said Mason. "I'm gonna be stuck here all night if this party doesn't die down soon!"

Just then, a drunk college girl stumbled into the area right above the curb where Mason was hiding.

"I think I'm going to puke!" said the young woman, and she bent over to vomit. Mason, seeing that he was right in the path of any vomit that might come down, ran out from under the shuttle cruiser into plain sight.

"Look!" said the drunk college student. "A little person!"

Several of the women approached the curb to see what the first woman was talking about, and a brunette spotted Mason. She thrust her mid-calf boot down on one side of Mason, then stomped down on his other side with her other boot. Before Mason could react, she had bent down and grabbed him.

"We've got another captive for the party game!" said the brunette. "Hello, little man! My name is Stephanie!"

"Stephanie," said a short burly blonde woman, "maybe we shouldn't swallow him, he might belong to someone!"

"I don't care!" said Stephanie. "If he goes to Arcadia it's just a matter of time before he gets swallowed anyway!"

Mason was held firmly in the hands of the mighty giantess, unable to escape. He could still breathe without difficulty, but if she tightened her grip she could easily crush him as if he were a mouse.

"Let me tell you something!" said Stephanie the brunette to the stout blonde, gesturing while waiving her arms,"if someone was stupid enough to let a little person escape, then they had it coming!" With the last few syllables, Stephanie accidentally loosened her grip on Mason, and he went flying through the air and landed on the lawn. Because the sorority girls were drunk, their reaction time was slowed down, giving Mason enough time to flee back into the gutter.

The drunk women looked for him, but they couldn't find him. Mason went back the way he had came, heading back to the University campus in defeat at having not found a stream. Although he had failed in his mission, he was grateful to have escaped the drunken giantess who wanted to use him for a drinking game in which he would've been swallowed.

Meanwhile, Leo was having better luck climbing the radio tower. Because it was dark, he hadn't seen a cable that stretched from a third of the way up the tower to the ground, before disappearing into a pipe. By climbing the cable, Leo was able to make it to the point fifty feet up where the grid started. The grid wasn't designed for human hands, but formed diamond patterns across its entirety. Each diamond shape was about two feet across and one foot high, so it functioned as a ladder for someone from Earth.

Leo climbed several hundred feet, but still wasn't as high as the elevation of a one-story house on Thanatar. This wasn't the work for someone who was afraid of heights, but luckily, Logan was born to be a pilot and was completely unafraid. It took the better part of an hour of steady climbing before he was high enough to see the layout of the town. As he looked around, he could see that Mason was correct, there were hills and streams that were visible. He could see the trees that lined the edges of the nearest stream.

Leo memorized the location and approximate distance of the nearest stream, and then began climbing down. He made his way back to the campus, and found the other five escapees before daybreak.

"No luck, Mason?" Leo asked.

"No, I got captured by a drunk sorority girl, but I got away. How about you?"

"I found a stream!" said Leo. "I know how to get there!"

"How do you know where a stream is?" Mason asked. "Did you find a map?"

"No, I climbed a radio tower and I was able to see the layout of the land." Leo motioned to the others. "Everyone, follow me! The distance is close from the perspective of a giant, but at our diminutive size, it will take us a while longer!"

The six escapees made their way along the gutters of the college town, under shuttle cruisers and in the direction that Logan instructed them. They didn't pass by the same street where the sorority girl had captured Mason, but by daybreak they arrived at the stream Leo had spotted from the radio tower. There was an embankment that was five or six feet down from a giant's perspective, but from an Earthling's perspective, it was several hundred feet down. There was a path they could follow that made their trek easier.

"I don't like this!" said Natalie. "There could be wild animals down here!"

"Well, what would you prefer?" Nolan asked. "Being back under Darian's power and forced to be a game piece on Arcadia, or being free but in a little bit of danger?"

"I guess you're right!" said Natalie. "This is such a strange world! They're thousands of years ahead of us technologically, but they have the mentality of the ancient Romans! Forcing little people to play games where the loser is captured or devoured!"

"Well, nobody ever said life made sense!" said Nolan.

"This society relies on slaves, without it, their economy would collapse!" said Tyler. "Darian herself tried to explain that to us."

"I wonder why we haven't heard of a lot more people ending up here!" said Carmen. "It must take a lot of little people our size to fuel the gaming mecca of Arcadia!"

"I think other people from our world have ended up here," said Tyler, "but they were never heard from again, so they couldn't come back and talk about it!"

"I guess that's true!" said Carmen.

The little people made their way along the stream, with Leo taking the lead while Mason was in the rear with a branch and leaves brushing their footprints clean.

"We should be walking single file to hide our numbers," said Leo, "even though Mason is wiping our trail clear, just so we get in the habit of walking this way."

After several hours passed, they decided to make a camp.

"It's about noon," said Leo, "we should set up camp here, but in the meantime I'm sending Mason out to find food."

Mason set out as Leo instructed. They hadn't eaten since they had eaten those protein bars Darian had given them the day before. Mason found his way to a park, where he saw some women playing volleyball. He made his way back to the camp to inform the others.

"I found a park where some women are playing volleyball," said Mason, "and there's a blanket with a picnic basket! We should be able to go in and take what we need without their knowing we were there!"

Leo, Mason, Nolan, and Tyler headed toward the park, with Mason in the lead. They were able to climb into the picnic basket because of the rungs on the basket acting as ladder rungs. The giant women were so involved in their game that the little people weren't spotted. After Leo, Mason, and Tyler had enough food, they told Nolan to forget about getting more and to come with them.

"Forget it, I'm not going back empty handed!" said Nolan. "I'll just jump in there and grab some dessert!"

As Nolan climbed into the picnic basket, the giantesses finished their game and headed back toward the blanket.

"Nolan, we have to leave! The giants are coming!" Leo shouted, but Nolan remained inside the picnic basket.

"Forget about Nolan," said Leo, "we have to spare ourselves! Let's get back to the camp!"

The three men were on the edge of the park when they saw the giant women surround the picnic basket. Nolan was easily captured within less than a minute. A blonde giantess held him firmly in her right fist.

"Now where did you come from, tiny one?" the giantess asked.

"I'm from Earth!" said Nolan.

"But aren't you all?" the giantess asked. "At least, from some version of Earth. Who did you escape from?"

Nolan was silent.

"If you won't tell me, then I'll just keep you!" said the blonde giantess.

"Are you going to use him for a sex toy?" one of the other women asked. The other women in their group started laughing.

"I might at some point, who knows?" said the blonde giantess. "I think I'm going to train him to be a game piece on Arcadia!" The giantess smiled at her tiny captive. "Don't worry, little man! I'll only play against other women, so if you lose, you'll end up in the belly of someone beautiful!"

"Thanks for reassuring me!" said Nolan sarcastically.

About one o'clock in the afternoon, Zima Zamora arrived to check on the tinies from Earth. She checked the habitation module and saw that they were missing, so she turned on some of the scanning equipment, to check and see if she could detect the lifesigns of the captives.

"They're not here!" Zima said to herself. She went to a two-way video phone and punched in the number to Darian's cell phone. Darian's face appeared on the screen a few moments later. She was sitting in her shuttlecruiser. "The captives have escaped!" said Zima.

"I'm on my way over!" said Darian.

When Darian arrived a couple of minutes later, Zima showed her the window and the cord hanging out of it where the captives had climbed down to get outside the building.

"Don't worry about the captives," said Darian. "We'll have them back soon enough! Everything is going according to plan!"

Darian gave a mischievous smile to Zima, and Zima gave an evil grin. Zima rubbed her hands together with excitement at the thought of re-capturing the tinies.

Meanwhile, back at the park, Leo Tanner, Mason Lewis, and Tyler Chen were watching as the giantesses who had been playing volleyball packed up their belongings, with Nolan Ward as the new acquisition of one of the giant women.

"I'm going to try to hitch a ride on their vehicle!" said Leo. "I want the two of you to take this food back to the camp. If I don't try to track Nolan down now, I might never get the chance again!"

Mason and Tyler watched Logan took off in the direction the giant women were heading.

"Do you really think we can survive on our own in a world of giants?" Tyler asked Mason. "Maybe we're better off under the care of Darian!"

"I'd rather try to do our best living out a fugitive existence than living as pawns that can be gambled away on a game board! You saw what happened to the guy on that losing team! Darian swallowed him!"

"But I'm a pro tennis player!" said Tyler. "Since this is a parallel world, there must be a sport that's an equivalent of tennis here on this world of titans! And if there is, I might be the best player out there!"

"But what if you're not?" Mason asked. "They might have gotten five or six other tennis champions from worlds that are analogs of our own, and they might be better than you!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right!" said Tyler.

"Let's get this food back to the camp!" said Mason.

Across the park, Leo followed the giantess who had captured Nolan. There was a parking lot with a few shuttle cruisers parked there, and when Leo saw the blonde giantess who had captured Nolan get into one of the shuttle cruisers, he got underneath and climbed into the undercarriage and found a spot above the rear bumper where he would be able to hold onto something when the vehicle made its ascent.

The blonde giantess set Nolan inside a plastic jar that she set in a cup holder, then worked the control console of her shuttle cruiser. In moments, the engines kicked on, and the vehicle took off into the sky, climbing at a gentle angle. Her home wasn't far, so the trip only lasted about twenty seconds. Around the rear bumper, Leo held on for dear life and was rewarded when the vehicle came in for a landing less than a minute after take-off. When he saw the giant woman carry the jar containing Nolan into her house, Leo climbed down and followed her, but hid in the shrubbery, waiting to make his move.

Back at the camp, Mason and Tyler eventually arrived with the food they had stolen from the giantess volleyball players.

"Nolan was captured!" Mason told Natalie. "Leo is trying to track him down to try to set him free!"

Natalie lifted her hands to her face in shock. "No!" she said. "How did it happen?"

"Nolan went back for food when Leo told him it was time for us to leave! I guess he didn't want to be the only one to show up at the camp empty handed."

Tyler began setting the food out, and the four of them sat down for their meal. Before they ate, Carmen said a prayer.

"Lord, please protect Nolan and Leo in this dangerous world, and please bring them back to us! Thank you for this food you have provided for us in this our hour of need!"

Back at the house of the giantess who captured Nolan, Leo was trying to scale the perimeter of the house, looking for openings. He spotted a window that was open slightly, and climbed a bush to the ledge beneath the window. When he saw giant insects, it didn't phase him, because his military training from his time in the Air Force gave him the intestinal fortitude to ignore things like that that would startle an average man.

Inside, the blonde giantess sat on the carpet and dumped out the jar that had contained Nolan, and he came tumbling out. The blonde giantess was wearing green shorts and an orange tank top, and she was bare-footed. She had taken her shoes and socks off during the time it took for Leo to get to the window ledge. She was sitting Indian style, and as Nolan got to his feet he saw that she had a nice medium tan for a blonde woman. Nolan thought that she must go to tanning salons regularly to achieve that effect.

"My name is Rikki!" said the giantess. "People like you usually only belong to the extremely wealthy, so someone like me doesn't get an opportunity like this very often! What's your name?"

"Nolan Ward!"

"Welcome to Thanatar, Nolan! Did you know there's a drinking game involving tinies like you?"

"One of the crew members of the space plane that brought me here was almost captured by a sorority girl who planned on using him in a drinking game. That happened last night!"

"Actually, there are several drinking games involving swallowing tiny people, I've always wanted to try it!"

"Wouldn't you rather use me for a sex toy?" Nolan asked.

"Yes, but only if you survive being swallowed by me. Now, I will vomit you back up if I drink enough alcohol, but you're going to have to conserve your air while you're inside my tummy, okay tiny one?"

"Can't we talk about this?" Nolan asked.

"The discussion is over!" said Rikki the giantess, and she stood up to reach for a bottle of alcohol. As she did, Nolan made a break for it and tried to run across the carpet toward the window. Rikki saw what he was trying to do, and walked over and pressed the button on the control console that activated the window and caused it to shut completely. Leo saw her arm approaching the window as she reached for the control console, and jumped out of the way, landing on a branch of the bush he had climbed up. Luckily, Rikki didn't see him.

Inside the house, Rikki grabbed a champagne glass and a bottle of white wine, and poured some into the glass. She grabbed Nolan, who from her perspective, was around one inch in height. Rikki dangled him over her champagne glass, and dropped him inside. When Nolan splashed down into the cool liquid, he panicked, thinking that he would soon find himself contained within the muscular walls of Rikki's stomach. As he struggled and splashed around inside the glass, Nolan tried to reason with Rikki.

"I'm about an inch tall from your perspective, right? Isn't that a little big to swallow? Maybe you should acquire a captive from a world where the people are one centimeter tall from your point of view! I don't know, you could swallow a midget or something!"

"Trying to reason with me will do you no good!" said the beautiful blonde titaness. "You're going on a journey to my belly!"

She tilted the glass back and began guzzling the contents. Nolan tried to swim in the direction of the bottom of the glass, which was tilted upwards at that point; however, it did him no good. Rikki's mouth was wide open and ready to receive him. Nolan could feel Rikki's hot breath washing over him as she guzzled the wine; there was nothing he could hold onto, the force of gravity was dragging him to exactly the place where Rikki wanted him: her mouth. Nolan found himself dragged down toward her mouth by the pull of the current of the wine. Soon, he splashed down on her tongue, and her teeth clenched down around him and locked into place. With one muscular contraction, Nolan was dispatched down Rikki's esophagus to splash down in the depths of her titanic belly. The fumes were overwhelming and he was covered with chyme, but surprisingly, there was a pocket of air inside Rikki's stomach, with just enough air for Nolan to survive, at least for the time being.

Meanwhile, outside the house, Leo tried to find another window he could climb through. He walked around the house, which was wider in diameter than a football stadium. He wished they had some form of walkie-talkies so he could communicate with his Mason Lewis, his co-pilot, but he knew the advanced technology of these titans would probably be able to track their transmissions, so it wouldn't have done them any good any way.

Right at that moment, Rikki chose to open the sliding door of the backyard and step outside. Leo was unaware of the drama that unfolded within her stomach walls, that Nolan was fighting for survival. Leo quickly seized the opportunity to run inside the house, hoping that he would be able to find a way to secure Nolan and bring him back to the camp. Rikki had the wine bottle in her hand, and took swigs from it now and then.

Inside her belly, Nolan was soaking wet, floating in the chyme of Rikki's partially digested food. Every time she took a swig of the wine bottle, wine rained down on Nolan. There was an air pocket with just enough air for him to survive if he took a breath only every fifteen or twenty seconds. Nolan silently prayed that Rikki would vomit as soon as possible.

When Rikki downed the last of the wine in the wine bottle, she felt a familiar sensation that she had felt on occasions when she was sick. She knew she was about to vomit, and what better place to do that than outside? She bent over, and the contents of her stomach erupted onto the grass. Nolan was discharged up through her esophagus and out her mouth, and down onto the grass below. When Rikki recovered, she scooped Nolan up.

"Let's get you inside and get you cleaned up! You just had an adventure! Tomorrow, I'm going to train you for Arcadia!"

The door was still open at that point, but Leo felt that he needed to get back to the camp and inform the others of what happened. They could come back for Nolan, now that he knew where Rikki the giantess who captured Nolan lived. When he got outside, he memorized the address on the wall near the front door of Rikki's house, and after jumping down into the gutter, he went to the corner and memorized the street name. The trip from the park to Rikki's house only took twenty seconds, so Leo figured he could get back to the camp by nightfall. In the distance, he could see the mountain that was near the edge of the campus they had escaped from.

Leo had a good sense of direction because of his military training, and he had a compass to guide him, so he made his way from gutter to gutter, avoiding giant people along the way. At sunset he found his way back to the park where Nolan was abducted, and from there he found his way to the camp by the stream just after night fall.

"We saved some food for you, captain!" said Mason.

"I tracked Nolan down, I know where we can find him! We should set out for him immediately!"

"Whoa, hold on!" said Mason. "You look like you just walked thirty miles! I think you need to rest!"

"Maybe you're right!" said Leo. "We can go after him first thing in the morning!"

"How is my brother doing?" Natalie asked. "Is he okay?"

"He's doing fine!" said Leo. "He got captured by a giantess named Rikki. I know where she lives. I saw her swallow Nolan while drinking a bottle of wine,"

"Oh my God!" said Natalie.

"It's okay!" said Leo. "She wasn't trying to hurt him, it was a drinking game. She vomited him up. She plans on taking him to Arcadia!"

Daybreak warmed the land, and Rikki woke up to check on her captive. Nolan had slept in a jar with airholes cut into the lid and a rag as a blanket, bed, and pillow. Rikki picked up the jar while Nolan was still sleeping and rapped on the jar with her other fist.

"Wake up, sleepyhead! It's time to prepare you for the games!"

Rikki sat down Indian style on the carpet of her bedroom and unscrewed the lid of the jar and dumped Nolan out onto the carpet. He came tumbling down harmlessly, then stood up to face his captress.

"Are you thinking of taking me to Arcadia?" Nolan asked.

"Yes!" said Rikki. "If you win a few games, I could acquire some more captives!"

"Wouldn't I make a better sex toy?" Nolan asked.

"You're too small to make an effective sex toy," said Rikki.

"But I don't have any athletic skills! The only sport I was ever any good at was basketball, but I'm five-eleven, so I wouldn't stand a chance against some of those bigger guys!"

"Maybe we can find a sport you're good at," said Rikki.

"I'm telling you you're wasting your time!" said Nolan. "I'm not good at anything!"

"Well, I can give you two choices," said Rikki. "You can either volunteer to practice for the games, or you can be the victim of another drinking game and end up at the bottom of my belly, but this time, you'll be stuck there permanently!"

Nolan stepped back and swallowed out of fear as he looked up at his mistress. She was far too powerful for him to escape from by himself, so he had no choice.

"Okay, I'll practice for the games!" said Nolan.

"Good!" said Rikki, clapping her hands together. "I'll call my friend Britney and have her bring her captives and equipment over, and they'll train you to play a sport!"

Rikki got up and got her cell phone and called her friend.

"Britney? This is Rikki! I have a captive now! Can you bring your captives over so they can train my captive for Arcadia?"

Meanwhile, back at the camp by the stream, the five fugitives from Earth began to wake up. Tyler and his wife Carmen woke up to see that Leo was already awake, and sitting on a log.

"I could really go for a cup of coffee right now!" said Carmen.

Mason woke up next, followed by Natalie.

"Are we going to rescue my brother?" Natalie asked Leo.

"Yes, we're going to try." replied Leo. "But I'm only taking one man with me, and the other man needs to stay with the women and find food. Both missions are dangerous, so I'm asking for volunteers!"

"I'll go with you to rescue Nolan," said Tyler. "It shouldn't fall on Mason to help you do all the difficult work."

"All right Tyler," said Leo, "Freshen up and drink some water before we leave, because we'll take off in ten minutes!"

Back at Rikki's house, her friend Britney arrived with the equipment and her two captives. Rikki helped Britney set up a portable handball court on her dining room table. After it was unfolded, it had a hard surface that made up the floor, and a hard surface that functioned as a wall.

"These are my two captives Jace and Trevor!" said Britney to Nolan. "I purchased Jace, and he happened to be a great handball player back on Earth, so I took him to Arcadia and he won a match and I won Trevor, his opponent!"

Nolan shook hands with Jace and Trevor.

"Nolan, have you ever played handball before?" Rikki asked.

"Yes, in jail, but I was never any good at it!" Nolan responded.

Jace and Trevor set out to show Nolan how to play the game effectively. They showed him how to serve the ball, and they showed him their techniques, but Nolan just couldn't catch on. As the morning wore on, it dawned on everyone that Nolan just didn't have any skills, and would probably get beaten at any sport on Arcadia he tried to play.

Within two hours of leaving the camp, Leo and Tyler were halfway to Rikki's house. Although it was a short distance from the park where Nolan was captured to Rikki's house according to how giants measured distance, to the fugitives from Earth it was a distance of about thirty miles. Leo was in top shape for a man his age, and Tyler was a professional tennis player, so both men were able to jog most of the distance without feeling tired. The two men were in such great shape that they could even carry on a conversation while they jogged along.

"We're going through a lot of effort for one man!" said Tyler. "Even if we rescue him, what do you think our chances are of getting the Thunderbolt refueled and returning to Earth?

"It doesn't look good right now," Leo replied, "but the Future Shock company entrusted me with the lives of these passengers, and I'm going to do all in my power to get them back to Earth, no matter the odds!"

"Let's say we manage to get the Thunderbolt refueled," said Tyler as he jogged along beside Leo in a gutter beneath a curb. "If one of us manages to figure out how to use Darian's equipment to re-open that wormhole or space warp that brought us here, one of us will have to stay behind to work the control console!"

"If it comes down to that, I'm prepared to stay behind, if it will mean the rest of you get to return home!" said Leo.

Meanwhile, back at Rikki's house, it was time for lunch. Rikki set out a small table that was on Nolan's scale, with three chairs, one for Nolan, one for Jace, and one for Trevor. Food and water was set on the table for the captives.

"Jace and Trevor," said Rikki, "try to talk some sense into Nolan for me!"

Rikki and Britney went to eat on the patio of the backyard. While Nolan, Jace and Trevor silently ate their lunch, Nolan noticed that Jace and Trevor were very athletic-looking, but also looked like they had done some time in jail.

"So how did you two get so good at handball?" Nolan asked.

"On the version of Earth that I came from," said Jace, "I was locked up in the county jail a lot, and that's how I got good at handball. They used to let us out into the yard a lot to play, and I became the best on my cell-block!"

"I played some handball in juvie when I was a teenager," said Trevor. "But I wasn't as good as Jace. I was defeated by him, but luckily, Britney didn't swallow me, she kept me and had Jace train me to get better at handball."

"Don't fool yourself," said Jace. "There's no escape from Thanatar, in the history of this world no tiny has ever escaped from this world! You will play handball on Arcadia, win or lose!"

"And whether or not you end up in the belly of some giantess depends on how good you get!" said Trevor.

"But I suck at handball!" said Nolan. "I did time in county jail, too! But I never got good at handball!"

"On Thanatar, it's do or die!" said Jace. "Pretenders don't live very long! You can either train with us, or you can live a very short life!"

Before long, training resumed. After playing hard for about 45 minutes (and not winning or improving), Nolan was thirsty.

"Rikki, can I have some water?"

Britney was shocked that Nolan had addressed her by name. "Nolan, that just isn't done!" said Britney. "You should always address your owner as mistress!"

Jace and Trevor approached Nolan. "How long ago did you get captured?" Jace asked.

"The day before yesterday!" said Nolan.

"Forgive him, mistress!" said Jace to Britney. "He hasn't been here long enough to know any better!"

"Can I have some water?" Nolan asked.

"You can have water when your game improves!" said Rikki.

Meanwhile, Leo and Tyler had found the street corner where the signpost that signified the street where Rikki's house was located.

"That's the street her house is on!" said Leo, pointing at the sign.

"How far is the house?" Tyler asked.

"About two miles on our scale," said Leo.

The two men jogged along the curb, passing underneath the occasional shuttle cruiser that was parked on the street. At each driveway, they peeked around before running to the other side where the curb continued; the curb concealed them, but every time the curb dipped down to form a driveway, they were out in the open.

Within twenty minutes, they reached Rikki's house. They walked under her back fence and entered her backyard. There was a patio area with a table and chairs for giants to sit and eat or drink. The sliding glass door was closed, but it opened and Rikki and her friend Britney exited.

"Nolan isn't with them!" whispered Leo. "He must still be inside!"

"Which one lives here?" Tyler whispered.

"That one," whispered Leo as he pointed at Rikki.

"I'm going after Nolan!" said Tyler, and he ran toward the open sliding door.

"Tyler, come back!" said Leo. "We need a plan!"

Tyler was able to enter the house undetected by the giantesses. He ran to a pot that held a potted plant, and hid behind it. Jace saw him enter the house, and got Trevor and Nolan's attention.

"Do you know that guy?" Jace asked Nolan.

"That's Tyler Chen!" said Nolan. "He was a passenger on the space plane that I was on when we got pulled through a space warp to this world!"

"I don't know about the world you came from," said Jace, "but on my version of Earth, Tyler Chen was a pro tennis player!"

Jace started yelling for Britney and Rikki. "Mistress! There's an intruder here! He plays tennis! You can't lose with him as your captive!"

Rikki and Britney got up from their seats on the patio and entered the house to see what the fuss was about. Rikki hit the button on the keypad that shut the sliding glass door, and crossed her arms and looked at the captives.

"What is going on?" Rikki asked.

"There's a pro tennis player hiding behind that potted plant!" shouted Trevor. "If you catch him, you can't lose!"

Rikki looked for the captive, and Tyler ran out and darted across the room. Rikki ran after him and slammed her left foot down in front of him, blocking his path. He ran in another direction, but she slammed her other foot down and blocked his path again. She reached down and cupped her hand over him and picked him up, and set him down on the table with Nolan, Jace, and Trevor.

"I can't believe you dropped a dime on him!" said Nolan, and he took a swing at Trevor.

"Is it true you play tennis professionally?" Rikki asked.

Leo could see Tyler getting captured, so he made his way under the backyard fence and out to the front yard, and back to the gutter to make his way back to the camp thirty miles away. It wasn't quite sunset when he started out. He made his way back the way he had came, traveling in gutters and being careful to cross the streets only when he was sure there were no giants around. He tried to jog like he did on the way to Rikki's house, and he made it back to the camp at about three in the morning. When he got back, he was exhausted from climbing the radio tower, and making the trek to and from Rikki's house three separate times. Mason was keeping watch, and woke up the others. Natalie and Carmen joined Leo and Mason.

"Tyler was captured by the same giantess that captured Nolan!" said Leo. "There was nothing I could do!"

"My husband!" said Carmen in shock. "Are you going to try to rescue them?"

"I don't know," said Leo. "We would need tools of some type to break through her sliding glass door! I don't know where we can find tools like that on our scale!"

"What does the giantess plan on doing with Tyler?" Carmen asked.

"It looks like both he and Nolan are being prepared to play on Arcadia!" said Leo.

"I have faith in Tyler," said Carmen. "He's an expert tennis player, so if they have a similar game here on Thanatar, Tyler should be okay!"

Earlier that day, after Leo had escaped and was heading back toward the camp, but before he got back, Rikki looked at Tyler as he stood on the dining room table, next to Nolan, Jace and Trevor. "So you're a pro tennis player on your home world?"

"I might be!" said Tyler.

"He is!" said Trevor. "On the version of Earth that I come from, everyone has heard of Tyler Chen! He must've came from a world that is an analog of mine! If he plays for you, it's a guarantee that he'll win some game pieces for you!"

"You're just their little minion, aren't you?" said Nolan.

"I've found it pays to serve the giants well!" said Trevor. "The sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be!"

"I still plan on getting back to Earth somehow!" said Nolan.

"It'll never happen!" said Trevor. "No tiny has ever escaped back to their home-world! It hasn't happened in the history of Thanatar, and they've been conquering alternate realities for thousands of years!"

"Yeah!" said Jace. "What makes you think you'll be the first?"

The next morning, back at the camp, Leo was sleeping in. He was catching up on some much needed rest. By walking back from Rikki's house and making two round trips there and back again, he had walked and jogged ninety miles in one twenty-four hour period, and it had caught up with him.

Mason, Carmen, and Natalie were sitting around contemplating their options.

"I guess I could get back to the campus and try to see if there's some way to refuel the Thunderbolt!" said Mason.

"You'd better wait until Leo wakes up," said Carmen. "He's in charge of our welfare."

"Do you think we really have a chance to ever get back to Earth?" Natalie asked.

"To be honest, it doesn't look good!" said Mason. "But Leo wants to keep trying until we've exhausted all of our possibilities."

Mason snapped a twig in half that he had been holding in his hands and tossed it into the stream. "I think I'd better do some recon and try to spy on Darian and Zima, and try to see if I can find anything out." Mason stood up and began to walk away. "When Leo wakes up, tell him where I went!"

"Mason, I don't think Leo will be happy when he wakes up and finds out that you've left!" said Carmen. "We already lost Nolan because he took action without the consent of the captain, then we lost Tyler on a rescue mission to retrieve Nolan! We don't need to lose you, too!"

"If I don't do anything, we won't be any better off," said Mason. "At least if I go try to spy on Darian, I can find out if there's a chance of refueling the Thunderbolt and using Darian's technology to get us home!"

"Mason, Carmen's right!" said Natalie. "We'd be lost without you! We can't afford to have you get captured!" Natalie tried to use her body to block Mason's path. Mason held her in his arms.

"Don't worry about me!" said Mason. "I won't get caught, I'm not as stupid as your brother Nolan! Trust me, I'll be back!" Mason grabbed Natalie by the shoulders and gently pushed her aside, and stepped around her.

Mason walked toward the trail that led to the road. He remembered how to get back to the University campus, so he followed the procedure and stayed in the gutters and tried to lay low. It took a couple of hours, but he got to the campus without getting caught. Now he just had to make his way to the building where Darian was keeping the Thunderbolt. He saw that the cord they had climbed down had been removed, but the door was open. He hid behind the front of the door and tried to listen. Mason could see the Thunderbolt on a table top. Peeking inside, Mason could see Darian and Zima were in between classes and Darian was adjusting some equipment.

"With this interface," said Darian, "we can use the crew and passenger manifest to run the names of the captives through this space warp Internet scanning technology; we can check the Internet of their own world to find out who they are and what skills they have!"

Several read-outs appeared on the screen in front of Darian. One of them interested Darian.

"It says here that Tyler Chen is a world renowned tennis champion! If I can get him back, we can't lose on Arcadia!"

"But what if he's already been captured by someone else by now?" Zima asked.

"Then we'll just have to go to Arcadia and claim him if anyone tries to register him as a game piece!"

"Did you register him as your own game piece when you took the captives to Arcadia?" Zima asked.

"Yes, of course!" said Darian. "So if someone tries to register him, I'll find out! There's also something I'm not telling you, Zima! I have a secret plan for getting all the captives back!"

"What did you do?" Zima asked.

"You'll find out later this afternoon!" said Darian.

Mason overheard the entire conversation, and decided that he had heard enough. He made his way off campus and returned to the camp, where Leo was awake sitting with Carmen and Natalie.

"I found something out!" said Mason. "Darian has something up her sleeve, and she plans on capturing us again later this afternoon!"

"How is she going to catch us?" Leo asked.

"I don't know," replied Mason, "I overheard her telling Zima, but she didn't reveal all of her plans to Zima yet. And she also found out that Tyler Chen is a pro tennis player!"

Leo cursed and shook his fist in the air. "Damn! Now he'll be used as a game piece by her for sure!"

"That other giantess already captured him, and she's probably going to use him as a game piece," said Natalie.

"Yes, but as soon as she does, Darian will go to Arcadia and retrieve him because she registered all of us already!" said Mason. "I heard her explaining that to Zima.

Meanwhile, back at Rikki's house, Rikki was planning on taking Tyler to Arcadia. She took Nolan along with her also, and her friend Britney came along with her in Rikki's shuttle cruiser, and she brought her two captives, Jace and Trevor.

"We can't lose with Tyler as my game piece!" said Rikki as she piloted the shuttle cruiser up through the clouds and into space. The Arcadia space station could be seen in the distance on the view screen. It only took a few minutes to reach Arcadia. Rikki parked her shuttle cruiser, and took Nolan and Tyler in her hands and carried them to the registration office.

"There's a problem," said the woman in the office.

"What's the problem?" Rikki asked.

"This game piece has a quantum signature that matches the one already registered to Darian Wagner! I'm notifying her now."

"But this game piece escaped from her!" said Rikki. "If I re-captured him, shouldn't I be entitled to a payment of some kind?"

"I'll let you negotiate with her about that!" said the woman.

Meanwhile, back on campus, Darian received a call from Arcadia.

"So they captured him?" Darian asked. "I'll be right there!" Darian put her phone away and turned toward Zima. "They captured Tyler Chen! We're going to Arcadia!"

Darian and Zima got into Darian's shuttle cruiser and took off into the sky, flying at a forty-five degree angle through the clouds. The blue sky soon gave away to the blackness of space, and they closed in on the Arcadia space station. Within minutes, they were parked and Darian, followed by Zima, headed to the registration office.

The office worker introduced Darian to Rikki.

"I captured two of your game pieces!" said Rikki. "Do I get a reward?"

"I'll tell you what," said Darian, "we'll set Tyler up with a match, and you can keep ten percent of the winnings!"

"That sounds good to me!" said Rikki, and the two women shook hands.

Before long, a match was set up, and Darian bet a lot of money on Tyler to win. Tyler was in his element, the game they played was very similar to tennis, and he only needed a brief orientation before he played his match. The racquets were made of an energy field, and the ball was made of an energy that reacted to and was repelled by the energy field on the racquet.

Tyler got busy and smashed his opponent. The opponent was just a guy who had been good at tennis back on his home world, but was no match for a seasoned pro like Tyler. When the game was over, Darian went to retrieve Tyler, but he shouted, "I want to play some more!"

Darian decided to let him keep playing. The next match was played against another man who was considered good, but he also was no pro. Tyler defeated him with ease. After playing three matches and dispatching three opponents with relative ease, Darian decided that he had played enough games for one day.

Darian cashed her game card and gave ten percent of her winnings to Rikki by plugging both cards into a machine and conducting the transfer. As Darian got up to leave with Tyler, Nolan, and her three other captives that she had just won, Rikki stopped her.

"Can I keep one of the captives you just won? After all, I did find your tennis champion and return him to you!"

"Sorry, but I promised them to my assistant Zima!" Darian had the three captives she had just won in her left fist, and Tyler and Nolan in her right fist. She told Zima to hold out her hand, and deposited the three newly won captives into Zima's waiting hand. Zima stuck her tongue out at Rikki as they walked off.

While Zima held her three captives and Darian held Nolan and Tyler, they decided to take in a match. They sat and ordered drinks and watched as tennis players fought to avoid getting defeated. Neither Darian nor Zima placed any bets, they just enjoyed the action. Darian was pleased when the woman who owned the winning player raised the losing opponent to her lips and swallowed him. The stadium erupted in cheers at this action.

"That's what I love about this place!" said Darian. "For the captives, there is no escape from our bellies! They all end up there eventually!"

"We have our presentation tomorrow," said Zima, "and you still don't have all of your captives collected yet!"

"Don't worry about that!" said Darian. "Before tonight, we'll have those tiny fools back in our clutches!"

"Can you tell me your plan?" Zima asked.

"Just wait until we get back to the surface," said Darian. "I'm tracking all of them at all times, I know exactly where they are!" Darian pulled out a small hand-held device. "I low-jacked them with nanobots in the food they ate!" said Darian. "We're going to have fun collecting them!"

Zima smiled. "You've thought of everything! Let's go get them right now!"

"After one more match!" said Darian. "I want to watch another captive get swallowed!"

Darian handed the scanning device to Zima. Zima could see where the captives were, and each of them had a position of latitude and longitude, except for Nolan and Tyler.

"It looks like they're close to the campus!" said Zima.

"They've been camped out at the creek that winds through town not far from the University. "When we return to Thanatar, we'll pounce on them!"

Zima sucked on her drink through a straw as they watched the match, holding her three captives firmly in her other fist.

"Think of how it must seem to the people from Earth who get captured!" said Zima with an evil smirk on her face. "To them, we must seem like a race of gods!"

"We're more than a race of gods to them, Zima!" said Darian. "We're a race of titans!"

"They are so trusting of us," said Zima, "But they don't suspect that each and every one of them will surely end up in the belly of a titan at some point!"

This conversation sent chills up and down Nolan's spine, and gave him resolve to try to help Leo and Mason find a way to get them back to Earth.

Just then, the current match was over, and the loser approached the giantess who owned the winning game piece, and she snatched him up. She lifted him over her mouth, and dropped him in and swallowed him. The crowd went wild, people were cheering and clapping. Darian and Zima rose to leave.

"Let's go capture those escaped captives!" said Darian.

Darian piloted her shuttlecruiser through space, away from the Arcadia space station. Zima sat beside her, and in between them was a habitation chamber that contained Nolan Ward, Tyler Chen, and the other three captives that Darian had won on Arcadia that she had given to Zima. Darian plugged in her device that kept track of the captives through the homing signals given off by the nanobots in their bloodstream that they consumed when they ate those protein bars Darian had given them on the day they were captured.

"I know exactly where they are!" said Darian. "I think I'll use some force-field mines to surround them."

"Do you really need to go through all that trouble?" Zima asked. "Why not just land and grab them?"

"Little people can move faster than you might think," said Darian as the shuttle cruiser pierced the atmosphere of Thanatar and descended toward the stream not far from her University campus. "It's really not as much trouble as it would be to try to chase them down through the smaller areas of the creek! It's better to be prepared!"

When they were about a mile above the creek, Darian pushed a sequence of buttons that released about a dozen self propelled mines that surrounded the captives at their campsite. On the ground below, Leo heard the sound of objects hitting the ground very firmly.

"What was that?" Leo asked Mason. Carmen and Natalie approached the men.

"What's happening?" Carmen asked.

"Darian must be coming for us!" said Mason. "She said she had some kind of a plan!"

"Everybody split up!" said Leo. "She can't capture all of us if we're not together, we have a better chance of escape if we're divided!"

The four fugitives split up in four directions. Leo came to a blue energy field that stretched from one large metallic mine to another about a football field away (on Leo's scale). Mason had the same luck when he came to an energy barrier in the direction he travelled. Mason threw a rock and when it hit the energy field, the rock bounced back. Mason tried to touch the energy field with his hand, but recoiled in pain instantly.

"Ouch! That hurt!" shouted Mason.

Darian's shuttle cruiser found a spot to land within a clearing not far from where the captives were. The gull wing door of her shuttle cruiser opened, and she emerged, followed by Zima, who held her three captives in a jar with a lid secured on top, with air holes cut out of it.

"Well, well, well!" said Darian. "What have we here? Four escaped fugitives who need to find themselves back in the loving hands of their mistress!"

Darien held a device in her hand that controlled the force-field mines. She adjusted the controls, and the mines began rolling toward a common center, where the shuttle cruiser was parked. Leo, Mason, Carmen, and Natalie ran toward the shuttle cruiser rather than risk getting burned by the shocking power of the force-fields. Before long, the mines were all less than ten yards (on Darian's scale) from the shuttle cruiser. All four captives were within view and earshot of Darian now.

"Just so you're in the know," said Darian, "I planted nanobots in those protein bars you all ate the day I captured you! They give off a homing signal that allows me to track you wherever you are!"

"We had you under our control all this time!" said Zima with a wicked smile on her face. "You're just a bunch of pathetic pawns!"

"Collect them, Zima!" Darian commanded.

"With pleasure!" said Zima as she unscrewed the lid from the jar with her three captives inside. There was more than enough room for an additional four captives. Carmen and Natalie didn't put up a fight, but Leo and Mason tried to run. Zima quickly stomped her left foot down in front of Leo, and knelt down and grabbed him. She made quick work of capturing Mason, too. Within one minute, she had collected all four former fugitives.

Darian and Zima returned to the shuttle cruiser, and Zima dumped all four former fugitives and the three captives belonging to Zima into the habitation module with Nolan and Tyler. Before the gull wing door to the shuttle cruiser even closed, Natalie ran up and hugged her half-brother Nolan.

"Nolan!" said Natalie. "I thought I'd never see you again!"

Carmen ran up and hugged her husband Tyler.

"Who are these guys?" Leo asked, indicating the three captives Darian had given to Zima.

"Don't trust them," said Nolan. "Any captive who is owned by titans are a bunch of little rats! If you want to keep anything a secret from Darian, they would drop a dime on you!"

Zima had been watching them and listening as Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser back to the campus. "I can take one of them off your hands!" Zima reached down and grabbed one of her three captives, and lifted him to her mouth.

"How does it feel to know you're going to surrender to the belly of a titan?" Zima asked.

"I'm terrified!" the man answered.

"Well," said Zima, "just remember to struggle when you're inside my belly, that would give me satisfaction if I could feel you squirming around inside me, okay?" Zima's face twisted into an evil smile. When the tiny man failed to respond, Zima repeated more loudly, "Okay?"

The tiny man in Zima's grasp spoke up: "I prefer if you'd call it your tummy!"

"What?" Zima asked.

"I'd like it if you said tummy instead of belly!" said the tiny captive.

"Oh, how sweet!" said Zima. "Do you want to surrender to the tummy of a titan goddess?"

"Yes!" said the captive.

"Do you promise to struggle when you're in my tummy, to give me a feeling of satisfaction?" Zima asked.

"Yes!" said the tiny captive, and Zima dropped him onto her tongue and closed her mouth. Several seconds later, after positioning him comfortably on her tongue, Zima swallowed him.

"That's so strange!" said Natalie. "It's like he volunteered to be swallowed by Zima!"

Zima heard this, and tilted her face toward the captives in their habitation module.

"That's because he's been on Thanatar a lot longer than you! When you've been here as long as he has, you'll realize that your destiny lies within the depths of the belly of a titan goddess, sooner or later!"

They arrived on campus, and Zima carried the habitation module containing the eight captives (it was nine, but Zima had just swallowed one of them, so their number had decreased by one). When they got to the building where the Thunderbolt was kept, Zima placed the habitation module right next to it.

"You can let them out," said Darian, "they can't get anywhere. It's not like they know how to use this equipment and can refuel their space plane!" Both giantesses laughed at this, and Zima pushed the button that opened the outer door of the habitation module. The six captives from Earth immediately exited and looked at the Thunderbolt.

"Is it okay if we get our luggage from our space plane?" Leo asked.

"By all means!" said Darian. "Make yourselves comfortable!"

Leo and Mason got busy unloading the luggage from the cargo holds. The women were especially happy to get their things back.

"Your habitation modules come equipped with warm showers," said Darian, "so if you want to get cleaned up and changed into nicer clothes, you can!"

Zima brought them some food to eat. "You must be hungry after living a fugitive existence for a few days!"

The food was similar to what they had eaten before, food bars wrapped in metallic wrappers. Zima also gave them water to drink. When Leo and Mason were done unloading the luggage, they all sat down to eat. Zima's two captives also ate with them.

"New arrivals always find it hard to accept their destiny on Thanatar!" said one of Zima's two captives. "Once you realize your destiny is to surrender to the belly of a titan goddess, you'll find peace!"

"No tiny person has ever escaped back to their home world!" said Zima's other captive. "Everyone who first gets here thinks they'll be the first, but no one ever does. The titans always win!"

"I don't know about that," said Leo, "I'm a betting man, and I've come up against some pretty bad odds and still came away a winner!"

"Don't try to reason with them," said Nolan. "If they find out you have an escape plan, they'll rat you out to Darian and Zima!"

"There's going to be a presentation tomorrow," said Darian to the captives. "I need the six of you to be well-rested, so don't try to escape again!"

When they were done eating, Zima collected her two captives, and Darian locked the captives in their habitation module for the night. Everyone got a hot shower and changed into clean clothes from their luggage, and there were extra food bars and water in case they were hungry again. There were beds built into the habitation module, and they all went to sleep. Nobody thought about escaping, at least not just yet.


The next morning, Darian and Zima arrived much earlier than they usually did. Darian activated the control console that slid the dome from the top of the habitation module, so she could see them and speak to them face to face, as they had when they were in the shuttle cruiser the day before when Zima had swallowed one of her captives.

"Are you guys ready? I'm taking you to an audience hall where I will present you for my junior thesis! People are going to watch you on stage! My advice to you is don't make me look stupid there! If you try to sabotage my presentation, I will end all of you! Do we have an understanding?"

Leo and the others agreed to Darian's terms. They weren't surprised, they had been expecting something like this.

"Zima, why didn't you bring your captives with you? The contrast between captives who are still defiant and captives who have accepted their fate would've been helpful to my presentation."

Zima broke eye contact with Darian and looked away, toward the floor.

"Zima?" Darian asked. "Where are your two captives?"

"I swallowed them!" said Zima. "I couldn't help it, they were so small and helpless, and I've never owned captives before!"

"You could've used them on Arcadia to win more captives!" said Darian. "Zima, you need to learn to control your animalistic desires!"

Darian closed the dome on the habitation module and carried it to the audience chamber several buildings away. Zima locked the door to the building that housed the Thunderbolt. When they arrived backstage, several other women were there with their projects, mostly of a technical nature. Darian was the only college student with tiny people as part of her presentation.

"Darian Wagner, you will be going first!" said the announcer.

Darian unlocked the outer door of the habitation module, and the six captives filed out.

"My junior thesis project involves how quickly the primitive people from Earth adapt to their new environment and learn to accept their fate! As you can see, I have six people whom I acquired with a space warp cannon at one of the school laboratories. None of them suffer from post traumatic stress disorder!" Darian looked at Zima. "My assistant Zima will now demonstrate something!"

Zima got a string and told the captives to hold on, and when they did, she held them above her mouth.

"People who want to pass laws to protect little people like these are misguided, because there are so many alternate realities to choose from that we have probably only taken less than ten people from any given reality, despite the trillions of captives that have been captured since inter-dimensional space-warp technology was perfected five thousand years ago!"

Zima slowly lowered the string down toward her open mouth. Carmen and Natalie were on the bottom trying to hold on, and they were the first to enter her mouth, followed by Nolan. Darian saw her out of the corner of her eye and said, "Zima, stop it! Don't put them in your mouth!"

People in the audience laughed at this, but there were a vocal group of protesters who booed. Some of them were carrying protest signs.

"Gaming is vitally important to our economy," Darian continued, "protesters don't understand that without tinies, our economy would collapse! We have no choice but to keep conquering tiny people from other realities!" Darian also gave some statistical information and concluded with her presentation by offering people from the audience to come up onstage and hold some of the captives.

A young woman was among the audience members who got onstage, and unknown to Darian, she was one of the protesters. She stuck something in Leo's hand and said, "Keep this and learn how to use it! It will help you escape!"

Leo slipped it in his jacket pocket before returning to the habitation module, and Darian was completely unaware that he had it.

Darian grabbed the captives and placed them back inside the habitation module. For some reason, she didn't allow them to walk back through the entrance themselves, she wanted to feel them in her hands, to give her a feeling of power. Darian instructed Zima to carry the habitation module back to the lab. The two women walked together while Zima carried the habitation module.

"Do you think the people of Earth will ever be as technologically advanced as Thanatar?" Zima asked.

"Probably," said Darian, "but when they do, we'll just find alternate realities where they are less sophisticated than us and use those realities to lure victims here for the games on Arcadia!"

"What if they went to war with us?" Zima asked. "I mean, if they became as advanced as us, and they sent warships to attack us in this day and age!"

"They'll probably never know people from their reality were victimized by us!" said Darian. "What you're describing could only happen if little people from Earth returned to their home world to tell them about us. So far, that's never happened, and it's up to people like us to ensure that it never happens!"

By that time, they had gotten back to the lab. Zima set the habitation module on the table next to the Thunderbolt.

"Don't set it there!" said Darian. "I don't want them to have access to their spaceplane while we're gone. I have to go to study hall and write a paper on my presentation that I did today, and you have a class right now. I'm leaving them in here without locking them into their habitation module."

"What if they escape again?" Zima asked.

"They only escaped last time because I allowed it to happen!" said Darian. "I'll discuss it during my second presentation. But for now, I'll just close the window they escaped from!" Darian walked over to the wall where the space-warp cannon was, and activated a control console that closed the window that the Earth captives had escaped out of with an extension cord several nights earlier.

"What are you going to do with the tinies when you're done with your junior thesis?" Zima asked.

"I'm not sure, why?" Darian asked.

"Because I'd like you to turn them over to me!" said Zima.

"Zima, that's not going to happen!" said Darian. "Those three captives I won on Arcadia that I gave you didn't last 24 hours! I'm not stupid enough to turn these captives over to you, they'd just end up in your belly!"

When Darian and Zima left, the lights were on lower than normal, but there was still enough light to see by. Leo was fiddling with the device the protester had given him. Mason saw it, and approached him.

"What did she give you?" Mason asked.

"It's a device that should help us to escape from Darian and get back to Earth!" said Leo. "If I could just figure out how to work it!"

Nolan, Tyler and Mason slid the door open that led outside the habitation module. The Thunderbolt was on the next table over, and there was a gulf of about a hundred feet between their table and the table where the Thunderbolt was perched. The men looked over the edge of the table and tried to find a way down and back up the other table so they could ascend to the Thunderbolt, but there was no way down.

"I don't see anything we can use!" said Mason. "We need to know how much fuel we have left, and once we refuel, someone needs to open the window and operate the space-warp cannon that brought us here!"

"Won't that mean one of us will have to stay behind?" Nolan asked. "Because it sure as hell won't be me!"

"It's going to be either Leo or myself who will have to stay behind," said Mason. "Logan has a device that may help him decipher Titan technology, and as long as Darian doesn't discover it and take it from him, it should be our key to getting home!"

"Well it looks like we can forget about getting to the Thunderbolt," said Nolan. "Let's try to help Logan decipher that gizmo he acquired!" Nolan turned and entered the habitation module.

Tyler, Mason, Carmen and Natalie remained outside.

"So how's it coming?" Nolan asked Leo.

"I'm reading the tutorial right now," said Leo. "It says not to activate the device completely until I've read and understand the tutorial, because it will give off an electromagnetic signature that Darian can track."

"Have you found out anything about Titan technology yet?" Nolan asked.

"It seems that everything we need to get home is in this lab! There is a replicator that we can use to synthesize fuel for the Thunderbolt, and it's showing me how to activate the space-warp cannon that pulled us into this universe!"

"That device that giantess gave you is very important, maybe we should keep watch and warn you when Darian and Zima are coming!"

"Good idea!" said Leo. "Go tell Mason to set up shifts where each of you will keep watch while I try to learn about this technology!"

"Leo?" Nolan asked.

"Yeah?" Logan replied.

"They say nobody from Earth has ever successfully returned to their home world from Thanatar, do you think we can pull this off? Do you think we have a chance?"

"There's a first time for everything!" said Leo.

Meanwhile, on another part of the campus, Darian was finishing typing up her report. She went to her teacher's office to hand it in. The teacher, a woman in her late 40's, was not unattractive, and Darian knew she would hold herself together as well as her when she got to be that age. The people of Thanatar were virtually immmortal, because every illness and disease known to man had been conquered thousands of years prior; because of this, it was no marvel when a teacher could reach her late 40s and still require no form of corrective surgery to look magnificent.

"Darian, this is an unusual topic for a junior thesis, but since you're a psyche major, it seems like a reasonable endeavour."

"How did I do?" Darian asked, as she turned in her report.

"I liked most of it, but if you're going to use school technology to acquire captives for your junior thesis project, I would like to see the spoils of your labor. You should've used some of your captives to win more captives on Arcadia! That would really impress the audience, and it would get your point across that when they first get here, they overcome any psychological stress to prevail on the game-boards if they have any athletic skills!"

"I had some captives I won, but I gave them to my assistant Zima, and she swallowed them!"

"I remember how much I loved swallowing captives at that age!" said the teacher. "That's what you get for showing mercy! When Zima becomes a junior and does her own junior thesis project, she can keep her captives and do with them how she pleases! But as long as you're in charge, you should keep any captives you've won as part of this project! Don't let her swallow any more!"

"I'll remember that!" said Darian. "I just felt sorry for Zima because she's become a close friend since we started working on this project!"

"You know what they say on the game-boards about feeling sorry for someone!" said the teacher. "'Those who feel sorry for others and act on it will soon feel sorry they did!'"

"I'm familiar with that expression," said Darian.

"Then turn it into action!" said the teacher. "For your next speech, I want you to have won as many captives as possible, while retaining the original set of captives you've already acquired!"

"Yes, ma'am!" said Darian, as she got up to leave. "I'll take them to Arcadia right now! One of my captives is a race car driver, and another is a pro tennis player."

By this time, Zima got out of her class and Darian met her in the hallway on the way back to the lab.

"My teacher gave me a ton of homework!" said Zima. "There's no class a week from today, so we have a bunch of work today and the day after tomorrow!"

"I can't let you swallow any more captives!" said Darian. "My teacher wants me to acquire as many captives as possible for my next presentation."

"I don't have a problem with that," said Zima. "But can we cut a deal? If you let me have a skilled captive that I can use to win more captives, then I'll have a fully self-sufficient operation!"

"We are friends," said Darian, "If I win five or more captives today, I'll let you have one of them so you can win more captives. But you have to promise not to swallow him until you have more captives!"

"You've got a deal!" said Zima as they shook hands. As the two giant women entered the lab, Nolan and Mason warned Leo and he put his device away.

"Okay," said Darian, "we're going back to Arcadia! I need the race car driver and the tennis pro!"

Zima collected Mason and Tyler, and put them in a jar with air-holes cut into the lid.

"The rest of you are staying here," said Darian as she grabbed some protein bars from a box and threw them into the habitation module, then closed the dome over the top. "There are water bottles in the kitchen area if you get thirsty!"

Darian and Zima turned and exited the lab, and walked to the parking area and entered Darian's shuttle cruiser. Zima placed the captives (inside their container) in a cup-holder as they blasted off. The shuttle cruiser pierced the cloud layer and hurtled into the stratosphere, then emerged into outer space.

Before long, the familiar site of the Arcadia space station appeared on the view screen. Darian deftly maneuvered her shuttle cruiser to the parking structure, which was located in one of the armatures that swung around constantly, providing perpetual gravity that matched the gravity on Thanatar.

Darian and Zima walked through the crowded hallways and corridors, and came to a turn that divided the racetrack from the tennis arena.

"You take Mason to the racetrack," said Darian, "and I'll take Tyler to play tennis."

The two women split up, and Darian went and registered Tyler for a tennis match. She bet Tyler against the ownership of another captive; if Tyler won, Darian would own that captive. The match began within fifteen minutes, and Tyler won with ease. Darian collected her captive and entered Tyler in another game. Tyler had better competition in the second match, but he still won fairly easily. Darian collected her second captive, and entered Tyler for a third match. Tyler was tired by this time, so Darian told him "This will be your last match of the day!"

Tyler got into the arena and fought hard against his opponent, and dispatched him despite being exhausted. When the match was over, Darian collected her third captive and went to see how Zima was doing. When she got to Zima's seat in the other stadium, she was surprised to see the jar with ten captives stuffed inside.

"We're going to have to get a bigger jar!" said Darian said. "How did you win so many?"

"I bet credits in addition to captives, and every time Mason won, I gave the loser the option of paying me with their captive instead of paying me money!"

"Let's get them back to the lab!" said Darian.

The two women walked back to Darian's shuttle cruiser, and from the perspective of the society they lived in, they looked like a couple of ordinary college-age women walking through a hallway crowded with other people, but the reality of it was they were colossal and the other people were all gigantic in stature; on Earth, most of these people would stand in the vicinity of four-hundred feet tall, some of them taller than that! But within the society they lived in of people who existed on the same scale as them, they appeared to be two ordinary college students conducting normal every day business.

They got into Darian's shuttle cruiser, and returned to the college campus. Zima held onto the captives in her jar, as if holding them empowered her somehow. The two women carried their captives to the lab where the Thunderbolt was. Darian activated the dome on the habitation module, and it opened. Zima dumped the ten captives plus Mason into the habitation module, and Darian dumped Tyler and the three captives she had won into the module.

"You've got some partners!" said Darian. "Get along with each other, because I'm going to need you all for my next presentation!"

Darian and Zima stood looking into the habitation module as the six captives who had arrived on the Thunderbolt mingled with the thirteen new captives who were recently acquired on Arcadia.

"So how many captives do I get to keep out of the captives I won for you, Darian?" Zima asked.

"How many do you want?' Darian asked.

"If you're giving me a choice, I'd like at least five of them," Zima replied.

"I'll let you keep three!" said Darian. "But choose carefully, try to pick three who are skilled enough to win more captives for you."

"Leo!" said Zima. "Try to figure out which captives have the most skill out of the new guys we just put in there, okay?"

"No problem!" said Leo, and the two giantesses left the area so Logan could try to investigate the new captives and find their skill levels. Leo approached a man who was in his twenties.

"What sports are you good at?" Leo asked him.

"I'm not really the athletic type," the man replied, "but I've gotten better at handball since getting stranded on Arcadia."

"Do you know who out of these captives is the most skilled in athletic competitions?" Leo asked.

"Brody Seger," the man replied. "He's not as good as Tyler Chen, but he was a tennis champion on Arcadia for a long time. He was on his way to the semi-finals, until he got beaten by Tyler."

Leo had the man point out Brody to him. Brody was in his late thirties, talking to Natalie Red Hawk, Nolan's half-sister.

"Well, he sure doesn't waste any time!" said Leo. "He goes straight to the hottest chick in the room!"

Leo approached Brody. "I'm Leo Tanner, pilot of the Thunderbolt." Brody and Logan shook hands.

"That giantess named Zima put me in charge of finding out which one of you is the most skilled athlete, and you were pointed out to me by another captive. So they say you're good at tennis?"

"What good will it do me if I tell you," said Brody, "just to have you rat me out to that giantess?"

"It will work out in both our favor if I let her know," said Leo. "She's already swallowed three captives that she recently acquired, and if you ended up in her possession and she didn't know you were good at tennis, you could end up being next!"

"Well, since you put it that way," said Brody, "I was a tennis coach back on my version of Earth."

"Since we're all from different versions of Earth," said Leo, "I think most captives just refer to it as their home world."

"Yes, well, on my home world I was a skilled tennis coach. I was able to pay my rent and my bills that way. Of course, I'm not nearly as good as someone like Tyler Chen, that's why I eventually got beaten by him. But I would've made it to the semi-finals if I hadn't gone up against Tyler!"

"How did you end up here on Thanatar?" Leo asked.

"I was a passenger on a private jet flying over the Bermuda Triangle about six months ago," said Brody. "I was on my way to an island in the Caribbean for a vacation with my wife and two of my students, when we got pulled through some kind of a space-warp to Thanatar! And you?"

"Same scenario," Leo replied, "but we were on a point-to-point suborbital space-plane. We had just briefly left the upper atmosphere when Darian used a space-warp cannon to pull us into this universe. So far, myself and my fellow crew-member and my four passengers are all intact. How is your wife doing?"

"She is with my former mistress," said Brody. "My original mistress used her as bait to keep me in line, so I would keep winning tennis matches. When I lost to Tyler Chen, I went with Darian and my wife stayed with my old mistress."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Leo. "Can you point out two more skilled athletes out of the thirteen of you who just arrived under Darian's power?"

"I have two students whom I personally taught, and they played against Tyler and lost, too." said Brody. "They're really you're best bet, anyone else is just a couch potato who ended up training on a fly-by-night kind of arrangement."

"And they're good?" Leo asked.

"They're not as good as me, but they're highly skilled." Brody replied. "They actually trained beginning students back on my home world, and they're probably the best you'll find among captives from Arcadia."

"Can you introduce me to them?" Leo asked.

"Anthony! Johnathan! Come over here! There's someone who wants to meet you!"

Two young men not a day older than 21 approached Logan and Brody.

"This is Leo Tanner," said Brody, "he is going to hook it up for us so we get special treatment from an evil giantess who normally swallows captives left and right! As long as she knows we're real athletes, she'll spare us! As long as we're hand-selected by her, we should be okay. Right Leo?"

"She wants to use you guys to win her more captives," said Leo. "Any captives who are less skilled than you, she'll swallow; but as long as you keep winning tennis matches, you should be okay! I'm going to summon her right now!"

Logan yelled in the direction of the top of the container, and called out Zima's name. Zima approached, and her face could be seen above them.

"Have you found any athletes yet?" Zima asked.

"I've found Brody Seger and his two students, Anthony and Johnathan! They're the best tennis players you're probably going to find!"

"If they're so good, why did they lose to Tyler Chen?" Zima asked.

"Tyler Chen is a tennis champion!" said Logan. "There's no way they could win against him, but if they went up against any average player on the game boards, they're bound to win!"

"You did a good job, Leo!" said Zima as she moved her hand down into the habitation module, palm-side up. "Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan! I command you to surrender to my hand!"

Brody and his two students stepped onto Zima's palm, and she lifted them into the air. She cupped the three of them with her other hand and spoke to Darian.

"I think we need to go back to Arcadia so I can register them in my name and play them against someone!"

"Then let's go!" said Darian. "I can train the passengers of the Thunderbolt to serve drinks while we're there. Can you carry the habitation module to the shuttle cruiser?"

"No problem!" said Zima, as she shoved her three tennis-playing captives into a pocket of her blouse and zipped it closed. She grabbed the habitation module right after pushing the button that sealed the dome that enclosed the top. Once onboard Darian's shuttle cruiser, they ascended into the sky and headed back to Arcadia for the second time in one day.

The space station was on the view screen, and from a great distance they could see a lot of traffic flowing around the station. Darian listened on her headphones to the traffic controller.

"There's going to be a wait," said Darian. "At this time of day, Arcadia is filled to capacity. But we've been given a voucher number, and when more people exit the station, we will be able to park on a first come first served basis."

"We can take this time to get to know the captives," said Zima. She pushed a button on the main control module of the habitation module, and the dome slid open. Zima also unzipped her blouse pocket and produced her three latest conquests. She held her three captives firmly but not hard enough to hurt them.

"Let's get to know each other!" said Zima to the captives in the habitation module. "Do you have anything to share?"

Leo was the first to speak up. "Brody has a wife who is owned by his former mistress. Do you think you can try to win her back?"

Zima and Darian both laughed. Zima replied to Logan: "First of all, Brody's wife is a 'that,' not a 'who,' she's not a person, she's a game piece! All of you are game pieces now! Don't ever forget that!"

"I apologize, mistress!" said Leo.

"Well, don't let it happen again!" said Zima. "Don't forget something, to us, you're no better than inanimate objects! At best, to an owner who has kept you for a number of years and assuming you scored a lot of victories for them on Arcadia, then you would be elevated to the status of a beloved pet! But ninety-nine percent of all Earth people end up in the bellies of their owners, sooner or later! It's just a matter of time!"

"What about the other one percent?" Leo asked.

"Like I said, if they don't get swallowed by their owners, it's because they became beloved pets. You can't count on that happening to you! As far as Brody is concerned, I consider him and his two tennis students to be an investment! He's going to win me a lot of captives, and all of them are going to end up in my belly sooner rather than later! The only reason Brody and his two students are being spared is because they will help me acquire more captives!" Zima sat back in her seat and discontinued looking at the captives, whose habitation module was in the area between the pilot and co-pilot's seats.

Nolan, Leo, Mason, and Tyler all thought Zima was attractive. "I wonder who she would go for if she were our size!" said Nolan.

"Why don't you ask her?" Leo asked.

"Okay, I will!" said Nolan. He looked up at Zima and yelled. "Zima!"

Zima tilted her head to look down at the captives. "What do you want, pawn?"

"If all of us were the same size, which one of us would you go out with?" Nolan asked.

"What's your name?" Zima asked.

"I'm Nolan Ward!"

"I'd probably go out with you if you somehow became our size. You're kind of cute!" Zima smiled after finishing her sentence, and Nolan felt like he had scored. "Looks are all that matter to me!"

"Yes! I knew she'd go for me!" said Nolan.

"We have clearance to dock!" said Darian. "Our number came up."

Darian piloted her shuttle cruiser and docked with the Arcadia space station. Zima returned her three tennis players to her blouse pocket and zipped them up, then she carried the habitation module as she walked along with Darian. They went straight to the registration office and made an appointment. Zima unzipped the pocket of her blouse and set the three tennis players on the desk in front of her.

"These three belonged to her, she won them in the games," Zima explained, "but she gave them to me, so I want them registered in my name."

The receptionist said it wasn't a problem, and they were out of there within minutes. Darian and Zima got good seats in the stadium where the tennis matches were being played. There was a drink dispenser and Darian set Leo, Nolan, Carmen, and Natalie on top of it and taught them how to serve drinks for people.

"The switch has been designed so someone on your scale can operate it. You just pull back on the switch when people order their drinks, see?"

The four of them quickly caught on and Darian left them to go send Mason and Tyler to the games. Mason had to drive a race car in another stadium, so she left Tyler with Zima as Zima set her three tennis players against other less experienced players.

"I think I should get my own racquet!" said Tyler. "One I can keep!"

"If you win all your matches today, I'll buy a racquet for you!" said Zima. "How does that sound?"

"Okay!" said Tyler.

Brody and his two students were set in three matches with obviously less skilled opponents, and Tyler Chen was set against someone who was better than Brody's opponent, but not quite a match for Tyler, who was a tennis pro. The games were virtually identical to tennis as played on Earth, with the exception of the racquets, which formed an energy net instead of the being made from plastic like Earth racquets. The ball itself was also made of energy, and it took a lot of skill to stay ahead in the game. When Tyler won his match, Zima went to collect the losing captive for Darian.

"I think that's unfair!" said the giantess who owned the losing captive. "My captive told me your captive was a tennis pro back on his home world!"

"That's the way the dice falls!" said Zima with a smile on her face as she collected the losing captive.

Meanwhile, in the other stadium, Mason Lewis was driving like a bat out of hell in the hovercar he was driving. It functioned much like an ordinary car back on Earth, with the exception of the repulsor fields it used for propulsion instead of wheels or tires. Racing wasn't so much a game of who could drive faster so much as it was a game of skill, involving negotiating the track better than your opponents. Mason had been a successful pro stock race car driver back on Earth, so much so that he had made millions of dollars that he had used to buy his own jet airplanes and learn how to pilot them in his spare time. He had been such a good race car driver that his fans had adopted a slogan about him that had entered the pop culture lexicon: 'Mason Lewis can't lose.'

None of this hype could help him on Arcadia; however, his immense skill from spending most of his life racing proved to be an advantage. When Mason came in first, the only person who wasn't surprised was Mason himself. Many people had been betting on the favorite, a race car driver from an analog of Mason's universe. This man had been some kind of a champion, but if they had met on a track on Mason's world, Mason would've smoked him easily. In the biggest upset of the night, Darian collected Mason and the supposed champion who had been favored to win, but instead of collecting the other losing racers, Darian let her opponents keep them and collected the cash equivalent on her gaming debit card instead. This way, there would be less captives for them to deal with.

Darian carried Mason and his opponent back to the stadium where Zima was gambling with Tyler and Brody, and Brody's students. When she got there, she was surprised to see Zima with close to ten captives.

"Again?" Darian asked.

"Leo wasn't lying when he said Brody was good!" said Zima. "He won three matches in a row! His students all won three matches each, too!"

"So you've got nine more captives?" Darian asked.

"Yes, and Tyler beat three opponents, so there's three more captives for you, also!"

"How are my drink servers?" Darian asked.

Zima and Darian walked over to the drink dispenser, and Darian ordered a drink.

"I'll take a light beer!" said Darian.

Carmen and Nolan struggled with a lever that was bigger than they were, but they managed to operate the device and a glass was filled with beer. Darian took the beer when it was full and took a swig from it.

"Ahh! The taste of victory! Zima what are you going to do with all of your captives?"

"You don't even need to ask!" Zima replied. "Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan are all safe, they're going to win me more captives, but if I find out any of my captives have no athletic skills to win me more captives," Zima lifted her blouse to reveal her light brown stomach, and pointed at her belly button as she licked her lips. Zima and Darian burst out laughing.

"What about my racquet?" Tyler asked.

"I promised Tyler if he won all his matches tonight that I'd get him his own racquet," said Zima, who turned and walked to the concession stand to buy him one. She returned several minutes later with a tiny (to her) racquet that was built on Tyler's scale.

"It's good that you got him that," said Darian, "because now he can practice back on Thanatar!"

Before Darian and Zima were ready to leave Arcadia, Zima whispered something in Darian's ear, and Darian chuckled. The two women collected the captives and walked to the registration office. Both Darian and Zima pulled out their identification cards, and Zima pulled Nolan Ward out of the habitation module and addressed the receptionist.

"We would like to transfer ownership of the captive named Nolan Ward from Darian Wagner to me!"

"And what is your name?" the receptionist asked.

"Zima Zamora!"

"Can both of you slide your cards into that device? Transfer of ownership will begin as soon as you insert your cards!"

Darian and Zima did as they were told, but inside the habitation module, Natalie was panicking.

"Why is my brother being transferred to being owned by Zima? She'll swallow him for sure!"

When the transfer was complete, Zima unzipped the pocket where she kept Brody and his two students, and dropped Nolan in, then zipped it closed again. Darian and Zima were silent as Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser back to the Crestwood University campus. After parking, Zima carried the habitation module back to the lab.

"I'll leave you alone for a while," said Darian. "I know you have plans, Zima! The lab is yours, see you tomorrow!"

After Darian left, Zima unzipped her blouse pocket and pulled Nolan out.

"How would you like to become one of us for a day?" Zima asked.

"What do you mean by that?" Nolan asked.

"In this lab, we have the technology to enlarge little people like you and make you our size. I think you would make a good sex slave, so I want to make you big like me so I can take you home with me!"

"Sounds good to me!" said Nolan.

"You do realize that when we come back here tomorrow, I'm shrinking you back down to size! Do you agree to these terms?"

"Absolutely!" said Nolan.

"First I have to give you something to swallow," said Zima, and she fished around in a drawer and pulled out a blue pellet. She placed it in a chamber and pressed a series of controls, and the pellet was miniaturized down to Nolan's scale. Zima picked it up and handed it to Nolan.

"Swallow this!" said Zima. "It will allow me to locate you and shrink you back down to size from a remote location if you ever manage to escape from me!"

Nolan took the pellet from Zima and dry swallowed it. Zima picked him up and placed him on top of a device that reminded Nolan of the transporter pads from Star Trek. Zima entered her University identification card into a slot in the control console that controlled the strange machine that was going to enlarge Nolan. Zima pressed a sequence of buttons, then pulled a lever. Nolan began to grow, slowly at first, and then quicker than the blink of an eye. When he was done growing, he was at the same proportionate height as one of Zima's people, about half an inch shy of six feet tall. He was now taller than Zima, who ran up onto the enlarger pad and threw her arms around Nolan and kissed him on the lips.

"Welcome to our world!" said Zima, with her arms still around Nolan. "You're one of us for a day! Let's see, what should we do first?"

"We could go to your place," said Nolan.

"Eventually," said Zima, "but first, let's go shopping and get you some different clothes!"

Nolan followed Zima out of the lab, and watched Zima lock the door behind her. They used public transportation because Zima didn't have her own shuttle cruiser yet like Darian did. They went into several men's clothing stores, until Zima found what she thought would look good on Nolan. He was dressed in a semi-futuristic outfit when they left the store. Zima had purchased the clothing with one of her credit cards.

"How did this society get created?" Nolan asked. "Is there an explanation for how this universe came into existence?"

"Our universe was created by someone your size," said Zima. "At least, someone who was the size you were this morning."

"Really?" Nolan asked. "Why would someone from Earth create a world of giants?"

"He was a macrophile," said Zima. "He was sexually aroused by the concept of giant women. He lived in a world tens of thousands of years more technologically advanced than your world. Maybe hundreds of thousands of years more advanced. He wanted to create a world of giants, so he found a universe that was an analog of his own, and went back to before the Big Bang when this universe was created, and he seeded the primal atom that would eventually become this universe."

"He seeded it?" Nolan asked. "With what?"

"I don't know the specifics because I'm a psyche major, not a physicist," said Zima, "but he manipulated the sub-atomic structures of all the atoms in this universe so they would be seventy-two times bigger, and to avoid violating the square-cube law, he developed a way so that anti-graviton particles compose the matrix of all subatomic particles. That's why the gravity on Thanatar seems no different than the gravity of Earth to you and the other tiny people!"

"What's the square-cube law?" Nolan asked.

"That's a geometric principle that states that every time you double the height of a person or object, their mass, volume and weight increase eight times. So if you had a statue that was two meters tall and weighed five hundred pounds, if you used technology to make it grow to four meters tall, it wouldn't weigh double five-hundred pounds, it would weigh five-hundred multiplied by eight, so it would weigh four-thousand pounds."

"How did you add that up so fast?" Nolan asked.

Zima pulled out a small flask. "This is a drug that stimulates the left side of your brain. It's for people who are artistic and good at English like me. I think mostly with the right side of my brain, so I've never been good at math, so I take this whenever I have to take a math exam. I had a calculus exam this morning."

"Tell me more about this guy who created this universe!" Nolan asked.

"We know a lot about him because eventually we rose up and conquered his civilization," said Zima.

"If he was so advanced, how was that possible?" Nolan asked.

"After he created this universe, he went back to Neolithic times on this world and established a civilization that was as advanced as his own. Once our population got into the tens of billions and we colonized the nearest planetary systems, our ancestors set out to find him and conquer him. It's in our history books, and there's a statue of him in our capital."

Zima and Nolan arrived at the monorail station. Zima bought two tickets, and the next tram arrived less than a minute later. The two of them got onboard, and the tram took them to the station close to Zima's dorm. When they arrived there, Nolan was surprised at how small the dorm was. He was accustomed to thinking of these people as giants, but from the perspective of one of these people, it was just an ordinary dorm.

"Do you want some enchiladas?" Zima asked.

"Yeah, after eating those protein bars three meals a day, that sounds great!"

"Actually," said Zima as she got the enchiladas out of the stasis chamber, "they contain a blend of protein, complex carbohydrates, and monounsaturated fat. Everything your body needs to function properly!"

"Yeah, but those things have no flavor!" said Nolan. "Cardboard would have more flavor than those nutrition bars! Hey, what's that thing you just pulled the enchiladas out of?"

"It's a stasis chamber. It keeps the food in a state of perpetual suspended animation. The food doesn't even need to be re-heated, because whatever temperature the food was when it went into the stasis chamber, that's the temperature the food is when you shut down the stasis field to pull the food out."

Zima scooped some enchiladas onto two plates, and grabbed some glasses and filled them with milk. The two of them sat down at a table to eat.

"So what else did that guy do?" Nolan asked between bites of enchilada. "The guy who created this universe."

"He created other universes of giants before he created this one," said Zima. "He created a world where blonde-haired, blue-eyed people were on the same scale as us, but all other people were normal size, that is, they were tiny like your people. But he kept that world primitive, to this day, their technology level is equal to that of 18th century Europe."

"So this guy was a Nazi?" Nolan asked.

"No," said Zima, "he wasn't white, he was a Latino scientist. He created these worlds out of a lust to worship giant people. He happened to like blonde women, that's why he created that world I just mentioned. He had brown skin just like mine!"

"What was his name?" Nolan asked.

"Octavian Ortega," said Zima. "We owe our entire civilization to him. I'll show you a picture of his statue on the computer monitor." Zima got up and told the computer to show the statue. Nolan got up and looked at the picture. A Roman style building with Corinthian columns surrounded a statue of a man that was life size. He was obviously Hispanic, and was dressed in futuristic clothing.

"So because this guy had a fetish this whole world of giants was created?" said Nolan.

"Yes!" said Zima. "He was swallowed alive by a woman he was in a relationship with. He chose to remain at his normal stature, while she was over three hundred feet tall. Of course, that was several centuries after our society was established."

"Several centuries?" Nolan asked. "How long was his life span?"

"We're not sure how old he actually was, but after establishing our society he lived here for several centuries before he was killed. The people of our society don't die from aging; we can only dies from accidents like getting pulled into a blackhole by a navigation error on a starship, or if a reactor blew up and killed people who were nearby."

"You people don't die?" Nolan asked. "If you live forever, how can you so callously disregard the lives of the tiny people you conquer?"

"Our brains work differently than yours," said Zima. "Ortega made the women of our race into control freaks, and the men are submissive. I wouldn't even know how to have sex with a man from your world who was considered normal. Are you submissive?"

Nolan looked away from Zima, embarrassed.

"There's one way I can find out, I have a mind scanner that will tell me how the psychosexual portion of your brain functions." Zima got up to go get the mind scanner from her bedroom. When she got back with it, she said, "Go ahead, put it on!"

Nolan was reluctant. He had knowledge that Logan had a device that had been given to him by a giantess that could allow all of them to escape. He didn't want Zima to find out that he knew about it, and a mind scanner might reveal that information.

"There's things I like to keep private," said Nolan.

"I'll tell you what," said Zima. "I'll turn off the consciousness retrieval protocol. That will make it so the thoughts in your conscious mind remain hidden from my scan. I'll only be able to sift through the parts of your mind dealing with your sexuality. Zima thrust the device toward Nolan. He was still reluctant.

"Is there something you're trying to hide from me?" Zima asked. "Because if you are, I'll take a full mind scan of your brain without your consent! Now, what do you have to hide?'

Nolan took the device, and put it on. It was similar to a pair of headphones. After putting them on, Zima activated it, and held a device in her hands that displayed the results.

"You are submissive!" said Zima. "Just like the men of my society. That will make sex with you much more interesting. Come on, let's go to my bed." Zima took Nolan by the hand and led him to her bedroom. There was a changing screen in front of her closet, and Zima took off her schoolgirl uniform.

"I'd like to get into something a little more comfortable, what would you suggest? Oh wait, nevermind, I'll just view your mind scan results." Zima looked at the hand held device that displayed the results. "So, you'd like to see me dressed up like a barbarian princess from a Frank Frazetta painting, huh?"

"Yeah!" said Nolan.

Not long after that, Zima emerged from behind the screen looking precisely like that. She had on an outfit that looked like it belonged in a Conan the Barbarian movie, complete with golden armbands and bracelets, and leather sandals that reached to her upper calves. She looked like either an Aztec princess, or some kind of a goddess from the barbarian days. Nolan sat on her bed, and she sat in his lap facing him, and pushed him down on the bed, so he was lying flat on his back.

"How do you like the girl to be on top?" Zima asked.

Meanwhile, Darian had returned to the lab on campus to find a new way to torment the captives.

"Guess what?" said Darian. "One of you is going on a journey to my belly today!" Darian took out a gold coin and held it aloft for them to see."I want those of you who arrived in the Thunderbolt in two groups, the women on one side, and the men on the other!"

The captives did as they were told. Darian held the coin up. "Heads I pick the men, tails I pick the women!" Darian flipped the coin, and when it landed, it was tails. "Heads I pick Carmen, tails I pick Natalie!" Darian flipped the coin, and it landed heads. "Carmen it is!"

As Darian reached for Carmen, Leo yelled out, "No! take me instead! I've got nothing to lose!"

The heroic type, huh?" said Darian. "I can take you instead, I guess it makes more sense. With you out of the picture, there would be nobody to pilot the Thunderbolt back to Earth!"

Darian picked Leo up and held him up to her mouth. "Say goodbye to Leo, everyone!" Darian dropped him into her mouth, and forced him to the back of her mouth with her tongue. Several moments later, she swallowed him alive. Darian stuck her tongue out to the captives and said, "All gone!"

Nolan laid back on Zima's bed after some satisfying sex. Zima laid back next to him in her barbarian princess outfit.

"I'm going to have to enlarge you again some time," said Zima. "That was really satisfying. Most of the guys I have sex with are unappreciative of me, but you really seem to want to worship me!"

"What kind of guys have you had sex with?" Nolan asked.

"Mainly guys who were smart and could tutor me in subjects I'm not good at. I guess you could say I used them. When I got a good grade in those classes, I broke up with them. Is that wrong?"

"I don't think so," said Nolan.

"Oh shit, it's almost three o'clock!" said Zima as she got up and changed back into her schoolgirl uniform. "I have a class pretty soon. I'm going to have to shrink you down to size for a while, but when I get home I'll re-enlarge you so we can get it on again."

"No problem," said Nolan. "Is there somewhere you want me to stand while you shrink me?"

"Climb onto the top of that dresser," said Zima as she fished around for her shrink-ray pistol. Nolan did as she commanded, and Zima pointed the pistol and fired, and Nolan was reduced back down to about two inches tall again. Zima unzipped the pocket of her blouse and pulled out Brody Seger and his two tennis students.

"Here, they can keep you company!" said Zima as she set the three of them down next to Nolan and headed out the door. "Don't try to escape!"

Nolan shook hands with Brody Seger and Anthony and Johnathan.

"So you knocked boots with that titaness?" Brody asked.

"Yeah," said Nolan, "I think she likes me."

Meanwhile, Darian was busy with a secret plan. She left the passengers of the Thunderbolt in the lab after she had swallowed Leo, and headed toward the women's bathroom. She went to a dispenser and used her credit card to buy a bottle of Gak, which was a vomiting agent that was popular on Thanatar. She took the cap off and drank some, and went to a sink and made sure the drain was plugged. Within a few moments she began to vomit, and sure enough, Leo came up and landed in the sink. Darian used warm water to wash him off.

"It wasn't my intention to kill you!" said Darian. "If I wanted you dead, you would still be squirming around in my belly right now!"

"I understand!" said Leo. "But why did you swallow me to begin with?"

"It's part of my class project," said Darian. "I need the others to think you've been killed, to see how it affects them psychologically. I also need to examine how they react when I re-introduce you to them and they find out you're not dead."

"What are you going to do with me in the meantime?" Leo asked.

"I'm going to keep you in my dorm while I keep the others in the lab, separated from you."

Darian collected Leo and cupped him in her hands, and took him to her dorm room. She put him in a jar that had air-holes cut into the lid.

"I'm keeping you here until I find better quarters for you," said Darian. "You'll be reunited with your friends before too long."

Darian turned and left the dorm, leaving Leo behind. She returned to the lab and collected Tyler.

"I want to see how far you can go in the tennis tournaments!" Darian took him to her shuttle cruiser, but this time, she left the other captives in the lab. She flew her shuttle cruiser to Arcadia once again, and once she docked on the space station she went to the registration booth and asked about getting Tyler signed up for a tennis tournament.

"There is a tournament going on right now," said the receptionist, "but your captive will need to qualify for it first. If he gets beaten, you will lose him!"

"I'm not worried about that!" said Darian. "Sign him up!"

When the paperwork was finished, Darian took Tyler to the area where she had been directed to go, and when it was his turn, he played against an opponent who was one of the better tennis players on Arcadia. Tyler beat him with ease. Darian signed Tyler up for another match, and Tyler won that game, too. As Darian signed up for matches and won them, he moved up in his ranking until he was in line to play against the best tennis players on Arcadia.

The next series of matches would be determined by the best three out of five. Tyler's opponent was supposed to be a champion on Arcadia, but on Earth he would've at best been a tennis coach; he was no match for Tyler Chen. He gave Tyler a run for his money, Tyler won the first two games, but the opponent won the third game. When Tyler lost he looked in Darian's direction, and she lifted her blouse to reveal her belly button and pointed at it, to send a message home to Tyler that her belly would be his grave if he failed her.

Tyler tried extra hard and won the fourth game, then Darian took him home. He stood on the center console as Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser back to Thanatar.

"You got sloppy back there!" said Darian. "Don't let that happen again! You're a tennis champion, you shouldn't lose to anyone! Do you know how rare it is to acquire a pro athlete like yourself on Thanatar? It almost never happens! There's no excuse for you to not win every single game! You're going up against amateurs!"

"I won't fail you again, mistress!" said Tyler.

Darian slammed her fist down on the central console, rattling Tyler's bones.

"I command you to call me mighty mistress!" said Darian.

"Yes, mighty mistress!" said Tyler.

By that time, early evening, Zima had finished the class she was supposed to go to, and also finished doing her homework in study hall, and returned to her dorm.

"Nolan?" Zima called out. "Brody? Where are you guys?"

Not caring that she couldn't immediately find her captives, Zima went behind her changing screen and slipped out of her schoolgirl uniform and put the barbarian goddess outfit on again. As she fastened her leather sandals that went up her calves, she called out again to Nolan.

"Nolan! I'm ready to conquer you again!"

Nolan came out of his hiding place, followed by Brody and Anthony and Johnathan.

"I almost thought I was going to have to give you an ultimatum!" said Zima, as she finished fastening her sandals. "If you didn't come out within one more minute, I was going to swallow you! If I resorted to that, I wouldn't have puked you up, my belly would be your grave! Now, stand away from Brody and those other two, so I can use the neutrino transfer protocol to enlarge you to giant-size!"

Nolan did as Zima commanded, and she set the pistol to enlarge, and in an instant, Nolan was giant size again. Nolan jumped down from the dresser, and Zima threw her arms around Nolan and kissed him on the lips.

"How would you like to experience Arcadia from the perspective of one of the Titans?" Zima asked. "I could borrow Darian's shuttle cruiser and take you there, and I could make Brody play against someone and bet on him!"

"I wouldn't want to endanger Brody," said Nolan. "I've really gotten to know him during the time you were gone today."

"It's okay, Nolan!" said Brody. "Don't worry about me, I can win!"

Nolan agreed, and Zima took him with her to the parking lot just as Darian's shuttle cruiser was landing. Zima had Brody and his two students in her blouse pocket.

"Can I borrow your shuttle cruiser to go to Arcadia?" Zima asked Darian, as Darian got out of the driver's side.

"Yeah, I guess," said Darian, throwing Zima the keys. "But you have to refuel it!"

"No problem!" said Zima, and she got in, followed by Nolan.

Zima was a good pilot, and she flew them to Arcadia without any incident.

"The Arcadia space station is constantly going, 24 hours a day!" said Zima. "It almost tickles my tummy thinking of all the captives who get swallowed in one day there!" Zima put her right hand on Nolan's lap. "I hope that didn't make you feel funny!"

"No problem!" said Nolan. "I know you're a born predator, and you can't help it! I don't judge you for that!"

"Thank you!" said Zima.

After they arrived on Arcadia and got situated, Brody was set up in a match against another captive, and Zima came with drinks to where Nolan was seated and handed him a drink. It was an ordinary cardboard cup with a lid and a straw. Nolan took a drink.

"This stuff is good!" said Nolan.

"I'm only eighteen, so I'm not old enough to order alcohol, so I got us some soft drinks."

The match started, and Brody hammered his opponent at the beginning of the match.

"I was talking to Brody today," said Nolan, "and he told me to ask you if you could get him his own racquet. He thinks he's good enough to have his own racquet, and he needs to practice when he's away from Arcadia."

"Okay, whatever!" said Zima, and she thrust her arms around Nolan and French-kissed him brutally. The two of them made out during the rest of Brody's match, and when Brody won, they had to be interrupted by a gaming official for Zima to collect Brody and the losing opponent. On the ride back from Arcadia, Zima was in a passionate mood.

"I think I'm going to keep you as my property!" said Zima, as she piloted the shuttle cruiser back to the campus.

"Wasn't that the whole idea of transferring ownership to begin with?" Nolan asked.

"Darian relinquished control of you temporarily, she still needs you for her class project!" said Zima. "But I'm just going to let her borrow you when she needs you, and I'm going to keep you under my power!"

After parking the shuttle cruiser, Zima and Nolan made out passionately on the way to her dorm room. She opened the door while they were French-kissing, and she deposited Brody, his two students, and the captive Brody had beaten on the dresser before collapsing on the bed. Zima had been wearing her barbarian princess outfit this whole time, so Nolan was aroused when it came time for love-making. He surrendered to her passions, and gave in to her violent ways, until they were done making love. Then, as if none of the passion had happened, Zima returned to a normal state of mind.

"Ok, it's time for me to shrink you down to size and return you to the lab!" Zima fingered the shrink-ray pistol in her right hand.

"Are you serious?" Nolan asked. "A few minutes ago it sounded like you wanted to marry me!"

"I'll return you to giant-size when I'm in a sexy mood, but for now, I'm shrinking you and returning you to the lab with the other members of the Thunderbolt."

Nolan did as she commanded, and stood on the dresser. Zima pulled the trigger, and Nolan returned to around two inches tall.

Zima grabbed him as though he were an inanimate object, and carried him to the lab. When they arrived back at the habitation module where the others were, Mason, Tyler, Carmen and Natalie were surprised to see Zima dressed in an outlandish and sexy outfit. When Zima deposited Nolan and left, the others surrounded Nolan.

"What was going on with that get-up Zima was wearing?" Mason asked. "Did she wear that outfit when you two were having sex?"

"She used a mind scanner to find out exactly what turns me on," said Nolan. "I'm surprised she didn't use it to find out what I know about that device Leo has that could help us escape!"

"Leo is history!" said Natalie. "Darian swallowed him earlier today!"

"You're kidding me!" said Nolan. "Nat, you've got a twisted sense of humor, are you kidding around with me?"

"She's serious!" said Mason. "We all watched Darian swallow Leo!"

"So what was she like?" Tyler asked Nolan. "What was it like scoring with Zima?"

"I think I'm in love with her!" said Nolan. "If she ever lets me stay giant-sized, I'll figure out a way for all of you to return to Earth, but I'm staying here, by Zima's side!"

Later that evening, Darian came to Zima's dorm. "How about we go out for a night on the town?"

"I'm only eighteen," said Zima. "I can't buy alcohol."

"I know of a place where you can get in if you're eighteen, and I can buy a drink and give it to you."

"Okay!" said Zima.

"Let's get one of the captives and take him with us," said Darian.

They went to the lab and Darian grabbed Mason, and the two gianteses stormed off into the night. The passengers of the Thunderbolt were concerned.

"Now we've lost Leo and Mason," said Tyler. "Those two were the only ones who could pilot the Thunderbolt!"

"Maybe Mason will survive!" said Nolan.

"We can only hope!" said Natalie.

Meanwhile, Darian and Zima took public transportation to a nightspot where Darian did as she had planned. She bought a mug of beer for Zima and gave it to her, then she bought a mug of beer for herself. They made friends with another giantess from their University. Her name was Kayla. She carried an tall captive in one hand, and a mug of beer in the other. Darian showed Mason to her.

"He was a champion race car driver back on Earth," said Darian.

"I bet if I put my captive in my mug of beer," said Kayla, "I can swallow my captive faster than you can swallow yours!"

"I'm not gambling with Mason," said Darian. "He's too valuable! He can win me more captives!"

Darian turned to go use the bathroom. "Zima, can you hold my beer while I use the bathroom?"

"Yes," said Zima, "and can I hold Mason for you, too?"

Darian handed Mason to her as well. After Darian left, Zima challenged Kayla to a contest.

"If I swallow Darian's captive faster than you can swallow yours, what do I get?"

"I have three more captives at home that I can give you. Can you match that?" Kayla asked.

"I happen to have three captives at home I can give you if I lose," said Zima. The two women shook hands, and dropped their captives into their mugs of beer and it was on! Zima guzzled her beer down quickly, while Kayla tried to down hers just as quickly, but Zima was just a little bit faster. Zima slammed her empty mug on the table next to them, and wiped her mouth with her forearm.

"Done!" said Zima while Kayla was still on her last swallow.

"How did you beat me?" Kayla asked. "I'm a champion beer drinker!"

"I've practiced for a long time with soda!" said Zima. "I've wanted to do this for a long time!"

Inside Zima's belly, there was a struggle going on. Mason was fighting for air. He had found an air pocket, but he needed to conserve his air if he was going to survive the savage depths of Zima's belly.

Meanwhile, Darian returned from the bathroom.

"Hey, where's Mason?" she asked.

"I sent him crashing to the depths of my unyielding belly!" said Zima. "But I won the contest! Kayla owes me three captives!"

"You need to puke him up right now!" said Darian as she grabbed Zima's arm and walked her over to a Gak dispenser. She used her credit card to purchase a small bottle of Gak, and opened it.

"Drink this!" said Darian.

"No!" said Zima, sticking out her tongue. "I want more beer! Besides, I don't want my stomach acid to mess up my esophagus and my throat!"

"Gak protects your esophagus and your throat from the effects of any stomach acid that comes up!" said Darian. "Now drink it!"

"No!" said Zima.

"Drink this and puke up my captive, or you're not my assistant any more!" said Darian. "You'll be off the project!"

Zima scowled and took the bottle of Gak, and drank it. She headed to the women's restroom, and found a sink and plugged it up. Within moments, Zima began to puke. Mason was vomited up into the sink, and Darian grabbed him and washed him off.

"I'm sorry, Mason!" said Darian. "Zima just got a little carried away!"

Darian and Zima returned to the bar area and met up with Kayla.

"Hey, did you guys come in a vehicle?" Kayla asked.

"No, we took the tram," said Darian.

"I brought my shuttle cruiser," said Kayla, "how about you two come home with me to my dorm so I can give Zima the three captives she won from me, and I can pick up some more captives so I can try to win them back?"

"Sounds good to me!" said Zima. "I guess I can grab Brody and his two students and use them as collateral."

"You don't have to do that," said Darian, "they're too valuable! You can use some of the nobody's in my captives that Mason and Tyler won for me!"

"Sounds good!" said Zima, and the women left.

Eventually, they made their way to the lab and Darian grabbed some of the no-name captives who were locked away in the habitation module with the passengers of the Thunderbolt. Darian grabbed about ten of them and put them in a jar. They returned to the bar in Kayla's shuttle cruiser, which was set to autopilot because she had been drinking.

Back at the bar, the contest was underway. Zima had a mug of beer, and so did Kayla. Darian placed a captive in each mug, and said, "Go!" and the two young women started drinking. Zima took an early lead, but Kayla began to catch up. Zima finished her beer about half a swallow ahead of Kayla and slammed her empty beer mug down.

"Done!" said Zima, just before Kayla slammed her empty beer mug down.

"This doesn't make sense," said Zima. "I lose a captive for each captive I win. How about for the next bet, we bet three captives?"

"You're on!" said Kayla.

The contest resumed again. Darian dropped a captive into each mug, and the two young women started drinking again. This time Zima nearly chugged the entire mug in one gulp; apparently, she knew she had more to lose this time. She slammed her mug down on the bar while Kayla still had a substantial amount of beer left in her mug.

"That makes two captives currently struggling inside my belly," said Zima, "and four that I won from Kayla!"

"If you drink a bottle of Gak, you can produce two more!" said Darian. "Then you'll have six captives all together."

"I'm not drinking any more Gak!" said Zima. "Those two captives in my tummy right now are going to stay there permanently!" Zima gave a wicked smile, despite being slightly drunk. "If I kept them, that's where they would end up eventually anyway!" Zima lifted her blouse to reveal her light brown tummy, and said, "I wonder if they're still alive inside there? How much air do you think is in there, Darian?"

"Not enough!" said Darian. "Zima, are you ready to go home yet? You're kind of drunk!"

"One more round!" said Zima. Darian bought another mug of beer and handed it to Zima.

"I'll bet all four of my captives that I just won against four of yours!" said Zima to Kayla.

"You're on!" said Kayla.

"We need to get out of here before the management finds out you're under twenty-one," Darian whispered to Zima.

"Okay, this will be the last one!" said Zima. Kayla had her mug of beer and her captive. Darian took Zima's captive and Kayla's captive and dropped them into their respective mugs, according to the official rules of this drinking game. The citizens of Thanatar took this drinking game very seriously, it had been popular for thousands of years.

"Go!" said Darian, and the two young women downed their drinks so fast that it was difficult at first to determine the winner. Zima's mug slammed down against the bar just a split second sooner than Kayla's mug.

"Zima is the winner, again!" said Darian. Zima collected her eight captives and Darian hustled her out of the bar before they got caught for Zima being under twenty-one. It would be a scandal if their University found out a college freshman was drinking beer in a drinking game at a local bar.

Zima carried her captives in her fists none-too-gently, as Darian and Kayla helped her get to Kayla's shuttle cruiser. Kayla set the shuttle cruiser to autopilot, and had it return to the campus. Darian walked Zima to her dorm. Zima set the eight captives she had won on her dining room table.

"I think I'm gonna puke!" said Zima, and she walked to the bathroom and vomited into the sink. Her captives came up, but they weren't as fortunate as Mason had been. They were all dead.

"They're dead, Zima!" said Darian. "I told you that you should've drank some Gak back at the bar. All these captives are wasted!"

"I've got a resuscitator for captives!" said Zima, as she fumbled around for the device she was looking for. "Here it is!" Zima used the device to try to revive the captives who had spent the past 45 minutes in the depths of Zima's belly. One of them started to awaken, followed by the other three.

"You did it!" said Darian, clapping her hands together victoriously. "You've revived them!"

Zima rinsed them off and had them get dressed in clean clothes that she had on hand. When they were changed and dry, Zima set them on the kitchen table, and got a glass of water.

"I revived the four of you for a reason!" said Zima. "So I can enjoy swallowing you for a second time!"

Zima picked one of the captives up, and tossed him into her mouth, and took a huge swig of water and tilted her head back, and swallowed. She repeated this procedure until all four captives were swallowed. Darian was holding Mason in her hand, and he witnessed this.

"Zima," you resuscitated them just to swallow them again?"

"Yes, I wanted to feel the satisfaction a second time!" said Zima, with a wicked grin.

"I'll leave you here at your dorm now that I know you're safe," said Darian. "I'm going to return Mason to the lab with the others."

Darian turned and left Zima's dorm, and carried Mason back to the lab. She dropped him off in the habitation module, and left the lab.

"We thought you were a goner!" said Nolan.

"I almost was!" said Mason. "I got swallowed by Zima during a drinking game at a bar. Luckily, I got puked back up and I survived!"

"That Zima sure is evil!" said Tyler. "I feel sorry for Nolan, he's owned by her now!"

"I trust Zima!" said Nolan. "She would never hurt me!"

"I don't think you should trust her!" said Mason. "She'll probably use you a few times, and then when she gets tired of you, she'll just swallow you! She gets off on swallowing people!"

"Don't judge her!" said Nolan. "She's a product of her environment."

"Don't judge her?" said Mason. "I saw her accidentally vomit up four captives, and do you know what she did with them? She cleaned them up, put them in clean, dry clothes, then swallowed them a second time!"

"I still love her!" said Nolan.

"You're letting your love for her blind you!" said Natalie. "We can't trust these giants, or these 'titans' as they call themselves, regardless of whether or not you're in love with one of them!"

"If we ever find a way to get back to Earth," said Nolan, "I'm staying behind with Zima!"

Meanwhile, back at Zima's dorm, she got a habitation module that was almost half the size of the one Darian had at the lab. She put her eight new captives inside, and then set Brody, Anthony and Johnathan inside with them. Zima changed into her nightgown, and slipped into bed. She pulled up her nightgown to reveal her bare brown stomach, which she patted and caressed.

"Don't worry, tiny slaves, your deaths weren't in vain! You've given your mistress a lot of satisfaction!" despite being slightly drunk, Zima smiled mischievously, as she was known to do. She got out of bed and walked over to the habitation module, and lifted her nightgown to reveal her stomach.

"There will come a day when all of you will come to know the inside of my tummy!" Zima smile evilly. "What better fate than to surrender to the belly of a goddess? No, more than a goddess, a titaness!"

"What about me?" said Brody. "I'm a skilled tennis player, I can win you more captives!"

Even in her drunk state of mind, this made sense to Zima.

"Yes, your life will be spared!" said Zima. "As long as you win more captives for me! My belly is a never-ending pit for captives! I'll never tire of swallowing them!" Zima still had a wicked smile on her face as she put a sheet over the habitation module so the captives could sleep for the night.

While Darian and Zima were at the bar, Leo was trapped in his jar back in Darian's dorm. His jar was small in comparison to him, a mistake that Darian would later regret; Leo had to stoop over so as not to bang his head on the lid. The air holes had been hastily cut out of the lid with a tool that left holes big enough for Leo to grasp. He began trying to grasp the lid and unscrew it, and sure enough, it began to give way. He struggled harder, and the plastic lid unscrewed and fell to the tabletop below. Logan climbed out and jumped down to the table.

Unsure of how to proceed, the answer came to him like a revelation. He climbed down onto the floor and ran and hid by the door. He would wait for Darian to come home, and make a run for it when the door was open and her back was to him. He had to wait quite some time, but when she eventually came home, he did exactly as he had planned, and made a run for it. His escape attempt was successful. He ran back toward the creek, and about two and a half hours later he was there, back at the spot where they had camped before being re-captured by Darian.

He still had the device that the protester had given him the day Darian had given her speech. He turned it on, and the tutorial informed him that there was a cache of climbing gear hidden at the creek, not far from where he was. Though it was night time and dark out, he was able to track down the location of the secret stash location. There was rope and carabiners, and a pneumatic tube to shoot the rope if he needed to, exactly what he would need to get back into the lab where the Thunderbolt was.

Leo made his way back to the lab, and another two and a half hours later he was there. One thing the tutorial taught him was how to utilize a mind control device in Darian's lab. Once he utilized it, he would have the knowledge to access all the technology in the lab, and he would be able to proceed from there. Once he was outside the lab, he stood below the window they had escaped from, which was now closed. The rope he had was connected to a pneumatic tube, and after aiming for the window and firing it, the grapnel hook at the end of the rope penetrated the window above him and hooked inside the room. Logan pulled on the rope to make sure it was secure, and when he was satisfied, he began his ascent.

Carmen was the first to hear the glass breaking. She woke up startled, and woke her husband Tyler up. Mason, Nolan and Natalie woke up, too.

"What was that?" Carmen asked.

"Is it a giant?" Natalie asked.

From their vantage point, they could see just above the habitation module through the plastic dome, to the window above the space-warp cannon; this was the window they had escaped from when they had escaped from Darian.

"I don't think so," said Mason. "It looks like someone our size is breaking in here!"

"It must be a rescue!" said Nolan.

When Logan reached the window sill, he pulled up the rope he had climbed and threw it through the hole in the window, over the other side and down into the lab. He tied one end of the rope to a handle on the window, so he wouldn't lose the rope. Nolan looked up and spotted Logan.

"It's Logan!" said Nolan.

"It couldn't be Logan," said Carmen, "we saw him get swallowed alive by Darian!"

"Well, he must've gotten puked back up!" said Nolan.

"Nobody shout to him," said Mason, "just let him do whatever he needs to do. He's probably got something figured out!"

Logan climbed down and looked around the lab. The device the tutorial mentioned as the mind control machine was on a shelf in the lab, and Logan located it. He easily climbed up and made his way to the device.

He turned it on according to the instructions given to him by the protester's device, following the tutorial word for word. This mind control device could forge a pattern in the neurons in Logan's brain that would teach him how to operate all the technology in the lab. Logan stuck his head into the emitter and turned on the device to full power. Within less than a minute, he had understanding of all the devices in Darian's lab. He looked around with full knowledge of how everything worked.

"The first thing I need to do is purge myself of the nanobots in my system, or the show's over!" said Logan. He saw another device that was capable of just that on another level of the shelf, and went to it and turned it on. He used a tube to send an electromagnetic pulse through his body. This electromagnetic pulse was strong enough to fry the delicate circuitry of the nanobots in his body so they couldn't send a signal to Darian's equipment. Just to check and see if it worked, he went to another device on the same shelf that could track the nanobots in their systems. He turned it on and saw the signature of the other five captives in their habitation chamber, but his signal wasn't being picked up.


A feeling, something akin to a sixth sense alerted Logan that he should leave immediately. He climbed down from the shelf and made his way to the rope and climbed back up. When he was at the window, he called out to the others in the habitation module.

"Sorry I couldn't help you, but I purged myself of the nanobots so Darian can't track me anymore! When I have a better plan, I promise to come back for the rest of you!"

Logan disappeared through the hole in the window and climbed down the outside.

"Maybe the best we can hope for is to escape from Darian and live out a fugitive existence here on Thanatar!" said Tyler. "Maybe we'll never get back to Earth!"

"Don't say that!" said Mason. "We're going to refuel the Thunderbolt and get back to Earth, somehow! No matter how the odds are stacked against us!"

A few moments later, the door slid open and the lights came on. Darian entered the lab. She had seen that Leo's jar was empty when she got home, and saw the rope dangling outside the lab, coming from the window that concealed the space-warp cannon. She looked around the lab, and saw the equipment that Logan had utilized. She went to the habitation module and took the dome off. The five people from the Thunderbolt were in one compartment, and the dozen or so other captives who had been won when Mason and Leo had played on Arcadia were in another section of the habitation module.

"What in the hell just happened here?" said Darian.

One of the captives who had been won on Arcadia spoke up. "It was Leo! He came back and purged himself of the nanobots so you can't track him!"

"What are his plans?" Darian asked.

"He plans to come back and rescue the others!" said the captive.

"Then I'll be ready for him!" said Darian.

Nolan asked Darian a question while she stood there towering over them. "Darian, I thought you swallowed Leo. What happened?"

"I guess it won't hurt to tell you now that all of you know," said Darian. "This was all part of a psychological experiment. I was going to surprise all of you at the next speech I gave, and re-introduce Logan to you to see how you react."

"Has Zima mentioned me?" said Nolan. "We had an unforgettable night together."

"She hasn't mentioned you, but you're the first tiny person she has ever enlarged."

"I want to stay here on Thanatar and marry her!" said Nolan. "I'm in love with her!"

"At your size?" Darian asked. "Wouldn't that be difficult?"

"No!" said Nolan. "I want her to enlarge me to her scale, so we can be together forever!"

"I'll talk to her about it tomorrow," said Darian. "I'll tell her how you feel!"

Darian turned off the equipment that Leo had activated, and returned to the habitation module. Before sliding the dome back on, she grabbed a captive at random, one of the captives she had won on Arcadia.

"I need something to relieve my stress!" said Darian, and she lifted the captive over her mouth, and dropped him in. She forced him to the back of her mouth with her tongue, and swallowed him. Darian lifted her blouse and looked at her stomach as she laughed to herself. She replaced the dome on top of the habitation module, and left the lab. Before she left, she grabbed the rope that Leo had left hanging from the window.

Meanwhile, Leo was running as fast as he could across the campus, trying to make his way back to the creek so he could find cover. This world was so massive that a creek that was half a mile away to the giants was over thirty miles away from his perspective. When he got there, he collapsed and caught his breath. He pulled out the little device the protester had given him, which was about the size of a small camera. He didn't know what to do from here, but the device would provide him with any information he needed to assist him. If he could refuel the Thunderbolt, he could man the space-warp cannon and launch the Thunderbolt so the others could get home. Mason would have to pilot the space plane while Leo remained on Thanatar, but that was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

Leo activated the device and an image appeared on the screen. It was the woman who had given him the device. "Have you escaped from your captress?" the woman asked. This was a real-time two-way video call, and the device in Leo's hands was acting like a two-way video cell phone.

"Yes!" said Leo. "I got away!"

"Did you purge yourself of the nanobots so she can't track you?" the woman asked.

"Yes, what do I do now?" Leo asked.

"There are some women who work for the resistance. You need to go to one of them. There are several of them near you, one of them is very trust-worthy, she is about twenty of your miles from you, but then there's Melina, she's new, and we don't know if she can be trusted yet, but she's closer to you."

"How far away is Melina?" Leo asked.

"About five miles from you, on your scale, but you would be better off with our contact who is twenty of your miles from you!"

"I'll just trust Melina!" said Leo. "Give me a map that shows me how to get to her! I've done a lot of walking tonight, and I don't want to walk another twenty miles!"

"I'm transmitting it to you right now!" said the woman. When Logan got the map, he memorized it and set out to find Melina before daybreak.

Meanwhile, Darian went and woke Zima up and brought her back to the lab and showed her the hole in the window, as well as the rope (from Darian and Zima's perspective, the rope seemed like thread). Zima was still in her nightgown.

"They're getting brave!" said Zima. "You should set an example and swallow one of the passengers of the Thunderbolt!"

At that exact moment, the captives inside the lab could hear every word Darian and Zima were speaking. Carmen and Natalie were worried.

"One of us is going to get swallowed!" said Natalie.

"How would it look at your next presentation if you had to tell them that one of your captives escaped, and you didn't even punish any of them for it?" said Zima.

"You're right!" said Darian, and she punched in her combination into the keypad and the door slid open. She entered the lab and took the transparent dome off the habitation module.

"One of you is going to pay for Leo's escape!" said Darian, and she grabbed Nolan Ward and stuffed him into her mouth before he could even say anything in his defense. Darian tilted her head back and forced Nolan to the back of her mouth with her tongue, and swallowed him.

"Wait, which captive was that?" Zima asked.

"That was Nolan Ward!" said Darian. "By the way, he's in love with you and wants to marry you!"

"Drink some Gak!" said Zima, as she tossed a bottle of the purple liquid to Darian. "He belongs to me now, and I'm getting kind of attached to him!"

Darian nodded in assent and swallowed some of the Gak, and threw up in a sink nearby. Nolan was alive, and none the worse for wear. Zima walked over and rinsed him off.

"I'm keeping you at my dorm, with Brody and my other captives, okay Nolan?"

"Okay!" said Nolan. "It's great to see you again!"

"It's great to see you again, too!" said Zima with a smile that was lacking that evil glint in her eye that she usually had when she smiled.

Leo made his way through the giant town in the middle of the night, following the map that had been transmitted to him by the giant woman who was helping him escape. The distance was five miles on his scale, so it wasn't too far. The giantess who gave him the device that helped him escape had said that the giantess who lived farther away was a better choice, but Logan had chosen to seek out the giantess who lived closer, because he was tired from walking back and forth to and from the Crestwood University campus after he had escaped from Darian.

Leo couldn't help wondering if he was making a mistake, the giantess had said that Melina couldn't be trusted one hundred percent, because she was new to the resistance movement. Still, Leo decided to trust her, because how could she have gotten to know the resistance if she was a traitor? It didn't make sense that she would help tinies if she was planning to betray them.

When Leo got to the address he was looking for, a giantess was waiting outside the house in the yard, standing there. There were several normal-size people at her feet, and they saw Leo first. They waved to him.

"So this must be Melina!" said Leo as he walked across the street to introduce himself to the giantess. She had long brown hair and a light brown complexion. She wasn't extremely skinny, but she wasn't overweight, she struck a fine balance between those two extremes. Melina was wearing an ultra-short mini-skirt with pink spandex leggings that disappeared into mid-calf boots. She also wore a tank top. She was extremely cute.

"You must be Leo!" said Melina, as she knelt down. "Welcome to the sanctuary! Follow the other tinies inside and we'll get you a meal!"

Leo followed the other tinies through a secret door that led through a tunnel that led into the giant house. There was a room built to their scale, with a table and chairs. The six other tinies sat down and invited Leo to eat with them. The giantess set down plates of food for the tiny people, because there was no ceiling or roof in the little room that had been built for them. On the table were plates of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and several plates of vegetables. There was a pitcher of water and glasses for them to drink out of.

One of the men served Leo, and he began to eat ravenously. After finishing his meal, Leo sat back satisfied for the first time since his arrival on Thanatar.

"That was excellent!" said Leo.

"There is a bedroom where you can retire for the night," said the man who had served Leo his dinner. "A bed has been prepared for you!"

"That sounds perfect!" said Leo. "I'm exhausted!"

The man led Leo to his bed, and Leo collapsed and fell right asleep.

The next morning, in Zima's dorm, Zima woke up and went to her habitation module. She took the dome off, and woke up her captives.

"Are any of you good at art?" said Zima. "I need an artist."

Nolan raised his hand. "I'm a graduate of the Joe Kubert school of art! Class of 2013!"

Zima reached in and grabbed Nolan, then set him on her dresser and used her shrink-ray pistol to enlarge him to giant-size again. Nolan stood there on Zima's scale, and jumped down onto the floor, where Zima hugged him and gave him a kiss.

"I studied sequential art at the Kubert school," said Nolan. "Is that okay?"

"Part of my general education requirement was to take an art class," said Zima, as she led Nolan to a canvas that was set up with paints and art supplies. "I need to do a painting, but I'm not good with a paint brush."

"I was horrible with a brush before I went to art school," said Nolan, "but I got proficient at using a sable hair brush for inking. I can handle a brush pretty well now."

"Do a painting of me at Arcadia," said Zima. "I have to paint something from a day in my life that happened recently."

As Nolan began painting, Zima leaned her head against his shoulder.

"I had a crazy night the other night!" said Zima. "I went to a bar with Darian and I played a drinking game with someone and I swallowed like three or four captives! I won the drinking game, but it left me wondering about something."

"What's that?" Nolan asked.

"Do you think a person should feel guilty for swallowing tiny people?" Zima asked.

"Most people from Earth would feel that it is wrong," said Nolan as he painted.

"I don't even feel like it's wrong," said Zima. "Sometimes I wonder what will happen to me in the afterlife if I'm so evil!"

"What religion do you have here on Thanatar?" Nolan asked.

"Octavian Ortega, the guy I told you about who founded our society, was Catholic, and that is the official religion of our society."

"Catholic?" said Nolan. "Then how does your society justify cannibalizing smaller people?"

"People who are into cannibalism make up a slight majority of our society, and it's mostly younger people who are into that. When people get older, they get baptized and stop eating tiny people."

"So this Octavian guy founded this society more than five-thousand years ago?" Nolan asked. "Jesus was alive two-thousand years ago, how could you have a Catholic religion before Christ was even born?"

"It seems ironic," said Zima, "but the people alive before the time of Christ knew about his life and his miracles, even though the life of Christ was a future event at that time. Since Octavian was a time traveler, they knew what would eventually come to pass."

"So when you get baptized, are you going to give up swallowing tiny people?" Nolan asked.

"Yes," said Zima, "I have to get baptized before I can get married, and when you get baptized, you're supposed to give up your sinful life."

"Can you do that?" Nolan asked. "You seem like the more evil of you and Darian. I find it hard to imagine you giving up swallowing tinies!"

"I'm young," said Zima. "I just need to get it out of my system."

"What happens when you're married and you have a daughter of your own who wants to swallow tiny people?" Nolan asked.

"When she's away at college she can do whatever she wants, but while she's at home, she won't be allowed to." said Zima. "That's why college is so popular with women on Thanatar, so many women want to break away from the rules of their parents and experience what it's like to dominate tiny people from Earth, and devour them. For most young women, they wouldn't be able to do that at home with their parents."

"Any ideas on who you want to marry?" Nolan asked.

"Darian told me you want to marry me," said Zima. "Is that true?" Zima tilted her head so she could look into Nolan's eyes while her head still leaned on his shoulder. Zima smiled.

"What would it take for you to marry me?" Nolan asked. "Could I ever win your hand?"

"It isn't unheard of for a woman from Thanatar to marry a man from Earth," said Zima. "The thing is, if you married me, I would demand that you remain as my slave for as long as you are alive. You would never be a citizen. Would you agree to those terms?"

"I would do whatever it takes to marry you!" said Nolan. "I'm in love with you!"

"There's a problem," said Zima, "there's a guy named Adonis who is pursuing me. He wants to marry me. He's twenty-one and studying to be a cop. If I married him, he would be a full citizen, and I'd rather be married to a slave like you, so I can boss you around!"

"Is he your boyfriend?" Nolan asked.

"Not exactly," said Zima, "but my parents approve of him and they want me to marry him. I'll invite him over here for you to meet him, but don't say anything about me drinking beer at that bar, because I'm underage and he would tell my parents."

After Zima made a phone call on her cell phone, Adonis showed up. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, and he was younger than Nolan and handsome, but not quite as muscular as Nolan.

Zima introduced the two men. "Adonis, this is Nolan, Nolan, this is Adonis!" The two men shook hands.

"Nolan is a captive from Earth that I enlarged," said Zima. "Adonis, guess what the two of you have in common?"

"What?" Adonis asked.

"Both of you want to marry me." said Zima. "My parents want me to marry you Adonis, but I want to marry Nolan, because he's a slave from Earth."

"So how are you going to decide?" Adonis asked.

"I'll give you both a challenge. Whoever makes the greatest sacrifice for me will win my hand!"

"What kind of sacrifice?" Nolan asked.

"It could be anything!" said Zima. "Adonis, for instance, you could shrink yourself down for one day and become one of my game pieces on Arcadia! Nolan, I haven't figured out what you could do yet!"

"Nolan, will you help me?" Adonis asked.

"Why would I help you?" Nolan asked.

"If you helped him, that could be your sacrifice," said Zima.

"Okay, I guess so!" said Nolan. "What do you want me to do?"

"What team sport are you good at?" Adonis asked.

"I used to be good at horse, but that's not really a team sport." said Nolan.

"What's horse?" Adonis asked.

"It's kind of like basketball," said Nolan.

"I'm good at basketball!" said Adonis.

"I can go buy a miniature basketball court for the two of you to practice with!" said Zima. "You two stay here, I'll be back soon!" Zima left, and Nolan and Adonis stayed behind in her dorm.

"Now that Zima is gone," said Adonis, "I want to tell you something. I know Zima likes you, but I've known her longer and her parents approve of me. Our marriage was arranged before you even arrived on Thanatar. I'm going to win this challenge and win Zima's hand in marriage. You do realize that, being from Earth, if you lose this challenge and I end up marrying her, you'll end up in her belly?"

"I would die for Zima!" said Nolan. "So if she didn't want to marry me, I would willingly sacrifice myself to her!"

"I would never sacrifice myself to Zima!" said Adonis. "I'm not even in love with her, this is a relationship of convenience for me. And don't think you can win that way, the sacrifice has to be done in a way so you can present it to her, if you die in her belly, you'll still lose the challenge, regardless of whether your sacrifice is greater than mine!"

"And I just want you to know that I plan on winning this challenge," said Nolan, "because my love for Zima is greater than yours!"

At that exact moment, back at Melina's, Leo was just waking up.

"You slept in late today, you must've been tired!" said one of the tiny men who stood the same size as Leo.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name last night!" said Leo as he stood up to shake the man's hand. "I'm Leo Tanner!"

"Jake Bowman!" said the man. "I think you're going to fit in well around here if you managed to escape from the giantess who conquered you. All of us are escapees, too."

Jake introduced Logan to the other men. Each of them told Leo of their narrow escapes, and how they came under the care of Melina. There was a ladder leading up to the dining room table that was built to Leo's scale. Leo followed Jake up the ladder, and saw that Melina was sitting down with her arms on the table.

"Welcome to the resistance, Leo!" said Melina.

"What exactly is it you people do here, Melina?" Leo asked.

"We help other tiny people escape from their mistresses! I'm going to need you guys to break into homes of giantesses and break out other captives for me. Are you willing to do that?"

"Sure!" said Leo, without thinking.

"I know of some tiny people who are trapped in a house not far from here," said Melina. "We can't expect captives to escape and come to us, so we have to go to them. Right after you eat, I'll have Jake look at the plan I have written down on paper, then I'll send you on your mission!"

There was a smaller table built to Leo's scale on the giant table, with chairs around it. Leo and the other six escapees sat down to eat their meal. Leo wondered if their mission would be successful.

When Leo finished his meal, he was given some equipment by Jake and the others who were the same size as him. He was given another pressurized pneumatic device that had a rope and a grapnel hook attached to it, as well as some other climbing gear. Leo and all six of the other captives were going on the mission to rescue some other captives who were also from another version of Earth. Jake showed them a map, the location was about seven or eight miles away on their scale. Melina wished them good luck, and they set out from their tunnel that led under the house, and made their way to the curb. They climbed down and made their way toward their destination. Although it was daylight, they were able to make progress toward their destination without being seen by staying in the gutters and only crossing the streets when they were absolutely sure no giants could see them.

Meanwhile, back at Zima's dorm, Nolan and Adonis were sitting on a couch when Zima returned with the basketball court that was on the same scale as Nolan when he was normal size. It easily fit on Zima's dining room table.

"How often do giants shrink down to our size and play games on Arcadia?" Nolan asked.

"We call ourselves titans," said Zima. "Get it right!"

"Sorry!" said Nolan, "How often do titans shrink down to human size and play in the games on Arcadia?"

"It's done more often than you might think," said Adonis. "Usually it's done by a man to prove his love to a woman, as with my situation with Zima."

"Wouldn't humans attack a titan who shrunk down to human size?" Nolan asked.

"It's been known to happen," said Adonis. "But if a human kills a titan, the punishment is an automatic death sentence! Are you ready to practice?"

Meanwhile, Leo and the six other fugitives who were staying with the giantess Melina were almost to their destination. Jake showed Logan the map on his GPS device that was built on their scale. It had been provided to them by Melina. About half an hour later, they arrived at the house. To the humans, it was colossal, but to a titan it was a modest three story house that was nothing out of the ordinary. It had two floors and an attic, but the attic could qualify as a third floor.

"I think we should climb to that top window and go through the attic," said Leo.

"I agree!" said Jake, and Jake fired his pneumatic tube that released the rope with the grapnel hook attached to it; the grapnel hook Jake climbed the rope, followed by Leo and the others. Once on the first floor roof, Leo fired his pneumatic tube, and the rope with the grapnel hook shot up into the air and broke through the window high above. After checking to see if it was secure, Leo began to climb. When he reached the window, Jake followed him up, and the other men climbed up one at a time.

They climbed through the hole in the window made by the grapnel hook, and found themselves on the window ledge inside the attic. There were drapes hanging to the floor, so they climbed down without any problem and made their way to the door, which had a clearance of about two feet on the bottom of the door. Jake borrowed some climbing gear from one of the other men. He tied one end of some rope to the leg of a chair, and pulled it under the door and to a flight of stairs. He threw the rope down the stairs, and the men followed him as he climbed down from the attic level to the second floor.

"I think two of us should go in opposite directions and scout the second floor," said Jake. "Leo, you go left and I'll go right, the rest of you stay here. We'll report back and describe what we see in five minutes!"

Jake and Leo split up. Leo walked down the hallway, and looked under the first door he saw. There was two feet of clearance, just like the attic door. Leo peeked underneath, and he could see two titanesses standing there observing some humans on a dresser. One was a brunette with a tan complexion and a short miniskirt, the other was a lighter-skinned brunette wearing pants. Leo went back to the other men just as Jake returned from his reconnaissance.

"I saw nothing, what about you?" Jake asked.

"I saw two giant women with some humans in their possession!" said Leo. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm not going in there," said Jake. "I say we wait until nightfall, then go in and try to perform a rescue."

"I'll go in now!" said Leo. "Someone give me a pneumatic firing tube with a rope and grapnel! Their backs are to us, so I think I can get inside undetected!"

Someone gave Leo what he requested, and he peeked under the bedroom door and saw that the two titanesses still had their backs to him. As he crawled underneath the door, he knew the party would be over if one of them turned around before he could find shelter. There was a trash can inside the room not far from the door, Leo quickly but quietly made his way behind it. He eavesdropped on the conversation of the two titanesses.

"I just don't know if there are enough of them for Lindsay's birthday party tomorrow!" said the tan brunette with the miniskirt. "We only have five captives, and there are eight of us!"

"Victoria, we can take them to Arcadia and gamble them to win more," said the lighter-skinned giantess in pants.

"I don't know, Charlotte!" said Victoria, the tanned brunette. "We could end up losing all of them. I say we keep the captives we have right now!"

"Well, let's go eat lunch, and we can decide then!" said Victoria. the two titanesses left the room, completely unaware that seven more tiny people were in their house, if only they could capture them and add them to their collection. When the titanesses were downstairs, Leo made his way under the door and made his way back to Jake Bowman and the other fugitives.

"They're going to lunch right now!" said Leo. "We have time to perform a rescue attempt!"

"Okay," said Jake, "three of you stay up in the attic in case we get captured. The rest of you, come with me and Leo!"

Once inside the room, Leo fired the pneumatic tube he was carrying, and the grapnel pierced the glass jar the other captives were trapped in. Logan climbed up the rope, and used a small tool to break through the glass of the jar, freeing the five captives.

"Come with us!" said Leo. "We're here to free you!"

The five men followed Leo without questions. They climbed down the rope to the floor, then ran across the room and climbed under the door. They made their way to the hallway, and ascended the stairs to the attic and climbed underneath the attic door. They ascended the drapes to the window, and climbed out and down the rope Leo and the others had climbed up originally.

After climbing down the other rope, they were in the front yard of the house. There were now twelve of them, and they all ran back toward Melina's house.

Before the house they escaped from was out of visual distance, they could all hear a scream. Back at the house, Victoria and Charlotte had just discovered that the tinies had escaped from their clutches. They saw the broken jar, the grapnel hook, and the rope leading to the floor that Leo and his crew had hastily left behind.

"Let's check around the house!" said Victoria, as she clutched the rope hanging from the jar.

"They probably climbed out through the attic!" said Charlotte.

The two titan women ran toward the stairs leading to the third floor attic. They found the rope hanging down the length of the stairs, and opened the attic door to see that the rope was tied around the leg of a chair.

"Look!" said Victoria. "Another grapnel hook hanging from the window! Little people must've came through here to conduct a rescue operation!" Victoria looked out the window and saw the rope hanging from the rain gutter.

"We need to get to the ground floor and get outside!" said Victoria. Both women ran down the stairs and headed outside. Since the house was located in the middle of the block, there were only two directions the tiny men could've went.

"You go East," said Victoria, "and I'll go West! Yell if you find any of them! Maybe we'll catch more than we started out with!"

Logan and the other had covered quite some distance since they had hit the ground, but they could still hear Victoria and Charlotte.

Jake tried to do damage control. "All of my guys, team up with one of the guys we rescued and take off in a different direction, and we'll meet back at Melina's!"

Leo took a captive and guided him through a backyard to another street on the other side of the block they were on, away from Victoria and Charlotte. He had memorized the map Jake had shown him, and knew how to get back to Melina's. By taking a different route, it took a little longer, but by nightfall Logan and the captive he had befriended had made it back to Melina's. During their journey, Leo had explained to the guy about Melina, and the underground resistance. They went through the tunnel to get inside the house, and were met by Melina.

"The others arrived twenty minutes ago!" said Melina.

"Did everyone get here okay?" Leo asked.

"Yes!" said Melina. "You guys did an excellent job!"

By that time, back at Zima's dorm room, Nolan and Adonis were finishing up their practice session. Both Nolan and Adonis had been reduced to human size by Zima's shrink-ray pistol, and they were practicing taking shots with the basketball. Zima had tired of watching them, so she had gone to her desk to do some homework.

"Take another shot!" said Adonis, as he tossed the basketball back to Nolan. Nolan took the basketball and threw it in the air, and he made a perfect swish.

"You're getting a lot better in a brief span of time," said Adonis, "you were playing horribly when we first started."

"Once I warm up, I can do pretty good," said Nolan. "Hey, there's something Zima told me about your society that I was wondering about."

"What?" Adonis asked.

"Is Catholicism the official state religion? Nolan asked.

"Yes, the founder of our society was a Hispanic guy from future Earth. He was Catholic, so he made that the official religion of our society."

"There's something that doesn't add up for me," said Nolan after he caught the basketball from Adonis, and threw it for another basket. "If everyone here is Catholic, how can your society be so evil?"

Adonis caught the ball and threw it back to Nolan. "That's easy to explain," said Adonis. "The people of our society don't die, except by accident. Most of the people who were here when Octavian Ortega founded our society five-thousand years ago are still alive! The people who run our society are relatively young in comparison, and most of them are unbaptized. The government of Thanatar is run by secular society, the Catholics stay out of it."

"Zima said the people who are into dominating captives from Earth are in the majority!" said Nolan. "How can that be possible if most of the people of your society are older?" Nolan shot the ball and made another basket.

"In our society, in order to have the right to vote, you must serve four years in the military," said Adonis as he ran to catch the ball, then threw it back to Nolan. "Nobody over thirty can be in the military, so most people who vote are younger people, therefore, our society is run by the younger generation!"

Nolan made another basket. "But what about all the people who served in the military who had the right to vote? There should be more of them than the younger people! Shouldn't their opinions sway the way this society is run? If older people are against what is going on at Arcadia, why don't the older voters put a stop to it?"

"Thousands of years ago, they passed a law that people over sixty-five years old can't vote any more, regardless of whether or not they've served in the military." Adonis caught the ball and threw it back to Nolan.

"That's insane!" said Nolan, as he made a basket. "A law like that could never be passed on Earth!"

"Since people under thirty outnumber people over sixty-five, the law has never been repealed. Hey, I have a question for you."

"What?" Nolan asked.

"Who do you think Zima will lose her virginity to?" Adonis asked. Nolan tried not to smile, knowing that he had made love to Zima, and Adonis obviously had not.

"Why are you smiling?" Adonis asked.

"Because I already boned Zima the first time she enlarged me!" said Nolan.

"Nolan!" said Zima as her face came into view. "Why did you tell him that?" Zima had been eavesdropping on their conversation. Zima reached for Nolan and lifted him to her face. "Now he's going to tell my parents that I'm not a virgin!"

"You would have sex with a game piece from Earth over me?" Adonis asked.

"Shut up, Adonis!" said Zima, "I'm dealing with a situation."

Zima looked at Nolan and said, "I have to punish you, do you have any last words?"

"I love you!" said Nolan, and Zima plunged him into her mouth and swallowed. Nolan felt himself pulled down her esophagus and quickly splashed down into her belly. Nolan wondered how long his air would hold out. Despite having doubts, Nolan felt in his heart of hearts that Zima loved him, and that she wouldn't kill him. But how close to the truth was he?

Nolan struggled to hold his breath while he was treading in Zima's chyme. He felt that if he only took a breath once or twice a minute, he would conserve his air more efficiently. He wondered if Zima loved him, he was confident that she did, but even if she wasn't going to release him from his murky doom, Nolan felt it was a better fate to die within the savage depths of the belly of his mistress rather than to go on living knowing she didn't love him.

Before two minutes elapsed, Nolan felt a surge of movement within Zima's stomach. He was forced upwards along with some chyme, so he held his breath; there had been a pocket of air within her belly, but as he cruised up her esophagus there were no air pockets. He glimpsed light as he streamed out of Zima's mouth and downwards into the sink in Zima's bathroom. Nolan was covered in vomit.

Zima picked him up and rinsed him off, then spoke to him when he was clean.

"I'm sorry I had to do that, I was just mad."

"Where's Adonis?" Nolan asked.

"I re-enlarged him and asked him to leave," said Zima. "I told him that from now on, he has to be shrunk down to your size when you're shrunk, or you have to be enlarged to our size if he's around you."

"Why?" Nolan asked.

"I don't want him to hurt you, he's jealous of you because he knows I like you!"

"Like?" said Nolan. "Are you sure you're not in love with me?"

Zima smiled. "That's for me to know and you to find out!"

Later that evening, at Melina's house, Leo and the other eleven fugitives who were part of the underground resistance movement were eating a dinner that had been prepared by Melina. There was a giant-sized table where Melina sat, and a smaller table built to the scale of Leo and the other fugitives that sat on the larger table; Leo and the others sat at this table and ate.

"I've got another mission for you guys tonight!" said Melina.

"Two missions on the same day?" said Logan between bites of food. "I'm still recovering from the last mission!"

After dinner, Melina gave them the specifics of their mission. There was a sorority house not far from the University where Darian and Zima attended; Leo noted that this was probably the same place where Mason had almost been captured the night they had escaped from Darian. There were several men who had been captured by the sorority girls, and Melina wanted them rescued. Jake held the device that contained the map that showed them how to get there. Leo memorized the information in case the device containing the map was lost or stolen.

Just like before, the men set out through the tunnel under the house and made their way under cover of darkness through the gutters toward the neighborhood where the University was located. They were equipped with pneumatic firing tubes and rope and grapnels just like before. They had several close calls from women out walking their dogs or exiting a shuttle cruiser, but within three hours they had made it to the neighborhood where the sorority was located. Jake pointed out the address to Leo, and they both saw that it was the same address on Melina's map.

As they walked up the driveway, they could hear noise and music coming from the mansion; it was obvious that the women who lived here were having a celebration of some type. Leo was the first to spot an open window on the first floor. One of the men fired his pneumatic tube, and the rope and grapnel flew over the edge of the window and latched on. Apparently, there was so much noise coming from the party inside that none of the titan women heard the noise of the grapnel seeking purchase on the window ledge. The man climbed up the rope, and when he was on the window ledge, Leo followed him, then Jake. Soon, all twelve men were on the window ledge, hiding behind a curtain.

There was a large group of attractive women socializing. There were a large number of blondes, brunettes, and Hispanic women; there were also a couple of Asians, and a couple of black women. Leo uncoiled some rope he had with him and tied one end to the control console that opened and closed the window. It jutted from the edge of the ledge, leaving an area just right for tying a rope around it. Leo tossed the other end of the rope to the ground, and climbed down. Jake and the others followed him. Once they were gathered together on the floor, Jake gave orders.

"I want us to split into two groups of six. Leo, you lead the first group, and I'll lead the other. We need to find the bedroom where the captives are being held. According to Melina's map, it's down here on the first floor, so we're in luck!" Jake pulled out the device with the map, and showed the group the layout of the mansion. "There's two different ways to get to our destination!"

Leo and Jake split into teams and split up. Leo led his team along the back wall that led toward the dining room. Leo could remember the map as he walked along the wall, the women were in and out of the dining area, so there was a good chance they wouldn't get caught there.

"I think once we get to the hallway, when the coast is clear, we should run as fast as we can to the bedroom!" said Leo.

The other five men on his team did as he suggested, and they ran down the hallway. They passed a bedroom along the way, and Leo noticed that there was two feet of clearance under the door, just as there had been at the house they had invaded earlier that day. That left enough room for any man Leo's size to get under the doors without any problems.

"This is it!" said Leo, as they stopped in front of a second bedroom. "We got here before Jake did! I'm crawling under the door to see what's happening in there!"

When Leo crawled underneath the door, he saw that there were no titans in the room, and there was a large jar on a table on the other side of the room. Leo crawled back underneath to inform the others, and he guided them into the room. One of the men fired his pneumatic firing tube and a rope shot out, and a hook penetrated the top of the table. Without being directed to do so, the man began climbing up onto the table to perform the rescue. Once he was on the table, Leo climbed up and joined him, then the others followed, until all six of the team members were on the table.

Before they could go any further, the closet opened and three titan women came lumbering out. One was a brunette, one was a blonde, and one was Hispanic.

"You fell right into our trap!" said the brunette. "My name is Stephanie, and I will be your captress tonight!"

Leo tried to climb down the rope, but he wasn't fast enough; Stephanie jumped in front of the rope and pulled it up in one hand, until Logan was dangling in front of her face.

"So small, yet so agile! We plan on playing a drinking game here tonight, and you're all invited!"

The blonde high-fived Stephanie, and the Hispanic woman and the blonde woman high-fived each other. The blonde unscrewed the jar, and Stephanie dropped Logan inside after removing his escape equipment. Stephanie did the same to the other captives who had just been re-captured.

"You're little lives involve getting captured, escaping from the hands of your mistress, then getting re-captured all over again!" said Stephanie as she screwed the lid of the jar back on tight. This jar was very deep, unlike the shallow jar Darian had kept Logan in back at her dorm. Even if three of them stood on each other's backs, there would be no way to get enough leverage to unscrew the jar, despite the fact that the air holes were large enough to fit their fists inside of.

Stephanie carried the massive jar to the living room, where the party was in full swing.

"We have visitors, ladies!" said Stephanie, holding the jar aloft. Another woman came in with another jar, and Leo noticed that Jake and his team had also been captured. The two jars were placed side by side.

"Who wants to play a drinking game?" Stephanie asked, and the crowd of women went wild. Stephanie unscrewed the lids of both jars, and pulled out a captive from Leo's jar. He was one of the men who had been rescued from Victoria and Charlotte's house earlier that day. Stephanie grabbed a mug of beer, and dropped the captive inside. A stout blonde with nice legs grabbed a captive from the other jar, and dropped him into another mug of beer.

"Whoever swallows their captive first and finishes their beer has the heart of a conqueror!" said Stephanie, and both women lifted their beer mugs. "Three, two, one, go!" and both women started guzzling their beers.

Stephanie was obviously a regular drinker, because her beer was half empty by the time the blonde had taken two swallows. Stephanie swallowed her captive, and slammed her empty mug down on a counter while the blonde was still drinking.

"Finished!" Stephanie shouted, and the women in the room began cheering for her.

"Again!" shouted the women in unison. "Again! Again! Again!"

Stephanie responded by pulling Jake out of the other jar as another woman refilled her beer mug. The stout blonde grabbed a captive from the jar that housed Leo. When both mugs were full, the women dropped their respective captives into their mugs, and the countdown began anew.

At "Go!" Stephanie plunged the beer to the back of her throat and swallowed her helpless captive, then finished her beer in record time. She finished sooner than she had finished her first beer. She slammed her empty mug down on the counter, and the women started cheering again.

Leo wondered if any of them would survive the night, when there was a knock at the door. One of the sorority women opened the door, and Leo was shocked to see Melina enter the mansion! At first, he was overjoyed, thinking that she had come to rescue them, but then the truth set in: Melina had double-crossed them, it was the only explanation! How else could she know so much about the layout of the mansion?

"I hope you don't mind, we're using them for a drinking game!" said Stephanie.

"No!" said Melina. "When we sell these captives back to their original owners, we'll split the money! I don't want you swallowing any more of them!"

Melina approached the jars, which were open because the lids had been taken off. Melina could easily hear the captives if they tried to speak to her.

"Melina, how could you betray us?" Leo asked. "The resistance trusted you!"

"And they still do!" said Melina with a smile. "I'm going to report your capture, and it will look like it wasn't my fault! This time next week, I'll have half a dozen more captives just like you! In the meantime, your mistresses will pay a pretty penny for all of you!"

Meanwhile, back at Zima's dorm, Zima was finished with her homework and was feeling a little frisky. She pulled out her shrink-ray pistol, and set it to the neutrino transfer protocol, and Nolan was enlarged. When he jumped down off the dresser, Zima hugged him and gave him a kiss.

"Can you give me a massage?" Zima asked. "I've got a stiff neck from doing a lot of homework."

"Only if it has a happy ending!" said Nolan, and Zima smiled.

Zima laid down on her stomach on her bed. As Nolan gave her a massage, she said "Adonis knows you didn't die when I swallowed you earlier today."

"What do you see in that punk anyway?" Nolan asked as he worked on Zima's neck muscles.

"I really don't see anything in him," said Zima. "You're the one I love!"

Nolan's heart swelled with pride, as his greatest desire was met: he had Zima's love. The love of this titaness!

"There's just one problem!" said Zima.

"What's that?" Nolan asked.

"I made a promise to Adonis, and he told my parents about it, so I have to honor it."

"What promise?" Nolan asked, his mind drawing a blank.

"I will marry whichever one of you makes a greater sacrifice for me!" said Zima.

Nolan had mixed feelings. On one hand, he knew he was in like Flynn because he had Zima's love. On the other hand, he felt a small amount of anxiety, because what sacrifice could he possibly make to prove his love to this mighty giantess from another world?

At the sorority mansion just off campus, Melina picked up the two jars containing Leo and the other captives.

"Four of us got swallowed by Stephanie and that blonde!" said Leo as Melina screwed the lids onto the jars.

"Do you think I really care?" said Melina. "The whole purpose of your existence is to give pleasure to titans! All of you are bound to end up in someone's belly sooner or later! Besides, I'll just take a bigger cut of Stephanie's share of the profits because she swallowed some of you!"

Melina took the two jars and headed outside to her shuttle cruiser. She got in, and set the jars on the center console between the driver's seat and the front passenger seat. She didn't drive back to her house, however; she began calling the numbers of the giantesses who owned the captives, and returned them one by one. Leo's mistress was the first owner Melina contacted.

"Darian Wagner?" said Melina.

"Yes?" said Darian as her face appeared on the screen. She was in the process of doing homework in her dorm.

"I have Leo Tanner, a captive that escaped from you!" said Melina.

"How did you capture him?" Darian asked.

"Don't worry about that just yet," said Melina. "I'm interested in the reward for returning him to you."

"I've got a lot of credits from gambling on Arcadia," said Darian. "How much do you want for him?"

"Standard rate is five-thousand credits!" said Melina.

"I can give you five-thousand!" said Darian.

"I was hoping for nine!" said Melina. "What I do is a business venture, by capturing escaped captives!"

"I'll give you six-thousand," said Darian. "But I won't go any higher!"

"How about six-five?" Melina asked.

"If you won't take six-thousand, then you can keep him!" said Darian. "That's a thousand over the standard rate, so you'd still be ahead. I plan on punishing him by taking him back to Arcadia, and I'm sure he'll lose, so I won't be keeping him anyway. Why would I pay more than six-thousand for a captive I don't plan on keeping?"

"Okay, you drive a hard bargain!" said Melina. "I'll take six-thousand for Leo Tanner!"

"I'll text my address to you so you can bring him right over!" said Darian.

Melina flew her shuttle cruiser directly to the Crestwood University parking lot, and took Leo's jar and a credit swiper to Darian's dorm. When Darian answered the door, she had a credit card in her hand, and before Melina gave Leo to Darian, Melina waited for Darian to swipe her credit card and transfer six-thousand credits to Melina's account before she reached into the jar and pulled Leo out and gave him to her.

After Melina left, Darian lifted Logan to face level and addressed him.

"Well, haven't you been off on a little adventure? I'm taking you back to the lab right now! I should've known the jar I put you inside of was too small!"

Darian returned to the lab, and took the dome off of the habitation module and set Logan inside. Natalie ran up and hugged him.

"I thought we'd never see you again!" said Natalie.

"Don't get too happy!" said Darian, as she looked down on the captives. "Tomorrow morning, I'm taking all of you to Arcadia and Logan is going to play a game! I'm counting on him losing, I'm going to bet against him! Don't let me down, Leo!"

After Darian left the captives alone in the lab and left for the night, the captives got back to socializing with each other. Mason, Tyler, Carmen, and Natalie gathered around Leo.

"Where's Nolan?" Leo asked.

"He belongs to Zima now," said Natalie. "He's in love with her, so I think he's where he wants to be."

Leo shivered. "Ooh! How could anyone be in love with one of these troll women?"

"My brother was a comic book artist before he became a concert promoter," said Natalie, "and he used to make comic books about the giantess fetish. He has admitted to the family that he was into giant women for a long time. Being here is like a dream come true for him!"

"I'm with Leo!" said Mason. "These giant women are nothing but trolls! Cannibalistic trolls!"

Leo pulled a device out of his pocket. "I've still got it!" said Leo. "I never gave it to Melina, and I took it with me on every mission she sent me on, just in case I got re-captured!"

"Who's Melina?" Carmen asked.

"She's a traitor working for the underground resistance movement. She allows escaped captives to come under her care, then she turns them over to their original owners and collects a reward, with the resistance being none the wiser!"

"What is that?" Natalie asked.

"It's what allowed me to learn how to use Darian's equipment in this lab!" said Leo. "She was stupid for not shaking me down and taking it!"

"Zima used a device here in the lab to enlarge Nolan to giant size," said Mason. "When you utilized the other devices in the lab, why didn't you use that device to make yourself big like them? Then you could've refueled the Thunderbolt and we could've taken off that night!"

"It's password encrypted!" said Leo. "These titans are very picky about allowing tiny people to grow to giant size. The tutorial in this device explained that to me! Only Darian or Zima can use the enlarger! Same with any shrink-ray pistol, if we took one away from a giant, we wouldn't be able to use it against them, because it only works if it locks onto the chromosome pattern of the owner of the gun!"

"It seems like for every three steps forward, we get knocked two steps back!" said Mason.

"But that's still one step forward!" said Leo.

At Zima's dorm, Nolan and Zima were getting frisky while Nolan was giant-sized, when there was a knock at the door. Zima opened the door and Darian was there.

"Someone captured Leo, and I bought him back from her!" said Darian. "I'm taking him and the other captives to Arcadia tomorrow morning, I'm betting that he'll lose. Want to come with me?"

"Sure!" said Zima, with her arm around Nolan.

Darian looked at how affectionate Zima was with Nolan, and remarked, "If you marry Nolan, you'll be an embarrassment to your entire family, I hope you know that!"

Zima looked at Nolan and smiled. "I'd rather have a slave for a husband anyway!"

"So would I," said Darian, "but you don't see me marrying an enlarged captive!" Darian turned to walk away. "Well, see you tomorrow!"

Zima said goodbye and closed the door. Zima and Nolan started making out.

The next morning at the lab, Darian arrived and gave the captives a breakfast of nutrition bars and bottled water. When they were fed, they met Zima in the parking lot with Nolan shrunk back down to normal size and in Zima's hands. Darian sat in the driver's seat, while Zima sat in the passenger seat. The habitation module was placed in the center console between the two seats, and Zima placed Nolan in the habitation module with the other captives.

"Oh, Nolan!" said Natalie, throwing her arms around her brother. "I thought I might never see you again!"

"I'm okay!" said Nolan. "Me and Zima are in love! I just have to do something to show that I can make a greater sacrifice for her than the guy her parents want her to marry, some guy named Adonis."

"But she's crazy!" sad Natalie. "I know you have a giantess fetish, but isn't this crazy, even for you? What if she swallows you?"

"She already has!" said Nolan. "And she puked me right back up again by drinking something called Gak. If that doesn't prove her love for me, then what will? Zima is my destiny!"

After docking on the Arcadia space station, Zima carried the habitation module to the seating area.

"Are you going to have Tyler Chen play so you can win some guaranteed credits?" Zima asked.

"No, I'm just going to have Leo play and lose. I've got a lot of money riding on him if he loses," Darian replied.

"What if he wins?" Zima asked.

"Then I'll lose a substantial amount of credits!" said Darian. "He can't win anyway, I'm having him play the most difficult game of all."

"What game is that?" Zima asked.

"He will play tennis while levitating on a hover-disk. It takes a long time to master that game, even at the beginning levels!"

Zima smiled mischievously, "Is there still time to bet against him?"

"I think you still have a few minutes!" said Darian, and Zima got up to go place her bet. In the meantime, Darian picked Leo up from the habitation module and said, "You're doomed, little man! If you lose, you'll end up as someone else's captive! If you win, you'll be punished by me!"

When Zima returned, she grabbed Nolan none too gently and placed him in her bosom.

"You've got the best seat in the house!" said Zima.

When it came time for the game to begin, Darian took Leo to the game board, and he got situated. He was on a hover-disk, something like a round skateboard that utilized anti-gravity to hover about six inches above the game board. His opponent was on the other side of the tennis court, also on a hover-disk. When the game started, Leo was still getting accustomed to using the hover-disk.

His opponent scored a point when he wasn't ready, and continued to score over and over again. Leo hadn't played tennis in years, and this version of it was especially difficult to play, because of the added problem of being forced to balance on the hover-disk. Leo had learned to ride a skateboard when he was a teenager, but he still had trouble balancing. His opponent obviously had been trained to balance and play this game. When Leo got lucky and managed to score a point, he looked up at Darian, who lifted her blouse ever so slightly and pointed to her belly button. This was a threat meant to ensure that Leo lost this match, and Leo got the message. He stopped trying too hard to win, though he wouldn't have been able to win anyway. If he won and went back to Darian, she would swallow him. If he lost, he would end up under the ownership of his opponent's mistress, a gothic blonde with fishnet stockings. He didn't know if she would swallow him or not, but it would be an improvement over being under Darian's power, because she held a grudge against Leo for escaping from her.

When the match was over, the gothic blonde stepped forward to collect Leo. She put her hand down palm-side up, and Leo and his opponent both stepped on. She lifted them, and said: "My name is Morgan. I'll be your new mistress from this day forward!" She placed them in a container that didn't have windows on the sides, but the lid had a window that allowed light in. On the interior, there were seats built into the walls, and a table.

"So what's the situation here?" Leo asked the man who had beaten him in the tennis match. "Is Morgan good, or evil?"

"They're all evil, aren't they?" the man asked. "So what's the difference?"

"Some are less evil than others," said Leo. "I know of an underground resistance that rescues people like us."

"Be quiet!" said the man. "We're being recorded at all times!"

"My last mistress never recorded us, as far as I know!" said Leo.

"She probably did, without your knowledge," said the man. "I'm Peter, by the way! You can call me Pete!"

"Leo!" The two men shook hands.

Right at the end of the match when Leo lost, Darian and Zima stood up and cheered. The two young women went to collect their winnings. Nolan was still shrunk and riding along in Zima's bosom, happy as clam. When the women had their credit cards updated, Zima collected the habitation module and they went back to Darian's shuttle cruiser. Zima plucked Nolan from her bosom and kissed him.

"When we get back to my dorm, I want to try having sex with you while you're shrunk!" said Zima.

Despite knowing of the obvious danger of this, for some reason Nolan kept quiet. If she tried having sexual contact with him while he was tiny in comparison to her, he could be crushed. This could be the most horrifying event of his life, or his greatest ecstasy. What adventures awaited him?

"You know Tyler Chen?" Peter asked Logan.

"Yes! He was on the space plane I was piloting when we got pulled through a space warp to Thanatar."

"I'd hate to go up against him!" said Peter. "The only reason I'm good at the game I defeated you in is because I can balance on a hover-disk. In a regular tennis match, he would squash me!"

Leo was glad that Peter had told him that Morgan, their mistress, recorded what they said; Leo still had the device with him that he could communicate with the protester who helped him escape when he was on the run to Melina's. She had even warned Logan that Melina might not be trustworthy, but Leo was exhausted so he had chosen to work with Melina rather than walk the extra distance to a giantess who was guaranteed to be safe. Leo knew he had to be very careful about using the device or pulling it out, because Morgan might find out about it and take it away from him.

Soon, their containment unit was put into Morgan's shuttle cruiser and they headed back toward Thanatar. When they arrived at her house, the containment unit was put on the dining room table, and Morgan scooped them out. Logan was able to get a better look at her this time. From her feet to her head, she wore black leather mid-calf boots with lots of buckles, black fishnet stockings that disappeared into an ultra-short black leather miniskirt. She wore a tiger stripe tank top and a black vest, and she had on lots of bracelets. Her long blonde hair was spiked up in several places, and she wore gothic makeup and black lipstick. She looked like she would fit in at a typical heavy-metal concert back on Earth, had she been normal size.

"Are you done checking me out?" Morgan said to Leo with a smile on her face.

"What are you planning on doing with me?" Leo asked.

"I sort of work with the underground resistance," said Morgan. "In a round-about way. I'm sort of a bounty hunter. Any captive who came into contact with a resistance operative but gets captured has a bounty placed on them by the resistance. You were recently in the care of a resistance operative, am I right?"

"Yes!" said Leo, feeling that he had nothing to lose, since there was nothing he could do either way whether she was or wasn't being truthful about helping captives. "I was under the care of a giantess named Melina, but she double-crossed me!"

"Melina is a double agent?" Morgan asked.

"Yes!" said Leo. "She acts like she's working for the resistance, but she sells her captives out and reports them as being captured, so the resistance will trust her again! You should report her to the leaders of the resistance!"

"I'm not reporting anyone," said Morgan. "I'm going to continue letting her do what she's doing, it will mean more business for me. I don't actually work for the resistance, but I make money from them by selling them back captives who were under their care who have been captured. This is how I make my living, but I'm neither for nor against the resistance."

"What about Peter?" Leo asked.

"He is a recent conquest, he knows nothing of any of this. I keep him because he is a skilled game piece, and he can win back any captive I need to win."

"So you're not going to hurt either me or Peter?" Leo asked.

"No," said Morgan. "This is a business for me. Do you know that it's a felony for titans to be caught helping Earth people escape? We can be sent to prison for that."

"Then why do you take that chance?" Leo asked.

"For the thrill, I guess." said Morgan. "Life for us is boring. Medical science is such that we can theoretically live forever without aging; there are no diseases, no poverty, no wars. Without a risk in life, things wouldn't be as exciting!"

"How is the exchange going to take place?" Leo asked. "When you turn me over to the resistance?"

"I'm taking you to Arcadia in an hour. The resistance operative I'm in contact with will have a captive who is working for the resistance, and you'll play him in a game and lose. When your opponent wins, his mistress will own you and him, and she'll take you with her. Remember, your opponent works for the resistance, and you must lose in order for the exchange to take place as planned. Do you understand?"

"Loud and clear!" said Leo. "But what game will we be playing?"

"It's just a foot race!" said Morgan. "Just be sure to let your opponent win, I don't know how many times I should remind you of that! I don't get paid unless you fall into the hands of the resistance!"

"What about me?" said Peter. "Are you ever going to release me?"

"You're too talented!" said Morgan. "I need you to win more captives."

Peter hunched his shoulders and looked dejected. Leo felt sorry for him, but there was nothing he could do to help Peter. If he played his cards right, he could rescue the captives from the Thunderbolt who were trapped in Darian's lab, and with the help of the resistance, he could refuel the Thunderbolt and get everyone safely back to Earth.

Morgan took Leo and Peter back to Arcadia in their containment unit. After they arrived in one of the arenas, Morgan released them from their containment unit so they could take a look around. A racing match had just ended, and the winner of the race made a speech thanking his captress for the honor of serving her.

"The winner gets to make a speech?" Leo asked.

"The footraces are the only competition where the winner is allowed to make a speech," said Morgan. "The captive is expected to show veneration for his mistress, and to thank the spectators for the honor of competing." Morgan looked at the captives entering the game board. "That blonde captive is the one I told you about." Morgan was careful not to give away any more details, because if other titans found out she was allowing Logan to throw the race for the resistance, she could be arrested.

Leo thought about what Morgan said as he made his way through a tube that led to the game board. He knew he had to lose to the blonde guy, but he had some things to say to these titans if he won, and he wasn't sure if he could throw the race that easily. Could he say things that might sway the way these people thought about their way of life, and the concept of enslaving tiny people from other worlds? Leo thought it was worth a try.

When the race began, Leo was in the lead; the blonde guy he was supposed to lose to was right behind him in another lane of the track. Leo had a flashback to when he was a prisoner of war ten years earlier; he had been in a living situation not that unlike what he was experiencing on Thanatar. Not many people knew this, not even his close family members, but Leo suffered from a mild case of post-traumatic stress disorder. The war had exhilarated him, but at the same time it had damaged his psyche to the point that if he allowed himself to, he could let his PTSD completely take over, and that is what happened during the footrace. Instead of allowing the blonde guy to win, Leo made his way around the track faster than any of his opponents. Although Logan was in his mid-40s, the strict athletic conditioning requirements of the Air Force had left him in better shape than most men half his age.

Morgan sat in her seat and watched the results. Most people had bet on the blonde captive to win, word of mouth was a strong influence in the betting arenas on Arcadia. Morgan felt that Leo was a fool, but she also knew she wouldn't be getting paid until Leo was in the hands of the resistance.

Back on Thanatar, Zima was sitting on her bed when she got a phone call from Darian.

"Logan just won a footrace on Arcadia!" said Darian over the two-way video cell phone.

"I'll turn on the TV!" said Zima.

When she switched it on and turned it to the main Arcadia channel, she could see a close-up of Leo Tanner, Darian's former captive.

Most of the people on Thanatar were watching this event, simply because it was such a huge upset. Even the women of Arcadia were interested in sports, because of the fate of the captives who lost their lives the majority of the time to sadistic titanesses who swallowed the captives on the losing teams.

Leo stepped onto the winner's podium and spoke into the microphone.

"People of Thanatar, titans and titan-goddesses! I am Leo Tanner, and though I am much smaller than you, I am a man! To many of you, I am nothing more than a game piece to be won or lost on the game board, but where I come from, I was a man with a family, a life, and a soul! Try to imagine being ripped away from everything you know to be treated as nothing more than a possession by a ruthless race of tyrants! You may feel that your way of life is right, but all of you must at some point realize that this way of life is wrong! Taking a sentient being and enslaving them for entertainment is barbaric!"

Morgan made her way down to the game board, carrying the containment unit that had housed Leo and Peter. According to the rules of the game, she was the owner of both Logan and the captives who had lost the race, and was therefore held responsible for his misbehavior. She grabbed Logan before he could make any more inflammatory statements. Morgan took the bigger microphone that was built to her scale, and said: "I apologize for my captive! He just misses his home world!"

Morgan collected the captives she had won because of Leo's victory, and went back to her shuttle cruiser. Once inside and they were on their way back to Thanatar, Morgan took Leo out of the containment unit and set him on the console in front of her as she piloted her shuttle cruiser.

"Leo, what were you thinking back there?" said Morgan with frustration in her voice. "First, you defied my instructions when you won the race, then you spouted all of that political rhetoric! If they find out I'm working with the resistance, I could be sent to prison for a very long time!"

"I wanted to try to sway them to re-think the way this society operates!" said Leo.

"You didn't sway anyone back there, you endangered me and the resistance! If you want to be the first captive to ever make it back to Earth, that's fine, but don't do it at the expense of the people who are trying to help you!"

"I'm sorry!" said Leo. "I didn't mean to endanger you."

"One thing worked out good in all of this," said Morgan, "I'm going to send you in for a re-match, and it will look less suspicious if you won the first race and lost the second race. But you must do as I tell you this time and throw the second race, or I won't be able to help you!"

Meanwhile, back at Zima's dorm, Zima was still laughing after watching Leo's speech, while the miniaturized Nolan was next to her.

"That fool!" said Zima. "He can't convince titans to feel pity for their captives! That's like trying to convince a falcon or a hawk not to eat a mouse or a pigeon!" She looked down at Nolan. "Are you proud of your friend? He did something that has never been done before on Arcadia!"

"I hope Leo does okay," said Nolan. "Hey, didn't you promise me that we'd have sex while I was tiny-sized?"

"We will," said Zima, "but first Adonis is coming over, and he wants to talk to you about something."

"What does he want to talk to me about?" Nolan asked.

"He said it was guy stuff," said Zima, "so I have to enlarge you before he comes over. He's going to take you somewhere so the two of you can talk about life and stuff."

Zima placed Nolan on her dresser as she had several times before, and set her shrink-ray pistol to neutrino transfer protocol, and aimed it at Nolan. The instant she fired the pistol, Nolan was re-enlarged back to giant-size. Nolan jumped down, and Zima threw her arms around him and kissed him.

"I'm sorry I didn't have sex with you while you were shrunk, but I was swamped with homework!"

"No problem!" said Nolan. "But I'll take a rain-check!"

Zima smiled as she kissed him on the lips, then there was a knock at the door.

"That's Adonis!" said Zima. "Have fun, Nolan!"

Adonis waited at the door and didn't enter. Zima used body language to suggest that Nolan exit the dorm. Nolan wondered what Adonis wanted to talk about as he headed out the door and shook hands with Adonis.

Nolan had an uneasy feeling in his stomach as he left Zima's dorm with Adonis, but he hoped for the best as Zima closed her door behind him.

"I want to take a walk with you and have a private conversation with you," said Adonis.

"That's what Zima told me," said Nolan, "So what's on your mind?"

Adonis kept quiet until they were some distance from the dormitories. When he felt nobody was nearby, he spoke up.

"I want to start off by saying I can't kill you, because Zima already told me she will have nothing to do with me if I hurt you in any way."

That's good to know!" said Nolan. "I was kind of stressed about that."

"I know Zima is in love with you, and you're in love with her," said Adonis. "Before you arrived, there was a delicate balance in our relationship. Her parents and my parents arranged our marriage when we were children. I know what Zima and I have isn't true love, but it's good enough for me. I want you to return to your own world so Zima and I can be married!"

"Return to Earth?" said Nolan. "From what I've been told, that's never happened before, in the five-thousand year history of Thanatar!"

"That's true, but if you agree to leave, I will help you get back to Earth." said Adonis.

"How do you plan on doing that?" Nolan asked.

"I can refuel the Thunderbolt for you, Darian still has it in the lab!" said Adonis.

"Who's going to open up a space warp so we can get back?" Nolan asked.

"Leo Tanner, the pilot of the Thunderbolt, has managed to access mind control technology in Darian's lab. He knows how to operate the space warp cannon. He will have to stay behind, of course, but you and your sister Natalie and the others will be able to return to Earth! All you need to do is leave behind an object from your world, so the space warp cannon can lock onto the quantum signature of your reality!"

"What kind of object?" Nolan asked.

"It can be anything, a lighter, keys, something that came from your world. That's the only way the space warp cannon can lock onto your home reality."

"I'm not sure if I want to do that," said Nolan. "I've got a good thing going with Zima, and you yourself said that she's in love with me! You're like a loser at a blackjack table trying to tell the guy with the most chips to cash in!"

"What are you, like 40?" Adonis asked.

"I'm 39!" said Nolan. "I was born in 1990!"

"I'm 21," said Adonis, "doesn't it seem better for someone closer to Zima's age being married to her?"

"My dad told me something a long time ago," said Nolan, "as long as the chick is eighteen or older, the age difference doesn't matter!"

"Well consider this," said Nolan, "My people conquer your people and use them as game pieces on Arcadia, then we swallow them and digest them! Do you really want to be married to a woman who cannibalizes your own race?"

"Actually, that's the reason I want to marry Zima!" said Nolan. "She's like a goddess to me!"

"I could be sent to prison for conspiracy if anyone finds out that I made this offer to you!" said Adonis. "So I'm only going to make this offer one more time, then I'll never ask you again. So keep this in mind: your sister Natalie would love to return to Earth. I'm willing to make that happen. I want a response from you right now, because I won't make this offer again! I want an answer now!"

Adonis wanted an immediate response from Nolan, but in that moment Nolan considered his options. He knew that if he agreed to let Adonis help him his sister would be able to return home, and it wasn't a guarantee that he would end up with Zima if he couldn't make a sacrifice for her, as she demanded. If he stayed on Thanatar and Adonis somehow made a greater sacrifice than he was able to, then he would end up becoming Zima's meal. His choice was to remain loyal to his family, or remaining loyal to Zima. In a second of time, he gave Adonis his answer.

"You've got a deal!" said Nolan, as he shook Adonis's hand.

"I was hoping you'd be sensible!" said Adonis. "I've got everything planned. I'm going to get the combination of the lab from Zima so I can refuel the Thunderbolt, but I can't do it today, because it would arouse the suspicions of Zima and Darian so soon after I spoke with you. Word on the street has it that your buddy Leo was won by a woman named Morgan, a member of the resistance, and they're trying to get him home. I am in contact with her. I need you to have Zima shrink you and return you to the habitation module. Just tell her you want to see your sister again."

"What's your plan?" Nolan asked.

"I'm going to have Darian gamble with Mason, the race car driver, against Logan. But I need you to tell Mason to throw the race! Can you do that?"

"Yeah," said Nolan, "so you want Mason to be owned by the resistance along with Logan?"

"Yes," said Adonis, "because Mason will have to pilot the Thunderbolt back to Earth while Logan operates the space warp cannon!"

"Okay, I'll do it!" said Nolan.

"You can't breathe a word of this to Zima or Darian!" said Adonis. "And you can't tell anyone else, either! Not your sister, or the other captives back in Darian's lab, or Brody and those other captives back in Zima's dorm!"

"I just figured something out," said Nolan. "by following through with this plan, you're making a sacrifice for Zima because you're risking prison time by doing this, aren't you? Is this how you hope to win the contest Zima has between the two of us?"

"If you return to your home-world, hopefully there won't need to be a contest anymore because you'll be out of the picture!"

"I guess you're right!" said Nolan.

"Now I want you to return to Zima's dorm and follow through with your part of the plan," said Adonis. "I'm in touch with Morgan, the woman who won Leo. I'll convince Darian to gamble Mason against him today on Arcadia, just remember to tell Mason to throw the race so Logan will win!"

"If you want me to keep all of this a secret, how do you expect me to tell Mason to throw the race?" Nolan asked.

"That's something for you to figure out on your own!" said Adonis as he turned and walked away.

Nolan returned to Zima's dorm and knocked on the door. Within seconds, the door slid open and Zima stood there smiling.

"Can you shrink me and return me to the habitation module at Darian's lab?" Nolan asked. "I miss my sister and want to see her again."

"Sure!" said Zima. "I thought you couldn't live without me!"

"I can't, but I want to spend some time alone with my sister for a while."

"Get back up on my dresser!" said Zima as she fingered her shrink-ray pistol.

Nolan climbed up and stood there, and Zima pulled the trigger and was instantly reduced to his normal size, which to the titans of Thanatar was around one inch tall. Zima snatched him up and carried him out of her dorm and headed back to the lab. She entered her combination in the keypad and the door opened, and she went to the habitation module and set Nolan down. She took the dome off and set Nolan inside, then replaced the dome and left the lab. Mason, Tyler, Carmen, and Natalie were there. When Nolan was sure Zima was gone, he approached Mason.

"If we get taken to Arcadia today and you race against Logan, you have to throw the race!" said Nolan.

"Throw a race?" said Mason. "That's crazy! I'm not throwing a race!"

"You have to!" said Nolan. "Leo is now owned by the resistance, and if you lose to him, you'll belong to the resistance, too!"

"How did you come by this knowledge?" Mason asked.

"Someone who knows Zima is working with the resistance, but I can't tell you who!" said Nolan. "You have to trust me on this! He's going to refuel the Thunderbolt, and then you can pilot it back to Earth while Logan works the space warp cannon!"

"You should trust him, Mason!" said Natalie. "What do we have to lose? If we do nothing, we'll stay trapped on this world of titans! Nolan has been enlarged by Zima, so he's privy to knowledge that isn't available to us!"

"Okay, I'll do it!" said Mason. "But if you're lying to me Nolan, I'll kick your ass!"

"I'm not lying!" said Nolan. "I found a way to get us back to Earth, but Leo will have to stay behind to operate the space warp cannon. It's crucial that you lose the race to Logan for the cards to fall in our favor."

Later that day, just as Nolan had predicted, Darian arrived and informed Mason that he would be racing against Logan; apparently, Darian wanted to win Logan back from the woman who had won him from her.

"Nolan, you belong to Zima now. Do you want to come with us and watch the race, or do you want me to leave you with Zima?"

"I'd like to watch the race!" said Nolan.

Darian carried the habitation module to her shuttle cruiser and locked the lab. She flew to Arcadia, and found a seat in one of the hover car racing arenas. Morgan was there, and she had Logan. She knew of Adonis's plan, and was prepared to turn both Mason and Logan over to the resistance for the right price. The only thing Adonis had been wrong about was that Morgan didn't actually work for the resistance, as he had thought. She was a middle man who sold specific captives back to the resistance, but would never double-cross the resistance, because this was her livelihood. Adonis had actually paid her to gamble with Leo against Darian's captive Logan. The price had been right, and she agreed and had contacted Darian without Darian knowing Adonis was behind the whole thing.

Mason was issued hover car 58, and Leo was in car 76. There were numerous other drivers, but Mason only paid attention to the car Leo was getting into. When the race started, Mason took an early lead, just to put on a show; then Leo came up behind him, and Mason maneuvered so Leo could pass him. Once Leo took the lead, Mason stayed behind him and blocked other cars from getting ahead of the two of them. When the prescribed number of laps had been completed and Leo won the race, Darian slammed her fist down on the table in front of her.

"Damn!" said Darian. "I lost one of my best game pieces!"

Meanwhile, Morgan was happy as she collected all the race car drivers and put them in her containment unit. While Darian got up to leave, Morgan still had a plan. The next race was being financed entirely by the resistance, and Leo quickly explained this to Mason, as he had been instructed to do.

"In the next race, we have to lose!" said Leo. "No matter who wins, as long as it's not one of us, we'll end up with the underground resistance!"

Mason agreed to throw the race, because he trusted Leo. When the race started, they tried to make it look good by driving fast, but as the end of the race drew near, Leo and Mason made sure they were behind some of the other drivers. When the race was over, Mason and Leo lost, but all of the losing captives ended up with a blonde woman who was familiar to Leo; she had originally given him the device that helped him to learn how to use the technology in Darian's lab. The woman collected the captives and put them in a containment unit similar to Morgan's, and took them with her to her shuttle cruiser. The other men in the containment unit introduced themselves to Leo and Mason.

"I'm Nick! The woman who is caring for us works for the resistance! Her name is Melissa! Shes says you two have a space plane back on Thanatar, and Melissa is going to help you get it up and running so you can get back to your home world!"

"Don't you want to get back to your home world?" Mason asked. "Why are you so motivated to help us out?"

"Nobody has ever escaped Thanatar!" said Nick. "If you are able to get home, it would give hope to others!"

"I'm down for that!" said Mason. "Maybe we'll be the first of many!"

Leo and Mason sat back as their new owner Melissa piloted her shuttle cruiser back to Thanatar. The other captives were friendly, and it seemed to be the truth that Melissa indeed worked for the underground resistance. When they landed in the parking structure of Melissa's condominium complex, she carried the containment unit with the captives and went inside.

She placed the containment unit on a coffee table in her living room, and opened a door in the side and instructed the captives to emerge.

"I'm Melissa! I'm sure the other captives have informed you that I work for the resistance movement."

"Yeah," said Mason,"Nick told us. I didn't want to believe it at first, but I'm glad to be rescued!"

"How long has the resistance movement been around?" Leo asked.

"The resistance movement has existed off and on for many centuries!" said Melissa. "We have tried unsuccessfully to get tiny people back to their home world for a very long time!"

"Why hasn't there been a successful mission of returning captives back to Earth?" Leo asked.

"All of the vehicles that have been pulled to Thanatar have been sea vessels and airplanes up until the arrival of your space plane." said Melissa. "It just wasn't feasible to try to send a boat or an airplane back through a dimensional space warp, because it would be too dangerous."

"What about bringing them here to begin with?" Leo asked. "If you can use a space warp to bring a plane or boat to Thanatar, then you shouldn't have a problem sending a boat or plane back through the space warp to Earth!"

"Vessels that aren't space worthy don't always survive the trip here," said Melissa. "We've sent planes back through a space warp, but they were destroyed before they made it back to Earth. Half the vehicles that are targeted never make it to Thanatar. Your space plane is different, it can survive the turbulent confluence of inter-dimensional space because it was built to fly in outer space! That is how we plan on sending you home!"

Melissa got up and got a bottle of whiskey, and poured some in a shot glass, and set it down on the coffee table within reach of the freed captives. She retrieved enough small mugs that were built to Leo and Mason's scale, and set them down.

"You guys deserve a drink after all you've been through," said Melissa. "I'm going to make some lunch for all of you while you enjoy your whiskey!"

Melissa got busy in the kitchen making tuna sandwiches, then she used a shrink-ray pistol to shrink them down to the scale of Leo and the other freed captives. When she set the food down, Nick served everyone, because he had been under Melissa's care the longest. There was more whiskey than all of them could drink, and both Leo and Mason only drank a small amount.

As the men dug into their sandwiches, Melissa pulled up a chair and sat down close to where the men were standing.

"I tell this story to all the new captives that join us," said Melissa. "The captives who have been here longer have heard this story, but Mason and Leo, this will be new to you. Many people on Thanatar want the conquest of tiny people to stop, but there doesn't seem to be much we can do to get legislators to make any changes. Young people have so much fun conquering little people from Earth, and politicians think of it as a way of life. Our goal is to send a group of tiny people back to their home world so we can shock society into realizing how wrong it is to exploit tiny people!"

Mason and Leo grabbed another sandwich, and Melissa continued. "There's something the two of you must do for me, as sort of an initiation ritual! I always have sex with new recruits, and we play a sex game called 'Escape from Thunder-Nipple Mountain' in my bedroom. Are you both game, Leo and Mason?"

Leo and Mason froze in place with tuna in their mouths. They looked at each other incredulously and thought the same thing: What have we gotten ourselves into? Did we jump out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Meanwhile, not far from Melissa's condominium, the University where Darian and Zima were students was located in the same town. Back at the lab, Zima returned to the lab to meet Darian and retrieve Nolan. Zima grabbed him none too gently and held him in her fist.

"Have you spent enough time with your sister?" Zima asked.

Nolan nodded his assent, and Zima carried him back to her dorm, where she enlarged him again with her shrink-ray pistol set on neutrino transfer protocol. When Nolan jumped down, Zima didn't rush up and hug him or kiss him this time.

"What did you and Adonis talk about earlier?" Zima asked.

Nolan had visualized this happening; he had promised Adonis that he wouldn't breathe a word of the plan to Zima or Darian or the passengers or crew of the Thunderbolt. He had managed to keep from mentioning the plan to Leo and the others, but if he told Zima, then Adonis wouldn't follow through with his plan to refuel the Thunderbolt so Mason, Tyler, Carmen, and Natalie could escape to Earth. Nolan had to play his cards right and keep his cool, but what about that mind control device Zima had? Couldn't she use it to scan his mind?

Nolan put his arms around Zima and said, "It's a surprise," then kissed her on the lips.

"Whatever Adonis has cooked up, I hope he doesn't end up winning the competition I have going between the two of you!" said Zima, putting her arms around Nolan. "I want you to win! I want to marry you!" Tears formed in Zima's eyes. "Adonis even came by while you were gone and took my mind control device so I can't use it on you to find out what his plan is! Whatever it is he's planning, he wants to win! You have to defeat him, do you understand?"

"I guess," said Nolan.

"I love you Nolan!" said Zima. "I want you to stay on Thanatar with me forever! We're virtually immortal here!"

"This would be a lot easier if you hadn't told Adonis you would marry him if he made a greater sacrifice for you than me!"

"I had to do that!" said Zima. "You don't know what it's like here on Thanatar! My parents and his parents arranged our marriage when we were young! If I didn't give Adonis a chance to win my hand in marriage, I would never hear the end of it from my parents!"

"Well," said Nolan, "Adonis has a plan to win your hand, that much I can tell you, but I have a trick up my sleeve, too!"

"What's your plan?" Zima asked.

"I can't tell you!" said Nolan. "But just trust me! We'll be together when all this is over!"

"There's something you can do to prove your love to me!" said Zima.

"Yeah?" said Nolan. "What's that?"

"You can go on a full tour of my body!" said Zima. "Adonis would never agree to do something like that for me!"

Nolan knew exactly what Zima was talking about, he had been to many giantess and vore sites on the Internet back on Earth, and understood that Zima was talking about sending Nolan through her digestive system and retrieving him after he passed through her colon.

"How will that be accomplished?" Nolan asked.

Zima got up and went to a drawer and got a package and unwrapped it, and pulled out what looked like a small spacesuit that was on the scale of someone from Earth when they were normal size.

"After I shrink you, just put this on and I'll swallow you!" said Zima. "This suit will protect you from my stomach acid, and we can stay in contact through radio! I bought it while you were with Darian on Arcadia earlier today!"

Nolan didn't even need to be convinced. "I've always wanted to go on a full tour!" said Nolan. "But it wasn't possible on Earth. Where do I sign up?"

"Stand on my dresser and let me shrink you!" said Zima. Nolan did as she asked, and Zima pulled out her shrink-ray pistol and zapped Nolan back down to normal size, tiny size from Zima's perspective. Zima unwrapped the protective suit and gave it to Nolan, and when he was dressed in it, Zima checked to make sure the openings were fastened properly. When everything was secure, Zima lifted Nolan above her mouth and swallowed him. When Nolan plunged down into her stomach, a speaker came on in his helmet, and he heard Zima's voice.

"How are you in there?" Zima asked.

"I'm doing okay!" said Nolan.

"Since you're going to be in my digestive system for quite some time," said Zima, "why don't you use this time to tell me more about yourself?"

Nolan thought this was a good idea. "I was born in Bellflower, that's a city near Long Beach, in California in 1990. My mother won the lottery when I was five years old, and we moved to Pismo Beach. I have an older half-sister, she is from my dad's first wife. My mom and dad had another kid together besides me, a sister. My parents split up when I was four, and my mother found a new boyfriend, and they had a daughter together a week before my ninth birthday."

"What did you like better," Zima asked, "Bellflower or Pismo Beach?"

"Pismo!" said Nolan. "But I always regretted never being able to be a true local, because I was from L.A. originally."

"When your mom won the lottery, how did it affect you?" Zima said into her microphone. She had a small device in front of her that allowed her to keep track of where Nolan was in her digestive tract.

"I always wanted to be a comic book artist, so she was able to buy me a drafting table, a computer with a Wacom tablet, and when junior college didn't pan out, she paid my way to attend the Joe Kubert school of art."

"Why didn't junior college pan out?" Zima asked.

"I went for a couple of semesters and got good grades," said Nolan, "but there were certain classes I couldn't get into because they were filled up by the time it was my turn to enroll. Since I wasn't an athlete or a disabled student, and I didn't qualify for any programs because my mom was rich, I just enrolled at the Joe Kubert art school in New Jersey."

"I got an A on that painting you did for me!" said Zima. "So that art school must've done you some good!"

"Yes, I've always excelled at art," said Nolan.

"Tell me about your relationships!" said Zima.

"I lost my virginity in high school," said Nolan, "and there were women in my life from time to time. I was going to ask my most recent girlfriend to marry me, but she used to boss me around in public, so I broke up with her just before I took off on the Thunderbolt and ended up here on Thanatar." Nolan looked around, and a thought occurred to him. "Zima? What happens if I get hungry while I'm in here?"

"There's a way you can scoop some chyme and pull it into your suit," said Zima. "It would be like drinking my vomit!"

"And if I get thirsty?" Nolan asked.

"There is a water supply built into the suit, and when you urinate, it is reclaimed and circulated back into your water supply."

Nolan was silent. "Nolan?" Zima asked. "Are you hesitating about eating my chyme?"

"Kind of," said Nolan.

"Haven't you ever swallowed an attractive woman's vomit before?" Zima asked, as if that was a common occurrence on Thanatar.

"Yeah," said Nolan, "some chick at a party was drinking beer and she needed to puke, so she grabbed me and puked into my mouth and I swallowed it!"

"So you're willing to drink the vomit of some bitch at a party, but you won't eat my chyme?" Zima asked through the radio microphone. Nolan realized he had little choice, because he had to prove his love to Zima at all costs. He didn't have the option of not eating for the nineteen or twenty hours he was passing through Zima's digestive system, because she would know he chose not to partake of her chyme.

While Nolan debated with Zima, Leo and Mason were still with Melissa after she delivered a bombshell.

"You want us to have sex with you?" Mason asked.

"Wouldn't that be kind of dangerous for us?" Leo asked.

A smile crept across Melissa's face. "I was just kidding with you! Thunder-nipple mountain is a joke I use on all the new guys! I'm not going to have sex with you!"

The other freed captives began laughing as Leo and Mason let out sighs of relief.

Melissa sat in her chair observing Leo, Mason, and the other freed captives. They had finished eating, and the freed captives were waiting for her to speak to them. A noise came from her communication console in her living room, and she turned it on. A woman's face appeared on the screen, and she sounded frantic.

"One of our operatives has reported that there are some people who are going to feed some captives to a snake!" the woman said. "Can you send some of your agents to rescue them? The place is not too far from where you live!"

"My captives have been drinking alcohol," said Melissa. "Can't you find someone else? I don't want to send my guys when they're impaired."

"What have they been drinking?" the woman asked.

"A little whiskey," said Melissa.

Leo stepped to the edge of the coffee table and spoke up. "I only drank a little bit, Melissa! I'm not impaired at all!"

Mason joined him. "Me too! I'm willing to take risks for the resistance!"

"Okay, great, Leo and Mason!" said Melissa. "Two of my guys are volunteering! Transmit the address to me and I'll arm them and send them in!"

Once Melissa had the address, she got Mason and Leo some gear that they would need. They were armed with protective clothing, and weapons. They were much more prepared than they had been when they were under Melina's care. She only armed them with pneumatic firing tubes, but Melissa gave them laser rifles. Melissa carried them in her hands and took them to the back of a condominium complex that was only a few blocks from where she lived. She released Mason and Leo and told them where the condominium was where the captives were being held. They set out on their mission.

Meanwhile, back at Zima's dorm, Nolan was inside of Zima's belly wearing a protective suit. Zima had demanded that Nolan eat some of her chyme to prove his love to her, but Nolan had figured out a way out of that. He swam downwards to the hole that connected Zima's stomach to her small intestine, and made his way through the opening. After passing into the small intestine, the digested food was inedible, so he would have nothing to prove to Zima. When he was thirsty, there was an attachment that allowed him to sip water. He could communicate with Zima via two-way radio.

"You just passed into my small intestine!" said Zima. "I wouldn't recommend eating anything from there at this point! If you were hungry, you should've eaten when you first arrived in my stomach!"

"I'm not hungry right now!" said Nolan.

In another part of town, Leo and Mason came to an air vent and used their laser rifles to cut a hole into it so they could enter. Once inside, they were in a long pipe that led to an air vent that was inside the living room of the condominium they were invading. The vent was located behind a couch, so they were able to enter unseen by titans. Leo used his laser rifle to cut through the second vent, and they jumped down and crawled underneath the couch to get a view of what was going on.

Meanwhile, back at Zima's dorm, Zima sat back relaxing in her school girl uniform with her blouse pulled up to reveal her belly, which she was gently rubbing. Zima smiled as she thought about the power she had over Nolan, knowing that he was proving his love by going on a full tour of her digestive system. Zima had a control console that allowed her to track exactly where Nolan was within her body, and there was a two-way radio she could communicate with him with. Zima pressed the button that transmitted her voice to Nolan so he could hear her.

"Tell me more about your life!" said Zima. "I want to get to know you better!"

"My dad was in the Marine Corps. before I was born," said Nolan. "I thought about joining, but my dad always told me I didn't have what it takes, because I'm more of a creative type."

"What a mean thing to say!" said Zima.

"Well, he was probably right," said Nolan, "I could've gotten myself killed if I had joined up, because I daydream too much. I would rather work on giantess comics than train to be a soldier. I went to college instead, but I guess I already told you about that. A couple of semesters at a junior college, then three years at the Joe Kubert art school!"

"Are you an artist now, back on Earth?" Zima asked.

"In my spare time," said Nolan, "but my main gig is being a concert promoter."

"How did you get into that?" Zima asked.

"I had lived in Pismo Beach most of my life, but me and some friends went down to Hollywood to party at some clubs, and we all got arrested. We got split up in jail, and my celly was a concert promoter who got busted the same night I did. He showed me the ropes, and gave me a phone number and I started working for him when I got released. I ended up moving to L.A. after that, and that's how I got into concert promoting."

"Are you good at what you do?" Zima asked.

"Any time I promote a rock concert, my name is mentioned on several rock stations in L.A." said Nolan. "I've been living in L.A. promoting concerts since I was in my 20's, and I'm 39 now. After spending time working for the guy I met in jail, I went to work for myself, and I'm one of the top three concert promoters in the Los Angeles area."

"You've got a nice physique," said Zima. "How did you achieve it?"

"My mom bought me some weights for my thirteenth birthday. My thirteenth birthday was on a Friday the thirteenth, by the way."

"Friday the thirteenth?" Zima asked. "When is your birthday?"

"June 13th, 1990." said Nolan. "I was born on a Wednesday, but my 13th birthday fell on a Friday the 13th. Anyway, getting back to my story, I worked out with weights consistently through junior high and high school. By the time I was 20, I was pretty buff."

Back in another part of town, Leo and Mason could see a snake cage. There were some titans in the living room, but they couldn't see any captives. Leo and Mason had been briefed by Melissa about how to conduct the mission. They both got their backpacks out and took out the gas masks, and put them on. They were much better prepared for a rescue than when Leo had been with Melina. They each pulled out blue pellets and cracked them open. Instantly, a blue gas emerged, and both men threw the pellets into the room. The titans in the room fell instantly, and Leo and Mason knew they had about five minutes to act.

They ran to the snake cage, and saw that there were captives inside the cage. The snake cage was unaffected by the gas, because it had its own air conditioning system. The captives banged on the transparent wall of the cage, and Mason and Logan used their laser rifles to drill through the transparent material. The gas had dissipated enough that the captives they were rescuing weren't adversely affected by it. There were six of them, and they followed Leo and Mason back behind the couch through the air vent, and outside to freedom.

"We're working for the underground resistance!" said Leo. "There's a giantess named Melissa who takes care of us, so don't be scared of her when we approach her!"

Melissa was waiting for them, and she collected them in a box and carried them back to her condominium. When they were back at Melissa's, the freed captives were set on the coffee table with the other captives, and Melissa introduced herself to them.

"My name is Melissa, and I work for the underground resistance, as Leo and Mason have probably already told you. Let me make something for you to eat!"

Melissa disappeared into the kitchen and came back five minutes later with a plate of sandwiches. She used a shrink-ray pistol to reduce the sandwiches down to the scale of the captives. They dug in and enjoyed their meal.

"There's something new captives must do to get initiated," said Melissa. "You must be my sex toys as we play a game called 'Escape from Thunder-nipple mountain,' are you down for that?"

One of the men said yes, while the other five of the newly freed captives remained silent. Leo and Mason kept quiet, so as not to ruin the joke.

"I was just kidding!" said Melissa. "I say that to all the new recruits! When we free some new captives, don't ruin the joke when I play that trick on the newer guys!"

Back at Zima's, Nolan was still swimming through Zima's digestive system. He felt very strange knowing that others had passed along this same route, but they had died by being digested by her. This both chilled him and excited him at the same time. What right did he have to be spared by Zima? What right did he have to win her love? He didn't know, but he was thrilled that this mighty giantess had chosen him to be her husband. Now all he had to do was make a greater sacrifice than Adonis, and he would win her hand. He had an idea of how to accomplish that, but he would need Adonis to keep his end of the bargain and refuel the Thunderbolt.

"What are you thinking about right now?"" Zima's voice asked through the two-way radio.

"I was thinking about how much I love you!" said Nolan. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm in the mood for sex!" said Zima. "Having you inside me makes me feel like a conqueror, and that makes me horny!"

"How long before I pass through your colon?" Nolan asked.

"A few more hours," said Zima. "Keep swimming, Nolan!"

There were lights on his helmet that allowed Nolan to see what was ahead of him. He couldn't see much, except for a brownish liquid of digesting matter that he swam through, trying to find his way to the exit of Zima's digestive system. As he was swimming along, he bumped into something solid. He grabbed it and pulled it close to his helmet so he could see it, and he had a human skull in his hands.

"Uh, Zima?" Nolan asked.

"What's up, tiger?" Zima asked.

"I found a skull in your small intestine!" said Nolan. "Did you swallow someone recently?"

Nolan could hear Zima's laughter over the two-way radio. "I swallowed one of the captives that didn't have any skills, but that was yesterday! How does he look?"

"Your stomach acid did a number on his skull!" said Nolan. "All that's left is bone!"

"How does that make you feel?" Zima asked.

"I have mixed feelings," said Nolan. "On one hand, I feel kind of excited that you're such a conqueror, but at the same time, it's kind of frightening."

"The fact that you can feel turned on by that is further proof that you belong on Thanatar! That's how men on Thanatar have been genetically engineered to think and feel! They all want to be conquered by a giantess! You don't belong on Earth!"

"I would gladly never return to Earth if I could stay with you and be your husband!" said Nolan. "If I did stay and you enlarged me, where could I stay?"

"You could stay in my dorm with me," said Zima. "We would have to get married for it to be legal, but marriages here on Thanatar are swift. Of course, you would have to retain your slave status. I wouldn't have it any other way!"

"I'd love to be your slave, Zima!" said Nolan. "I'll stay loyal to you forever!"

For the next several hours, Nolan swam through Zima's digestive system, until it was late at night and he got tired and passed out. Zima's digestive system did the work of passing him through her colon while he slept. Eventually, Nolan woke up and he saw light.

"That doesn't make sense!" Nolan thought to himself. He was enlarged to Zima's scale, and he was on her bed. It was morning, and there was a note with some doughnuts on the table.

The note said: Dearest Nolan: You passed through my colon in the early morning hours, and I extracted you and enlarged you. I have a class this morning, but I set some donuts on the table for your breakfast. When I return at noon, we can have some crazy sex! Love, Zima.

Nolan grabbed a doughnut and started eating, anticipating his meeting with Zima in the near future.

Noon came, and Zima returned to her dorm, where Nolan was waiting for her. He was on the same scale as Zima, she had enlarged him with her shrink-ray pistol set on neutrino transfer protocol. Nolan was expecting some really good sex, as was usually the case whenever Zima enlarged him.

"How's it going, tiger?" Zima asked.

Before Nolan could answer, her cell phone rang. "Hello? Oh, hi Adonis. Why do you want to know the password to the lab? I guess you can have it, it's thirteen sixty-nine." Zima hung up her phone and straddled Nolan, who was lying on his back on her bed.

"Why would Adonis want the password to the lab?" Zima asked. "Do the two of you have something planned?"

Nolan knew there would probably be no sex with Zima today. He had to keep his plans with Adonis a secret, so that Adonis could refuel the Thunderbolt so his sister and the other people who came to Thanatar could return to Earth. It pleased Nolan that he was finding out first-hand that Adonis was getting the password to the lab so he could follow through with the plan to refuel the Thunderbolt.

"I can't tell you!" said Nolan. "Just be patient, and wait to see what happens!"

"If I end up married to Adonis, I'm going to be pissed!" said Zima.

"You can marry whoever you want!" said Nolan. "Haven't you ever broken a promise before? You don't have to follow through with this deal you made with me and Adonis, if he wins the competition, you can say screw him and just marry me instead!"

"I know," said Zima, "but if you tell me what Adonis is doing, I'll give you the best sex of your life right now!"

Nolan was tempted. In his current situation, he wasn't that far from death, at least in his mind. If he got on Zima's bad side, she could easily do away with him, and there would be nothing he could do about it.

"Well?" said Zima.

Nolan weighed the possibilities in his mind, and felt that honesty was important in a relationship. "Adonis is refueling the Thunderbolt today!"

Zima grabbed her cell phone, but Nolan grabbed her hand before she could dial. "What are you doing, Zima?"

"I'm calling Darian!" said Zima. "If they get away, it would ruin her project!"

"You need to let Adonis refuel the Thunderbolt!" said Nolan.

"Why should I do that?" said Zima.

"Because if he gets caught refueling the Thunderbolt, he will get busted, and you and me can get married." said Nolan.

Zima smiled at this. "That's a good idea! In fact, when I have proof, I can report him myself!"

"You don't have to do that," said Nolan. "Adonis made a deal with me and he thinks I'm going to be on the Thunderbolt when Mason pilots it back to Earth!"

"Who's going to work the space-warp cannon?" Zima asked.

"Leo, as far as I know," said Nolan. "It's my understanding that he knows how to work most of the devices in Darian's lab!"

"Leo was won by some other woman on Arcadia!" said Zima. "Darian doesn't own him anymore!"

"It doesn't matter, Adonis is working with the resistance!" said Nolan. "Somehow, he'll get Leo back to that lab!"

"Were you seriously considering leaving with them back to Earth?" Zima asked.

"All I'm going to do is say goodbye to my sister!" said Nolan. "Maybe Brody can take my place on the Thunderbolt."

"Brody isn't from the same world as you!" said Zima. "He's from an alternate quantum reality! Here, I'll shrink you and put you in with him and you can talk to him about the history of your world, and compare it to his."

"Aren't we gonna have sex?" Nolan asked.

"I have a class pretty soon!" said Zima, who had the shrink-ray pistol in her hand already. "Get up on the dresser, like usual!"

Nolan got up on the dresser, and Zima shrunk him back down to his normal size. She grabbed him and put him in the containment unit where she kept Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan.

"How's it going, Brody!" said Nolan. Zima had gone to another part of the dorm as she got ready for her class, and wasn't paying attention to the captives. Nolan recognized Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan, because they were skilled tennis players and Zima planned on keeping them, but he didn't really know many of the others that well. They were 'expendable' in Zima's opinion, therefore Nolan didn't really want to get to know them too well. He did notice, however, that there was one man missing, that must've been the one whose skull Nolan ran into when he was in Zima's digestive system.

"It's going okay," said Brody. "I heard what you were saying to Zima. Our realities are different?"

"Let's see!" said Nolan. "Who won the 2008 election on your world?"

"McCain!" said Brody.

"You've got to be kidding me!" said Nolan. "On my world, Obama won!"

"I heard what you were saying about the Thunderbolt," said Brody. "Is it true that you would let me take your place if you decide to stay here?"

"I've already decided to stay here!" said Nolan. "I think if we need the same number of passengers, we could use you. But you won't be returning to your own world! Is that okay?"

"Anything is better than being stuck on this crazy world!" said Brody. "Your world couldn't be too different from mine. Remember twelve thirty-one?"

"What's that?" Nolan asked.

"Terrorists crashed 747s into the World Trade Center. Both towers came down, and a lot of people died."

"For us that happened on nine eleven," said Nolan.

"Huh?" Brody asked.

"September eleventh, 2001!" said Nolan.

"Maybe your world really is different than mine!" said Brody. "But it's a chance I'm willing to risk to get the fuck out of this crazy place! If it goes down like you said, can you make a promise to me?"

"What?" Nolan asked.

"If you really do stay here and get enlarged and marry Zima, and I go back on the Thunderbolt, can you take care of Anthony and Johnathan for me? They're like sons to me!"

"Yeah, of course!" said Nolan. "Zima can't help them get back to Earth, because she would get arrested for treason! Once I'm married to Zima, I won't be able to help them return to Earth, either!"

"I know you can't do that," said Brody, "but I was just hoping that you could make sure they don't get swallowed by Zima! If she ever talks about wanting to swallow them, can you talk her out of it?"

"Yeah, I can do that!" said Nolan. "But I can't stop her from gambling with them. If they end up being won by another giantess, there's nothing I can do to stop that from happening!"

"Oh, I know that!" said Brody. "I don't care if they play like shit and get won by another giantess, I realize you have no control over that. My concern is with Zima, and her affinity for swallowing captives. I just don't want her to get drunk one day and forget how good they are at tennis and swallow them!"

"I'll do my best to look out for them!" said Nolan.

"Do you think this could really work?" Brody asked. "Me going back to Earth on the Thunderbolt?"

"We don't know what the future holds," said Nolan, "but right now, Adonis is trying to refuel the Thunderbolt as we speak!"

At that moment, Nolan proved to be correct; Adonis was at the lab where the Thunderbolt was housed, and he punched in the password he needed to get in. When the door slid open, he went straight to a matter conversion device and turned it on. He had some tools with him. He grabbed his tool pouch and pulled out a certain type of scanner. With it, he was able to determine exactly what kind of fuel the Thunderbolt used, in this case, liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the same fuel used on space shuttles since the early 1980's.

This wasn't a quick or easy task; Adonis needed to have fittings and hoses that were compatible with the Thunderbolt, and he needed to have them hooked up to the matter conversion device. He actually had to use the matter conversion device to manufacture the fittings he needed. When everything was hooked up, he set the matter conversion device to hydrogen in one tube and oxygen in the other tube, and he programmed the device to make them on the same scale as matter from Earth, about seventy-two times smaller in diameter than the atoms of Thanatar.

When the tanks were full, Adonis shut down the machine, and tried to erase any evidence that he had been there. When he was finished, he went to his shuttle cruiser and grabbed a dozen roses he had bought as a smokescreen. He would be able to explain to Zima later that he wanted in to leave her those roses. He had no inkling that Nolan had already blown his cover. When Adonis left the lab, he was convinced that he had succeeded on his mission.

When Zima's class was over, she went back to her dorm and dropped off her backpack, then she checked on Nolan.

"How are they treating you?" Zima asked Nolan.

"Brody is like a home-boy!" said Nolan. "Can you bring Brody in to replace me when the Thunderbolt gets ready to take off?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," said Zima. "It's a good thing you told me about your plan, you're going to need my help!"

"Won't you get in trouble if you help us?" Nolan asked.

"I've thought about that," said Zima. "If I'm asking you to make a sacrifice for me, I think I should be willing to make a sacrifice for you!"

"So you would risk your freedom for me?" Nolan asked.

"I'm going to have to!" said Zima. "I'll just tell Adonis that you made the greater sacrifice for me by staying on Thanatar!"

"Do you want him to get busted for helping the Thunderbolt get back to Earth?" Nolan asked.

"I can't turn him in, because I'm helping you guys, too." said Zima.

"And he can't tell on you, because you could drop the dime on him!" said Nolan.

"Drop the dime?" Zima asked. "What does that mean?"

"It means to rat someone out, to snitch on someone!" said Nolan.

"Oh, I know what you mean!" said Zima. "You're right, we'll be in a mutually assured defeat if we tell on each other! He'll have no choice but to keep quiet! Well, I'm going to go check on the lab! See you later!"

Zima left the dorm and went to the lab, and entered the combination. When she entered, she saw the roses left by Adonis, and her heart sank.

"Maybe he only left the roses, and didn't do anything else!" Zima said to herself. She grabbed an instrument and measured how much fuel was inside the fuel tanks of the Thunderbolt, and the instrument indicated the tanks were full. Zima let out a sigh of relief. She read the note that came with the roses, then pulled out her cell phone and called Adonis.

"Why did you leave roses for me in the lab?" Zima asked.

"I wanted to surprise you!" said Adonis.

"What's the real reason you wanted into the lab today?" Zima asked, feigning suspicion.

"Didn't Nolan tell you anything?" Adonis asked.

"Nolan won't tell me shit, but I know the two of you are up to something!" said Zima.

"You'll be surprised when you find out!" said Adonis. "But it's going to take some time! Just have patience!"

"Okay!" said Zima. "Bye, Adonis!"

Zima locked the lab and went back to her dorm and collected Nolan and re-enlarged him, and told him what happened at the lab.

"He doesn't suspect a thing!" said Zima. "If Adonis sets up a time for you to return to Earth with your sister and friends, be sure to tell me so I can plan for it!"

"You've got a deal!" said Nolan, and the two began making out passionately. Nolan was happy because it looked like he was going to get to have sex with his mistress after all today. As he took his shirt off while kissing Zima, Nolan was about to take off Zima's blouse when she stopped kissing him and spoke.

"You do realize what will happen to you if you betray me, don't you?" Zima asked.

"What?" Nolan asked.

"If you do end up back on the Thunderbolt heading back for Earth to try to escape me, I'll track you down and send you to my belly!"

"I'm not going back!" said Nolan, trying to kiss Zima again.

She held his lips from kissing her. "Promise me!"

"Ok, I promise!" said Nolan, and they resumed making out as a prelude to sex.

Adonis used his training as a police officer to track down Morgan's address on the Internet. He had access to software not available to the public, and was able to find her within a couple of hours. Morgan was the middle-man who traded Leo to the resistance, and Adonis hoped she could deliver a message to the people who owned Leo and Mason. Morgan was at home when Adonis tried to contact her. She pulled out her cell phone and answered it when Adonis called her.

"I need to talk to you in person!" said Adonis. "It's about two captives you had in your possession."

"What do you want to know!? Morgan asked.

"I don't know if our conversation is being monitored, I'd rather talk to you in person! Can we meet somewhere, like at a park?" Adonis asked.

"I'll meet you wherever you want to," said Morgan.

"How about the park near the university?" Adonis asked.

"I'll meet you there in fifteen minutes!" said Morgan.

Adonis hopped onto a tram and rode there, because it was too close to fly his own shuttle cruiser, but too far to walk. Morgan flew there in her shuttle cruiser, because she lived in a different city than Adonis and Zima and Darian. When Adonis got to the park, Morgan's shuttle cruiser was landing. She got out and met him in the park.

"What's this about?" Morgan asked.

"I need to talk to the resistance," said Adonis. "My name is Adonis, It's about Leo and Mason."

"I don't have access to the resistance movement, that would be treason!" said Morgan.

"I don't need you to admit you work for the resistance, I just need you to deliver a message for me!" said Adonis. "I refueled the Thunderbolt, and it's ready for takeoff! You need to tell the people who are caring for Leo and Mason that they can return to Earth now!"

"I know who won Mason and Leo, I can deliver your message to them," said Morgan.

"Be sure Nolan Ward is on the Thunderbolt when it returns to Earth!" said Adonis. "My whole plan revolves around him going back! You have my phone number, make sure you contact me if you need any help from me!"

"Considering that you refueled their space plane," said Morgan, "you're just as guilty as I am for working with the resistance. I guess I can trust you. I'll deliver your message!"

"Thanks!" said Adonis, and the two parted ways and left the park. Adonis caught a tram, and Morgan got in her shuttle cruiser and flew off into the sky.

Morgan got a hold of Melissa, the woman who worked for the resistance. She was on the view screen in front of her as Morgan flew her shuttle cruiser toward her condominium complex.

"I've got important news that I must deliver in person!" said Morgan. "I'm on my way over!"

Morgan landed her shuttle cruiser in the parking structure and went to Melissa's door. After knocking, Melissa hit the control console that controlled the door, and it slid open, and Morgan walked in. After the door was sealed shut behind them, Morgan told Melissa the news.

"So this guy named Adonis is helping the resistance out!" said Morgan. "He refueled the Thunderbolt, and he wants Leo and Mason to make sure the captives return home, and he wants a captive named Nolan Ward to go with them!"

"This is great news!" said Melissa. Leo, Mason, and the other captives were on the coffee table and they heard every word of Morgan and Melissa's conversation.

"You know what this means, don't you?" said Leo to Mason. "You're going to have to pilot the Thunderbolt while I stay behind to operate the space-warp cannon!"

"No way!" said Mason. "You can pilot the Thunderbolt, I'll stay behind!"

"I'm the only one who understands how titan technology works!" said Leo. "Remember when I utilized that mind control device? I know how to operate every piece of machinery in that lab!"

"Then why didn't you use the enlarger to make yourself titan-sized?" Mason asked. "Then you could've saved all of us that very night!"

"It was password encrypted," said Leo, "I thought I had already explained that to you! Common sense dictates that you pilot the Thunderbolt back to Earth and I stay behind! I don't like it either, but it's better that some of you get back to Earth rather than none of us!"

"I see your point!" said Mason. "But don't worry, if I ever get back to Earth, I'll come back for you some day!"

Leo patted Mason on the back. "I knew you were one of the best when Future Shock hired you!"

"So Melissa," said Mason, "when are we going to perform this rescue operation and take off in the Thunderbolt?"

"I have to ask Morgan," said Melissa. "Can you contact Adonis, Morgan? And set up a time to get to the lab where the Thunderbolt is being kept, and a way to gain access to the lab?"

"I've got Adonis's phone number," said Morgan. "Here, let me give it to you!"

As the two women exchanged phone numbers, across town, at the dormitories of the University where Darian and Zima went to school, Zima was once again in bed with Nolan when their sexual romp was interrupted by a phone call from Adonis.

"Hello?" said Zima.

"This is your boyfriend, Adonis!"

"You're technically not my boyfriend yet, but what do you want?"

"I want you to return Nolan to the lab where Darian's other captives are being held," said Adonis.

"First of all," said Zima, "Nolan isn't one of Darian's captives any more, he belongs to me now!"

"Okay, okay!" said Adonis. "Calm down! Can you bring your captive Nolan to the lab now?"

"Why?" Zima asked. "What's going on?"

"It's part of my sacrifice to you," said Adonis, "just humor me and put Nolan back in the lab with the others, and you'll be surprised what happens!"

"Okay, I'll do it!" said Zima.

"Call me back when he's back in the lab!" said Adonis.

"Okay, bye!" said Zima, and she hung up. "Nolan, I think Adonis is planning on sending the Thunderbolt back to Earth soon. I'm going to put you back in there, but I don't want you flying back with them, you're staying here with me. Okay?"

"No problem!" said Nolan.

"I need you to be my eyes and ears in there for me Nolan, if you find anything out about when they plan on launching the Thunderbolt, I want you to tell me. I won't interfere if they actually get it to take off, I just don't want you on it when it launches."

Zima told Nolan to stand on the dresser again so she could shrink him, and he climbed up at her command. Zima used her neutrino dissimilator pistol to reduce Nolan back down to his normal size, then she plucked him from the dresser and stuffed him into her mouth and exited the dorm. As she walked to the lab, she opened her mouth occasionally to let air in so Nolan could breathe. She entered the combination into the control console that operated the door to the lab, and it slid open.

Zima removed Nolan from her mouth. He was wet, but none the worse for wear.

"Were you worried while you were in there?" Zima asked. "Did you think I might swallow you?"

"No," said Nolan, "I trust you!"

"Good!" said Zima, who went to the habitation module and opened the dome and stuck Nolan inside.

"Bye Nolan!" said Zima, and she left the lab.

Nolan was greeted by his sister Natalie, and Tyler and his wife Carmen.

"It's so good to have you back!" said Natalie. "Every time you go with that troll woman I get so scared for you! I'm afraid she's going to eat you!"

"She's not a troll!" said Nolan. "She's the woman of my dreams, and I'm staying behind with her when you guys leave for Earth! Leo and Mason are coming back to rescue all of you!"

"You're kidding me!" said Tyler. "You'd stay behind with that man-eater rather than return home, to your family?"

"She's the ruler of my heart, goddess of my soul!" said Nolan. "I'm going to become one of them! Zima can grow me to their size with a gun she has!"

"Is that even possible?" Tyler asked. "I don't mean from a technological standpoint, but from a legal perspective, will their law allow one of us to become one of them?"

"Zima told me it isn't unheard of for a citizen of Thanatar to marry a human, it's just frowned upon."

"But will you retain full citizenship?" Tyler asked. "That's something to think about!"

"Zima told me she wants me to remain her slave, even though I will be the same size as her!" said Nolan.

"Then you should forget about it, and return to Earth with us!" said Tyler.

"Oh Tyler," said Natalie, "Please try to talk him out of it!"

"I'm trying to, but he's lovesick for that tyrannical titaness!" said Tyler.

Meanwhile, back at Melissa's condominium, Melissa had been given Adonis's phone number by Morgan, who had just left. Melissa tried to contact Adonis. His face appeared on the screen of her video cell phone.

"Yes?" Adonis asked.

"I'm Melissa, I own Leo and Mason. I think we need to talk!" said Melissa.

The two agreed to meet in the same park where Adonis had met Morgan. About fifteen minutes later, they were both there.

"I have the captives you're interested in," said Melissa, "but I need you to set up the time when I should bring them to the lab at the University so they can escape in the Thunderbolt."

"Let's do it tonight!" said Adonis. "I know the password to get in, I can meet you there and open the door for you!"

"What time?" Melissa asked.

"How about eight o'clock sharp?" Adonis replied.

When Melissa returned home and informed Leo and Mason, they were thrilled. For Leo, it was bittersweet, because he would be staying on Thanatar.

Meanwhile, as Adonis left the park, he got a phone call from Zima.

"Nolan is back with the other captives in the lab!" said Zima. "I really wish you would tell me what's going on!"

"You'll be surprised when you find out!" said Adonis. "The risks I'm taking for your love are supreme! You said you would marry either me or Nolan, depending on who made the greater sacrifice!"

Zima knew she had to pretend that she didn't know Nolan was helping the Earth people to escape and return to Earth. By his logic, he was making a great sacrifice, but if the captives were able to return to Earth safely and Adonis was caught for helping them, it would be the most publicized case of treason in the history of Thanatar.

"If whatever you're doing is a sacrifice that will get you sent to prison for a long time," said Zima, "then you can forget about marrying me, because I'm not waiting for you to get out!"

"Don't worry, I won't get caught!" said Adonis, and he hung up the phone.

Meanwhile, back in the lab, Tyler was still trying to reason with Nolan, but it wasn't working.

"We're nothing but cockroaches to them!" said Tyler. "You would have no legal rights as her consort, you could be forced to live and die by her command!"

"That's giving me a hard-on!" said Nolan. "You're only convincing me to stay with her even more! What Zima and I have is true love, that's something you can't seem to understand!"

"Uuh!" said Carmen, literally shivering. "How can you be in love with a cannibal? That woman is sadistic! People like us pass through her digestive system and die!"

"I'm with Carmen!" said Natalie. "Maybe we need to knock you out and tie you up to take you back with us when we return to Earth!"

Tyler snapped his fingers. "Natalie, that's brilliant! We should tell Leo and Mason when they arrive!"

"Very funny!" said Nolan. "You don't need me to go back with you anyway! I'm 39 years old, I'm capable of making my own decisions! Marrying Zima would be like marrying a princess! She's like Helen of Troy!"

"Helen of Troy caused a lot of problems for a lot of people!" said Tyler. "Zima is no different! Do you really think she cares about you?"

"She's helping you guys escape!" said Nolan. "She's not as evil as you're making her out to be! There are women here on Thanatar who are much more evil than she is!"

"Tell it to someone who will believe you," said Tyler. "I wasn't born yesterday, I was born last week! Zima is a titan, and this is a planet of titans! We can't trust any of them!"

Melissa collected Leo and Mason, and got in her shuttle cruiser and flew to the University where Darian and Zima went to school. She parked and waited for eight o'clock to roll around, when she would meet Adonis, who would unlock the door of the lab. Melissa felt a surge of excitement course through her body thinking that she would be instrumental in setting the first group of captives free and returning them to Earth. Even if she went to prison for treason, Melissa knew she would go down in the history books. Although she would be considered infamous in certain circles, she would be forever loved by the underground resistance and to supporters of the resistance.

Adonis arrived on campus, but before he met with Melissa, he went to Zima's dorm. He had a bottle in his hand and two wine glasses. He knocked on Zima's door. At that moment, Zima was busy watching two of her captives play tennis on a small tennis court she had recently purchased. Brody and Anthony were playing a good game of tennis. When Zima let Adonis in, the game continued.

"I wanted to share a glass of wine with you!" said Adonis after Zima let him in. He set the two glasses down on the table, and opened the bottle of wine.

"It's not like you to let me drink wine," said Zima, "I'm only eighteen!"

"Maybe it's one of the little sacrifices I'm making for you!" said Adonis with a smile, as he poured wine in both glasses. "I brought back your mind control device!" Adonis handed it to Zima, and she took it to her bedroom. While she was in the room for a few seconds, Adonis took a small vial and uncapped it, and poured it into the glass that had been poured for Zima. When she returned, he held the other glass and sipped from it, and used body language to indicate that Zima should take the other glass. Brody and Anthony saw what Adonis did, but said nothing out of fear that he might harm them if they said anything.

"Cheers!" said Adonis, and the two of them drank their glasses of wine.

"I've got to go!" said Adonis. "I've got something going on right now!"

Adonis turned and left, leaving Zima feeling woozy. When he was gone, Brody shouted to Zima: "He spiked your drink!"

Zima stumbled over to Brody, but passed out and hit the floor. Luckily for Zima, the area where she fell was carpeted.

"We've got to do something!" said Brody. "Adonis is going to allow Nolan and his friends to get back to Earth right now! We've got to wake Zima back up!"

Brody knew where Zima kept her medical equipment, because she sometimes used it to monitor the activity of captives she had recently swallowed. One of the devices in her medical kit was a scanning device that should tell him what kind of drug Adonis spiked her drink with.

"Do you see that black bag with the zipper on the couch over there?" Brody asked Anthony.

"Yeah!" said Anthony.

"There's a scanner in there that we can use to test her breath to see what kind of drug she just took! We have to get over onto the couch!"

Brody and his student Anthony helped each other make the trek across the room to the couch, a formidable task for men who stood roughly one inch tall in comparison with their environment. Getting from the table to the floor was difficult enough, but the problem of getting up onto the couch was solved when they realized there was a window behind the couch with a curtain they could climb. It took about ten minutes from the time Adonis left to the time they reached the medical kit. Anthony helped Brody unzip it, and Brody pulled out an instrument he recognized. The two of them shoved it off the couch onto the floor, then climbed down the curtain to the floor and pushed it over to Zima's mouth, where she was inhaling and exhaling loudly.

Brody was pretty sure he knew how to operate the device, and after a few tries, he managed to turn it on. At first, the device wouldn't obey them because they weren't 'titans.'

"This thing must have an over-ride in place!" Brody said to Anthony. "This is an emergency!" Brody shouted into the device. "A titan has been rendered unconscious by a drug, you need to analyze it and find out what drug it was!"

A green light went on, and the device complied with Brody. Words appeared on the screen indicating what type of drug was administered to Zima.

"Now we're getting somewhere!" said Brody.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Adonis opened the door to the lab and took the dome off of the habitation module. He also opened the window that was behind the space-warp cannon, so it would be clear for the Thunderbolt to fly through when it got ready for takeoff. Adonis ran to the parking lot and left the door to the lab open. He found Melissa's shuttle cruiser and knocked on the window.

Melissa disembarked, and Adonis said, "The coast is clear! The lab is open, just don't let yourself get caught!" Adonis took off after that, leaving Melissa alone in the parking lot with Logan and Mason in her hands.

Melissa carried the two men in her hands and found her way to the lab. The Thunderbolt was on one table, while the captives were outside of their habitation module on another table with their luggage. Adonis hadn't bothered to pick them up and carry them to their space plane. In addition to the four passengers who originally arrived on the Thunderbolt, there were about a dozen other captives that had been won on Arcadia, and Melissa couldn't tell them apart.

"Leo," Melissa asked. "Point out the original passengers of the Thunderbolt!"

Leo pointed out Tyler, Carmen, Nolan, and Natalie. Melissa picked them up and placed them with Mason near the Thunderbolt.

"I'm not going to be able to stay here!" said Melissa. "Leo, you're going to have to stay behind and operate the space-warp cannon! Once the Thunderbolt is in the sky, you can turn that space-warp cannon on, Leo. But be careful, You'll only have about a minute before the detection systems of Thanatar will be onto you!"

"I have no problem staying behind!" said Leo.

"Another thing!" said Melissa. "How many people came over in the space-warp?"

"There were six of us!" said Leo.

"If six of you came through, six of you will have to go back!" said Melissa. "Not one less person, nor one more person can go back with you, or the space-warp device will malfunction!"

"We only have five of our original people without Leo!" said Mason.

"I'll grab another captive from the pile, and he should compensate!" said Melissa, and she did just that. With the addition of the additional man, they had six people again. Melissa also put a small device inside the Thunderbolt. "This is a transponder that will allow me to track whether or not you returned to Earth safely. Don't let this get damaged!"

"We'll take care of it!" said Mason.

Melissa set Leo on top of the space warp cannon, while the rest of them, with the exception of Nolan, got into the Thunderbolt. Melissa hurried and left the lab to return to her shuttle cruiser, so she wouldn't get caught.

"Nolan!" said Mason. "This is no time for games! Get on board!"

"I'm not getting on board!" said Nolan. "I'm staying behind with Zima!"

"I was afraid this would happen!" said Tyler. "We should just knock his ass out and tie him up and take him with us!"

"Good idea!" said Mason. The two men grabbed Nolan against his will and dragged him toward the space plane.

"Carmen!" said Tyler. "Get that rope from my duffel bag!"

Carmen ran in and got the rope and carried it to her husband. Tyler and Mason hog-tied Nolan. Though Nolan was strong and muscular, Tyler and Mason were strong, also. Nolan was kicking and yelling, but the two men managed to drag him onto the space plane.

The space plane was positioned in such a way that it could fly directly out the window once it was launched. Mason did the final countdown preparations. The passengers were all in their seats, and someone had tied a gag in Nolan's mouth so he couldn't yell. Just as Mason began the countdown, Zima appeared in the doorway, with Brody and Anthony in her hands.

"Give Nolan back to me!" said Zima. "I'm giving you two of my captives to take back with you to Earth, but I want my Nolan back! Nolan wanted these two guys to go back to Earth with you!"

"What are we gonna do?" Tyler asked Mason. "If we don't give him back, she could rip the door hatch off!"

"Then let's give him back!" said Mason. "I don't know about you, but I'm going back to Earth today! If Nolan wants to stay with that crazy bitch, he can stay here as far as I'm concerned!"

They dragged Nolan out the door hatch and dropped him on the table top. Zima responded by setting Brody and Anthony inside the door.

"This means that we have to make that extra captive stay here!" said Mason. They both shoved the extra captive out of the door hatch, and closed it. The abandoned captive banged on the door hatch, to no avail.

Mason strapped himself into the pilot seat and blasted off without doing a countdown. The space plane shot through the open window and out into the open sky. Zima carried Nolan back to her dorm, so she wouldn't be seen as an accomplice. Meanwhile, the space plane rocketed up through the sky, eventually entering outer space.

Leo turned on the space-warp cannon and aimed it in the general direction of the Thunderbolt. He saw the Thunderbolt on the screen. He put his hand in the scanner device, and it picked up the metal in his wedding ring. This allowed the space-warp cannon to open a space warp into the same alternate quantum reality that he had come from.

As the Thunderbolt headed through space, the tracking systems of Thanatar were able to home in on it. They opened a channel on a frequency the Thunderbolt could pick up.

"You must return to the surface immediately, or you will be shot down!" said a voice over the radio.

"I hope Leo is quick with the space-warp cannon!" said Mason.

At that instant, the space-warp cannon back in Darian's lab sent a quantum pulse that tore an inter-dimensional space warp open right in front of the Thunderbolt. The warships from Thanatar were now alone in space. Back in Melissa's condominium, she had scanning equipment that could show her whether or not the Thunderbolt had made it home safely.

"They're away!" said Melissa. Even Morgan had stayed behind at Melissa's place to see this spectacle. The transponder Melissa had planted inside the Thunderbolt showed when the Thunderbolt glided back for a landing in the Mojave desert, and Melissa and Morgan jumped for joy a second time.

"For the first time in the history of Thanatar, humans have escaped back to Earth!" said Melissa.

Back at Zima's dorm, Zima set Nolan on her dresser and enlarged him and turned on the news. A reporter described that people from Earth had escaped in a space plane and had gotten back to Earth. There was a knock at the door, and Zima answered it. Adonis had arrived.

"You drugged me!" said Zima.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Adonis asked, pointing at Nolan. "He was back at the lab, I made sure of it!"

"Trying to go behind my back and send Nolan home?" said Zima. "Well, the Thunderbolt is back on Earth thanks to you, and Nolan won the competition because he made the greater sacrifice for me!" Zima kissed Nolan on the lips.

"But I risked my freedom for you!" said Adonis.

"By committing treason?" said Zima. "Are you willing to tell my parents what you tried to do for me? And that you drugged me to try to make sure I wouldn't be awake when the Thunderbolt blasted off?"

"Zima, I can't tell anyone anything about any of this!" said Adonis.

"I know!" said Zima, putting her arms around Nolan. "I'm getting married to Nolan!"

Adonis stormed out of the dorm, defeated. Zima pressed the button on the control console next to the door, and the door slid shut.

"I'm never shrinking you again!" said Zima. "Well, except when we're having foreplay. And I'm getting baptized, and then we're getting married!"

"Cool!" said Nolan, hugging his fiance.

"But you do realize, you're still going to be my slave, don't you?" said Zima. "That's just the way it's done on Thanatar when a man from Earth is enlarged and marries a woman from our world!"

"Who am I to argue with tradition?" said Nolan, and he kissed Zima on the lips.

Mason Lewis flew the space plane through the inter-dimensional space warp that Leo had ripped open in the fabric of time and space, and saw Earth dead ahead. Their original destination had been Oahu, but considering the extraordinary circumstances, Mason decided to land at the space port in the Mojave desert. He brought the Thunderbolt into the atmosphere at a trajectory that would bring them East to West over Texas and down to south-eastern California.

When they glided in for a landing and the Thunderbolt pulled in to a stop on the runway, the first thing Mason did when he opened the door hatch was to ditch the tracking device that Melissa had planted to make sure they arrived on Earth safely.

"I don't want them to be able to pull this space plane back to Thanatar with this tracking device locked onto us!" said Mason.

The passengers disembarked, and they were met by a large group of workers who had assumed that the Thunderbolt had burned up in the atmosphere the day of the launch.

"What happened to you guys?" said one of the workers.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you!" said Mason.

"I'm worried they won't believe our story," said Tyler.

"Don't worry," said Brody, "I'm living proof that we were really there! Somewhere on this world there's another Brody Seger somewhere who didn't end up on Thanatar!"

Meanwhile, back on Thanatar, Melissa knew her capture was imminent, so she gave her captives to Morgan, who fled Melissa's condominium. The police found Leo at the lab, and tracked him to his owner, who was Melissa. They arrived at Melissa's condominium not too long afterwards, and they took Melissa in to the station and hooked her head up to a mind-control device. On a view screen they saw images from her mind of Adonis assisting her with opening the door of the lab at the University. Adonis was arrested a short time later.

Back at Zima's dorm, Nolan was still on the same scale as Zima when Zima found out about Adonis being arrested.

"They'll never find out I was involved because Adonis doesn't know how I switched you with Brody!" said Zima. "I'm taking you in to get you registered as my slave so we can get engaged! Come with me!" Zima held out her hand and Nolan took it.

"I already belong to you, though." said Nolan.

"You're registered as my game piece right now," said Zima. "When women on Thanatar marry a man from Earth and enlarge him, he is registered as her slave. You have more privileges than a game piece, though you are still my property!"

They went to a local government agency, and Nolan was introduced to a state worker who would process him.

"Things are a little different here on Thanatar," said the worker. "Now that you're going to be one of us, you're expected to follow our rules and laws, and forget about how things were on Earth. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Not at all!" said Nolan.

"You're going to be the slave of Zima Zamora for the rest of your life," said the worker. "How do you feel about that?"

"I would truly have it no other way!" said Nolan enthusiastically.

The worker smiled. "I think you're going to fit in nicely here on Thanatar!"

Over the next few days, back on Earth, the escaped captives resumed their lives as best as they could after experiencing the stress of being held captive on a world of giants. A talk show host immediately booked all of them on his television show, and they were given airline tickets to Burbank. None of them chose to fly by point-to-point sub-orbital shuttle or space plane. In addition to Brody being invited, his counterpart was also invited.

The host introduced all of them to the audience, and began with Brody. "So you're not even from our world, are you Mr. Seger?"

"No, there are several historical differences between my world and yours. The people of Thanatar don't target planes and space vehicles from just one version of Earth, they target hundreds of thousands of different versions of Earth."

"What are some historical differences on your world that differ from our history?" the host asked.

"The main difference I was able to discern is the 2008 U.S. election. On your world, Obama won, but on my world, McCain won. Also, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on December 31st, 1999, rather than the date it happened on your world."

"And your counterpart," said the host, "he isn't your twin brother?"

"I don't have a twin," said Brody. "This version of Brody Seger is from this world, and he appears identical to me!"

Meanwhile, back on Thanatar, Zima was getting ready for her baptism.

"You're going to meet my family today!" said Zima. "They're going to be at my baptism!"

Zima held hands with Nolan wherever they went, and as they left the dorm for the tram that would take them to her parent's home, Zima clutched Nolan's hand tightly.

"When are we getting married?" Nolan asked.

"Soon!" said Zima. "I have to get baptized first!"

"Are you going to be able to quit swallowing captives?" Nolan asked. "I remember you saying you weren't supposed to eat them anymore once you got baptized."

"It's true!" said Zima. "That's why people don't get baptized until they're really old! But I want to marry you, and our law forbids the un-baptized from getting married!"

"So you're going to quit cold turkey?" Nolan asked.

"Cold what?" Zima asked, unfamiliar with that particular expression.

"I mean you're going to quit eating tiny people, just like that?" Nolan asked.

"I've already contacted a twelve-step program that deals with people who like to swallow captives, but want to stop!" said Zima.

Back on Earth, the talk show host continued with his interview. "So Natalie Red-Hawk, your half-brother Nolan Ward stayed on Thanatar! How do you feel about that?"

"He's in love with a giantess on that world, she was one of the titans who bossed us around. Her name is Zima. My brother is convinced they will get married some day! She even enlarged him to her size at one point!"

"So your brother became one of them?" the talk show host asked.

"He was our size when we left Thanatar, but after we left, she may have enlarged him back to giant-size. I'll probably never see my brother again, but I hope he's happy in the life he chose there on that planet of titans!"

"There was another member of your group who was forced to stay behind," said the talk show host.

"That was captain, Leo Tanner!" said Mason. "He had to work the space-warp cannon that allowed us to return to Earth, so he had to stay behind."

Back on Thanatar, Nolan was meeting Zima's parents for the first time. Though they were in their fifties, they appeared quite young, as was the case on Thanatar, where the aging process had been completely eliminated.

"It's an honor to meet you!" said Nolan to Zima's father and mother.

"So you're the man my daughter wants to marry?" the man asked.

"He's handsome!" said Zima's mother.

"It would've been better if she had married Adonis!" said Zima's father.

"Adonis is a felon!" said Zima's mother. "We don't want Zima marrying someone like that!"

"I guess you're right!" said Zima's father.

Zima's father flew their shuttle cruiser to the church, with Zima's parents in the front seats, and Zima and Nolan sat in the back seats. When they got to the church, they watched as Zima was baptized. When the ceremony was over, Nolan told Zima: "On Earth, they only baptize around Easter time, I guess it's different here on Thanatar."

"The population of Thanatar is too high to schedule baptisms for one time a year," said Zima's mom. "People can get baptized here within a day's notice."

"I was baptized Catholic on Earth," said Nolan, do I need any proof of my baptism to marry Zima?"

"It won't be a problem," said Zima's mother. "You're not a citizen, so the laws that apply to us don't necessarily apply to you, because you're Zima's slave. Even if you weren't baptized catholic, you could probably still marry her."

"A lot of people from Earth don't like the idea of being enslaved by a woman from Thanatar," said Zima's dad. "How do you feel about being my daughter's slave?"

"I'm looking forward to it!" said Nolan.

"Then you think like us!" said Zima's dad. "Our ancestors were genetically engineered so the men are submissive and the women enjoy being in control. I didn't know there were men like you on Earth!"

"Yes, there are some of us!" said Nolan.

Just then, Zima approached them, and hugged Nolan.

"As long as you make my daughter happy, that's what's important!" said Zima's dad.

"The wedding is tomorrow!" said Zima. "Aren't you excited, Nolan?"

Nolan held Zima close, and kissed her on the lips gently. "This is like a dream come true!"

The next day, the wedding was held at the same church where Zima had been baptized, and Zima's entire family was there. It was similar to a wedding on Earth, and the rings had been provided by Zima's parents, since Nolan had no income yet. After the wedding, they went to the reception, and Nolan and Zima danced with Zima's family.

Nolan walked up and decided to grab a beer at the reception, when he was stopped by Zima's father.

"Slaves aren't allowed to drink alcohol on Thanatar!"

"What?" said Nolan. "Are you serious?"

"I'm just kidding," said Zima's father, "but since Zima is still only eighteen and not old enough to drink, you should abstain from alcohol until she turns twenty-one!"

Nolan put the beer back. "I guess you're right!"

Zima's father handed Nolan a couple of tickets.

"What are these?" Nolan asked.

"Tickets to a cruise-ship that goes to Mars!" said Zima's father.

"That sounds like a cool honeymoon!" said Nolan.

Nolan showed his new bride the cruise tickets her father had given them, and when the reception was over, they took a taxi shuttle cruiser to the launch site of the cruise ship. Once they blasted off, they went to their private room and got ready for their first shot at sex as a married couple.

Zima came out of the bathroom after changing into a sexy outfit. She had her shrink-ray pistol in her hand.

"Do you want to have sex normal-sized, or do you want me to shrink you?"

Nolan smiled as he made up his mind.

THE END