For a few seconds spent struggling in the awkward upside-down position she’d fallen into, Athena thought she would be able to right herself fairly easily. Her environment was warm, fairly dark, and a bit cramped, but she figured it would be easy enough to get herself moving if she could just get upright again. Unfortunately, just as it appeared she would be able to do so, she felt a painful yank on the side of her head.

“Ow…!”

Her huge ponytail had scattered around a little as she’d been falling, but it had mostly held together, and now it was stuck. Whatever it was snagged on, she couldn’t budge without painfully pulling on her own hair. She cursed under her breath. This place was much too warm, and she was sweating already.

Something suddenly moved. She let out a startled yelp, wrenching back and forth to try and see what was happening. The limited light reaching her from above increased a bit, and she managed to take in the sight of several tall, pillar-like objects reaching high into the air above her awkward position. They almost looked like…

She flinched, half-swallowing a breath.

“F-fries…!?” she stammered in confusion. It looked very much like she was trapped in a canyon of gigantic French fries, the rough texture of the towering stalks all around her cluing her in. “B-but why…”

Another gasp.

“MAYA!! MAYAAAAAA!!” she began to scream, horrible realizations crashing together in her head. Maya must have come back from her trip out to the nearby burger stand, and by some horrible stroke of misfortune, Athena had found herself falling right into her lunch. This was about as bad as her situation could possibly get, and she needed to fix it right now.

Popping a few fries into her mouth and savouring the first bite of her lunch, Maya grinned to herself and picked up her burger next. She didn’t care if she lived to be a hundred years old – she would absolutely never get tired of burgers, no matter how many she put away. Without any further delay, she took a generous bite. The lettuce crunched and the flavour of the patty hit her taste buds instantly, her grin becoming even wider. This had been more than worth the delay.

Athena was still desperately struggling and screaming for Maya’s attention, the heat from the fries around her and the state of panic she was in making her sweat like mad. If only her hair hadn’t still been stuck, wedged between two huge fries, she could’ve climbed to safety already, but instead…

Some time after the first, another huge movement shook the space around her. She loudly cursed as the fries shifted around only to still leave her huge ponytail trapped. She’d been letting her hair grow out since childhood, but right at this second, she would’ve been delighted to hack the entire ponytail off so long as it meant escaping before she wound up as part of Maya’s lunch. The latter option was absolutely not something she would ever be OK with.

“MAYAAA!!” she screamed again, her voice cracking.

In contrast to Athena’s current location being much too hot, Phoenix was downright freezing. Just figuring out where the hell he was had been one ordeal, and now there was the further problem of trying to plan out some means of escaping from the middle of Maya’s milkshake alive.

Even if he’d been able to ignore the cold, that wouldn’t have settled his issue with barely being able to move. He and Maya had visited that same food stand that this meal had come from before, and he’d tried the milkshakes – they were practically thick enough to require a spoon. The idea that he was at risk of being eaten by Maya was already horrifying enough, but at the rate he was going, he half-expected to freeze to death first. If nothing else, it was immensely fortunate that he hadn’t landed headfirst.

“Damn it…!” He had waited a few seconds to try and get some energy back, but his next lurching attempt at moving himself forward hadn’t been much more successful than the last. He cleared a small distance, but he’d been using the straw sitting in the massive basin of the cup as a landmark for all this time, and it didn’t look meaningfully closer to him than when he’d started.

Somewhere above him, a large shape moved past his view, and the world shuddered around him. He tensed, his stomach turning over in a panic. Looking up, he could only stare on in alarm as the huge milkshake cup moved, the mire around him shuddering just the slightest bit. Maya was picking it up.

Taking a lengthy sip through her straw, Maya found herself grinning again. A good old lunch from her favourite stand had been seriously overdue. She’d almost forgotten how long it had been since her last visit. Taking a moment to savour the taste of the milkshake, she swirled the straw around in the cup, all the while totally unaware of the hazardous effect this had on the puny lawyer trapped inside it. The blue-clad speck that was her best friend was nearly impossible to spot against the light, sparkling surface of the milkshake. She took another sip and set it aside, moving her hand toward her fries once more.

Athena was getting horribly dizzy, still stuck upside-down. Between the heat and the blood pooling in her head, she guessed that her face was probably about as red as her hair.

With one boot half-braced against the side of one of the gigantic fries near her, she had been trying to adjust her body to a position that would let her work her way back upright. The plan seemed fairly trustworthy, and all she needed to do was…

“Eep!”

The noise escaped her throat in response to another abrupt shift in the massive stalks of potato around her. Thinking quickly, she tried to test her ability to wrench her ponytail free again, but the very next second she felt herself being lifted into the air, the limited space she could see beyond the surrounding fries at her sides changing to a blur of different colours.

“N-no…!!”

Her erratic heart rate began to accelerate, and her movements became shakier by the second. Maya had to notice her, right…? There was no way she could miss her brightly-coloured work outfit or her hair snagged between her fries as she picked them up, was there…?

Her blue eyes widened and her mouth fell slightly open as an oppressively warm gust of air blew past her and she was thrown into darkness, the light of the gigantic office space around her vanishing.

She was going into Maya’s mouth.

A horrible scream sounded from her throat almost unconsciously. She’d never been more terrified. No longer concerned at all by anything like pain, she wrenched her entire body to the side, desperate to finally get free of the space she’d been trapped in, between the fries. Fortunately, it seemed that Maya popping the fries into her mouth had finally allowed her long hair to escape its trapped position. Much less fortunately, Athena only just managed to roll onto her front and look up in time to see the one remaining source of proper light around her vanish as Maya’s colossal lips sealed ahead of her. In the last split-second before darkness completely enveloped her, she saw the vague shape of her spirit medium friend’s teeth and the edge of her massive tongue framing a limited view of the office beyond, and then all she had left was the pale-blue light emanating from Widget’s screen down on her chest.

On her knees with her palms pressed to the rough, damp surface of what could only be Maya’s tongue, her entire body was shaking and her mind was going blank. A second later, her senses caught up and she became all too aware of the cacophony of noises surrounding her. She fell to her side, clamping her hands to her ears and giving a yell of distress. Her sensitive hearing was being assaulted from all sides, the combined tumult of Maya’s breaths and her gigantic teeth effortlessly tearing through the huge fries deafening to the point that Athena couldn’t escape it. Too overpowered, terrified, and exhausted to do anything else, she curled up in place, both hands still fixed to the sides of her head in a weak effort to dampen the sound. She was thrown from her place, crumpling in a heap on another part of the huge and shuddering mass of Maya’s tongue as the horrible noise continued, and then she was suddenly struck by a huge mass of something that knocked her into a daze.

Her head pounding, Athena vaguely registered a feeling like her body was being compressed between soft, damp walls set on choking the life out of her. Her damp hair was sticking all over her body. On the verge of losing consciousness, she was only shaken back to reality by a lurching motion that sent her toppling forward to an uncomfortable landing in a thick mire of something she couldn’t hope to identify. She gasped, almost choking on the heavy, unpleasant air around her.

It was still dark, Widget’s glowing screen still projecting a terrified blue and acting as her only source of light. She fumbled at her chest for a moment to get a hold on his casing and boost the display’s brightness.

Her heaving breaths halted for just a second as she took in the sight of a spongy, dark-red wall a ways ahead of her. The space between her and the wall was filled with what looked very much like thoroughly mulched fries and burger toppings.

This was the inside of Maya’s stomach.

Of the shrunken group, Trucy was in the least danger overall, though it was only relative. A minute or two ago, she’d seen her dad and her two lawyer friends go hurtling down from their positions on Pearl’s robes, their panicked yells fading away into the distance, and in the short time since, all the tiny magician had been able to do was continue clinging to her best friend’s robes and wait for a chance to escape this position for herself. She had to do something – everyone else might have been hurt, and she had a horrible feeling that they’d all fallen straight down toward the lunch Aunt Maya had just laid out on the table. If she was right, they were all in serious danger.

Unfortunately, Pearl hadn’t provided many safe chances for Trucy to do anything at all yet. Her colossal medium friend had been pacing the office for a short time before heading to the stairs up to the apartment above. It had been a miracle that Trucy maintained her grip on her friend’s robes as Pearl headed up the stairs, the powerful shaking motions coming frighteningly close to tossing her away as well. Her arms were getting very tired, and it felt like adrenaline was the only thing keeping her in place. If she fell, it was a long and terrifying way down to the apartment floor. She’d done dangerous things in her magic acts before, but not quite on this scale…

There was no way Apollo could hope to tell with complete confidence, but the blind terror in his mind by now had him fairly well-convinced that he was inside of something that Ms. Fey was in the middle of eating. He hadn’t been able to properly move on his own in a little while, an oppressive weight pushing down on top of his whole body and flattening him helplessly into a warm, strong-scented mess of what tasted like a very flavourful burger sauce. Ms. Fey was still a huge fan of burgers, last he’d checked, and at the moment, that did not bode well for his chances of safety.

(So, I deal with almost drowning, staring down mobsters, getting caught up in a bombing, and I live through all of that just to end up here!? Getting eaten by Mr. Wright’s old assistant…!? Did I burn down orphanages in a past life…?)

A few times now he’d heard a horrible sound of tearing as what he could only assume to be Maya’s teeth ripped cleanly through the layers of the colossal burger surrounding him. This time, however, was different. The world shuddered and he heard the same violent noise rumbling toward him, but quite suddenly, his vision was assaulted by the blinding return of the light he’d been banished from when he was first sealed into the burger. He gasped, his eyes stinging as he looked on at the surreal and horrifying sight of a massive set of lips retreating from view. His throat felt very dry.

Maya had only just avoided taking his head off with that last bite, and now he could see her and the space surrounding her, though the burger sauce he’d spent the last minute or two mostly submerged in was still stinging at his eyes.

(Move. Move or you’re dead…!)

He opened his mouth, trying to shout for Maya’s attention. His normally-loud voice came out as a weak rasp. Raising an arm weakly, he tried to wave as well.

The ground beneath him moved, and suddenly he was toppling forward, the lake of sauce he’d been trapped in proving quite slick when there was no longer a bun holding it down. A horrible lurch in his stomach accompanied another panicked scream as he fell right out of the burger, hurtling down toward Maya’s upper body. She was even larger than Pearl’s massively increased size, though it was very different to be looking down at her incredible scale instead of upward. Her usual channeling robes were worn a bit loosely at the moment, and Apollo’s yell was cut off when he crashed down hard against her pale skin, just below her neckline.

The burger sauce splattered messily around a small area where the droplet that had fallen with him made impact. His head was spinning again, but Apollo felt a warm sense of relief seeping into his tired body all the same. Sure, this situation was still a total mess, but at least he’d gotten out of that damn burger before Maya could obliviously eat him alive. That thought was more horrifying than anything else that had happened in the past ten minutes.

He groaned, currently lying on his back on the slope of Maya’s chest. Getting anywhere from this position wasn’t going to be easy without help.

His frazzled train of thought was unfortunately interrupted yet again, this time by a shadow falling over him. He blinked, his eyes still stinging a little. He almost choked.

A huge fingertip was hurtling toward him, coming down on Maya’s skin just below his position and then rushing back up in his direction.

(Th-that’s not help…!!)

He was scooped up by the massive digit, finding himself helplessly swept back into the air. The dizzying rush upward was just as bad as ever.

A little frown appearing on her lips as Maya felt a drop of burger sauce splatter against her chest, she’d quickly gulped down her latest bite of her burger and set the rest down. She needed to get rid of that spill before it could stain into her robes. Bringing her left index finger down to her chest, she swept as much of the sauce as she could right back off of her skin, and without delay popped her fingertip into her mouth.

If she had paused to examine her fingertip first, she might have noticed something very unexpected snared in the blob of sauce she’d just picked back up, but her attention was presently occupied by the need to grab a napkin and finish cleaning the last traces of the sauce off of herself, and so poor Apollo went totally unnoticed as he vanished past her lips as well. Another quick gulp, and she was back to working through what remained of her meal. Without so much as a moment of notice, Maya sent the second of the three shrunken attorneys in the room on an express trip to her stomach, joining Athena.

It was becoming hard for Phoenix to guess whether he was going to freeze to death sooner than he had any chance to escape the confines of Maya’s nearly-finished milkshake. Again and again now he had dealt with the terrifying experience of hearing his gigantic friend take a lengthy sip through the colossal straw accompanying him in the cup, spending every moment half-expecting to suddenly be violently dragged beneath the surface and into the straw itself. He was uncontrollably shuddering, the bone-chilling cold of his surroundings impossible to escape from. The number of possible good ways this situation could end only ever seemed to be getting smaller.

Were the others at least alright? When he’d fallen from the fabric wall of Pearl’s robes, it had looked for a split-second as if Trucy had managed to hold on. As for Athena and Apollo, however, he was sure they’d fallen just like he had. All he could really do for the moment was try to stay conscious and hope desperately for their safety.

Miraculously, he found a spot where he could brace himself up against the wall of the cup, away from the coldest parts of the tundra-like environment that filled the rest of the space. It wasn’t warm, but at least he wasn’t wading awkwardly through the stuff anymore.

(I-if there’s so little left now, at least Maya will be finished soon…)

Avoiding the straw for so long had been a continuous, nerve-wracking challenge, and there was some small relief in not having to continue doing so anymore. Phoenix stood in place for a while, arms crossed over his chest as he tried to warm himself back up a bit. Even the dead of winter didn’t make the office this cold.

Outside the boundaries of the milkshake cup, he could still hear the familiar sounds of Maya thoroughly enjoying a meal. The awful thought that somehow, Athena or Apollo might’ve ended up being unwittingly eaten by Maya made him sick to his stomach.

(Please be alright, all of you…)

After a while, he saw the straw shift in place again, but instead of the motion being immediately followed by the cup shaking uncomfortably as Maya picked it up, she paused for a moment before lifting the straw away entirely. Even after so many bizarre experiences since he’d first shrunk, Phoenix found it impressive to watch the tall pillar being whisked away like it was nothing. Unfortunately, what followed next was even more unpleasant than the shuddering motions he’d come to expect of Maya lifting her milkshake up to take a sip.

The cup began to tilt in the air, much more so than normal. Phoenix stammered in alarm, the chill set into his whole body still making it difficult to move about comfortably. He toppled over, winding up on his front against the wall of the cup, though it was now more like a sloped floor. What was Maya doing…?

He looked upward at the space leading out to the cup’s top, and his best friend’s familiar features shifted into view. Her brown eyes disappeared beyond the rim of the cup as it was brought toward her face. Phoenix winced, his eyes widening in realization. Far ahead, Maya’s plush lips parted slightly, and she set them against the rim of the cup, tilting it to her face.

“M-Maya!! MAYAAAA-!!”

Before Phoenix could yell any more, the remainder of the milkshake accompanying him became a frigid landslide spilling over his puny body and carrying it straight toward Maya’s lips at a dizzying speed. Stuck on his front and sliding helplessly, there was absolutely nothing he could do.

Her lunch was, tragically, finished. With her delicious burger and her order of fries completely gone, all Maya had left was one generous sip from her milkshake, which she gladly tipped into her mouth, totally oblivious to the unfortunate passenger being carried along with it. Phoenix’s puny figure disappeared into her mouth just as his two apprentices had, and after just a moment spent enjoying the last taste of her milkshake, Maya unknowingly gulped down the last of the three shrunken lawyers who had been so unfortunate as to tumble down onto her lunch.

Kurain Village’s esteemed Master sighed, content with her meal. She would have to make sure there wasn’t such a long gap between visits to her favourite stand the next time around.

A few minutes ago, Pearl had gone upstairs to the Wrights’ apartment on the office’s top floor; apparently Phoenix, Trucy, Athena, and Apollo had all headed up there for something just before she’d returned to the Agency with her lunch. Maya hadn’t heard a single noise from the upper floor since she’d arrived, so it was a mystery what they were all up to.

She wanted to relax here for a bit, but it would be best to deal with all of her trash and clean up a little first. She probably had a few crumbs on her face, and her hands were a mess. So, hopping from the couch with both of her sandaled feet landing solidly on the carpet, Maya made to gather up her things from the glass table and go to dispose of them.

“No, no, no…!!”

The panic in Athena’s voice was easy to identify with. Her entire body covered in stains and grease, and a pale blue light emitting from the little computer device around her neck, Athena had clearly already been beyond freaked-out at being eaten by Maya, and when Apollo was next to arrive in the gigantic spirit medium’s cavernous stomach, she had only fallen to pieces more. Finally, things became even worse as the two lawyers were joined by their terrified boss, Phoenix making a sudden entrance to the pitch-black and unbearably humid cavern not long afterward, falling into a splattered mess of milkshake that immediately mixed into the unidentifiable mess of the rest of Maya’s lunch.

Athena was braced against a spongy wall, hands pressed to her sensitive ears and her whole body shaking uncontrollably. Apollo could understand why – this was easily the worst situation they ever found themselves in, and even to him, the sickening noises audible from inside of Maya’s body were powerful and impossible to block out. For poor Athena, with her heightened sense of hearing, they had to be totally overwhelming when combined with the awful stress of finding herself in such a place.

Apollo first helped Phoenix get upright again, only for both of them to be knocked flat by a sudden movement of the space around them. Was Maya getting up?

The only light in the entire sweltering cavern came from Widget, still faithfully dangling from Athena’s neck. His display was a dark, terrified blue, the limited light swaying as Athena was pushed one way or another by Maya’s powerful movements.

Getting Phoenix’s arm over his shoulders, Apollo helped his dazed boss stagger toward Athena’s position.

“A… thena…!” he called out, the syllables disrupted by coughs. The air in here was barely breathable – humid beyond belief and filled with a truly overpowering mix of unpleasant scents, just getting his lungs full enough to speak at all was an arduous task.

They reached Athena’s position, having awkwardly clambered over a pile of mulched food to get to her.

“Athena!” Apollo called out again, stepping away from Phoenix to gently grip at his redheaded friend’s shoulders. She looked up, tears streaming from her blue eyes and her teeth gritted in discomfort. “A-Athena, just… uh… w-we’ll…”

He had absolutely no idea of what he could possibly say. All of his terrified experiences up to this point were fading, replaced one by one with the looming, inescapable idea that this was the end – they were all going to die here, inside of Maya’s stomach. It was hard to imagine any other possible outcome.

Still wracking his frazzled brain for anything that might soothe his terrified friend’s nerves even for a second, Apollo was surprised by Phoenix tapping a hand against his shoulder. He looked back.

“Mr. Wright?”

Phoenix was five hundred miles from calm himself, but he made eye contact.

“Trucy.” he said slowly. The cavern around them shuddered again. “I don’t think Trucy fell when we all did.”

Something flashed up in Apollo’s mind.

“W-wait, so she might still be OK?”

“I… I don’t know.” Phoenix said honestly. “Still, she’s not in here with us, and that’s something.”

“R-right…”

Athena gently pushed off from the shuddering wall. “Trucy’s smarter than any of us.” she said, trying to sound calm. Her voice was still uneven and shaky. “She’ll think of some way to get Pearly and Maya’s attention.”

There it was. Hope. Getting Pearl’s attention had been their plan as a group in the first place, and if Trucy was still in position to try it…

“… OK, you two.” Phoenix said after a brief silence. “Stick together. If we stay calm and only move when we need to, we should be able to buy enough time to survive in here for… well, for a while, anyway. Hopefully it’s enough for Trucy to think of something.”

Apollo nodded. Athena did the same. Widget was their only source of light in the hellish cavern of Maya’s stomach, but she appeared to be finished eating, and now they all had some semblance of a plan. Things were still bad, no doubt about it, but they were all still alive, at least for now.

Unfortunately, Trucy’s only plan for the moment was still “hold on to Pearly’s robes and don’t look down”. Her gigantic medium friend had searched the whole apartment for any sign of them, totally unaware of what had really happened, and now she was heading back down the stairs.

Her arms were practically on fire. Trucy had pulled off some physical feats that impressed even her when something went wrong in one of her magic shows and she needed to improvise to keep the illusion going, but hanging on to a sheer wall for several minutes with only a loose grip on fabric was a bit much. It was good that she didn’t have her gloves on, at least. She would’ve fallen already for sure if she’d been wearing them.

The thundering motions of Pearl’s steps back down the stairs were the hardest thing she’d had to deal with so far. Trucy closed her eyes, gripping as painfully tightly as she could to the swaying fabric, forcing herself through the discomfort until Pearl had reached the office floor again. It wasn’t much easier to keep holding on from there, but she could still handle it. Her hands were going to hurt for days at least…

Pearl was quite concerned now. Until she’d gone upstairs for herself, she’d been totally sure that Trucy and her lawyer friends just had to be up there for some reason or another. There was no way they’d just snuck out of the office without her noticing, unless she’d been even deeper in concentration than before. Now, though, she had no ideas. The Wrights’ apartment was totally empty.

Re-entering the Wright Anything Agency’s main office room, she saw her older cousin tidying up after her lunch. Maybe she might have some sort of guess as to where everyone had gone? Heading for the couch, Pearl sighed to herself. Maya could be heard humming cheerfully, clearly not as concerned by anything as she was.

She flopped down, bouncing slightly on the cushions. Pearl didn’t notice, but this motion had a catastrophic effect.

At last, Trucy lost her grip. Pearl had suddenly dropped onto the couch, and the motion slammed the speck-sized magician so powerfully back and forth in just a split-second that her grip on the fabric wall she’d been clinging to was finally torn away from her. She screamed, hurtling through the air in a dizzying arc. Everything became a blinding blur of colours all around her until-

-thump-

She coughed, bouncing once before stopping.

“Huh…?”

Had she fallen onto one of the couch cushions…? It looked like it. Shaking her head, Trucy took a look around and saw Pearl’s gargantuan figure still looming over her, but now seated on the couch again. The medium’s normally-soft voice was echoing all around her.

“Darn it…” Trucy muttered.

This wasn’t any better than where she and her friends had started, and now she was exhausted and sore, too. Were her dad, Apollo, and Athena alright? She had no idea, and no time to dwell on it. She was feeling incredibly worn out, but she needed to get moving all the same. Maybe there was some other tactic she could use to draw Pearl’s attention. Forcing herself onto her feet, Trucy shook her numb arms for a few seconds and calmed herself down enough to think. She was absolutely tiny, but that didn’t have to mean she was useless as far as making herself seen or heard. Maybe if she…

A shadow fell over her. Trucy froze up completely, staring upward in disbelief. The space before the couch had suddenly been filled by another towering figure. Maya.

Trucy’s heart sank faster than it ever had as she realized what was about to happen. The light from above was eclipsed completely by the violet fabric of Maya’s fancier channeling robes as her colossal rear end came hurtling downward like a meteor. She was sitting down on the couch, right where Trucy was standing.

There wasn’t even time to scream before Trucy’s entire world blacked out, an unimaginable weight crashing down on her all at once.

“Whoa…!!”

Apollo felt an iron grip close over his wrist, but still nearly toppled over into a mass of… whatever had been in Maya’s burger besides him. Athena had caught him just in time, saving him from a very unpleasant faceplant, but Phoenix wasn’t so lucky. He let out a similar panicked yelp before falling right out of view.

Athena cursed under her breath. “Sorry, Boss, I’ll be right there…!”

Apollo nodded to her to indicate he was fine again, and Athena got back into motion, moving to rescue their boss from whatever he’d just fallen into.

What had just happened? Maya’s movements hadn’t been too bad for a while, and then all at once there had been a massive shake all around them like a small, very brief earthquake. Everything else in Maya’s cavernous stomach had lurched along with them, throwing their balance off completely.

(Whatever… just gotta wait for Trucy to figure something out.)

Most unfortunately, now that their shrunken magician friend had been reduced to a puny, struggling speck beneath the full weight of Maya’s rear, it would be quite difficult for her to find any means of saving them from the medium’s churning stomach.