“Sonia? Helloooo? Are you in here, Sonia?” Gloria called out as she and Marnie stepped into Sonia's new lab. They had wanted to surprise Sonia with a visit, but apparently she wasn't here yet. Ah well.
They flipped on a light switch, then gaped in awe as the place was illuminated before them. It was their first time visiting this lab, and going into it their curiosity was piqued, leading them to walk around and look at all the high-tech equipment while they waited for Sonia to arrive, wondering what all these strange devices were for.
Even when they had finished looking at everything, however, Sonia still hadn't arrived. They waited and waited yet still there was no sign of her. Growing bored, Marnie sighed and absentmindedly leaned against some sort of control panel for a device, accidentally pressing one of its buttons. Startled by the electric hum that started to resonate from it, she jumped off and turned to see that a portal of some sort had opened up on the device.
Stepping cautiously up to the portal, the girls and peered into it, finding that it overlooked what they at first sight assumed to be a model city, albeit a very detailed and comprehensive one that seemed to go on for many, many yards around. It wasn't until they noticed the tiny cars and people moving around in its streets that they realized this was no mere model.
“No way!” Gloria said. “Those have to be real people!” She reached through the portal, her hand coming into the world on the other side at a relative two thousand feet wide. Bringing her hand beside one of the buildings, she curled her fingers around it, cracking countless windows and warping its very structure with even the softest of grips. Then with a gentle pull, she uprooted it and carried it back into the lab, holding it up between her and Marnie. Looking closely at the tiny building, the girls could see, through its windows, at least a thousand mite-sized people cowering in fear inside.
Had they been normal sized, the girls would have felt sorry for scaring them, but small as they were, their fear made the girls feel... powerful.
Here were a thousand people or more, all held between a pair of Gloria's fingers. Doubtless they had lives and families, hopes and dreams, yet now they were all reduced to mere curiosities, existing solely for the amusement of two young girls who to anyone else would have looked like they wouldn't even hurt a fly.
Taking it all in, a devilish smile crept over Gloria's face. “Are you all supposed to be people? Man, how pathetic. Even a joltik would look like a giant monster to you guys. All I would have to do to kill you all is press my fingers together just like this.” Putting the tiniest bit of pressure on the building, the building slowly crumbled between her fingers, turning into so much rubble falling down to the floor. The people screamed and frantically tried to find any sort of safe place while the building crumbled around them all the while Gloria's fingers closed in on them mercilessly. Those who couldn't hold on and fell to the floor died on impact, but the ones who could cling on to the building wouldn't fare any better as they were crushed between Gloria's fingers, then blown away as so much dust by a puff of her breath.
I the meantime, Marnie had plucked out a building of her own, dangling it between her fingers. With a fingernail, she scraped away one of the building's sides, leaving its contents exposed to her. Tipping it over, she sent everyone inside falling onto her open palm, then discarded the building in the garbage before inspecting her tiny captives.
There was something curious about these people, she noticed. Though they were obviously some sort of humans, their proportions were just a bit off from anyone she'd ever seen. Not only that, but there was something missing from all the creatures in her hand. “Where are all your pokemon? Don't you have any?” she asked, her damp and heavy breath flattening them against her hand. “I guess you must all be from another world. A world without pokemon. I can't even imagine how boring and awful that must be. Such a miserable existence. I would be doing you all a favor by ending it.”Bringing them all up to her face, she stuck her tongue out and set it down on the edge of her palm, slowly dragging it across her hand. The wet and slimy appendage barreled over the landscape of her hand, gathering the tiny humans one by one. Even those who tried to avoid it by tucking themselves into the various nooks and crannies of her palm were picked up by her thick saliva and dragged along with her tongue.
After licking her hand, Marnie righted her face and slowly brought her tongue inside before closing her lips behind it. She swished it around, trying to see if she could taste the tiny people, but there wasn't any taste that she could detect. Disappointed, she gathered them all up and swallowed, thinking no more of them.
“Hey, Marnie, check this!” Gloria said. While Marnie was playing with the people, she had been looking over the controls to see if she could figure out what they did. “Look at this dial here, the one that says 'scale control'. See what happens when I turn it.” Turning the dial left, the portal “zoomed in” on the city, making it appear larger. Then, turning it the other way, even farther than where it had been before, the portal” zoomed out”, making the city and the rest of this world even smaller compared to them.
“Stop it there,” Marnie said once the city was small enough that it could fit in the palm of her hand. Reaching through the portal, she dug her fingers into the earth around the city and uprooted it, then pulled it out, letting her and Gloria get a better look at it.
“Whoa. It's so small now I can't even see the people anymore. Heck, I can barely even make out the buildings!” Gloria said. Raising a single finger, she reached into the city and gave it a little tap, crushing countless blocks in the process and sending a ripple through the rest of the city that toppled many buildings. Not that there were many buildings left standing anyways; most of them had been destroyed as the city was picked up, and many more were still being destroyed as Marnie held them, crumbling from the subtle movements of her hands, movements so minute that they didn't even register for her.
“Is that really all it takes to destroy your city? How disappointing. How are we supposed to play with you if you die just by being in our hands?” Marnie said, dumping it all in the trash.
“Maybe these gloves will help?” Gloria said, pointing to two pairs of gloves resting on a table next to the control panel. They had some sort of device attached, looking like some very high-tech pieces of equipment. Gloria put one on, then when she reached out for the other with it, it was enveloped in some sort of stasis field, being lifted into the air without her even touching it. “Wow, look at this! We can definitely handle them better if we use these things.”“Too bad the city's gone,” Marnie said, looking at the crater she'd left behind when she'd picked it up. “I wonder if we can find another one.” Looking over the control panel, she found a button labeled “new target”. When she pressed it, the view through the portal changed, now being that of a different area with another sprawling city, even bigger than the last one.
Now wielding the special gloves, Gloria tried to pick up the city without touching it, but she ended up tearing it to pieces in the attempt. “Oh, whoops,” she said, pulling her hand back out. “Okay, let's try another city; I kinda messed this one up already.” She tried picking up three more cities without any success, then finally, on the fifth attempt, she managed to get the city out intact and held it floating in the air.
“Put it on the floor,” Marnie said. “I want them to see us at our full height.” Complying with her request, Gloria carefully lowered it to the floor, managing to set it down without any visible damage to it.
Looking up from their city, the people were met with the incredible sight of the two young girls towering over them, standing taller than any mountain, their feet alone rising as high as Everest. As they stepped up to them, the impact of their feet on the ground sent powerful earthquakes through the city, making the buildings wobble dangerously.
Looking over them, Gloria started feeling giddy over how much power she held over these people now. She started tapping her foot softly, knowing that even that simple motion would be enough to shake the earth for all of them and strike fear in their hearts. Marnie, meanwhile, crouched next to it, looking it over thoughtfully. “It's a shame these things can't last us more than a few minutes at most. Imagine if we could keep them around for days, even years, and make them all worship us—make them dedicate their entire lives to us. They would live with us as their goddesses, and we could play with them all day without having to pull a new city out every five minutes.”Gloria pondered the world that Marnie described, then looked back at the city. Yes, these people were too fragile. Even the simplest of interactions could destroy their cities and kill them all off. It didn't leave them any time for the knowledge that they were nothing compared to her and Marnie to really sink in, didn't let them truly appreciate how powerful the two of them were.
Standing back up, Marnie raised a foot over the city, covering them all in her shadow. She let it hover there for a few seconds, then simply brought it down and twisted her foot on the ground, exterminating the lot of them in seconds. Without even glancing at the remains, she went back to the control panel with Gloria following behind. There were still so many controls that they hadn't looked at; maybe one of them could give her what she wanted.
After searching every label on the panel, Marnie finally happened upon one that read “durability”, right next to a knob that was turned all the way to the left. After making a new city appear, she turned the knob all the way to the left, then reached in and gave the city a quick tap. Rather than the buildings crumbling at her touch, they all remained standing, though she thought there might be a bit of damage on them. Smiling, she tried to pick the city up, only to find the earth how had the consistency of solid rock and the couldn't dig her fingers into it at all.
“Here, let me try,” Gloria said, reaching inside with her gloved hand and easily uprooting the city. She handed it over to Marnie, then made a new city appear and picked it up for herself.
“Perfect” Marnie said, dragging a finger over her city by way of greeting. “Welcome to your new life, you worthless little specks. I hope you enjoy being my little worshippers because that's what you're going to be doing for the rest of your lives. You can start right away by worshipping the smell of my feet.”Sitting down on the floor and setting the city down in front of her, Marnie took her shoes and socks off, sighing as she could finally air out her hot and tired feet. Then she set them down with her soles resting on the city, reveling in the knowledge that she would be subjecting millions of people to the awful smell.
Indeed, no sooner did the tiny people catch a whiff of the smell than they reached to cover their noses, coughing and gagging uncontrollably. With Marnie's feet covering the city, the smell was practically trapped inside with them, and it only kept building and building, until it got so strong that a whiff of it was enough to make anyone dizzy. Not only was the atmosphere getting smellier, it was also getting unbearably hot and damp as the sweat of Marnie's soles evaporated, filling the tiny space with her body heat. As if that wasn't enough, sweat spilled down from her soles along the sides of buildings, flooding the streets and nearly drowning whatever unfortunate pedestrians happened to be out right then.
Meanwhile, Gloria gathered up some saliva in her mouth before letting a big glob of spit trickle out and fall into her city, leaving thousands swimming in her spit. “Look at you all; you can't even handle being spit on by a girl. And you call yourselves human beings? You're more like living specks of dust, and you'll spend the rest of your lives as my little toys.” She ran her tongue over the city, letting it fill with her saliva until the only people who were still dry were those inside the buildings, and even then only if they were at least three stories up, as the bottom three were all flooded with spit. Gloria's saliva liquid thankfully evaporated fairly quick, but still left behind a sticky residue coating everything, leaving all the people stuck to the streets or the sides of buildings. Satisfied with her handiwork, Gloria slipped the city into her shoe as an insole, enjoying the feeling of it under her foot.
As for Marnie, after letting the city stew for a while, she grabbed it and turned it over on top of her feet, shaking it lightly to send millions and millions of tiny, microscopic people spilling out of the city and onto her bare feet, landing anywhere from her toenails to her ankles, some landing in the huge lakes that filled her sweat pores, others in the great canyons that were mere wrinkles on her skin. Curiously, wherever they landed, the people found they could stand as if Marnie's body has its own gravitational pull, being able to walk even along the bottom of her foot.
Wiggling her toes in satisfaction at the knowledge that her feet would now be the permanent home of all those millions of people, Marnie put her socks and shoes back on and chucked the now-empty city into the trash before going to see what Gloria was doing at the control panel now.
Turning the scale control dial, Gloria made the portal zoom out again, further and further and further, various cities popping into view before fading out as they became too small to even see. Then the contours of the continents appeared stretched out before their eyes, the curvature of whatever planet they were looking at becoming visible at first glance. Still she kept zooming out, until they could see the whole planet as it floated placidly in empty space, no bigger than a ping pong ball to them.
Reaching out, Marnie held her hand beneath the planet, gently tapping at its back. That simply touch sent the planet floating towards them, reaching the portal where it fell down right as it passed through it, landing right in Gloria's hand. “A whole entire planet,” she breathed, barely believing it even as she peered closely at the tiny world, holding it by its frozen poles. Meanwhile, an entire hemisphere looked on in horror as an eye that far outsized their moon peered down at them. This girl was beyond their comprehension, so big that her words had come to them as an ear-rending explosion that shook the planet to its core—and that with their durability at its maximum setting, though they had no way of knowing that. Had it been left at its natural state, the vibrations of her voice would have sufficed to stop the beating of every last one of their hearts. Then again, without that protection, they would all have been blown to smithereens at Marnie's first touch.
Half the world cried out that it was the end times while the other told each other that this had to be a dream, even as their gut-wrenching dread had them fearing for their lives. Unfortunately for all of them, the horror was just beginning.
“I wonder what it's like to eat a whole planet,” Gloria said, opening her mouth wide and bringing the planet up to it. A humid breeze rushed out of her mouth as she exhaled, sending hurricane-force winds throughout the tiny world, winds strong enough to uproot trees and tear down buildings. She first gave the planet a lick, then, finding the crust tasteless, took a small bite out of it, her teeth tearing through the crust and mantle with just a bit of effort. The hot lava cooled down instantly as it met the ocean of saliva inside her mouth, allowing her to chew it without any harm to herself. She found it had a very chewy consistency, and a not-unpleasant taste. After chewing it for a bit, she swallowed, then started digging her teeth into it again, about to chow down on an entire hemisphere.
She still held it between her teeth, not having bit down all the way yet, when she noticed Marnie looking at her. “Oo wanf ome?” she asked. Without a word, Marnie wrapped a hand around the back of Gloria's head, leaned forward, and took a bite while it still hung from her mouth, her lips grazing against Gloria's. Startled, Gloria chomped down and pulled away, letting the remains of the planet fall to the floor. “What was that about!?” she asked, blushing, after swallowing her half of the planet almost without chewing.
Marnie didn't answer her, only kept on chewing before swallowing. “Not bad,” she said.
“Is that all you have to say for yourself!?”
“What else is there to say?” Marnie said as she picked up the fallen bits of the planet, left shattered upon impact with the floor, and threw them all away. “Come on, I want to see how far this setting can go.” Grabbing ahold of the scale control dial again, she started turning it around and around and around. The empty space where the planet had been gave way to the solar system, then several stars, then an entire galaxy. As she kept zooming out, whole galaxies became visible before shrinking down to tiny bright dots, then the same happened with galaxy clusters and superclusters. Finally, when the dial hit its maximum setting and could be turned no further, all that remained for them to see was a small “bubble” surrounded by nothingness, holding within it an entire universe.
In total awe, Gloria reached into the portal. As her hand crossed the void surrounding the universe, strange lines appeared and disappeared around her fingers, as if the movement was creating creases in the very fabric of reality. Finally she reached the tiny universe and gave it a poke to see what would happen. “It's squishy,” she breathed as she felt it deform at her touch, as though it were some sort of water balloon with a rubbery outer layer protecting its contents. Presumably it would also burst like a water balloon if she put too much pressure on it, but after some tests, she found it was sturdy enough to hold, so she went and pulled it out.
Strangely, even though she could look into the universe and knew it was only filled with empty space, she couldn't actually look through it; the inside was still wholly dark aside from the light of the galaxies. Looking at it, Marnie and Gloria alike were filled with an incredible sense of power. Here were countless billions of billions of stars, with who knew how many more living beings in those worlds, all of them fitting easily in the palm of their hands.
“Wanna pop it together?” Gloria said. Marnie nodded; then, holding the universe between their chests, Gloria pressed herself against her friend, Marnie's hands wrapping around her back and squeezing them together.
The tiny universe bulged out in all directions, its protective covering straining to keep itself together between them, lest it and everything inside it meet their end between the still-developing chests of the two young girls. Seeing how close they were to ending its existence had them both feeling euphoric, unlike anything they had ever felt before. Hugging each other tighter, the universe-bubble strained further and further, until finally it burst all at once, the whole thing dissipating in a fraction of a second as their chests slammed together.
They remained holding each other for a while, enjoying the indescribable feeling of having ended an entire universe. When they finally pulled apart, their clothes were glittering with the light of untold stars exploding against their bodies. The vast majority of life in the universe had been extinguished, only a tiny fraction of its inhabitants landing unscathed somewhere on their clothes or else falling through the threads and onto their skin far below, where they would have to eke out a new existence as the smallest of the small, so insignificantly puny that they would never be noticed by any living being from this universe.
“Let's pop another one,” Gloria said, rushing to press the “new target” button and watching as another universe appeared. This one they crushed by pressing their butts together. Then they went on to pop several more using other parts of their bodies, like their mouths, thighs and feet. By the end of it, their clothes and bodies had become the worlds of trillions and trillions of people, for whom they would eventually be seen as supreme goddesses, unwittingly worshipped by more people than they could ever count.
Finally, they each grabbed one last universe to play with whenever they pleased before leaving the lab. Though Sonia had never shown up, they had had more fun while waiting for her than at any other time in their lives, and would be sure to come back if they ever wanted to end some more worlds together.