Christmas was always a time of pleasant celebrations, pleasant gatherings, and pleasant surprises in general. This joy could usually be seen throughout the entire season and not just a single week of the year. While everyone has different ways of celebrating, Novaim had a unique project for the start of December. They have spent the year working on a new kind of immersive experience, and they were finally ready to let others try it. This was, in some respect, Novaim’s gift this Christmas to everyone.
Amélie Bintray, the CEO of Novaim, was ready to unveil the company’s latest immersive breakthrough this month. Right before that, however, she wanted to have some… special fun with it just “to test things one last time” before officially unveiling it. Two nights before this event was scheduled, Amélie brought a few friends and connections over to Novaim’s main facility. This group didn’t realize why Amélie chose them specifically, but they were about to find out. They were getting a sneak peek of this year’s gift, but they were also seeing a unique side to this gift aside from the regular version meant for everyone.
At around 8:30 PM, three of these guests had arrived and were waiting by the entrance when everyone else arrived in a minivan. To add to the surprise factor, most of these guests were complete strangers to each other, keeping the surprise until they were ready to experience it themselves. As they too approached the entrance, Amélie headed to the door to welcome everybody. For this occasion, she was wearing a bright red trenchcoat with gold and green ornaments decorating it and lavender faux-fur accents. This trenchcoat obscured everything else in her outfit save her winter boots and classic yellow goggles. “Come on in! It’s freezing out here!” she said while gesturing for everyone to enter the warm and bright building. As she did, everybody rushed in from the snowy outdoors. They had some semblance of an idea of what they were getting into, but the fun mystery was about to get a whole lot more fun. As she led them through the large hall of the building, Amelie eventually directed them to a small room with what looked to be a series of pods, each with a single harness and headset attached to it. That room seemed completely empty except for these, though it had an open window to a nearby room with a single similar-looking pod and a large monitor with one of the most complicated control panels these people had seen. “So tell me,” asked Amelie, turning to the group with notable excitement for this trial, “Are you all ready for something to TRULY blow you away?” The group seemed to share her enthusiasm, as a random guy named Tonio was the first to exclaim “You bet!” in an excited voice. The crowd seemed to share this excitement as they all entered the room. Meanwhile, Amélie herself headed into the control room and kept a close eye on everyone else. Before they knew it, a bright light and loud mechanical humming filled the two rooms, and everyone inside could only see and hear that.
A few seconds later, the bright light dimmed down while the humming faded to near silence. However, nobody could see the window leading to the control room at this point. The whole group was somehow in a dark room. Tonio tried to look around and call out to anyone else, asking “Hello… where are we? Can anyone hear me?” somewhat loudly. He was surprised by the echoes of his voice, and everyone else was surprised by how distant Tonio’s voice sounded. Another guest, Seth, responded “Whoa! Where are we? Can anyone hear me?” while trying to discern where everyone around him ended up. As he asked that, a colossal door opened up, letting a bright blue light pour into the odd chamber. As it turns out, the group members found themselves scattered across colossal leaves and berries. These were fairly sticky, which made movement rather difficult but kept their body harnesses safely attached and protected them from falling down. As people tried to look out, they saw a gigantic hand reaching out to grab this mistletoe-ring. A wave of both fear and excitement swept over the participants, each one smaller than a pinhead in comparison to the hand grabbing them. They all looked around, seeing Amélie towering above them all. They tried to run about, but the sticky surface of the mistletoe made running a real challenge.
“Well well well,” said the titaness with a thunderous voice, “It actually worked! Look at you guys!” Her laughter boomed from above as she slowly raised the group all the way to her face, her laughing mouth opening more than wide enough to swallow them whole if she wanted. Amazingly, this experience felt entirely real to everyone. They had all tried something similar with an earlier version of this, though this blows those previous experiences totally away. Some of the participants tried to yell something to the towering titaness before them, but their voices were nothing but barely audible squeaks to her. To add to the performance, she licked her lips while staring them down and slowly brought the mistletoe closer to her mouth before laughing much louder. “You know what?” said Amélie, still staring at her tinies menacingly, “I have a different idea for YOU guys!” She was eyeing them as though she was about to eat that mistletoe like a snack seasoned with a few tiny people.
Amélie took a seat while still eyeing her tiny captives. As this building was getting quite warm, she decided to slide her boots off, revealing that, for this particular occasion, she wasn’t wearing any socks. Of course, her sweaty feet were on full display, and she knew that this crowd would enjoy this kind of ride. She playfully wriggled her right foot as she wore her mistle-toering, wiggling her toes to give her tiny passengers a wild ride. “I hope you can hang on. This party has only started!” her voice boomed far from above. She doesn't enjoy things like this often, so when she has the chance to include things like this in her schedule, she makes sure to make the most of it. She’s had this side to her for a long time, which is largely how she got to know each of her minuscule guests in the first place. However, her increasingly busy work life means that she didn’t really have time to enjoy this with others as much in recent times. “But look at you! I should probably take this party somewhere nice and toasty with how cold it is outside!” While everybody was still getting used to their surprisingly real surroundings underneath Amélie’s titanic toes, she quickly lifted her foot and pushed it back into the musky boot. The warmth and smell quickly overpowered the whole group, and they could barely believe just how powerful the smell was to their new minuscule bodies. Somehow, the darkness seemed to make that sensation all the more powerful. Amélie continued to have fun talking to the tinies near her toes, though her voice was largely muffled to them. Instead, they could hear each and every step of her right foot as they felt each impact hit them like an earthquake. They could barely hear anything but these steps, which seemed to only make them all the more impactful. With each step, her foot made sure to smother each and every one of her guests. Whenever they weren’t breathing her foot’s aroma, they were smothered and drenched by it instead. She made sure to have some more fun by jogging in this heated building, making sure to drag her boot across the ground as hard as she could. She knew that she could go all out and still not seriously hurt anyone, despite how real it felt. Despite this constant battering, they felt as though, at any moment, they could fall from the sticky mistletoe and either get lost on her skin or in the forest of worn faux-fur inside her boot. They were too worn out to really grab on to anything, and most of them were too stuck to even have that thought cross their minds. Alas, it only took around two minutes with her gleeful gaits to reach the door leading to the frigid outdoors, at which point she leapt out and landed on a thin blanket of snow. The tinies inside her boot knew that something was up when they noticed how differently this felt.
As Amélie stepped outside, she was met with a cool breeze. Her tiny captives were able to feel that drop in temperature, though it was slight to them with the sweltering foot. “Well, that’s enough of that. I say that it’s time to cool off and really enjoy this weather, huh?” she said while sitting on a snow-covered chair and slowly slipping both of her feet out of her toasty boots, giving her guests a more sudden blast of cold air on this snowy night. Immediately, they could see the beautiful layer of shimmering snow in a whole new light. Each falling snowflake looked far more beautiful with these spectators being close to the same size as them. The vast expanses of pristine crystal structures falling from the sky looked completely otherworldly. Of course, these structures would often land on a still-steaming foot and melt even more quickly than they gracefully landed. The body heat from her foot was enough to keep the group warm despite the frigid outdoors, though she still decided to keep them warmer by bringing her feet together and rubbing them as she would her hands normally. She made sure to continually smother her mistletoering with both feet, giving her guests a whole new kind of party between warm and cold. “This normally feels right already,” she told her tinies, “but having you down there just… makes it feel that much better. I really should have more fun like this more often during my holiday breaks!” She raised her legs while leaning back in her seat, being careful not to fall. She made sure to swing her legs to let her tinies see everything, bringing her feet together every now and again to caress her tiny passengers. Her toes would often play with the mistletoe, moving it around and even taking it off for a second before putting it back on. The aroma of her foot sweat combining with the freshly melting flakes of snow seemed to only get stronger as time went on. As she continued playfully flailing her feet around, her upper body reclined to relax in this unusual setting. Of course, while she was relaxing, her guests were all having the times of their lives. After half an hour of this fun, her phone vibrated to notify her that, despite her and her guests wanting this party to continue forever, this one would eventually have to end, though something like this could certainly happen again.
As her phone notified her of the time, she slowly and reluctantly sat back up, her feet still playing as actively and wildly as when this activity started. As she slowly brought her feet back to her boots, which were themselves cooler and sparkling with snow inside and out, the group could hear her towering voice speaking to them once again. “Well, that was absolutely AMAZING, so I hope you enjoyed your time, but that’s all for this time!” Despite what felt like hours of euphoria, these guests were surprised that their fun would have to end for the moment. Of course, they were all the more hyped for the official reveal right around the corner and already thinking about the limitless possibilities. Of course, they would never forget this poignant first impression, and neither would the giantess enjoying this much-needed festivity. Even with her work, she finds ways to enjoy herself every now and again, and in this case, she was able to spread the merry joy to some others, though she had various ways of spreading all sorts of merry joy to everyone, with occasions like this being rare treats amid the many sorts of festivities.