With her warmth, dramatic flair, and overblown proportions Tori was like a curvy modern Disney princess giantess. Looking up at her, it felt like my larynx was in a vice. My voice was trapped. It would have been nice to meet her on any other day than the most humiliating day of my life.

I managed to get out:

“I think I need to go home and rest.”

She laughed as if this was a joke. My eyes dropped to the floor, and I twisted my hands. Realizing I was serious, she intook a sharp breath.

“My dad will kill me if he thinks I lost you!”

“I’m sure he won’t. I can take care of myself.” I resented being equated to a belonging that needed to be looked after. But just thinking this, I realized I couldn’t use the toilet.

She got over it quickly.

“Suit yourself, you rebel.”

Before I could react, her hand snatched around my waist and hefted me into the air. I yelled in surprise, even as the warm inside of her palm felt so good on my naked body. She rose from the carpet and went to the door.

Her thumb was on my chest and it was really big, feeling more like a foot resting there. She had black painted nails, but the polish was starting to chip, like streaked obsidian. Her other fingers were wrapped around my side, hugging me from every angle, but for a little extra grip, the tip of her pinky had hooked behind my butt and rested between my legs. The pressure against my sack sent shivers down my spine.

I sensed her gaze on me, but when I glanced up, she was scanning the night sky.

“So…” she squeezed me nervously without realizing, “…what happened out there?”

All I could think was the pink beams, the silent electric snap of the lasers in my ears, and the smoky copper tinge of blood in my nostrils. The phantom smell was so strong I sneezed.

Tori giggled and bopped me on the nose.

“Nothing.” I said this a little too quickly. There was a beat of silence, before I added: “I mean, nothing happened because Zamira Venus got in and shut everything down pretty fast.”

“Superstar.” She said this in a dismissive, weirdly ironic way. “She just left you like this? I mean, she couldn’t take you to a shrinking doctor?”

Back before I’d enrolled in the Academy, I’d been this naïve about power reversal, too. Supers were policed by a different system than we were. An invisible system with its own rules, and its own invisible lawkeepers. Sometimes Supers protested it, mostly they obeyed it. Or else.

“You need an active Increaser,” I explained. “‘Active’ is the hard part. There’s this thing about power use… like if you stripped naked and walked down the street. You might not be hurting anyone – maybe you even have a good excuse why you’re doing it – but you’re going to attract the police for causing needless alarm. Same for Supers but ten times worse. They attract the Hypers from Foundation and Paradox; the Super police, and that’s…really bad.”

“Yeah, well, it’s also royally effed-up. If it meant you grew again, I would strip naked for you in a heartbeat.”

I didn’t reply. All of a sudden she seemed twice as big.

She gave an unapologetic laugh.

“Okay, calm down,” she said quickly, “I know what I said.” She shook her head as if I was the one who said something risqué, but she was blushing. “Anyway, can’t they just explain to the Super police they were trying to help you?”

“It’s complicated,” I replied. “There’s a whole legal and licensing thing with power use.”  

“What is a Hyper anyway?”

“A Meta Super. Shadow people.” I shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly, I’ve never seen one. But we know they’re out there.”

“Whoa. Deep.” The curiosity had left her voice. “I saw her today, too, you know.”

“Zamira?”

“Zamiraah, darling,” she said in a fake Mid-Atlantic accent. “Yes. Captain Venus. Why do you call her that?”

“It’s her name. Anyway, you saw her?”

“On a cosmetic poster in the mall.” She laughed.

“Oh.”

"She just loves Hammerhead doesn't she?"

"Hammerhead loves her even more, and she just gives it back."

"Still waiting to see it on the big Welcome sign when you drive in: Hammerhead, officially adopted by Captain Venus."

I didn’t laugh. The word ‘adopted’ brought a flash of memory: being scooped up a giant hand with polished crystalline nails. The silence deepened. Tori could tell I was uncomfortable now.

Then we were at my front door. It might as well be a towering wall to me, since I couldn’t use the handle. Tori tried the front handle but it was locked.

“Check the gargoyle,” I said. There was a small gargoyle statue in the front yard, and the spare key was kept underneath, buried shallowly in the soil.

Tori dug it out and unlocked the door and switched the foyer light on. Then she hesitated on the doorstep, holding me.

“Nice house,” she said, pretending to admire the place. It seemed to dawn on her how big things must be compared to me. “You live alone, right? What are you, uh, doing for the rest of the night, Mr Rockwell?”

Coming from such an unsubtly dramatic personality, her attempt to sound casual was such a fail it made me laugh out loud.

“Settling in,” I said. “I just need some privacy.”

“I think…you could still be in shock,” she babbled. “I mean, what if? Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

She had a point, but I didn’t want to admit it. Particularly as part of the shock was from her boob being so close to my head, and dominating it in size.

“Goodnight, Tori.”

“That’s it, huh,” she sounded spurned and didn’t hide it. She very clearly wore her heart on her sleeve.

“Look, it’s just…Your dad should have warned you, I’m pretty boring.”

“Ya-uuhh, obviously,” she scoffed, gently putting me down, and my bare feet planted on the bare, cold tiles. “See ya.”

Awkwardly, I disappeared into the house. With the giant forms of furniture parked around, walking through the house was like walking through a yard of Mack trucks in the dark. I couldn’t believe I was supposed to live here. The shadowy floor stretched on and on, until I crept into my study.

“Open SciLab,” I called out.

An automated voice played out: “Denied.”

Frowning, I repeated.

“The Lab!”

“Denied.”

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Diagnostic.”

The AI voice, ‘Blue Sky’ replied:

“Input does not match authorized copy.”

But my voice was the authorized copy; if I couldn’t get in, no one could! I puzzled over this for a second before reaching the unhappy realization. Being shrunk must have changed the sound of my voice, and the program didn’t recognize it anymore. Like everything else, my vocal chords had been reduced, so it must have been higher, or lighter, or softer.

Tori had blushed and fluttered earlier, while Zamira had picked me up and kissed me. It was all starting to make mortifying sense. My voice must have sounded cute.

Lucky I had a failsafe in case I got locked out somehow. But I always imagined this would be due to a glitch with the AI, not me.

“Soon comes Mr Night,” I said. This was the ‘master key’ password phrase.

A wall panel slid away to reveal a doorway down stairs into a basement room. The lights automatically flicked on as I began to hop down each step, trying to marvel at the depth of each single stair, not even thinking how I might get back up again.

Each small drop lower it got slightly colder, until I was at the bottom, and staring up hopelessly at my work desk and PC, my ‘home security’ workshop.

“PC on,” I commanded, and the PC monitor flashed into life. “Run intel database. Update on Captain Zamira Venus media presence.”

Blue Sky responded:

“Matrix probe activated. Rebuilding knowledge cache. Synthesizing results. Outcome: Remaining discrepancies.” 

“List them,” I said.

“Virtual interrogation report: A scan of most recent news-based interactions of subject, ZAMIRA VENUS, finds irregularities in oculomotor activity and speech patterns. Does User wish to be provided analysis log?”

Blue Sky was suggesting Zamira had been dishonest on recent news media. The ‘analysis log’ recorded every little facial muscle twitch, pupil dilation, and a waveform tracking odd jumps in vocal pitch, and breathlessness, along with the AI’s percentage estimates of falsity. Usually I scanned this, but right now, for once, I really didn’t feel like seeing Zamira’s face blown up on the monitor. Particularly not with Blue Sky politely telling me she might be a big, flying liar.

Everyone kept saying things about her behind her back, and I’d always stood up for her. Was I the idiot here?

“No. Pend for approval,” I said, deciding to make manual updates of the file I kept on her. “New entry under powers: Beamer. Confirmed. Painter. Unconfirmed—”

I stopped.

What about the way Zamira had sped out of the warehouse room?...Well, what about it? If she was a Soarer she was merely using a trick known to every other Soarer above age 5, combining forward flight propulsion with running to make it look like she could run super fast.

Except she wasn’t every other Soarer. Tonight had made that clear.

I went on:

“—Racer. Unconfirmed.”

A Super who could race and fly and beam and…? – and what else? Even Blue Sky implicitly agreed; this was getting ludicrous. It said:

“New entries under power: denied.”

It only let the power section contain a single entry, but if my observation said otherwise, it was the program which had to change. 

“Override it,” I commanded. And then, added hastily: “For the Venus file.”

“Overridden. Receiving inbound call. Connecting—”

“No calls!” I wailed. The last thing I felt like right now was chatting on the phone to someone. I was standing on the floor below the desk, and my PC camera couldn’t even pick me up.

The monitor flicked over to a face cam view of the caller, a guy with metal studs in his lip and eyebrow, my friend Tripp.

He was a Waver; he could manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum. But his power gave him seizures and he had to drop out of the Academy. He was obsessed with ‘Fits’ (Super slang for Cybernetics) and had invented Blue Sky, then something weird happened since he dropped out of Paragon and started working at the infra-news station, Night Watch, under boss and editorial director, Miles Matheson (the Zamira critic). Tripp became a conspiracy nut. He decided he didn’t like Cybernetics anymore, and Miles apparently had no objection to Tripp clouding the waves with half-ranting accusations of Fits being ‘bot boxes’ installed into Supers. I saved Blue Sky from almost being permanently disabled by Tripp, and ‘adopted’ it for use myself.

From the cam, it looked like he was in his home. His voice crackled in:

“Steve, are you there?”

“Hi Tripp,” I said, resignedly.

“Huh? Check your cam, I’m not getting a face.”

I sighed as he tinkered with his display.

“I’m definitely here.”

As I scanned the room for something to help me climb up onto the desk, he suddenly turned his head and called out:

“Honey, Lucy shrunk my friend! But I think he’s microscopic; come over here and help me find him!”

I shouldn’t have been surprised he already knew what had happened, he was better connected than I was.

Then a girl leaped over, practically falling onto Tripp’s lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and peered into the screen. She had golden brown hair and very red lips. Tripp always seemed to be with a new girl every time I saw him. The girl was cute but was one in a line of previous pretty girls that no longer seemed to stun Tripp by looks or otherwise. And I was a little peeved at her sudden appearance; what happened to privacy?

“Hello? Steven?” she said, scanning all over the screen. “Can you hear me?”

“Laura is a Projector,” Tripp explained. “We’re seeing each other.” Obviously. He then said to her quietly, “Can you check on him? I’ll give you a shunt to his side.”

“Oh are we doing this?” she giggled as if he’d put on some Karaoke and asked her to duet with him. Her voice also hushed, as if she didn’t think I could hear her. But at small scale, my hearing was much more sensitive now.

While Tripp concentrated on the screen, Laura sunk against him into a trance.

They were emerging.

It meant combining their separate powers to create a new ‘emergent’ kind of power. It was very rare; you had to find a Super with a power that complimented your own. Emerging with a lover must have felt amazing, a highly stimulating Super version of playing a duet, or having sex. A little sadly I realized I would never be able to experience it, I was Natural.

“Don’t move little buddy!” Tripp said. “Laura could find you if you were standing on a pinhead.”

The world turned steamy; light curled and bent in the corners of my eye. Unbearable pressure injected throughout my body, causing a tingling numbness to creep down my extremities. I could no longer stand, but something was holding me, keeping me upright, like I was being gripped. Paralyzed. My head felt like it was about to burst.

Steven, Laura’s voice was in my head, firm but calm, Thatta boy. Don’t fight me.

She sounded like she was trying to tame a mustang. From far away, Tripp said, unhelpfully: “She’s harmless, dude.”

I was just about to pass out and could no longer hold the growing dimness back. I gave in, but instead of passing out, the pressure subsided and there was a giddy calmness.

That’s when it got weird.

A wave of sensations battered over me: shock, then relief, then a kind of warm, curious friendliness. These weren’t my feelings, they were hers. The feelings morphed seamlessly into a cavalcade of rapid-fire thoughts:

My God so cute he’s a doll oh I just want to pick him up and squeeze him and oooh okay calm down—  

The sensations evaporated and the world was clear and sharp again.

On the monitor, Laura was out of her trance. It was strange to see her on the screen again and remember she hadn’t actually been in the room with me.

Of course Laura had to be weird, I thought ruefully, she was Tripp’s girlfriend. So many weird things had happened to me today it was starting to all wash together and my brain was accepting it all without question.

She laughed and said to Tripp:

“Oh, he’s little but he’s not microscopic!”

Tripp groaned with relief.

“You called me cute,” I said without thinking. I was still dizzy from her jumping inside my head.

“You called me cute,” she parroted mischievously.  Only, she meant it. With shock I realized when I had read her thoughts, she must have read mine.

Laura tilted her head into Tripp, keeping her eyes on the screen, on me, watching thoughtfully.

“Exactly how big are you now anyway?”

“Six inches,” I said.

“Your height, Steven,” she reiterated, giving me a quick wink that Tripp did not see. Ever the flirt it seemed. “Be honest.”

Rather than argue, I decided to show them directly. First, I had to climb up my desk, using the drawer handles as hand-holds. This was easier than expected; by standing on one handle I could pull myself up onto the next one. Finally, the monitor showed their faces in one window, and a twin window showed me, utterly dwarfed, standing on the desk like an action figure, red faced and panting.

They both stared with their mouths open. I was the first real ‘reductee’ they’d ever seen.

“You met Captain Venus looking like that?” Tripp burst out. “You’re smaller than a shoe, man!”

I stood right on the edge of the desk to keep them both in view.

“And you know how tall her boots are," I said.

At this, Tripp was reduced as well, to laughter, while Laura buried her face in his neck and giggled sympathetically.

He groaned as if the laughter was painful, and said:

“That is so awkward, dude!”

Laura said:

“That is so cute!” She leaned forward until her profile on screen blocked out most of Tripp’s, and her face was bigger than ever – but only a taste of how big she actually was. “Steven...creep in a little. I wanna see your face better...please?” her brows drew in ”—wait, are you wearing a skirt?”

Tripp grabbed her shoulders and eased her back.

“Okay, babe, enough.  Last thing he needs right now is for you to flirt with him. He’s smaller than your tit.”

His sleazy tone made it clear the two of them were past the honeymoon phase.

“I heard about your exam glitch,” he said seriously. “So the flying fire truck Shuf!fed in, and then…? The reports are saying she neutralized a Reconstructor.”

My mind raced. Tripp might have been younger than me, but he was smarter than he acted. It wouldn’t be unlike him to ask a deceptively simple question while already knowing the answer, like a good police interrogator.

“It all happened in a split second,” I said.

“So what did you see?”

My brow scrunched up.

"Look at my point of view!” I gestured at myself in a self-explanatory way. “I was hoping you’d know more.”

“My theory?” He said. “She's stashing a whole black-market of illegal powers.”

One of Laura’s eyebrows rose, and she tugged her hair self-consciously as if suddenly embarrassed to find herself sitting on his lap.

“Tripp, even for you, that’s insane.”

“Eh, you’re right,” Tripp reconsidered. “Not multiple powers. Fits. She’s a fembot!”

“I’m with Laura,” I said. “You’re crazy.”

"She's a fembot. And one day we're going to tear her face off and show the world what's underneath: a metal skull with glowing red eyes."

Glowing red eyes.  Smoky smell. Copper tang of blood. I uneasily swept the thoughts out of my head.

“I just remembered,” Laura said suddenly. “She once asked me to be her partner. I said no.”

“What?” I said.

“Well, she was novice and, also, I thought she was trying to ask me out.” She looked between Tripp and the monitor, at me.

“Honey, you’re novice,” said Tripp. “You’ve never not been novice. You dropped out of Paragon after one week.”

“Zamira never even went to Paragon,” I pointed out.

“I didn’t know who she was back then!” Laura said: “It was before she started dating Ben Flint.”

“Superblazar,” I said.

“Total power couple,” Laura nodded and then added, somewhat acidly. “Oh, except now they hate each other.”

Tripp shook his head.

“Enough about them. Right now, something more urgent is going on: Miles is talking a deal with Lux Corp to buy us. Night Watch is going to become a subsidiary of Lux.”

“What’s the problem?” I volunteered. “You might get a budget increase.”

“Well, there’s a rumor the Andromedas are planning a big takeover of Lux.”

The ‘Andromedas’ were the major shareholders of the biotech RightFit, which produced tech fittings and implants for Supers, comprising dad-and-daughter-duo CEO, Aaron Andromeda, and socialite, Alexandria Andromeda.

Tripp emphasized:

“If they get a hold of us, we’ll become a press shill for RightFit and then we can’t report anything critical about Cybernetics.”

“Okay then,” I said. He must have heard the disinterest in my voice. On one hand I was for freedom of the press, too, but Tripp’s anti-Fit position stretched the ‘freedom’ to breaking point. Fits rehabilitated disabled Supers; it was tone-deaf politics to question the Fit business motive. Not to mention the aspect the mainstream press so loved, the poignant irony that the Andromedas weren’t even Supers, they were both Naturals. It was like a modern day, fairytale Super-Natural alliance. What Zamira meant when she said ‘one people, one power’, the Andromedas were doing, real time.

“There’s going to be a party,” Tripp said. “Alex’s 23rd birthday at the Grand Cheval Hotel. One of our reporters is allowed in to write a gossip column piece, but he can’t make it. Now I’ve got a better idea.”

“What?”

“Well, I’m thinking you could go instead, find out if the rumor is true.”

“Me?”

“You could pretend to be our reporter. No one knows what he’s supposed to look like.”

Tripp chose not to mention the obvious, so I finally said:

“I’m tiny.”

His eyes fixed on me knowingly. The idea was expanding in his mind now.

"Exactly. Do you have a girlfriend, Steve?”

“No, why?”

“Then think of all those bored, rich girls looking for a distraction.”

“Wait, how would I get in?”

“Catch a cab to the building and I’ll get a contact to meet you.”

I thought about it. A billionaire’s birthday party. A real undercover job. Even if I didn’t agree with Tripp’s position, it could be interesting, and potentially supply a truckload of insider intel I could feed to Blue Sky. Maybe it would help the AI clean up some of those outstanding 'discrepancies' in its records.

Laura leaned forward to see me better.

“You really don’t have a girlfriend, Steve?” she pondered aloud.

I stared back at her, nonplussed.

“Yeah...I don’t.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Then who’s that girl in the room with you?”

“What?”

On my camera window, there was a figure coming down the stairway.

“Steve?” It was Tori. “Dad said – whoa, what is that—?”   

“Blue Sky, disconnect!” I said. “Security protocol!”

I turned but forgot I was standing right on the edge of the table. Suddenly there was no tabletop anymore, just air, racing all around my body—