"Wonder where... Laghari? Wonder where Laghari is now." Tessay had sat back on his mattress, after taking a few steps around - moving halfway to the food intake tube before circling back. The surface felt larger than before, too big for him.

"That commissioner dude?" Hadi perked up, but kept her eyes on Bello.
"With Aliev, I guess." The largest of the shrunken women sighed, and peered down to her own feet, beyond her new dress, rubbing a cramp out. She dared to give a peek at the fogged, silent expanse of Pedro's glassy enclosure for just a moment. "Maybe they had the right idea."

Anderson didn't respond beyond a quick groan, rubbing his thigh. "Still smarts..."

Staring at an imaginary window on the smoothed, polycarbonate walls, Liu quietly mumbled. "It's weird... I think Laghari had dreams for the future or something."

Tessay nodded. "And Aliev... Didn't want a future at all." He shook his head. "Can't imagine them getting along if it weren't for this... Y'know, this thing where we all wanted to be shrunken down."

"They got in arguments all the time in the chatroom, didn't they..." Bello kept running her fingers through Hadi's hair.
She tilted her small head, letting it follow the strokes. "It brings together the weirdest people, doesn't it."

Liu still kept turned away from them, looking to the door. "Still not sure which of them I want. A future with someone... Or an end...?"

This time, Veronica's entrance was swifter than before - a shadowy specter slamming the door open. The glide of her jacket through the doorway was like watching a low-flying black jet, complete with a sonic boom effect. She had a gargantuan, gleaming scythe that waved high in the air - right above the roof of Pedro's cage. It cut down, straight, surely.

The very tip pinned down a cockroach's leg. The dark-haired girl tried to keep her expression safe, but it was evident she kept letting out fast, heavy panting. "I... I heard a bug had gotten in here. I didn't want to..." She clenched her teeth. "Anything that could mess up that life support system would... just ruin my sister's experiment."

Everyone in the room had to take a moment to recover from the lingering shock. Veronica plucked the insect in her fingertips, by the wings.

"Wow..." Liu kept gazing at the small shape against the massive span of flesh. "Those weapons are sooo cool." She kept looking up and down. "Do you... have more?"

"Huh? Uhm, I've got..." The edge of Veronica's gargantuan hand rubbed the back of her hair. "Uh, some poisons, a bunch of blades... Really, the Professor made my whole body a weapon."

Liu wiggled in place. "And you're still so gentle with it... The very image of a noble warrior."

The swallow from Veronica's lips was audible through the whole room. "You really think? I, I've heard people saying they respect my fighting skills, but it's kinda different... hearing it from someone like you. It really doesn't scare you? All these scars I have, all this, metal stuff?"

"It feels..." She struggled for the right word. "...safe. Like nothing could hurt you. Like you're looking out for us."

Veronica held the blade dangerously close to her chest, the touch of its cold blade making her spine shiver. "Of course. Of course I'm keeping you safe... I'm keeping the lab safe, The Professor's research safe. That's my job..." She choked slightly, while vanishing from the small room. "...It's my fate..."

Minutes passed, with few subjects coming up to occupy their minds. There were a few false starts where Tessay would suddenly crouch down as loafers passed the door; only for the doctor to be going to some other patient, or stopping for a brief discussion.

"Soo~oo, Okita, are you keeping to that exercise routine?"
"Fran, you know that cats can't do tricks like that."
"Hmm, but the other day, you told me you were still human... does that mean I should feed you cat food?"
"Feh, come on, I can cook for myself."

Finally, after a period of silence in the room, listening to whatever passed by, Fran entered the door. She brought a small syringe in one hand, and a bright smile on her face. "How are you all doing? Getting used to your smaller selves?"

"Another... another out-of-body experience last night." Anderson commented to himself, and rolled over, scratching his stomach.

Liu shook her head. "I can't get used to anything with all these people around. It feels like they're watching me, even when I'm sleeping..."

"Sleeping's been hard." Bello rubbed her eyes.
Hadi crawled over her. "Internal clocks are all off..."

Pedro kept coughing and hacking.

"That's unfortunate. In terms of adaptation to this state," Fran rubbed her chin, "Tessay should be getting much more comfortable with his size soon." She pointed the syringe to him, the white lab coat lifting over the edge of the wall.

Tessay instantly shrunk down, covering his long dark hair. "No, no, I'm... I'm good. No need to experiment on me... Or anything..."

"Ah, now that... is a bit of a predicament." She rubbed her brow, sweat droplets the size of boulders descending off. "See, I've already adapted your food and water dispensers for Heat Shock Protein 60 release..."

He stared up wordlessly for a minute.

Her neck, meters and meters above, swayed back and forth in disappointment; large enough that he could see each stitch traversing it. And they only got bigger. "Tessay, I couldn't make you the size you wished for initially... But through this manually-adjusted cellular structure, you have an excess of capillaries for your scale and particularly active mitochondria. With the correct heat shock protein regulation, then..." She shifted, one leg hiding behind the other. "...The process of mitosis will have progressed too far to turn back now."

"You've. Uh, Doctor Madaraki... You poisoned my water?" Tessay rushed to the edge of his cell, trying to get close to her to be heard. And yet, it took more steps than he remembered. And her shirt buttons were larger than he remembered, able to fit his whole body through each of the eyes - and they kept shifting and bobbing with her breaths... Her loud, booming breaths.

"...I've adapted this based off the principle of large, full fat cells reforming into smaller, healthier ones through stimulation. Your internaa~al structure has already begun folding on itself. In other words,"

A gargantuan index finger SLAMMED against the glass, showing off the minuscule dust particles caught in her fingerprint.

"...You're shrinking to the microscopic size you requested!"

Tessay peeked to the other containers. There were voices from the girls - but he could barely understand them with the distance. He reached up, but felt as if his limb was weighed down. The air was thicker, putting up increased resistance against his flapping arms. It was like treading through water, with none of the buoyancy.

"Why... Why didn't I notice..." His jaw fluttered. He tried to look away from the massive shape overlooking his tank - but the doctor's coat, her hands, her presence seemed to stretch further and further. Not only were the individual fabric threads she wore more evident, down to a slight fraying; he could see the stomata on her hands, mismatched and patternless as they breathed.

Her skin breathed. It took air in as she kept cutting her hands through that heavy air, like it was nothing.

"The effect is exponential, on a parabo~olic curve. Two cells shrink, then four, then sixteen, then two hundred and fifty-six." Each number was a louder thunderclap, and the demonstrative swing of her fingertip peachy cloud formations shifting. The smallest imperfection on her skin seemed comparable to the container he had been in a minute ago - the container itself, a world.

"Thankfully, I can still hear you, due to the..." An agonizingly long pause. "...Life support system's sensors. Very usefu~ul. Any first impressions?"

Continually struggling with his own weight changes, Tessay felt his feet leave the ground. He was light enough that simple breaths began making him fly. He tried to go higher, but the continual turbulence of rapidly-shifting molecules next to him sent him tumbling left to right. "Why the... Why the syringe? How can you... inject me, Doctor Fran?"

"Ah, I forgot all about that! I'm ree~eally out of it today..." Her chuckles now evoked tectonic plates shifting, as if there were volcanic eruptions in her vocal cords. "You also said you wanted 'milkers', so that's what's in here. Purchasing breast milk from lactating mothers can be an arduous process, but don't worry~" It was impossible to see, but the sound of her lips moving evoked a reassuring smile. "...It's only a small portion, so it wasn't that expensive."

"Wai-"

*drip.*

Meteors of white, viscous liquid fell from the unreachable vial above. It hurdled down faster than he could outrun it, a shifting globe of juices rotating multiple times in midair. Upon landing, it exploded upon itself, and tendrils of its wet surface began consuming the ground. It absorbed Tessay, the active molecules clinging around him and overpowering his squirms, hundreds of microscopic hands pulling him in.

Lactobacillus - delbrueckii, acidophilus, and helveticus. Massive bacteria that resembled fuzzy, colourful pool noodles crashed into him. They choked out his last few attempts at resistance, attacking him. As he tried to push them off, he found his arms frozen - the milk surrounding was impossibly heavy. The sensation was like trying to push back a hundred roaming, rapidly-moving skyscrapers. Even taking in breaths was next to impossible, with the weight of oxygen putting a strain on his shrinking lungs. All that kept him alive was the continual background hum of the life support device.

Fran mused, as he disappeared before her - and her presence slowly faded from the culturing tanks, too. "Even if I can watch... Taking the Uncertainty Principle into account, the machinery needs to expend more and more energy into observing you the smaller you get. The same power regulating the air and temperature regulation that your companions all need. So I'll have to stop babysitting you now... But I'm ever so eager to see you report all the details of your journey through breast milk oceans~"

The door shut once more behind her.