May considered herself lucky to have slipped under her mother's notice, quietly locking herself in her room. Annie was still letting out small, choked sobs occasionally, which tugged at her heartstrings even as they annoyed her. Had she done anything bad to the little girl yet? Couldn't she just stay quiet for a bit?

She set Annie's pedestal down on her desk beside Jeeves, who stood obediently at attention as always. The little servant watched Annie with interest while never looking directly at May herself.

"How do I help her?" May asked, sitting down at the desk and holding her head in her hands. "I'm afraid anything I do is just gonna hurt her worse. Do you think it's best if I just... tug her off like a band-aid?"

"I-" Jeeves' voice caught in his throat as the ghastly imagery popped into his mind. "M-Madam, perhaps you could just cut her off instead with some kind of small, thin blade."

"I don't really have anything like that." May thought for a moment, then her face lit up. "Oh, wait! I totally do!" Looking through her personal supplies, she retrieved a small pair of nail clippers, complete with a nail file extension. To the little people on the desk, the apparatus looked more like a barbed instrument of torture than a harmless tool of personal care.

"No! No, please no!" Annie screamed, her voice raw, as well as completely devoid of its usual British affectation. "Please!"

"Calm down, I'm not gonna hurt you." Leveling the file where the glue had dried, she gently pushed it in and sawed, slowly cutting away at the adhesive substance. She started with Annie's hands, as May figured the smaller amount of glue would make them easier to free. Unfortunately, Annie's fingers had not been trapped at a uniform depth, which May discovered after a quick thrust filed half of Annie's ring finger off.

"Sorry! Sorry, fuck! Sorry!" Annie thrashed against her restraints, likely causing herself more damage, but she was wild with pain and fear. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, fuck, goddamnit!" Pinching Annie's wrist for what little stability it could provide, May quickly finished the job, freeing the tiny girl's left hand from the wooden board.

The blue-haired girl swung her left arm in a wide arc before clutching it to her chest, her screams slowly dying down once more into sobs. "See? I'm- I'm trying to help. I'm sorry about your finger, really." A large wad of glue was still stuck to Annie's hand, keeping her fingers largely immobile, but the girl seemed grateful for even a small modicum of mobility. "I'll be more careful with this one."

"Please... please kill me," Annie said. Her eyes struggled to stay focused on the upside-down visage of the enormous girl before her. "D-don't make me suffer more."

May paused. Annie truly was a pathetic sight, only barely resembling the cool, confident girl she had been twenty-four hours ago. Her braids had been undone, and her long blue hair was stuck to various parts of her body by sweat, blood and... May didn't want to think about what else. Her chest - no, her breasts - were bruised black and blue, even moreso than her face. With years of physical and psychological work, May guessed, Annie might come close to having something resembling dignity again, but May couldn't see how the girl would ever truly feel human.

"Hey... hey, come on, don't say that," May cooed at Annie, gripping her other wrist and filing off the glue in slow, careful strokes.

"I w-w-wouldn't have... a-abandoned you." Even through the hoarseness of her voice, Annie communicated her hatred. "Wouldn't have... r-r-r-raped you."

"I didn't rape you." May's tone was flat, clinical. She wasn't going to let a Loser - even Annie - reaffirm what her psyche was already telling her.

"B-bullshit."

"You're in distress. Save your voice." May released the other hand, then gently tilted Annie up off the metal pole in her back. The small girl let out a long, low moan of relief, finally able to relax muscles that had likely been tensed for almost a day straight. Annie's torso fell forward, crumpling onto legs that were still bound to the podium.

"I'll never forgive you," Annie muttered just loud enough for May to hear. Taking away the stress of the pole seemed to have improved her voice already, as her strained stutter was nearly gone. "I would never have done that. I'm n-not a monster." May tried to think of what to say when Annie continued, "Just kill me."

"I can't," May croaked, already seeing a few steps ahead in the conversation and dreading the time between.

"What do you mean, you can't?"

"I just..." May blinked and shook her head. "I just can't. Stay still." Slowly, the giant girl began chiseling away at the glue underneath Annie's left shin.

"Fuck your 'just can't'," Annie spat. "Do it. Just shove that file in my throat and twist and be done with me."

"Annie, I-"

"Fucking please!" There was enough emotion in Annie's voice to freeze May in her tracks. "You want me to beg? I'll beg, I've been begging for a day straight. I begged when the glue seared my flesh and stuck me to this fucking thing. I begged while he... w-while he fucking pinched and... a-and..." Annie crossed her arms over herself, shaking. "I can't live with this shame. So... so please, May, please just fucking kill me."

May looked down at the tiny girl, completely rigid, and spoke in stuttered exhalations. "You're. Going. To be shown. To your father." She forced herself to look Annie in the eyes. At the very least, May bitterly consoled herself, she wouldn't be a coward.

Annie's face went white. "No. No, no, not like this, no May no..."

"Mmhmm." May didn't trust her ability to maintain composure if she opened her mouth. Blinking rapidly, she got back to work filing the little girl off the wooden pedestal.

"May, no, May please don't let this happen. Think about what you're doing to me! About what you've already done to me!" The giantess remained silently focused on her work as Annie's voice became shrill. "Answer me! Acknowledge me, you fuck! You low-life, cowardly piece of shit! You abandoned me! You raped me! The least you can do is fucking kill me!"

"SHUT UP!" May shrieked at the top of her lungs. She threw the file aside with one hand while the other snatched up Jeeves. Before any of the three of them knew what was happening, her fingers curled around the little man, crushing his chest in her fist. Blood sprayed out of his mouth, spattering the desk below.

The giant girl didn't even look. Instead, she squeezed her fist harder, drawing out the cracks and crunches of bone right in front of Annie. She brought him forward, closer to the little girl. "This is what you want, then?" she asked venomously. "This is how you want to end, you ungrateful cunt?" Uncurling her fingers, she let the limp mass of meat and bone slide out of her palm and land directly in front of Annie, his viscera splatting onto her.

It was Annie's turn to fall silent, staring in wide-eyed horror at the British man's fate. "My daddy hates your daddy and you were dumb enough to challenge me, so yeah. This is what happens to you now. So, what, you want to end up like him? You want that for yourself? Because that is pathetic. That twerp died for nothing, and nobody will notice. I don't even think my parents remember him. Is that what happens to you? Is that how Annie Ainsley goes out?"

Shell-shocked, Annie couldn't manage anything more than a small shake of her head. May sighed. "I'm sorry that fuckhead had his way with you. He's a grease stain now, if that's any consolation."

It was a long time before either spoke again. "I should have won," Annie lamented, still staring at the mutilated body before her.

"Yeah, you should have." The response surprised Annie, who looked up to meet May's eyes. "I don't want what you had. I don't want everyone knowing my name, and expecting me to be this... slavemaster or something, just because I beat you. I know I would have been a servant, and I know my life and death would have been meaningless, but... yeah, you should have won. I think I'd have preferred that."

The blue-haired girl gave a rueful chuckle. "Isn't this great. The reluctant owner and the defiant slave. What a good fuckin' pair we make."

May was just about to say something when her mother knocked at the door. "May? Are you home?"

Shit. "Yeah, mom," she called, hastily wiping up the mess on her desk with a nearby paper towel.

"Did you get the Ainsley girl?"

"Uh-" she shot a glance at Annie, who shook her head. With an apologetic expression, she replied, "Yeah, I did."

"Oh, that's great! May I see her?"

"Yeah. Yeah, just a second." She threw the bloody paper towel in the trash and hurried to her door, opening it. "She's on my desk over here."

Margot entered, hugging her daughter once more. May felt something wriggle against her boob, and suddenly recalled there was still a living person in her bra. She sheepishly pulled away from her mother, hoping she hadn't felt the movement too.

"Your father and I are both so proud of you, you know," Margot said, looking her daughter in the eyes. "Did you have to shrink anyone else to get her?"

May nodded. "Yeah. Some fat kid who took her. He's - I stepped on him."

Chuckling, Margot walked with her daughter across the room, and together they looked down on the miniscule little girl. Annie held herself tighter as Margot's smug grin grew. "Oh, isn't she just precious. Did you do this to her?"

"No!" May said defensively. "I mean - I mean, no, I didn't. It was the fat kid. I was actually just getting her out with, uh," she glanced around her room, spotting the nail file against the wall to her left. "With those," she pointed.

"Oh, honey." May's mother reached down and tested the glue with her nail, smiling. "You don't need to go through all that effort. I'll go get you some rubbing alcohol, all this will dissolve right off, you'll see." She briefly turned her attention to Annie, adding, "And it's a pleasure to finally meet you too, dear. Welcome to the Lancrest household."

With that, Margot departed, leaving the two girls alone once more. Annie opened her mouth, struggling to find the right words. She settled on just one: "Lancrest."

"Yep," May admitted. "May Lancrest."

Annie's heart plummeted in her chest. "Fuck."