"Oh for God's sake, we've got another one."

Georgia rolled her eyes and spun in her swivel chair, chewing irritably on a piece of thoroughly mashed pink bubblegum that perfectly matched the colour of her wavy hair.

"And this is why we bug test thoroughly before we ship the game Yvonne. What's the damage this time?"

"Some girl by the name of Lillian. She posted an official complaint on the forums about that whole 'perma-shrinking' problem with Morale. We've had to temporarily ban a few of the more mouthy members of the community for getting too verbally aggressive, but there's enough of these bugs being reported that I think it's worth looking into at least."

"Yeah, probably. Did Lillian ever post a status update?"

"Not yet, just the initial complaint and then she stopped posting." Yvonne rested her ample hips against the desk and glanced back at her computer screen. "No, wait... she's posted a second reply, says everything's fine now."

"Well there you go, no need to waste time on this absurd bug report." Georgia responded, blowing a sizeable pink bubble between her lips before letting it burst. The moment she begun to swivel back to her desk however, Yvonne let loose a grunt of uncertainty.

"Ehh... I don't know about that; at least four other players also posted similar complaints around the same time as her, and there have been six more since then. Almost all of them claim their issue isn't yet fixed."

Georgia threw her hands up over her head in exasperation, hauling herself out of her chair and turning to face Yvonne. Where Yvonne had the advantage in curves and overall voluptuousness, Georgia had pure height. She stood head and shoulders taller than her colleague; a fact that she exploited often to look down her nose at her when Yvonne was doing things that annoyed her, like making the pink-haired diva actually do her job. She cocked an eyebrow at the bespectacled geek in her frumpy brown jumper.

"Well? Let's get this over with. The sooner we can safely confirm that this ridiculous bug is just a myth, the sooner you can let me get on with my work!"

"Pfft, what work? I hardly think playing competitive Overlook counts as work."

Georgia's cheeks went as pink as her hair, her nostrils flaring furiously as she stalked over to the row of VR headsets lined up along the wall of the office. Ordinarily there would be an entire row of developers stationed here at all times, constantly joining servers and playing undercover with the wider player-base to spread those coveted 'play a game with someone who made the game' achievements. Now though, with the majority of the office at home sleeping, only Georgia and Yvonne were left to wrangle the night shift.

Booting up a private lobby, Georgia fiddled briefly with the settings to prevent unwanted interruptions by players around the world. Yvonne sidled up next to her, strapping on one of the headsets and speaking the password to the developer-only game room.

"Okay, so how are we gonna-" Yvonne started to ask before Georgia steamrolled over her.

"We're not going to actually play a match. We're basically on an even footing as far as skill level goes, and so-far these complaints have only come in from people who are getting really stomped. So having a fair contest between us would be a huge waste of time... I'm just going to play Saeko and expediate the whole process. You play Ruby-Streak; spam 'glass cannon' as often as possible and just let me ruin you 'til the match is over."

Yvonne fidgeted uncomfortable in her jumper, grumbling quietly.

"Why do I have to be the one getting wrecked? That's boring and painful. And Ruby-Streak is way too fun a character not to actually play properly; when was the last time you used her in a real game?"

"Don't remember when. I remember she was absurdly overpowered in just about every game mode except Morale though, so this works out perfectly."

"We'll have to balance that at some point you know."

"I'm sure you'll remind me." Georgia said sarcastically as the match sprang to life before her eyes. She felt the familiar twinge as her body morphed into the Japanese assassin, shadow boxing the air a couple of times to make sure the link had worked properly. Mere seconds after she's entered the virtual world, she saw Yvonne's avatar enter the picture. Ruby-Streak, the unlockable fourth character of the female tree, was an absolute demon in the hands of a player who understood risk and reward. Her primary ability, 'glass cannon', made Ruby-Streak temporarily vulnerable to instant death from all damage sources, but also granted her the ability to make her next shot deal ten times its normal damage and pierce targets. A carefully timed 'glass cannon' could utterly ruin an unaware defense, but right now Georgia had only one use for it.

"Time for a shatterpoint!" The Australian accent lilted out of the red-armoured woman's throat as she activated the ability, only to slump over dead a moment later when Saeko's shotgun pumped her stomach full of digital lead.

"One down. Keep them coming, I'm just going to stick around the central control point."

"This is going to be a long three minutes..."

As it so happened, it took less than a minute for the score gap between the two developers to widen to the point that Ruby-Streak was now barely the size of a doll. There was something about the situation that felt deliciously surreal to Georgia, and more than a little sadistic. She would just stand there, hands on her hips, weapons holstered and watching as the tiny red streak sprinted right up to her. In a normal game, Ruby-Streak would be a nightmare at that scale, more than able to work her way back up through the ranks to first place. Right now though?

Georgia took so much satisfaction from feeling her colleague's digital representative explode under the tread of her boot that she had to force herself to remain focused on the game lest she start giving off the kind of real-world signals that would end in a sexual misconduct report. Time and time again, Ruby-Streak would run right up to the towering titan, practically throwing herself under the scuff of her iron-shod boots to get utterly obliterated.

With thirty seconds to go however, Georgia decided that the score gap had sufficiently widened that she could afford to take her time with the final kill. Without pausing to let her opponent get close enough for a stomp, she triggered Saeko's gravity cannon. The tumbling little toy of red scrap hurtled through the air like a grape, landing firmly in Saeko's fist. Even through the digital glove, Georgia could feel Yvonne squirming between her fingers. It took a great deal of self-control not to just squeeze the life out of her there and then.

Parting Saeko's lips with an impulse of thought, Georgia casually flicked the struggling little warrior onto her tongue. Ruby-Streak may have been a top-tier, elite fighter in the context of Titan Legion's story, but here she was little more than lunch. Chewing fiercely, Saeko set about grinding Ruby-Streak into a fine red mash before gulping down what was left with a happy sigh of pre-programmed satisfaction.

"MATCH OVER!" the announcer blared, prompting Georgia to reach up and take hold of her headset as her body slid back to its original shape.

"Alright, that should pretty definitvely prove that this whole thing is a load of non-" Georgia froze midway through the sentence, looking around beside her for Yvonne. Her eyes widened as a wave of disbelief mingled with realization struck home at her. Squatting down on the ground and peering at the floor carefully, it didn't take her long for her to find her colleague. The squeaking, plump little thing was no bigger than one of Georgia's fingernails, staring up at the pink-haired colossus with an expression of total bewilderment. For a few long seconds, Georgia said nothing, content to drink in the sight of her puny little work-mate as the sweet little thing tried desperately to explain what she believed had occurred to cause the bug and how to fix it.

"Yvonne?" Georgia said loudly but firmly, causing the dinky dame to jump on the spot and abruptly stop talking. "Remember how you were so concerned about our gameplay footage being leaked that you removed all security cameras covering the testing bay?"

It took a few moments for comprehension to reach Yvonne's pin-sized brain, but when it did, a look of lingering fear crawled across her face. Georgia continued gleefully, a grin of pure malicious delight on her mouth.

"That was the best decision you ever made."

Yvonne barely had time to scream before her colleague's fingertips were pinching her on either side, lifting her into the air at a teasingly slow pace. Leaning back to a kneeling position, her legs planted firmly apart, Georgia tilted back her head and let her mouth hang wide open. Her arm stretched up as far as it could, dangling Yvonne upside down over the gaping maw beneath. The sound emanating from her tiny throat was like music to Georgia; a never-ending string of screaming, begging sounds that melted together into an incoherent squeal for mercy.

After leaving her hanging for ten straight seconds, Georgia's mouth closed and she chuckled with undisguised mirth at the turn of events.

"Oh you silly little thing," she purred, "I'm not going to let you get out of this that easily. You're so keen on hard work, right? Well... you're going to be working in 'human resources' from now on, in a sense." Tugging down the front of her shirt to reveal her cleavage, Georgia lowered her colleague briskly into the vast expance and dropped her square in the middle. "I know, they're not as big as yours, but really? You should count that as a blessing; less chance of being accidentally flattened like a mosquito."

Rising to her feet, Georgia purred her instructions to her puny prisoner.

"Here's how this is going to go down. You do what I say all day, every day... massage my breasts, rub my feet, kiss my ass - all of it. You work so hard that you actually shed some of that weight your lazy ass has packed on, and I'll allow you to keep living... If you bore me though, or you do a poor job, well... you know the office's policy on vermin."

Without another word, Georgia let her shirt slip back into place... and moments later, felt the trembling lips of her colleague pressed against her skin.

"Damn; this game is so much better than I realized."