Working as a young defence lawyer was not usually an easy experience. Apollo was in the fourth year of his career, and had seen considerably more than what he considered his fair share of rough trials and troublesome investigations. His chosen career path had actively endangered his life more than once, directly and indirectly. He was used to all this.

The experience he was caught up in right at this moment, however, while similarly strenuous for him, was something new, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to tolerate as time went on.

Earlier, for a few wonderful moments, he had called his current furnishings within the confines of Athena’s shoulder bag “safe”. Even “comfortable”. Now, on the other hand, he had a very different opinion. Thanks to Athena’s active and energetic running pace, the entire bag was swaying wildly on her shoulder, thumping against her hip again and again as she made her way back to the Wright Anything Agency from the precinct, and this motion had quickly proved to be nearly unbearable for her unnoticed passenger.

Awkwardly lurching back and forth, struggling to stay away from the dangerously heavy contents of the bag, and becoming dizzier with every minute that passed, Apollo was deeply regretting the decision to stow away with Athena’s belongings at all.

Every time she slowed down or stopped, Apollo would desperately hope to himself that the trip was over, but it never seemed to be. His dizzying ride just dragged on and on, seeming endless. He could hear the rumble of the city’s population and traffic all the while, making it even harder to get anywhere near a state of relaxation.

After what felt very much like an entire day spent being jostled around in the bag’s dark interior, Apollo finally felt Athena come to a complete stop, and heard the sound of a door being opened, all other sounds falling away shortly thereafter.

Athena sometimes dragged him along when she went out for a run in the city, and Apollo had never liked that experience to begin with, but he had now learned that going along with her as a shrunken passenger in the depths of her shoulder bag was no better at all.

By the sound of it, his torment was finally over, at least. Letting out a long groan, he flopped face-first against some unidentified soft surface, hoping he might finally be able to rest for a short while.

To his continued dismay, he realized a moment late that he’d forgotten about the stairs. As soon as Athena hopped the first step, Apollo found himself rolling helplessly along, tumbling deeper into the bag.

Athena ascended the flight of stairs that led up to the Wright Anything Agency’s main interior, leaving Apollo somewhere near the bottom of her bag when her movement slowed again.

“Oh! Athena!” Trucy Wright called out, a wide grin appearing on her face.

“Hey!” Athena called back, smiling for herself. She looked around, and her face fell slightly. “Uh… no sign of Apollo?”

“What? Isn’t he with you?” Trucy asked, sounding puzzled. Athena shook her head.

“I got to the precinct, and Ema said he’d stopped in with her, but then he left while she was busy with something.” she replied, moving into the main room of the office. She was getting a bit concerned.

“… That sounds kinda weird.” Trucy remarked. “Polly usually makes sure to explain why he’s going somewhere, if he needs to leave.”

“Yeah…”

Stopping in the middle of the room, Athena rested one hand on her hip, the other digging into her bag to retrieve her water bottle again. She took a lengthy sip, thinking this over. She didn’t really have any idea of what her co-worker might have been up to, if he had suddenly dropped off the radar. She spotted her phone resting on the edge of one of the couches, and picked it up.

“Guess I’ll just text him…” she said, switching the screen on. She momentarily hoped that she might see a message from Apollo, but none appeared. She typed out a brief message to him, simply asking for a reply whenever he had the chance, and tucked her phone into her pocket.

Standing indoors like this, she suddenly felt very warm, and uncomfortably sweaty. She’d been running for somewhere close to an hour since leaving the Agency to see Ema down at the precinct.

“Hey, do you mind if I take a break upstairs and have a shower?” she asked Trucy.

Trucy shrugged, smiling. “Sounds OK to me! I’ll just tell Daddy what you’re up to if he asks.”

“Great, thanks!” Athena replied. She didn’t normally make requests like this, but today felt like an unusual circumstance. She watched as Trucy briefly stepped out of the room, hearing a rattling noise a few seconds later. Trucy returned, and to Athena’s surprise, she was carrying a familiar set of clothes. Athena kept a spare set of clothes in a small locker here at the Agency, identical to her usual work attire. She would most likely have gone to grab it for herself, but now she was just confused about how Trucy had retrieved it instead. She had picked out a pretty nice lock for that locker. Was it really so easy for Trucy to break in…?

She sighed quietly, moving forward to take the outfit from Trucy.

“Thanks.” she said again, deciding to shelve her questions for now. “I’ll be back down in a little while.”

Back inside the bag, still hanging from Athena’s shoulder, Apollo was crawling his way back up to the top of the jumbled pile of loose items stored with him. Athena didn’t seem to be moving much right now, so he finally had a brief time to enjoy an environment that wasn’t plagued by constant shaking. He could hear Athena’s voice, as well as Trucy’s, coming from outside the bag’s fabric walls.

Unfortunately, due to his inability to piece together exactly what the girls were saying, he was once more caught off-guard when Athena began to climb up another set of stairs. Was she going up into the Wrights’ apartment now…? Why?

He at least managed to maintain a grip this time, avoiding another fall back into the dark depths of the bag. Athena’s movements settled again. Several seconds passed, during which Apollo simply wondered what his redheaded carrier was doing.

Athena entered the bathroom in the third-floor apartment that belonged to Trucy and her father, switching on the lights and sighing to herself. Their shower wasn’t incredible, but it looked nicer than the one back in her own apartment, at any rate. She glanced past the curtain. Body wash, soap, shampoo -- she was all set, and reached down to start the shower. Approaching the mirror as the water began to heat up, she slipped her boots off, setting them at the door and closing it. She took her bag off her shoulder, dropping it solidly onto the countertop. Her other hand held the spare outfit from her locker, which she set on the counter as well. It was time to finally ditch these sweaty clothes and get herself cleaned up.

Reaching up to her shoulders again, she slipped out of the yellow suit jacket she wore, folding it on the counter next to its replacement. Next came her white top, blue tie, and yellow skirt, the single glove she used to interact with Widget’s holographic display, her violet leggings…

Once she’d folded everything up and set it all in a pile on the counter, she was left in only her underwear, her enormous quantity of hair still tied up with its blue ribbon as well.

One last catastrophe had struck Apollo not long after Athena got off the staircase. She’d apparently removed her bag, dropping it carelessly onto a solid surface, and the impact had caused an avalanche of her various belongings, subjecting her shrunken friend to another few terrifying moments, scared that he might be crushed in the collapse.

Fortunately, he instead found himself lying on the cloth surface of the bag itself, free of everything else stored within. He groaned, just lying there for a half a minute or so. He thought he deserved a short break, after everything he had just been through. He would attempt an excursion out of the bag after he had a moment to rest.

…

(OK, time’s up.)

He groaned, his whole body feeling a bit sore. Pushing off the floor, he stood up. After a moment spent testing his limbs and finding nothing broken, he started forward. He just needed to poke his head outside and see what was going on. Planning his next move could come right afterward.

The bag was technically still closed, but he was easily small enough to walk out of it anyways. He saw a plain-coloured floor beyond, the light a bit difficult to adjust to after so long in the darkness of the bag.

He stepped outside.

“Whoa…”

Blinking in the harsh light, he saw something huge being set down on the same surface he was standing on, a massive hand retreating after leaving the object in place.

“I-is that…”

The size was disorienting, as usual, but the object looked a bit like someone’s…

He turned his head to the left, and he once again froze up completely, his mouth falling wide open.

He was looking at Athena, directly in front of her. He was on some kind of raised surface, like a table or counter, but this wasn’t the cause for his sudden stop. He stared in frozen disbelief, taking in the unbelievable sight of Athena before him.

She was totally nude.

He almost didn’t believe that what he was seeing was real. He blinked a few times, his mouth still open wide. His position left him roughly level with Athena’s stomach, her toned abs taking up all the immediate space before him. Her skin was practically shining with a visible layer of sweat, clearly indicative of all the running she’d been doing to get here. Above her incredible abs, his view was filled by the awe-inspiring sight of her bare chest, her breasts completely exposed to him.

Athena was a strikingly well-endowed young woman. Apollo hadn’t exactly failed to notice that in the few years he had known her. At a normal scale, her breasts were quite obviously above average in size, and right now, they looked absolutely staggering, standing out from her bare chest like entire feminine mountains, taking up more space than he could believe. Hanging heavily from Athena’s chest, her breasts looked to be three-… no, four times the entire height of the Wright Anything Agency. By his diminished scale, they were over a hundred feet high, no doubt. Even just the cute nubs of her nipples looked big enough to crush him, each of them comparable in size to an entire van.

Apollo stepped back in surprise as Athena moved. Somewhere in all this awestruck staring, he’d realized that he and Athena must have been inside the bathroom of the Wrights’ apartment. Athena was looking into the mirror, totally unaware that she had an onlooker. She lifted her hands up to the side and back of her head, the motion finally drawing Apollo’s gaze away from her breasts, fixing instead on the prominent muscle mass of her bare arms. She was fiddling with the blue ribbon that held her hair in its massive ponytail. It came loose, Athena’s red hair tumbling into a vast curtain behind her back. Athena tossed the ribbon onto a pile of clothing on the counter. The object she’d been setting down right as Apollo crawled free of her shoulder bag had been her bra, he finally realized, watching as the ribbon draped across the undergarment.

One of her massive hands approached, reaching past him to retrieve the water bottle from her bag again. Finally, Apollo shook himself out of his stunned reverie, ducking to avoid Athena’s hand. He felt a deep sense of shame welling up inside him as he glanced down, realizing that his right hand had been unconsciously moving closer to his crotch, and was now mere inches from closing over the extremely prominent tent that had developed in the front of his suit pants.

(Yeah, scratch what you said earlier. If Athena knew you what you were doing right now, you’d be in a full body cast for the rest of your life.)

Athena took a sip from her water bottle, leaving Apollo to once more begin staring at her breasts for a moment, his shame not quite enough to override his arousal. Once she set the bottle down, she turned around.

Apollo made an uncomfortable noise. While it was partly obscured behind the unbelievably long curtains of red hair that hung down Athena’s back, he could see her ass now, just as toned and attractive as the rest of her exposed body had been.

Only once Athena had stepped into the shower, disappearing behind the curtain, did Apollo at last properly wake up again. His face was burning a deep red, and he could barely process so much as a thought that wasn’t occupied primarily by the unbelievable sights he had just been graced with.

He stood there for the better part of a minute, then turned around, looking at the large sink set into the counter he was standing on. Still filled with an intense degree of arousal, he’d suddenly had a deeply questionable thought; would anyone really be likely to notice if he… relieved the tension he was feeling over in the sink…? He was incredibly small, so he doubted it.

He bit his lip, glancing back at the shower. He couldn’t see Athena any more, save for a vague silhouette against the curtain, steam gently rising up to the ceiling above her position. A few seconds passed.

Still feeling a considerable amount of strain being placed on the front of his suit pants, he began to move toward the sink.

…

It was difficult to feel anything besides shame for what he’d just done. Apollo did what he could to clean his hands using a few stray droplets of water on the porcelain of the sink, zipping his suit pants back up. He would definitely need some clean underwear once he was done with all of this.

Athena was still in the shower, softly humming to herself over the sound of the pounding water. Apollo sighed.

(It’s gonna be pretty hard to ever look Athena in the eye again…)

He needed to get back to solving his problems. Sticking around on this countertop wasn’t really a good plan going forward, so he needed a way of getting Athena’s help.

He took a look back at her bag, which was still resting on the counter a short distance away, as well as the piles of clothing she’d set down before hopping into the shower.

He briefly entertained the idea of finding some safe place in Athena’s fresh set of clothes to hole up and wait, but discarded the thought quite promptly. A plan like that could go wrong in about a thousand different ways. He could end up being crushed by mistake, dropped to the floor, or get himself stuck somewhere in the depths of Athena’s outfit, trapped while she carried on with her day, and even if he was still alive after an entire day spent as an accessory stuck to Athena’s clothes, there was no guarantee he would even succeed in drawing her attention at all.

Another idea occurred to him. He remembered some of the loose objects he’d moved past to get out of Athena’s shoulder bag right after she’d set it down. There had been a hairbrush right next to the bag’s exit.

Athena had a pretty ridiculous amount of hair. No doubt she would want to spend some time drying and brushing it once she finished with her shower. If he caught a ride on the hairbrush…

(This plan is sounding dumber by the second…)

Still, it was something. Standing here on the counter and waving his arms wasn’t going to get the job done.

He set off, jogging back to Athena’s bag. He quickly located the hairbrush, which was lying on its side, easily accessible.

“Perfect.”

He had a plan, so now he just needed to wait a bit more.

It wasn’t too long before Athena finished her shower. Apollo was sitting just inside the shoulder bag, almost nodding off. He shook awake, looking up as he heard the shower switch off, the water slowing to a drip.

A rattling noise sounded, the shower curtain being dragged away, and Athena emerged.

Apollo felt his stomach turn over, once more taking in the sight of his redheaded friend totally nude. The view was actually even better now that Athena was a few wide steps away. Apollo tried to stop himself, but before he knew it, he was staring at the features of Athena’s body that he couldn’t see earlier.

Her thighs were just as toned and muscular as the rest of her, loose droplets of water sliding down her bare legs and out of view. Apollo’s throat was feeling very dry as he watched her movements. Between her legs, he saw the slightest hint of her vagina, though his position on a raised surface above that point made it difficult to spot. Just above that area, he could much more clearly see a neatly trimmed patch of red hair, its colour matching perfectly with the voluminous curtains of hair draped all the way down Athena’s back and over her shoulders.

For a moment, he almost wished that Athena was in more of a habit of coming to work with her hair down.

“Ngh…” he grumbled, giving his head a shake. This was about the worst time to get himself distracted, and especially aroused again.

Pushing against the fabric beneath him, he shuffled backward into the bag, moving closer to Athena’s hairbrush.

The wait was a bit longer than he’d expected, but then again, given the incredible length of Athena’s hair, drying it was probably quite a task. He could see her pausing to take a sip from her water bottle periodically. It was almost empty now.

By the time Athena finally reached toward his position, he had settled into lying on his back, immediately next to the enormous hairbrush. Loose strands of red hair could be seen stuck to the brush here and there.

He scrambled upright, hastily clambering onto the brush. Athena’s gigantic hand approached, closing over it. Apollo made a nervous sound, clutching at one of the brush’s bristles. Even its thin frame was almost as wide as his entire body at this size.

He hugged at the bristle, already regretting choosing a plan this dangerous. Athena lifted the brush from the bag, and Apollo found himself airborne, rising up into the sky with Athena’s movement. His hands were shaking. Fortunately, Athena happened to keep the brush oriented in such a way that he stayed mostly upright.

“A-Athena!!” he yelled once he was level with her face. Her hair was still hanging heavily all around her face, framing her in a massive curtain of red locks. Her features were incredible to take in at this size, stretched in every direction to a size that made her look like a living cliffside. Shaking like mad, he raised one arm to wave for attention. “ATHENA!!”

She had extremely sensitive ears, so even with his utterly puny size, she ought to hear him, right? He took a deep breath, ready to scream even more loudly.

Instead, he let out his breath in a startled yelp. Athena had abruptly twisted the brush around in her grip, and now Apollo was suddenly upside down. His eyes widened, and with a horrible lurch in his stomach, he felt his grip on the brush slip loose.

“N-no-…!!”

He was falling. He screamed, his voice echoing in his ears. He could only stare back up at the retreating hairbrush, picking up speed as he dropped out of the sky.

Another surprise struck a moment later. He felt something soft against his back, and the whole world disappeared into a flurry of red. A cool sensation on his back, he slipped downward until he came to a stop, finding himself entangled in a vast jungle.

He’d fallen right onto Athena’s head, simply disappearing into the endless depths of her red hair.

A breathless laugh escaped him. He had been expecting this fall to be the one that killed him, and yet he’d lucked out once again, making a soft landing without so much as a scratch.

His heart was still hammering in his chest. This might not have been the worst possible outcome for this situation, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

… Actually, he seemed to be very deep in the woods. Athena’s hair was unbelievable; all around him, a dense tangle of nothing but red filled his view, stretching as far as he could see. It was impossible to tell just where on Athena’s head he had ended up. Hopefully it was close enough to one of her ears; he didn’t like the idea of starving to death, lost in a jungle.

Testing his movements, he started to crawl forward. He could only guess at an appropriate direction and get moving.

A shadow passed overhead, and Apollo froze, watching Athena’s hairbrush pass over him. She was hard at work by now, taming her vast quantity of hair. Apollo couldn’t help but feel like a louse, crawling around on his friend’s head without her knowledge.

He pushed through lock after lock of the dense tangle, starting to worry that he might end up going in circles. Maybe it would be good to rest here. He didn’t seem to be in much danger, and Athena was going to need a fair while to finish brushing.

He bedded down. Aside from the nearly overwhelming scent of shampoo, this was a pretty comfortable place to camp for a while. Athena could be heard distantly, still humming softly to herself as she worked through her incredible locks. She was probably going to tie up her usual ponytail once she was done, so that would be a good time to get moving again.

Apollo waited, glad for a chance to rest his sore body. He’d been through quite a lot since accidentally ending up shrunken down.

He nearly fell asleep once or twice, hastily shaking himself back to reality. Catching a nap was appealing, but it would be way too dangerous.

After a considerable amount of time spent relaxing here, he decided to get moving again. Resuming his crawl through the vast depths of his unwitting host’s hair, he was still running through what his actual plan was for getting out of this. He’d mostly been improvising, and while it had kept him alive thus far, he hadn’t really even come close to actually fixing this situation yet.

“Wh-whoa…”

He’d moved onto a slope. Was this Athena’s forehead…?

He got an idea. Carefully moving along, he lowered himself down to get into the vicinity of his friend’s bangs. This was definitely the closest he was going to get to her eyes, so maybe he could get into view after all.

He emerged from the tangle, seeing the bathroom again for the first time in quite a while. Athena looked strangely normal in the bathroom mirror. She’d put on most of her clothes already, and was just smiling serenely at her reflection, eyes tracing over her hair as she brushed away. Apollo couldn’t quite make out his own exact position, but he guessed himself to be just above Athena’s bangs now.

She was almost finished with the hairbrush. Apollo waited in place, thinking this over again. Would it be best to make his move right now? He could get pretty close to Athena’s eyes from here.

She moved, reaching over to her water bottle again. There was only a small amount still left, half of it vanishing as Athena took another sip from the bottle. Apollo swayed in his perch, tightening his grip to avoid being dropped.

He was quite damp from moving through this jungle right after Athena had showered. He wanted a drink for himself, but as he briefly imagined the idea of trying to draw water from Athena’s damp hair, he was glad not to be quite that desperate just yet.

He decided instead to retreat a bit, watching Athena inspect her hair. She set down the brush and retrieved the blue ribbon she liked to wear. Apollo backed off, vanishing back into the depths of her hair while she tied up her favourite enormous ponytail. She was going to be moving again.

Athena folded up her sweaty clothes in a bundle and stuffed them into her bag. She could get everything washed up at home. Snapping Widget into place, she finished tidying up and turned to leave the bathroom. Getting cleaned up felt fantastic after all the running she’d done today.

She still wondered what Apollo was up to as she left the bathroom.

“Hey, any word from Apollo…?” she asked, spotting Trucy. Seated on the couch, Trucy shook her head sadly.

“This isn’t normal for him.” she said, frowning. “Polly can be a bit weird, but he doesn’t just run off without telling anyone. Daddy’s out for a bit, but I told him to let me know if he hears anything.”

“Good.” Athena replied. “Keep me posted, too.”

“I will.” Trucy said, nodding.

Athena left the room, heading back down the stairs to the office. She had really been hoping to look over all the documents Ema had given her with Apollo as soon as possible, but if he was going to keep up this vanishing act, that part of her work day would just have to wait.