John struggled to comprehend the actions that Daisy had been doing to Joana for the past few minutes. Poking and prodding her as if she was just some defenceless bug that she’d just caught. She’d said multiple times that to her, the both of them weren’t people, they were guinea pigs and John quickly figured what they were being used for. He looked around the desk he was on while still trapped to see the papers scattered about. They had drawings on them on people shrinking, or growing. Either way, out of all the possible places or dorms they could’ve ended up in, it had to be the one friend that was not only interested in shrinking but it seemed like she was actively  searching for tiny people. Terrifying, convenient and also fascinating. Daisy was always seen as a super sweet girl to everyone and especially John. Now that they were labrats, the once soft Daisy was the most chilling girl he had the discontent of knowing at this size.

Daisy continued to poke Joana with sharp objects very gently as she tried her best not to puncture the near microscopic skin the tiny girl now had but just enough so that it would barely puncture, something Joana greatly appreciated. Even as Daisy poked and prodded her, the bones Joana had broken or fractured had fully healed, unfortunately even with the fact that she healed remarkably fast, it didn’t help that she could still feel pain. Daisy would accidentally puncture the skin, blood would spill out for the briefest of seconds before it sealed itself up with out as much as a scar. Joana couldn’t help but notice as Daisy was torturing her, she was also busy taking notes on whenever she would cut into her skin. It fascinated Daisy beyond belief and it terrified both tiny people.

“Daisy? What are you doing to her?” John yelled out to his overlord that so casually looked a John with a smile. “We’re still your friends, not lab rats!” John said as he watched Daisy moved all her tools and notepad to the where John was. He knew what Daisy was planning on doing. The exact same thing she did on Joana and judging by the screams he heard from Joana’s ‘room’, he was in for one hell of a time with the same girl who just a few hours ago, he would’ve considered a friend.

“Let’s see, I tested your strength with Joana here, she can heal rather fast. That will make for some interesting research tonight. You my dear John, I won’t poke or prod you like I did with Joana. I know I could poke or prod you with all these needles and sticks but I already have done that with Joana. No, I want to do a little experiment off the books. No records for this one.” Daisy plucked John out of his container, much to his fight because whatever Daisy was planning, it wouldn’t be good for John. “I may not know the how on how you got so small or the how you ended up in my dorm but I do know one thing for certain about you.” Daisy soon looked over to Joana’s container and just rolled her eyes to grab a small cloth to cover her. She then whispered into John’s ear or at least spoke a soft as she could to him. “I know you like the one thing that almost everyone on this campus universally thinks is weird.” John’s heart dropped by the news that Daisy knew his secret or at least one of them. She didn’t even have to finish the news for him to know what she was going to tell him.

“I know how you always looked down at the heels of professors, the sandals of students. But not all the students here, more specifically, the female students. Now, I never wanted to embarrass you in front of everyone but here we are.” Daisy then brought John lower and lower to the ground, John knew where she was planning on dropping him near. Her feet. “Just the thought of me knowing your deepest, darkest secret must make your heart race. Don’t worry, I know what will calm you down. While I’m continuing to work with Joana here, you my good little servant boy can do both of us a favor and give me a quick massage.” Daisy dropped John right in front of her toes that wiggled so excitedly. Not even five seconds after landing near her toes, John could smell the pungent order of Daisy's socks irradiating from the toes he secretly wanted a taste of. Now that he was this size with her, he was nothing more than a masseuse while Joana was her tiny lab rat. John knew he could never run or hide from Daisy due to her massive size, but he had to try something to get both him and Joana out of this room. He only saw one salvation from this nightmare. He had to get Gaby over here.

“Hey John, quit thinking. Don’t make me put you in Leslie’s running shoes.” Daisy said as she peeled off her socks to show John the full power of her feet. “Now I don’t want to kill you, if you can be killed but I’ll let you know I won’t hesitate to step on you. Now get to work.” Daisy commanded John as he watched the massive soles begin to rise up, letting him see the dirt and grime that’d accumulated underneath her sole over the day. Dirt, sock fuzz and everything in between were attached to her sole. John was beyond aroused by this show that Daisy was giving him, even if it was a sort of punishment. The pungent and seemingly toxic odor that would make a normal person run or gag but the scent Daisy’s feet were giving off made John almost forget he was trapped here against his will. He was here, forced to clean his friends feet so he took it. After all, the toxic fumes is what made him what to be small once more. No matter how much he wanted to escape, his body fought tooth and nail for him to stay which he reluctantly did. He opened his mouth and walked to the sole that was hovering above him. The sweat that dripped off landed all around his tiny frame, quickly sinking into the carpet. John then threw away the of escape. It was too good to be down here than to leave. His mind had become enthralled by the scent and flavor of Daisy’s feet. This left Joana at the complete mercy of her giant overlord with no help on its way.

“Now Joana, I can just keep cutting you until you pass out but it’s not exactly what I had in mind.” Daisy removed the razor sharp knife and tossed it aside. This let Joana catch her breath as she closed her eyes, taking in the fact that Daisy had given her the slightest of breaks. But unfortunately, the break she was given wasn’t long or worth the time she’d been given. She looked up to see Daisy holding a bright red needle that Daisy had heated up using her roommate, Leslie’s lighter who was just right outside the door. Daisy hadn’t even bothered to hear to the door open nor Joana’s screams as she tried her best to move out of the way as much as she could. It was a good thing, she was saved by another giant woman who she’d only seen once. Daisy felt a hand on her shoulder, so she dropped her hot needle on to her desk, leaving her small lab experiment a much better breather than the one Daisy given her moments prior. Unfortunately or fortunately on however was being asked, John didn’t have enough time to move out of the way as his ‘patient’ brought her foot down right on top of him. He screamed and was suddenly underneath the soles he’d been admiring for a while. In the time before he passed out, John began to wonder if this was heaven or hell on Earth.

“Daisy what are you doing?” Leslie said as Daisy stood vertically as she blocked the desk and in essence, Joana from being seen. “A breakthrough, you made one didn’t you?” Leslie soon took off her glasses and collapsed on top of her bed, kicking off her shoes as she looked over to see her roommate/lab partner had finally figured something to complete their projects. “Well, did you? What did you find?” Leslie said as sat up, wiggling her toes as they were still in her socks. Daisy saw this and instantly remembered of that small boy she had at her feet. Daisy just scraped her sole against the carpet, hoping that whatever caused Joana to heal carried with it the same properties that John had. It was a huge gamble but one she was willing to take.

“Well Leslie, I might’ve found a way or two to get our projects funded.” Daisy left John on the ground, recovering from his short time underneath Daisy’s soles. To her, if John had gotten crushed by Daisy being careless, she knew they still had the little girl known to her old world as Joana but to the pair, she would now be known as the first shrunken person in history.

Leslie’s face lit up with excitement as she stood up to jump and hug her lab partner, nearly crushing the tiny John. He managed to live only through the fact that Leslie had stepped mere centimeters from where he was standing. John was actually right between her giant big toe, letting John take in the smell that had accumulated over the hours Leslie had worn her running shoes. John looked vertically and saw the two giant women talking to one another just as John’s senses attempted to override his natural instincts to run or even try to get Leslie’s attention. John may not have known Leslie very well, only seeing her a few times before but even that was just a slight hello to one another. For all he knew, Leslie could be just as ambitious or even more than Daisy to torture them both. He just had to hope and pray to whatever merciful deity was listening to him to have Leslie have some resemblance of a soul unlike John’s now former friend. If he made it out with Joana alive, and not in some twisted lab experiment.

Even if the smell of Leslie’s feet were almost too much for the tiny John to handle, if Joana wasn’t being tortured high above him on Daisy’s desk, he would more than likely go straight to start licking Leslie’s feet. But with his friend trapped, he had to stop getting distracted with the constant. At least until he found his way to Marissa to get Joana back to normal size. Then it was free game to go or do whatever he wanted. As long as he found Gaby at the end of it all.

“What do you mean? What’d you find out in the lab today?” Leslie walked around Daisy, again almost crushing John as he backtracked his way to the desk, avoiding the two pairs of colossal feet at every turn as the two giantesses took seemingly small strides to them but the miniscule John, it was as if he was in a monster movie as he tried to outrun the monsters massive footsteps. He knew damn well that he would most certainly survive the impact of getting stepped as proven when he lived through a small step or two under Daisy’s foot. He was ready to go on and get out of this room with Joana.

“Well I didn’t actually find it in the lab, in fact it were in our room. I found the thing a few minutes ago, and it was just what we were looking for.” Daisy moved to let Leslie see Joana who she had no clue was a fellow student. Leslie’s mind filled with ideas. The longer she locked eyes with the tiny girl that was trapped in the glass bottle her lab partner had her in, Leslie smiled more and more. Leslie soon practically shoved Daisy out of the way in order to get a closer look to see if the tiny woman in the jar was real. Her eyesight wasn’t the best as she had to wear glasses. “Does this mean Monarch is going to be off the ground?” The goal of Monarch was to create a way to save the human race from themselves, which their idea was to shrink everyone and bring all of humanity to an artificial planet, where one drop of oil would last centuries, maybe even forever. It was called impractical by almost everyone as the two girls could never figure out how to shrink a normal object, let alone a human. But while Leslie was staring at Joana, Daisy chimed in, bringing in her notes that she’d taken while she was full on torturing the tiny girl.

“And these are all the notes I made while conducting my experiments on her. It appears that whatever made this girl small also made her able to reform her matter.” Daisy looked over to Leslie who at this point felt a small what she thought was a mere bug on her leg. Not thinking much of it at the time, Leslie used her other foot to simply brush the annoyance off her leg as she looked at the note her partner took.

“Can regenerate from minor cuts, still feels pain, if for a few seconds.” Leslie read aloud as she looked at Joana who was still shaking considerably as she watched now both of her captors stare at her, probably not even thinking she was a real human that just got caught in the mess that Marissa had caused. She knew she needed to get out of this alive, with or without her plan going to hell. She thought it was a perfect plan for her, granted she had to think of it on the fly. She couldn’t have known when or where John would be the next time he wanted to shrink? But she had to set aside the plan, momentary. “Daisy, this will change things for sure but how do we replicate the process? The whole point of Monarch is to shrink everyone and everything down to millimeters high. If we can’t replicate the process hundreds of millions of times, well I guess Professor Manchester was right.”

“Don’t let that old son of a bitch get into your head again. We have an actual shrunken person in front of us and you don’t have the nerve to finish it?” Daisy soon grabbed a small blade and even went as far as reaching into the air, hovering just above Joana. Leslie locked eyes with Daisy to stop the attempt of Joana’s life by grabbing Daisy’s forearm. She didn’t do it  because she cared about the life of the tiny woman. Far from it. She knew they would need a living subject and killing her would set them back months, maybe years. Neither of them really knew when the next time they would have a tiny person show up in their room, if one will ever do it again.

“No, but we have to be careful with this one. If this is our one chance to prove Manchester wrong then we take it. But we keep her alive. Just cause she can heal from some cuts you gave her doesn’t mean she can come back from the dead with a knife through her.” Leslie said as she once again felt the tiny and insignificant tickles on the bottom of her socked foot. Without much fanfare, she flicked her ankle backwards and suddenly the feeling was gone. Leslie sighed some sense of relief as had no idea that it was in fact the tiny John trying to get her attention rather than Daisy. She thought nothing of it at the time but they do say hindsight is twenty twenty.

Meanwhile, all of John’s efforts were erased all by a simple flick of Leslie’s ankle.