A familiar ringing blotting out all other sound. Blurred, undefined shapes fading in and out of view. Heavy, almost immovable limbs.

“Unh-... ughh-...”

Athena coughed, her senses completely scrambled. She couldn’t even think straight, much less get up and move anywhere.

One of her hands came into view, her comfortable, custom-made glove standing out against everything else she could see. So, that was her right hand. At least she could piece that much together.

The horrible ringing noise in her ears was finally starting to fade. She blinked, uttering another groan. She was lying on her front, feeling very much like she’d just been hit by a particularly large truck. She might have been an exceedingly fit young woman, but not even her body was built for the kinds of abuse it felt like she’d been through this evening.

At last, her mind started to clear up. She remembered being up on the gigantic desk with Apollo, Aura’s colossal upper body looming over them, and then...

(... We fell. Aura knocked us down.)

So, this had to be the floor. It was a place Athena had been hoping to avoid, but there wasn’t really any way to argue it now.

She suddenly gasped, the tiny sound barely even audible.

“A-Apollo...!”

Her strained voice matched how sore she felt all over. She forced herself to roll over onto her back, sitting up. Where was Apollo? He’d been falling with her...

There. She spotted him, not too far away.

... He wasn’t moving.

“Apollo...!”

She shakily tried to stand up, but both her knees buckled immediately and she toppled onto the ground again, coming down hard. It hurt, just like the last landing. After a moment to recover from the shock of hitting the ground again, she cursed quietly. She couldn’t just lie on the ground here while Apollo could potentially be even more hurt. It didn’t even feel like she’d broken any bones, and yet just getting herself off the ground was proving to be an incredible challenge.

-THUD-

A startled breath escaped her lips. That had been a pretty loud noise, and the ground had shuddered under her for a second.

(Don’t tell me...!)

If Aura was moving again, this situation was at risk of getting much worse. Athena groaned in frustration, once more forcing herself upward with both hands. She braced one knee on the ground, panting. Her red hair was hanging partly over her face, and she used one shaky hand to brush it aside, trying to get a look in Apollo’s direction again. She nearly flopped right back to the ground in the moment her hand took to complete the motion, but she narrowly managed to keep herself stable.

As she’d feared, Apollo still wasn’t moving. Athena coughed again, trying to call out to him.

“Apollo!”

No response. Was he unconscious? Or...

No, she couldn’t let herself think like that. It was entirely her mistake that had put them into this situation in the first place, so the task of getting her friend back out of it was on her shoulders.

-THUD-

Her muscled arms shuddered at the floor’s rumbling. Aura was definitely moving. Athena took a deep breath, and with a strained effort, managed to get to her feet. She was still sore all over, but with the height she’d fallen from, she wouldn’t have expected to survive in the first place. Pain was something she could handle.

Now, she needed to make her way over to Apollo and check on him.

Something gigantic suddenly swung into her view on her right side, and she staggered, looking up in alarm.

Aura’s foot had come down a fair distance away. Still wearing her usual pink tights, the roboticist’s leg stood high over Athena’s position like some alien tree, unbelievable in its size and height. Almost in a trance, awed by what she was seeing, Athena just watched as Aura’s movement continued. Her other leg, just as astounding to see as its twin, was in motion for itself now.

What happened next was worse than anything she had experienced since this entire shrinking incident began.

In a two-second window that seemed to drag on for hours, Athena watched Aura’s left foot hurtling into view, rushing straight toward the floor, precisely where Apollo was still lying, unmoving. For the tiniest fraction of a second, Athena thought she heard a scream, and then...

-BOOM-

A horrible, burning feeling tore at her chest, followed by a chill she couldn’t describe. She had just watched Aura’s foot come right down on top of Apollo, her friend disappearing beneath it instantly.

The world seemed to stop. Athena’s mouth hung open, her blue eyes wide in stunned horror. Without even a split-second of resistance, Apollo had just been crushed beneath Aura’s sole, gone in no more than an instant.

Her vision began to blur again, her senses seeming to fade. That couldn’t have just happened. Her mind was screaming protests at the very thought. She couldn’t have just seen one of her closest friends losing his life in a second like that, obliviously crushed out of existence under Aura’s foot.

She realized she had fallen to the ground again, only just catching herself on her hands and knees. Widget was loosely hanging from her neck, his display dull and black.

Her stupid, careless mistake back in the robotics lab had just gotten Apollo killed, and there was nothing she could do about it. She wanted to scream, the burning feeling from moments ago tearing at her chest from within again, until...

Someone else screamed.

Athena jerked in place, her head swinging upward. Everything swam back into view. She could see Aura’s colossal legs again, one off to her right and the other directly ahead. The scream she’d just heard had come from the vicinity of Aura’s left leg, which was in motion again, her foot swinging forward at an incredible speed.

She wasn’t sure of how she managed it through the burning tears in her eyes, but she spotted something on the underside of Aura’s foot, positioned directly between the two largest of her massive toes.

Apollo.

The last minute had not been a pleasant experience for Apollo.

Making a crash-landing that nearly knocked him unconscious had only been the start. He had needed several seconds to recover from the shock of the landing, and even once he had, he felt too sore to even attempt to move. Lying there on his side, he had screwed his eyes shut and tried to block out the pain he was feeling, concentrating his mind on anything else he could think of. His friends and all of his warm memories with them, his familiar workplace – anything that came to mind had been good enough.

And then Aura had gotten up from her chair. The terrifying, impossible sight of the halfway-drunk robotics engineer looming what looked like a mile into the air above him had nearly caused Apollo to pass out entirely. His position had only just allowed him the space to see that Aura was taking a step in his direction, and then her gigantic foot had come bearing down on him, the pink colour of her tights filling his vision entirely. He’d screamed, but only for a split-second before the world disappeared.

The fact that he definitely wasn’t dead had only become clear a moment later, when he felt his whole body being squeezed from all sides, and the ground falling away. Somehow, by some stroke of blind luck, he hadn’t been crushed instantly beneath Aura’s unforgiving sole, instead ending up wedged helplessly between two of her colossal toes, her tights holding him firmly in place.

A sickening feeling set in as gravity and Aura’s movements brought him crashing back down.

-WHAM-

And then he was off of the ground again, his whole body shuddering with a mix of heart-stopping terror and plain disorientation. The horrible motion repeated.

-WHAM-

All he could feel around him was uncomfortable warmth and the similarly unpleasant sensation of Aura’s tights squeezing in at him, her toes far bigger than he was and keeping him locked in their grip.

Aura shuffled across the room, grumbling to herself. She hadn’t needed the bathroom just a minute ago, and yet now, the moment she’d gotten comfortable at her desk, that had changed. Her drink once more left behind at the desk, she made her way into her bathroom, not bothering to hit the button on the wall that would close the doors. It wasn’t as if she needed the extra layer of privacy anyway, being alone in her quarters.

Arriving at the toilet, she made to drop her tights and the panties she was wearing beneath them.

The motion had finally stopped, putting an end to the crashing impacts Apollo had experienced with every step of Aura’s left foot.

He was being pressed into the solid floor now, barely able to see a thing around him. Aura’s huge toes, still covered by her pink tights, blocked out his view of nearly everything around him. He didn’t know where she had inadvertently taken him, but now that she had finally stopped moving, he hoped he might have some chance to escape this awful situation.

His heart was still thundering painfully in his chest. Twice in the space of a few minutes, Aura had nearly crushed him out of existence. There was no way his puny body could have hoped to hold out against anything as big as she was. First, her chest had nearly flattened him, and now her foot.

There was a stale odour filling his lungs. It wasn’t hard to identify. Aura had no doubt been working in her lab all day, her feet crammed into her usual heeled shoes, and so it was quite inevitable that she would have been sweating.

He tried to move, pushing against the floor and squirming in place. Aura’s toes didn’t budge.

“C-c’mon...!!”

He couldn’t just lie here under Aura’s toes, baking in the stale air and her body heat. Honestly, he was lucky to be alive, and if he didn’t get out of this position, there was a good chance he would see that luck run out.

The soreness didn’t matter. She could patch herself up or deal with the consequences later on. In either case, this was the wrong time to do anything other than sprint.

From the moment Athena had realized that Apollo was still alive, she’d been in motion. Running full-tilt across the vast floor of Aura’s quarters, she was headed for the bathroom door. She needed to get there. Aura had crossed the room in just a handful of gigantic steps, so Athena’s utterly puny size meant that she was far behind, but nothing was more important than catching up and making sure that Apollo was safe.

Every booming step she’d seen Aura take had the potential to be the one that ended her friend’s life. Athena had to force herself not to think about it as she ran, her toned legs practically moving on their own. Streaks were running down her face, the few tears she’d shed too unimportant to deal with right now.

(Apollo’s alive. Apollo’s fine. Just don’t stop for anything...)

She wasn’t sure of how long it had been. Aura had disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the doors open. That meant that she had an opening, so long as she arrived before the gargantuan roboticist was finished up in there.

It wasn’t much further. The tiny redhead was straining herself, her muscles aching and her breaths coming out heavily, but she was almost there. The bathroom doorway stood open like the walls of some vast canyon.

Aura rose from the toilet, hearing the familiar noise of the automated flush. Damn near everything in this space centre was automated by now.

Still totally unaware of the two guests she had with her in her quarters, she tugged her panties back up from around her knees and made to fit her tights back on as well. Maybe it was time to just take them off for the evening...

She moved to the side, heading for the sink next. Down at her feet, out of her view, a very, very small figure was suddenly flung from its place between two of her toes, hurtling the short distance from the toilet to directly in front of the sink and coming to a stop.

Switching the water on, she splashed a bit onto her face once she’d washed her hands. In the mirror, she could see that her face looked pretty weary from her long day, but that wasn’t really something she cared about right now. She was tired, half-drunk, and alone for the evening. Looking particularly gorgeous was a low priority.

(... Speaking of “alone"...)

A small smirk crept across her face. She’d just dried her hands, but one began to move downward, approaching her thighs. Her tights weren’t fully on, just hanging loosely around her hips. Her fingers slipped into the front of her partly-exposed panties, pushing past a thin patch of violet hair and stopping just above the particularly sensitive area below.

“Hmm~...”

Dazed, Apollo looked up at the sound. He’d been making progress in his effort to escape from beneath Aura’s huge toes, but then she’d started moving again, and before he knew what was happening, he’d been launched from his position and hurled a considerable distance, crashing painfully on his front and flipping over before sliding to a stop.

He was directly underneath Aura, and fortunately free of her toes at last. Above, her legs still towered over him like a pair of neighbouring skyscrapers draped in pink.

... What was she doing? He squinted for a moment.

“Urk-!!”

His mouth fell open, and his face lit up with a burning-red blush. From here, he could plainly see that Aura had tucked a hand partway into the front of her panties, the movements of her hand inside the undergarment plainly visible now.

(Sh-she’s touching herself...!?)

If he’d been lucky not to be crushed instantly under one of Aura’s feet, it was even more fortunate that the embarrassment he was suddenly feeling now didn’t finish him off.

He could see Aura’s upper body leaning onto the bathroom counter (this was her bathroom...?) and out of his view.

This was even more embarrassing to witness than his run-in with Athena in the Wrights’ upstairs bathroom the first time he’d shrunk, but somehow, he couldn’t make himself tear his eyes away from the mortifying sight. Transfixed, he continued to stare straight up in disbelief at what he was seeing.

To his relief, Aura’s hand seemed to retreat from her underwear after a few seconds. He could hear water running, high above him. She was probably washing up, then.

He noticed a shift in the pink fabric covering Aura’s colossal legs, and finally glanced aside just in time to see the tights she usually wore slipping loose and falling.

Falling right toward him. He flinched, trying to run, but there was no time to get clear. Aura’s tights fell onto him like a massive, collapsing canopy, and the world was cast into darkness again.

At least he could move this time...

This wasn’t really the time to get herself too worked up, even if the idea had appeal. Aura washed her hands again, making a mental note to further consider some... personal time once she’d finished up with the bit of reading she wanted to do this evening.

If she was still fairly close to sober in an hour or so, that might be a perfect way to unwind before bed.

Loosening her tights with one hand, she let them drop to the floor. The temperature in her quarters was such that she could go without them and just wear her tank top and panties for the rest of the evening.

She next moved one foot clear of her crumpled tights, and began to shift the other around for a moment, twisting the fabric around it. From there, she casually flicked the mess of fabric across the bathroom floor, toward the door. She could gather them up again once she was done at the sink.

“Whoa...!”

Athena was taking in several surprising sights at once. Aura was positioned in front of a mountainous counter (the tiny attorney was immensely relieved not to see her on the toilet), she’d apparently removed her tights, and following the latter, she was using one foot to fling them straight toward the door.

Halting cautiously in place, Athena watched the crumpled mass of pink fabric as it finished its short arc, sliding for a moment on the floor before stopping a short distance from her position.

Having only just reached the bathroom door following her mad dash across the room, Athena was still panting heavily, but she got moving again all the same. A distinct suspicion had just appeared in her mind.

Apollo had been stuck beneath Aura’s toes, wedged into the fabric of those tights. Was it possible that he’d gotten loose with them now...?

“Apollo! Apollo, are you here!?”

She groaned. Aura’s tights were huge, like everything else was at this scale. If she needed to start digging through them, it could take an hour to locate any sign of Apollo. Nevertheless, she began to circle around the crumpled hill of fabric.

“Apollo! ¡Contéstame por favor!”

She stole a glance up at Aura. Their host wasn’t done with washing her hands yet, by the look of it. There probably still wouldn’t be any time to start burrowing around in her tights to locate Apollo, though...

“APOLLO!!”

She’d been concentrating as hard as she could to listen for any response since arriving here in the bathroom, but nothing had yet reached even her highly-tuned ears besides the distant sound of water running.

Once more, she began to feel an awful suspicion that Aura might have unknowingly crushed poor Apollo underfoot, and she closed her eyes, forcing the idea down.

“APOLLO, WHERE ARE YOU...!?”

Her breath hitched in her throat when she heard what sounded like a cough. It was impossible to pinpoint the noise’s exact origin, but she rushed toward the mass of Aura’s crumpled tights all the same.

“Apollo...!?”

Grabbing onto the fabric, she found that she could only move it the tiniest possible bit. There wouldn’t be any way to pull it apart and locate her missing friend without a whole lot more time on her hands.

From the corner of her eye, she spotted something moving, and she dropped the fabric in her grip, wrenching around on the spot.

Relief crashed over her from within like an explosion of warmth. Just a short ways away, Apollo was pushing his way out from beneath the pink fabric, on the bathroom floor. She moved automatically, reaching him in just a few steps.

“Apollo!! Grazie Dio!!”

Another cough.

“A-Athena...?”

She dropped to the floor immediately, grabbing him by the arms and dragging him free.

“C’mon, up you get...!”

The moment Apollo was on his feet, she threw her arms around him in a crushing hug. She’d never been more relieved to see him in the few years since they’d met.

“A-Athena, how did you...?”

[Seriously lucky break!]

Widget’s muffled outburst made her laugh, and she tightened her grip around her friend’s shoulders. Apollo didn’t seem too badly hurt, so he could handle a Cykes Hug at full strength.

Tears were starting to sting at her eyes again.

“I... I saw Aura’s foot come down on you, a-and...”

Apollo made a noise combining a laugh and a groan.

“Trust me - it was worse from my point of view.”

“No arguments here.” she replied, finally pulling back a bit to get a proper look at Apollo’s battered face. “F-for a couple of seconds, I really thought I’d gotten you killed...!”

She was shaking at just the memory of those few horrible moments. To her relief, Apollo gave a tired grin.

“Well, apparently I’ve still got at least a little bit of luck stashed away somewhere.” he said. “Let’s just find a way off of this floor ASAP, alright?”

“You bet!” Athena wiped her few loose tears away and grinned right back. “Especially the bathroom floor... I don’t even want to think about how gross some of this place might be up close like this...”

Their conversation was interrupted by an abrupt end to the sound of the tap running. Aura was finishing up.

The pair looked upward together, stepping back a bit.

“Uh, OK... new plan...”

Once Aura had finished drying her hands, she spent a moment or two just seeming to examine herself in the mirror, and then she turned. Once more, the two shrunken lawyers were left to stare at the intimidating scale of her colossal figure in amazement.

To Athena’s surprise, Apollo moved forward, right back to the edge of Aura’s dropped tights.

“Athena, grab on with me! I’ve got... well, it’s a stupid idea, but it’s something!”

“Huh...?”