With the Gala coming soon, the student council needed a way to raise some funds to decorate the gymnasium. The five members - Gonta, Tenko, Angie, Keebo, and Himiko - all gathered in Angie’s research lab to brainstorm some ideas…but they were all shot down pretty fast. Keebo wanted to host a karaoke contest, which was denied after hearing the robot sing. Gonta wanted to display his bug collection, but was denied by the girls in a majority vote. Angie wanted to have an art gallery, but after hearing what all she wanted to make, was declined due to how much all that would cost.
Running out of ideas, Tenko glanced over at Himiko, who seemed spaced out from the conversation, and that’s when she got a brilliant idea. “How about a magic show?!” The energetic aikido master spoke up. Everyone then turned their eyes to the magician in the room, then back to each other to discuss it some more. But it didn’t take long to come to an agreement, as all they would have to do is set up a stage and let Himiko work her magic.
Once they settled on the plan, the student council split up to work on their tasks. Angie got Kirumi to help set up the stage, Gonta was able to convince Kaito to help sell tickets around town, which left Tenko to work on a little trick of her own. Grabbing Keebo, she dragged him away to Miu’s lab, discussing her plan for the show with her. Loving the idea, Miu kept Keebo in her lab to make some adjustments to his robo body. With everything now squared away, all Tenko had to do now was wait for the show.
Three days later, and the big day had finally come. Thousands of people had shown up, as it was a luxury to bear witness to the skills of an Ultimate. Tenko stood at the door to the gym to collect the tickets, doing her best to contain her excitement for what was to come. As soon as the last person walked into the gym, Miu had finally shown up, with Keebo by her side. The inventor looked exhausted, like she had just pulled several all-nighters to get this prepared. As soon as Tenko got her hands on her robo-accomplice, Miu passed out right there in the hallway, her job was done.
Backstage, Himiko was shaking in her boots. Performing for a crowd this large was much different than just doing a show for fun for her fifteen other friends. The nervous magician peeked around the curtain as the commotion of the people echoed throughout the gym, enjoying the concessions of free punch and bowls of candy that Angie had prepared. Himiko calmed herself by using some deep breathing exercises Tenko had taught her. Now she was ready to perform for these people and put a big smile on their faces, unaware that someone else had a much different plan.
The lights in the gym grew dark as Himiko made her way center stage. Once in position, a spotlight shined down on her, illuminating her for the whole crowd to see. While the audience clapped upon her arrival, she used that downtime to steel herself some more, not wanting the last three days of practice to go to waste.
“Prepare to be amazed, fall to your knees. I, the great Himiko Yumeno, shall perform a trick you’ve never seen before!” Himiko announced to the crowd, holding her arms out and waving them around like any good performer would do. “What you all are about to see is a brand new trick, where I will make you - the audience - disappear!”
The whole crowd let out a shocked gasp, it was truly an honor to be the first ones to witness something new from the Ultimate Magician of all people. But in Himiko’s mind, she was more than nervous. It was Tenko who encouraged her to try this out. But when she asked her friend for information, all she was told was to ‘not worry about it.’ This didn’t help, as now was the time to worry about such a thing. But still, despite how clingy Tenko can be, she still trusted her friend that everything would go well. Angie pulled the curtain up, hiding Himiko from the crowd before she went backstage. The anxious magician just stood there, as she wasn’t given a cue on what to do next. Maybe a trapdoor would open up and cause everyone else to fall into a cushion below? It was the only explanation Himiko could think of.
Once the spotlight shut off, Tenko sprung up and stood at the doorway with Keebo. “Hit it now!” she whispered loudly at her robo-pal. Keebo nodded, pressing a button Miu had installed on his chest. When that activated, a weird, ray-like device popped out from his chest, firing into the crowd. For a moment, there was a murmur in the audience, trying to predict what will happen, but that sound quickly vanished after the blast. The smoke cleared from the ray gun and retracted back into his chest as Tenko turned on the lights. What was once a room stacked with people was now completely void of any form of life, save for one magician tucked away behind the curtain.
“Yes yes yes, Miu’s transporter ray worked!” Tenko cheered, jumping up and down. She wasn’t sure how it did, but from what the inventor explained, it would take people’s molecules and shuffle them around the room…but the restoration process would make them lose a lot of cells in the process, turning them a lot smaller. And the more people involved, the smaller they would get. Now this left thousands of people stranded at a nanoscopic scale around the gym, causing everyone to go into a panic that couldn’t be heard in the normal world.
The curtain finally lifted, revealing the room to Himiko, who was in complete disbelief as to what she was seeing. “...Nyeh?” was all she could say after what she could discern. The trick…somehow worked! The audience had disappeared just as planned! But with Tenko being the one who planned this trick, the magician didn’t have a clue as to how to bring them back. In the back of the room, she witnessed Tenko cheering to herself, as Keebo turned around to go back for Miu, carrying her back to the dorms. “Tenko, where did everyone go?” the distraught magician asked, hopping down off the stage.
Down on the floor, a group of the now shrunken audience members were startled as they looked around at their surroundings. Little clumps of dust and dirt that had been kicked up by them formerly now completely towered over them. To their right, a stray red hair lay forming a barricade preventing them from going in that direction. But those surroundings didn’t last very long. Before they could even come up with a plan, a colossal brown boot crashed down onto them, as if the very moon itself collided with the Earth. Their bodies were completely crushed and mangled, their bones shattered upon impact, leaving the group of several hundreds as nothing more than red blotches on the bottom of Himiko’s shoe. But to the magician, she didn’t even feel a thing, as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Noticing Himiko now, Tenko stopped her momentary celebration and continued on with what she set out to do…see her crush be large and in charge. Tenko quickly rushed over to the candy bowl and pulled out a few M&Ms. At the size those people were stuck at, she had no way of telling if there were any on the ones she had chosen. But as luck had, quite a few hundred did end up inside that bowl. The ones unlucky to not be in those pieces, however, were met with a swift death as Tenko’s fingers plowed right through them as she reached into the bowl. Just the tip of her finger was several dozen tons of force being applied to their minuscule bodies, cracking their bones and skin right off in less than a second, leaving those that unlucky to be unsuspecting blots lost in the ridges of Tenko’s fingers.
With the candy in hand, the aikido master ran over to her best friend and placed her free hand on Himiko’s shoulder. “Good job Himiko! I’ll bring them back soon, so for now, have a snack!” Tenko encouraged her friend, offering the candy.
“Well, at least I get some downtime…thanks Tenko.” Himiko muttered monotonously, taking Tenko up on the offer and scooping that candy into her mouth. Doing no work was definitely a lot better for her than an unprepared trick. Tenko retracted her hand away, watching with a blush on her face as her friend munched down on those little pieces of chocolate. Those poor people were so small, she could only imagine what living hell they could possibly be going through.
As for said people, it was truly an absolute nightmare. Their bodies were practically molded into the pieces of chocolate, making them unable to escape. The first thing they had all encountered was the monster that was the magician’s tongue. Immediately upon contact, their bodies were coated in sticky saliva, adhering them even more to the candy. It was getting hard to breathe in there too, as the air was replaced by Himiko’s damp breath, weighing down the atmosphere significantly. The nanoscopic people were already in pain, but the worst was yet to come. Himiko rolled the chocolate with her tongue to the right and bit down, her teeth breaking apart the candy in an instant, along with those inside. Their bodies instantly turned to mush from the earth-shattering force that was a simple bite. The screams they let out upon impact were glass breaking, piercing volumes one could only imagine. Yet nobody could hear them, trapped in the dungeon that was a mouth. Their guts and skin mushed together elastically, causing their remains to stick to the tops and bottoms of her teeth, stretching in and out like they were little specks of gum. Some of their limbs would wind up stuck in between her teeth, while other body parts would cling to the side of her gums or attached to her cheek. It was a complete bloodbath, yet just a single piece of chocolate was more than enough to hide the massive amount of bloodstains left behind, leaving Himiko none the wiser.
Tenko was internally screaming inside, doing her best to hide her enthusiasm. There’s no way Himiko would agree to do something like this on purpose, so she kept it a secret. A little squeal escaped her lips, almost blowing her cover, but quickly caught herself and interrupted her own amusement to add some more. “Oh I bet you need something to wash that down! Let me get you something real quick.” With that statement, Tenko rushed over to the punch bowl and filled up a glass. Again, she relied on luck and hoped there were some of the people ending up inside the glass too. But with no Ultimate Lucky Students to steal that luck away, once again there were hundreds of nanos in the glass, swimming hard and doing their best to keep themselves afloat. But for them, all hope was immediately lost as the only exit for them was several thousand feet up, and the sides of the glass were much too slick to try and climb out.
Tenko returned shortly after, handing her friend the glass. The chocolate was rather sticky. Licking her lips, unknowingly causing a few mangled corpses stuck to her tongue to wind up on her lips, she held the glass up and took a big gulp, feeling a bit parched from the stage fright before this happened. High-pitched shrieks rang out across the doomed people as they swiftly took the water park ride from glass into mouth. They all saw a brief glimpse of the massacre that took place prior before getting washed down into the throat, with a long drop down into the stomach. For them, it was a ride that seemed like an eternity as they plummeted into darkness, only to be met with a horrifying end as they splashed down into a pool of stomach acid below. The screams rang out even louder as their skin and bones rapidly dissolved into the acid. Their bodies were inflamed from the high intensity of the heat, their blood boiling until they essentially imploded upon themselves, unable to take the pressure. Very few of them had survived, landing on chunks of chocolate yet to dissolve. Yet they couldn’t move as their limbs were broken from the high velocity fall earlier. All they could do now was weakly moan and accept their fate to become a single calorie added to Himiko’s collection.
Tenko held her fists up in joy as Himiko guzzled down that punch, not doing a good job at hiding her emotions anymore. When Himiko lowered her glass, her eyes met Tenko’s, with her own face turning into one of disgust. “Stop that…you look weird.” Himiko stated, although she looked pretty weird too with a red punch mustache formed between her nose and lips. All Tenko could do was giggle as she leaned in, licking up that punch residue of Himiko’s face, with a bunch of nanoscopic corpses entering the aikido master’s mouth now, soon to be digested quickly afterwards.
“Hmm…I thought the audience would be back by now…” Tenko exclaimed. “Ooh you know what we should do? Let’s go hide somewhere so they’ll think you did a vanishing act too!” She made up an excuse on the spot, pulling Himiko by the arm, causing her to drop her drink, ending the lives of those still left on the floor beneath the two of them as the weight of the liquid was just too much for their bodies to handle. With that, the two of them raced out of the gym, heading back to Tenko’s lab for now. With how much had happened, the tired magician was feeling a bit sleepy, laying down in her friend’s lap for a long snooze.
“N-nyeh…”
—---------------------------------------
Shuichi had to step back for a moment, as now things were getting incredibly suspicious. “Why did it have our friends in this one too? And it was another story about…shrinking and getting crushed. This doesn’t make any sense!” There was a hint of anger in his voice as he spoke up, not sure what to make of any of this. But once again, it was up to Kaede to calm him down, with another quick slap to the back.
“Calm down, Shuichi. It’s just a story! A work of fiction.” Kaede states cheerfully, trying her best to remedy the situation. Once Shuichi recovers, he returns to his seat, but still pondering the contents of the story.
“It may be…but it referenced the gala we have coming up. That shouldn’t be possible…” the detective mumbled, trying to wrap his head around things. But once again, Kaede interrupted his train of thought.
“That is pretty weird…but it’s also pretty weird both stories have involved shrinking in some way. Maybe it’s telling us to come up with a costume like that!” she smiled happily, trying to make things more positive.
“Well I’m not going dressed as…dust or whatever.” Shuichi retorted. Kaede giggled, looking down at the book to see how far inside the two of them had gone.
“Looks like there’s still a bit more left. Maybe that will clear things up.” Kaede responded. Shuichi had to pause, not really sure if he did want to continue…but he figured he can’t let this mystery go unsolved. With no other options, he turned the page, revealing the next chapter that he had hoped would be better than the last two.