For most people at the academy, it was a time to kick back and relax, not having to worry about classes or progressing their talents or anything. Except for one student. Kaito Momota - the Ultimate Astronaut - had a serious mission coming up. A group of scientists wanted to know if living on the moon could be possible one day, and so they asked Kaito for his help to spend three days up on the moon as a test subject. Just being excited for the chance to go to space in the first place, Kaito eagerly accepted, not thinking of any of the possible consequences. He’ll just cross that bridge when he gets to them.

The actual mission was yet to come, so in the meantime all he could do was prepare for the big day. Up in his research lab at the very top of the academy, Kaito made his way up the long flight of stairs to begin today’s training routine. But being an astronaut isn’t a one-man job, so he needed an assistant to stay in the monitor room to make sure all the gauges and stabilizers were normal. There was only one person he could think of more than suited to take on such an important role.

“Kaito, I don’t know what any of this stuff means.” Maki stated bluntly, glaring at the many computer screens before her. As the Ultimate Child Caregiver, Maki knew little when it came to computers. She knew how to use one of course, but advanced technological space travel was out of her league.

“Hey don’t worry Maki Roll, I only need you to watch a few things for me.” Kaito chimed in, trying to relieve the stress of the situation. He pointed his finger to the controls. “If any of these gauges goes into the red zone, just press this button here and it’ll alert me so I can fix things.” He explained, showing a big red button right below a monitor that surveyed the cockpit area Kaito would be in. “But there’s nothing to worry about, it’s just a simulation.”

Maki, feeling more reassured now, took a seat in the command chair and placed the headphones on her head. “Let’s just get this over with so we can go back to our normal training.” Maki commented snidely. Kaito just laughed it off as he walked out the door and into the main room where the practice space shuttle was. Maki could see him through her screen sitting down at his chair, pressing a bunch of different buttons. She didn’t want to express this now, but she was proud of Kaito for going through with this plan and living his dream. Maybe one day she could do the same…

But while Kaito was busy preparing for his practice, something more sinister was lurking above. Several hundred feet above the academy, a black unmarked helicopter was hovering above the vicinity. One by one, the goons inside hopped out of the helicopter, parachuting a short distance below. The first guy kicked his foot out as he neared the academy, smashing the nearby window, granting everyone else following him a point of access inside the astronaut’s research lab.

With Maki wearing the headphones, she couldn’t tell what was going on in the other room. All she could see and hear was whatever was happening inside the cockpit. But her eyes widened as she noticed a mysterious figure approaching from the bottom of the screen, and then another, and then another. There were about ten of these men, all wearing the same black suits and sunglasses, and it was clear who they were after. Maki swiftly pressed the button, activating the intercom. “Kaito, run!”

The startled astronaut was confused at first, but quickly stood up and turned around, only to be greeted by a mob of strangers. The leader of the group reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun, aiming it right at Kaito. Although this didn’t look like any normal handgun, as it looked more hi-tech with different dials and settings on it. But Kaito was too shocked to notice such a thing, simply raising his arms up and backing away as far as he could until his butt ran into one of the control panels. “Who the hell are you guys?” Kaito erupted, having a million questions going through his head right now, but that was the only one he could manage to speak.

The leader spoke up, Kaito staring straight into his bald head able to see his reflection in it. “My name is Ashton. We’re a secret organization known as the Moon Enders. Our goal is simple really…to destroy the moon.” The middle-aged man snickered to himself. “And from what our intel gathered…you’re planning on making a trip there soon. Not if we have anything to say about it.” After his little monologue, the bald man raised his arm up even higher, pointing the weird gun right at Kaito’s face. The stubborn astronaut grit his teeth. There’s no way something like this could stop the Luminary of the Stars! As the gun was about to fire, Kaito lunged forward, holding his right hand in a fist. He reeled his arm back and let out a roar. “Hhhrrrrrraaaaagggghhhh!!” His battle cry as he landed a punch square in the middle of the leader’s stomach, causing him to stumble backwards. But with his finger already pulling the trigger, the gun still went off as it flew out of his hands, spinning around in the air. A violet ray of light emitted from the gun, enveloping everyone in the spaceship with its weird power. The whole group felt a weird tingling feeling inside them, but that didn’t last for long as the whole place started to get much, much bigger.

“Kaito!” Maki screamed from the other room. Despite her talent, Maki is actually a skilled assassin. But without any of her weapons, and the time it would take to get to her lab from the very top floor, all she could really do was watch as everyone in the room had diminished in size. When the smoke had settled, Maki couldn’t even see anyone through the monitor anymore. She quickly ripped off the headset from her head and dashed into the main room, opening the door to the shuttle to scope out where everyone went.

Kaito sat up a few moments later, holding his head like someone had just knocked him out. Looking around, he saw the others who had assaulted him earlier too, all doing the same he was doing. Kaito sprang to his feet, ready for round two, but stopped as he noticed the room had changed. The floor had changed to a sleek white that seemed to never end. The same could be true for the walls and ceiling too, although they appeared to be several hundreds of miles away. Wanting answers, Kaito sprinted towards the bald guy who had him at gunpoint and lifted him off the ground by his chest. “What did you do?” Kaito shouted, more furious than ever.

Ashton chuckled once more, not feeling he was in any danger. “Murder is a crime you know. So we thought that the next best way to get rid of you…was to shrink you out of existence. Then one of our men would take your place.” Kaito was ready to throw another punch, not wanting to hear any more of this. “Go ahead, punch me. Our mission is complete anyways. Now that you’re stuck here at a micrometer tall, there’s nothing you ca-”

*THOOM*

*THOOM*

His speech was cut off from the sound of Maki walking into the shuttle, trying to find where everyone went. But it was an impossible task, as everyone had simply shrunk too small for Maki to notice. All she could spot was the ray gun on the floor, that had shattered in half from dropping to the floor, as no one was at a correct size to catch it. The assassin wanted revenge on these hooligans for doing this to Kaito, but she had to be careful as there was no way for her to differentiate between her friend and a speck of dust like this.

Maki decided she needed to get a bit closer to find Kaito. She dropped down to her hands and knees, lowering her head as low to the ground as possible to get a better view. As a trained killer, her eyesight is better than average, due to a lot of her jobs having to take place at nighttime with limited visibility. Her eyes were now laser focused on the floor, trying to find even the slightest hint of movement in hopes that Kaito was still okay.

While Ashton and Kaito were in their argument, the other members of the enemy cult finally got to their feet. They were about to spring into action to help their boss, but that plan came to a stop as the sky above them grew dark. All nine of the other men jumped in the air as a monolithic hand slammed down right beside them, and then again as the other hand repeated. Gazing up, all of them were scared stiff as two red orbs, big enough to be cosmic entities themselves, peered down right over them. But yet, Maki paid no mind to them. Even though she was looking for anything moving, her mind was fixated on the color purple, something none of these men had. Even though there was strength in numbers, there was nothing they could do together that could even put a dent in this titaness. They tried their best to hightail it out of there, but were stopped once more by the huntress.

*SNIFF*

Maki’s normal breathing was too much for these microscopic men to handle. As a group, they were all sucked up high into the air, like a tornado carrying a trailer. They all screamed for help, but it was too late as they split up into two groups, heading into the dark tunnels of Maki’s nostrils.

The journey was relatively short for them, as the strength of the suction caused them all to fly at speeds far too fast for them to handle. They all smashed against the hairs inside the nose, their bones breaking upon impact. Blood exploded out of their bodies, creating huge splotches of blood that no one would ever get to see. Their bodies fell into the minuscule globs of snot that had been slowly forming over the day, absorbing the remaining limbs and guts of these former people to now become a part of Maki that would one day be sneezed out of, forgotten to the rest of the world.

By this point, the bickering between the remaining shrunken people had settled down, now focused more on the quakes from the colossal being close by. Kaito noticed what Maki was trying to do, and quickly rushed by his opponent, waving his arms up to try and garner attention. “Maki, it’s me! I’m right here!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, but his voice was starting to grow hoarse from the amount of yelling he had to do in such little time. But it didn’t matter, as the sounds he made came nowhere close to reaching the ears of his only potential savior.

This didn’t stop Ashton though. He didn’t want to get his hands too dirty, but now that the possibility of his plan failing had arisen, he couldn’t afford to lose. He sprang up and began to chase after Kaito. Despite being nearly three times older than the astronaut, he was still quite fit, able to catch up fast, most likely because Kaito had to run in slippers. Ashton lunged forward, grabbing Kaito’s leg, pulling them both down to the ground. With his actions now being restricted, Kaito turned his body around, sending more punches the villain’s way to try and shake him off, but Ashton’s grip proved to be too strong.

Maki was still on the hunt looking for her friend, but it was beginning to strain on her eyes having to stare so intently for so long. It was the equivalent of finding a salt grain in a haystack. She had to carefully maneuver her body as she crawled along the ground, watching where she placed her hands to avoid squishing the one person she cared deeply about. It took her quite a bit of time, but eventually she did spot some movement down in front of her. Maki let out an audible gasp, crawling a bit faster to get a closer look. “Kaito?!”

The two men halted their actions for a moment as Maki’s deafening voice struck down on both of them. This pause in the fight gave Kaito the opportunity he needed, using his other leg to kick Ashton in the face, causing him to roll back, freeing the astronaut from his grip. This gave Kaito enough time to pull his cell phone out from his pocket, shooting a quick text to Maki.

“Crazy guy down here! Pick me up!”

Maki felt her own phone vibrate in her pocket. It was a feeling she was not accustomed to, only having two contacts in her phone, but still she checked anyway. Reading the text, she brought her hand around and turned her hand over, lending out her index finger to the speck closest to her, not sure if it was Kaito or not.

Kaito held his hands over his head from the strong surge of wind Maki caused by just moving her hand around, but there was no time to waste before Ashton would return. The luminary once again charged forward as fast as he could, leaping high into the air to grab ahold of an imperfection in Maki’s nail. The mysterious man was catching up quickly, so Kaito had to dig deep and haul himself up the tough cliff of nail, making it just in time before Ashton to grab on. The two of them got back to their phones, as it was the only possible way to communicate.

“Are you on?”

“Yeah, lift your finger up before he gets here!”

Maki did as instructed, lifting her hand off the ground. Just barely moving her hand up was more than enough distance for the pursuer to feasibly jump that high, leaving Kaito safe in the hands of his friend. With Kaito now secure, Maki slowly brought herself back off the ground, careful not to shake her hand around too much as she stood back up at her full height. Now she couldn’t even see the other speck left lying on the ground, but still had a good idea where it was, as there’s no way someone that small could travel any reasonable distance. Her eyebrows furled as she glared downwards, her frown even more intense, and her body was starting to heat up from all the anger she was experiencing. After a while, all she could say was…

“Do you wanna die?”

Maki turned around, facing the opposite direction. All Ashton could do now was turn and run the other way, but there was nowhere to run or hide. At such a scale, Maki was far too powerful that they were not even on the same plane of existence anymore, and one of them was about to leave said plane. Maki began to squat down, her butt casting an enormous shadow over the minuscule speck. No matter which direction he ran, it was all darkness. The colossal butt grew closer and closer with each second, her skirt swayed as she descended downwards. It was far too late for Ashton now. All he could do was brace himself for impact. But the impact was far too much to handle. It was as if the whole solar system had collapsed on him. The man yelped in agony from how much force was being applied. He could feel his bones collapse from the inside, his guts were getting all mushed together, suffocating him from the inside. Blood shot out of his body, flying everywhere across the fibers of Maki’s skirts. His entire body quickly flattened, leaving him an unrecognizable mess of a red splotch stuck in the skirt of an assassin. Just like that, Maki had ended the Moon Enders with her own moon.

With that taken care of, Maki stood back up, not even bothering to check if she was successful because of how unimportant that speck was and took to her phone again, getting back in contact with Kaito.

“So what do we do now?”

“Idk…maybe ask Miu?”

“Good idea. But where should I keep you?”

“Um…I’ll let you decide. I believe in you!”

Maki sighed. He had no idea how he could stay so calm and keep his usual demeanor in a situation like this. But that’s what made Kaito…Kaito. She then brought her hand up above her head, tilting her finger so that Kaito could slide right off and land in the forest of her own hair. The astronaut had to act quick, grabbing on to one of those strands thicker than any tree, repelling down the side of it until he landed down on her scalp. In every direction was just towering hairs, each one big enough to essentially live inside of. It was as if he landed in a never-ending forest. But Kaito didn’t mind this at all, quickly sitting down against one of the strands, pulling out his phone.

“You know…we don’t have to talk to Miu right away.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“Maybe…but this isn’t so bad. Now I can spend a lot more time with you.”

Maki blushed as she read that last message, not sure how to properly respond to that.

“Don’t think of this as an excuse to forget your training.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll still train with you even like this.”

Maki then smiled, something she rarely did. He was still the same Kaito, but doing this made her feel even more important to him.

“Alright. I’ll see Miu in a few days then.”

“Thanks Maki Roll, you’re the best.”

Maki hung up her phone for now, exiting the space shuttle, leaving no trace of the ten murders she just executed. As expected of the Ultimate Assassin. But now she had Kaito all to himself for a few days…and thought things were going to get pretty interesting from here on out.