Bounce Back Effect

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(Side - Mayu-nee: Mayumi Komiya)

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Just how long was it going to take checking on the machine? Updating the code was no problem for Mayumi Komiya. She knew the design of the Compression Chamber like she knew the back of her hand. Testing it to be certain it would properly and safely turn the two high school seniors back to normal, however, took time.

‘Okay. We should be good. I’ve confirmed before that the entire process is safe for living beings, and from the looks of it, even after all the misuse it’s been through, the chamber still works as intended.’

She hadn’t said a single word so as to not alert Takumi and Makoto who she hoped were having a proper heart-to-heart where she left them in her used teacup. She hoped matters would resolve themselves soon, but a part of her was nervous about what decision Takumi came to. It was hard to believe that just the very start of Golden Week had led to the utter destruction of the Komiya siblings’ normal relationship with Takumi Endou. She wanted to give Takumi and Makoto time together in hopes a resolution could be made.

However, that wasn’t the only reason she kept silent after she had finished confirming that the Compression Chamber was ready to go.

‘Decompression is designed to apply a wave of energy to counter and remove the Compression Layer, but Takkun has more than one applied on him right now… If I’m right, this will work, but which theory will it be?’

From all of her research, testing, and inventing, Mayumi had a moderate idea about what could happen to the multi-Compressed Takumi if she used the Chamber again on him. She had two theories, but she wasn’t certain which of them would be reality or if something else entirely unexpected would happen. The only good thing she could think of at least was that she was aware that it wouldn’t be lethal and Takumi would be changed back in the end.

‘There’s the straight forward theory and a very roundabout theory. I’d be nice if it were the former, but if it’s the latter…’ She was hesitant to go through with the Decompression because of such a risk. She was afraid to tell Takumi because it would put unnecessary stress on him when he had already been through so much.

Slap!

As silently as she could, she tried to reassure herself by slapping her palms against her cheeks.

‘No. That second effect I considered can’t likely happen, right? And there’s no choice. It’s not like I can leave Takkun dirt-sized forever. It’ll all go well in the end, I know that. Takkun, just hold on. You can handle this.’

She hoped that would be the case. It just had to be for Takumi’s sake. 

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(Side - Taku: Takumi Endou)

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“Okay, everything should be good to go. I triple checked and there shouldn’t be any bugs with the system. Everything should work as it should,” the voice of Mayumi resounded into Takumi’s ears as the over 2 km tall woman spoke to them. He made an effort to decipher what the booming thunder of the giant woman’s words meant, but it was difficult. He was thankful Makoto was holding him gently in her cupped palms as they looked up at the older Komiya sibling. 

“So we’ll be back to normal after this, right? No funny business?” Makoto asked. She was speaking like a sane human being now. Her tear ducts had dried and she had properly calmed down enough to start showing concern for Takumi. He felt a bit of pride knowing he had successfully ‘purified’ her.

“...” There was a brief silence as Mayumi did not respond to Makoto. He saw her expression turn into a smile. There seemed to be relief in her voice as she spoke. “Makoto,  It looks like you’re back to your usual self. I hope that’s the case. You and Takkun will have to tell me what your decision was when you’re both normal size.”

He could have sworn Mayumi’s gaze focused on him. Was she giving him a look of gratitude? It was hard to tell when she was so much larger than him that he couldn’t see her entirely or even clearly, but she seemed to get the gist of the talk he and Makoto had. There was something else in her eyes, though. Was it concern?

“Then we’ll get started. I’ll bring this cup down to the platform and decompress you both. Don’t worry about the cup growing. We’ll just be removing the Layer that is keeping you two smaller. The cup hasn’t been Compressed so it’ll stay the same,” she informed them of her plan. “Takkun, this will be my first time doing a multi-layer removal too, but if I’m right, you’ll be changed back just fine. However, it may just take a while before the layers are removed, so just prepare yourself, okay?”

“Remove the Layer?” It was an odd way to phrase changing them back, but Takumi knew what she meant. He had read Mayumi’s files on Compression after all. Compression didn’t directly shrink a person. It coated a body in energy that then Compressed him to a set level. Any additional Compressions applied another coating on top of the previous one like putting on another layer of clothing. His guess was that decompression would have to remove the energy coatings one at a time to change them back. For Makoto, she only had to be decompressed once to remove the 1/30 scale shrinking, but for him, that would only bring him back to the bug size he was earlier. He had started off by being shrunk to 1/6th of his normal scale and then 1/8th of that and then finally 1/30th of that. He was going to have to be decompressed 3 times.

He had no way of telling Mayumi his theory or asking her to confirm at that moment. He just had to prepare himself.

“I see… Just a bit longer...,” he heard Makoto say as she swallowed her saliva. Mayumi stepped away from the teacup after bringing them down. 

Whrrrr...

A whirring sound accompanied a rumble as Mayumi started up the machine. He stumbled as Makoto clenched the fist holding him, enveloping him in it as she closed her eyes and waited. He closed his eyes too, knowing full well what was to be expected when the Compression Platform activated. From what Takumi had experienced before, the process was instantaneous. There was no inbetween where he could witness his size change before his eyes, but if the two of them opened their eyes to confirm that, they wouldn’t be able to because the light of the energy would blind them.

At the very least, the entire process was painless as their bodies were engulfed by the Decompression energy.

...

…….

……… Bzzt!

“Huh?” Did it work? Takumi had felt the light flash enveloping his and Makoto’s bodies. Even so, something didn’t feel right.

“Phew. It worked!” he heard Mayumi’s deafening voice, confirming the decompression’s success. It sounded exactly the same as before being Decompressed.

“Whoah!” Takumi felt his entire body turn weightless for a moment and start to fall. Makoto had dropped to her knees in relief, but he knew nothing other than that his word had suddenly plummeted because of the girl’s sudden movement.

“I’m… I’m back?” Makoto’s stunned voice sounded louder than before too.

Bzzt!

“No… Wait, it couldn’t be...” Takumi’s body shuddered, putting together the intensity of the booming voices of the giant Komiya siblings he was hearing.

“Welcome back, Makoto,” he heard Mayumi’s voice. “Are you done playing around yet? Did Takkun knock some sense into you?”

“Yeah… Taku’s too nice...” Makoto answered. It was at this moment that her attention returned to him, who she still held in her hand. “That’s right! Taku!”

“Uwah! Bright!” 

With the girl’s realization, Makoto opened up her palm. The shadow of her curled fingers over his body spread apart and allowed light to pour through the gaps. The brightness of the light forced him to cover his eyes yet again; however, as his vision refocused in the light, Takumi confirmed his fears.

“Why? It didn’t work?” he honestly didn’t know what to say. Makoto’s hand had been a large platform before, but now he found himself standing in an enormous peach colored field of rolling hills. He realized these were the lines on Makoto’s palm. He had been interacting with the girl the entire time when she was nearly 50 times his size, but now she was on the same scale as Mayumi: 1500 times his size.

He hadn’t been Decompressed at all. Both Komiya siblings were now normal sized while he was still a mere 1 millimeter tall.

“Taku? Wait. Where did he go?” Makoto’s fearful shock thundered in his ears. 

Bzzt!

She didn’t see him? No, she was looking for the ‘him’ when he was still bug sized to her, but now that he was speck sized, she overlooked him.

“Makoto! I’m here!” he waved his arms up and down while screaming up at the practically 2 kilometer tall girl. 

“No...“ He was grateful he was still visible. Makoto did manage to see him, but it was clear by the expression on her face that she was afraid for his sake.“ T-Taku? Is that little dot, you? Mayu-nee, Taku didn’t change back!”

“Didn’t change back? … I was afraid of this. So it was the second theory after all.” To both his and Makoto’s surprise, Mayumi remained calm. The woman walked closer to Makoto. The wind kicked up because her mountainous body displaced the air, blowing the millimeter tall boy down onto his butt. To Takumi, the horizon was suddenly filled with the woman’s body. Makoto cupped her hand against her stomach, so, because Mayumi was the taller of the two of them, he was looking at the imposing wall that was Mayumi’s crotch. 

He wasn’t looking there for long.

“Whoa! Ngghrk!” Takumi’s body was forced down onto Makoto’s palm as Mayumi forcibly brought Makoto’s hand up so the two of them could see him more clearly. It was unnerving being gazed up from all sides by two giants 150 times his size. It unnerved him even further when Mayumi’s hand lifted and a monumental index finger approached him with meteoric speeds. The woman’s finger poked down onto Makoto’s palm. He was staring up at the woman’s neatly trimmed nail which towered over him like a building. “Uwah...”

“Let’s calm down. Takkun, it’ll be fine. Just be patient. The Decompression is in progress. It’s just that from what I could predict, Decompression on someone with multiple layers has a different effect than just immediate removal or even partial removal,” Mayumi’s mouth was beneath Makoto’s hand, but he could feel the rush of heat from her breath as it rose up through Makoto’s fingers. His environment suddenly became hot and humid.

A different effect? It looked like it had no effect at all.

Bzzt! Bzzt!

No… She was right. There was an effect. His body had been experiencing an electric shock running through him the whole time. The jolt that went up his spine didn’t hurt, but it felt disorienting. 

“What kind of effects?” Makoto was concerned for him. He wanted to know as well, but Mayumi’s despondent expression worried him.

Mayumi hesitated “... I’m sorry, Takkun.”

Sorry? He did not like the fact that Makoto’s big sister was apologizing, but he soon discovered why she did so as well as why she had put her finger down.

Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!

“No… Wait… No no no no no! Are you kidding me? Not any more! I thought it was over!” Takumi turned pale. His blood turned cold as he realized his surroundings were changing. He may have been disoriented, but what he was seeing in front of him was as clear as day to someone who was so tiny. Even a loss of one tenth of a millimeter was an expansive increase in the size of the world around him due to his miniscule state. With Mayumi’s finger for reference on the field of Makoto’s palm, he realized he was still getting smaller.

“Mayu-nee! What’s going on?” Makoto could see before her eyes that the little dot that was him was becoming harder and harder to see. He was already a tiny speck like a grain of sand, but he was becoming so miniscule, it was becoming impossible to see him let alone recognize him.

He was already 1440 times smaller, but that was quickly changing. His body didn’t feel like anything was hurting, but the tingling sensation was intense. The entire world around him seemed to explosively expand in instantaneous bursts. 

Two times bigger? Three times bigger? Four? Makoto’s field-sized palm was becoming an alien landscape. The lines in Makoto’s palm went from rolling hills to mountainous hills and valleys, or rather, they would be if it weren’t for the wrinkles in her skin that would have been unnoticeable normally. At his size, he found himself in what looked to be an endless world of expansive ditches that he would actually have to pull himself out of if he fell into one. And to add to that, Mayumi’s fingernail which had been as tall as a skyscraper to him alone, was now an overwhelming tower he could see no end to. He couldn’t even see anything past Makoto’s hand because of how distant everything was becoming now.

Rumble. Rumble.

“A-Ah….?” Takumi fell to his knees. His entire body felt like it was being pounded on all sides by a deafening roar. The air reverberated all around him. Even if his body could endure it, his mind could hardly process what was going on: Mayumi was speaking.

“Originally, I thought we could just Decompress him multiple times to get him back to normal, but seeing this, it looks like my second theory was the correct one. The energy is undoing all of his layers at once. While that would normally be good, the problem is that there’s a rubber-banding effect due to the intensity of his Compression.” Mayumi explained to Makoto. “Before Takkun’s size can ‘bounce back’ in one full burst, he has to experience the Compression Layers temporarily intensifying.”

“Don’t tell me there’s no limit to the shrinking. This doesn’t make any sense. Just how microscopic am I?” Takumi could feel tears dripping from his eyes. He couldn’t clearly hear Mayumi anymore. The sheer intensity of her voice shook him rather than entered his ears. Because of that, Mayumi’s explanation fell on deaf ears. And even if he had heard Mayumi say he’d grow back, his mind surging with pessimistic thoughts from being compressed once again.. Was he just going to keep shrinking? What if he couldn’t be decompressed? Was he going to be spending the rest of his life on Makoto even after all of his efforts? 

Takumi wasn’t microscopic yet, but he might as well have been. He lost another tenth of his height due to the decompression, dropping from 1 mm to 0.1 mm. He was at the level of dust. At 0.1 mm, practically 15000 times smaller than a normal person, Takumi was approaching the level of bacteria and cells. If he were to measure himself out, that would be 100 micrometers- the very size of the wrinkles of Makoto’s hand that he now considered trenches. He could fit in them. 

Both of the Komiya siblings were now around 25 km tall to him now, standing higher than any mountain on the planet, and if they lied down… They were now practically an entire city to him now. Makoto’s hand alone was on the scale of kilometers. Even if he started moving it would take minutes to traverse the rugged, new landscape to get to Mayumi’s nail and even longer to get to Makoto’s fingers.

Rumble. Rumble.

“Huh? Wah!” Takumi’s body jerked up and down along with Makoto’s hand. The world-destroying earthquake wasn’t the only chaos that threw the microscopic boy into another panic. Approaching him at a speed beyond the speed of sound was Mayumi’s skyscraper sized fingernail bulldozing through the landscape of Makoto’s palm. “Uwoah!”

There was no avoiding it. How could you run from a monolithic pillar hundreds of times your size? Mayumi’s fingertip slammed into him. On his scale, there was no fighting her giant body. 

“This field… It’s Mayumi-san’s nail? It’s even bigger now...” He found himself in the center of Mayumi’s finger nail as the woman raised her index finger up toward her gargantuan eye.

“We just need to wait,” Mayumi’s thunderous voice was painfully all-encompassing at close proximity.  He had to cover his ears, but he couldn’t easily decipher the deafening booms anymore. “Just hold on tight, Takkun. You’ll grow back. Just let me put you down in a safe place.”

Just what was Mayumi trying to say? Takumi still couldn’t decipher the entire atmosphere around him turning into a storm from her words alone, but he physically realized her intentions when the finger he was on started to lower.

“Whoaaah! I’m falling!” Takumi could only wail and scream as he was taken along for the ride by the gigantic woman’s motions. Mayumi was trying to be gentle, there was no way a being as large as she was could have any subtle movements as she brought him down. The moment Mayumi stopped, his momentum sent him flying off her nail. The 2 cm drop was over a 100 meter plummet to him that he only could have survived due to his reduced state. “Oof!”

“Takkun, you stay here, okay? It can’t take too long before you bounce back,” Mayumi tried to speak to him as she stood back up to her full height and stepped away from the platform.

“Nee-san, you put him down, but… I can’t even see him anymore. Are you sure he’ll be okay?” Makoto and Mayumi were an omnipresent sight to Takumi now that they were a part of the landscape and sky. In contrast, however, the two of them could no longer spot him.

“... About 90 percent sure,” Mayumi bit her lip. “Now that I put him down on the floor, I’m realizing I can’t see him anymore standing up. But I’m afraid I’d suck him up my nose or something if I tried getting closer. Just be patient and wait.”

“No… Please, Taku… You’ve got to change back.”

Waiting - That’s all he could do in the first place. Where could he go? At his present size, it would take him hours to get to the edge of the Compression Platform the older Komiya put him down on. The steel surface was thankfully smoother than Makoto’s hand, but there were multitudes of boulders scattered around both the same size as and also larger than him. He realized these were the traces of lint, dirt, and dust clinging to the platform. And if he was being overwhelmed by just dust and dirt...

“Damn… Just how big are they?”  Because he had only been on Makoto’s hand and Mayumi’s finger, he hadn’t seen the two normal sized women in their entirety yet. Now that he was down on the floor, he looked up… and up… and up… And even then, he couldn’t see everything. Their ankles alone looked like they were as high up as clouds would be. Beyond that... “They’re only a meter away, right? But it looks like they’re so far away.”

Takumi tried his best to retain his sense of reason. The sheer size of Makoto and Mayumi as their giant selves loomed over him was not something he could comprehend even though he was seeing it with his own eyes. He was a microbe to the two normal sized siblings - imperceivable and insignificant. In an effort to retain his own sanity, his mind refused to consider him as the one who was shrunken down and worked to calculate and process normal things he could compare them to.

The entire compression platform alone could fit multiple cities and spanned over a dozen kilometers. He pictured the entire platform covered in skyscrapers and even the tallest 500+ meter towers of the Tokyo metropolis, but what was 500 meters to someone who was over 20 km? Only the tallest of towers would even get close to their ankles. If he were normal sized, a single step Mayumi from them would utterly annihilate urban neighborhoods with ease. It wasn’t just cities either. Even mountains couldn’t compare to how large the two women seemed to be. Mount Fuji wouldn’t even be above Makoto’s knees. It was hard to properly view both Komiya siblings as people and not almighty beings. 

“What kind of world would we live in if Mayumi-san’s machine spread?” The thought crossed Takumi’s mind after picturing cities and mountains at the women’s feet. He recalled Mayumi’s original reason for building the Compression Chamber - to curb humanity’s overconsumption problem. How was she planning to use it now that it was shown that humans could be shrunken to his level?

While he had been excited and curious when he first came to the Komiya house that weekend, after everything he had been through, the thought of widespread Compression now terrified him. If there was no limit, no regulation, and no fail-safes, the world could end up in the same predicament as he was in - looking up to a pair of regular sized people who had as much power over him as a god probably would have.

“This technology needs a way to limit it.”

That thought sparked something into Takumi. Perhaps it was his mind’s way of keeping a grip on reality, perhaps it was his desperation to change back, or perhaps it was just his intellectual curiosity - whatever it was, Takumi made a silent oath then and there. If Mayumi was going to continue the Compression project after this, he was going to make sure nobody else would ever experience the same hell he had been through even if he was going to have to design the fail-safes himself.

… Bzzt!

Finally, the bounce back occurred.

“Ngk…? Huh?” A flurry of colors flashed past Takumi’s eyes. It was so sudden that the split second change in height caused a seizure of lights and sounds that the boy wasn’t ready for. He winced and closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, however, he could feel that the atmosphere had changed. 

“W-Whoa! I knew this was going to happen, but seeing you just pop like that was startling,” a much softer, normal sounding voice entered Takumi’s ears. The boy looked up to find he no longer had to look up. Looking forward, he saw the long haired, slender inventor he knew well.

“Mayumi-san? Then that means…”

Slaaaaam!

“Gak! Neko?”

A tackle-hug was the answer to his question. Makoto lunged towards him and pulled her close to him after seeing him normal-sized again. Though he now was happy enough to have the weight and height to resist her again, he still lost his balance and fell onto his butt.

“Taku!” the girl cried. He could hear her tearing up as she rubbed her face into his chest. “Thank god it worked! Thank god! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! Uwaaaah!”

Though it hadn’t been more than a day or two, it felt strange to have Makoto shorter than him again and pressed against his body. Still, that meant he was back to normal.

“Yeah… It worked. I’m back,” he exhaled a breath of relief and put his hand around Makoto’s back. The tension that was in body faded away as his muscles relaxed. 

“Glad to see you safe and big again, Takkun. I was worried it wouldn’t work,” Mayumi relaxed her arms as well now that he was normal sized again. “You must have had a hard time thanks to us.”

He sure did. Looking down at Makoto’s head buried into her chest, he moved his hand over to the top of it and started petting her like he would a cat.

“You don’t know the half of it, Mayumi-san.”

He was going to have to explain everything that happened to Mayumi as well as confront Makoto about her feelings. He was also going to have to confront Mayumi on her technology’s need for fail-safes. But at that moment, now that the oppressive feeling of Compression around him was gone, he could finally rest.