Power Play (28 cm, 3.5 cm)

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(Side - Neko: Makoto Komiya)

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“Taku!”

Makoto couldn’t believe it. In front of her, standing in the center of the guest room on top of the Compression Chamber platform was Takumi. The 28 cm boy she had been worried about had somehow gotten all the way down to the first floor. How had he even gotten out?

“N-Neko. Looks like you woke up.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled and nodded. Looking left and right, she searched the guest room. She saw a phone connected to the controls on the platform of the machine and the dome of the machine open. She confirmed there was no sight of her sister, but she was still wary. How could Takumi set up the Compression Chamber all on his own? “Is Mayu-nee back?”

“Mayumi-san? No, I don’t think so. I thought you said she wouldn’t be home yet.”

At Takumi’s response, Makoto’s heartbeat relaxed. She forced herself not to show it, however, as that would cause Takumi to wonder why she was relieved. “Wait, so you got this thing going all on your own?”

“Sorry,” Takumi apologized, taking a small step back. “I thought I’d try my hand at getting back to normal. Being this size has been really disorienting. It wasn’t too hard, but I’ll admit it wasn’t too easy either.” 

Makoto wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or irritated. For Takumi to get to the guest room, figure out how to power up the Compression Chamber, and get it working… She couldn’t underestimate his ability. She thought he was just all brains but to do so much at his size, he had to have had some brawn too. Though it was hard to believe his tiny body could do much at all, she supposed Takumi could man up when it counted.

Sigh!

Makoto shook her head. “What the hell, Taku? I told you not to leave the room. You have no idea how worried I was when you weren’t around.”

“Like I said: being this size has really been messing with my head,” the boy’s little voice shouted up to her. “I’ll apologize to Mayumi-san about abandoning the tests later, but I really want to get back to normal for now. Okay, Neko?”

“… Looks like you’re already doing that,” Makoto noticed the dome of the chamber slowly rising up. It was hard not to notice because it seemed the imperfect design of the dome made it difficult to close on occasions. The noise it made was incredibly loud, and it closed up very slowly due to the metal scraping on the metal.

“It took a lot of effort to figure out. You scared me when you barged in, but now that you’re here, can you help me and double check if I set things up right?”

Makoto froze. Takumi was going back to normal so soon? That meant she was in the clear. All she had to do was convince Takumi to keep certain incidents a secret and her entire stress relief session the day before would be completely glanced over by her sister. She had been worried about getting Takumi back to normal before Mayumi discovered she went behind her back, and now that Takumi had set up the entire machine, it was over.

However, Makoto was hesitant to speak up. She swallowed her own saliva before she could form any words. While she was happy that she hadn’t been discovered the entire time, Takumi getting back to normal so easily made her feel disappointed inside, as though someone had given her a taste of her favorite ice cream and then yanked the rest away. She had wanted to play with him more, quite honestly, though she was certain her idea of play was getting more and more warped as time went on. Even so, what could she do? 

“…Sure,” she nodded, but she remained hesitant. 

“Great. The settings are on my phone over there. I had to find a way to turn this on other than the computer, so could you please make sure?”

She didn’t really have a choice if she wanted Takumi to not be suspicious of her. Walking on by as the chamber was half way through closing, she slowly bent down to look at his smartphone. The Compression side of the interface that read 1/6th was blacked out while the Decompression but was locked in with the timer still counting down. Everything looked to be perfectly fine to turn him back to normal.

That was when her thumb accidentally brushed against the Compression side, however. Despite the screen being darkened, the number 6 on the Compression scale changed to an 8. Makoto noticed it, but because that side of the screen was still dark, she wasn’t sure what to think. Was it a bug?

Turning to Takumi, she saw that the container was now 3/4th of the way machine with closing. She could see the boy’s nervous expression as the dorm closed up on him. He was still waiting for confirmation.

Should she tell him? Makoto tried to consider how her actions would turn out. If it was just a programming oversight and nothing went wrong, Takumi would be back to normal and that was the end of that. If it was a more extreme oversight, she needed to decide whether or not she should alert Takumi.

If she told him and he was reduced further, then it wouldn’t be her fault because she had warned him and he’d think it was just an issue with the machine. If she didn’t tell him and the Compression activated, she could also argue that she didn’t know because the screen was still darkened. So long as she didn’t turn the Decompression button off, Takumi would be none-the-wiser. There was no downside to her if the Compression side activated even if she changed the scale value…

“… Taku, I think this Compression side isn’t actually off,” Makoto said just before the chamber closed.

“What?” she heard his high pitched wail just before the dome completely shut. The instant it did, a puzzled expression crossed the girl’s face. There were 5 seconds left before the timer finished. If the decompression worked, Takumi would be back to normal, but if she was right about the glitch, he’d be left at the 1/8th scale she had accidentally shifted it to. At 1/8th his height, Takumi would be even smaller than the doll-like height of the 1/6th scale she had made him be. He’d be under 21 cm tall, smaller than her feet were long. Did she want that?

A part of Makoto hoped the machine actually worked properly. The twisted feeling in her chest would go away when things got back to normal, but the rest of Makoto were earnestly wishing for something to go wrong so she could continue the fun. She really was a horrible person, but she just couldn’t fight her own desires. Her blood boiled with anticipation. Whatever would happen when the timer hit zero, she would just have to accept. The instant 0:00:00 appeared on Takumi’s phone, the Compression Chamber activated.

If there was any mistake Makoto had made, it was not knowing that compressing was multiplicative. When the machine reopened and she was able to see Takumi once again, a switch inside her had been flipped.

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(Side - Taku: Takumi Endou)

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No.

No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

This was bad. Absolutely bad. He had put his hopes in something he shouldn’t have in his desperation to get back to normal. It didn’t work. Not only didn’t it work, it made things worse. He should have known better than to trust a work in progress. It was his mistake entirely. He wanted to shout, to scream, to panic, but all he had the strength to do was to stare dumbfounded at the expansive world around him.

“N-Neko…” were the only words able to escape his dry lips. There was no reason for him to say anything else. She was the first thing he was able to see when the Compression Chamber opened up. His closest friend who he had been with through thick and thin, the short little girl who had an amazing sister who mentored him, the same girl he had spent a day in the hands of when he was the size of a doll – Makoto was the only thing on his mind at that very instant.

Despite having gotten some experience dealing with a girl the size of a small building when he was on 1/6th scale, Makoto could no longer be considered as tall as a mere building to him. No, a towering skyscraper couldn’t even compare to her. She was a being that rose high into the air so high that the monuments like the marvels of human engineering couldn’t even rival her legs.

How small was he? 3 centimeters? 2? If he would have been able to see the scale the Compression Chamber had compressed him further to, he would have realized he was 1/48th of his normal size. He was standing at around 3.5 cm tall, a little person in the center of the formerly-stadium sized platform of the very machine that had shrunk him.

“This is not good. How badly was the smartphone interface bugged?”

Bugged… That was not a word he wanted to utter. It was the perfect word to describe his predicament. He was now a bug looking up and up at a world that was no longer familiar to him. The metal platform had now become a field of steel that stretched all around him. The walls and ceilings were blurs he could no longer discern. Makoto herself was the only thing close enough for him to see clearly, but even then, he found himself unable to keep his vision focused with how distant anything beyond her waist she seemed to him.

His knees trembled as his head tilted further and further back to look up at his friend. A small skyscraper was what Makoto’s whole body had been before, but now, Makoto was a sky-piercing tower.

“Neko!” he cried, shouting as loud as he could. “Restart the machine! This is way too small!”

But his voice was too small to reach Makoto’s ears from the floor. The titanic girl didn’t even react to his screams. Makoto stood motionless with the phone in her hands. She was simply staring straight at him, her mouth agape.

“Neko!” he continued screaming. He jumped up and down fervently, desperate to get her attention. He had put in all of the effort to change back but his problems only worsened. He should have listened to Makoto. His attempt to get back to normal on his own had completely gone awry. Now, he was certain it’d be impossible for him to reactivate the machine on his own.

His only hope now was Makoto, the titanic girl who was once shorter than him. She knew he was there. She saw what had happened. It was his fault. He’d tell her that if she could hear him, but first, she had to change him back.

“Ta… ku…?”

She mumbled his name. For a moment, he was ecstatic to get her attention, but the moment he looked up into Makoto’s eyes, his entire body shuddered.

Slam!

“Uwah!”

In an instant, he was knocked off his feet by a powerful shockwave. He slammed his head against the ground and was sent tumbling backwards. He tried to recover as soon as he could, but before he could even stand back up, a gust of wind sent him flying even further away.

What had happened? The answer was simple enough. Takumi only realized it when his eyes snapped open and he saw that the distant sky suddenly became a white, brown, and black monster. He was staring up at Makoto’s left eye that was directly above him. He had been knocked away just by her stooping down to get a closer look at him.

“Smaller… than I’d thought...”

“N-Neko?” Takumi unconsciously tried to crawl away from the immense face of his best friend. He tried to tell himself that what he was staring at Makoto, but his body couldn’t stop shaking. The sight of such a massive figure staring down at every bit of his miniscule body brought about a primal fear in him, but it was still Makoto. He believed in her.

His body was not wrong to be afraid.

“Taku?” 

Makoto leaned forward so that her mouth was directly above him. A dark cave opened up and her warm, humid breath assaulted him along with her deafeningly loud voice. He tried to protect himself from the assault of morning breath but it was useless. He choked on the thick air.

“Grk! Ne- Urgh… ko… Cut it… Gak… Out...” he coughed repeatedly trying to speak to her.

Now that she was close enough, Makoto was able to hear him speak, but they registered as squeaks to her. A giggle escaped the girl and caused the entire ground to shake.

“Was that you talking, Taku?” she spoke. 

An overpowering echo beat down on his body. He flinched and couldn’t speak. All he could do was gaze up at the gigantic face directly above him. He would have been calmer if Makoto looked worried, but for some reason, Makoto was smiling - like a child with a new toy.

“Ne-”

Before he could finish speaking, his entire body was engulfed in darkness and he felt a rush as his body was lifted dozens of meters into the air. Makoto snatched him up in her hand, completely covering his 3.5 cm body. He was forced into the fetal position as the thick trees of Makoto’s fingers smothered him into her spongey palm.

“This is-...” When he was finally released from the pressure and the darkness, Takumi couldn’t complete his sentence. Processing the sight before him with his brain took too much of his ability that he had been rendered speechless.s

“Wow. This is unbelievable. You really messed up this time, didn’t you?” Makoto’s booming voice overpowered the bug-sized boy, forcing him to his knees clutching his ears.

“Grk… My ears… Neko… you’re too loud,” Takumi struggled to get up again. Unfortunately, he was stopped. “Gak!”

“You got so puny. What would’ve happened if I weren’t here? I don’t think I would’ve spotted you,” she hammered home his size by slamming him down into her palm with a tap of her finger.

“Grk!” Takumi grunted as he was pushed down by a powerful smack in his side. He grunted again when Makoto flipped him over by slipping her nail beneath his stomach and flicking her finger upwards. “Hey Nek- Uwah!”

Makoto didn’t stop. She kept knocking him around her hand. Even when he tried to get up to avoid her finger, he couldn’t escape it. He was stuck on her hand, and Makoto’s finger chased him down like a tiger hunting its prey.

“This is what you get for going off on your own, Taku,” Makoto giggled. Though her giggles were normally cute, Takumi was intimidated by the low roar.  There was power and presence behind her voice that wasn’t there before.

“Alright. I get it,” Takumi stopped resisting as Makoto pinned down his legs and a majority of his torso with one finger. “I shouldn’t have gone off on my own. I shouldn’t have tried setting up the machine at this size.”

Makoto had heard him. She had brought him up close enough to her head that she could hear his voice, as faint as it had gotten. He could see her smile widen. She seemed oddly too happy. Was it just because his karmic consequence had been hilarious in her eyes or was it something else?

“You shouldn’t have tried to get back to normal in the first place,” Makoto added.

Takumi frowned. He didn’t like how she said that, but he couldn’t have helped himself. Even now, more than ever, he wanted to get back to normal height. Even if he was around Mayumi instead of Makoto, he didn’t think he’d be able to deal with being the size of a bug for any longer.

“I’ll admit it. This was my fault,” Takumi swallowed his pride. “Now can you decompress me? It’s a little intimidating seeing you as big as a building, Neko.”

The high school boy believed after he admitted fault, Makoto would be the kind person to undo the mistake he had made because he no longer had the power to do so himself. That was his own naivete. 

“Maybe later,” Makoto’s response caused the bug-sized boy to choke on his own saliva.

“W-what?” he stuttered.

The giant 152 cm girl took her finger off him and made her decision. “I think I should leave you like this for a while. Like say… for a few more hours?”

“You can’t be serious, Neko!” Takumi was in disbelief. To leave him in this state as a punishment, Makoto was being far too playful. 

“Oh, I’m very serious, Taku. ” Makoto pulled her hand away from her face. He grew worried as she started wagging her finger back and forth and scolded him “You seriously freaked me out earlier. I told you to stay in the room, but you didn’t listen. What do you think could’ve happened to you if I weren’t around? I could’ve stepped on you without even realizing it or I could have never found you and you’d be stuck because of how small your voice is now.”

The girl had a point, he frowned. While it had been proven he was more durable while compressed, there was now a clear divide between himself and Makoto. If she hadn’t been around when the second compression happened, he would have been struggling to find a way to get her attention safely.

“Leaving you like this for a few hours seems like a fitting punishment for going off on your own, don’t you think?” Makoto concluded.

The shrunken boy was unwilling to accept it.

“C’mon, Neko. This is a bad joke,” he scowled. “You can’t just do that.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

Makoto took Takumi up on the challenge suggested by his words. The boy tumbled as she brought him back down to the floor. The moment he looked up, he paled, looking up at the 152 cm girl. To the compressed boy, she was a kaiju-sized girl whose ankles were over twice his height above him. 

“Go ahead then, Taku. Go change yourself back again. Maybe you’ll end up smaller again,” his friend instructed from high above. She was smirking, confident that he wouldn’t be able to do so. She would be correct too. The platform he needed to get on, he saw, was the size of a three-story building, and his phone, which Makoto had set against the Compression Chamber platform, had grown to the size of a wall. How could he operate his phone if he could barely reach the HOME button when it was set on its side? He couldn’t muster enough strength to push the button either.

“You’ve made your point. Neko,” he grumbled, rubbing his head that was now aching from having to come to terms with what was happening. There was no way he could change back on his own. He had no choice but to accept his punishment until she was satisfied enough to change him back.

But even accepting things did not give Takumi any relief. Another giggle escaped Makoto’s mouth.

“Fufu~n,” she laughed and put her hand to her ear. “What was that, Taku? I could only hear some squeaking.”

Makoto was not going to let him off easily. She could hold grudges, and she was making him understand he was being punished. She was enjoying his predicament a bit too much, however.

Without giving him any opportunity to react, Makoto’s hand descended on him again, plucking the compressed boy by the back of his shirt. He felt like a toy being picked up in a crane game. His giant friend was not slow and steady like a crane, though. His entire body felt the rapid acceleration as he was brought up to Makoto’s billboard of a face.

“I take it you understand, now, Taku?” Makoto held him in front of her mouth. He was blasted by the thunderous sound of her voice along with the harsh, stormy gale of her morning breath. “I decide when you’re changing back. You better think long and hard about your mistake alright?”

“So you’re giving me no choice?” frowned Takumi. He was doing his best not to look down at the great drop to the floor. “Can at least we keep this a secret from Mayumi-san? I don’t think she’d appreciate me screwing up like this.”

To his surprise, Takumi could feel Makoto freeze up. She could see her facial muscles tense right in front of his eyes. It was impossible to miss on his scale. He could see everything about Makoto’s face while held up to it:  her eyelashes, her small pores, the bags under her eyes from the lack of sleep - everything.

“Neko?” he called her, worried more for himself than her but also worried about what she was thinking.

Makoto shook her head as she came back to her senses. Takumi felt a chill when a smile widened on her face. “I’ll think about it, Taku,” she muttered. She then glanced to the side in the direction of what the boy knew was the exit to the room. “Before anything else though, don’t you think we should have some breakfast?”

She wasn’t actually asking him. She was already starting to move out the door while he dangled between her fingers. Takumi had lost his ability to go against her completely.