"Broken?" Asked Scott, looking at the crowd of giants surrounding him. "What do you mean? What happened?"
"It got a little crushed when we sort of rolled on it." Offered Dave.
"The emitter is toast, the control boards are crushed and several key crystals have been smashed." Said Brian. "I need to rebuild about 90% of it."
"So I'm stuck like this?" He said. "Again? For how long?"
"I need to order the crystals, they'll take a week to get here if we're lucky. I'm hoping I can fix everything else before then."
"And if we're unlucky?"
"Two weeks. Maybe more."
"Fuck."
"Sorry." said Brian.
"Sorry?" Scott exploded. "Sorry? I'm stuck being smaller than a finger for two weeks because you lot can't watch where you're lying down, and you're sorry?"
"Hey man," said Dave, "it's not his fault."
"Not his fault? Who's fault is it?" demanded the diminutive cyclist.
"Mine," Dave admitted, "I persuaded him to grow. I couldn't keep my hands to myself... I didn't check where we were... And now I've trapped you and Adel small."
Dave turned away, clearly upset.  Brian turned after him.

Scott looked up at Adel. She looked angry. Now he looked harder, she did seem smaller than Mary. What had Mary said about her? Shorter than her knee? Maybe she was quarter sized, then.
"You're not blameless in this." She said. "You could have grown back yesterday, but you asked Brian to make you smaller. You can't tell me that you never thought that there was a chance something could happen to the ray."
Scott sighed, she was right, of course.
"No."
"I'm stuck too," she continued, "and it wasn't your boyfriend making out with someone else that caused the accident."
"Shit." said Mary, "Are you OK?"
"It's complicated."
"Sounds like." Said Scott.
"The point is," she said, "that we're all stuck with this one way or the other. We need to accept that it's happened and work together. Sure, you're tiny, but I'm also stuck at one quarter my normal size too. It's not like I'm going to be living a normal life for the next few weeks either."
"True," Scott said, "sorry."
"It's OK. And Dave is going to get enough of a grilling from me about Brian, so leave it alone."
Scott nodded.

Mary watched the small woman and her tiny boyfriend argue. She knew she should probably be angry, but mostly she was feeling a little thrill that she had him shrunk for not just a day, but at least for a week, maybe even two. He needed to train for the nationals, but she could help him do that... Some weights, somewhere to ride... Yes, this could be a lot of fun.

*  *  *  *

It was four days later that Mary went back to her office at the University to work. She had spent a couple of days consolidating her research materials at home, and then there had been the weekend. Now she really needed to get back into samples to gather more data.

Scott hadn't been keen on coming along. His plan had involved working out and resting, and she had pointed out he could do that just as well with her in the lab as he could at home. If he was at her house by himself who knew what could happen to a 3.8cm tall person.

He had protested, saying that he didn't need a babysitter. Then she'd pointed out the spider just outside the window. Given that, including legs, it was at least twice as wide as he was tall, he started to see her point.

She looked at the fresh sample under the microscope while Scott did dead lifts further up the bench. She'd found some 15 gram weights and a short section that had probably been from an old wire coat hanger and taped them all together into a barbell shape. It seemed to work for him, which was something.

Scott had spent the day moping after he'd learned he was spending a week or two shrunk. He moaned about missing the nationals, about being stuck forever and she'd reminded him that it was really only for a week or two. Eventually she'd drawn some chalk ovals on the concrete out the back of her house and taken him out with his bike to his own scale velodrome. Initially he'd complained about not having a track bike, but he'd eventually picked a gearing on the road bike that he liked and just got on with it.

Apart from that initial moping and the episode this morning, Scott had really taken the situation in his stride. He'd refocused himself on his race preparations, and on his "super-giant girlfriend", as he had taken to calling her. He was taking his experiences if being shrunk a little more carefully as though he was savouring them more than he had when he'd chosen to be shrunk.

They'd spent some time with Adel and Dave. It seemed funny to her, given she'd never met him before, that Dave was meant to be 10cm shorter than her. At his enlarged height he qualified as "very tall", which he seemed to delight in. He was one of those people who was at home in their own body. Admittedly he did have a pretty nice one in the grand scheme of things. Scott and Dave found that they had a lot in common, at least when it came to sport.  Adel was proving to be a delight, and like Scott was taking her shrinking with good grace.

Brian was the odd one out, taking the whole situation to heart.  He blamed himself, despite what the others now insisted. He also seemed to feel like he was coming between Dave and Adel. She wasn't totally clear what had gone on between the three, but she had the distinct impression that it had been consensual on all their parts.  Brian very clearly had a thing for Dave, and while the feeling was mutual, Dave was committed to Adel.  What he really needed was someone else to get him laid.

All things considered, she thought, given the bizarre and possibly unprecedented situation they found themselves in, everyone was coping well.

She knew it couldn't last. For one thing her housemate Kate was due home tomorrow, and that would mean that her boyfriend would be around as well.  For another, Matt had emailed Scott this morning, saying he wanted to bring some photos around for them to look at.  Matt, who had actually inadvertently started this whole thing, and seemed totally oblivious to it.

Something, she thought to herself, was bound to happen.