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Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Chapter Notes:
This story contains a woman being shrunk and used by a man.
    Doctor Sachie Watanabe removed her glasses with a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, squeezing her eyes shut. "It worked yesterday," she mumbled to herself. And it did. The previous day marked the first ever successful test of a shrink ray in any lab across the world, of which there were several. Governments, corporations, private investors--the push to make the technology happened entirely in secret, but interest was widespread. Sachie tried not to think about what all of the different parties wanted it for. She liked to imagine that the technology wouldn't be used on human test subjects, and that the limitless potential of miniaturization would be realized to better mankind. But, somewhere in the back of her mind, she always doubted such rosy-tinted hopes.

    Not to mention the department head was pushing for a successful test on a human to be carried out, especially after yesterday's success. Norman Blackwell, the head of Sachie's team, told her time and time again that interested parties wanted to know they were investing in a dynamic product, and a successful human shrinking would be the most powerful statement they could make. Despite her protests that it would send the wrong message, Norman didn't want to hear any of it. Last night, after the test, the large man was barreling down on her so hard, his rotund, wide-shouldered body dwarfing her lithe form so completely as he stabbed at her with an unlit cigar that she almost felt as if the ray had been fired at her and not an apple.

    Sachie smiled. The apple was, of course, a nod to the famous scene that she very nearly replicated from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, minus the fruit exploding all over the room. The miniaturization went off without a hitch and, after a split second, there was a much smaller apple on the test platform. As a joke, Sachie and her team decided to cut the apple and share it, but encountered their first odd side effect. Even with a scalpel they couldn't cut the fruit's red flesh, no matter how hard they tried. It was virtually impenetrable. Hank even popped it in his mouth and there was an audible grinding noise as he couldn't crush it between his teeth.
    
    Hank Rose was an idiot. "It turned into a rock," was the first thing he said. Sachie had slapped her forehead at this. She had her own theories what had happened to the apple's structure, but they were still only guesses at best, and she had had very little sleep. She was worried about leaving the ray unattended, especially now that it was successful. Not because she thought someone might take the credit, but the last thing she wanted was for this very real power she had brought into the world abused.

And it was, at the end of the day, entirely her doing. Her team was filled with nitwits. Hank Rose, for example--her "colleague"--was charismatic, good looking, and Norman's favorite, but, as the old saying goes, didn't have much going on upstairs. No one said it out loud, but Hank's reputation was that he got to where he is using his charm and cunning, not his intellect. People had to use what they had, Sachie ruminated, but she sorely wished Hank was on a different team than hers. He was pushing as hard for a human subject as Norman was. If he was even half as capable as Sachie, she would have been pulled from the team long ago. But they needed her.

    Sachie heard heavy steps echoing down the hall and didn't need to turn around to know that Hank was about to open the door. He nearly tore it open and then slammed it after him. She collected her glasses and looked back over shoulder at him.

    "Past your bedtime, isn't it? Beauty sleep is important, isn't it?"
    
    "I wouldn't recommend you try and get some. It'd very nearly put you in a coma." He returned, approaching her.

    Sachie could feel Hank's self-satisfied, smug grin filling the room and didn't have to look to know it was there. With a sigh, she pushed on her glasses and turned back to her screen. "It's not firing anymore."

    Hank's steps stopped. "What?"

    "After yesterday's test. It won't recognize the firing code to activate." Sachie swiveled and looked over toward the ray. It looked pretty much the same as the movie, and another apple was loaded and ready to be shrunk.

    Hank followed her gaze and then rolled his eyes. "Another apple? We're not getting paid to turn produce into indigestible rocks."

    "They don't turn into anything, Hank. And yes, another apple. This is what a scientist does, if you didn't know. We set up experiments and test theories. We need to make sure this thing works."

    Hank threw up his hands. "Of course it works! We know it can shrink apples! It's time to move on, Sachie."

    Sachie rose from her seat and walked over to the ray, eyeing it as she had several times that night. Nothing was misplaced or broken or visibly fried. Yet whenever she punched in the code to fire she got an unexplained error. What about the test the previous day could have shorted it out?

    "I think we need to roll back the experiment," Sachie said, hearing Hank sink into the seat behind her. "We should dismantle the gun and see where the malfunction is."

    "Are you crazy, Sachie? We can't tell Norman we're going to tear the thing apart right after a successful shrinking. He wants us to ramp it up. We're in a race to develop the first real shrinking ray, if you haven't noticed, and people want results. You know exactly what kind of results I'm talking about."

    Sachie sighed, closing her eyes as she wished--oh how she wished--that she was on this all alone. That there weren't any investors to think about. Size altering technology could solve so many of the world's problems and improve so much. She walked around the ray to collect the apple, its red skin shiny under the lights.

    "I have no way to verify what's wrong with the gun, Hank," she said, gathering up the apple and feeling its cool surface over between her palms. "Frankly, this is amazingly complex and a simple, unimaginative buffoon like yourself wouldn't even begin to be able to understand how to solve it. We're taking it back to step one." As far as we can get from human test subjects, Sachie suddenly thought. And it surprised her. Was that really at the heart of all of this? Was she afraid now that it was a success.

    She turned, expecting to see Hank's usual glare as his lip twitched, unable to come up with a response. Instead, Hank's room-filling grin was on his face.

    Sachie paused. "What?"

    "What if the problem wasn't so complex after all, Sachie-babe?" Hank's hand idly drifted over to the keypad.

    Sachie felt the hair on the back of her neck raised, holding the apple tighter in her fist. I'm right in the line of fire, a voice inside her suddenly warned.

    "Seeing as I changed the firing code and all, I mean."

    She leapt, not letting him finish his smug admission, but Hank's fingers were quick as he hammered in a short code he'd practiced several times before. The ray whined and didn't even give Sachie time to curse him as her skin felt like it was on fire, everything going black.
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