One street was all the neighborhood was. On one side was a row of suburban houses, compact in their design but modern fitted. Across from those, a wall. A gray-tinted wall, a visor that rose as high as the homes, transparent but barely reflecting the face looking past the screen. The artificial light blurred her vision of the outside, so she shielded away the glare with her hands. Sometimes, just sometimes, she’d be able to catch her, way off in the distance -- across the room.

“If she wasn’t coming, she would have messaged us,” Kendall told her. She was in the reflection, so Sierra had noticed when she looked up. Sierra turned to face her, no distinct emotion on her face. Kendall tilted her head with a gentle smile, “Are you anxious for your first time?”

“I like to be prepared,” Sierra replied. She picked up her gym bag from off the pavement, the same exact bag Kendall had around her shoulder.

“So that’s a yes, yes you are anxious,” Kendall teased. “That’s a cool way of putting it.”

Sierra walked down the road and Kendall followed, catching up to her with a little jog. “You must have nerves of steel then,” Sierra said, “if you’re so calm about being picked up by her.”

“Well, after you’ve been picked up by a giant’s hand once, you get used to it from then on.”

“... Do you?” Sierra rose a brow. “Do you actually?”

“Ahh, haha, no. Sort of,” Kendall admitted. Sierra giggled alongside her. “There isn’t anything quite like it.”

Sierra agreed more than Kendall could understand, for that phrase suited the circumstance she and forty-nine others had found themselves in. It wasn’t a giant they discussed, but a scientist -- the overseer, specifically, whose role was thusly to oversee a community project like no other. A community of varied folks who volunteered for the opportunity to be shrunk to a percentage of their natural heights, approximately four centimeters tall. For years, they were going to live in a setting constructed for their shrunken states, and it was the overseer that would perform routine examinations and tests on these subjects.

Each of the inhabitants had their reasons for volunteering for such a strange, obscure project. The entire procedure was being ran quietly, beneath the eyes and ears of any media attention. But the pay was guaranteed, a wealthy sum, and many of those who took to apply had direct purposes to put the money towards. After all, to be shrunken and experimented on was a sacrifice few were willing to make. Only the truly committed gave themselves up to being made so vulnerable, to live isolated from the rest of the world on what was effectively a woman’s table.

But it wasn’t the money that drove Sierra to the project. Kendall, she had learned over the past four months, had debts to repay. Other neighbors had reasons for laying low outside of society. Sierra had a job and hobbies; all had to be left behind, for years, so that she could be shrunken as part of a scientific experiment, and it had all been for the purpose of getting away. She wanted to escape her stresses, and she had little elsewhere to go at the time. When the opportunity to live a carefree life presented itself, even with such an unreal cost, Sierra dashed towards it.

Now, however, there was more that she wanted from this experiment. Beyond the money and beyond the lifestyle, she had discovered a stronger purpose for being in the tiny community.

The road ended upon reaching a large building, a rec center complete with a comfortable park outside it. Attached to the building at its entrance was a dock, just like a train station but with only one singular car waiting to be loaded. A line of six people was already there, and one among them waved Kendall over gleefully. Kendall trotted ahead to meet this person, passing and leaving Sierra, and without that pressure behind her, Sierra again slowed so she could look outside that window.

It hadn’t been that she was worried the overseer wouldn’t arrive. She wanted to be the first to see her.

Across a mile-long stretch of a polished teal floor, a door slowly moved open, and the overseer stepped through it. With one hand, she carried in a briefcase, and with the other, she buttoned up the top of her white lab coat, the knot of her red tie barely visible above the collar. Black slacks completed the uniform, with only dark blue heels being any other flare of personal fashion. The door was closed quietly behind her, and she walked into the lab with a smile aimed at the community that stood level with her hips -- to her, a line-up of intricate dollhouses, none of which she couldn’t lift with the most casual effort.

The clacking of her heels was distinct to the subjects of her project. Each step cracked against the hard floor, like dulled thunder way off in the distance. The sound of these steps became routine to the members of the community, but it was Sierra that always listened to them intently, her heart beating in sync with every footfall. Her expression had subtly shifted when the overseer had entered the room, having swallowed them in the midst of her fascination.

Sierra watched diligently as the scientist first tended to a desk, a computer, the briefcase, some papers. “Sierra?” Kendall called out to her, pulling her from her trance. More than usual, she had been staring openly, so Sierra moved immediately towards the line of others. “We’re about to board, you know!”

“I’m right here,” Sierra said, her pace hurried only out of politeness. It would still be several minutes before the overseer was ready for them -- she had memorized this schedule just from her observations.

“Yeah but you don’t want to keep her waiting,” Kendall warned with a teasing wag of her finger. “No one’s kept her waiting before. She might decide to punish you.”

“Mhmm.”

“You joke about that,” someone else said, ahead of the two in line. A man, disgruntled and serious, shaking his head. “But it isn’t funny. We’re like hamsters to her, in a cage.”

“Chase…” Kendall rolled her eyes with a chuckle-like huff. “She’s never done a thing to us. You get yourself worried about nothing.”

“We’re more like lab rats,” Sierra suggested, her tone dry with a quiet edge of sarcasm. “Not hamsters.”

“Yeah, funny.” Chase turned away from them, but he then looked back at Sierra. “Oh. You haven’t been taken out before, have you? Yeah, don’t get yourself hurt out there. She’ll have to set you aside.”

“Chase, that isn’t funny,” Kendall said, even though she was smiling still. “Are you trying to scare her?”

“Just a heads-up.”

“Advice taken,” Sierra replied. She wasn’t sarcastic then.

Chase and his worries immediately lost Sierra’s interest when the clacking of giant heels was heard again. Everyone in line watched as the giantess approached their community, standing tall over the walled-off horizon. Three footsteps was all that was needed for her to stroll up the street, beginning to end, so that she was standing in front of the rec center and its docking area. More so than anyone else, Sierra stared up, high up to where the overseer’s face beamed with a warm expression between waves of cool black hair.

The overseer’s mouth opened, then opened wider, until a surprise yawn took her over. It was a powerful gust of a breath, maintained to herself, but nevertheless could the tiny citizens below feel a sense of how strong that wind had to be. “Pardon me!” she laughed. “Before today’s over, I’ll have had more cups of coffee than I did hours of sleep…”

The people received the comment warmly, as though it was stated by a coworker. This was the light humor that Overseer Ophelia Duval was known for, a tone that undoubtedly eased the high tensions of her test subjects. While spoken jokingly, it reflected a true part of her career and how busy her schedule often was. Even now, there were partially visible bags under her eyes, though it blended seamlessly into her more mature appearance; an unintended aspect, so she regarded it, not wanting to give up her youth just yet as she neared closer to the top of the hill.

A switch at a console was pressed by Duval which opened the doors to the shuttle for the shrunken people. The line ushered in, every person bringing with them their own uniform gym bag. Pairs of seats were filled in and the luggage was stored in small vaults underneath each section. The design inside the shuttle lent itself to any other bus or train, but the seats came equipped with heavy duty seat belts, a testament to the vehicle’s purpose.

Sierra was about to take a seat before Kendall questioned her choice. “You’re not going to want a window seat if it’s your first time.”

“Actually, I think it will help,” Sierra insisted, claiming the seat and adjusting the harness. “It’s just a short trip. I appreciate the concern, though.” Kendall shrugged and took the adjacent seat. “Did you get sick on your, uh, first time?”

“A little bit~” Kendall chuckled. “Others had it worse than me, anyway. Duval had someone return home after they, err, spilled.” Sierra nodded, but grew worried of that possibility of being sent back. Her stomach would have to endure.

Both ends of the shuttle had each a long window for viewing the outside. Two huge, blue eyes filled the display as Duval leaned close to the glass wall, peeking in at its passengers. “I’m locking the hatches,” she announced, and a click could be heard as the shuttle doors were sealed tight. A heavier sound clanged from beneath them, as Duval had flipped a switch to unlatch the shuttle from the dock. Then, Duval rose out of sight and donned over her hands a pair of sterile gloves.

“Ready…?” Duval giggled. “Three, two, one.” It was a speedy rhythm that preluded lift-off. At the flanks of the shuttle, a thumb and forefinger pinched around the vehicle, each digit fitting near-perfectly into indents made just for this purpose. Gravity intensified for the passengers as the shuttle suddenly elevated, hardly a smooth transition from still to mobile. The shuttle, which had to weigh as much as a traditional bus, had been taken into the giantess’s grasp like a mere toy.

Sierra’s heart was aflutter with an anxiety completely unrelated to the reasons Kendall would have assumed. The height at which they were being carried was certainly breathtaking, a factor Sierra herself agreed with. She awed, in her quiet way, at how the rec center shrank away, as did the rest of the neighborhood being left behind. But it was the glimpse of the overseer’s finger, as minor as it was, that had her chest pounding. She had the urge to put her hand against the window, to try and feel the raw strength being applied to hoist the trailer with such delicacy, but her hands only gripped the seat belt, fidgeting with anticipation.

“Whee~” Kendall laughed, even stretching her arms outward for effect. This was for Sierra’s entertainment, but she realized she wasn’t looking. “How do you feel?” she asked. “... Sierra?”

“F-Fine,” Sierra swallowed. Her eyes were glued to the outside, the view of pockets, buttons, and a red tie descending past as the shuttle rose higher -- but it was Duval’s chest, round and protruding even with the lab coat, that Sierra particularly observed. The movement came to a peak, where the shuttle was then turned so that those giant blue eyes from before were staring into the passenger windows. “Very fine.”

“Just a quick headcount,” Duval told them, tallying up the eight subjects. “Looks good! Let’s take all of you to the desk, hold tight.”

Duval kept the shuttle at shoulder height while she strolled away from the neighborhood and around a corner to another part of the lab. Even a walk as short as this felt like a journey for Sierra and the other subjects, a trip of rocking back and forth in wave-like leaps. More than a mile of the lab was traversed, all of it lost in an unsteady blur, before the overseer had reached today’s workspace.

Atop a waist-high table was a strip of an outdoor lawn, as though a slice of someone’s yard had been cleanly removed and transported to the facility. Duval faced herself as well as the shuttle to survey the landscape, which was about half the length of the community’s neighborhood. It began at one side with a plot of grass that stretched up to a series of stone steps, like the beginning of a patio. A tall wooden wall replicated the likeness of a door, where the rest of the course then went “inside,” complete with wood panel flooring, a rug, and then finally, a low-height coffee table. Understanding the layout was important for the shrunken experiments, for they knew ahead of them would be a complete trek through it.

“This is pretty straightforward,” Duval explained, motioning over the obstacle course she had arranged. “Today, you’ll be running through a course that replicates some of the features you would find outside a suburban home. An experiment to test the movement capabilities of shrunken people in a simulated environment; everyone’s favorite.”

As the overseer had suggested, this was a fairly mundane test that the community members had been trialed through before. Sierra listened intently as a first-timer, as did most everyone else. There was still a small groan from someone in their seat. “More labor,” Chase had complained, and a couple others shared his sentiment more quietly.

What’s his problem? Sierra asked herself, finding the griping to be the only thing worthy enough to distract her from the overseer. She considered Chase lucky that at their height, neither the overseer nor anyone of normal size could hear them especially well, not when speaking with anything less than a full tone. It made it easy, then, to sneak comments of disdain right under Duval’s nose, but it was the disdain itself that bothered Sierra. We signed up for these kinds of activities, she remembered, what does Chase expect?

The shuttle was gently lowered to the beginning section of the obstacle course, a flat piece of desk that came equipped with a series of stalls for changing into uniform. Once the shuttle was completely released from Duval’s grip, the passengers undid their seat belts and began to exit. Sierra had reason to stay in her seat for a few moments longer after the trip had concluded. Kendall chose not to tease her this time, figuring that it was queasiness from the movement keeping her slowed, but it was truly just her flustered state of mind after having been in the grasp of a titanic scientist.

Nonetheless, Sierra was energized to step outside, even if she was the last one out. The others were accustomed to the feeling awaiting them; the huge open space of a different area in the facility, absolutely imposing with the grand scale of things. There was no longer the familiarity of similarly-sized houses, no longer an illusion of living a normal life. There were tools far larger than most buildings, a steep drop just past the edge of the work desk, and of course, the overseer, a woman of epic height and strength, casually taking a seat into a mobile chair.

The group knew what to do from there, moving ahead towards the privacy stalls with their gym bags. While they did this, Duval was powering up a nearby computer monitor when she noticed that not everyone was moving along. She smiled at the straggler, not realizing she herself was the cause for Sierra’s delay. “Go ahead and get changed into your uniforms,” she politely urged. “It will make you easier to see down there, after all. Don’t want any accidents!”

Sierra swallowed and nodded, even though her gesture was too small for the scientist to notice. It clouded her thoughts to know that she was addressed, pointed out amongst the group. Kendall waved at her to follow, lagging behind just enough for her to catch up. Sierra hurried along into one of the stalls, but with every chance she had, she always glanced back at Duval, even as she closed the curtain behind her.

The outfit, Sierra agreed, was indeed noticeable. Everyone donned an orange track suit of sorts, and blue streaks down the limbs made each of their little motions easier to track. With her longer brown hair, Sierra had to tie it back into a ponytail much like some of the others. She was the last to get ready, but the pressure of her peers didn’t affect her at all, certainly not the same way she felt about being seen by Overseer Duval.

“We know,” Kendall joked as Sierra got into a line with everyone else, “it’s definitely not the most fashionable thing, is it?” Sierra lightly chuckled to the comment, feeling conflicted. She wanted to be noticed, that was certain, but with everyone dressed exactly the same, she wondered how possible it actually was to get the attention she desired.

After adjusting some settings from her computer, Duval rolled her chair back to the end of the table. Minimal was needed to get everyone’s attention, as usual. “Everyone ate a healthy breakfast, right?” she said, genuinely asking. Without any objections, she continued, “Then allow me to layout the conditions of today’s test. I have a little motivator for you all, to try and get some impressive times on these results.”

Sierra hadn’t been especially interested in the test itself, but the promise of a prize allured her. It was already her intent to try her best at whatever Duval tasked her with, but she was keen to earn something more.

 Duval smiled, eager to reveal what this motivator was. “I know desserts are on a limited stock for all of you, so the first four people to complete the course will receive…” She drummed her fingers in a roll against the edge of the desk, sending little quakes across the surface for her subjects to feel. “... cheesecake! I hope you all like cheesecake, it’ll be easier to share than something like… pie. So, do your best to get positive results!”