Wrong Place, Wrong Time (Chapter 2) (Patreon)

“Oh, I had a feeling this would happen…” Dr. Moore sighed with irritation while fumbling with the computer, though even her soft voice came out as a boom for the unseen shrinkers below. “The university had that massive endowment last year, and they still can’t pay to update the wiring in this place. Some of this equipment is very volatile. Who knows what could’ve happened? Let’s just get this thing powered down, now, before anything else happens.”

“Well, Professor, it’s not just the surge’s fault. I mean, I hate to get them in trouble, but Mike and Jason were the last ones on the sign-up sheet to use the lab, and it sure looks like they left all the equipment on when they were done!” Megan stated with mock-innocence. A rival of her fellow grad students, the brainy but bratty golden-haired twenty-six-year-old was constantly trying to undermine them out of favor. Though her arrogant rudeness was the least of Jason and Mike’s concerns now, as Megan meandered around the workstation and stood suddenly in the doorway of the test chamber. From so close up, her every thwooming stride made the boys’ teeth chatter and their knees wobble. What’s more, they could hardly even lean back far enough to see her admittedly-beautiful gargantuan countenance so high above now, as both half-inchers’ forward gazes instead naturally met the obscenely huge boat-like vessels of her meshy black-and-pink running shoes. Their blood turned to ice and they were petrified in place, even though they knew they should run.

“Now, now. I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. Mike and Jason wouldn’t be so careless. There, everything’s switched off. It’s safe to go in,” Dr. Moore said.

Sure enough, Jason and Mike heard the size-switching machine sputter to quiet again, which was probably safest for everyone, though they also had to hope their notes would be enough to replicate the conditions of the experiment and reverse their heights to normal. Of course, first they had to be found. Overcoming their dread, both shrunken scientists began jumping up and down, waving their arms and shrieking her name at the top of their lungs for Megan’s attention. The girl was hardly the person they wanted to discover them in this lowly rather-humiliated state, but she could insult them as much as she wished if only she got them to safety, and they’d still love her forever. Unfortunately, even the miniscule boys’ most enthusiastic shouts were like mosquito whines from down here, and Megan didn’t even flinch with partial awareness. When she had the professor’s permission, then, the blonde giantess smoothed down the collar of her lab coat and stepped inside the chamber. Feeling the wind of those approaching sneakers lurching toward them like enormous sporty-patterned battering rams, and even more harrowing vibrations from the ground, Jason and Mike had no choice but to abandon their attempts at gaining her attention and split away in a hectic heart-pounding furor.

Sprinting aside and taking a flying leap, the half-inch scientists just barely moved fast enough to avoid being caught beneath the shadow of Megan’s burly rubber-treaded footwear before it cast ominously above them and then crashed straight into the floor like a plummeting zeppelin. Seeing the weighty bulwark of that undersole WHAM into the floor an inch away made it impossible for either shrunken student to stop imagining what would’ve happened if they’d failed to move a little quicker. They each would’ve been instantly reduced to mangled micro-roadkill already, gummed into the hard underside divots of their ginormous rival’s shoe, and perhaps never noticed again as she unwittingly stalked off without realizing she’d just executed them in a single step. As much as Megan disliked them, Mike and Jason were pretty certain she didn’t literally want them dead, but no one’s desires would ultimately matter if they weren’t careful. Even if this ninety-story giantess looked and sounded like the Megan they knew, now magnified to a leviathan hundreds of times her former size, both shrinkers realized they weren’t so much at the mercy of a human, but a force of nature: unjudgmental and absolutely deadly.

“Hey, all I’m saying is, they left a big mess here, and now they’re just nowhere to be found! Doesn’t seem very considerate to me,” Megan scoffed as she scrutinized the platform in front of the depowered beam. Contemplatively, the girl arched her sneaker heel off the ground, pivoting playfully off the toe section in a way that threatened to bring those lethal threads colliding into the floor again at any second and from almost any angle, which gave Mike and Jason little time to flee. Once more, the boys just managed to dodge out of the way before Megan could unknowingly almost-smush them to bloodied smithereens. Increasingly disheartened, both shrinkers resumed yelping her name until they went hoarse, but still to no avail, and whatever oxygen and energy was required to try and earn the haughty giantess’s attention was instead spent next on racing deeper into the chamber in chaotic zig-zagging patterns. It felt like they were stuck in the middle of an ongoing stampede, when Megan was only lazily shifting her feet every few moments to examine the shrinking machine and test platform.

Why couldn’t she look down just once, Jason angrily wondered? How could she be so unobservant? Their lives were on the line here, and she had no clue. Meanwhile Mike, terrified as he was too, felt his heart sink at the thought of not only never being discovered if they were accidentally mashed to paste by their grad school nemesis, but also at the possibility of their research posthumously being stolen and continued by Megan. Somehow that seemed even worse than being killed by an oblivious titaness’s leaden house-sized shoe sole.

“I admit, this is… unusual. But I’d still like to give them the benefit of the doubt,” Dr. Moore supportively stated, now standing in the chamber doorway too and raising the shrunken twosome’s manic pulses. Though the benevolent educator’s presence normally was a source of comfort, now that the dark-haired bespectacled woman had just doubled the number of absentminded giantesses currently holding court in the vicinity of the helpless half-inchers, Mike and Jason were instead only riled into greater alarm. Especially once she entered the space to study the same abandoned equipment as Megan, which meant the professor’s velvety-black high-heeled footwear was abruptly clacking toward them too, driving the backend spire of each heel into the ground like a jumbo lance. Howling like madmen, the two miniaturized scientists couldn’t jump away fast enough, and found themselves perilously sprawled in the technically-safe but gut-wrenching space beneath the slope of their astronomic advisor’s stylish undersole, between that steep heel and where the incline flattened to the ground again.

Both Jason and Mike were so unsettled that they couldn’t even move until the giantess had already walked “over” them and onward again, clutching one another and trembling like psych ward patients in disbelief that they were still alive. Though how much longer that would last was anyone’s guess. Still blissfully oblivious to the suspenseful near-carnage transpiring at their feet, both gorgeous monolithic scientists kept on contentedly cleaning up the mess left behind by the shrunken pair, heedless of the despair building so close by on the floor. Though it might as well have been another world entirely down here, considering how insignificant the half-inch victims’ existence seemed now. Despite the low odds of success, Mike and Jason kept on breathlessly hopping and pleading for help from their would-be saviors, feeling more hopeless with each failure to be noticed.

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THE END (for now?)