Ambition's Equilibrium - Chapter One (Patron Reward) (Patreon)

[The following story is a reward for my patron, Jith! Thank you so much for your support~

The following story features multiple diverse characters from an original setting experiencing various size-changings as they make use of a magical item. It contains themes of shrinking/growing; multiple sizes; domination/humiliation; growing/shrinking out of clothes/nudity; size stealing; sex; mouthplay;  mass shrinking.]

There had been a commotion in the artificer’s district, where Ship Haven’s engineers and technicians had their work tampered by the bubbling disruptions of something magical and uncommon. It was a blue light, a ball that bounced between workshops and warehouses – fluttering from place to place, in and out of the very machines and devices that distinguished the district. The jingle of her giggling became as infamous as her glow, a signal that havoc was about to unfold unto whatever contraption had earned her interest. No one was fast enough to keep up with her, let alone catch her; she escaped worksites with crashes and bangs behind her, whimsically leaving to find something else to sate her curiosity. Days of her mischief made for a spread of rumors: a fairy had found itself in Ship Haven.

And when the rumors finally reached the ears of a particular duo of women, they knew it was time for their designs to take fruition. A fairy’s magic was the key to their schematics – a plan for an arcanic device that would change the world-order under their heels.

But only if Leah could successfully bring back that fairy, having sent herself to the artificer’s district early that morning to catch her in an act of chaos. It did not take long to discover a ruckus from one of the workshops, where steam spilled out the windows and forced the engineers outside for air. They were all different non-humans – halfkins, whose animal features included horns and tails, fur and feathers, as well as gnomes, dwarves, and even orcs – yet no species was ever familiar with fairies, the likes of which were said to be rare to find in the wilds, rarer so in the middle of a city. Leah, a human with an aristocrat’s background but a warrior’s disposition, heard their remarks of a blue light meddling with machinery, confirming her suspicion; she promised the engineers she would fix their fairy problem, free of charge.

In the center of the workspace was a water purifier, hollow and half-repaired – with a blue light shimmering inside its pipes and compartments. Leah tensed, ready to pounce, but then reconsidered her approach; though she dressed like a warrior with light plates of armor and rugged wraps of clothing, she was not all brawns-over-brains. She eased herself with an exhale before stepping closer to the machine, adjusting her braid of brown hair behind her so that she had a clean, trustworthy image.

“...Having fun in there, Miss Fairy?” Leah spoke, aiming her voice into the pipes of the purifier. Her call instantly made the light inside shudder with reaction. Leah grinned, “That is what you are, right? A fairy…?”

The light inside dimmed and changed, according to the movements of the fairy inside, whose head eventually appeared from one of the pipes. Leah’s eyes widened with amazement, dazzled by the tiny woman and her fey features: purple skin, blue hair, long ears, and insect wings. She debuted timidly, peeping over the pipe before rising high enough to reveal her little fabric of a dress, blossoming forth like a reluctant flower. The glow of her presence extended to Leah’s cheeks, hiding the redness of her energy – the excitement that what she saw was a real, true fairy, the very magic her and her partner required.

To her surprise, the fairy then popped with a bright smile. “Yeah! I am!” she answered cheerily. “My name’s Luluca~ Are you gonna try and grab me, too?”

Leah chuckled, “I just wanted to see what was going on. I’m Leah. Do you like artifices?”

“Hah? Arti-whats?” Luluca tilted her head; her eyes were huge with interest, making them easy for Leah to follow and look into.

“Machines,” Leah clarified, “like this one. I know a place with lots of machines, actually. My friend is an engineer, and is working on something special – something much cooler than a water purifier.”

Luluca was visibly hooked. “Ooo~ What does it do?!”

“Nothing yet,” Leah replied honestly, “but you’re free to take a look around~ No one would try and grab you there, that’s for sure.”

It could be seen how the idea weighed back and forth in Luluca’s head as it swayed side to side, pondering how much she could trust the stranger looming over her. She was wary – any two inch-tall creature had to be – but her curiosity was bounding, always inspired to see how her magical existence would provoke technology, much to the ire of those around her. It was unusual to be invited to someone’s workshop, but before she could worry too much, her surroundings were lifted up into the air, picked up into Leah’s arms. She ducked inside, fearing she was captured, until the purifier was settled in a grasp; she peeped out through a pipe, detecting not hostility, but a warm welcome from Leah.

“How about I take you there, Luluca?” Leah offered, picking up the machine with relative ease. She put her face to the upper pipe, beaming over Luluca up-close; she admired the little fey, intrigued at how something so innately powerful could also be so cute – and seemingly, so naive. “My partner, Ravana, would be delighted to show you that special machine…~”

Luluca never verbally agreed to be taken, but her optimistic smile and forward-facing direction in the purifier expressed enough consent for Leah to march out of the workshop. Free to fly away and leave whenever she pleased, Luluca still chose to linger in the machine as if it were a traveling carriage, happily awing at the huge, magi-tech world of the artificer’s district – imagining that if these artifices were as incredible as they were, then surely Leah and Ravana must have something unbelievable in the works. Indeed, she rattled away with questions to Leah of what to anticipate – much as Leah had questions of her own – all the while that she was escorted to their lab, a place found within the proud Ship Haven College.

“Is this it? Is this the place?” Luluca’s little voice echoed up from the pipes. She gawked at the wide-spanning building of the college, its clean construction glistening in the midday sunlight. Compared to the grimy workshops she had been used to playing in, the college exterior appeared radiant and pristine. “Wow~! Really tall walls…! You must have huge machines inside there!”

Leah entered through two grand doors and into vacant halls. Classes were seasonally out of session, and so the building was used exclusively by professors and researchers, studying new feats of magic, science, and where the two subjects combined. Among the workshops was one that Ravana personally owned, the humble headquarters from which the two devised their ambitious artifice. “I can’t wait to introduce you to my lab partner,” Leah chimed. “She’ll want to show you the conduit as soon as possible. We’ve both been waiting a while for someone special like yourself to show up in Ship Haven.”

“Really?! I didn’t know I was keeping anyone waiting~!” Luluca laughed, too airheaded to be suspicious of Leah. With lithe wings, she hovered out of the purifier’s pipes and to a height level with the woman’s chin, fluttering forwardly along with her in the hall; enough trust had been earned to fly alongside Leah. “What does a conduit do? Is it big?”

“It manages power,” Leah began in a giggle, opening a numbered door to the workshop, “but perhaps I should let Ravana explain it. I’ll admit, she’s more of the brains of the operation.” While closing the door with her hips behind her, she winked at Luluca, “That’s why I’m the one going out to pick up fairies.”

Luluca listened, but went slack-jawed upon arriving at the workshop, scanning all around the room in awe of the engineering that was on display. She flittered quickly from corner to corner, zooming from one interest to the next: tools organized on wide racks, gadgets propped up onto the walls, blueprints and charts posted over boards, chemical ingredients measured out across shelves. Luluca shivered in anticipation, unsure what to tinker with first – while uncurling an arm towards an unfinished machine hanging from the ceiling, she was disturbed suddenly by a sharp pang. Believing she was caught in the wrong, she flew fast away, back down into the collar of Leah’s cloak; Leah chuckled and helped hide her, though she knew the noise was none other than Ravana at work.

From the garage that was ahead, sparks from an arcanic torch blower illuminated the silhouettes of large mechanical limbs, surrounding the center of construction like doctors performing surgery. The color of the light flashed between purples, reds, and greens, imbuing magical energies into the technology; a pattern of metal clanging echoed over the room as the engineer used a hammering tool to configure pieces into position. Then, all the tools were stopped, and the elven engineer scuttled back from her work, lifting her welder’s mask over her brow to reveal a studious, golden-eyed glare. Threads of blond hair slipped free from the mask’s straps, quietly tucked back behind her long, pointed ears as she affirmed the quality of what was in front of her: though its making required the whole space of the garage, the product itself was remarkably small, not much larger than a traditional pocket watch or compass. Ravana glowed warmly over the dazzling device, an apparatus of multiple gold rings fitted into one another that orbited perfectly around a round field of emptiness – around a slot for a power source, that which would spin the apparatus to life on its own, and thus properly function as a magical conduit.

“Ravana!” Leah called into the garage. She smiled wide while coyly leaning against a partition; “We have company.”

“No guests right now,” Ravana dismissed, only glancing at Leah before strolling to a worktable. She removed the welder’s mask and dotted her multi-color-smudged face with a cloth; “We’re closer than ever, Leah. We just need that–”

Leah cut her off with a whistle. She nodded in a direction; Ravana looked, then gasped, seeing a mote of light circling around the mechanical arms that held the conduit in place. Luluca hummed with fascination, toying with the cables of the arms and admiring their length, bubbling to herself with questions wondering how they worked. Ravana’s expression twisted into alternating states of confusion, creeping around the garage until she was close up to the fairy, her curiosity painted wide behind the little creature.

“...I see,” Ravana finally said, blinking out from a trance of inspiration. Watching Luluca lift and flutter down the mechanical arm, she still could not believe her eyes; “And here I was so sure those rumors were from engineers huffing too many fumes…”

“Her name is Luluca,” Leah explained, approaching her partner from behind and sharing in watching the fairy flutter about. “She can’t remember how she got here – not to Ship Haven, or even Liedinis at all. As if she’s from another world.” She cocked a brow playfully to poke at Ravana’s seriousness. “What? Don’t tell me you think this is fake or something.”

“No, no,” Ravana replied, stroking her chin while staring up at Luluca, floating up to where the cables were plugged in the ceiling. “Rather, I’m surprised at how this is all coming together… The artificery itself has always made sense, but the magic component has been… so theoretical. It’s hard to imagine that a fairy, of all things, will be the key that unlocks our futures.”

“So long as it works, right?” Leah chuckled, pushing her elbow into Ravana’s side. When Ravana recoiled coldly, Leah inched closer and pressed shoulders with her partner. They were both tall women, but they felt even taller together, especially as they stood in front of the magic conduit, the tool that promised them great power – the power they had longed for, enough to vanquish their rivals and claim dominance over a land they believed was better belonging to them. Leah reminisced over those histories, recalling trials and tribulations, events from the past that aligned her and Ravana’s destinies into one; the magic conduit was their vessel for revenge, and they could swear they felt an electrical energy preemptively buzzing from the artifice, regardless that it was yet without power. Leah’s head found the curve of Ravana’s neck to cradle into, both staring at the conduit and its rings; “What should we do with it first? I can think of a few names that would want to witness the conduit~”

“We can think of that after it’s proven to work,” Ravana replied snidely, but her smile softened her tone. “But, I suppose you can decide first. After all, there’s–”

A zap of sound startled the two women – sparks sizzled from the ceiling right above them, where their fey guest had flown up to. They found Luluca hovering away from where the cables connected, shielding herself with an arm as arcanic electricity went loose into the air, far enough to pinch her– “Yowch!” she chirped as she flung away in a buzz, knocking into another cable that then trickled in response to her presence. “Gah! S-So loud…!”

“Hey! Hey!!” Ravana barked, squinting up at the electrical hazard. “Get down from there! What are you doing?!”

Luluca covered her ears as another zap whipped near her. “Sh-She said I could play here!” she argued, pointing at Leah.

Ravana glared at her partner, but Leah had only a shrug to respond with, believing she did well enough for her part. She waved at Luluca to lower herself; “Your magical essence is disrupting the power! You’re like a flying super magnet…!”

“Oh? Am I?” Luluca drifted into scattered thoughts, but flashed back into the present when another discharge was close to shocking her. The mechanical arms groaned as they then staggered with robotic motions, jerking hard up and down; Ravana reached up for the fairy, but was denied when an arm dropped into her chest and weighed her down. Luluca winced apologetically, “Sorry! I didn’t mean to– eep!”

A cable broke loose, causing Luluca to flinch and fall from where she was fluttering. Her wings kicked in a second later, but by then, she felt something had grabbed her – an invisible grasp, as though she had been immersed in a bubble. Indeed, she was within one: levitating in the center of the apparatus rings, a field of magic designated for containing the conduit’s battery. The sensation that held her was unlike anything else, that when she tried to hover away, she instead felt her energy repurposed; responding to her will, the revolving rings began to turn and twist differently, slowly orbiting around her as a source of power. Rather than jet off like she wanted, Luluca could only make the conduit float up – only so far, at least until the hook of a robotic hand snagged the outermost ring. Luluca was jostled, but not displaced; her curiosity pointed her in all directions, so excited that she overlooked the humans’ nervous expressions, ignoring the swelling noise of magic gathering intensely around her spiraling self.

“Hah! Hey…! Th-This feels really cool…!” Luluca giggled, her voice warped by the vibrating motion of the rings. She noticed her body glowing brighter, more than her usual light of a fairy. Her fingers clenched into fists and the conduit rose higher in the air with the arm still hooked to it; “Hehehe…! What if I…?”

Those trailing words of whimsy made Ravana jump again at Luluca. “No! Don’t do–!” she hissed, but sharper than her voice was the zing of static and hum of machinery, all noises that grew increasingly louder, until all the energy reached a point. Ravana and Leah both went still, sensing a magical pressure in the atmosphere; then, when Luluca waved forward with a fist, that tension broke and flowed again – a bolt of magic leapt from the conduit at Ravana, snapping her in the same glow that had surrounded Luluca herself. Leah trembled away in a gasp, barely comprehending the sight, before she, too, was picked out by the fairy’s giggle and grabbed by the conduit’s energy.

Both women fell into spasms as a reaction to that electric effect, a response that would have put a pause to Luluca’s actions – if she were still in control. But due to the mechanical malfunctions, when the fairy tried to pull back on the intangible reins, the conduit was instead dislodged by its own orbit of rings, knocked aside by a flailing robotic arm. Luluca shrieked dizzily in the air, spinning without her ability to fly, but rather than crash to the ground, the conduit began to spin erratically around the lab, unleashing stray bolts of magic that fried equipment and sizzled walls. All the while, a windstorm was whipped up in the workshop, spreading documents and blueprints all over. The chaos swirled as such until another point was reached: when the conduit’s winding path finally threw itself to the floor–

Kra-koooouuum! From outside the engineering wing of Ship Haven college, students and faculty were rattled by a sudden boom. They feared a bomb had been detonated, perhaps an experiment gone wrong; when they discovered multicolored vapors leaking into the hallways, they all turned to evacuate. When word got out that the lab responsible was Ravana’s own, people had less reason to get involved, wary of trifling with her and her associates, much less the nefarious projects they were always rumored to be working on.

Thus was why only one student appeared permitted to investigate, an artificer that often cooperated with Ravana and Leah; a tall halfkin, whose cat ears were perked high as she neared the blast site, her tail twitching with intrigue at the hem of her skirt. If not for the vapors having to clear, she would have stormed onward into the lab – “What are they doing in there?” she scoffed. “And why are they doing it without me…?”

Inside the lab was a cloud of colors, gradually fading as ventilation units refreshed the air. A desolate version of the workshop was revealed, a complete mess of scattered papers along the walls and floor, all centered around the heavy machinery that had been operating on the magic conduit, which then smoked in disrepair, the robotic arms limp without any power. A lifeless lab – not only because of the zapped technology, but because the two engineers had seemingly disappeared. There were no heads that rose out from the vapors, no coughing fits or plights of confusion; none that could be seen nor heard, not without a keen attention pointed to the ground, where two mounds of discarded clothes could be found among the windswept documents. Between these oddly abandoned articles was the fallen conduit – the remains of it, its apparatus pieces delinked and dropped like scrap gears.

From those disconnected pieces, a figure lifted up light into the air. Luluca fluttered off the cold floor, her hands and knees cloistered to her center as she scanned around the lab, stunned by the strewn papers and foggy air. Miraculously, the effect left her unharmed, but not her dress – it ripped tightly on her little body, left mostly in tatters loosely hanging on her, but the sprite was unphased by any strips of her nudity. She was more interested in finding someone with an explanation; “Mmm… Leah…?” Luluca whimpered. Shreds of her clothes peeled from her until she was entirely naked, slowly hovering away from the pile of rings. “That wasn’t bad, right? I-I was only just looking…! Err, where did you all go…?”

Luluca eventually noticed the pile of clothes, taking moments after to then make the correlation that her new human friends had just disappeared. Identifying the leathers and metals of Leah’s gear, she skeptically approached through the air, still uncertain if her playing around had somehow vanished the people entirely – but she soon saw a lump rummaging under the heavy fabrics, a ball of life struggling to writhe free. Luluca’s eyes opened large and round, determined to know for certain if her assumption was correct. She grabbed the collar of Leah’s tunic, then fluttered upwards, slowly lifting it off the ground and causing the movement inside to drop loose – out the other end, a tiny nude body appeared, tumbling gracelessly atop the rest of the clothes.

Leah gasped, “Huh?! Wha– Eh? Where…?!” Dazed and disoriented, especially after falling to the ground, she frantically searched for answers, only to find herself in an alien world, not immediately comprehending her place as the floor of the lab. From within the seat of her pants, she shakily stood and awed up at the staggeringly tall structures, the legs of tables rising like castle towers, and the disabled machines stretching even farther. Beneath the workshop lights, Leah blinded herself by looking up at the sky-like ceiling, but by the time her vision cleared, it had begun to dawn on her what effect the magic conduit had – that she saw that prized fairy floating overhead, responsible for their shrunken situation. “Luluca! You! Wh-What did you do to us?!”

“Hmmm? Ohhh…” Luluca lacked a reply, though she did gently flutter lower, drawn to the odd condition. By coming closer to each other, both women realized a distinct difference between them. While Leah had certainly shrunken to a pitiful two inches tall, Luluca had seemingly become bigger – only twice the human’s new height, but a notable boost for a creature otherwise so small. Surprise, then delight, colored her expression; “Ahh!! Look at you, look at you – look at me! I’m bigger…! How did you make that happen~? Eh-heh-heh~!”

“H-How? That’s what I’m asking you–! Ghh!” Leah’s high-pitched stammering was muffled quiet after getting locked into a hug. Luluca dropped from her hover and embraced what she saw as an adorable rarity – a creature actually smaller than herself. Her enthusiasm lifted Leah off her feet, an embrace made even tighter by her larger size, as if swallowing the shrunken human into her purple-blue color. Leah eventually squirmed her head free, but could only pull her flushed face so far from Luluca’s bare bosom; “Hey, l-let go…! This is serious…!”

Even after letting Leah spring free from her hug, Luluca continued grinning ear to ear, sitting on her knees so that she was closer to her height. Leah stumbled on a wrinkle of her pants, falling backwards into the belt; recognizing then that she was naked, chills ran all over her skin, and she jumped to her feet with her arms around her body. Though she shivered underneath the hugeness of everything, she especially hesitated from Luluca, dreading how different their scales were, the complete reversal of their dynamic. It was a terrible feeling for a fighter such as herself: powerlessness, and against something so small, something she initially pitied.

“...Ravana!” Leah gasped. She hoisted herself over a ridge of her clothes, towards where her companion last was before the blast. Across the long distance of just a couple meters, there was another landmark of engineering attire on the floor, with its own figure standing within it, perplexed and stripped naked. But Ravana was not so panicked by the predicament, quietly admiring the results with wide eyes and a finger drawing at her lip. Leah called to her, “Ravana! What happened to us?!”

“The conduit…” Ravana breathed, her answer too quiet to be heard. She crawled out of her clothing and onto the floor which chilled her bare knees and hands, towards the disconnected collection of golden rings. The magic conduit lay broken, a heap of intricate pieces that were then each bigger than their designer; Ravana dashed to it, more concerned with the item than she was with her own diminished condition. After all, she knew how vital the conduit was for possibly returning to normal: “It… took our power,” she explained, “and reduced us… to this. But, i-if it’s broken like this, then where did…?”

“What are you on about?! Tell me we can at least fix ourselves, r-right?” Leah called again, still treading past the buckles and pads of her clothes. Unlike Ravana, she dared not venture out any farther, afraid of being too exposed. She glanced at Luluca behind her, still giggling to herself and following close, greatly entertained to be looking down on someone shorter. Leah asked, “And what about her? Sh-Should I hold her down, or…?”

Luluca blinked, then choked back a laugh. “Hold me down? Could you even?” she snickered, leaning forward with a hand between her thighs. Her loom itched Leah back a pace, which only amused the fairy more; Luluca reached low and lifted the human up from under her arms, letting her legs dangle unsupported. That was enough to claim Leah, but Luluca also laughed up into a hover, taking her inches higher off the floor. “Aww! You’re so light, too! You couldn’t hold down a leaf from blowing away, hehe~!”

“Bah! H-Hey, quit it…!” Leah growled and kicked, yet relied on being held at that height, just as much grabbing Luluca’s waist for support. Matters were made worse when the fairy’s touch turned intentionally ticklish; “N-No, hh– no! Ha! St-stop, haha…!” Luluca did cease, but took advantage of the relief by drawing her tight into another hug. Leah hissed past the embrace, “Ravana! Can’t you do something?!”

Ravana pored over the disrepaired state, but her concern only grew heavier, biting her thumb as she asked herself arcanic questions – a difficult chore to do all in her head, without notes or tools, the likes of which were in disarray anyway, scattered all over the lab. “I-I could try putting it back together,” she said, whimpering on, “but… at this size…” She lifted the widest, most-outer ring of the apparatus, but her tiny arms could only hoist it so high, much less rearrange and realign the pieces. “...We’re going to need help,” she stated coldly. “Maybe Emma…”

“Emma?! Oh, gods,” Leah sighed, her attitude not as whimsical as the way Luluca twirled them both in the air in slow circles. “That snotty apprentice of yours doesn’t even know what we’re working on! And you know how she gets about feeling left out from you.”

“Unless you intend on walking all the way to the docks and fetching Ophellia to help us, we don’t have the luxury of options,” Ravana countered cuttingly. She scoffed, “At this scale, that should only take you a week to get there. Better get started.”

“Fine, fine!” Leah submitted. “But how do we even get Emma’s– hyuh?!” She gasped, dropped from Luluca’s grasp and right into the pit of her giant boot; the fairy had flinched, as did the other little women, when they heard a creak come from the enormous entrance to the lab. The door itself was barely on its hinges after the explosion, swayed open by the touch of the halfkin woman wandering inside.

Emma welcomed herself into the lab with cautious steps, agasp at the state of the room, her cat tail made stiff in suspense. She lowered her head to enter under the doorframe, slinking inside with her tall stature, moving with the poise known of her feline blood. Her leather boots carefully navigated the floor of papers and debris while her red-blue heterochromic eyes scanned for details, making loose sense of what had occurred. Believing she was alone in the lab, Emma untensed and scowled; “Okay…? So, where’s Ravana?” she asked, but she was just as much pulled to another question, gravitating towards the construction equipment in the center of the room. “And what was this for? Putting something together, it looks like…”

“Down here, Emma!” Ravana shouted, but her words were against a mountain, regardless of how loud she yelled. She tried again, sprinting in her direction, believing her engineering pupil would eventually glance down and notice something amiss – she overestimated her significance, however, not yet realizing how tiny her two-inch scale truly was until it was too late. It dawned on her after running so much distance, that Emma was disturbingly massive; a single footstep, placed without a thought of shrunken people in the way, swung quickly across more yards than Ravana had just ran, and also was its impact more important, the black boot planting hard into the floor only a dash away from where she was. That quake bounced Ravana off her feet and onto her back, a supine position that pointed her gaze high up Emma’s legs and into the darkness of her skirt – another step flew overhead, turning Ravana faint as it passed by, curiously continuing around the lab. “E-Emma…! Sh-She… walked right over me…”

Leah had watched it for herself, though her perspective was worse – a moment where she saw her friend disappear behind Emma’s step, seemingly flattened like a workshop bug. She had to earn that much of a view from climbing out of her own boot and clinging to its entrance, a miserable feat that drained her of stamina; every detail was a bitter insult of how small they had become, the harsh opposite of what they had been wanting to achieve. It was especially frustrating to see Emma waltzing around with the exact power they had sought for themselves, stomping across the landscape at an unstoppable magnitude. Ravana will correct this, Leah promised herself, she always does. But until then, they were at the mercy of Emma, whom Leah knew as an upstart wild child – a student with a meanstreak, a rebel that only Ravana was ever able to tame. She imagined that snappy attitude magnified to towering heights, an obnoxious image that required little more imagination, as Emma herself made snide comments to herself, circling the lab with an unforgiving glare and her hands on her hip. Is she even going to look for us? Leah asked herself. Or is she just here to criticize everything? The know-it-all…

Indeed, neither of the shrunken women had an idea of how to communicate safely to their halfkin hope, who proceeded to overlook the two clothes piles in favor of the technology that fascinated her – seemingly having forgotten what she came to investigate for. While Emma was absorbed in understanding the mystery project, someone else rose to get her attention, a blue glow that hovered in the air with a lone apparatus ring in her possession. Luluca knew nothing of the person rifling around, but she had heard the others mention they would need someone bigger to put the magic conduit back together – the primary goal the fairy then pursued.

“Hello? Miss?” Luluca jingled. Emma’s feline ears turned towards her in a twitch. “You look normal! Can you look at this thing? And fix it? And make it work?”

“...Huh?” Not as alone as she thought, Emma cautiously turned and faced the fairy that fluttered level with her eyes, which then flashed with bewilderment. “A fairy?!” she erupted, but the tiny cryptid only surprised her for so long, focusing then on the ring she held. “What… is this?” Luluca insisted it be given, and so Emma took it, pinching the ring and looking through its loop. “There’s rune printing,” her keen sight detected on the coin-sized piece, “for transferring… power?”

“Yeah, yeah! That’s what it did! When it worked!” Luluca clapped, happy just to remember the sensation. “They spun around me really fast, and then when I waved my arms– whoosh!”

Emma blinked at the winding gesture the fairy performed. “...Whoosh?” she repeated, distracted just enough for the little ring to slip out from the pads of her fingers. She gasped, making a grab at it, but the piece fumbled like a tricky gear, twirling rapidly to the floor. “Ah, dang,” Emma hissed, watching it ricochet – tink-tink-tink – bouncing and rolling lightly, until it met with the other apparatus pieces piled below–

Zzz-zzkt! A sharp noise lashed out like a spark the very instant the apparatus clinked together. Emma reflexively jumped away, unexpecting any loud consequence, yet the sound was only the start. Magical energy trickled through the pieces, warming them with a volatile glow; bolts shot out aimlessly, only zipping so far, but with enough heat to singe documents. A similar effect was then observed elsewhere – first floating in the air, an electric buzz that resonated from Luluca, but also twice across the floor, where the shrunken women felt their bodies be grabbed again by magical tethers.

“Oh, oh! It’s going again!” Luluca hyped, rotating in the air to look over her body and the trills running through it. Her fingers clenched and knees buckled, “Look, look! I’m gonna–!”

Emma winced and went to shield herself, backing away to a work desk for cover – if another surge was about to happen, she expected it to be as explosive as it was previously. Indeed, there was a sudden charge of wind circling the room and a static in the air, but before the scattered papers could be scattered much further, there was a ping and a flash. Peeking over the desk, it appeared nothing had occurred – but something had the fairy in a giggle fit.

“Yes! It happened again~!” Luluca laughed and rolled in the air. Her fingers trickled over her squirming body, appreciating what had been another boost to her size – another two inches taller, a fair fraction of her overall height. Her amusement was almost maniacal for a moment; “Bigger, bigger…! Is this gonna keep happening?!”

Emma’s brow twitched as she slowly rose around the desk. “I’m wondering that, too…” she muttered, wary of what else the fairy might be capable of – she had to ask herself, What in the world was Ravana working on down here? And why a fairy?! She knew her mentor to have eccentric passions, and thus concluded it could only be her to explain anything. It was that process that brought her back to her initial reason for entering the lab: “Where’s Ravana? And shouldn’t ~Leah~ be here, too?” A mocking tone spoke Leah’s name, referring to their rivalry over Ravana’s time and attention – something they both deeply vied for.

“They were around here somewhere~” Luluca hummed, still spinning in the air enthusiastically. Having grown another couple inches taller had distracted her from the point that she had known where the other women were, but it failed to cross her mind as something to mention.

It was enough of a lead, at least, to guide Emma towards a real clue. When she next scanned the floor, she discovered an unusual mound of clothes amidst the winded mess – with a pair of leather boots, of which one appeared to be shivering. Emma’s ears perked and she quietly approached; she assumed it could be another fairy, but leering above the boot revealed something more surprising – someone, only half the size of the wandering sprite. She recognized the brunette inside the boot almost instantly: “Ahk! I-Is that– Leah…?”

The sound of her name froze Leah where she was in the corner of her own boot. She had been pacing worriedly, but with Emma looming overhead, her energy sank and her expression turned flat. “H-Hey, Emma…” she dimly greeted. “Uh, h-how about getting me out of here– eek!”

Rather than just pluck out Leah, Emma instead took the entire boot off the floor, lifting it up in a hurry. The fast movement and change of angle jostled Leah harshly, flipped around just as much as the footwear was revolved in Emma’s grasp; she stopped face-down in her boot’s heel, flopped in a graceless position that had her squirming to veil her nudity. Just as she had her chest and crotch covered, the world shook – an act of curiosity from Emma – and shambled her all over again.

“Hey! St-stop that!” Leah squeaked from the insole. An itch of anger pointed out of the hole, but that fury faded under the heterochromic gaze that filled the exit. Her smallness felt much more real than before; “E-Emma…?”

“Well, well, well! It really is you in there…!” Emma giggled, a mischievous slant forming in her stare. “Hah~ What happened to get you stuck in your own boot? Don’t tell me this is what all this machinery is for…”

Gravity twisted against Leah with an intense slope that tumbled her into a roll – down the angle of the boot, to where she was unceremoniously dropped into Emma’s awaiting hand. A shrill noise was squeezed from her when fingers closed around her shrunken body, capturing her in a grab that barely allowed her arms and legs to twitch. As much as she fought to get out of the grasp, she found herself equally clinging to it, most so whenever Emma’s grip loosened and readjusted; while Leah groaned and complained, Emma made her balance worse with great giggles and a playful attitude – none of which Leah was in the mood for, made evident by her boiled-red expression.

“This is priceless~ You look ridiculous, Leah!” Emma laughed, curled forward above the tiny woman in her hand. Her fingers peeled away carefully from the little body, undressing Leah to be looked at – regardless of how her tiny hands pulled or pushed at those digits, failing to control any one of them. The other hand arrived to prod at those exposed slices of skin, stroking down the middle of her belly with a gentle slide, but then tickling the soles of her feet. Each touch resulted in its own unique spasm, though any resistance was easily outmatched by her fist; “Little Leah, hah! Where can I get one for myself? I know just the bookshelf to pose you on, hehe~”

Leah growled as a fingertip rubbed hard into her face, fighting it off with only her cheek. She spat, “None of this is funny, Emma…! S-Something went terribly wrong!”

“Oh, trust me, this is hilarious,” Emma mocked, “you just don’t have the right perspective~” She then glanced at the machinery that had been constructing the conduit, looking up and down its most distinguishing features; “I also couldn’t help but notice how familiar this looks… Almost like it was something I blueprinted.”

“Ugh, Emma…” Leah held her fevered head, realizing then just how annoying the halfkin was about to become. It was an awkward conversation in the making, even before the conduit miraculously shrunk her and Ravana: Leah had stolen blueprints from Emma’s lab. Of course, “borrowed” was how she justified the act, and the order was on Ravana’s behalf – a decision to keep the project secret, for Emma had the unfortunate reputation of leaking information or becoming overly involved. It was a hurdle Leah expected to circumvent once the conduit was running, and her and her partner had access to unlimited power; fate was ironic, and she thus faced the consequences magnified above her. “L-Look… I-I was going to tell you–”

“Spare me the details,” Emma scoffed. She pulled on Leah’s limbs for emphasis. “Clearly you got in over your head, and this is your lesson~ It’s about time nobles like you actually faced some consequences!” That was another stabbing point against the belittled Leah, that she was of noble blood – belonging to a lesser house, but enough for Emma to routinely tease her for. It made no difference to the halfkin, who grew up with a grudge against the rich and privileged, no matter their status; it was something of a dream-come-true to have someone of such prestige wriggling in her fist.

“C-Come on, Emma! If things were the other way around– yowwch!” Leah’s voice sharpened into a shriek when she was suddenly whipped in the ass – punished with a flicking finger, so swiftly hit that her rear was set ablaze with color. Her legs cringed tightly, vaguely defending her butt from a subsequent attack as best as she was permitted; “Stop, stop! Oww…!”

“Ooh, that was a cute noise…!” Emma chuckled, freely rotating Leah around in her grasp so that she might inspect the reddened mark. With two other fingers, she inarguably separated the kicking legs, widening the window that saw her nethers. Leah protested against that perverted peeping, but her high-pitched pleas were muffled quiet when Emma forced her head into her bosom, cushioning any more sound she made. “Calm down, won’t you? It was just a little flick~ Shouldn’t you be tougher than this? Or is this the sort of doll you have to play gently with…?” Spilling over with giggles, Emma dropped to a squat beside the machinery, enthralled with all the temptations of how to humiliate her rival.

Meanwhile, just within Emma’s shadow was the other shrunken woman – Ravana hollered and waved with both arms, trying to earn her apprentice’s attention, but her tiny voice proved too pitiful to reach those feline ears. She had marched across the lab floor to get closer, only to discover just how huge Emma stood, and thus how improbable it would be to be noticed; she had a plan to grab the halfkin’s tail as it hung low, but stimulated as she was with a shrunken Leah, that tail was then curled and perked high away, an expression of her excitement. Ravana thought next to try tapping Emma’s heels, but a flashback to being walked over moments earlier made her reconsider.

“What am I supposed to do…?” Ravana wondered frustratedly, increasingly worried she could be stuck in her shrunken state. That fear spiked when she heard jingling from where the apparatus had fallen apart – “Don’t mess with that!” she suddenly called out, finding that Luluca was seated among the pieces, picking them up and pressing them together at random. Ravana groaned and ran to the fairy, “You could make things so much worse! Quit it!”

Luluca looked away from the artifice and over her shoulder, back to where Ravana was rushing towards her. “Hm…?” She shifted in her seat expecting to stand, but when she twisted around, she found herself already level with Ravana – they saw each other eye-to-eye where Luluca sat, a height difference that staggered the engineer to a stumbled stop, while the fairy lit up with intrigue. “Hey! Did you get even smaller?” she asked, extending a flat palm to measure Ravana’s height. “Oh, oh, or did I get bigger? Let’s compare! Hee-hee!”

Ravana shrilled away under the fairy’s reach, skeptical of being lifted and dropped as Leah was prior. Yet the question was an earnest mystery; she compared herself and Luluca to the pieces of the conduit, all of which appeared smaller than before. “Actually, I believe we both grew,” she answered. After Luluca rose to her feet and loomed over her, Ravana nervously made an addendum: “S-Somehow… you seemed to have grown more. But, why the inconsistency…?”

“I dunno~ but I like it!” Luluca cheered, lifting off the ground in a flutter. She danced around Ravana, measuring herself to her – a nearly doubled difference in proportions, a contrast Luluca deeply enjoyed. “I’ve always been small, even for a fairy~ It’s so much better being big! I never wanna go back – I wanna be even bigger!”

The tone took an intimidating turn for Ravana as she kept huddled under Luluca’s curiosity, but she thought of a way to use that attitude to her advantage. “W-We can look into doing that,” she began, immediately earning the fairy’s attention with that promise. She smirked, “You think you’re big now? The conduit can do much, much more – once it’s working, that is.”

Luluca’s expression sparkled. She bent forward low enough to have her eyes matched with Ravana’s, melting to her influence. “Let’s make it working again! What can I do to help?!”

“I can think of something for you, Luluca,” Ravana replied, singing the creature’s name. She pointed up to the towering halfkin perched on the machinery; “Could you just give me a lift? …Carefully…?”

Emma had become no less enamored over her discovery of her shrunken rival. She had Leah bound in one hand, her arms and legs restrained between fingers so that she could barely shiver; her nude presentation was brought within breathing range, exposed to the humid exhales that were allowed to wash over her bare body. Emma chuckled at her shuddering state; “This is a fair trade, you know~ You borrowed my stuff, I borrow you. Consider it a lesson about asking for someone’s permission…!”

“Emma…! When I return to normal– ergh…!” Leah bit her lip, resisting a comment that would only spell her more trouble. Saying as much as she did was enough to warrant another fingertip brushing under her arm and by her boob – but it was Emma’s breathing and proximity that irritated her the most. She kicked a leg loose and stamped the foot into Emma’s lip; “Back off a bit!!”

Of course, the kick was only a feathery touch, yet Emma retaliated right away. Her tongue lashed out from her lips and swept Leah’s ankle; Leah gasped as her calf was sucked into the mouth, the rest of her body then pressed suddenly into Emma’s face in a hug-like squeeze. Forced even closer to her captor, Leah burned into a rant, her squeaks muffled into the pillowy cheek she was massaged into. Emma’s nose inhaled intensely, stealing Leah’s scent right off her body – the air was shortly laughed back out, ringing Leah’s ears with an obnoxious noise and making her other leg easier to pull between her lips.

“H-Hey, qu-quit that…! Gah– ahh!” Leah sparked into protests as her lower-half gradually disappeared into the mouth. She was being bitten away by plush lips, never scathed but certainly humiliated the more she was drawn in. A hand grabbed at Emma’s nostril piercing, but enough of her body had been taken to be spun into spasms, electrified by the serpentine tongue slithering unseen. “N-No, whoa! E-Emma, wh-what–?!” she gasped, flinching silent as the organ coiled over and between her legs, coating everything it touched with saliva. Leah arched her back in resistance, her face popped with a startled red color; “Hngg!! Yhhaa…!”

Emma snickered, briefly pausing her tongue’s advances. “So easy,” she scoffed smugly, enjoying how her voice rippled through the little body. “Like eating candy~ Mmm! Maybe you’re even sweet enough to eat…?”

In her flustered state, Leah was struck critically by the comment – a very real threat she imagined could happen, thinking ahead of every wet, squelching detail. She stuttered into protest, “E-Emma, d-don’t be rash…! C-C’mon…!” Yet in her voice was a pining – a twinge of desire, made dangerously aroused by the licking tongue that her senses were nearly flipped. She swallowed submissively, “Wh-What are you doing…?”

Emma’s thoughts were no less hazy than her rival’s, lost in a world of power and possibility like she never knew. She thought to respond to Leah, but her instincts needed no explanation, encouraging her to take the leap – push Leah in a little farther, taking on her feisty form like a delectable treat. Hotter breaths escaped her and melted her captive more, as though she could be poured past her lips and effortlessly drank, a temptation that had both women shivering in suspense. Without realizing, Emma was curling her head back, letting Leah sink deeper, up to her chest, trapped in a puckered suction – while her waist-down was enwrapped and explored, becoming charged with stimulation until she was about to burst.

“Emma! Control yourself, won’t you?” The intimate scene was cut by a razor voice, pin-like in pitch but as commanding as ever. Emma’s ears twitched up in fright upon recognizing Ravana’s voice beside her, and her head spun to meet her – she met Luluca first, however, before noticing her mentor held in the fairy’s arms. If Emma meant to respond, her words were mumbled by having Leah between her lips; Ravana stared at that exact issue, “You’ve had plenty of fun, now it’s time to get serious. Spit her out!”

“Err, sure…” Emma’s confidence had been severed, and as ordered, she obediently removed Leah from her mouth and into her hands; the tiny woman was laid out in a daze, still swirled by how she had been used. Emma’s expression remained alert to Ravana, her eyes widening to comprehend her shrunken form, which looked especially tiny while cradled in the grasp of a little fey. Drool was left over her lip while she tried to make sense of what she saw; “Y-You shrunk too, Ravana…? Ahh… H-Had I known, I would’ve–”

“Nevermind that now,” Ravana sighed. “Let me see Leah – make sure you didn’t stun her too terribly…”

Emma offered both palms flat for Ravana, but Luluca invited herself as well to sit down where she reunited the women. Ravana knelt to Leah’s side, grimacing at the saliva that glistened from her lower-half; Leah’s voice cackled with embarrassment and frustration, decidedly not commenting on what had unraveled upon her. Above the pair was Luluca’s enthusiastic smile – beyond content to have two women half her size in front of herself, every finger curling with a touchy temptation. Yet looming over all three was Emma and her flustered expression, eyes zigzagging between the mis-sized figures in her bowl-shaped hands. She felt an awkward pang watching the women move and interact, sensing the distorted effects that made everything abnormal, as though it were a mistake in reality.

But Ravana then turned to the halfkin, her serious disposition contrasting the otherwise silly circumstance. Emma expected to be scolded, but her mentor’s tone was surprisingly soft – “I truly apologize, Emma, for the purloining of your blueprints,” Ravana humbly admitted. “It was always my intent to have you join us in this project, but what Leah and I have been constructing is more than just an artifice experiment. The power we’re playing with her here had to be kept secret, and I had hoped you would understand when I would have explained it to you – eventually.”

Emma was unbalanced by the apology, made especially soft and malleable by Ravana’s mature tone – a voice that always had an easy way of soothing her. She chuckled to reclaim her cool, “I-It was a bit rude, but I suppose I understand~ I’m sure you can make it up to me or something…” Her cheeks blushed, particularly obvious to the tiny women she held. “Mm, how about telling me what this is actually all about then? Maybe before I end up shrinking myself, too…”

Ravana was willing to explain everything while having Emma work while she listened, directing her to collect the parts of the apparatus off the floor – and also away from one another, lest they clink and cause another consequence. She spoke of the conduit’s capabilities to transfer power, which could then be manifested in a number of ways, but most critically was the application to a target’s size. Effectively, it was a tool that could take the mass from one subject, diminishing it in scale, to then be redistributed to any others, magnifying their proportions to the user’s choosing. At its core was a nexus that bent magic and reality, a wrinkle in space – at least, there should have been, as was the fairy’s purpose in the project, a living source of interdimensional energy, but evidently there were more variables Ravana had not calculated. She never had imagined a result such as it was, even if it were a mishap of Luluca’s involvement; it perplexed her that power could be taken, but not exerted somewhere else, that she and Leah shrank without anything having equally grown.

The explanation of the conduit had enraptured more than just Emma. Indeed, all four of the women had their own lofty ambitions visualized in their minds, dreaming of how to use that power for themselves. Emma thought how to use a giant size to dominate and control as she always wished she could; Leah and Ravana recalled their original intentions, to earn revenge against their conspirators and claim more than they had ever lost; Luluca’s fantasy was the simplest of them all, a desire to become bigger than anything or anyone, and explore the world with that exciting perspective. Though their goals were not totally aligned, the group nevertheless developed a feeling of camaraderie – that they were all so close to unlocking that power, no differences between them could disrupt their ability to come together and make it happen.

Emma was thus more than willing to oblige to Ravana’s demands, increasingly eager to put together the apparatus and have the magic conduit functioning again. She carried her engineering mentor on her shoulder, delicately balancing her while moving around the lab and resetting the machinery. As she worked, Luluca was left on a work desk with Leah; the fairy kept herself idle and distracted by lifting and touching Leah, still limp and exhausted from earlier, yet awake enough to whine and complain about how she was being handled – Ravana urged her to endure, for the sake of Luluca not becoming disinterested and fluttering away. She was reminded by Ravana, in fact, that managing the fairy was her task, after all, and so Leah was left being dangled by her arms and caught in overbearing embraces, treated like a doll in Luluca’s possession while the artificers studied and reconstructed the conduit.

Before Leah’s patience could run completely flat, Emma arose from a control panel, having successfully pieced the apparatus back together. Yet as she held the watch-sized device in her hand, her expression was lacking the hype it once had. Ravana, too, was soured with what she had learned; Leah broke the question, “What’s wrong? Sh-Shouldn’t it work now?”

“The ahben rings damaged themselves in a collision,” Emma smugly responded, quick to prove herself capable over Leah, so much so that she continued speaking to Ravana on her shoulder instead. “You would need just as much ahben to bang them back into shape – you’re better off looking for new rings all together. Solid ahben isn’t really meant to get so beat-up, but I guess that’s the degree of power we’re dealing with here…”

“Dammit! So we’re stuck like this?!” Leah complained. Though not an engineer herself, it was common knowledge that ahben was a rare resource – a super material of condensed arcana, capable of channeling incredible feats of magic.

“But I wanna be bigger!” Luluca added, jostling Leah on her lap with her impatient swaying. “When is that gonna happen? Do I have to keep waiting?”

“I won’t permit it,” Ravana affirmed, arms crossed under her chest. “We’ve come too close to risk any more delays. We can obtain more ahben rings from the same source we bought the originals. An expensive option, unfortunately, but–”

Leah groaned, “So we have to get overcharged by Ophellia again?” She fidgeted frustratedly in Luluca’s arms, but the fairy kept her restrained for her amusement. “She nearly cleaned out our coffers once already! She practically is the cost of this project!”

“Money will be the last of our worries soon enough, Leah!” Ravana assured her partner. “Think of what we’re about to achieve here. Another payment to Ophellia is a drop in the sea to what we will soon be able to take for ourselves~”

Emma chimed in with extra superiority, leaning low down to where Leah was on the desk with her fists on her hips. “Yeah! So unless you know how to procure us some ahben rings, you should squeak a little less loudly~” Yet after speaking down on Leah, Emma blinked and glanced at Ravana; “Uh, who’s Ophellia?”

“She is our requisitions manager, so to speak,” Ravana answered, carefully avoiding another awkward topic with Emma – keenly aware of how jealous the halfkin could become because of it. “Everything will be explained at the shipyard. Emma, please hurry and get us all there. I trust you can do this well for me~”

Emma was electrified by Ravana’s faith, and thrilled when her mentor stroked her neck with a teasing touch. As if on a leash to Ravana’s wrist, she sprung into motion and collected the apparatus pieces, cautiously packing them into separate pockets. She had to pry one such ring away from Luluca when the fairy failed to hide a piece behind her back; Emma wondered if Luluca even had to come along, but was told of her importance to the conduit’s functionality. She accepted allowing Luluca to fly on her own nearby, and left Ravana perched on her shoulder to be carried, but when it came to transporting Leah, Emma had a more mischievous method in mind. She plucked Leah up between two fingers and brought her above the collar of her shirt, dropping the two-inch tall woman tumbling into her cleavage. Leah was frantic under the fabric of the shirt, slipping along the skin until she was squished into position by Emma’s bust shifting around her presence. Within that grasp of skin, Leah struggled and argued, but since no one could convince Emma otherwise, she was soon off and out of the college labs, making haste to the shipyard – a haste that bounced Leah into perpetual dizziness, her complaints unheard.

Waves crashed and dock bells rang. It was a bustling day for the shipyard, as it usually were, with suppliers and sailors hurrying around to move stock into storehouses, or to get ships in and out of the docks. The shipyard was, afterall, the hub of commerce for Ship’s Haven, a point of crossroads for a variety of cultures found throughout Liedinis. The resources and treasures that passed through were what gave Ship’s Haven its legacy, and those responsible for such trades were in unique positions of influence, profiting a cut off of every trade – both legal and criminal.

It was through connections of the latter variety that Ravana became familiar with Ophellia, the infamous overseer of Ship’s Haven’s smuggling circuit. On the surface of society, Ophellia was a profoundly successful businesswoman, managing a variety of businesses that allowed her hands across a multitude of different trades; it was with that access and power that she made a name for herself in the underground, supercharging the criminal trading scene while simultaneously keeping it stabilized. These two sides of her were like day and night – appropriate for a vampire, whose immortal life was another boon to her rise, more than two-hundred years of wisdom hidden behind her young, aristocratic demeanor. Like many details of her life, Ophellia’s vampirism was a well-kept secret, but it was something Ravana knew of her – an important force of leverage that kept the two working together, despite rarely ever seeing one another eye to eye.

In her shrunken state, Ravana prepared herself to use every bit of leverage she had, predicting Ophellia to be stubborn. She had already groveled to the blackmarket overseer once before to obtain the ahben rings initially; she would certainly have to go through that all over again to purchase another set, if she could persuade her that far. She strategized for exactly that as she sat perched on Emma’s shoulder, en route to Ophellia’s private docks – no less were they interrupting her in daytime hours, but Ravana would also have to convince Ophellia that her project was progressing well enough to stay invested in. Proof to the contrary, however, was her and Leah’s diminished conditions, a result of that very project going awry. What the vampire sought to profit was the power to energize her immortal existence – not to be reduced to pygmy height, thus far all the magic conduit had been able to achieve.

While Ravana stressed silently, her halfkin escort to the shipyard had much less weighing on her mind, and was in fact enthused with the current situation as she walked through the busy streets. Pedestrians were too caught up in their own affairs to pay much mind to Emma and the “dolls” she carried with her – or played with, as was the case with how she handled Leah. To her, Emma was purposefully overbearing, making the most of their power difference while it lasted. After having stashed Leah in her bra for most of the walk, Emma later retrieved her to admire her status – noticing particularly how she was lathered in the sweat of her cleavage, her hair plastered with wetness, her stamina drained and exhausted. The pitiful image both amused Emma and also tempted her with urges that she could happily play out unrestrained.

“Aww, why the gloomy attitude?” Emma asked mischievously, speaking her words chillingly close to Leah’s little body. “Are you disappointed that you don’t get to stay shrunk like this for longer~? I know, I know, we were only just starting to have fun!”

Leah aimed her frustration aside with a scoff. She had hoped by staying silent, she would avoid the risk of upsetting Emma, but without a reaction, she was then prodded by a persistent finger, ticked intensely on one side exposed between the giant fingers. Spasms instantly broke her body out of weakness, “Pfft– S-Stop it, n-no!! He-heh-hh!! Q-Quit it– ffuhahaha!!”

Emma’s tail whipped rapidly behind her. “See~? You seem so much happier being my little toy! Do you even want to change back…?”

“Ahahhaa…! I-I’m gonna k-kill you!!” After some straining, Leah successfully pulled an arm free from the fist that bound her, but with it, she was only able to smack helplessly at Emma’s hand, much of her energy spent on laughing until she was sore. “C-Come on!! Ahg-ah-hah…! S-Stop…!”

“Mm? Would you rather I do something worse?” Emma hissed playfully, her heterochromic eyes clearly glistening with creatively mean ideas. “Maybe I ought to tie you up nice and tight~ and dangle you around for the rest of the way?” Her grip changed, so that Leah was held by a pinch on one leg; the rest of her spilled upside-down in a vulnerable pose, still shivering in the wake of the tickle attack. “Or maybe there’s other places I could stow you away…? You could easily make this walk so much more entertaining for me~”

Dread traveled down to Leah’s head as she imagined a few such places and the horrid conditions each would have in store for her. She spun into wiggles when Emma’s hand began drifting her lower to her legs, where the hem of her skirt was being curled in her other hand – “No! No!” Leah gasped, shot with a red color all over her naked body. “N-Not there…!”

Emma loved to hear the whimpering from her plaything, but her teasing ceased when her chin and cheek were scratched by a tiny hand. Ravana had reached over and offered affection that tamed Emma’s temptations, at least for the time being. “Try not to get distracted,” Ravana sighed. “Ophellia can be a very serious person. We can’t afford for her to get the wrong impression.”

“It’s just a little bit of fun~” Emma purred, made so loose by Ravana’s touch that she nearly let Leah slip out from between her fingers – Leah, in fact, had to struggle to keep herself from falling, clinging to the halfkin’s hand in a desperate embrace. Ignoring her, Emma turned a curious expression to Ravana. “How about changing places with her~? I bet you wouldn’t complain so annoyingly…~”

The comment made Ravana wince, and the two unrolled into back and forth banter. In the meantime, Luluca seized the opportunity while they were distracted – she had been fluttering alongside Emma as directed, but what truly motivated her to follow was the potential of the conduit. When the chance presented itself, the fairy stealthily swooped into Emma’s satchel, undoing the buttons with an eager smile. She shuffled through the contents quickly, digging waist-deep into the main pocket, her legs hanging outside and kicking with bits of effort. Rustling around there, Luluca was well-enough hidden from view as Emma passed through Ophellia’s shipyard security, slipping completely inside so that she could uncover that most fascinating item.

Emma was led to a courtyard that overlooked the docks, where she and the others would wait while a servant went to fetch Ophellia from the ship she was inspecting – a majestic galleon that unloaded supplies, swarmed by sailors and dockhands diligently doing their work. The busy scene earned only a glance from Emma before, left alone, her interest spiraled back onto her shrunken companions. She sat on a stone bench in front of a fountain fixture, letting her satchel drop off her shoulder and beside her feet; knowing she had only a precious few minutes to enjoy her power thrill, she acted energetically to savor the most of the moment.

“Here we are – I did my part~” Emma coyly affirmed, holding each woman’s body in a separate fist. Whereas Ravana squirmed and struggled, Leah lay limp in submission, saving her energy for resisting something worse – as forewarned by Emma’s cunning grin. “Now, let me have just a little fun…”

“Th-There’ll be plenty of time for that later, Emma!” Ravana growled, disgruntled to have her subordinate taking such a superior attitude. “O-Once the conduit is functioning, we can– ghh! Hey– a-a-ah!!” Her protesting was cut short by a squish over her torso, the movement of a thumb combing her front before settling squarely on top of her chest. Both hands grabbed the edge of that digit to push it away, but Emma overpowered her, free to swirl the pad of her thumb over Ravana’s breasts, exploring the concentrated dots of softness with an almost-drooling stare. Ravana gasped heatedly, “E-Emma!!” but her spat only caused the halfkin to venture elsewhere. Uncontested, her fingers went around Ravana’s shape, curling around her curvature and wriggling between her legs, all places that jostled entertaining reactions from her toy-sized mentor.

But not yet forgetting about Leah, Emma included her as well, feeling her body once over with her fingers before springing into a humiliating idea. In a bout of laughter, Emma combined the two women in her hands, pressing their forms forcefully together, front to front – “Hey!” both piqued, wrestling against one another in exactly the way Emma wished. Her fingers remained in total control over their shrunken bodies, twisting their heads to face one another so that they could be squeezed together in a “kiss” – similarly were their limbs forced around one another, manipulated like dolls that were being shoved into each other’s unwanting embrace. Emma was keen on studying how their features fought for dominance: Leah’s breasts overwhelming Ravana’s, Ravana’s legs sliding up and down Leah’s, their hands grabbing and groping in attempts to separate.

“Heh-heh~ You two have grown so close together under my nose…!” Emma mocked, squishing the two women in pulses of tightness. A rich blush had spread over her face, a kink flaring to the surface of her ego; power and control were regular turn-ons, but she had never experienced so much of either, wielding two women as effortlessly as she did. Her smile cracked further, “I-Is this the sort of thing you’ve been doing without me…? Hah~ Show me! Do you two do things like this…?”

Neither woman had time to argue before Emma had them repositioned another way, with Leah held lower to Ravana – her head made level with her crotch, where she was then bound for, carried by Emma’s desires. Leah’s shock was frozen on her face as she was pushed into place, shoved in between Ravana’s legs, regardless of how hard she tried to bend her neck away. Ravana closed her legs and lifted them away, but long fingers pried them back apart, creating an opening where Leah’s writhing head was fitted – an impact that shot a squeak from Ravana’s throat, a mix of embarrassment and arousal affecting the pitch to be ever delightful to Emma’s feline ears. Even when Leah turned to stone, she was provoked into shivered movements when a roll of touches tickled her back to life, and so too was Ravana trilled into a moan, flushed with arousal she did not mean for – not within the hands of her engineer pupil, not under the daylight and blue sky. Yet it mattered not how either struggled to refrain, as Emma insisted on the cunnilingus, her purr-like giggles pouring over the two relentlessly.

The halfkin was far too enthused with how she played to notice a fairy pilfering her satchel. She remained unaware that Luluca had strung the rings of the apparatus around her arms and waist, struggling slightly to pull them all at once – too impatient to move them one at a time, she jangled with every effort to get out of the bag, yet even that noise went undetected by Emma up above. Luluca never bothered to look at her, too eager to utilize the size-shifting device regardless of whoever might try to stop her. Holding all the rings around her in a messy fashion, Luluca joyously spread her arms – but nothing happened. She jostled the rings, shook her hips, bounced up and down, but with the rings as they were, no magic was being invoked.

Though her smile faded, her curiosity only shined brighter. “C’mon! I wanna be bigger!” she whined, disrobing the rings from her body and arranging them in front of her on the courtyard stone. “I know you can work… What if I put you like this?” She set them one way at her bare feet, then another; “Mm, this…? What about this…?”

But it was the moment she stepped in the center of the rings that small sparks ignited from the metal, resonating with one another to generate energy. Luluca was still guessing the next arrangement to attempt when the apparatus was floating around her again, catching her by surprise – a gasp of excitement, her eyes popping as wide as her mouth, feeling the tickle of power coursing around and through her. “Yeah, yeah…!” Luluca chuckled mischievously, darker than she realized; she fluttered off the ground, and the rings followed her upward, connected to her magical core.

What the whimsical fairy failed to understand, however, was that the brokenness of the ahben material meant her power was unstable, yet with how enthused she was, it was unlikely it would have stopped her anyway. Luluca lifted her arms and waved carelessly, gestures that easily could have swept the area with effects – it did not matter to her, as long as she could make herself grow. Of course, she had no regard for when she sensed the resonant field reach outward and claim the others in its radius, not realizing how it would alter them as well. The instant she registered a chance to expand herself, Luluca laughed and allowed the magic loose.

Emma was enthralled with her own entertainment at the time, squishing her two captives together, happy to disregard their pleas to stop. She massaged their chests together, poring over top of them as she watched their different nudities push and grope. Even when the fur of her tail pricked up as if strung with static, she continued to caress Ravana and Leah into each other, biting her lip and sweating droplets. “This is what you do behind my back, right~? Doing naughty stuff in the lab and keeping it a secret~ But you can’t hide anything from me! I wonder what else you two would do when no one was looking…?”

Before she could inflict another position upon the shrunken pair, Emma had to pause, overtaken by that tingling feeling. With a woman in each fist, she stood up in a jump of reflexes, itched with an unfamiliar feeling – but which Ravana and Leah both recognized, dazed as they were from being treated like dolls. Only then did Emma look over her shoulder to see Luluca afloat with the conduit, practically dancing while the rings spun in unbalanced revolutions. Not yet exposed to the phenomenon first-hand, Emma was caught off-guard in the magic’s glow and whirling winds; Ravana and Leah, meanwhile, wriggled furiously in her fists, aware of what was about to occur but helpless to defend themselves. Emma flinched behind her arms when she sensed a wave of power approaching, holding the two women forward – only for the magic to pulse through them all, a force that staggered Emma backwards with electrified twinges.

When Emma opened her eyes, she expected to see the world from an ironic perspective, shrunken to the same heights as the two she had been toying with, but rather than be taken lower to the ground, she felt herself launching farther from it, shooting up several feet taller. The development was announced with a violent rip, the sound of her uniform stressing and tearing all over, failing to contain her unexpected growth without unraveling. Her new size came to her in the middle of a stumbled step, a jump that tripped her onto her ass, emphasized with a heavier thump than normal. Emma twisted her legs under her, awkwardly positioning herself in the more narrow surroundings between the fountain fixture and a garden wall; she used the latter to hoist herself forward, revealing her confused expression. While adjusting to her stranger proportions, her movements were heavy and gangly, very unlike her usual poise and sharpness, that she was afraid even to stand up and risk tripping over from a taller height. Cramped in that path, she looked to the glowing mechanism of the conduit, swayfully spinning in the air, responsible for changing her size.

But she soon realized that she was not alone in the transformation, when she remembered Ravana and Leah – now engulfed in her fists, disappeared into them completely. Emma could still feel their rumbling under her fingers, such weak bumps of effort from either hand; opening them exposed two dots of the naked women, much smaller than they should have been. Puzzlingly, while the halfkin was made to grow because of the conduit, her two captives shrank even tinier, reduced by a comparable fraction. Emma’s awe honed in on the pair, brought in front of her eyes so she could more closely observe their tiny responses; they were tilted and pinched by her curiosity, never given a chance to speak up or assess their situation, treated like trinkets under Emma’s gaze of fascination.

“Huh? Wha-a?!” Luluca gasped from her centered spot amidst the moving rings, stung with disappointment. “How come you got bigger? Y-You’re big enough! I was supposed to be made bigger!” It may have been her intention, but she had less control of the conduit than she thought; she hardly changed at all, compared to the effects on the others. The fairy looked at the rings, forgetting entirely that they were even broken, unaware how unstable the field was – “It did what I wanted earlier…! How does this silly thing work?”

“You little moth…!” Emma growled as she leaned ahead, prowling low to the courtyard. She grimaced as she moved, each motion causing more of her clothes to rip and expose more stripes of skin. “What did we tell you?! Don’t play with that! Y-You’re going to get us all stuck like this!”

“Nuh-uh!” Luluca argued, defensively dashing away in the air. “I’ll make you all normal, I promise! …Right after I get bigger! J-Just one more momen– eeeik!” Failing to convince the looming halfkin, Luluca had to evade being grabbed, nimbly swerving around the closed fists that swung after her; with every attempt, she had a glimpse of the shrunken women already in Emma’s grasp, neither responding well to being thrown back and forth. The fairy’s smaller size proved faster than Emma’s gangly reaches, but as the distance was closed, she had less and less room to buzz about – forcing her to protect herself with another wave of conduit energy.

The apparatus hummed erratically as its field distorted once again – another boom of magic, and another instantaneous effect. Just as Emma stood up to make a leaping attack, she was stalled by the conduit’s pulse, gasping as she felt her height drop dramatically and completely change her momentum. Her own speed undid herself when she tripped over her uniform, her feet slipping through the holes she tore open earlier. Fallen flat on her face, she meekly comprehended her shrunken status – a fraction of how tall she just was, an even half of her regular size. Emma rose with a bundle of her oversized clothes held around her, only then noticing Ravana and Leah stumbled on the ground at her feet, no bigger than they were before.

Indeed, the size taken from Emma was not distributed to her companions, but was instead absorbed into Luluca. She was boosted immediately, jumping in height the same way Emma was reduced, with a reaction that was aptly more opposite – kicking and fidgeting, she was a ball of amusement as she expanded, happily watching her arms and legs grow longer, thrilled to feel her weight become more substantial. She twirled from joy when the transformation was complete: from her mere inches of height, Luluca had leaped dramatically to roughly five feet tall, passable for a young human woman if her body was not otherwise so lithe and fairy-featured.

Her feet were then planted on the ground, no longer afloat; having grown so significantly, her own landing felt like powerful impacts, as if she were tremendously bigger than she actually was. “Boom…! Wow! I-It’s all so small now…!” Luluca giggled, spinning twice with enthusiasm over her less-sprawling surroundings – regardless of how the grandiose architecture of the shipyard was still far overhead from her. So amazed as she was, she was late to notice the apparatus at her hand, unchanged in size and thus no longer orbiting around her, but instead fitting in her possession like it was meant to be used. Inspiration almost instantly struck her, and she lifted the conduit upward, ready to utilize it again–

“Drop it!!” Emma snarled from the side, cutting off Luluca mid-motion. From where she had been shrunken, the halfkin slipped out from the tattered fabrics, aiming an intense glare at the fairy – prepared to pounce before she could cause more havoc. She placed Ravana and Leah on either bare shoulder, haphazardly having them hang onto her so she could dash ahead; they shrieked, yet successfully held on, as Emma leaped at Luluca in a burst of speed, ramming into her winged-back with all-fours, just before she could make a flying getaway. “This isn’t a game! You’ve gone too far!”

Though Emma was almost half the size of her target, her dexterity and persistence were enough to stay latched to Luluca, making her stumble and sway in attempts to swing her off. “N-Not fair! You got to have fun being the big one…!” she complained, rapidly drumming down the stairs into the docks as she wrestled with Emma on her back. “It’s my turn! J-Just a few more growths…!”

“Nrgh! No! No more growths!” Emma growled, wrapping her arms around Luluca’s neck. “You’re going into a bottle where you belong after this!”

The two danced disruptively through the business of the shipyard, springing the sailors with surprise wherever they weaved – an unusual sight to see a half-sized halfkin riding an oversized fairy throughout their workplace. Worse yet was that in Luluca’s attempts to wriggle free, she unintentionally provoked the power of the magic conduit from her hand, spreading disorder at random. A barrel in a sailor’s arms was suddenly shrunk out of his grasp, while another’s barrel ballooned without warning, toppling them both over; caches of crates disappeared, but an anchor nearby tripled in size, breaking through the wood underneath and crashing into the water. No one knew how to respond to such spontaneous magic, all scrambling to avoid the conflict – except for one woman at the end of the dock, her poise and elegance undisturbed as the messy situation came towards her and her private galleon like a twister.

Luluca had finally managed to remove Emma’s claw-like grip from her shoulders, casting the halfkin behind her. Emma expertly landed on two feet, but froze where she was; Luluca mocked her as she continued away, only to then turn and run face-first into a solid force – not a wall, but the walking cane belonging to Ophellia, refusing to budge much like her grace refused to be sullied. The fairy fell backwards on her butt, rubbing the center of her face and looking up at the tall, noble woman that obstructed her; adorned in a crimson gown, a wide-brimmed hat cast a gloomy shadow down the socialite’s narrow shape, an eerie color that sent a shiver down the fairy’s spine. The shadows of her fashion almost hid her pale face and furrowed brow, dampening the anger that was otherwise in her eyes, beaming at the menaces that had thrown her shipyard into disarray.

“...What is the meaning of this?” Ophellia asked, her tone as cold as a graveyard – the crew closest to her had chills when they heard that voice. She inferred the two strangers in front of her; “Runts? Running amok on my docks?” She glanced at the mayhem behind Luluca and Emma, all the mis-sized contents and the chaos caused, then at the magic conduit. “Some sort of sorcery…? Tch. Who is responsible for you two?”

Emma was inclined to approach, stepping forward stiffly, tail tucked between her legs. She whimpered, “Th-That would be… her.” She lifted a hand for Ophellia to look at, the fingers unfolding to reveal Ravana, not much bigger than a grain of rice. The engineer was nude, disheveled, and dazzled by all the movements she had been put through; she was laid bent-forward on her knees and face when Emma exposed her, exhausted and depleted, her arms too aching to help her up. Yet she felt that was demanded of her when she eventually sensed the judgment of a giant weighing on her, the stare from a mountain-sized elite. Ophellia was always an oppressive character with an intimidating aura, but to the scale relative to Ravana, she was as compelling as a myth brought to life, as huge as her infamous fleet of ships.

“...Ravana. I should have known sooner.” Ophellia’s sigh was a grim wind that breezed over the shrunken woman, a breath not at all warm like an ordinary human’s. She permitted herself to pluck Ravana up in a pinch of fingers, removing her from Emma’s palm; leaving a finger extended, she expected Ravana to stand pitifully upon it like a platform, held level with her piercing eyes. “Is this meant to entertain me? Because as amused as it might make me, I prefer an explanation for why your associates here are disrupting my affairs…”

“O-Ophellia… pl-please try to understand…” Ravana spoke shiveringly, putting together the confidence to stand and raise her voice. From the lowly place of the finger of her primary investor, she struggled to think about anything else except how disappointingly small she was – the exact opposite of what her invention was meant to do. “There were, err, unexpected problems when it came to the conduit project…”

Ophellia groaned, bending an ear to the tiny woman. “Speak up,” she ordered sternly, “or otherwise I might be convinced you really are a bug needing to be flicked away… Now, what of the conduit?”

“I-It’s functioning!” Ravana stressed, yelling so she could be understood – and taken seriously. “It’s how we ended up this way! We found a power source – her! The fairy!”

“Is that so…?” Almost impressed, Ophellia leered at Luluca, who had remained seated on the dock – hypnotized by the warbling movement and noise of the apparatus that she held far in front of herself. It was clear to anyone, engineer or not, that the device was becoming increasingly erratic, its orbiting rings unraveling fast with wider, inconsistent revolutions. Ophellia hesitated to remark, “Wh-What is it doing…?”

There was no time for an answer, not when there was a lighting-like spark that blinded every observer, a zoom of noise that split through eardrums. The winds that the apparatus had been rolling were suddenly unleashed in an explosion just the same as at the college lab, an eruption of energy that blew over stacks of barrels and sent sailors stumbling backwards. The seawater was roused into waves that tipped and tilted the boats along the dock, but one ship among them – Ophellia’s prized galleon – was the target of the conduit’s power. Not simply rocked around like the other vessels, the long galleon found itself dwindling away, reducing suddenly just before anyone’s eyes yet recovered. Yet it was obvious to everyone that Ophellia’s private ship was entirely missing – excitement and uneasiness brewed, until the galleon was then pointed out by astonished sailors, down almost beneath the docks. Ophellia was agasp at what magic had occurred: her beautiful galleon, from which she had disembarked only moments ago, was reduced to model scale, floating atop little waves that threatened to capsize her like a discarded toy.

And that included the crew onboard, the hundred men that managed the once-mighty vessel, whether they were above or below deck to realize magic was afoot. There was a commotion onboard as the predicament struck them like a snap storm, blindsided by their belittled status; they were suddenly lost at sea, but the truth was that the ship bobbed in the water, nearly outmatched by ordinary tides. Ophellia was speechless, but was the first to react, hurrying to the platforms below where she could retrieve her property – before it could be taken away like driftwood.

Of all the awestruck responses from the crowd, the most impressed expression came from Luluca, who stood at the very edge of the pier, looking down at the surface where Ophellia was rushing towards. Her eyes sparkled over the spectacle, how the vessel diminished before her very eyes, becoming almost as little as she was – as she was supposed to be, not the human-like scale she had made herself, a size that she was still unsettled with. Indeed, after seeing the galleon nearly dwindle away, Luluca felt a spring of inspiration inside run free; she stared into the revolving rings of the conduit floating in her grasp, vibrating with unseeable energy, wondering what it would take to tap into that power…

“Oh-ho-oh no you don’t!” a growl called to the fairy from behind, urging her to turn – and realize that Emma was behind her, posed to pounce her once again. “Drop it! Haven’t you done enough?!”

Luluca gasped sharply, and cornered at the edge where she was, she desperately took to the air with her wings, trying to fly away. Before she could get too high up, Emma dashed to her and made a leap to grab her by the ankle – enough to pull her back down with a tug of weight, making the fairy spiral back towards the dock. Luluca wailed as she was spun down, failing to kick the cat-woman off her leg, until she was dropped to the floor with a thud.

That impact caused the conduit to jostle away from Luluca’s hand, bouncing out of reach while it still hummed and buzzed with a charge of energy. All eyes watched the device in suspense as it fell, seemingly lightweight and inconsequential. That was until the moment it struck the ground – boo-oooowwwm! A pulse of energy released in an outburst, sweeping outward in a radius that reached the full length of the pier in an instant. But in that same moment, the apparatus became undone, its rings clattering and separating, each piece bounding for a different direction. Without it, there was no direction of the energy, nothing controlling it, and no way to predict what it would next do.

After that low-bass sound of noise erupted, everyone expected an explosive result, but rather than chaos breaking loose all at once, there was instead a staggering quiet. That field of energy, once having extended so far, warped back to where it originated, just as suddenly as it had spread. The various size-changing effects that had bolted the dock were then gradually undone with the energy’s absence, overgrown or shrunken things returning to normal – and that included people, too, with Ravana and Leah most notably appearing from almost nothing, shambled as they were without any clothes on. Similarly did Emma grow to her ordinarily-tall height, proportions that made pinning the fairy much easier; Luluca hardly struggled under the halfkin’s weight, dim and disappointed that her fun was being reversed.

Yet, while all else transformed to normal without the conduit’s stability, Luluca remained as big as she had made herself. More curiously, however, was the state of the galleon – unchanged from its shrunken scale, it was picked up out of the harbor and in Ophellia’s arms, cradled like it were a delicate basket. She looked at the activity stirring on the deck, all the tiny sailors scrambling around, perplexed by the giant world around them; as Ravana and the others regained their bearings, they too looked at Ophellia and her shrunken ship, each struck with wonder over the numerous implications of what the magic conduit was capable of.

“...You,” Ophellia spoke, her voice cutting through the crowd to prick Luluca’s ears. The fairy squirmed under Emma, unable to escape like she was so used to doing. When Ophellia was close enough, she shivered and closed her eyes, prepared to be punished – “...You… are very important,” Ophellia continued coldly, “so you will stay with me… while my associates construct a new conduit.” She glared at Ravana and Leah, sending chills over both of them; “These ahben rings will pay for themselves, won’t they?”

Ravana stuttered an answer, “A-Absolutely, ma’am! I-I promise, when the conduit is functioning again, we will–”

“I will make use of its power,” Ophellia stated, her fingers crawling over the sides of the ship with a slight, devilish grin. “And you will be grateful for whatever I spare for you and your companions.”

Having no more orders to give, Ophellia walked forward and through the crowd, passing Ravana, Leah, and Emma with a ghostly air as she wordlessly went to her estate – her galleon in tow, still bustling with a shrunken crew. Ravana bit her tongue, remaining totally silent as Ophellia left; Leah could not restrain a low hiss of frustration over her lack of credit, but otherwise looked to her partner for direction. Emma then approached them, but only with a claw-like grip on Luluca’s shoulders, pushing her along so that she would not try and flee – but fleeing seemed like nothing that the fairy desired, proving bubbly and ecstatic compared to the exhaustion that hung over everyone else. Despite plainly being told that she was a key for someone else’s machine, Luluca’s optimism persisted, appearing eager to do anything if it meant another chance at becoming big– bigger than anything has become yet.

“So, so…!” Luluca sang, swaying energetically where she was forced to stand. “When do we get to play next?!”