Macro/Micro GTS Vore stories by Gastric Aztec

[GastricAztec]

”Micromage & Vector Girl”


Chapter 2: Enter Amnesio

The gunman aimed the machine gun at Moxie as she tried to think of an excuse for Mike's disappearance.

"Am I talkin' to a brick wall? I said where's your partner?"

"There was nobody else here!" Moxie said defiantly.

"We handcuffed you two by two!" the man said. "Where's that friend of yours who tried to pick a beef with Shank?”

"How the heck should I know? I just look out for myself!"

The gunman flagged down the leader. "Vertigo! We've got a problem over here! One of the hostages escaped, and this little chick knows something about it!"

Vertigo, the leader, approached Moxie. “These machine guns are real, so I strongly suggest you cooperate!”

Moxie answered: "He used a neutrino dissimilator device attached to his belt to shrink down to an inch tall! Right now, he's in the ventilator shaft, trying to find that underground vault!"

Vertigo pulled out a walkie-talkie and said into it: "We've got a bogie in the ventilator shaft!"

Vertigo put the walkie-talkie away and pulled out a set of keys. "Un-cuff yourself and come with me!"

Meanwhile, Mike was at the edge of a vertical ventilation shaft. He found a hole he could hook a carabiner to, and used the coil of cable built into the back of his costume to lower himself down. Lights built into his costume illuminated the metal chasm below.

When he got to the bottom, he found the screen that circulated air to the underground vault the leader had spoke of.

Just then, Mike heard a crackle of static and then he heard Moxie’s voice on his wrist-radio.

"Mike! They've got me!"

"Moxie!” Mike responded, but her voice was replaced by the voice of the gangleader.

"I've got your little girlfriend! Now I want you to find the access elevator that leads to the vault!"

"I'll do whatever you ask!" Mike said into his wrist-radio. "What's in the vault that's so valuable?"

"You let me worry about that!" Vertigo answered.

When Mike cut through the ventilation screen, the lights built into his costume illuminated the interior of the vault.

On two sides of a pathway were stacks of gold and silver bars stacked from floor to ceiling. Mike jumped from his perch to the nearest gold bar. The door to an elevator was built into the wall nearest him. Since Mike was an inch tall, he was able to maneuver to the elevator control panel. Mike pushed the button, and the door opened. There were lights built into the ceiling of the elevator, so he shut off the lights in his suit to conserve his batteries.

Now Mike had the problem of reaching the interior control panel now that he was inside the elevator. He accomplished this by finding a bolt on the ground, and threw it toward the UP button. On the third attempt, Mike hit his target. When the doors started to slide shut, Mike raced out into the vault.

Mike keyed his wrist-radio: "Okay! I did my part! I sent up the elevator!"

Back on ground level, Vertigo heard Mike's transmission. His men had used a blowtorch to cut through the metal gate that had concealed the ground floor elevator door, but they had been unable to get it to work.

When the door opened, Vertigo smiled as three of his gunmen got in, and patted Moxie on the shoulder. He spoke into his walkie-talkie: "Great job, Micromage! You've kept your end of the bargain!"

Vertigo took a closer look at Moxie, to admire his handiwork. She was bound in two pairs of handcuffs, one on her left wrist, and one on her right. The other loop of each pair of handcuffs was connected to a huge timebomb that Moxie was sitting on.

Meanwhile, Mike was climbing the cable back up the vertical ventilation shaft. Once he reached the top, he coiled the cable back up in case he needed it again, then he raced back to where he had first entered.

Climbing out, Mike saw that Moxie was no longer cuffed to the clothes rack where he had left her. After looking around, Mike spotted her handcuffed to the timebomb.

The criminals were carrying loads of gold bars out to their van. At one inch tall, Mike was able to follow them without being spotted.

Mike raced out the door and under the van. He uncoiled his cable, and flung it over the front suspension. He connected the carabiner to the cable, and climbed up.

Once he was on top of the suspension, it was easy for Mike to climb up into the engine and disconnect the wire that connected the coil to the distributor.

"These idiots aren't going anywhere!" Mike said to himself.

Mike ran under each of the three vans, and pulled the coil wires from them, too. Mike found a sewer grate, and tossed the three wires in. After the vans were loaded up with gold bars, the bandits piled in, shut the doors, and tried to drive away. Of course, the ignitions didn't work, and about that time, about a dozen police cars pulled up. The reason it took so long for them to get there was because the crooks had clipped the phone lines to the mall, and a bystander had to call them on a cell-phone.

As the police apprehended the crooks, Mike ran back into the mall to check on Moxie. She was still handcuffed to the timebomb.

"We only have 20 minutes left, Mike! Go get the cops!" Moxie shouted to Mike.

When Mike ventured back outside, the police were afraid to enter the building, convinced there might be more gunmen inside. Mike used the neutrino assimilator function of his suit to return to normal size.

"Hey, flatfoot!" Mike shouted to the nearest cop. "We've got a girl hand-cuffed to a timebomb inside! You've got to get the keys from the gangleader!"

After adjusting to Mike’s outlandish costume, the officer went inside and saw that it was just as Mike had said. The police brought bolt cutters, and freed Moxie. With Mike standing next to her, she was interviewed by the throngs of reporters that had gathered outside the mall. The bomb squad was brought in, and the timebomb was de-activated.

Mike shrank and returned to normal size while television cameras were aimed at him as he did this, so his shrinking ability was now public knowledge.

When the interviews were at last over, Mike and Moxie walked back to the Micromobile. A man in a business suit was leaning against Mike's car.

"Can I help you?" Mike asked.

"Are you Mike Roman and Moxie Miller?” the man asked.

"Yes!" Mike and Moxie said simultaneously.

"Are you two going to be in southern California tomorrow night?"

"Yes," Mike answered, "in fact, we're on our way there as soon as we leave here!"

The man handed Mike a business card. "I represent a well-known Hollywood producer, and I've been asked to invite the two of you to a party in Bel-Air tomorrow evening. Dakota Ryan will be there!”

“I’ve seen all of her movies!” said Moxie.

Mike looked at the address on the back of the card, thanked the man, and put the card in the glove compartment.

Soon they were on the highway. Mike drove from southern Arizona to San Diego, California, where Mike and Moxie ate at a fancy restaurant. Then they were back on the highway again, driving north to Bel-Air. It was night time when they arrived at their hotel.

After the long drive, Mike was tired, so he crashed out and slept for about twelve hours. When he finally woke up to eat breakfast, it was after 11:00 a.m. in the morning and Moxie was reading the electronic tablet given to them by the time travelers.

"What're you doing?" Mike asked.

"While you were asleep, I started reading about the features built into the equipment given to us by those people from the future.”

“Did you find anything interesting?” Mike asked.

“Yes, you have a neural stimulator that you can use to make someone vomit you back up if you get swallowed!”

“That sounds crucial, hopefully I’ll never need to use it.” Mike looked at his watch. “Today's my day to work out, if you want to come with me, let's go!"

The duo got into the Micromobile, and Mike drove them to a gym not far from their hotel. Mike worked his triceps and chest, and Moxie worked out, too. She was trying to enlarge the size of her arms by doing triceps exercises, and she also did squats to build up her thighs. After a couple of hours of working out, they hit the showers, then went to an exclusive restaurant in Bel-Air where the waiters knew Mike, because he always ate there when he was in the Los Angeles area.

As Moxie finished her dessert (Mike didn't have dessert, just two orders of chicken breast, brown rice and broccoli, as well as two glasses of milk), Moxie pondered the invitation they had received at the mall in Arizona where the bandits had held up the place.

"Are you going to that party?" Moxie asked.

"The one that producer invited us to?" Mike asked.

"Yeah!" Moxie replied.

"It's still kind of early in the afternoon... he didn't really give us a time, so I guess it's okay if we show up a little early!"

Mike left a hundred dollar bill as a tip, and the two of them got back into the Micromobile and headed toward the party.

When they arrived at the address, it was a mansion. Valets took the Micromobile, and Mike and Moxie approached the door. A man standing at the door looked at the guest list, and Mike and Moxie were on the list. He ushered the two of them inside.

When they got inside, there were no celebrities, just producers in business suits and their families. There was a bar where a bartender was serving drinks, but Mike didn't want to take any chances. If Moxie threw a scene because she didn't want him to drink, then it would look like Moxie wore the pants in their relationship.

"Why are there no stars hanging out here?' Moxie asked. "I was hoping to bump into Dakota Ryan."

"Maybe it's just a party of producers and directors," said Mike.

Moxie approached some of the kids, while Mike hung out by himself.

"Hi!" Moxie said to one of the girls.

"Hey!" the girl replied, "you must be Moxie, from the Micromage & Vector-Girl videogame!"

"Yeah, that's me!" Moxie replied.

"My little brother loves that game!" the girl added. "I've never played the game myself, but I've heard about it!"

"Is your dad a producer?" Moxie asked.

"Yep! All the kids at this party are the children of producers or directors! See that girl over there? Her father is a billionaire!"

More producers started to arrive. The teenage actress Dakota Ryan arrived, and introduced herself to Mike. She was about the same age as Moxie.

“I’ve played your video game!” said Dakota.

"Hi there!" Mike said to a producer. “I'm Mike Roman, also known as Micromage!"

The producer shook his hand. "I've heard about your videogame. Didn't you design it yourself?"

"Yeah, but I used software that did most of the work. Still, it took a couple of years to make!"

Just then, a man with a beard wearing a black domino mask walked in followed by three girls in their mid teens wearing Domino masks and black tee shirts with a white skull and crossbones on the front. They also wore ultra-short black mini-skirts with a purple cape that only goes halfway down their back, and a gold colored utility belt with futuristic devices, as well as black mid-calf boots. One girl wore a red domino mask, another wore an orange one, and the third girl wore a violet domino mask.

The man carried a strange looking device. He had earmuffs on, the kind a sound engineer would use in a recording studio.

"I am Amnesio, Master of Mind Control! Accompanying me are my three nieces, April, May and June! Soon, you will all heed the clarion call of my mind control technology!”

“Mike,” Moxie whispered, “That’s the guy Duke warned us about!”

Just then, one of the security guards walked up to him and said, "I'm sorry, but you don't have an invitation, and you're not on the guest list, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to lea-"

At that instant, Amnesio aimed the strange device at the burly young security guard.

"Amnesio answers to no one!"

The device was apparently mesmerizing the man, because as Amnesio pointed it at his face, the security guard just stood there, as if he had forgotten why he had approached Amnesio in the first place.

Mike turned to Moxie. “I think you’re right, that must be the guy we were warned about! I'd better shrink before he uses his mind control technology on me! At shrunken size, maybe it will have no effect on me because my brainwaves are different when I'm shrunk!"

Mike keyed in the sequence on the control console of his wristband, and instantly shrank to one inch tall. Amnesio saw this, and turned on his device. Soon, everyone in the room was under the influence of his mind control device!

Amnesio looked at one of his teenage companions and said, "June, your Uncle Amnesio commands you to swallow Micromage! Do it! At once!"

The girl in the red domino mask picked Mike up, and directed him toward her mouth...

"Please, don't do this!" Mike pleaded. "You're under the control of Amnesio's mind control device!"

The girl brought the one-inch tall Mike closer to her open mouth. “If you answer one of my questions correctly, I won’t swallow you!”

“What’s the question?” Mike asked

"Calculate the last digit of the number pi!" June asked with a sinister smile.

"That's crazy!" Mike argued. "Pi is an irrational number! It's infinite! There is no last digit!"

"That's your question, and you agreed to my terms!" June said defiantly.

"But that's not fair!" Mike argued. "You can't ask me questions that have no answer!"

"I can ask you any question I want! You agreed to it!" June said. "Here's question number two: how fast is the speed of light in kilometers per second?"

"I know that one!" Mike shouted, "If I get this one right, you can't swallow me! The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second!"

"I said in kilometers per second, Mike! Not miles per second! Anyone can answer that question in miles per second!"

"Wait a minute!" Mike said, there's a formula for converting miles into kilometers! I should remember that formula from college!"

"You have ten seconds!" June said.

To Be Continued!

[GastricAztec]

"Micromage & Vector Girl"

Chapter 3: Mike and Moxie Go Hollywood!

Amnesio stood there waiting for his niece, June, to obey him. He had gray shoulder-length hair, a slight gray beard, and a black domino mask. Mike stood on June’s palm as she raised him higher into the air, toward her mouth.

“Why are you doing this?” Mike asked.

“Why?” Amnesio replied. “In the century I came from, I developed mind control technology that was capable of overcoming countermeasures that protect people from mind control in my own era. My invention was part of my dissertation, but an unscrupulous professor stole credit for my discoveries, and claimed it as his own. Nobody in my century will ever know that I am responsible for the mind control tech that I developed. I decided to travel back to your century and exploit this era with my advanced super science!”

“That’s horrible,” Mike replied. “I’ve heard of things like that happening in my time, as well.”

“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.” said Amnesio.

“Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2,” Mike replied. “I was an English professor at a junior college for quite some time before going back to school to study computer programming. I know a lot about Shakespeare.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Amnesio. “In my century you are a well known historical figure. I minored in English while majoring in electrical engineering. Shakespeare was a guilty pleasure of mine.”

Amnesio turned his attention to June, who was interrupted before she was about to swallow Mike. “You may proceed to swallow Micromage, June!”

June hesitated, Amnesio aimed his mind control pistol at June. “When Amnesio gives a command, it is obeyed!"

“I’ll gladly swallow him, Unc! There’s no need to threaten me!” June tossed Mike into her mouth, and a moment later, swallowed him!

June and Amnesio high-fived each other once Mike was inside of June’s belly.

Meanwhile, Mike slid down her esophagus to the stench of June’s stomach.

"I need to design a gas mask for this costume!" Mike said to himself.

Meanwhile, in the living room of the mansion, Amnesio's nieces were gathering the valuables from the wealthy party-goers and putting them in pillow cases. The three girls were not all identical: the one known as June had medium length light brown hair, the second girl, May, was blonde, and the third girl, April, had long black hair. One thing they had in common were skinny yet athletic figures.

Moxie quickly forgot about Mike and noticed Amnesio’s nieces each wore black shirts, with a white skull and crossbones on each shirt. Why Amnesio had brought them with him to the crime scene was a mystery.

There was a personal computer in the room, One of the kids had been using it to access a chatroom. Amnesio's nieces quickly exited that website and brought up a sight more to Amnesio's liking.

"You will notice a computer over here," Amnesio instructed, "I want each and every one of you to use your credit cards to contribute one million dollars into my bank account! Failure to do so will make Amnesio very angry!"

The producers and directors stepped up one by one, and whipped out their credit cards. Moxie counted them, and figured that Amnesio would be a multi-millionaire, judging by how many celebrities were stepping up to the plate.

The teenage actress Dakota Ryan looked at Moxie with a puzzled look on her face. She took Moxie aside and whispered to her: “If this guy is using mind control, why isn’t it working on us?”

“Maybe it doesn’t work on teenagers and kids,” Moxie replied, “so his nieces will be unaffected!”

While Amnesio's attention was diverted to the computer screen, Moxie tried to exit the mansion.

"Where do you think you're going, young lady?" said April. She stood there with a futuristic weapon in her hand.

“What is that, some kind of ray-gun?” Moxie asked.

“It can re-arrange your chromosomes!” April replied. “With this device, I can make you allergic to peanut butter, or give you Alopecia and all your hair would fall out! Now get back inside!”

“Okay,” Moxie replied, and turned back around and went upstairs and locked herself in a bathroom. She used her communicator built into her arm band to contact Mike.

“Mike, can you hear me?” Moxie asked.

“Yes!” Mike replied. “How do I activate that neural stimulator so June will vomit me up?”

“It’s built into your gauntlet,” Moxie replied. “There should be a button next to the miniaturization console!”

“Found it!” said Mike.

In the living room, June ran for a bathroom and vomited into the sink. Mike, who stood an inch tall, was treading the surface of the vomit. June was unaware that Mike had been expelled from her body.

“Moxie, I’m in the sink of the downstairs bathroom! I’ll stay shrunk so Amnesio doesn’t see me, come and get me!”

“I’m on my way!” Moxie replied, and she tried to hurry down the stairs without looking like she was hurrying, so as not to alert Amnesio and his nieces.

In less than a minute, Moxie was inside the downstairs bathroom, fishing Mike out of the sink. She rinsed him off.

"Mike," Moxie said, "The mind control device doesn't work on teenagers! Me and the other kids are unaffected! But Amnesio has all the adults mesmerized, and he's getting them each to deposit a million dollars in his bank account!"

"It couldn't hurt some of these rich punks to cough up a million bucks!" Mike said.

"Mike, what Amnesio's doing is wrong! We have to stop him!"

"Moxie, this is a job for the police! We don't even know what we're up against! He's using mind control technology that is a quantum leap above and beyond what even our government is capable of!”

"But Mike," Moxie pleaded, "we're heroes! We have to stop Amnesio!"

"I'm in this gig for the money!" Mike replied. "Nobody's paying me to risk my neck chasing down thugs from the future!”

"When you were a kid, didn't you ever read comic books? Didn't you believe in heroes, Mike?" Moxie asked.

"Yes, but then I grew up!"

"Those time travelers trusted us to stop Amnesio!” said Moxie. “We’re the only ones who can stop him! All I ask is that you help me defeat Amnesio! I need your help for my plan to work!"

"What's your plan?" Mike asked.

Once the plan was explained, Moxie put Mike in the empty pack on her belt, which served as a prop for her character. Because it was now empty, it was the best hiding place for Micromage.

Moxie exited the bathroom and entered the main living room, where she was met by June. "What were you doing in there?" she asked Moxie.

"I was using the bathroom!" Moxie replied. June was satisfied with this explanation, and went back to whatever she had been doing.

Moxie walked up to the kids. "Do they still think you're affected by the mind control device?" Moxie whispered. The kids nodded their heads in assent. "I have a plan!" Moxie told them. Moxie then walked up to the lady who owned the mansion.

"Is this the only computer in the house?" Moxie asked.

"No, there's another one upstairs!" the woman replied.

"Does it have Internet access, like this one does?" Moxie asked.

"Yes!" the woman replied, eager to deposit one million dollars in Amnesio's bank account.

Moxie headed up the stairs, when she was sure Amnesio's assistants weren't watching her. She checked each bedroom, one after the other.

"There sure are a lot of bedrooms in this place!" Moxie said to herself, "I guess that's why it's called a mansion!"

Finally, she found what she was looking for: a bedroom with a computer. She pulled Mike out, and did as he instructed.

"Are you going to have me program in Fortran?" Moxie asked. "I might be bright, but I can't create a computer virus in like, five minutes!"

"Yeah?" Mike asked. "Well, don't worry, just go to the website I tell you to, and there's a virus I already programmed that you can download, to infect Amnesio's bank computer with a virus that will wipe out his entire bank account! I majored in computer programming in college, remember?"

Once Moxie found the website, she pulled out a flash drive from her utility belt and downloaded the virus. When the program was ready, Moxie copied the virus to the flash drive and carried it downstairs, with Mike in her pouch that was attached to her belt.

When she got downstairs, Amnesio was instructing his assistants. Moxie went to a window, opened it slightly, and tossed Mike into some bushes. As he climbed down and made his way back to the Micromobile, Moxie approached the computer.

"I have millions of dollars too, Amnesio!" Moxie said. "But I need to use this flash drive to access my bank code. Is that cool?"

"Yes, but hurry!" Amnesio replied.

Meanwhile, Mike was at the Micromobile. He pulled out the cable from his costume and attached the grapnel hook, and threw it until the hook caught on the passenger side leather seat. Mike began climbing up. When he was inside, he found Moxie’s cell phone and flipped it open (it took all his strength), and dialed 911. When the operator came on, he told her of the situation, but was careful not to mention the mind control technology. He didn't want the lady to think this was a prank call!

Back in the mansion, Moxie successfully uploaded the program from the flash drive. Soon, Amnesio's bank account computer was hit with a virus that wiped out all memory of Amnesio's account, but didn't harm the other accounts of innocent people who had money at that same bank.

"Uncle Amnesio!” June said. "Vector-Girl did something to your bank account! I think she uploaded a virus from that flash drive!”

"No!" Amnesio shouted.

"Amnesio," May said, "we've got to leave now! They’ve probably alerted the authorities! They might be on their way over here right now!"

Amnesio turned to Moxie on his way out the front door. "You may have defeated me this time little girl, but we'll meet again! And when we do, I'll have the last laugh!"

A moment later, Amnesio and his three nieces were gone. Moxie looked around at the adults. The other kids started waving their hands in front of the faces of the previously mesmerized adults. They began to snap out of it. Mike returned to normal size, and less than a minute later, the police arrived. When the police finally left a half hour later, the party got rolling again as if nothing had happened.

A producer walked up to Mike and Moxie. “Hi, I'm a producer and I'm interested in producing a movie about the two of you! I plan on calling it: Micromage & Vector-Girl! What do you think?"

"That's a pretty unique title!" Moxie said sarcastically.

"I want the two of you to portray yourselves in the film! I'll give you each one million dollars up front, and a percentage of the movie's gross!"

"Yeah, I'll do it, but it has to be soon! Me and Moxie will be on vacation for a couple of months, so we need to film it right away!"

"No problem!" the producer replied. "I'll hire the fastest writer in Hollywood to knock out a script in less than a week! I want to feature Amnesio as the villain! Of course, we're going to have to get an actor who looks like him, because the real Amnesio is still at large!"

The producer handed Mike a business card. "Here's how you can contact me if there's any questions. I want you and Moxie in my office tomorrow, to sign the contracts."

"I'd like to speak with the writer, as soon as the script is ready!" Mike said.

"No problem!" the producer replied. "I'll call you when he has it ready. It shouldn't be more than a few days, because like I said, he's fast."

After Mike and Moxie went back to their hotel, they decided to get accustomed to southern California, since they would be filming a movie in a couple of weeks. Mike and Moxie went to Gold's gym in Santa Monica, or to World gym, depending on Mike's preference that day. They lived like royalty on the hotel room service, and enjoyed their vacation from touring the country.

Mike got a call from the producer, and wrote down the address of the hotshot writer who was working on the script. Mike and Moxie drove over there. It was a modest house for the upscale neighborhood it was located in, but any real estate agent worth their mettle could've fetched $700,000 for it easily.

They walked to the front door and knocked. The door was answered by a guy who looked wired. He had a cup of coffee in his hand.

"I'm Mike Roman, and this is Moxie Miller. The producer said you'd talk about the screenplay with us?"

"Oh, yeah!" the man said, opening the door wider. "I'm Wally Williams. They say I'm the best!"

"If you typed a screenplay in three days, then you are the best!" Mike replied.

Wally sat Mike and Moxie down in his computer room, and brought them each a bottle of water. He pulled out a copy of the screenplay, and read some of it to Mike. At some points, he would describe the story in his own words; at other points, he would quote the screenplay word for word.

"At the end of act two, you get frozen by Amnesio in a cryogenic experiment!" Wally explained. "Now I know this guy is into mind control, but that's not dramatic enough! We had to get him involved with other kinds of technology to provide conflict!"

"I don't have a problem with that!" Mike said. "But what I'd like to know is, how do you do it? How did you write this screenplay in three days?"

"I get amped up!" Wally said.

"On what?” Mike asked.

"Coffee!" Wally said. "I'm a caffeine-freak! I drank about sixteen pots of coffee over the past three days, and I've been up for over seventy-two hours!"

"You should look into getting into a twelve-step program!" Mike replied sarcastically.

"Oh, by the way," Wally added, "you and Moxie are supposed to report to the studio at 5:30 Monday morning for the first day of shooting."

"5:30 in the morning?" Mike asked.

"Yeah," said Wally, "things get started early in Hollywood!"

Monday morning, Moxie and Mike showed up at the gates of the studio just before 5:30 a.m. They were let in, and they were met by the producer, who took them to their trailer.

A gaffer walked up and handed a hot cup of coffee to Moxie, and she took it eagerly. When he walked around to hand a second cup of coffee to Mike, he tripped over a power cord that was connected to one of the cameras, and spilled the hot coffee all over the front of Mike's costume.

"Oww!" Mike shouted.

The producer saw this and walked up to the gaffer. "You there, what's your name?"

"Toby!" the gaffer replied.

"Well, Toby! You're fired!" the producer said.

"No, that's not necessary!" Mike said. "It was an accident! I have another costume in the trunk of the Micromobile!"

The producer looked at the gaffer and said: "Okay, you're un-fired! But you should be grateful Mike Roman is such a nice guy!"

The producer and the director approached Mike and Moxie. The producer introduced the director to Mike. "I hired this guy straight out of USC! They're cheaper that way, they’re not well known enough to be prima donnas yet, and they do just as good of a job as a more well known director!"

"That's very cost-effective," said Mike as he shook hands with the director.

"We're going to film act three first," said the director.

"Why are we filming the ending first?" Moxie asked.

"It's for insurance reasons. It's in case something happened to either of you before we finished filming."

Filming got underway, and twelve hours later, the day was over. Mike and Moxie got up early on Tuesday, and repeated the process. Wednesday and Thursday were no different. When it came time to film a scene with Amnesio, Mike marveled at how realistic the actor who portrayed him looked just like the real Amnesio. It was hard to believe that latex and make-up could achieve such realistic results.

As the weeks passed, the ending of act two was finally being filmed. There was a set on a soundstage with a cryogenic lab, and Mike was supposed to be lowered into a freezing chamber as Moxie watched from a wall where she was handcuffed, helpless to enlist her aid.

As the actor who was portraying Amnesio finished his lunch, he got up to walk to the bathroom. A hand reached from behind and covered his face with a rag soaked in chloroform, rendering him unconscious. The man who carried his sleeping body to another area of the set was none other than the real Amnesio!

Amnesio and his three nieces had gotten onto the grounds, in an effort to seek revenge against Micromage & Vector-Girl for foiling his evil plans at that party in Bel-Air. His nieces wheeled away the cryogenic chamber, and replaced it with a sleeker, deadlier looking version. The new version didn't look like a just a prop. It looked functional, like it could really work!

When the time came to shoot the scene, Moxie was handcuffed against the wall, according to the script, and Mike was chained to a gurney suspended upside-down as he was slowly lowered into the cryogenic freezing chamber.

"What do you hope to accomplish by doing this, Amnesio?" Mike said, following the script line for line.

"I got a copy of this script, and I was amazed at the resemblance!” Amnesio replied.

What? Mike thought to himself. This isn't in the script!

Amnesio went on: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

“The Merchant of Venice Act 3, Scene 1,” Mike replied.

“You should have known I would come back for revenge, with my super science there is no safe harbor from my wrath! You cost me a lot of money, Micromage!”

Amnesio continued: "This technology looks rather conventional, don’t you think?” Amnesio ripped a piece of equipment from a prop that was meant to represent future technology, and threw it to the floor. “I know the screenplay calls for you being frozen in a cryogenics experiment, but since I’m from twenty thousand years in the future, I have a way to slow down subjective time so you will be immobilized for two months, Micromage! It’s much more advanced than simple cryogenics.”

"Cut!" the director shouted, but Amnesio's three female assistants pointed machine guns at him, preventing him from approaching Amnesio.

"But don't worry!" Amnesio continued, "The effects of the temporal stasis experiment will wear off in exactly sixty days. Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow."

Amnesio's laugh filled the soundstage as Mike was lowered into the vat that would freeze him, at least according to the screenplay. Moxie could only look on helplessly as Mike was lowered into the chamber.

When he was inside, Amnesio keyed the control console and sealed him in, initiating the temporal stasis process!

“Romeo & Juliet Act two-“ Mike began, but he was cut off by the temporal stasis device kicking in.

And as soon as it began, it was all over. By the time security arrived, Amnesio and his nieces were long gone, and Mike Roman was completely immobile. Moxie was released from her handcuffs, and walked over and viewed what remained of Mike.

"Is he dead?" Moxie asked the director.

"We can only assume that Amnesio was telling the truth, that there is a way to resuscitate him!"

To Be Continued!

[GastricAztec]

"Micromage & Vector Girl"

Chapter 4: Hot on Amnesio's Trail!

When Mike was in temporal stasis, the producer and the director both alerted the authorities. The local police were called, and they, in turn notified the FBI. The FBI agents combed the area for clues, but Amnesio had been wearing gloves when he had activated the controls to the strange temporal manipulation equipment, so there were no fingerprints.

Moxie didn't cry. She still held onto the hope that Mike could and would be revived. The southern California branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation took the hibernation capsule Mike was contained in, and made sure it was constantly hooked up to a power supply. Their best engineers tried to access the software inside. When they succeeded, they were baffled to find out the technical schematics and diagrams specific to the resuscitation process seemed to be based on solid scientific ground. One of the engineers notified the director.

"So it seems," the engineer began, "that his heart is still beating, his metabolism has been slowed down almost completely. The software built into this equipment states that Mike Roman will return to normal 60 days from the day he was put into stasis.”

The director was puzzled. "So you're telling me this Mike Roman guy might survive?"

"I'm telling you that he will definitely survive!" the engineer informed him.

"Why would somebody force someone into hibernation then bother to restore them afterwards? Why not just kill him?” the director asked.

"I don't know," the engineer answered, "but phase two, the resuscitation process will begin automatically in less than two months. All we have to do is keep that hibernation capsule hooked up to a power supply!"

While this was going on, Moxie secured a house for herself in the Hollywood Hills. With her vast wealth, it was no problem coming up with the money, and because Mike had gotten her legally emancipated when she turned fifteen, she didn't need her parents' permission. She made it her mission to track down Amnesio. She took a course through the mail that taught her how to be a private investigator, and bought a home computer and got it hooked up to the Internet.

She spent twelve hours a day on the Internet, tracking down leads that led to dead-ends.

"I found a front company owned by Amnesio!" said Moxie to herself. Moxie took a bus to the neighborhood where the company was located, and snuck in through a back door. She hid in a closet next to the main office, and listened to a conversation through an air vent.

"All we need to do is get my mind control device on that satellite today," said Amnesio, "and we'll be able to control the minds of millions of people simultaneously!"

"You're a genius, Uncle Amnesio!" said April. “It gives me goosebumps being involved in this master plan!"

"Yeah," said May, "you're gonna go down in history!"

"Help me load the mind control device in the van," said Amnesio.

Moxie waited until the coast was clear, then she got out and climbed into the van and hid in a storage compartment. June drove the van to the company that was manufacturing the satellite. Two vans were driven, and all three of Amnesio's nieces were onboard. When they unloaded the equipment and went inside, Moxie climbed out of the storage compartment and followed them inside.

When she peaked around the corner of the open door, she saw that Amnesio had taken aim with one of his mind control devices, and the workers at the factory were under mind control.

"You will install this device in your satellite!" said Amnesio.

Moxie could only watch helplessly as the workers did as Amnesio instructed. The mind control device was installed, and hooked up to the satellite's power source. Moxie was tapped on the shoulder. When she turned to look, it was April, one of Amnesio's assistants.

"Uncle Amnesio!" shouted April. "I've captured Vector-Girl!”

Amnesio turned to look, and walked over toward Moxie. “Render her unconscious!”

"Sure thing, Unc!” said April, and she reached into a backpack and pulled out a bottle of strange chemicals. She dumped some in a rag, and tried to hold the rag over Moxie’s mouth. Moxie struggled, so April shouted for May to help her, and the two of them were able to successfully hold Moxie down long enough to hold the rag over her mouth, causing Moxie to lose consciousness.

When Moxie woke up, she was in a motel room. There was a note on a DVD player that said 'play.' Moxie pushed the button, and Amnesio appeared on the TV screen.

"Vector-Girl, you were injected with a powerful sedative that knocked you out for several days. By the time you watch this, you will have been asleep long enough so that the satellite is already on its way to Vandenberg Air Force Base to be launched aboard an Ariane Titan rocket! There is absolutely nothing you can do to change things! With my mind control device in space, I will be able to control the minds of millions! This August during the Teen Preference awards I will activate the mind control device and control people through a TV broadcast! This message will self-destruct, so don't bother trying to turn over this DVD to the authorities!"

The recording ended with Amnesio's maniacal laughter, then the DVD player exploded, frightening Moxie momentarily. Moxie sprayed fire suppressant from her gauntlet put out the fire, then she got out her cell phone and dialed a number.

"I need a taxi!" said Moxie.

Moxie waited outside for the taxi. When it arrived, she instructed the driver that she wanted to go to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc.

"That's over a hundred miles from here!" said the driver. Moxie pulled out twenty one-hundred dollar bills.

"I've got it covered!"

Moxie jumped into the back seat of the taxi and closed the door. "Is it still Monday?" Moxie asked.

"It's Thursday!" said the driver.

"Amnesio was right about that sedative!" said Moxie.

"Who?” the driver asked.

"Nothing, just drive to Vandenberg!"

Two hours later, the taxi dropped Moxie off in front of the Air Force Base. She approached the guard in the control room in front of the base just as a rocket was being launched. She could see the vertical exhaust trail in the sky.

"You've got to warn them!" said Moxie. “They can't launch that Ariane Titan rocket! It has renegade technology attached to it!"

"They've already launched it!” the man said. "It's too late!"

Moxie looked toward the ocean and saw the Ariane Titan rocket hurtling toward space.

"Darn!" said Moxie.

Days turned into weeks, and eventually a month and a half passed. Moxie celebrated her sixteenth birthday alone. The Micromage & Vector-Girl movie opened in theaters, but Mike was still a popsicle. It had almost the same kind of success as any blockbuster of recent years aimed at kids and teenagers. Kids were lined up around the block with their parents, and teenagers went and saw the movie again and again. Moxie paid little attention to this, however. She finally found a clue that she felt might lead her to Amnesio.

There were Micromage & Vector-Girl comic books. Mike had hired a small comic publishing company to create fictional adventures for Mike and Moxie. Because of the success of the film, issue one of the first Micromage & Vector-Girl comic book was hard to find. Ironically, there was a company that was offering mint condition copies of the first issue at half of what they were now worth, which normally sold for about $300. It made sense to Moxie that this company was counterfeiting the comic books.

Moxie looked up at her Micromage & Vector-Girl calendar and sighed. "The Teen Preference awards are in a week" she said to herself, "me and Mike have been nominated, but he's still in hibernation!”

She pulled out her cell phone and used speed dial to call the director of the FBI, as she had been doing several times a week for nearly the past two months, ever since Mike had been frozen. Someone answered.

"Hello?" Moxie said.

"Moxie,” the director said, "I think you'd better get down here! Mike Roman is set to come out of hibernation today!”

Moxie hung up the phone and caught a taxi-cab. In less than an hour, she was at the FBI headquarters, and she was let in by a receptionist who recognized her. When she got there, Mike was still unconscious. He began stirring soon after she arrived, and woke up.

“Scene two!” said Mike, finishing the sentence he had began on the day he had gone into hibernation.

Moxie giggled. “You just finished a sentence you started two months ago!”

Somebody handed Mike a glass of water, and he greedily guzzled it down like a man who hadn't drank water for several days.

"Mike!" Moxie said. "I've got a place in the Hollywood Hills now. We can stay there!"

"Doc," Mike said, "when am I clear to go home?"

"From our test results, it seems that you can go home today. Physiologically, you haven’t aged in the past two months.”

About an hour later, Moxie and Mike were sitting in the back of a taxi-cab heading for Moxie’s new house.

"So you're sixteen now, huh?" Mike said. "It was just a month and and a half before your sixteenth birthday when I got put into temporal stasis."

"We’ve got more important things to worry about,” said Moxie. “I tracked down a comic book publishing company that I think is counterfeiting copies of the first issue of the Micromage & Vector-Girl comic book! That comic is worth three-hundred dollars, but he's only charging a hundred and fifty dollars. I think Amnesio's behind it!"

Mike tilted his head back with his hands on his gut and let out a loud laugh. “Moxie, Amnesio is a big-time hood! What would he be doing messing around with comic books?"

"I know it sounds weird, but I've checked out almost a dozen companies he was behind. Amnesio was always one step ahead of me, and terminated the company and destroyed the records if I snooped too close. This time, I didn't make the mistake of pushing too hard... he doesn't know I'm onto him!"

"I'll tell you what," Mike said, "I'll drive us over there if you write down the address and punch it into the gps! I'll prove it to you that Amnesio isn't behind this!"

Soon, they were on the road in the Micromobile. After driving past the business they were looking for, Mike parked a couple of blocks away, and they walked to the side of the building of the business in question. Mike was wearing his Micromage costume, because Moxie had demanded it. There was an air vent with a grill that had square holes about two inches in diameter, both vertically and horizontally. Mike activated the neutrino dissimilator on his wristband, and keyed the sizing scope to shrink down to one inch tall.

Moxie picked Mike up in her hand, and said: "Good luck, Micromage!" before placing him on the air vent. They still had their two-way radios to communicate with. Mike's was built into his wristband and Moxie, who was also wearing her space-age Vector-Girl costume, had one built into the gauntlet of her left wrist, also.

Mike made his way through the vent. There was a circular fan blade, but it wasn't moving.

"So far, so good!" Mike said to Moxie through his two-way. When he got to the other side of the vent, Mike was surprised to see that although machinery was active, there were no workers hustling around. Upon closer inspection, Mike saw that robots were doing all the work, much like an automobile manufacturing plant in Detroit. Mike jumped down from his perch and investigated further.

There was a light on in an office down the hall. The best way to look through the office of the window would be to climb on top of one of the robots. This would kill two birds with one stone, because Mike could survey what the robots were working on, as well as seeing who was in the office.

Mike climbed a power cord and found himself on top of one of the printers. Sure enough, hundreds of copies of issue one of the Micromage & Vector-Girl comic book were being printed!

"Vector-Girl!” Mike said into his two-way radio. "Everything is just as you said it was! They're printing counterfeit copies of our comic book in here!"

"Okay Mike," Moxie replied, "you've done your job, now come back to me! I don't want you getting hurt!"

"I'm going to see who's in the office!" Mike replied. "I want to see if it's really Amnesio!"

"Mike!" Moxie said angrily. "Our work here is done! We need to contact the police!”

Mike turned off his radio. Moxie’s wrath he could endure; it was his insatiable curiosity he couldn't avoid. Looking into the office, he saw a girl in her mid teens; it was obviously one of Amnesio’s nieces. As he struggled to get a better view, to see who she was talking to, Mike fell downward, toward the printer.

He landed on top of a comic book cover that was on it's way to the saddle stitching device. Mike tried to roll out of the way, but before he could, a laser scanner picked up his image, and the printer stopped immediately, and an alarm began to sound.

Two teenage girls with domino masks ran out of the office. They were wearing tee-shirts and ultra-short mini-skirts. They knew a foreign object had landed in the printer, but at the moment, they didn't know it was Mike.

"Amnesio is going to to flip out if we don't meet his daily quota!" one girl said to the other.

Mike quickly scurried down into the equipment as the two girls tried to assess what was wrong. When he hit the tile floor, he saw where their shoes were pointing, and ran in another direction. A curtain hung over the air vent he had entered through, and a power cord to a fan touched the floor before coiling up to where the curtain began. Mike climbed the cord, then grabbed onto the curtain and made his way toward the vent. Once there, he grabbed onto what to him was a metal bar (it was really one of the wires composing the air vent), and he climbed into the vent and ran to the outside.

Moxie was waiting for him, and she cupped her left palm and Mike jumped in. "They're working for Amnesio!" Mike told her.

"I told you so!" Moxie said. "You doubted me, but I knew what I was doing!”

Moxie cupped Mike in her hand and stood up, and walked back to the Micromobile. Mike re-enlarged. After returning to normal size, Mike drove them back to Moxie’s house in the Hollywood Hills.

Moxie went to her personal computer and checked her e-mail. Suddenly, she saw something she had never seen before on her computer. An e-mail from Amnesio! Was this a trick? Was someone posing as Amnesio? She opened the e-mail and read it.

"Mike! You're never going to believe this!"

"What is it?” Mike asked.

"Amnesio sent me an e-mail!"

"What does it say?" Mike asked.

"He says he has a plan for attacking the Teen Preference awards show! Mike, you and I have been nominated! He's targeting that awards show because we're both going to be there! He's challenging us!"

"Then we'll be ready for him!" Mike replied.

To Be Continued!

[GastricAztec]

"Micromage & Vector Girl"

Chapter 5: Amnesio Strikes Again!

Mike looked up and saw Moxie’s Micromage & Vector-Girl calendar.

"Holy crap!" Mike said. "There's a bodybuilding contest less than a week away! I have to start training!"

Mike took off his Micromage uniform and stripped down to the swimming trunks he wore beneath his costume. "Moxie, whaddaya think? Is my bodyfat down to contest levels?"

"Sure, Mike! I think you'll win your pro card this time, for sure! You were prepping for another contest before you got frozen, anyway, remember?"

Mike realized this was true. There had been another contest he was less than a month away from when he got frozen. Still, in spite of this, it would be a real challenge to get in shape in less than a week.

Mike's approach was to spend a lot of time in the gym. Moxie coached him as he did bench presses, and used the weight machines to work on his chest and shoulders. Every day in the gym, Mike hit a different body part. One day he hit arms, the next he worked his legs. Mike engaged in workouts that would fell a horse!

Moxie was also in charge of his nutrition, making sure he got a lot of protein with minimal carbohydrates. The day of the contest, Mike was in the best shape of his life. He was ripped and shredded, and he was down to less than five percent bodyfat.

"Being in hibernation must've given you some kind of advantage, Mike!" Moxie said as they drove to the contest. "I've never seen you look this good!"

They pulled into the parking lot, and a valet took the Micromobile after Mike handed him the keys. Moxie and Mike strolled across the parking lot. "I'm hungry!" Moxie said. "I forgot to eat lunch. I guess I'll go get a protein bar while you're getting yourself psyched up for the contest."

Mike and Moxie parted after they entered the building; Mike went to the locker room, and Moxie went to the tables where products were being sold. She grabbed a strawberry protein bar and asked, "How much?"

The attendant said: "These are complimentary, young lady! Go ahead and take one!"

Moxie took two. While walking around eating her first protein bar, she spotted a teenage girl who might be one of Amnesio's assistants, here to case the contest. She had medium length light brown hair, and she appeared to be skinny, but it was difficult to tell, because she was wearing a trenchcoat. It was hard to recognize her, because she was also wearing sunglasses.

Since Moxie was wearing her costume, she had the built-in transceiver she could use to communicate with Mike. She raised her forearm to chin level discreetly, and with the index finger of her other hand, activated the two-way radio. "Micromage! This is Vector-Girl, come in! Do you copy?"

Mike, meanwhile, was getting out of his Micromage costume, and when he saw the green light that indicated Moxie was trying to communicate with him, he flicked the button and said: "This is Mike! What's up, Moxie?”

"There's some creepy chick who looks like she might be one of Amnesio's assistants! I'm not sure though, because she isn’t wearing one of those goofy domino masks!”

"Well," Mike replied, "keep an eye on her, and let me know if you find out for sure that she works for Amnesio! In the mean time, stay close to her, keep an eye on her, and whatever you do, if a mind control device is used, pretend like you're affected by it just like all the adults!"

"Got it, Mike!" Moxie replied, "over and out!"

Mike put his Micromage costume in his locker. He was dressed in his posing trunks, and began to apply the oil bodybuilders use when they're on stage. Meanwhile, Moxie was keeping an eye on the suspicious girl. When she took a seat, Moxie sat down close to her. Not right next to her, but a couple of chairs down from her.

About fifteen minutes later, the show was ready to begin. The bodybuilders filed out onto the stage, and Moxie waved to Mike. The suspicious young woman pulled out a cell-phone, and started dialing a number. Moxie leaned close so she could hear the conversation.

"Yes, Amnesio!" the woman said clearly. "The transponder is placed in the rafters, just as you ordered! You can begin the mind control session now, because the contest is underway!"

Moxie lifted her eyes, and saw a strange device in the rafters above the stage. It was a transponder, capable of relaying Amnesio's mind controlling alpha waves. They would affect all of the adults in the room, but not Moxie or any of the other children who had been brought here by their parents. Moxie was counting on the fact that Amnesio still seemed to be unaware that his mind control technology didn't work on kids.

Soon, after the device warmed up, Amnesio's voice could be heard throughout the large room: "This is Amnesio, master of mind control! I am now in charge of your minds! You will do exactly as I command! First, those of you who have checkbooks with you, write out a check for half your savings, and make it out to me! My assistant, June, will walk around with a large purse, and you can drop the check inside!"

Moxie watched as the contest went on as if nothing unusual was going on, and saw June walking around collecting checks from people. June was wearing earmuffs to block out the mind controlling alpha waves. The announcer could be heard at a different volume than Amnesio's voice, and he pointed out the strong-points and flaws of each competitor.

Moxie looked over at the judges. They were making notes as if this contest was going along as planned. Moxie tried hard to look mesmerized, just like everyone else. As the contest progressed, June’s purse became so full she had to push down on the pile of checks inside. If she got the checks to Amnesio within the next couple of hours, he would still have time to deposit them before the banks closed for the day.

Amnesio's menacing voice went on: "This command is for the judges! Mike Roman must lose! Forget about him, just focus on the others, Mike Roman is in last place!"

Moxie could understand this. Why would Amnesio want Mike to win? Mike and Moxie had cost him millions of dollars by foiling his scheme to trick a room full of millionaires to deposit money into Amnesio's account. Still, Mike had won every amateur bodybuilding contest he had entered, because he didn't start competing until he was very well developed. There were at least one or two other guys at this contest who could give Mike a run for his money, but it had seemed like a sure win for Mike, before Amnesio's interference.

When June was done collecting the money, she pulled out her cell-phone, and called Amnesio. "Amnesio! The device works just as you planned! The experiment is a success! Now we know it will work during the Teen Preference awards in a few days!"

Moxie waited for June to leave, then for the contest to end. The first, second, and third place winners were announced, and Mike was given honorable mention for fourth place.

She went backstage to talk to Mike. "It looks like Amnesio didn't strike!" said Mike.

"What are you talking about?" Moxie asked.

"He didn't do anything tonight!" said Mike. "It looks like we need to take you in to a repair shop to get your female intuition checked out!"

"Mike," Moxie replied angrily, "he mesmerized all of the adults in the audience! Didn't you see June walking around with a purse collecting checks from everyone? Her purse was so full of checks, she almost couldn't fit it all in there!"

Mike started laughing. "Moxie, don't you think I would be aware if Amnesio used mind control on me?"

"That's just the point!" Moxie countered, "the reason you can't remember is because Amnesio did use mind control on you! There's a transponder in the rafters if you want me to prove it to you! And listen to this!"

The voice of June could be heard informing Amnesio about the Teen Preference awards. "I started recording her the second time she was on the phone! They're planning on using mind control during the Teen Preference awards! It would be too difficult to try to climb up to the rafters to get the mind control device at normal size, but if you shrink, I can launch you up there!”

Mike took this seriously. Still in his posing trunks, Mike went back out to the stage and had Moxie point out Amnesio's transponder. What he saw convinced him. "Moxie, don't tell anyone about the transponder. I'm getting into my Micromage uniform so I can shrink!"

Mike greedily munched on a protein bar backstage as he put his Micromage uniform back on. He downed the last of the protein bar, took a swig of water, and activated the costume. Moxie was standing there waiting for him to shrink. Once Mike was an inch tall, Moxie picked him up and carried him out to the stage. "Okay, launch me toward the transponder, and don't miss!"

Moxie pulled her right arm back, and swung it out and let go of Micromage. He went flying through the air, and landed perfectly on top of the transponder. He used his wrist transceiver to communicate with Moxie. “Vector-Girl! Bull’s eye! I'm right on target!"

"What do you see?" Moxie asked.

"I see the transponder, obviously, and a car battery hooked up to a full-wave rectifier! The transponder is plugged into the rectifier, that's what powered it!"

"Do you think it's booby-trapped?" Moxie asked.

"I don't think so," Mike replied, "but something tells me this technology is way out of my league! I need to take this to a professor I know at Cal Tech University in Pasadena!"

"What kind of a professor is he?" Moxie asked through her wrist-radio.

"He specializes in psionics!" Mike replied. "I'm going to unhook this transponder. Can you catch it?"

"I think so!" Moxie replied, and stood directly underneath Mike. He found a strap that was attached to the rafter. A second strap wrapped around the transponder, car battery, and rectifier. By using the ratchet tool that was connected to the strap that was attached to the rafter, Mike could unhook all three devices.

He took hold of the ratchet tool, and swung it far to the right, then far to the left. Each time he pulled it in one direction, it made a sound that indicated it was loosening. Over and over Mike pulled on the ratchet lever, until the straps were loose. Mike keyed his wrist-radio, and asked, "Vector-Girl, are you ready?"

She said: "Yes!" and Mike dropped the transponder down to her. It didn't take much effort on Mike's part, because the transponder was wider than the rafter, and it was ready to fall by itself. Moxie caught it, and set it on the ground. "Do you think we need that other stuff?" Moxie asked.

"No," Mike replied over his wrist-radio, "the professor will be able to plug it into any A.C. outlet! Now, are you ready to catch me?"

Moxie nodded her head. They didn't need to use their wrist-radios, because they were in visual contact with each other. Below him, Moxie looked to Mike to be a teenage colossus, her hands open and waiting for him. Mike jumped down, and landed in her hands. Moxie set him on the floor and he re-enlarged.

Mike picked up the transponder, and carried it to the Micromobile. Once it was loaded, they were on their way to pay a visit to the professor Mike knew who was an expert in psionics!

To Be Continued!

[GastricAztec]

Chapter 6: Professor Hyperion

Mike drove the Micromobile toward Pasadena. Moxie asked, “What's the Professor’s name?"

"Professor Hyperion!" Mike replied.

When they got there, people stopped and stared as Mike got the transponder out of the trunk and carried it to the professor's lab. After walking through a maze of hallways, they found his office. Inside, a gray-haired man with a goatee stood up from where he had been sitting and greeted Mike.

"Hi there, Mike! To what do I owe the good fortune of seeing you again?"

"This transponder," Mike replied, "was placed at a sporting event by my arch-nemesis, Amnesio. He's a master of mind control! I'd like you to take a look at this device and see if you can tell me anything!"

"I'll see what I can do!" the professor replied.

For the next hour, Professor Hyperion dismantled the device with tools he had with him in his office, and he analyzed it. He took one device out of the transponder in particular and looked it over. "This is an alpha wave emitter, and only one company that I know of manufactures this variety! The Vizotech corporation! That's about all I can tell you!"

"Thanks a lot, professor! Moxie, use your smart phone to look that company up on the Internet!"

"Mike," the professor asked, "would it be okay if I kept this transponder unit? I'd like to run some tests on it!"

"Sure professor," Mike replied, "go ahead!"

Once Mike and Moxie were back in the Micromobile, Moxie did some research on her smart phone and found out the name and address of the president of the Vizotech corporation. "His name is Mason Eisenberg, and his home address is in Beverly Hills!" Moxie informed Mike. "I'll punch it into the GPS, and we can go there!"

"Mason Eisenberg is probably an alias for Amnesio!" Mike declared.

"Actually," said Moxie, “the name Mason and the first two letters of that last name form an anagram of the name Amnesio, so I think you're right!"

“You figured that out quick,” said Mike, “when I first met you, your parents weren’t kidding when they said you had a genius level intellect. You’re smarter than me!”

Mike drove the Micromobile toward Beverly Hills. When they found the address, it was a mansion surrounded by an eight foot high wall. "You're going to have to shrink," Moxie explained, "so I can toss you up onto the wall so you can investigate."

Mike keyed his neutrino dissimilator device, and shrunk down to one inch tall. Moxie picked him up, and tossed him up into the air, but she didn't throw him far enough, and he came back down and landed in her hands. On the second try Moxie succeeded, and Mike landed on top of the wall.

Mike walked around on the wall until he was pretty far into the backyard, which was huge. He hid behind the canopy of a large tree, unaware that a video camera was perched in one of the higher branches of the tree. Beside a swimming pool, Mike could see Amnesio's three teenage nieces. Mike keyed his wrist-radio and told Moxie, "This is definitely the place! I can see April, May and June by the swimming pool, but I don't see Amnesio!"

At that exact moment, Amnesio was in his control room, watching Mike on a video monitor. "So, you tracked me down, eh, Micromage?" Amnesio said to Mike's image on the video screen. "Well, you won't get far!"

April and May went out the back gate of the backyard in one direction, and June went out the back gate in the opposite direction, and walked around the block. When Moxie saw June approaching, she turned to go in the opposite direction, only to be intercepted by April and May.

"You weren't going anywhere, were you, Vector Girl?” April asked, as she grabbed Moxie’s left arm, while May grabbed her right wrist. Nobody saw them drag Moxie into the house. April returned outside and met up with June by the wall.

Meanwhile, on the wall, Mike had noticed that Amnesio's nieces had left out the back gate. He figured it was nothing to be concerned about. He didn't notice June and April walking around the wall toward his location, because he was standing near the edge of the inside of the backyard, and they were on the outside of the wall. June knelt down on the ground, and April used her back for a ladder, and reached the top of the wall. Mike turned around to see April’s hand reach for him, and found himself firmly enclosed within her fist.

“I want to swallow him now,” said April. “You got to swallow him last time!”

April lifted Mike above her mouth, but June interrupted her. “Make sure your dampening field is activated, so he can’t activate his neutrino assimilator and re-enlarge while he’s inside your belly!”

April flicked a switch on her utility belt, then swallowed Mike. When they returned inside the mansion, Amnesio asked where Mike was, and April informed him that she had just swallowed him.

“I need him! June, use a neural stimulator to force April to vomit him back up.”

June used her device as Amnesio ordered, and vomited into the sink. June picked Mike out of the puddle of vomit and rinsed him off, then clenched him in her fist.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the mansion, May had tied Moxie to a chair with her hands bound behind her back, then June duct taped Mike to Moxie’s right thigh. "It's interesting that you found me today," Amnesio told them. "I recently completed a new mind control device, the previous version didn’t work on people who had been miniaturized, and I need to test the newer version out on Micromage."

"Drop dead, creep!" Moxie yelled at him.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” said Amnesio.

“King Lear Act 1, Scene 4,” said Mike.

“The only reason you were able to find me today is because I wished it,” said Amnesio. “I purposely left clues for you to track me down. When I first developed my mind control device, it apparently didn’t work on the brains of people who have been miniaturized. I’ve made some improvements recently, so I lured Micromage here to test it out. He will be completely mesmerized, and quite useless!”

Amnesio continued: “It's also interesting that I am in the process of relocating. All my furniture has been packed and shipped to my new location. I've already sold the land this mansion occupies to a new buyer! I informed them that I would take care of the demolition process, they aren’t interested in the mansion itself. Pity that they will have to clean up the charred corpses of a young teenage girl and a miniaturized self-proclaimed hero!"

Amnesio pushed a button on a remote control device in his hand, and heavy metal music began to emanate from speakers located throughout the room. "This is Dio's greatest hits album!" Amnesio informed Moxie.

"Tell someone who cares!" Moxie said defiantly.

"You should care," Amnesio continued, because I rigged a circuit connected to some C4 explosives that are keyed to go off when this CD player finishes the last song of this album! This entire mansion will be utterly destroyed, with you in it! It was nice knowing you!"

Amnesio exited the room, followed by his three female assistants. When they were gone, Moxie tried untying her hands from the rope that bound her. A recording of Amnesio's voice could be heard coming from speakers, saying: "Mike Roman, you are on hidden camera! This is all part of a new reality television series that you and Moxie will be starring in!"

"Mike, we've got to get out of here! Amnesio has some C4 that's set to go off when this album finishes the last song!"

Mike was strapped to Moxie’s thigh with duct tape. He replied, "You're crazy, Moxie! We're going to be on TV! This is all part of one of those reality shows!"

"No, Mike!" Moxie argued. "That's just what Amnesio wants you to think! You're mesmerized right now!"

"We have to do what Amnesio wants us to do!" Mike argued.

The voice from the speaker instructed Mike to stay where he was. Moxie realized she had to play along with Amnesio's game to defeat him. "Mike," Moxie said, "I was briefed on the specifics of the show! In order to win the one-million dollar prize, you have to go against what Amnesio is telling you to do!"

"Are you serious?" Mike asked.

“Yes! Unstrap yourself from the duct tape and work your way over my shoulder and untie my hands!”

Mike looked over and saw the rectangular block of C4 with wires hooked up to it. Without an engineering background, it would be impossible to unhook the C4 from the circuit without causing it to explode. Mike forced his way out of the duct tape, and in several moments, he was free. Moxie’s legs weren't tied to the chair she was sitting in.

"Mike," Moxie instructed, "climb over my shoulder and untie my hands from behind my back! Remember, you have to do this if you want to be the star of this new reality television show!"

Mike, at one inch tall, climbed over Moxie’s shoulder as she had instructed, and reached her hands. When Moxie felt Mike on her right hand, she felt Mike untied her from the chair.

"Good job, Micromage!" Moxie said triumphantly.

By the time the last Dio song played, Mike had untied Moxie from her ropes, and she had escaped with Mike to the front yard, just before the mansion exploded from the C4 explosives Amnesio had set to go off. The explosion was as large as Amnesio had warned them, but both Mike and Moxie were far enough away that they were completely safe.

Mike used his neutrino assimilator built into his gauntlet to return to normal size.

"The Teen Preference awards are tonight!" Moxie said. "We've got to head over there, to see if we can stop Amnesio before he carries out his plan!"

"There's no time to change!" Mike replied. "We'll have to go to the awards show dressed as Micromage & Vector-Girl!"

To Be Continued!

[GastricAztec]

”Micromage & Vector Girl”

Chapter 7: Showdown at the Teen Preference Awards!

When Mike and Moxie pulled up at the front of the building where the Teen Preference Awards were being held, a valet took the Micromobile, and Mike and Moxie approached the entrance.

There was no problem finding a place for Moxie and Mike to sit, because people were still getting seated.

A random teenage girl sitting near Mike and Moxie said to Moxie: “I've seen your movie!" Is it true that Amnesio is a real person?"

"Yes!" Moxie replied angrily. "He's a real creep! He tried to kill me and Mike! The cool thing is, his mind control technology doesn't work on kids or teenagers! That fact has saved us on more than one occasion!"

"Is it true that he has assistants named after the months?” the girl asked.

"Yes!" Moxie replied. "There's three of them, they’re his nieces. Their names are April, May, and June. June is the one who helped mesmerize the participants at the bodybuilding competition earlier today! Amnesio is supposed to strike here tonight!"

As the celebrities who were presenting he awards took to the stage, they were surprised that Mike and Moxie had chosen to dress in their costumes, rather than a tuxedo for Mike and an appropriate dress for Moxie. What they didn't know was that Mike and Moxie were on a real life mission to defeat Amnesio; it wasn’t part of an act.

As Moxie sat talking with her female fan, Mike noticed someone up in the rafters installing a device near the ceiling. If it was Amnesio, it would've been easy for him to mesmerize the right people to allow him access to the building.

"Moxie, I think it's the real Amnesio!"

Mike and Moxie got up and ran to the back of the stage. There, up in the rafters, was one of Amnesio's nieces. She had just finished installing a mind-control device that Amnesio obviously planned on using on the audience. Before Mike could act, the device was activated!

Amnesio walked out to the center of the stage. People started clapping, thinking he was part of the show; they couldn’t discern the difference between the real Amnesio and the actor who had portrayed him in the recent film.

Amnesio quoted Shakespeare again, as was his custom: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Mike was standing backstage with Moxie, and said, “As You Like it Act 2, Scene 7!”

“Mike,” said Moxie, “nobody cares if you know which play, act and scene from Shakespeare Amnesio is quoting!”

Amnesio Continued: “I am Amnesio, master of mind control!" his voice was amplified over a speaker system. "The teenagers of America may have voted, but I, Amnesio, have my own agenda of people I want to win tonight! Those of you who are in charge of the winning envelopes, bring them to my assistant April, and my other assistant will give you replacement envelopes! Amnesio commands you, and you must obey!"

Mike stood there mesmerized, but Moxie sprang into action. One of the young celebrities who was there as a presenter approached Moxie. “What’s going on? None of this was planned out!”

“Mike's mesmerized like all the other adults in here! It's up to me to prevent Amnesio from getting the winning envelopes! I'll climb up in the rafters and try to deactivate the mind control transponder!"

Moxie found a ladder backstage that she used to climb up to the mind control device. As she climbed, she was unaware of what transpired below.

April was already on the catwalk. May and June climbed the ladder to the catwalk to stop Moxie, thinking it would be a piece of cake to stop the young teenager. May and June grabbed Moxie from behind while Moxie’s attention was on April, who pulled out her ray gun.

“I’m going to make you allergic to peanuts!” April pulled out a peanut butter sandwich and waved it in Moxie’s face while aiming the ray gun at her. When she got close enough, Moxie kicked the ray gun out of April’s hand, and it went up in the air. April accidentally dropped the peanut butter sandwich onto the catwalk in a vain effort to catch the ray gun.

Moxie leaped into the air and kicked June in the stomach, landed, and delivered a round-house kick into May's abdomen. Moxie caught the ray gun as May and June tried to throw punches in Moxie's direction, but Moxie easily blocked all the punches, and delivered two for every punch she intercepted, hitting the girls in the face. They were knocked off balance and fell, grabbing onto the catwalk.

Moxie aimed the ray gun at April, and pulled the trigger. Moxie grabbed the sandwich and rubbed it in April’s face, and she started to go into anaphylactic shock.

Moxie had made her way to the mind control device, but couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

"Oh well," Moxie said to herself, "I guess I can just unstrap it and let it fall to the stage below!" Moxie began unfastening the straps.

Far below, Amnesio lost his temper. "She's just a girl! Overwhelm her!"

April started to fall from the catwalk, but Moxie grabbed onto her and sat her down on the catwalk. Moxie unstrapped the device from the rafter, and it fell directly onto Amnesio's head, knocking him out cold.

May and June climbed down the ladder and ran to his aid, but the mind control device ceased to function, and the adults in the audience began to snap out of it.

"We've got to get him and April to the car!" June informed May.

"Amnesio’s not going anywhere, except to jail!" Moxie shouted down at her opponents.

Moxie made her way back down the ladder, and met up with Mike near Amnesio's unconscious form. May and June had by that time decided to take off and leave Amnesio and April behind. When the police arrived, Amnesio was taken into custody, April was given medical attention, and the Teen Preference Awards got underway.

Duke arrived, the man from the future who had given Micromage his powers.

“You’ve done better than I expected, Moxie!” said Duke. “We were able to reverse engineer and de-activate the mind control device attached to the satellite and we backtracked to this event in our time cruiser. We couldn’t have done this without you, we can take it from here.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Moxie asked.

“Oh yes, of course!” said Duke. “Moxie, I’m activating your growing powers immediately, you’ve passed our test with flying colors!”

Duke pressed a sequence of buttons on a device on his wrist, and Moxie’s gauntlet on her left arm lit up with blue lighting, as it had been when she first tested out her growing powers when she and Mike had broken into the research facility several months before.

“Cool!” said Moxie. “I’ve got my growing powers back now!”

Duke and his assistants hauled Amnesio off the stage, taking the enigmatic mind control device with them. Mike and Moxie didn't win, but they received congratulations from the hosts for defeating Amnesio's evil plan, and the audience applauded them. Would there be more adventures? Considering that Amnesio's assistants had gotten away, it was possible that they hadn't heard the last of him; even now, Amnesio’s nieces were probably working on a plan to rescue him!

The End

[GastricAztec]

”Always Give Up Your Seat!”

(F/m Macro/Micro Non-Fatal Vore)

A young college aged man sat down on a seat on a bus as other passengers boarded the bus, and there were no more seats available. One of the standing passengers was a pregnant woman Jackie Douglas was in her early 20’s. Nobody would stand for her and give up their seat to her, including the young man. His decision to not give her his seat would have life altering consequences for him, he just didn’t know it yet.

Nearly 17 years later, the woman named Jackie who had been on the bus that day was talking to her now 16-year-old daughter, Dolores.

“A kid named Devon at school claimed he met a time traveler,” sixteen-year-old Dolores told her mother. “He has a huge crush on me, so he let me borrow this device. It’s a time cube, and it can take me back to any time and place in history. I can also shrink someone with a built in neutrino dissimilator, and bring him back to the present era.”

Dolores turned the device over in her hands. “Mom, do you know anyone who deserved to get shrunk? But they have to be cute!”

“When I was pregnant with you, not too long before I gave birth to you, I was on a bus, and there was a cute guy in his 20’s who refused to give me his seat. That’s the only time I can recall a really cute guy who deserved to be dealt with.”

“According to Devon, I can be vague and describe the time and place, and it will still take me there. All I need to do is think about where and when I want to go, and a dimensional portal will open up and I can step through and travel there.”

“Can you shrink something?” Jackie asked.

Dolores aimed the time cube at a flower pot, and pushed the button that activated the neutrino dissimilator. In an instant, the flower pot and the flower were reduced to a fraction of their original size. Dolores picked up the shrunken flower pot, and handed it to her mother.

“Can you acquire that guy without any difficulties?” Jackie asked.

“From what Devon told me, I can be back before you even knew I was gone!”

“Then show me!” Jackie told her daughter.

Dolores opened a dimensional portal and stepped through, then the portal collapsed and disappeared.

Dolores emerged about sixteen years in the past, just as the guy her mother had indicated was disembarking the bus. The time cube indicated that he was the young man Dolores was seeking. She aimed the neutrino dissimilator at him, and he was reduced to an inch tall. He looked up to see a sixteen year old brunette with a tanned complexion towering over him. She wore a blue jean miniskirt and a tank top, and black and white Converse with white socks. In her left hand was a glowing cube. She knelt down and grabbed him before he could assess his situation.

From Jackie’s perspective, a second after Dolores left, another dimensional portal opened and Dolores returned, carrying the time cube in one hand, and the shrunken captive in her other hand.

“You were right, Mom!” Dolores exclaimed. “He’s cute!”

Dolores marched over to the dining room table and set the time cube down, then set her captive down.

“What’s your name?” Dolores demanded.

“I’m Russel James!” said the inch tall captive.

“You’re around sixteen years in the future,” said Dolores. “You were riding a bus when my mother was pregnant with me, and you refused to stand and let my mother have your seat.”

“There were a dozen other people sitting on that bus, I’m not the only one who refused to give up my seat!”

Dolores slammed her right fist down on the table violently. “I’m not asking them! I’m asking you!”

“Are you keeping me?” Russel asked.

Dolores continued: “Welcome to your new life, you’re new home is going to be a glass jar with cotton balls for a bed and air holes cut into the lid!”

“But I had a life sixteen years ago!” Russel said. “My family will be worried about me!”

“You put your life in my hands when you refused to offer your seat to my Mom!” said Dolores. Dolores lifted her shirt, revealing her belly button. “I’m sending you on a journey to my teenage belly!”

Dolores grabbed a Russel, and lifted him over her mouth. Russel looked down, and briefly saw that Dolores had immaculate white teeth. Dolores let go of Russel and he dropped into her mouth. She sealed her lips and swallowed him in one gulp.

Russel slid down the esophagus of the voracious vixen who had swallowed him, and he splashed down in her stomach. He had enough air to breathe, but instinctively tried to conserve his air by holding his breath. Every few seconds, he took a small breath. He was unsure if he would survive.

Dolores grabbed a large plastic bowl from the kitchen and set it on the table, then pulled a strange device from her purse. “This is a neural stimulator, it will make me vomit him back up.”

Dolores aimed the device at her head and pulled the trigger. Moments later, she vomited into the bowl. She fished around for Russel, and plucked him out.

“How do you feel about your new position on the bottom of the food chain?” Dolores asked. “You’re my slave-toy for the rest of your natural life!”

The End

[GastricAztec]

”Escape Attempt”

I originally wrote this story many years ago, but I revised it by making the teenage girl older, and modified the ending.

F/m non-fatal Vore

***********************************

When the earthquake hit, my jar was knocked over. There was no lid, because my captress didn't think that a man who had been reduced in mass, weight, strength and size equal to that of an ant could possibly scale the sides of the slick glass jar that had been my prison. But the earthquake provided me with the perfect opportunity to escape!

Several other jars had been knocked over, and three other miniaturized captives were also in the process of escaping, but as I scanned the counter top where I was standing, it bereaved me to see that not all of us would be able to seize this opportunity. Two of the jars were still vertically upright, with the tiny captives still trapped inside. There was no way to help them, it would've taken too long.

As I made my way up the electrical cord that was strapped to the open widow that had been shattered during the quake, I looked outside and saw that the damage had not been limited to the inside of the laboratory. The red brick wall that surrounded the perimeter of the building complex had been damaged. A whole section of it about eighteen inches in diameter had completely broken away.

The other three guys were already climbing down the rose bush that was next to the lab. They didn't even bother greeting me, in spite of the fact that we had all been through the same experience of being held captive against our will. There just wasn't time. In the seconds or minutes it would've taken to hold a conversation, Trina could've returned.

I assume that the others were shrunk and captured the same way I was. Trina was a blue-eyed blonde, and had given me a ride when I was hitch-hiking. I was on my way to Washington, D.C. to patent a discovery I had made as a biochemistry student, and when I saw her awesome legs, short denim skirt and cowboy boots, I couldn't refuse her offer to give me a ride. After a question and answer session, she realized that I was from out of town. I had been traveling across the country, and none of my relatives knew my current whereabouts. I was a graduate student at Georgia Tech university majoring in biochemistry, and I had found a way to allow shrunken people to assimilate the molecules of normal-sized food and water, something that had baffled scientists ever since miniaturization had been recently discovered by a scientist working at a university in California. He had been working on a cold fusion experiment that went awry, accidentally shrinking one of his students. That professor's lab had been raided by bandits who had obviously been hired by someone to steal the schematics of the cold fusion reactor. Three of the bandits had been charged for the robbery, and the trial had made national headlines.

Trina had picked me up in her vehicle by random chance. Her questions didn't arouse my suspicions, because they fit into the category of things that just about any curious driver would normally ask a hitch-hiker. I never gave it a second thought when Trina brought up the topic of neutrino dissimilation. 

When I told Trina about my discovery and my plan to get it patented, she told me she worked at a laboratory, I expressed interest, so she offered to show me a neutrino dissimilator that she was working on. I knew it was good to make connections with physicists and experts, so I might have some friends in high places when I graduated, just in case I wanted to return to look for a job after graduation; so I jumped at the chance.

At Trina's research facility, I met her niece, Saxon. She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 16-year-old Olympic athlete who had recently competed on the U.S. gymnastic team. I had seen her on television when her team won gold medals; that summer was an election year, so the Olympics had recently been held. She had been labeled 'Saxon the Sovereign Subjugator' by the press, and she had been the main reason her team had won gold medals in the Olympics. Saxon wore a blue bikini and flip-flops, and as I stared at the huge abdominal muscles and muscular arms and legs, Trina stood beside her there in the lab that day looking over the innards of the neutrino dissimilator she had built, Trina had Saxon explain the miniaturization theory to me: 

"The atoms of all elements are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are made up of elementary particles known as quarks that are held together by gluon particles. Electrons are also elementary particles. The most important particle that made miniaturization possible, however, was the neutrino.

"The neutrino is the smallest particle known to man, with a mass equal to about one-billionth of that of a single proton. It is so small, that neutrino particles emitted by the sun could pass straight through the Earth at near the speed of light, without bumping into any atoms on the way through. The quantum neutrino dissimilator, conveniently referred to as a 'Decimator' by my Aunt Trina, converts over 99.9999 percent of the matter making up the quarks and gluons of protons, neutrons, and electrons into neutrino particles.

"Once these neutrino particles exited whatever or whoever the Decimator had been used on, these particles went shooting off into outer space at near the speed of light, never to be recovered again. Although the quantum neutrino dissimilation effect could decrease the size, weight, volume and mass of a person or object, no theory had been developed which could restore any person or object back to normal size."

"I thought elementary particles couldn't be reduced any further?" I asked, hoping Trina's beautiful niece would elaborate further.

"A dimensional membrane surrounds each elementary particle," Saxon continued, "and the matter that is being removed gets sucked through a dimensional vortex into another dimension. When the electrons shrink, that diminishes the repulsive force between the atoms, causing them to move closer together to maintain the same proportionate distance in relation to one another."

As I marveled at the magnificence of this fantastic new technology, I didn't keep my eyes on Trina and she left and came back with a hand held neutrino dissimilator device. My back was still turned to her when she aimed it at me and activated it. I had been unaware that Trina had built a working model and kept it in the lab, or I would've been more careful and alert.

After being reduced to the size of an ant, Trina placed me in a jar and explained that she needed to research the effect of the Decimator on people, so she could determine whether it was safe enough to be used on criminals. The latest talk had been of legislators passing a bill requiring all prison inmates serving life terms to be miniaturized and sold as toys, but years of research would be required before such a bill would even be considered by congress or the senate.

"Can I keep this one, Aunt Trina?" Saxon asked. "I like him more than the others, he's cute!"

"I might, if you help me capture more of them." Trina responded. "I'm going to use the formula he discovered to see if their bodies can process normal-sized food and water, it would be cheaper than shrinking food and water down to their scale."

****

That had been three weeks ago. During the interim between then and now, Trina had successfully figured out how to conjure up the formula I discovered, which meant we could thrive on small amounts of normal-sized food and water. This was cheaper than Trina being forced to miniaturize water and food down to our scale, but it also meant she got credit for my invention. Now that I was finally free, I intended to stay that way, and to try to find an ally who would help me reclaim the credit for my hard-won discovery. If you were wondering how my miniaturized body could process normal-sized air molecules but not normal-sized food and water, I'll explain it. As far as breathing was concerned, normal-sized air molecules and atoms shrink when they cross the dimensional membrane surrounding the elementary particles of my body; when I exhale, the air molecules and atoms re-enlarge and return to normal size. It was only a matter of time before scientists figured out a way to use dimensional membranes to re-enlarge shrunken people. 

I navigated the blades of grass that towered over me like trees, completely unaware of the location of the other escapees. When I came to the brick wall, It took several minutes to climb up and over the pile of broken bricks and mortar of the broken section of the wall. Once on the other side, it was a lot easier; for as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but plains strewn with occasional boulders (pebbles) and clumps of wild grass growing here and there.

When I started to run, I eventually caught sight of the other three former captives. They were making their way, hell-bent-for-leather, towards the creek that was several hundred yards from our current location. To us, those several hundred yards were like several miles.

My heart pumped with fear as I raced at top speed, because I knew that Trina would be on our trail very soon, as soon as she realized that we were missing. I knew if I could make it to the other side of the creek, I would be home-free, because the dense foliage on the other side would make it impossible for Trina to find me, but getting there was the biggest problem. The field between the brick wall and the creek was barren, which would make spotting me and the other miniaturized escapees that much easier for the captivating conquerors who would soon be hunting us down.

After running for at least a mile (from my perspective), I stopped and caught my breath and looked back. The brick wall and the top of the lab beyond were still all too close. If Trina tried to track me down, I was a convenient distance from the perimeter of the laboratory complex, which would make her job much easier. When you're the size of an ant, it takes a long time to get anywhere.

A voice like thunder shattered the silence. Another equally loud voice, a girl's voice, replied. I knew it was Trina and her athletic 16-year-old niece, Saxon, who was still visiting her Aunt for the summer. Titanic Trina had promised sultry Saxon that she would be allowed to keep one of us, if she cleaned up around the lab and behaved herself. Therefore, the girl was now eager to capture as many escapees as possible. If we all got away, there would be none of us left for her to keep. Saxon had shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes like her Aunt, and was clad in a pink bare midriff tank top and ultra short purple shorts, and was wearing pink sneakers and white socks.

I started running again, and as I did, I looked back and saw Trina and Saxon. They were climbing over the brick wall in an effort to capture us. Trina had a large jar in her hand, and Saxon had a smaller but equally inescapable jar in her hand.

I knew that my best strategy once they began to draw near was to run from pebble to pebble as I made my way towards the creek, and when one of them looked in my direction, all I needed to do was remain still, and I should remain hidden. I was so small that a normal sized person wouldn't be able to see me among the pebbles and different colored dirt and sand, because they would be trying to scan a wide area, and all they would be able to detect was movement. As long as I was still, Trina or Saxon could look right at me as they turned their head from left to right, and they would never notice me.

One of the others didn't figure this out, and he was the first to get captured by Trina. Saxon was jealous, because to her this was like a game, and the score was now Trina one, Saxon zero. Because of this, Saxon was all the more obsessed with capturing one of us. She lumbered in my direction, and I was frozen in fear as she stopped right behind of me, only a couple of normal-sized feet away.

As she looked around, her eyes passed over my location, but, just as I had planned, she didn't notice me because I remained motionless. When her gaze shifted to the right, I ran to the pebble right in front of me, but stopped there and hid when Saxon’s eyes passed by me again as her head shifted from right to left. When she was looking to the left, I ran forward to the next pebble. I actually had a hope that this just might work, because if she stayed where she was, I could gain some ground and leave her behind, but this wasn't the case.

Every time I moved a few inches forward, Saxon took another step forward, which closed the distance between us. She finally gave up and became frustrated, and knelt down and began scattering small rocks and pebbles with her hand, hoping to find a miniaturized captive that had managed to hide beneath one of the pebbles.

The hand of the deific damsel drew near, and I knew that my strategy of remaining still and moving when her head was turned wouldn't work at this close distance, because she was close enough to me now that she would notice any movement at all, even out of the corners of her eyes.

Just when I was about to give up and accept defeat, a miracle happened. Trina caught another miniaturized man, and Saxon became angry. Saxon stood up, kicked some rocks, and thundered right past me as she ran towards the creek. She yelled back to Trina:

"I'll stay here and wait for them to try to cross the creek. I'll definitely catch one now!"

In the process of allowing me to harvest the fruits of one hope, fate had allowed another hope to be shattered. With Saxon standing guard over the creek, there would be no way to cross without being captured.

"That's a good idea!" Trina replied. “You guard the creek and catch any of them that try to cross, and I'll hunt them down as they try to cross the field!"

It was hopeless. The creek wound around the laboratory complex, so it was impossible to go around without walking around to the front of the complex. In that time, Trina could cover every square inch of territory between the wall that surrounded the perimeter of the lab and the creek, front and back. It looked like I was faced with two choices: get captured by Trina, or get captured by Saxon. Regardless of how hopeless it seemed, I continued making my way towards the creek, heading towards a section a good distance from where the mighty maiden was standing.

Saxon the subjugator stood there, one foot on each shore of the creek like the colossus of Rhodes had (incorrectly) been depicted in old paintings, arms folded across her chest, scanning the area in front of her and behind her for any movement. It would not be possible to cross the creek within 20 or 30 yards of her location without her knowing about it. My goal was a location about 50 normal-sized yards from Saxon, where I might be able to cross without being seen by her, if I could avoid being captured by the towering Trina in the process.

I decided to go all out and make a run for it, rather than to rely on my previous strategy. After fifteen minutes I was about twenty yards from the edge of the creek, and within about five more minutes I was ten yards closer. I looked behind me, and realized it had been a mistake to abandon my original strategy, because Saxon spotted me, in spite of the fact that I was about fifty yards from her.

"Aunt Trina!" Saxon yelled, "I saw one over there!"

The two of them started moving in my direction, and they could've easily reached me long before I could get to the creek. As they closed in, I realized that my only hope was to find an ant hole or a gopher hole to hide in. I had passed a couple of gopher holes, but they were too far behind me to reach them in time. I had only a matter of seconds before the two huntresses would arrive.

I ran forward, towards the creek, looking for any holes I could find. There was only one to be found, so I ran for it. I reached the edge of the gopher hole when Saxon was still a few steps away, but I hesitated; I didn't know if there was a gopher or a snake in the hole, and I was scared. I tried to circle back around and try to reach one of the ant holes I had passed, but Saxon arrived before I could even get close.

She was only a few steps away from me, so I hid behind a pebble, hoping she wouldn't notice me. Saxon didn't give up that easily. She knelt down and picked up every single pebble and rock within a square yard of where I was at, and I was trapped. When she picked up the pebble I was hiding behind, I knew it was over.

The domineering damsel turned the jar upside down, and dropped it over me. The jar was about three inches high, but to me it seemed like the height of a 15 story building. Trina soon arrived to assist with my capture, to ensure that I wouldn't be crushed by Saxon’s fingers if she tried to pick me up.

Trina's method was effective, but not scientific. She simply picked up the jar, licked her index finger, and pressed down on me gently. With the jar held right side up in her other hand, she wiped me against the inside of the jar.

"Since you found this one, I'll let you keep him." said Trina.

Saxon’s eyes lit up with joy as Trina handed her the jar. She looked at me with the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas morning who just opened a present and found her favorite toy.

"Now you have to promise not to let him escape, Saxon.” said Trina.

"Don't worry," said Saxon, “I'll make sure he'll never escape from me! I promise, aunt Trina!" As the two of them walked back to the lab with their captives, Saxon asked: "What if I swallowed him alive, Aunt Trina? Would the cells of his body nourish my muscles?"

"I went through a lot of work to acquire that captive, so I don't want you digesting him," said Trina. "I have a neural stimulator that was invented by one of my captives that you can use to vomit him back up if you ever end up swallowing him, okay?"

"Okay!" Saxon replied. The charismatic colossus then addressed me: "How does it feel to dwell under the dominion of an Olympian? Now you can worship me!"

As Saxon carried my jar back to the lab, I knew that I had made a sincere effort and tried as best as I could to get away, but I knew that I would never again have another chance to make another escape attempt. I had been conquered by the deific duo, and I was now the property of giantess Saxon, the sovereign subjugator!

*****

Eventually, Saxon went back home to her parents' home. She took me with her, and her parents were okay with her keeping me as a captive just as Trina had been. Things went normally until the Friday night before she started school again for the Fall semester. She was at a party that was attended by mostly her female friends, and beer was being consumed. One of Saxon’s girl friends dared her to swallow me. Saxon thought this was a hilarious idea, so she tossed me into her red plastic cup that was full of beer, and took a chug. I was swallowed instantly. At the proportionate size of an ant, I was powerless against her teenage might. I cascaded down her esophagus and splashed down into the belly of the beautiful behemoth who had conquered me.

I could breathe inside there, because there was enough air for me at my miniscule size. Everything smelled like beer down there, with the odor of pizza that she had eaten earlier that night. I wondered what would happen if I was digested by my mighty mistress, would the cells of my body be absorbed by her cells? That's what she wanted, but I knew Trina had given her the neural stimulator to make her vomit me up if she ever swallowed me. The irony of ending up in the belly of an Olympian wasn't lost on me, there are some people who would choose to die this way, but I wanted to live. Soon there was an eruption and all of the food and beer in Saxon’s stomach cavity moved upwards; she was puking, and I was going along for the ride.

I plunged out of her mouth into the light, into a kitchen sink that had been plugged up so I wouldn't be lost in the plumbing when I came out of her body. Saxon and her friends were laughing when they saw me, and Saxon showed me the neural stimulator that had allowed her to vomit me up. My majestic mistress plucked me out of the vomit and rinsed me off, then placed me back in my jar. I was the talk of the party for the next five or ten minutes. Some of Saxon’s female friends also wanted to swallow me, but Saxon wouldn't allow them to.

About a week later, Saxon came home from school and dumped me out of my jar onto her hand, and said, "They found a way to re-enlarge people who have been shrunk. There's a laboratory here in town, I'll take you to get re-enlarged if you promise not to seek litigation against me."

"Why would you do that?" I asked her. Most teenage girls would never allow a shrunken man to escape from them, if they had a choice.

"I don't want my gymnastics coach to find out that I conquered you. I could get kicked off the gymnastics team! I don't care if you sue my Aunt Trina, but you have to promise me that you won't allow me to get punished for keeping you as my prisoner swallowing you, okay?"

It seemed reasonable, so I agreed. I thought Saxon was cute, so I didn't mind being her captive for those several weeks. She took me to the lab where they could re-enlarge people, and I was put into a chamber. Twenty minutes later I was normal sized again, so I went to a restaurant and had a huge meal, because one of the side effects of the formula I discovered was that when the miniaturized atoms and molecules of my body were re-enlarged, the food in my digestive system remained normal size, so it was as if I hadn't eaten in several weeks. I also drank a lot of water at the lab that re-enlarged me when I returned to normal size. After my meal at the restaurant, I said goodbye to Saxon, and headed straight here to the courthouse, and here I am talking to you as you record everything I say.

*****

Tom Tucker, the man who had been miniaturized by Trina and given to her niece Saxon, was seated in a room speaking to his attorney.

"So based on everything I told you," said Tom, "I don't want Saxon prosecuted at all. Without her, I would still be a plaything living in a jar in her bedroom."

"We can swing that," said the attorney. "We can leave her involvement out of it completely."

"I just want to sue Trina, because she stole the formula I invented that allows shrunken people to assimilate normal-sized food and water. I don't want her taking credit for my invention."

*****

Several months later, Tom emerged from the courthouse victorious. He had won his case, and Trina had been sentenced to prison. Without Tom, the other captives who were being held prisoner would never have been freed. He still stayed in touch with Saxon over the phone, and she never got into trouble for her role in the abductions.


THE END

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Author's Note: I originally wrote this novel in 2011 for National Novel Writing Month that year, I had it posted on several websites. Recently, I went and edited the story, making certain changes. I switched the name of the giant planet from Alta-Earth to Thanatar, and I added a name to the University that Darien and Zima attend; I now call it Crestwood University. I also changed the pilot's name from Logan Tanner to Leo Tanner, because I feel there are too many characters named Logan in popular culture. If you spot a place where I failed to change his name from Logan to Leo, please let me know which chapter you spotted the mistake.

Chapter One

On Saturday, January 13, 2029, a space plane was perched upon a launchpad at a spaceport in California's Mojave desert. A new Aerospace company called "Future Shock" was entering the commercial space arena with a top-of-the-line space plane affectionately known as the Thunderbolt. Four men and two women were going up on the Thunderbolt's maiden voyage from the Mojave desert to Oahu.

Captain Leo Tanner was retired from the United States Air Force, and he was the pilot. The co-pilot was Mason Lewis, an African-American pro race car driver who parlayed his wealth into learning to be a pilot. The four passengers were made up of a husband and wife and a man and his sister. Tyler Chen was a Chinese-American pro tennis player who became a multi-millionaire before the age of 30. His wife Carmen was Mexican-American and in her mid-20's. Nolan Ward was a part Native-American, part Mexican-American, and part white concert promoter who won two tickets to this maiden flight from a radio station he does business with. He got into an argument with his girlfriend, so he brought his half-sister Natalie Red Hawk. Natalie is half Native-American and half-white. Nolan and Natalie have the same mother, but different fathers.

Leo greeted the four passengers individually as they carried their luggage onto the space plane. There were overhead luggage cabinets, and Mason the co-pilot made sure the luggage was secured inside the cabinets. He also made sure the passengers were strapped in correctly. Before long, they were ready for takeoff and the countdown began. When they were cleared for takeoff, Leo activated the thrusters and the space plane took off into the sky. It was daytime, but as they gained enough altitude, the sky outside the windows appeared to grow dark as they reached sub-orbital space.

Meanwhile, a universe away, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 21-year-old female college student named Darian Wagner was viewing the Thunderbolt on a scope. Beside her was her 18-year-old assistant Zima Zamora, a Latina with brown hair and brown eyes. Both women were dressed like schoolgirls, complete with white socks and Mary Janes. These were the standard uniforms for their all-female college known as Crestwood University.

"I found a suitable target, Zima!" said Darian.

Zima began rubbing her hands together with excitement. "How small are they?"

"From our perspective, a man from their reality who stands six feet tall would be exactly one inch tall! They're tiny enough to be easily handled, yet not too large that we couldn't swallow one of them to teach them discipline! They will be perfect subjects for my junior thesis!"

Darian pushed some buttons on the control console beneath the viewing scope, and pulled a lever.

"I'm initiating a space warp that should pull their space plane into our reality!" said Darian. "I will also control their vessel, to ensure that it lands where we want it to, so it can be easily retrieved!"

Back aboard the Thunderbolt, a hazy vortex of bright colors opened up in front of the space plane.

"I can't avoid it!" said Logan. "We're being pulled right into it!" Leo slammed his fists into the control panel and shouted, "The controls won't respond!"

The passengers saw all the colors of the rainbow outside their windows as the space plane lost altitude, plummeting downward toward the southern hemisphere of the planet below.

"You're coming in too steep!" said Mason.

"I can't help it!" Leo shouted. "It's like the space plane has a mind of its own!"

"It looks like we're heading for that wooded area!" said Mason as he pointed at a group of trees in the distance.

They came in for a landing, and the space plane glided to a stop in a clearing between some giant trees. Leo got on the intercom and said, "I don't understand what just happened, but everyone just stay seated while my co-pilot and I go outside to figure out where we are!"

Leo and Mason opened the door hatch and exited the Thunderbolt. What they saw astonished them. Trees stretched up into the sky, dozens of times taller than they should have been. The foliage and the rocks and debris on the ground were all on a more massive scale than normal.

"It looks like we've been shrunk down about an inch tall!" said Mason.

Meanwhile, back at Crestwood, the all-female University, Darian and Zima watched the Thunderbolt and her crew on the viewing scope.

"I'm going in my shuttle cruiser to go retrieve them!" said Darian, as she pulled a flash drive from the viewing console. "Stay here and watch the scope and keep me posted if any of them get away!"

Darian got into her shuttle cruiser and put it on autopilot. She instructed the navigation computer to fly to the coordinates on a flash drive she pulled from the viewing console where she left Zima. When the shuttle cruiser landed a few minutes later, Darian disembarked.

Leo and Mason looked up to see a giant Mary Jane fall from the sky, attached to a calf that was higher than a four story building. They looked up and saw Darian for the first time. Had she been normal size, she would have stood about five feet five inches tall, but because everything on this massive world was colossal, the young woman stood about 390 feet tall.

"Welcome to the planet Thanatar!" said Darian. "You must be the crew. I am Darian Wagner, and I will be your captress from this day forward!"

"Captress?" Leo asked.

"What's the meaning of this?" Mason asked. "Did you bring us here?"

"Yes, and all your questions will be answered shortly when we return to the University!" Darian activated a robotic assistant to lift the space plane and carry it to the shuttle cruiser, with the four passengers still inside. Darian collected Leo and Mason and carried them to her shuttle cruiser. She carried them snug in her fists, Leo in her left fist and Mason in her right fist. When she boarded the shuttle cruiser, she dropped Leo into a cup holder that was six inches deep on her scale, then dropped Mason into a second cup holder the same size.

Darian used autopilot and the shuttle cruiser was back at the University within minutes. The robotic assistant carried the space plane carefully into the lab where Zima was manning the viewing scope. The Thunderbolt was placed on a table, and Darian deposited Leo and Mason onto that same table.

"You can tell your passengers it is safe to disembark," said Darian.

The passengers heard this, and climbed out of the door hatch without being told. When all six of them were assembled, Darian and Zima stood over them excitedly.

"My family was never wealthy enough to own tiny people," said Zima, "but with the help of this University, I'm able to possess some of them!"

"They're not your tiny people, Zima!" Darian reminded her. "They belong to me! But if they are good on the game board on Arcadia, maybe we can win some other captives that you can own!"

"I hate to interrupt you," said Leo, "but can you tell me who the hell you people are and what the hell is going on?"

"Gladly!" said Darian. "I am Darian Wagner, and this is my assistant, Zima Zamora. You are on the planet Thanatar, in a universe that is parallel to your own. Everything here exists on a scale 72 times larger than anything in your universe. For instance, I stand five feet five inches tall by our standard of measurement, but to you, I tower over you at 390 feet tall!"

"How long are we going to be here?" Leo asked.

"Indefinitely!" said Darian. "I need to use the six of you for my junior thesis project here at Crestwood University."

"Do your laws allow that?" Leo asked. "To just imprison innocent people, without due cause?"

Darian tilted her head back and laughed. "There are no laws on our world that protect people your size! There are a nearly infinite number of alternate realities where we can acquire captives, and most of them are taken to Arcadia!"

"Arcadia?" Leo asked. "What is that?"

"It is a massive space station where tinies are taken to play games of skill. A lot of betting goes on there, our economy relies on the games! Any tiny person who loses a game is won by the owner of the winning tiny person."

"It would really help us if one of you had a skill that could help you win at the games!" said Zima.

"Do any of you possess special athletic skills?" Darian asked.

"No!" said Leo. "All of us are just regular average people! We're a waste of your time!"

"Leo's right!" said Mason. "You should just send us back to Earth!"

"Your little ruse won't work!" said Darian. "The process that brought you here was very expensive, the only way I was even able to do it was because I was using University equipment. You will play in the games, like it or not!"

"You're just game pieces to us!" said Zima. "You can be bought, sold, and traded like toys! And if you don't do as you're told, you might end up in someone's belly!" Zima rubbed her belly to emphasize her point. "Maybe you should do a mind scan and find out if they're lying about having athletic abilities!"

"I don't have time to rent out the mind scanning equipment right now," said Darian. "I'm just going to take them all to Arcadia right now and use the first captive who volunteers!"

Darian went and got a container and set it down on the massive table the captives from Earth were standing on. She activated the outer door, and it slid open. The door was on the same scale as the Earth people.

"Everybody into your habitation module!" said Darian.

"We may as well obey her," said Leo. "It would be futile to resist!"

All six of the captives marched into their habitation module. There were furnishings built into the walls, so the furniture wouldn't move around when the habitation module was moved.

"These couches look old and stained!" said Natalie Red Hawk.

"I agree!" said Carmen Chen.

Darian peeked through the transparent ceiling and said, "There is food to eat if you're hungry, but while you eat, everyone strap yourselves in! I'm taking you on my shuttle cruiser to Arcadia!"

The six captives did as they were told, and Darian carried the habitation module to her shuttle cruiser, with Zima following her. All six of them ate some of the food that was on their scale: protein bars in metallic wrappers with bottles of water.

Darian strapped herself in, and Zima strapped herself into the passenger seat. The habitation module was on a console between the two giant women. Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser up into space, and on the view screen, they could see a massive space station spinning in the distance. It had a central axis, while two spheres on either end of a long shaft spun around in circles to generate artificial gravity.

Darian parked her shuttle cruiser and walked into one of the arenas with Zima, as she carried the habitation module. The two women set themselves up in some seats where owners of game participants were meant to be seated, and Darian opened the top of the habitation module.

"Do I have any volunteers?" Darian asked. "They're having car races right now, are any of you skilled at racing? The loser will be executed in this game!"

"I'll volunteer!" said Mason. "I'm a pro race car driver back on Earth!"

Darian scooped Mason up and set him in a simulator to get him accustomed to the controls of the vehicle he would soon be driving. When he was ready, Darian set him in a race car next to another driver, and the two cars took off when the light turned green. Mason's car flew around the track, and it soon became obvious to Leo and the other captives that Mason's opponent didn't have any skills or experience with racing; at least, not as much training as Mason had.

Titans who were spectators in the audience placed bets, and the cars completed the necessary number of laps, and Mason was declared the winner.

When the loser was presented to Darian, she lifted him to her mouth, and swallowed him whole. She licked her lips and looked at her captives.

"That could easily be you if you dare to defy me! Understand?"

The captives nodded their ascent, and Darian commanded them to return to their habitation module, and after Darien collecting her winnings, she and Zima returned to the shuttle cruiser and flew back to Thanatar.

Once back at the University, Darian and Zima placed the habitation module on the massive table and said goodbye for the night.

When the giant women left, Leo looked at their surroundings. "I think we can escape!"

Leo pushed on the door. "Mason, Tyler, Nolan! Help me push this door open!"

The three men pushed on the door, and it slid open. All six captives exited the habitation module.

"That window is open!" said Leo. He pointed at a device that looked like a telescope, but it was actually the device that had opened the space warp that pulled them into this alternate reality.

It took the better part of an hour, but the captives were able to scale the equipment next to the wall and make their way up to the window, and they climbed out and used a power cord to climb down the outside of the building. Soon, they were on the ground on the planet Thanatar at night. They were on their own, but they were free!

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 2

The group of six former captives made their way along the side of the building to the front, and saw the quad of Crestwood University. Huge concrete walkways stretched from a central point and fanned out to form four diagonals. There was a water fountain in the center of the quad.

"It feels warm here for some reason," said Carmen.

"We were pulled into the southern hemisphere of this planet," said Leo Tanner, "so the seasons must be reversed, just like Australia is back on our world. It was the middle of Winter when we left Earth, so it must be the middle of Summer here in this region of Thanatar!"

"You're the boss, Captain Tanner!" said Nolan Ward. "What should we do?"

"Call me Leo! We're all in this crazy mess together, so we might as well be on a first name basis. We need to see if we can get to a secluded wooded area."

"Then going across the quad doesn't make much sense!" said Nolan. "I think we should go to the back of the campus and try to find our way off campus that way!"

"I agree with Nolan," said Mason. "If this campus is anything like Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, we might find a stream near campus that should lead us to a rural area. I know when we were descending in the Thunderbolt, this town seemed more medium-sized, not huge like Los Angeles. And I do recall seeing some streams winding through the town."

"I think we should break up into two groups," said Nolan, "because the odds of our capture are higher if we're together!"

"I disagree," said Leo. "We need to stick together! I'm going to find a way to get us back to Earth, even if it means I have to stay behind. When Future Shock hired me, I pledged to look after my passengers under any circumstances, including something as crazy as this!"

"I agree with the Captain," said Nolan's half-sister Natalie Red Hawk. "If we split up, we wouldn't be able to communicate with each other."

"Mason said there's a stream cutting through town," said Leo, "I think if we head South, we should get there and we can follow the stream."

All four of the passengers decided to follow Leo and Mason. It was night time, but Leo and Mason each had a small flashlight they could use.

"I've got an idea," said Leo. "If we set out in one specific direction without knowing where the stream is, we don't know where we could end up. I say the four passengers stay here on campus behind the building we escaped from, and Mason will head west and I'll head south, and we'll meet up here at daybreak. One of us should've found a stream by then."

"Sounds okay to me!" said Nolan, as he sat down and reclined against the school building with his arms behind his back.

"If we're not back within a half hour after daybreak, assume we've been captured and try to evade any giants!" said Leo, and he turned and walked away with Mason. Leo headed south, and Mason headed west.

Mason did his best to stay away from spots where he could be easily seen. He walked in the gutters and under shuttle cruisers. Soon, he came to an area where some college students were having a party. Since he was still close to the University campus where Darian went to school, he had inadvertently stumbled onto a sorority house where the party was in full swing.

"It must be Saturday night here on their world, too!" said Mason to himself.

Meanwhile, Leo found a radio tower that served as a communications nexus for the college radio station. He easily walked through the chain link fence and made his way to the tower.

"If I can climb high enough, I should be able to see where the streams are in this town!" said Leo.

Climbing the tower was easier said than done, however; Leo could see an area about fifty feet off the ground where there was a grid built into the tower that had rungs that were small enough for him to grab onto, but the question was how to scale those first fifty feet.

Back at the sorority party, Mason was trapped. The drunk women in their early 20's stumbled around the front lawn of the sorority mansion carrying their cups of beer, and some of them stumbled into the road as Mason hid in the gutter beneath a shuttle cruiser.

"Damn drunk bitches!" said Mason. "I'm gonna be stuck here all night if this party doesn't die down soon!"

Just then, a drunk college girl stumbled into the area right above the curb where Mason was hiding.

"I think I'm going to puke!" said the young woman, and she bent over to vomit. Mason, seeing that he was right in the path of any vomit that might come down, ran out from under the shuttle cruiser into plain sight.

"Look!" said the drunk college student. "A little person!"

Several of the women approached the curb to see what the first woman was talking about, and a brunette spotted Mason. She thrust her mid-calf boot down on one side of Mason, then stomped down on his other side with her other boot. Before Mason could react, she had bent down and grabbed him.

"We've got another captive for the party game!" said the brunette. "Hello, little man! My name is Stephanie!"

"Stephanie," said a short burly blonde woman, "maybe we shouldn't swallow him, he might belong to someone!"

"I don't care!" said Stephanie. "If he goes to Arcadia it's just a matter of time before he gets swallowed anyway!"

Mason was held firmly in the hands of the mighty giantess, unable to escape. He could still breathe without difficulty, but if she tightened her grip she could easily crush him as if he were a mouse.

"Let me tell you something!" said Stephanie the brunette to the stout blonde, gesturing while waiving her arms,"if someone was stupid enough to let a little person escape, then they had it coming!" With the last few syllables, Stephanie accidentally loosened her grip on Mason, and he went flying through the air and landed on the lawn. Because the sorority girls were drunk, their reaction time was slowed down, giving Mason enough time to flee back into the gutter.

The drunk women looked for him, but they couldn't find him. Mason went back the way he had came, heading back to the University campus in defeat at having not found a stream. Although he had failed in his mission, he was grateful to have escaped the drunken giantess who wanted to use him for a drinking game in which he would've been swallowed.

Meanwhile, Leo was having better luck climbing the radio tower. Because it was dark, he hadn't seen a cable that stretched from a third of the way up the tower to the ground, before disappearing into a pipe. By climbing the cable, Leo was able to make it to the point fifty feet up where the grid started. The grid wasn't designed for human hands, but formed diamond patterns across its entirety. Each diamond shape was about two feet across and one foot high, so it functioned as a ladder for someone from Earth.

Leo climbed several hundred feet, but still wasn't as high as the elevation of a one-story house on Thanatar. This wasn't the work for someone who was afraid of heights, but luckily, Logan was born to be a pilot and was completely unafraid. It took the better part of an hour of steady climbing before he was high enough to see the layout of the town. As he looked around, he could see that Mason was correct, there were hills and streams that were visible. He could see the trees that lined the edges of the nearest stream.

Leo memorized the location and approximate distance of the nearest stream, and then began climbing down. He made his way back to the campus, and found the other five escapees before daybreak.

"No luck, Mason?" Leo asked.

"No, I got captured by a drunk sorority girl, but I got away. How about you?"

"I found a stream!" said Leo. "I know how to get there!"

"How do you know where a stream is?" Mason asked. "Did you find a map?"

"No, I climbed a radio tower and I was able to see the layout of the land." Leo motioned to the others. "Everyone, follow me! The distance is close from the perspective of a giant, but at our diminutive size, it will take us a while longer!"

The six escapees made their way along the gutters of the college town, under shuttle cruisers and in the direction that Logan instructed them. They didn't pass by the same street where the sorority girl had captured Mason, but by daybreak they arrived at the stream Leo had spotted from the radio tower. There was an embankment that was five or six feet down from a giant's perspective, but from an Earthling's perspective, it was several hundred feet down. There was a path they could follow that made their trek easier.

"I don't like this!" said Natalie. "There could be wild animals down here!"

"Well, what would you prefer?" Nolan asked. "Being back under Darian's power and forced to be a game piece on Arcadia, or being free but in a little bit of danger?"

"I guess you're right!" said Natalie. "This is such a strange world! They're thousands of years ahead of us technologically, but they have the mentality of the ancient Romans! Forcing little people to play games where the loser is captured or devoured!"

"Well, nobody ever said life made sense!" said Nolan.

"This society relies on slaves, without it, their economy would collapse!" said Tyler. "Darian herself tried to explain that to us."

"I wonder why we haven't heard of a lot more people ending up here!" said Carmen. "It must take a lot of little people our size to fuel the gaming mecca of Arcadia!"

"I think other people from our world have ended up here," said Tyler, "but they were never heard from again, so they couldn't come back and talk about it!"

"I guess that's true!" said Carmen.

The little people made their way along the stream, with Leo taking the lead while Mason was in the rear with a branch and leaves brushing their footprints clean.

"We should be walking single file to hide our numbers," said Leo, "even though Mason is wiping our trail clear, just so we get in the habit of walking this way."

After several hours passed, they decided to make a camp.

"It's about noon," said Leo, "we should set up camp here, but in the meantime I'm sending Mason out to find food."

Mason set out as Leo instructed. They hadn't eaten since they had eaten those protein bars Darian had given them the day before. Mason found his way to a park, where he saw some women playing volleyball. He made his way back to the camp to inform the others.

"I found a park where some women are playing volleyball," said Mason, "and there's a blanket with a picnic basket! We should be able to go in and take what we need without their knowing we were there!"

Leo, Mason, Nolan, and Tyler headed toward the park, with Mason in the lead. They were able to climb into the picnic basket because of the rungs on the basket acting as ladder rungs. The giant women were so involved in their game that the little people weren't spotted. After Leo, Mason, and Tyler had enough food, they told Nolan to forget about getting more and to come with them.

"Forget it, I'm not going back empty handed!" said Nolan. "I'll just jump in there and grab some dessert!"

As Nolan climbed into the picnic basket, the giantesses finished their game and headed back toward the blanket.

"Nolan, we have to leave! The giants are coming!" Leo shouted, but Nolan remained inside the picnic basket.

"Forget about Nolan," said Leo, "we have to spare ourselves! Let's get back to the camp!"

The three men were on the edge of the park when they saw the giant women surround the picnic basket. Nolan was easily captured within less than a minute. A blonde giantess held him firmly in her right fist.

"Now where did you come from, tiny one?" the giantess asked.

"I'm from Earth!" said Nolan.

"But aren't you all?" the giantess asked. "At least, from some version of Earth. Who did you escape from?"

Nolan was silent.

"If you won't tell me, then I'll just keep you!" said the blonde giantess.

"Are you going to use him for a sex toy?" one of the other women asked. The other women in their group started laughing.

"I might at some point, who knows?" said the blonde giantess. "I think I'm going to train him to be a game piece on Arcadia!" The giantess smiled at her tiny captive. "Don't worry, little man! I'll only play against other women, so if you lose, you'll end up in the belly of someone beautiful!"

"Thanks for reassuring me!" said Nolan sarcastically.

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 3

About one o'clock in the afternoon, Zima Zamora arrived to check on the tinies from Earth. She checked the habitation module and saw that they were missing, so she turned on some of the scanning equipment, to check and see if she could detect the lifesigns of the captives.

"They're not here!" Zima said to herself. She went to a two-way video phone and punched in the number to Darian's cell phone. Darian's face appeared on the screen a few moments later. She was sitting in her shuttlecruiser. "The captives have escaped!" said Zima.

"I'm on my way over!" said Darian.

When Darian arrived a couple of minutes later, Zima showed her the window and the cord hanging out of it where the captives had climbed down to get outside the building.

"Don't worry about the captives," said Darian. "We'll have them back soon enough! Everything is going according to plan!"

Darian gave a mischievous smile to Zima, and Zima gave an evil grin. Zima rubbed her hands together with excitement at the thought of re-capturing the tinies.

Meanwhile, back at the park, Leo Tanner, Mason Lewis, and Tyler Chen were watching as the giantesses who had been playing volleyball packed up their belongings, with Nolan Ward as the new acquisition of one of the giant women.

"I'm going to try to hitch a ride on their vehicle!" said Leo. "I want the two of you to take this food back to the camp. If I don't try to track Nolan down now, I might never get the chance again!"

Mason and Tyler watched Logan took off in the direction the giant women were heading.

"Do you really think we can survive on our own in a world of giants?" Tyler asked Mason. "Maybe we're better off under the care of Darian!"

"I'd rather try to do our best living out a fugitive existence than living as pawns that can be gambled away on a game board! You saw what happened to the guy on that losing team! Darian swallowed him!"

"But I'm a pro tennis player!" said Tyler. "Since this is a parallel world, there must be a sport that's an equivalent of tennis here on this world of titans! And if there is, I might be the best player out there!"

"But what if you're not?" Mason asked. "They might have gotten five or six other tennis champions from worlds that are analogs of our own, and they might be better than you!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right!" said Tyler.

"Let's get this food back to the camp!" said Mason.

Across the park, Leo followed the giantess who had captured Nolan. There was a parking lot with a few shuttle cruisers parked there, and when Leo saw the blonde giantess who had captured Nolan get into one of the shuttle cruisers, he got underneath and climbed into the undercarriage and found a spot above the rear bumper where he would be able to hold onto something when the vehicle made its ascent.

The blonde giantess set Nolan inside a plastic jar that she set in a cup holder, then worked the control console of her shuttle cruiser. In moments, the engines kicked on, and the vehicle took off into the sky, climbing at a gentle angle. Her home wasn't far, so the trip only lasted about twenty seconds. Around the rear bumper, Leo held on for dear life and was rewarded when the vehicle came in for a landing less than a minute after take-off. When he saw the giant woman carry the jar containing Nolan into her house, Leo climbed down and followed her, but hid in the shrubbery, waiting to make his move.

Back at the camp, Mason and Tyler eventually arrived with the food they had stolen from the giantess volleyball players.

"Nolan was captured!" Mason told Natalie. "Leo is trying to track him down to try to set him free!"

Natalie lifted her hands to her face in shock. "No!" she said. "How did it happen?"

"Nolan went back for food when Leo told him it was time for us to leave! I guess he didn't want to be the only one to show up at the camp empty handed."

Tyler began setting the food out, and the four of them sat down for their meal. Before they ate, Carmen said a prayer.

"Lord, please protect Nolan and Leo in this dangerous world, and please bring them back to us! Thank you for this food you have provided for us in this our hour of need!"

Back at the house of the giantess who captured Nolan, Leo was trying to scale the perimeter of the house, looking for openings. He spotted a window that was open slightly, and climbed a bush to the ledge beneath the window. When he saw giant insects, it didn't phase him, because his military training from his time in the Air Force gave him the intestinal fortitude to ignore things like that that would startle an average man.

Inside, the blonde giantess sat on the carpet and dumped out the jar that had contained Nolan, and he came tumbling out. The blonde giantess was wearing green shorts and an orange tank top, and she was bare-footed. She had taken her shoes and socks off during the time it took for Leo to get to the window ledge. She was sitting Indian style, and as Nolan got to his feet he saw that she had a nice medium tan for a blonde woman. Nolan thought that she must go to tanning salons regularly to achieve that effect.

"My name is Rikki!" said the giantess. "People like you usually only belong to the extremely wealthy, so someone like me doesn't get an opportunity like this very often! What's your name?"

"Nolan Ward!"

"Welcome to Thanatar, Nolan! Did you know there's a drinking game involving tinies like you?"

"One of the crew members of the space plane that brought me here was almost captured by a sorority girl who planned on using him in a drinking game. That happened last night!"

"Actually, there are several drinking games involving swallowing tiny people, I've always wanted to try it!"

"Wouldn't you rather use me for a sex toy?" Nolan asked.

"Yes, but only if you survive being swallowed by me. Now, I will vomit you back up if I drink enough alcohol, but you're going to have to conserve your air while you're inside my tummy, okay tiny one?"

"Can't we talk about this?" Nolan asked.

"The discussion is over!" said Rikki the giantess, and she stood up to reach for a bottle of alcohol. As she did, Nolan made a break for it and tried to run across the carpet toward the window. Rikki saw what he was trying to do, and walked over and pressed the button on the control console that activated the window and caused it to shut completely. Leo saw her arm approaching the window as she reached for the control console, and jumped out of the way, landing on a branch of the bush he had climbed up. Luckily, Rikki didn't see him.

Inside the house, Rikki grabbed a champagne glass and a bottle of white wine, and poured some into the glass. She grabbed Nolan, who from her perspective, was around one inch in height. Rikki dangled him over her champagne glass, and dropped him inside. When Nolan splashed down into the cool liquid, he panicked, thinking that he would soon find himself contained within the muscular walls of Rikki's stomach. As he struggled and splashed around inside the glass, Nolan tried to reason with Rikki.

"I'm about an inch tall from your perspective, right? Isn't that a little big to swallow? Maybe you should acquire a captive from a world where the people are one centimeter tall from your point of view! I don't know, you could swallow a midget or something!"

"Trying to reason with me will do you no good!" said the beautiful blonde titaness. "You're going on a journey to my belly!"

She tilted the glass back and began guzzling the contents. Nolan tried to swim in the direction of the bottom of the glass, which was tilted upwards at that point; however, it did him no good. Rikki's mouth was wide open and ready to receive him. Nolan could feel Rikki's hot breath washing over him as she guzzled the wine; there was nothing he could hold onto, the force of gravity was dragging him to exactly the place where Rikki wanted him: her mouth. Nolan found himself dragged down toward her mouth by the pull of the current of the wine. Soon, he splashed down on her tongue, and her teeth clenched down around him and locked into place. With one muscular contraction, Nolan was dispatched down Rikki's esophagus to splash down in the depths of her titanic belly. The fumes were overwhelming and he was covered with chyme, but surprisingly, there was a pocket of air inside Rikki's stomach, with just enough air for Nolan to survive, at least for the time being.

Meanwhile, outside the house, Leo tried to find another window he could climb through. He walked around the house, which was wider in diameter than a football stadium. He wished they had some form of walkie-talkies so he could communicate with his Mason Lewis, his co-pilot, but he knew the advanced technology of these titans would probably be able to track their transmissions, so it wouldn't have done them any good any way.

Right at that moment, Rikki chose to open the sliding door of the backyard and step outside. Leo was unaware of the drama that unfolded within her stomach walls, that Nolan was fighting for survival. Leo quickly seized the opportunity to run inside the house, hoping that he would be able to find a way to secure Nolan and bring him back to the camp. Rikki had the wine bottle in her hand, and took swigs from it now and then.

Inside her belly, Nolan was soaking wet, floating in the chyme of Rikki's partially digested food. Every time she took a swig of the wine bottle, wine rained down on Nolan. There was an air pocket with just enough air for him to survive if he took a breath only every fifteen or twenty seconds. Nolan silently prayed that Rikki would vomit as soon as possible.

When Rikki downed the last of the wine in the wine bottle, she felt a familiar sensation that she had felt on occasions when she was sick. She knew she was about to vomit, and what better place to do that than outside? She bent over, and the contents of her stomach erupted onto the grass. Nolan was discharged up through her esophagus and out her mouth, and down onto the grass below. When Rikki recovered, she scooped Nolan up.

"Let's get you inside and get you cleaned up! You just had an adventure! Tomorrow, I'm going to train you for Arcadia!"

The door was still open at that point, but Leo felt that he needed to get back to the camp and inform the others of what happened. They could come back for Nolan, now that he knew where Rikki the giantess who captured Nolan lived. When he got outside, he memorized the address on the wall near the front door of Rikki's house, and after jumping down into the gutter, he went to the corner and memorized the street name. The trip from the park to Rikki's house only took twenty seconds, so Leo figured he could get back to the camp by nightfall. In the distance, he could see the mountain that was near the edge of the campus they had escaped from.

Leo had a good sense of direction because of his military training, and he had a compass to guide him, so he made his way from gutter to gutter, avoiding giant people along the way. At sunset he found his way back to the park where Nolan was abducted, and from there he found his way to the camp by the stream just after night fall.

"We saved some food for you, captain!" said Mason.

"I tracked Nolan down, I know where we can find him! We should set out for him immediately!"

"Whoa, hold on!" said Mason. "You look like you just walked thirty miles! I think you need to rest!"

"Maybe you're right!" said Leo. "We can go after him first thing in the morning!"

"How is my brother doing?" Natalie asked. "Is he okay?"

"He's doing fine!" said Leo. "He got captured by a giantess named Rikki. I know where she lives. I saw her swallow Nolan while drinking a bottle of wine,"

"Oh my God!" said Natalie.

"It's okay!" said Leo. "She wasn't trying to hurt him, it was a drinking game. She vomited him up. She plans on taking him to Arcadia!"

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 4

Daybreak warmed the land, and Rikki woke up to check on her captive. Nolan had slept in a jar with air holes cut into the lid and a rag as a blanket, bed, and pillow. Rikki picked up the jar while Nolan was still sleeping and rapped on the jar with her other fist.

"Wake up, sleepyhead! It's time to prepare you for the games!"

Rikki sat down Indian style on the carpet of her bedroom and unscrewed the lid of the jar and dumped Nolan out onto the carpet. He came tumbling down harmlessly, then stood up to face his captress.

"Are you thinking of taking me to Arcadia?" Nolan asked.

"Yes!" said Rikki. "If you win a few games, I could acquire some more captives!"

"Wouldn't I make a better sex toy?" Nolan asked.

"You're too small to make an effective sex toy," said Rikki.

"But I don't have any athletic skills! The only sport I was ever any good at was basketball, but I'm five-eleven, so I wouldn't stand a chance against some of those bigger guys!"

"Maybe we can find a sport you're good at," said Rikki.

"I'm telling you you're wasting your time!" said Nolan. "I'm not good at anything!"

"Well, I can give you two choices," said Rikki. "You can either volunteer to practice for the games, or you can be the victim of another drinking game and end up at the bottom of my belly, but this time, you'll be stuck there permanently!"

Nolan stepped back and swallowed out of fear as he looked up at his mistress. She was far too powerful for him to escape from by himself, so he had no choice.

"Okay, I'll practice for the games!" said Nolan.

"Good!" said Rikki, clapping her hands together. "I'll call my friend Britney and have her bring her captives and equipment over, and they'll train you to play a sport!"

Rikki got up and got her cell phone and called her friend.

"Britney? This is Rikki! I have a captive now! Can you bring your captives over so they can train my captive for Arcadia?"

Meanwhile, back at the camp by the stream, the five fugitives from Earth began to wake up. Tyler and his wife Carmen woke up to see that Leo was already awake, and sitting on a log.

"I could really go for a cup of coffee right now!" said Carmen.

Mason woke up next, followed by Natalie.

"Are we going to rescue my brother?" Natalie asked Leo.

"Yes, we're going to try." replied Leo. "But I'm only taking one man with me, and the other man needs to stay with the women and find food. Both missions are dangerous, so I'm asking for volunteers!"

"I'll go with you to rescue Nolan," said Tyler. "It shouldn't fall on Mason to help you do all the difficult work."

"All right Tyler," said Leo, "Freshen up and drink some water before we leave, because we'll take off in ten minutes!"

Back at Rikki's house, her friend Britney arrived with the equipment and her two captives. Rikki helped Britney set up a portable handball court on her dining room table. After it was unfolded, it had a hard surface that made up the floor, and a hard surface that functioned as a wall.

"These are my two captives Jace and Trevor!" said Britney to Nolan. "I purchased Jace, and he happened to be a great handball player back on Earth, so I took him to Arcadia and he won a match and I won Trevor, his opponent!"

Nolan shook hands with Jace and Trevor.

"Nolan, have you ever played handball before?" Rikki asked.

"Yes, in jail, but I was never any good at it!" Nolan responded.

Jace and Trevor set out to show Nolan how to play the game effectively. They showed him how to serve the ball, and they showed him their techniques, but Nolan just couldn't catch on. As the morning wore on, it dawned on everyone that Nolan just didn't have any skills, and would probably get beaten at any sport on Arcadia he tried to play.

Within two hours of leaving the camp, Leo and Tyler were halfway to Rikki's house. Although it was a short distance from the park where Nolan was captured to Rikki's house according to how giants measured distance, to the fugitives from Earth it was a distance of about thirty miles. Leo was in top shape for a man his age, and Tyler was a professional tennis player, so both men were able to jog most of the distance without feeling tired. The two men were in such great shape that they could even carry on a conversation while they jogged along.

"We're going through a lot of effort for one man!" said Tyler. "Even if we rescue him, what do you think our chances are of getting the Thunderbolt refueled and returning to Earth?

"It doesn't look good right now," Leo replied, "but the Future Shock company entrusted me with the lives of these passengers, and I'm going to do all in my power to get them back to Earth, no matter the odds!"

"Let's say we manage to get the Thunderbolt refueled," said Tyler as he jogged along beside Leo in a gutter beneath a curb. "If one of us manages to figure out how to use Darian's equipment to re-open that wormhole or space warp that brought us here, one of us will have to stay behind to work the control console!"

"If it comes down to that, I'm prepared to stay behind, if it will mean the rest of you get to return home!" said Leo.

Meanwhile, back at Rikki's house, it was time for lunch. Rikki set out a small table that was on Nolan's scale, with three chairs, one for Nolan, one for Jace, and one for Trevor. Food and water was set on the table for the captives.

"Jace and Trevor," said Rikki, "try to talk some sense into Nolan for me!"

Rikki and Britney went to eat on the patio of the backyard. While Nolan, Jace and Trevor silently ate their lunch, Nolan noticed that Jace and Trevor were very athletic-looking, but also looked like they had done some time in jail.

"So how did you two get so good at handball?" Nolan asked.

"On the version of Earth that I came from," said Jace, "I was locked up in the county jail a lot, and that's how I got good at handball. They used to let us out into the yard a lot to play, and I became the best on my cell-block!"

"I played some handball in juvie when I was a teenager," said Trevor. "But I wasn't as good as Jace. I was defeated by him, but luckily, Britney didn't swallow me, she kept me and had Jace train me to get better at handball."

"Don't fool yourself," said Jace. "There's no escape from Thanatar, in the history of this world no tiny has ever escaped from this world! You will play handball on Arcadia, win or lose!"

"And whether or not you end up in the belly of some giantess depends on how good you get!" said Trevor.

"But I suck at handball!" said Nolan. "I did time in county jail, too! But I never got good at handball!"

"On Thanatar, it's do or die!" said Jace. "Pretenders don't live very long! You can either train with us, or you can live a very short life!"

Before long, training resumed. After playing hard for about 45 minutes (and not winning or improving), Nolan was thirsty.

"Rikki, can I have some water?"

Britney was shocked that Nolan had addressed her by name. "Nolan, that just isn't done!" said Britney. "You should always address your owner as mistress!"

Jace and Trevor approached Nolan. "How long ago did you get captured?" Jace asked.

"The day before yesterday!" said Nolan.

"Forgive him, mistress!" said Jace to Britney. "He hasn't been here long enough to know any better!"

"Can I have some water?" Nolan asked.

"You can have water when your game improves!" said Rikki.

Meanwhile, Leo and Tyler had found the street corner where the signpost that signified the street where Rikki's house was located.

"That's the street her house is on!" said Leo, pointing at the sign.

"How far is the house?" Tyler asked.

"About two miles on our scale," said Leo.

The two men jogged along the curb, passing underneath the occasional shuttle cruiser that was parked on the street. At each driveway, they peeked around before running to the other side where the curb continued; the curb concealed them, but every time the curb dipped down to form a driveway, they were out in the open.

Within twenty minutes, they reached Rikki's house. They walked under her back fence and entered her backyard. There was a patio area with a table and chairs for giants to sit and eat or drink. The sliding glass door was closed, but it opened and Rikki and her friend Britney exited.

"Nolan isn't with them!" whispered Leo. "He must still be inside!"

"Which one lives here?" Tyler whispered.

"That one," whispered Leo as he pointed at Rikki.

"I'm going after Nolan!" said Tyler, and he ran toward the open sliding door.

"Tyler, come back!" said Leo. "We need a plan!"

Tyler was able to enter the house undetected by the giantesses. He ran to a pot that held a potted plant, and hid behind it. Jace saw him enter the house, and got Trevor and Nolan's attention.

"Do you know that guy?" Jace asked Nolan.

"That's Tyler Chen!" said Nolan. "He was a passenger on the space plane that I was on when we got pulled through a space warp to this world!"

"I don't know about the world you came from," said Jace, "but on my version of Earth, Tyler Chen was a pro tennis player!"

Jace started yelling for Britney and Rikki. "Mistress! There's an intruder here! He plays tennis! You can't lose with him as your captive!"

Rikki and Britney got up from their seats on the patio and entered the house to see what the fuss was about. Rikki hit the button on the keypad that shut the sliding glass door, and crossed her arms and looked at the captives.

"What is going on?" Rikki asked.

"There's a pro tennis player hiding behind that potted plant!" shouted Trevor. "If you catch him, you can't lose!"

Rikki looked for the captive, and Tyler ran out and darted across the room. Rikki ran after him and slammed her left foot down in front of him, blocking his path. He ran in another direction, but she slammed her other foot down and blocked his path again. She reached down and cupped her hand over him and picked him up, and set him down on the table with Nolan, Jace, and Trevor.

"I can't believe you dropped a dime on him!" said Nolan, and he took a swing at Trevor.

"Is it true you play tennis professionally?" Rikki asked.

Leo could see Tyler getting captured, so he made his way under the backyard fence and out to the front yard, and back to the gutter to make his way back to the camp thirty miles away. It wasn't quite sunset when he started out. He made his way back the way he had came, traveling in gutters and being careful to cross the streets only when he was sure there were no giants around. He tried to jog like he did on the way to Rikki's house, and he made it back to the camp at about three in the morning. When he got back, he was exhausted from climbing the radio tower, and making the trek to and from Rikki's house three separate times. Mason was keeping watch, and woke up the others. Natalie and Carmen joined Leo and Mason.

"Tyler was captured by the same giantess that captured Nolan!" said Leo. "There was nothing I could do!"

"My husband!" said Carmen in shock. "Are you going to try to rescue them?"

"I don't know," said Leo. "We would need tools of some type to break through her sliding glass door! I don't know where we can find tools like that on our scale!"

"What does the giantess plan on doing with Tyler?" Carmen asked.

"It looks like both he and Nolan are being prepared to play on Arcadia!" said Leo.

"I have faith in Tyler," said Carmen. "He's an expert tennis player, so if they have a similar game here on Thanatar, Tyler should be okay!"

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 5

Earlier that day, after Leo had escaped and was heading back toward the camp, but before he got back, Rikki looked at Tyler as he stood on the dining room table, next to Nolan, Jace and Trevor. "So you're a pro tennis player on your home world?"

"I might be!" said Tyler.

"He is!" said Trevor. "On the version of Earth that I come from, everyone has heard of Tyler Chen! He must've came from a world that is an analog of mine! If he plays for you, it's a guarantee that he'll win some game pieces for you!"

"You're just their little minion, aren't you?" said Nolan.

"I've found it pays to serve the giants well!" said Trevor. "The sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be!"

"I still plan on getting back to Earth somehow!" said Nolan.

"It'll never happen!" said Trevor. "No tiny has ever escaped back to their home-world! It hasn't happened in the history of Thanatar, and they've been conquering alternate realities for thousands of years!"

"Yeah!" said Jace. "What makes you think you'll be the first?"

The next morning, back at the camp, Leo was sleeping in. He was catching up on some much needed rest. By walking back from Rikki's house and making two round trips there and back again, he had walked and jogged ninety miles in one twenty-four hour period, and it had caught up with him.

Mason, Carmen, and Natalie were sitting around contemplating their options.

"I guess I could get back to the campus and try to see if there's some way to refuel the Thunderbolt!" said Mason.

"You'd better wait until Leo wakes up," said Carmen. "He's in charge of our welfare."

"Do you think we really have a chance to ever get back to Earth?" Natalie asked.

"To be honest, it doesn't look good!" said Mason. "But Leo wants to keep trying until we've exhausted all of our possibilities."

Mason snapped a twig in half that he had been holding in his hands and tossed it into the stream. "I think I'd better do some recon and try to spy on Darian and Zima, and try to see if I can find anything out." Mason stood up and began to walk away. "When Leo wakes up, tell him where I went!"

"Mason, I don't think Leo will be happy when he wakes up and finds out that you've left!" said Carmen. "We already lost Nolan because he took action without the consent of the captain, then we lost Tyler on a rescue mission to retrieve Nolan! We don't need to lose you, too!"

"If I don't do anything, we won't be any better off," said Mason. "At least if I go try to spy on Darian, I can find out if there's a chance of refueling the Thunderbolt and using Darian's technology to get us home!"

"Mason, Carmen's right!" said Natalie. "We'd be lost without you! We can't afford to have you get captured!" Natalie tried to use her body to block Mason's path. Mason held her in his arms.

"Don't worry about me!" said Mason. "I won't get caught, I'm not as stupid as your brother Nolan! Trust me, I'll be back!" Mason grabbed Natalie by the shoulders and gently pushed her aside, and stepped around her.

Mason walked toward the trail that led to the road. He remembered how to get back to the University campus, so he followed the procedure and stayed in the gutters and tried to lay low. It took a couple of hours, but he got to the campus without getting caught. Now he just had to make his way to the building where Darian was keeping the Thunderbolt. He saw that the cord they had climbed down had been removed, but the door was open. He hid behind the front of the door and tried to listen. Mason could see the Thunderbolt on a table top. Peeking inside, Mason could see Darian and Zima were in between classes and Darian was adjusting some equipment.

"With this interface," said Darian, "we can use the crew and passenger manifest to run the names of the captives through this space warp Internet scanning technology; we can check the Internet of their own world to find out who they are and what skills they have!"

Several read-outs appeared on the screen in front of Darian. One of them interested Darian.

"It says here that Tyler Chen is a world renowned tennis champion! If I can get him back, we can't lose on Arcadia!"

"But what if he's already been captured by someone else by now?" Zima asked.

"Then we'll just have to go to Arcadia and claim him if anyone tries to register him as a game piece!"

"Did you register him as your own game piece when you took the captives to Arcadia?" Zima asked.

"Yes, of course!" said Darian. "So if someone tries to register him, I'll find out! There's also something I'm not telling you, Zima! I have a secret plan for getting all the captives back!"

"What did you do?" Zima asked.

"You'll find out later this afternoon!" said Darian.

Mason overheard the entire conversation, and decided that he had heard enough. He made his way off campus and returned to the camp, where Leo was awake sitting with Carmen and Natalie.

"I found something out!" said Mason. "Darian has something up her sleeve, and she plans on capturing us again later this afternoon!"

"How is she going to catch us?" Leo asked.

"I don't know," replied Mason, "I overheard her telling Zima, but she didn't reveal all of her plans to Zima yet. And she also found out that Tyler Chen is a pro tennis player!"

Leo cursed and shook his fist in the air. "Damn! Now he'll be used as a game piece by her for sure!"

"That other giantess already captured him, and she's probably going to use him as a game piece," said Natalie.

"Yes, but as soon as she does, Darian will go to Arcadia and retrieve him because she registered all of us already!" said Mason. "I heard her explaining that to Zima.

Meanwhile, back at Rikki's house, Rikki was planning on taking Tyler to Arcadia. She took Nolan along with her also, and her friend Britney came along with her in Rikki's shuttle cruiser, and she brought her two captives, Jace and Trevor.

"We can't lose with Tyler as my game piece!" said Rikki as she piloted the shuttle cruiser up through the clouds and into space. The Arcadia space station could be seen in the distance on the view screen. It only took a few minutes to reach Arcadia. Rikki parked her shuttle cruiser, and took Nolan and Tyler in her hands and carried them to the registration office.

"There's a problem," said the woman in the office.

"What's the problem?" Rikki asked.

"This game piece has a quantum signature that matches the one already registered to Darian Wagner! I'm notifying her now."

"But this game piece escaped from her!" said Rikki. "If I re-captured him, shouldn't I be entitled to a payment of some kind?"

"I'll let you negotiate with her about that!" said the woman.

Meanwhile, back on campus, Darian received a call from Arcadia.

"So they captured him?" Darian asked. "I'll be right there!" Darian put her phone away and turned toward Zima. "They captured Tyler Chen! We're going to Arcadia!"

Darian and Zima got into Darian's shuttle cruiser and took off into the sky, flying at a forty-five degree angle through the clouds. The blue sky soon gave away to the blackness of space, and they closed in on the Arcadia space station. Within minutes, they were parked and Darian, followed by Zima, headed to the registration office.

The office worker introduced Darian to Rikki.

"I captured two of your game pieces!" said Rikki. "Do I get a reward?"

"I'll tell you what," said Darian, "we'll set Tyler up with a match, and you can keep ten percent of the winnings!"

"That sounds good to me!" said Rikki, and the two women shook hands.

Before long, a match was set up, and Darian bet a lot of money on Tyler to win. Tyler was in his element, the game they played was very similar to tennis, and he only needed a brief orientation before he played his match. The racquets were made of an energy field, and the ball was made of an energy that reacted to and was repelled by the energy field on the racquet.

Tyler got busy and smashed his opponent. The opponent was just a guy who had been good at tennis back on his home world, but was no match for a seasoned pro like Tyler. When the game was over, Darian went to retrieve Tyler, but he shouted, "I want to play some more!"

Darian decided to let him keep playing. The next match was played against another man who was considered good, but he also was no pro. Tyler defeated him with ease. After playing three matches and dispatching three opponents with relative ease, Darian decided that he had played enough games for one day.

Darian cashed her game card and gave ten percent of her winnings to Rikki by plugging both cards into a machine and conducting the transfer. As Darian got up to leave with Tyler, Nolan, and her three other captives that she had just won, Rikki stopped her.

"Can I keep one of the captives you just won? After all, I did find your tennis champion and return him to you!"

"Sorry, but I promised them to my assistant Zima!" Darian had the three captives she had just won in her left fist, and Tyler and Nolan in her right fist. She told Zima to hold out her hand, and deposited the three newly won captives into Zima's waiting hand. Zima stuck her tongue out at Rikki as they walked off.

While Zima held her three captives and Darian held Nolan and Tyler, they decided to take in a match. They sat and ordered drinks and watched as tennis players fought to avoid getting defeated. Neither Darian nor Zima placed any bets, they just enjoyed the action. Darian was pleased when the woman who owned the winning player raised the losing opponent to her lips and swallowed him. The stadium erupted in cheers at this action.

"That's what I love about this place!" said Darian. "For the captives, there is no escape from our bellies! They all end up there eventually!"

"We have our presentation tomorrow," said Zima, "and you still don't have all of your captives collected yet!"

"Don't worry about that!" said Darian. "Before tonight, we'll have those tiny fools back in our clutches!"

"Can you tell me your plan?" Zima asked.

"Just wait until we get back to the surface," said Darian. "I'm tracking all of them at all times, I know exactly where they are!" Darian pulled out a small hand-held device. "I low-jacked them with nanobots in the food they ate!" said Darian. "We're going to have fun collecting them!"

Zima smiled. "You've thought of everything! Let's go get them right now!"

"After one more match!" said Darian. "I want to watch another captive get swallowed!"

Darian handed the scanning device to Zima. Zima could see where the captives were, and each of them had a position of latitude and longitude, except for Nolan and Tyler.

"It looks like they're close to the campus!" said Zima.

"They've been camped out at the creek that winds through town not far from the University. "When we return to Thanatar, we'll pounce on them!"

Zima sucked on her drink through a straw as they watched the match, holding her three captives firmly in her other fist.

"Think of how it must seem to the people from Earth who get captured!" said Zima with an evil smirk on her face. "To them, we must seem like a race of gods!"

"We're more than a race of gods to them, Zima!" said Darian. "We're a race of titans!"

"They are so trusting of us," said Zima, "But they don't suspect that each and every one of them will surely end up in the belly of a titan at some point!"

This conversation sent chills up and down Nolan's spine, and gave him resolve to try to help Leo and Mason find a way to get them back to Earth.

Just then, the current match was over, and the loser approached the giantess who owned the winning game piece, and she snatched him up. She lifted him over her mouth, and dropped him in and swallowed him. The crowd went wild, people were cheering and clapping. Darian and Zima rose to leave.

"Let's go capture those escaped captives!" said Darian.

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans

Chapter 6

Darian piloted her shuttlecruiser through space, away from the Arcadia space station. Zima sat beside her, and in between them was a habitation chamber that contained Nolan Ward, Tyler Chen, and the other three captives that Darian had won on Arcadia that she had given to Zima. Darian plugged in her device that kept track of the captives through the homing signals given off by the nanobots in their bloodstream that they consumed when they ate those protein bars Darian had given them on the day they were captured.

"I know exactly where they are!" said Darian. "I think I'll use some force-field mines to surround them."

"Do you really need to go through all that trouble?" Zima asked. "Why not just land and grab them?"

"Little people can move faster than you might think," said Darian as the shuttle cruiser pierced the atmosphere of Thanatar and descended toward the stream not far from her University campus. "It's really not as much trouble as it would be to try to chase them down through the smaller areas of the creek! It's better to be prepared!"

When they were about a mile above the creek, Darian pushed a sequence of buttons that released about a dozen self propelled mines that surrounded the captives at their campsite. On the ground below, Leo heard the sound of objects hitting the ground very firmly.

"What was that?" Leo asked Mason. Carmen and Natalie approached the men.

"What's happening?" Carmen asked.

"Darian must be coming for us!" said Mason. "She said she had some kind of a plan!"

"Everybody split up!" said Leo. "She can't capture all of us if we're not together, we have a better chance of escape if we're divided!"

The four fugitives split up in four directions. Leo came to a blue energy field that stretched from one large metallic mine to another about a football field away (on Leo’s scale). Mason had the same luck when he came to an energy barrier in the direction he travelled. Mason threw a rock and when it hit the energy field, the rock bounced back. Mason tried to touch the energy field with his hand, but recoiled in pain instantly.

"Ouch! That hurt!" shouted Mason.

Darian's shuttle cruiser found a spot to land within a clearing not far from where the captives were. The gull wing door of her shuttle cruiser opened, and she emerged, followed by Zima, who held her three captives in a jar with a lid secured on top, with air holes cut out of it.

"Well, well, well!" said Darian. "What have we here? Four escaped fugitives who need to find themselves back in the loving hands of their mistress!"

Darien held a device in her hand that controlled the force-field mines. She adjusted the controls, and the mines began rolling toward a common center, where the shuttle cruiser was parked. Leo, Mason, Carmen, and Natalie ran toward the shuttle cruiser rather than risk getting burned by the shocking power of the force-fields. Before long, the mines were all less than ten yards (on Darian's scale) from the shuttle cruiser. All four captives were within view and earshot of Darian now.

"Just so you're in the know," said Darian, "I planted nanobots in those protein bars you all ate the day I captured you! They give off a homing signal that allows me to track you wherever you are!"

"We had you under our control all this time!" said Zima with a wicked smile on her face. "You're just a bunch of pathetic pawns!"

"Collect them, Zima!" Darian commanded.

"With pleasure!" said Zima as she unscrewed the lid from the jar with her three captives inside. There was more than enough room for an additional four captives. Carmen and Natalie didn't put up a fight, but Leo and Mason tried to run. Zima quickly stomped her left foot down in front of Leo, and knelt down and grabbed him. She made quick work of capturing Mason, too. Within one minute, she had collected all four former fugitives.

Darian and Zima returned to the shuttle cruiser, and Zima dumped all four former fugitives and the three captives belonging to Zima into the habitation module with Nolan and Tyler. Before the gull wing door to the shuttle cruiser even closed, Natalie ran up and hugged her half-brother Nolan.

"Nolan!" said Natalie. "I thought I'd never see you again!"

Carmen ran up and hugged her husband Tyler.

"Who are these guys?" Leo asked, indicating the three captives Darian had given to Zima.

"Don't trust them," said Nolan. "Any captive who is owned by titans are a bunch of little rats! If you want to keep anything a secret from Darian, they would drop a dime on you!"

Zima had been watching them and listening as Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser back to the campus. "I can take one of them off your hands!" Zima reached down and grabbed one of her three captives, and lifted him to her mouth.

"How does it feel to know you're going to surrender to the belly of a titan?" Zima asked.

"I'm terrified!" the man answered.

"Well," said Zima, "just remember to struggle when you're inside my belly, that would give me satisfaction if I could feel you squirming around inside me, okay?" Zima's face twisted into an evil smile. When the tiny man failed to respond, Zima repeated more loudly, "Okay?"

The tiny man in Zima's grasp spoke up: "I prefer if you'd call it your tummy!"

"What?" Zima asked.

"I'd like it if you said tummy instead of belly!" said the tiny captive.

"Oh, how sweet!" said Zima. "Do you want to surrender to the tummy of a titan goddess?"

"Yes!" said the captive.

"Do you promise to struggle when you're in my tummy, to give me a feeling of satisfaction?" Zima asked.

"Yes!" said the tiny captive, and Zima dropped him onto her tongue and closed her mouth. Several seconds later, after positioning him comfortably on her tongue, Zima swallowed him.

"That's so strange!" said Natalie. "It's like he volunteered to be swallowed by Zima!"

Zima heard this, and tilted her face toward the captives in their habitation module.

"That's because he's been on Thanatar a lot longer than you! When you've been here as long as he has, you'll realize that your destiny lies within the depths of the belly of a titan goddess, sooner or later!"

They arrived on campus, and Zima carried the habitation module containing the eight captives (it was nine, but Zima had just swallowed one of them, so their number had decreased by one). When they got to the building where the Thunderbolt was kept, Zima placed the habitation module right next to it.

"You can let them out," said Darian, "they can't get anywhere. It's not like they know how to use this equipment and can refuel their space plane!" Both giantesses laughed at this, and Zima pushed the button that opened the outer door of the habitation module. The six captives from Earth immediately exited and looked at the Thunderbolt.

"Is it okay if we get our luggage from our space plane?" Leo asked.

"By all means!" said Darian. "Make yourselves comfortable!"

Leo and Mason got busy unloading the luggage from the cargo holds. The women were especially happy to get their things back.

"Your habitation modules come equipped with warm showers," said Darian, "so if you want to get cleaned up and changed into nicer clothes, you can!"

Zima brought them some food to eat. "You must be hungry after living a fugitive existence for a few days!"

The food was similar to what they had eaten before, food bars wrapped in metallic wrappers. Zima also gave them water to drink. When Leo and Mason were done unloading the luggage, they all sat down to eat. Zima's two captives also ate with them.

"New arrivals always find it hard to accept their destiny on Thanatar!" said one of Zima's two captives. "Once you realize your destiny is to surrender to the belly of a titan goddess, you'll find peace!"

"No tiny person has ever escaped back to their home world!" said Zima's other captive. "Everyone who first gets here thinks they'll be the first, but no one ever does. The titans always win!"

"I don't know about that," said Leo, "I'm a betting man, and I've come up against some pretty bad odds and still came away a winner!"

"Don't try to reason with them," said Nolan. "If they find out you have an escape plan, they'll rat you out to Darian and Zima!"

"There's going to be a presentation tomorrow," said Darian to the captives. "I need the six of you to be well-rested, so don't try to escape again!"

When they were done eating, Zima collected her two captives, and Darian locked the captives in their habitation module for the night. Everyone got a hot shower and changed into clean clothes from their luggage, and there were extra food bars and water in case they were hungry again. There were beds built into the habitation module, and they all went to sleep. Nobody thought about escaping, at least not just yet.


The next morning, Darian and Zima arrived much earlier than they usually did. Darian activated the control console that slid the dome from the top of the habitation module, so she could see them and speak to them face to face, as they had when they were in the shuttle cruiser the day before when Zima had swallowed one of her captives.

"Are you guys ready? I'm taking you to an audience hall where I will present you for my junior thesis! People are going to watch you on stage! My advice to you is don't make me look stupid there! If you try to sabotage my presentation, I will end all of you! Do we have an understanding?"

Leo and the others agreed to Darian's terms. They weren't surprised, they had been expecting something like this.

"Zima, why didn't you bring your captives with you? The contrast between captives who are still defiant and captives who have accepted their fate would've been helpful to my presentation."

Zima broke eye contact with Darian and looked away, toward the floor.

"Zima?" Darian asked. "Where are your two captives?"

"I swallowed them!" said Zima. "I couldn't help it, they were so small and helpless, and I've never owned captives before!"

"You could've used them on Arcadia to win more captives!" said Darian. "Zima, you need to learn to control your animalistic desires!"

Darian closed the dome on the habitation module and carried it to the audience chamber several buildings away. Zima locked the door to the building that housed the Thunderbolt. When they arrived backstage, several other women were there with their projects, mostly of a technical nature. Darian was the only college student with tiny people as part of her presentation.

"Darian Wagner, you will be going first!" said the announcer.

Darian unlocked the outer door of the habitation module, and the six captives filed out.

"My junior thesis project involves how quickly the primitive people from Earth adapt to their new environment and learn to accept their fate! As you can see, I have six people whom I acquired with a space warp cannon at one of the school laboratories. None of them suffer from post traumatic stress disorder!" Darian looked at Zima. "My assistant Zima will now demonstrate something!"

Zima got a string and told the captives to hold on, and when they did, she held them above her mouth.

"People who want to pass laws to protect little people like these are misguided, because there are so many alternate realities to choose from that we have probably only taken less than ten people from any given reality, despite the trillions of captives that have been captured since inter-dimensional space-warp technology was perfected five thousand years ago!"

Zima slowly lowered the string down toward her open mouth. Carmen and Natalie were on the bottom trying to hold on, and they were the first to enter her mouth, followed by Nolan. Darian saw her out of the corner of her eye and said, "Zima, stop it! Don't put them in your mouth!"

People in the audience laughed at this, but there were a vocal group of protesters who booed. Some of them were carrying protest signs.

"Gaming is vitally important to our economy," Darian continued, "protesters don't understand that without tinies, our economy would collapse! We have no choice but to keep conquering tiny people from other realities!" Darian also gave some statistical information and concluded with her presentation by offering people from the audience to come up onstage and hold some of the captives.

A young woman was among the audience members who got onstage, and unknown to Darian, she was one of the protesters. She stuck something in Leo's hand and said, "Keep this and learn how to use it! It will help you escape!"

Leo slipped it in his jacket pocket before returning to the habitation module, and Darian was completely unaware that he had it.

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 7

Darian grabbed the captives and placed them back inside the habitation module. For some reason, she didn't allow them to walk back through the entrance themselves, she wanted to feel them in her hands, to give her a feeling of power. Darian instructed Zima to carry the habitation module back to the lab. The two women walked together while Zima carried the habitation module.

"Do you think the people of Earth will ever be as technologically advanced as Thanatar?" Zima asked.

"Probably," said Darian, "but when they do, we'll just find alternate realities where they are less sophisticated than us and use those realities to lure victims here for the games on Arcadia!"

"What if they went to war with us?" Zima asked. "I mean, if they became as advanced as us, and they sent warships to attack us in this day and age!"

"They'll probably never know people from their reality were victimized by us!" said Darian. "What you're describing could only happen if little people from Earth returned to their home world to tell them about us. So far, that's never happened, and it's up to people like us to ensure that it never happens!"

By that time, they had gotten back to the lab. Zima set the habitation module on the table next to the Thunderbolt.

"Don't set it there!" said Darian. "I don't want them to have access to their spaceplane while we're gone. I have to go to study hall and write a paper on my presentation that I did today, and you have a class right now. I'm leaving them in here without locking them into their habitation module."

"What if they escape again?" Zima asked.

"They only escaped last time because I allowed it to happen!" said Darian. "I'll discuss it during my second presentation. But for now, I'll just close the window they escaped from!" Darian walked over to the wall where the space-warp cannon was, and activated a control console that closed the window that the Earth captives had escaped out of with an extension cord several nights earlier.

"What are you going to do with the tinies when you're done with your junior thesis?" Zima asked.

"I'm not sure, why?" Darian asked.

"Because I'd like you to turn them over to me!" said Zima.

"Zima, that's not going to happen!" said Darian. "Those three captives I won on Arcadia that I gave you didn't last 24 hours! I'm not stupid enough to turn these captives over to you, they'd just end up in your belly!"

When Darian and Zima left, the lights were on lower than normal, but there was still enough light to see by. Leo was fiddling with the device the protester had given him. Mason saw it, and approached him.

"What did she give you?" Mason asked.

"It's a device that should help us to escape from Darian and get back to Earth!" said Leo. "If I could just figure out how to work it!"

Nolan, Tyler and Mason slid the door open that led outside the habitation module. The Thunderbolt was on the next table over, and there was a gulf of about a hundred feet between their table and the table where the Thunderbolt was perched. The men looked over the edge of the table and tried to find a way down and back up the other table so they could ascend to the Thunderbolt, but there was no way down.

"I don't see anything we can use!" said Mason. "We need to know how much fuel we have left, and once we refuel, someone needs to open the window and operate the space-warp cannon that brought us here!"

"Won't that mean one of us will have to stay behind?" Nolan asked. "Because it sure as hell won't be me!"

"It's going to be either Leo or myself who will have to stay behind," said Mason. "Logan has a device that may help him decipher Titan technology, and as long as Darian doesn't discover it and take it from him, it should be our key to getting home!"

"Well it looks like we can forget about getting to the Thunderbolt," said Nolan. "Let's try to help Logan decipher that gizmo he acquired!" Nolan turned and entered the habitation module.

Tyler, Mason, Carmen and Natalie remained outside.

"So how's it coming?" Nolan asked Leo.

"I'm reading the tutorial right now," said Leo. "It says not to activate the device completely until I've read and understand the tutorial, because it will give off an electromagnetic signature that Darian can track."

"Have you found out anything about Titan technology yet?" Nolan asked.

"It seems that everything we need to get home is in this lab! There is a replicator that we can use to synthesize fuel for the Thunderbolt, and it's showing me how to activate the space-warp cannon that pulled us into this universe!"

"That device that giantess gave you is very important, maybe we should keep watch and warn you when Darian and Zima are coming!"

"Good idea!" said Leo. "Go tell Mason to set up shifts where each of you will keep watch while I try to learn about this technology!"

"Leo?" Nolan asked.

"Yeah?" Logan replied.

"They say nobody from Earth has ever successfully returned to their home world from Thanatar, do you think we can pull this off? Do you think we have a chance?"

"There's a first time for everything!" said Leo.

Meanwhile, on another part of the campus, Darian was finishing typing up her report. She went to her teacher's office to hand it in. The teacher, a woman in her late 40's, was not unattractive, and Darian knew she would hold herself together as well as her when she got to be that age. The people of Thanatar were virtually immmortal, because every illness and disease known to man had been conquered thousands of years prior; because of this, it was no marvel when a teacher could reach her late 40s and still require no form of corrective surgery to look magnificent.

"Darian, this is an unusual topic for a junior thesis, but since you're a psyche major, it seems like a reasonable endeavour."

"How did I do?" Darian asked, as she turned in her report.

"I liked most of it, but if you're going to use school technology to acquire captives for your junior thesis project, I would like to see the spoils of your labor. You should've used some of your captives to win more captives on Arcadia! That would really impress the audience, and it would get your point across that when they first get here, they overcome any psychological stress to prevail on the game-boards if they have any athletic skills!"

"I had some captives I won, but I gave them to my assistant Zima, and she swallowed them!"

"I remember how much I loved swallowing captives at that age!" said the teacher. "That's what you get for showing mercy! When Zima becomes a junior and does her own junior thesis project, she can keep her captives and do with them how she pleases! But as long as you're in charge, you should keep any captives you've won as part of this project! Don't let her swallow any more!"

"I'll remember that!" said Darian. "I just felt sorry for Zima because she's become a close friend since we started working on this project!"

"You know what they say on the game-boards about feeling sorry for someone!" said the teacher. "'Those who feel sorry for others and act on it will soon feel sorry they did!'"

"I'm familiar with that expression," said Darian.

"Then turn it into action!" said the teacher. "For your next speech, I want you to have won as many captives as possible, while retaining the original set of captives you've already acquired!"

"Yes, ma'am!" said Darian, as she got up to leave. "I'll take them to Arcadia right now! One of my captives is a race car driver, and another is a pro tennis player."

By this time, Zima got out of her class and Darian met her in the hallway on the way back to the lab.

"My teacher gave me a ton of homework!" said Zima. "There's no class a week from today, so we have a bunch of work today and the day after tomorrow!"

"I can't let you swallow any more captives!" said Darian. "My teacher wants me to acquire as many captives as possible for my next presentation."

"I don't have a problem with that," said Zima. "But can we cut a deal? If you let me have a skilled captive that I can use to win more captives, then I'll have a fully self-sufficient operation!"

"We are friends," said Darian, "If I win five or more captives today, I'll let you have one of them so you can win more captives. But you have to promise not to swallow him until you have more captives!"

"You've got a deal!" said Zima as they shook hands. As the two giant women entered the lab, Nolan and Mason warned Leo and he put his device away.

"Okay," said Darian, "we're going back to Arcadia! I need the race car driver and the tennis pro!"

Zima collected Mason and Tyler, and put them in a jar with air-holes cut into the lid.

"The rest of you are staying here," said Darian as she grabbed some protein bars from a box and threw them into the habitation module, then closed the dome over the top. "There are water bottles in the kitchen area if you get thirsty!"

Darian and Zima turned and exited the lab, and walked to the parking area and entered Darian's shuttle cruiser. Zima placed the captives (inside their container) in a cup-holder as they blasted off. The shuttle cruiser pierced the cloud layer and hurtled into the stratosphere, then emerged into outer space.

Before long, the familiar site of the Arcadia space station appeared on the view screen. Darian deftly maneuvered her shuttle cruiser to the parking structure, which was located in one of the armatures that swung around constantly, providing perpetual gravity that matched the gravity on Thanatar.

Darian and Zima walked through the crowded hallways and corridors, and came to a turn that divided the racetrack from the tennis arena.

"You take Mason to the racetrack," said Darian, "and I'll take Tyler to play tennis."

The two women split up, and Darian went and registered Tyler for a tennis match. She bet Tyler against the ownership of another captive; if Tyler won, Darian would own that captive. The match began within fifteen minutes, and Tyler won with ease. Darian collected her captive and entered Tyler in another game. Tyler had better competition in the second match, but he still won fairly easily. Darian collected her second captive, and entered Tyler for a third match. Tyler was tired by this time, so Darian told him "This will be your last match of the day!"

Tyler got into the arena and fought hard against his opponent, and dispatched him despite being exhausted. When the match was over, Darian collected her third captive and went to see how Zima was doing. When she got to Zima's seat in the other stadium, she was surprised to see the jar with ten captives stuffed inside.

"We're going to have to get a bigger jar!" said Darian said. "How did you win so many?"

"I bet credits in addition to captives, and every time Mason won, I gave the loser the option of paying me with their captive instead of paying me money!"

"Let's get them back to the lab!" said Darian.

The two women walked back to Darian's shuttle cruiser, and from the perspective of the society they lived in, they looked like a couple of ordinary college-age women walking through a hallway crowded with other people, but the reality of it was they were colossal and the other people were all gigantic in stature; on Earth, most of these people would stand in the vicinity of four-hundred feet tall, some of them taller than that! But within the society they lived in of people who existed on the same scale as them, they appeared to be two ordinary college students conducting normal every day business.

They got into Darian's shuttle cruiser, and returned to the college campus. Zima held onto the captives in her jar, as if holding them empowered her somehow. The two women carried their captives to the lab where the Thunderbolt was. Darian activated the dome on the habitation module, and it opened. Zima dumped the ten captives plus Mason into the habitation module, and Darian dumped Tyler and the three captives she had won into the module.

"You've got some partners!" said Darian. "Get along with each other, because I'm going to need you all for my next presentation!"

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 8

Darian and Zima stood looking into the habitation module as the six captives who had arrived on the Thunderbolt mingled with the thirteen new captives who were recently acquired on Arcadia.

"So how many captives do I get to keep out of the captives I won for you, Darian?" Zima asked.

"How many do you want?' Darian asked.

"If you're giving me a choice, I'd like at least five of them," Zima replied.

"I'll let you keep three!" said Darian. "But choose carefully, try to pick three who are skilled enough to win more captives for you."

"Leo!" said Zima. "Try to figure out which captives have the most skill out of the new guys we just put in there, okay?"

"No problem!" said Leo, and the two giantesses left the area so Logan could try to investigate the new captives and find their skill levels. Leo approached a man who was in his twenties.

"What sports are you good at?" Leo asked him.

"I'm not really the athletic type," the man replied, "but I've gotten better at handball since getting stranded on Arcadia."

"Do you know who out of these captives is the most skilled in athletic competitions?" Leo asked.

"Brody Seger," the man replied. "He's not as good as Tyler Chen, but he was a tennis champion on Arcadia for a long time. He was on his way to the semi-finals, until he got beaten by Tyler."

Leo had the man point out Brody to him. Brody was in his late thirties, talking to Natalie Red Hawk, Nolan's half-sister.

"Well, he sure doesn't waste any time!" said Leo. "He goes straight to the hottest chick in the room!"

Leo approached Brody. "I'm Leo Tanner, pilot of the Thunderbolt." Brody and Logan shook hands.

"That giantess named Zima put me in charge of finding out which one of you is the most skilled athlete, and you were pointed out to me by another captive. So they say you're good at tennis?"

"What good will it do me if I tell you," said Brody, "just to have you rat me out to that giantess?"

"It will work out in both our favor if I let her know," said Leo. "She's already swallowed three captives that she recently acquired, and if you ended up in her possession and she didn't know you were good at tennis, you could end up being next!"

"Well, since you put it that way," said Brody, "I was a tennis coach back on my version of Earth."

"Since we're all from different versions of Earth," said Leo, "I think most captives just refer to it as their home world."

"Yes, well, on my home world I was a skilled tennis coach. I was able to pay my rent and my bills that way. Of course, I'm not nearly as good as someone like Tyler Chen, that's why I eventually got beaten by him. But I would've made it to the semi-finals if I hadn't gone up against Tyler!"

"How did you end up here on Thanatar?" Leo asked.

"I was a passenger on a private jet flying over the Bermuda Triangle about six months ago," said Brody. "I was on my way to an island in the Caribbean for a vacation with my wife and two of my students, when we got pulled through some kind of a space-warp to Thanatar! And you?"

"Same scenario," Leo replied, "but we were on a point-to-point suborbital space-plane. We had just briefly left the upper atmosphere when Darian used a space-warp cannon to pull us into this universe. So far, myself and my fellow crew-member and my four passengers are all intact. How is your wife doing?"

"She is with my former mistress," said Brody. "My original mistress used her as bait to keep me in line, so I would keep winning tennis matches. When I lost to Tyler Chen, I went with Darian and my wife stayed with my old mistress."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Leo. "Can you point out two more skilled athletes out of the thirteen of you who just arrived under Darian's power?"

"I have two students whom I personally taught, and they played against Tyler and lost, too." said Brody. "They're really you're best bet, anyone else is just a couch potato who ended up training on a fly-by-night kind of arrangement."

"And they're good?" Leo asked.

"They're not as good as me, but they're highly skilled." Brody replied. "They actually trained beginning students back on my home world, and they're probably the best you'll find among captives from Arcadia."

"Can you introduce me to them?" Leo asked.

"Anthony! Johnathan! Come over here! There's someone who wants to meet you!"

Two young men not a day older than 21 approached Logan and Brody.

"This is Leo Tanner," said Brody, "he is going to hook it up for us so we get special treatment from an evil giantess who normally swallows captives left and right! As long as she knows we're real athletes, she'll spare us! As long as we're hand-selected by her, we should be okay. Right Leo?"

"She wants to use you guys to win her more captives," said Leo. "Any captives who are less skilled than you, she'll swallow; but as long as you keep winning tennis matches, you should be okay! I'm going to summon her right now!"

Logan yelled in the direction of the top of the container, and called out Zima's name. Zima approached, and her face could be seen above them.

"Have you found any athletes yet?" Zima asked.

"I've found Brody Seger and his two students, Anthony and Johnathan! They're the best tennis players you're probably going to find!"

"If they're so good, why did they lose to Tyler Chen?" Zima asked.

"Tyler Chen is a tennis champion!" said Logan. "There's no way they could win against him, but if they went up against any average player on the game boards, they're bound to win!"

"You did a good job, Leo!" said Zima as she moved her hand down into the habitation module, palm-side up. "Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan! I command you to surrender to my hand!"

Brody and his two students stepped onto Zima's palm, and she lifted them into the air. She cupped the three of them with her other hand and spoke to Darian.

"I think we need to go back to Arcadia so I can register them in my name and play them against someone!"

"Then let's go!" said Darian. "I can train the passengers of the Thunderbolt to serve drinks while we're there. Can you carry the habitation module to the shuttle cruiser?"

"No problem!" said Zima, as she shoved her three tennis-playing captives into a pocket of her blouse and zipped it closed. She grabbed the habitation module right after pushing the button that sealed the dome that enclosed the top. Once onboard Darian's shuttle cruiser, they ascended into the sky and headed back to Arcadia for the second time in one day.

The space station was on the view screen, and from a great distance they could see a lot of traffic flowing around the station. Darian listened on her headphones to the traffic controller.

"There's going to be a wait," said Darian. "At this time of day, Arcadia is filled to capacity. But we've been given a voucher number, and when more people exit the station, we will be able to park on a first come first served basis."

"We can take this time to get to know the captives," said Zima. She pushed a button on the main control module of the habitation module, and the dome slid open. Zima also unzipped her blouse pocket and produced her three latest conquests. She held her three captives firmly but not hard enough to hurt them.

"Let's get to know each other!" said Zima to the captives in the habitation module. "Do you have anything to share?"

Leo was the first to speak up. "Brody has a wife who is owned by his former mistress. Do you think you can try to win her back?"

Zima and Darian both laughed. Zima replied to Logan: "First of all, Brody's wife is a 'that,' not a 'who,' she's not a person, she's a game piece! All of you are game pieces now! Don't ever forget that!"

"I apologize, mistress!" said Leo.

"Well, don't let it happen again!" said Zima. "Don't forget something, to us, you're no better than inanimate objects! At best, to an owner who has kept you for a number of years and assuming you scored a lot of victories for them on Arcadia, then you would be elevated to the status of a beloved pet! But ninety-nine percent of all Earth people end up in the bellies of their owners, sooner or later! It's just a matter of time!"

"What about the other one percent?" Leo asked.

"Like I said, if they don't get swallowed by their owners, it's because they became beloved pets. You can't count on that happening to you! As far as Brody is concerned, I consider him and his two tennis students to be an investment! He's going to win me a lot of captives, and all of them are going to end up in my belly sooner rather than later! The only reason Brody and his two students are being spared is because they will help me acquire more captives!" Zima sat back in her seat and discontinued looking at the captives, whose habitation module was in the area between the pilot and co-pilot's seats.

Nolan, Leo, Mason, and Tyler all thought Zima was attractive. "I wonder who she would go for if she were our size!" said Nolan.

"Why don't you ask her?" Leo asked.

"Okay, I will!" said Nolan. He looked up at Zima and yelled. "Zima!"

Zima tilted her head to look down at the captives. "What do you want, pawn?"

"If all of us were the same size, which one of us would you go out with?" Nolan asked.

"What's your name?" Zima asked.

"I'm Nolan Ward!"

"I'd probably go out with you if you somehow became our size. You're kind of cute!" Zima smiled after finishing her sentence, and Nolan felt like he had scored. "Looks are all that matter to me!"

"Yes! I knew she'd go for me!" said Nolan.

"We have clearance to dock!" said Darian. "Our number came up."

Darian piloted her shuttle cruiser and docked with the Arcadia space station. Zima returned her three tennis players to her blouse pocket and zipped them up, then she carried the habitation module as she walked along with Darian. They went straight to the registration office and made an appointment. Zima unzipped the pocket of her blouse and set the three tennis players on the desk in front of her.

"These three belonged to her, she won them in the games," Zima explained, "but she gave them to me, so I want them registered in my name."

The receptionist said it wasn't a problem, and they were out of there within minutes. Darian and Zima got good seats in the stadium where the tennis matches were being played. There was a drink dispenser and Darian set Leo, Nolan, Carmen, and Natalie on top of it and taught them how to serve drinks for people.

"The switch has been designed so someone on your scale can operate it. You just pull back on the switch when people order their drinks, see?"

The four of them quickly caught on and Darian left them to go send Mason and Tyler to the games. Mason had to drive a race car in another stadium, so she left Tyler with Zima as Zima set her three tennis players against other less experienced players.

"I think I should get my own racquet!" said Tyler. "One I can keep!"

"If you win all your matches today, I'll buy a racquet for you!" said Zima. "How does that sound?"

"Okay!" said Tyler.

Brody and his two students were set in three matches with obviously less skilled opponents, and Tyler Chen was set against someone who was better than Brody's opponent, but not quite a match for Tyler, who was a tennis pro. The games were virtually identical to tennis as played on Earth, with the exception of the racquets, which formed an energy net instead of the being made from plastic like Earth racquets. The ball itself was also made of energy, and it took a lot of skill to stay ahead in the game. When Tyler won his match, Zima went to collect the losing captive for Darian.

"I think that's unfair!" said the giantess who owned the losing captive. "My captive told me your captive was a tennis pro back on his home world!"

"That's the way the dice falls!" said Zima with a smile on her face as she collected the losing captive.

Meanwhile, in the other stadium, Mason Lewis was driving like a bat out of hell in the hovercar he was driving. It functioned much like an ordinary car back on Earth, with the exception of the repulsor fields it used for propulsion instead of wheels or tires. Racing wasn't so much a game of who could drive faster so much as it was a game of skill, involving negotiating the track better than your opponents. Mason had been a successful pro stock race car driver back on Earth, so much so that he had made millions of dollars that he had used to buy his own jet airplanes and learn how to pilot them in his spare time. He had been such a good race car driver that his fans had adopted a slogan about him that had entered the pop culture lexicon: 'Mason Lewis can't lose.'

None of this hype could help him on Arcadia; however, his immense skill from spending most of his life racing proved to be an advantage. When Mason came in first, the only person who wasn't surprised was Mason himself. Many people had been betting on the favorite, a race car driver from an analog of Mason's universe. This man had been some kind of a champion, but if they had met on a track on Mason's world, Mason would've smoked him easily. In the biggest upset of the night, Darian collected Mason and the supposed champion who had been favored to win, but instead of collecting the other losing racers, Darian let her opponents keep them and collected the cash equivalent on her gaming debit card instead. This way, there would be less captives for them to deal with.

Darian carried Mason and his opponent back to the stadium where Zima was gambling with Tyler and Brody, and Brody's students. When she got there, she was surprised to see Zima with close to ten captives.

"Again?" Darian asked.

"Leo wasn't lying when he said Brody was good!" said Zima. "He won three matches in a row! His students all won three matches each, too!"

"So you've got nine more captives?" Darian asked.

"Yes, and Tyler beat three opponents, so there's three more captives for you, also!"

"How are my drink servers?" Darian asked.

Zima and Darian walked over to the drink dispenser, and Darian ordered a drink.

"I'll take a light beer!" said Darian.

Carmen and Nolan struggled with a lever that was bigger than they were, but they managed to operate the device and a glass was filled with beer. Darian took the beer when it was full and took a swig from it.

"Ahh! The taste of victory! Zima what are you going to do with all of your captives?"

"You don't even need to ask!" Zima replied. "Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan are all safe, they're going to win me more captives, but if I find out any of my captives have no athletic skills to win me more captives," Zima lifted her blouse to reveal her light brown stomach, and pointed at her belly button as she licked her lips. Zima and Darian burst out laughing.

"What about my racquet?" Tyler asked.

"I promised Tyler if he won all his matches tonight that I'd get him his own racquet," said Zima, who turned and walked to the concession stand to buy him one. She returned several minutes later with a tiny (to her) racquet that was built on Tyler's scale.

"It's good that you got him that," said Darian, "because now he can practice back on Thanatar!"

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 9

Before Darian and Zima were ready to leave Arcadia, Zima whispered something in Darian's ear, and Darian chuckled. The two women collected the captives and walked to the registration office. Both Darian and Zima pulled out their identification cards, and Zima pulled Nolan Ward out of the habitation module and addressed the receptionist.

"We would like to transfer ownership of the captive named Nolan Ward from Darian Wagner to me!"

"And what is your name?" the receptionist asked.

"Zima Zamora!"

"Can both of you slide your cards into that device? Transfer of ownership will begin as soon as you insert your cards!"

Darian and Zima did as they were told, but inside the habitation module, Natalie was panicking.

"Why is my brother being transferred to being owned by Zima? She'll swallow him for sure!"

When the transfer was complete, Zima unzipped the pocket where she kept Brody and his two students, and dropped Nolan in, then zipped it closed again. Darian and Zima were silent as Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser back to the Crestwood University campus. After parking, Zima carried the habitation module back to the lab.

"I'll leave you alone for a while," said Darian. "I know you have plans, Zima! The lab is yours, see you tomorrow!"

After Darian left, Zima unzipped her blouse pocket and pulled Nolan out.

"How would you like to become one of us for a day?" Zima asked.

"What do you mean by that?" Nolan asked.

"In this lab, we have the technology to enlarge little people like you and make you our size. I think you would make a good sex slave, so I want to make you big like me so I can take you home with me!"

"Sounds good to me!" said Nolan.

"You do realize that when we come back here tomorrow, I'm shrinking you back down to size! Do you agree to these terms?"

"Absolutely!" said Nolan.

"First I have to give you something to swallow," said Zima, and she fished around in a drawer and pulled out a blue pellet. She placed it in a chamber and pressed a series of controls, and the pellet was miniaturized down to Nolan's scale. Zima picked it up and handed it to Nolan.

"Swallow this!" said Zima. "It will allow me to locate you and shrink you back down to size from a remote location if you ever manage to escape from me!"

Nolan took the pellet from Zima and dry swallowed it. Zima picked him up and placed him on top of a device that reminded Nolan of the transporter pads from Star Trek. Zima entered her University identification card into a slot in the control console that controlled the strange machine that was going to enlarge Nolan. Zima pressed a sequence of buttons, then pulled a lever. Nolan began to grow, slowly at first, and then quicker than the blink of an eye. When he was done growing, he was at the same proportionate height as one of Zima's people, about half an inch shy of six feet tall. He was now taller than Zima, who ran up onto the enlarger pad and threw her arms around Nolan and kissed him on the lips.

"Welcome to our world!" said Zima, with her arms still around Nolan. "You're one of us for a day! Let's see, what should we do first?"

"We could go to your place," said Nolan.

"Eventually," said Zima, "but first, let's go shopping and get you some different clothes!"

Nolan followed Zima out of the lab, and watched Zima lock the door behind her. They used public transportation because Zima didn't have her own shuttle cruiser yet like Darian did. They went into several men's clothing stores, until Zima found what she thought would look good on Nolan. He was dressed in a semi-futuristic outfit when they left the store. Zima had purchased the clothing with one of her credit cards.

"How did this society get created?" Nolan asked. "Is there an explanation for how this universe came into existence?"

"Our universe was created by someone your size," said Zima. "At least, someone who was the size you were this morning."

"Really?" Nolan asked. "Why would someone from Earth create a world of giants?"

"He was a macrophile," said Zima. "He was sexually aroused by the concept of giant women. He lived in a world tens of thousands of years more technologically advanced than your world. Maybe hundreds of thousands of years more advanced. He wanted to create a world of giants, so he found a universe that was an analog of his own, and went back to before the Big Bang when this universe was created, and he seeded the primal atom that would eventually become this universe."

"He seeded it?" Nolan asked. "With what?"

"I don't know the specifics because I'm a psyche major, not a physicist," said Zima, "but he manipulated the sub-atomic structures of all the atoms in this universe so they would be seventy-two times bigger, and to avoid violating the square-cube law, he developed a way so that anti-graviton particles compose the matrix of all subatomic particles. That's why the gravity on Thanatar seems no different than the gravity of Earth to you and the other tiny people!"

"What's the square-cube law?" Nolan asked.

"That's a geometric principle that states that every time you double the height of a person or object, their mass, volume and weight increase eight times. So if you had a statue that was two meters tall and weighed five hundred pounds, if you used technology to make it grow to four meters tall, it wouldn't weigh double five-hundred pounds, it would weigh five-hundred multiplied by eight, so it would weigh four-thousand pounds."

"How did you add that up so fast?" Nolan asked.

Zima pulled out a small flask. "This is a drug that stimulates the left side of your brain. It's for people who are artistic and good at English like me. I think mostly with the right side of my brain, so I've never been good at math, so I take this whenever I have to take a math exam. I had a calculus exam this morning."

"Tell me more about this guy who created this universe!" Nolan asked.

"We know a lot about him because eventually we rose up and conquered his civilization," said Zima.

"If he was so advanced, how was that possible?" Nolan asked.

"After he created this universe, he went back to Neolithic times on this world and established a civilization that was as advanced as his own. Once our population got into the tens of billions and we colonized the nearest planetary systems, our ancestors set out to find him and conquer him. It's in our history books, and there's a statue of him in our capital."

Zima and Nolan arrived at the monorail station. Zima bought two tickets, and the next tram arrived less than a minute later. The two of them got onboard, and the tram took them to the station close to Zima's dorm. When they arrived there, Nolan was surprised at how small the dorm was. He was accustomed to thinking of these people as giants, but from the perspective of one of these people, it was just an ordinary dorm.

"Do you want some enchiladas?" Zima asked.

"Yeah, after eating those protein bars three meals a day, that sounds great!"

"Actually," said Zima as she got the enchiladas out of the stasis chamber, "they contain a blend of protein, complex carbohydrates, and monounsaturated fat. Everything your body needs to function properly!"

"Yeah, but those things have no flavor!" said Nolan. "Cardboard would have more flavor than those nutrition bars! Hey, what's that thing you just pulled the enchiladas out of?"

"It's a stasis chamber. It keeps the food in a state of perpetual suspended animation. The food doesn't even need to be re-heated, because whatever temperature the food was when it went into the stasis chamber, that's the temperature the food is when you shut down the stasis field to pull the food out."

Zima scooped some enchiladas onto two plates, and grabbed some glasses and filled them with milk. The two of them sat down at a table to eat.

"So what else did that guy do?" Nolan asked between bites of enchilada. "The guy who created this universe."

"He created other universes of giants before he created this one," said Zima. "He created a world where blonde-haired, blue-eyed people were on the same scale as us, but all other people were normal size, that is, they were tiny like your people. But he kept that world primitive, to this day, their technology level is equal to that of 18th century Europe."

"So this guy was a Nazi?" Nolan asked.

"No," said Zima, "he wasn't white, he was a Latino scientist. He created these worlds out of a lust to worship giant people. He happened to like blonde women, that's why he created that world I just mentioned. He had brown skin just like mine!"

"What was his name?" Nolan asked.

"Octavian Ortega," said Zima. "We owe our entire civilization to him. I'll show you a picture of his statue on the computer monitor." Zima got up and told the computer to show the statue. Nolan got up and looked at the picture. A Roman style building with Corinthian columns surrounded a statue of a man that was life size. He was obviously Hispanic, and was dressed in futuristic clothing.

"So because this guy had a fetish this whole world of giants was created?" said Nolan.

"Yes!" said Zima. "He was swallowed alive by a woman he was in a relationship with. He chose to remain at his normal stature, while she was over three hundred feet tall. Of course, that was several centuries after our society was established."

"Several centuries?" Nolan asked. "How long was his life span?"

"We're not sure how old he actually was, but after establishing our society he lived here for several centuries before he was killed. The people of our society don't die from aging; we can only dies from accidents like getting pulled into a blackhole by a navigation error on a starship, or if a reactor blew up and killed people who were nearby."

"You people don't die?" Nolan asked. "If you live forever, how can you so callously disregard the lives of the tiny people you conquer?"

"Our brains work differently than yours," said Zima. "Ortega made the women of our race into control freaks, and the men are submissive. I wouldn't even know how to have sex with a man from your world who was considered normal. Are you submissive?"

Nolan looked away from Zima, embarrassed.

"There's one way I can find out, I have a mind scanner that will tell me how the psychosexual portion of your brain functions." Zima got up to go get the mind scanner from her bedroom. When she got back with it, she said, "Go ahead, put it on!"

Nolan was reluctant. He had knowledge that Logan had a device that had been given to him by a giantess that could allow all of them to escape. He didn't want Zima to find out that he knew about it, and a mind scanner might reveal that information.

"There's things I like to keep private," said Nolan.

"I'll tell you what," said Zima. "I'll turn off the consciousness retrieval protocol. That will make it so the thoughts in your conscious mind remain hidden from my scan. I'll only be able to sift through the parts of your mind dealing with your sexuality. Zima thrust the device toward Nolan. He was still reluctant.

"Is there something you're trying to hide from me?" Zima asked. "Because if you are, I'll take a full mind scan of your brain without your consent! Now, what do you have to hide?'

Nolan took the device, and put it on. It was similar to a pair of headphones. After putting them on, Zima activated it, and held a device in her hands that displayed the results.

"You are submissive!" said Zima. "Just like the men of my society. That will make sex with you much more interesting. Come on, let's go to my bed." Zima took Nolan by the hand and led him to her bedroom. There was a changing screen in front of her closet, and Zima took off her schoolgirl uniform.

"I'd like to get into something a little more comfortable, what would you suggest? Oh wait, nevermind, I'll just view your mind scan results." Zima looked at the hand held device that displayed the results. "So, you'd like to see me dressed up like a barbarian princess from a Frank Frazetta painting, huh?"

"Yeah!" said Nolan.

Not long after that, Zima emerged from behind the screen looking precisely like that. She had on an outfit that looked like it belonged in a Conan the Barbarian movie, complete with golden armbands and bracelets, and leather sandals that reached to her upper calves. She looked like either an Aztec princess, or some kind of a goddess from the barbarian days. Nolan sat on her bed, and she sat in his lap facing him, and pushed him down on the bed, so he was lying flat on his back.

"How do you like the girl to be on top?" Zima asked.

Meanwhile, Darian had returned to the lab on campus to find a new way to torment the captives.

"Guess what?" said Darian. "One of you is going on a journey to my belly today!" Darian took out a gold coin and held it aloft for them to see."I want those of you who arrived in the Thunderbolt in two groups, the women on one side, and the men on the other!"

The captives did as they were told. Darian held the coin up. "Heads I pick the men, tails I pick the women!" Darian flipped the coin, and when it landed, it was tails. "Heads I pick Carmen, tails I pick Natalie!" Darian flipped the coin, and it landed heads. "Carmen it is!"

As Darian reached for Carmen, Leo yelled out, "No! take me instead! I've got nothing to lose!"

The heroic type, huh?" said Darian. "I can take you instead, I guess it makes more sense. With you out of the picture, there would be nobody to pilot the Thunderbolt back to Earth!"

Darian picked Leo up and held him up to her mouth. "Say goodbye to Leo, everyone!" Darian dropped him into her mouth, and forced him to the back of her mouth with her tongue. Several moments later, she swallowed him alive. Darian stuck her tongue out to the captives and said, "All gone!"

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 10

Nolan laid back on Zima's bed after some satisfying sex. Zima laid back next to him in her barbarian princess outfit.

"I'm going to have to enlarge you again some time," said Zima. "That was really satisfying. Most of the guys I have sex with are unappreciative of me, but you really seem to want to worship me!"

"What kind of guys have you had sex with?" Nolan asked.

"Mainly guys who were smart and could tutor me in subjects I'm not good at. I guess you could say I used them. When I got a good grade in those classes, I broke up with them. Is that wrong?"

"I don't think so," said Nolan.

"Oh shit, it's almost three o'clock!" said Zima as she got up and changed back into her schoolgirl uniform. "I have a class pretty soon. I'm going to have to shrink you down to size for a while, but when I get home I'll re-enlarge you so we can get it on again."

"No problem," said Nolan. "Is there somewhere you want me to stand while you shrink me?"

"Climb onto the top of that dresser," said Zima as she fished around for her shrink-ray pistol. Nolan did as she commanded, and Zima pointed the pistol and fired, and Nolan was reduced back down to about two inches tall again. Zima unzipped the pocket of her blouse and pulled out Brody Seger and his two tennis students.

"Here, they can keep you company!" said Zima as she set the three of them down next to Nolan and headed out the door. "Don't try to escape!"

Nolan shook hands with Brody Seger and Anthony and Johnathan.

"So you knocked boots with that titaness?" Brody asked.

"Yeah," said Nolan, "I think she likes me."

Meanwhile, Darian was busy with a secret plan. She left the passengers of the Thunderbolt in the lab after she had swallowed Leo, and headed toward the women's bathroom. She went to a dispenser and used her credit card to buy a bottle of Gak, which was a vomiting agent that was popular on Thanatar. She took the cap off and drank some, and went to a sink and made sure the drain was plugged. Within a few moments she began to vomit, and sure enough, Leo came up and landed in the sink. Darian used warm water to wash him off.

"It wasn't my intention to kill you!" said Darian. "If I wanted you dead, you would still be squirming around in my belly right now!"

"I understand!" said Leo. "But why did you swallow me to begin with?"

"It's part of my class project," said Darian. "I need the others to think you've been killed, to see how it affects them psychologically. I also need to examine how they react when I re-introduce you to them and they find out you're not dead."

"What are you going to do with me in the meantime?" Leo asked.

"I'm going to keep you in my dorm while I keep the others in the lab, separated from you."

Darian collected Leo and cupped him in her hands, and took him to her dorm room. She put him in a jar that had air-holes cut into the lid.

"I'm keeping you here until I find better quarters for you," said Darian. "You'll be reunited with your friends before too long."

Darian turned and left the dorm, leaving Leo behind. She returned to the lab and collected Tyler.

"I want to see how far you can go in the tennis tournaments!" Darian took him to her shuttle cruiser, but this time, she left the other captives in the lab. She flew her shuttle cruiser to Arcadia once again, and once she docked on the space station she went to the registration booth and asked about getting Tyler signed up for a tennis tournament.

"There is a tournament going on right now," said the receptionist, "but your captive will need to qualify for it first. If he gets beaten, you will lose him!"

"I'm not worried about that!" said Darian. "Sign him up!"

When the paperwork was finished, Darian took Tyler to the area where she had been directed to go, and when it was his turn, he played against an opponent who was one of the better tennis players on Arcadia. Tyler beat him with ease. Darian signed Tyler up for another match, and Tyler won that game, too. As Darian signed up for matches and won them, he moved up in his ranking until he was in line to play against the best tennis players on Arcadia.

The next series of matches would be determined by the best three out of five. Tyler's opponent was supposed to be a champion on Arcadia, but on Earth he would've at best been a tennis coach; he was no match for Tyler Chen. He gave Tyler a run for his money, Tyler won the first two games, but the opponent won the third game. When Tyler lost he looked in Darian's direction, and she lifted her blouse to reveal her belly button and pointed at it, to send a message home to Tyler that her belly would be his grave if he failed her.

Tyler tried extra hard and won the fourth game, then Darian took him home. He stood on the center console as Darian piloted the shuttle cruiser back to Thanatar.

"You got sloppy back there!" said Darian. "Don't let that happen again! You're a tennis champion, you shouldn't lose to anyone! Do you know how rare it is to acquire a pro athlete like yourself on Thanatar? It almost never happens! There's no excuse for you to not win every single game! You're going up against amateurs!"

"I won't fail you again, mistress!" said Tyler.

Darian slammed her fist down on the central console, rattling Tyler's bones.

"I command you to call me mighty mistress!" said Darian.

"Yes, mighty mistress!" said Tyler.

By that time, early evening, Zima had finished the class she was supposed to go to, and also finished doing her homework in study hall, and returned to her dorm.

"Nolan?" Zima called out. "Brody? Where are you guys?"

Not caring that she couldn't immediately find her captives, Zima went behind her changing screen and slipped out of her schoolgirl uniform and put the barbarian goddess outfit on again. As she fastened her leather sandals that went up her calves, she called out again to Nolan.

"Nolan! I'm ready to conquer you again!"

Nolan came out of his hiding place, followed by Brody and Anthony and Johnathan.

"I almost thought I was going to have to give you an ultimatum!" said Zima, as she finished fastening her sandals. "If you didn't come out within one more minute, I was going to swallow you! If I resorted to that, I wouldn't have puked you up, my belly would be your grave! Now, stand away from Brody and those other two, so I can use the neutrino transfer protocol to enlarge you to giant-size!"

Nolan did as Zima commanded, and she set the pistol to enlarge, and in an instant, Nolan was giant size again. Nolan jumped down from the dresser, and Zima threw her arms around Nolan and kissed him on the lips.

"How would you like to experience Arcadia from the perspective of one of the Titans?" Zima asked. "I could borrow Darian's shuttle cruiser and take you there, and I could make Brody play against someone and bet on him!"

"I wouldn't want to endanger Brody," said Nolan. "I've really gotten to know him during the time you were gone today."

"It's okay, Nolan!" said Brody. "Don't worry about me, I can win!"

Nolan agreed, and Zima took him with her to the parking lot just as Darian's shuttle cruiser was landing. Zima had Brody and his two students in her blouse pocket.

"Can I borrow your shuttle cruiser to go to Arcadia?" Zima asked Darian, as Darian got out of the driver's side.

"Yeah, I guess," said Darian, throwing Zima the keys. "But you have to refuel it!"

"No problem!" said Zima, and she got in, followed by Nolan.

Zima was a good pilot, and she flew them to Arcadia without any incident.

"The Arcadia space station is constantly going, 24 hours a day!" said Zima. "It almost tickles my tummy thinking of all the captives who get swallowed in one day there!" Zima put her right hand on Nolan's lap. "I hope that didn't make you feel funny!"

"No problem!" said Nolan. "I know you're a born predator, and you can't help it! I don't judge you for that!"

"Thank you!" said Zima.

After they arrived on Arcadia and got situated, Brody was set up in a match against another captive, and Zima came with drinks to where Nolan was seated and handed him a drink. It was an ordinary cardboard cup with a lid and a straw. Nolan took a drink.

"This stuff is good!" said Nolan.

"I'm only eighteen, so I'm not old enough to order alcohol, so I got us some soft drinks."

The match started, and Brody hammered his opponent at the beginning of the match.

"I was talking to Brody today," said Nolan, "and he told me to ask you if you could get him his own racquet. He thinks he's good enough to have his own racquet, and he needs to practice when he's away from Arcadia."

"Okay, whatever!" said Zima, and she thrust her arms around Nolan and French-kissed him brutally. The two of them made out during the rest of Brody's match, and when Brody won, they had to be interrupted by a gaming official for Zima to collect Brody and the losing opponent. On the ride back from Arcadia, Zima was in a passionate mood.

"I think I'm going to keep you as my property!" said Zima, as she piloted the shuttle cruiser back to the campus.

"Wasn't that the whole idea of transferring ownership to begin with?" Nolan asked.

"Darian relinquished control of you temporarily, she still needs you for her class project!" said Zima. "But I'm just going to let her borrow you when she needs you, and I'm going to keep you under my power!"

After parking the shuttle cruiser, Zima and Nolan made out passionately on the way to her dorm room. She opened the door while they were French-kissing, and she deposited Brody, his two students, and the captive Brody had beaten on the dresser before collapsing on the bed. Zima had been wearing her barbarian princess outfit this whole time, so Nolan was aroused when it came time for love-making. He surrendered to her passions, and gave in to her violent ways, until they were done making love. Then, as if none of the passion had happened, Zima returned to a normal state of mind.

"Ok, it's time for me to shrink you down to size and return you to the lab!" Zima fingered the shrink-ray pistol in her right hand.

"Are you serious?" Nolan asked. "A few minutes ago it sounded like you wanted to marry me!"

"I'll return you to giant-size when I'm in a sexy mood, but for now, I'm shrinking you and returning you to the lab with the other members of the Thunderbolt."

Nolan did as she commanded, and stood on the dresser. Zima pulled the trigger, and Nolan returned to around two inches tall.

Zima grabbed him as though he were an inanimate object, and carried him to the lab. When they arrived back at the habitation module where the others were, Mason, Tyler, Carmen and Natalie were surprised to see Zima dressed in an outlandish and sexy outfit. When Zima deposited Nolan and left, the others surrounded Nolan.

"What was going on with that get-up Zima was wearing?" Mason asked. "Did she wear that outfit when you two were having sex?"

"She used a mind scanner to find out exactly what turns me on," said Nolan. "I'm surprised she didn't use it to find out what I know about that device Leo has that could help us escape!"

"Leo is history!" said Natalie. "Darian swallowed him earlier today!"

"You're kidding me!" said Nolan. "Nat, you've got a twisted sense of humor, are you kidding around with me?"

"She's serious!" said Mason. "We all watched Darian swallow Leo!"

"So what was she like?" Tyler asked Nolan. "What was it like scoring with Zima?"

"I think I'm in love with her!" said Nolan. "If she ever lets me stay giant-sized, I'll figure out a way for all of you to return to Earth, but I'm staying here, by Zima's side!"

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 11

Later that evening, Darian came to Zima's dorm. "How about we go out for a night on the town?"

"I'm only eighteen," said Zima. "I can't buy alcohol."

"I know of a place where you can get in if you're eighteen, and I can buy a drink and give it to you."

"Okay!" said Zima.

"Let's get one of the captives and take him with us," said Darian.

They went to the lab and Darian grabbed Mason, and the two gianteses stormed off into the night. The passengers of the Thunderbolt were concerned.

"Now we've lost Leo and Mason," said Tyler. "Those two were the only ones who could pilot the Thunderbolt!"

"Maybe Mason will survive!" said Nolan.

"We can only hope!" said Natalie.

Meanwhile, Darian and Zima took public transportation to a nightspot where Darian did as she had planned. She bought a mug of beer for Zima and gave it to her, then she bought a mug of beer for herself. They made friends with another giantess from their University. Her name was Kayla. She carried an tall captive in one hand, and a mug of beer in the other. Darian showed Mason to her.

"He was a champion race car driver back on Earth," said Darian.

"I bet if I put my captive in my mug of beer," said Kayla, "I can swallow my captive faster than you can swallow yours!"

"I'm not gambling with Mason," said Darian. "He's too valuable! He can win me more captives!"

Darian turned to go use the bathroom. "Zima, can you hold my beer while I use the bathroom?"

"Yes," said Zima, "and can I hold Mason for you, too?"

Darian handed Mason to her as well. After Darian left, Zima challenged Kayla to a contest.

"If I swallow Darian's captive faster than you can swallow yours, what do I get?"

"I have three more captives at home that I can give you. Can you match that?" Kayla asked.

"I happen to have three captives at home I can give you if I lose," said Zima. The two women shook hands, and dropped their captives into their mugs of beer and it was on! Zima guzzled her beer down quickly, while Kayla tried to down hers just as quickly, but Zima was just a little bit faster. Zima slammed her empty mug on the table next to them, and wiped her mouth with her forearm.

"Done!" said Zima while Kayla was still on her last swallow.

"How did you beat me?" Kayla asked. "I'm a champion beer drinker!"

"I've practiced for a long time with soda!" said Zima. "I've wanted to do this for a long time!"

Inside Zima's belly, there was a struggle going on. Mason was fighting for air. He had found an air pocket, but he needed to conserve his air if he was going to survive the savage depths of Zima's belly.

Meanwhile, Darian returned from the bathroom.

"Hey, where's Mason?" she asked.

"I sent him crashing to the depths of my unyielding belly!" said Zima. "But I won the contest! Kayla owes me three captives!"

"You need to puke him up right now!" said Darian as she grabbed Zima's arm and walked her over to a Gak dispenser. She used her credit card to purchase a small bottle of Gak, and opened it.

"Drink this!" said Darian.

"No!" said Zima, sticking out her tongue. "I want more beer! Besides, I don't want my stomach acid to mess up my esophagus and my throat!"

"Gak protects your esophagus and your throat from the effects of any stomach acid that comes up!" said Darian. "Now drink it!"

"No!" said Zima.

"Drink this and puke up my captive, or you're not my assistant any more!" said Darian. "You'll be off the project!"

Zima scowled and took the bottle of Gak, and drank it. She headed to the women's restroom, and found a sink and plugged it up. Within moments, Zima began to puke. Mason was vomited up into the sink, and Darian grabbed him and washed him off.

"I'm sorry, Mason!" said Darian. "Zima just got a little carried away!"

Darian and Zima returned to the bar area and met up with Kayla.

"Hey, did you guys come in a vehicle?" Kayla asked.

"No, we took the tram," said Darian.

"I brought my shuttle cruiser," said Kayla, "how about you two come home with me to my dorm so I can give Zima the three captives she won from me, and I can pick up some more captives so I can try to win them back?"

"Sounds good to me!" said Zima. "I guess I can grab Brody and his two students and use them as collateral."

"You don't have to do that," said Darian, "they're too valuable! You can use some of the nobody's in my captives that Mason and Tyler won for me!"

"Sounds good!" said Zima, and the women left.

Eventually, they made their way to the lab and Darian grabbed some of the no-name captives who were locked away in the habitation module with the passengers of the Thunderbolt. Darian grabbed about ten of them and put them in a jar. They returned to the bar in Kayla's shuttle cruiser, which was set to autopilot because she had been drinking.

Back at the bar, the contest was underway. Zima had a mug of beer, and so did Kayla. Darian placed a captive in each mug, and said, "Go!" and the two young women started drinking. Zima took an early lead, but Kayla began to catch up. Zima finished her beer about half a swallow ahead of Kayla and slammed her empty beer mug down.

"Done!" said Zima, just before Kayla slammed her empty beer mug down.

"This doesn't make sense," said Zima. "I lose a captive for each captive I win. How about for the next bet, we bet three captives?"

"You're on!" said Kayla.

The contest resumed again. Darian dropped a captive into each mug, and the two young women started drinking again. This time Zima nearly chugged the entire mug in one gulp; apparently, she knew she had more to lose this time. She slammed her mug down on the bar while Kayla still had a substantial amount of beer left in her mug.

"That makes two captives currently struggling inside my belly," said Zima, "and four that I won from Kayla!"

"If you drink a bottle of Gak, you can produce two more!" said Darian. "Then you'll have six captives all together."

"I'm not drinking any more Gak!" said Zima. "Those two captives in my tummy right now are going to stay there permanently!" Zima gave a wicked smile, despite being slightly drunk. "If I kept them, that's where they would end up eventually anyway!" Zima lifted her blouse to reveal her light brown tummy, and said, "I wonder if they're still alive inside there? How much air do you think is in there, Darian?"

"Not enough!" said Darian. "Zima, are you ready to go home yet? You're kind of drunk!"

"One more round!" said Zima. Darian bought another mug of beer and handed it to Zima.

"I'll bet all four of my captives that I just won against four of yours!" said Zima to Kayla.

"You're on!" said Kayla.

"We need to get out of here before the management finds out you're under twenty-one," Darian whispered to Zima.

"Okay, this will be the last one!" said Zima. Kayla had her mug of beer and her captive. Darian took Zima's captive and Kayla's captive and dropped them into their respective mugs, according to the official rules of this drinking game. The citizens of Thanatar took this drinking game very seriously, it had been popular for thousands of years.

"Go!" said Darian, and the two young women downed their drinks so fast that it was difficult at first to determine the winner. Zima's mug slammed down against the bar just a split second sooner than Kayla's mug.

"Zima is the winner, again!" said Darian. Zima collected her eight captives and Darian hustled her out of the bar before they got caught for Zima being under twenty-one. It would be a scandal if their University found out a college freshman was drinking beer in a drinking game at a local bar.

Zima carried her captives in her fists none-too-gently, as Darian and Kayla helped her get to Kayla's shuttle cruiser. Kayla set the shuttle cruiser to autopilot, and had it return to the campus. Darian walked Zima to her dorm. Zima set the eight captives she had won on her dining room table.

"I think I'm gonna puke!" said Zima, and she walked to the bathroom and vomited into the sink. Her captives came up, but they weren't as fortunate as Mason had been. They were all dead.

"They're dead, Zima!" said Darian. "I told you that you should've drank some Gak back at the bar. All these captives are wasted!"

"I've got a resuscitator for captives!" said Zima, as she fumbled around for the device she was looking for. "Here it is!" Zima used the device to try to revive the captives who had spent the past 45 minutes in the depths of Zima's belly. One of them started to awaken, followed by the other three.

"You did it!" said Darian, clapping her hands together victoriously. "You've revived them!"

Zima rinsed them off and had them get dressed in clean clothes that she had on hand. When they were changed and dry, Zima set them on the kitchen table, and got a glass of water.

"I revived the four of you for a reason!" said Zima. "So I can enjoy swallowing you for a second time!"

Zima picked one of the captives up, and tossed him into her mouth, and took a huge swig of water and tilted her head back, and swallowed. She repeated this procedure until all four captives were swallowed. Darian was holding Mason in her hand, and he witnessed this.

"Zima," you resuscitated them just to swallow them again?"

"Yes, I wanted to feel the satisfaction a second time!" said Zima, with a wicked grin.

"I'll leave you here at your dorm now that I know you're safe," said Darian. "I'm going to return Mason to the lab with the others."

Darian turned and left Zima's dorm, and carried Mason back to the lab. She dropped him off in the habitation module, and left the lab.

"We thought you were a goner!" said Nolan.

"I almost was!" said Mason. "I got swallowed by Zima during a drinking game at a bar. Luckily, I got puked back up and I survived!"

"That Zima sure is evil!" said Tyler. "I feel sorry for Nolan, he's owned by her now!"

"I trust Zima!" said Nolan. "She would never hurt me!"

"I don't think you should trust her!" said Mason. "She'll probably use you a few times, and then when she gets tired of you, she'll just swallow you! She gets off on swallowing people!"

"Don't judge her!" said Nolan. "She's a product of her environment."

"Don't judge her?" said Mason. "I saw her accidentally vomit up four captives, and do you know what she did with them? She cleaned them up, put them in clean, dry clothes, then swallowed them a second time!"

"I still love her!" said Nolan.

"You're letting your love for her blind you!" said Natalie. "We can't trust these giants, or these 'titans' as they call themselves, regardless of whether or not you're in love with one of them!"

"If we ever find a way to get back to Earth," said Nolan, "I'm staying behind with Zima!"

Meanwhile, back at Zima's dorm, she got a habitation module that was almost half the size of the one Darian had at the lab. She put her eight new captives inside, and then set Brody, Anthony and Johnathan inside with them. Zima changed into her nightgown, and slipped into bed. She pulled up her nightgown to reveal her bare brown stomach, which she patted and caressed.

"Don't worry, tiny slaves, your deaths weren't in vain! You've given your mistress a lot of satisfaction!" despite being slightly drunk, Zima smiled mischievously, as she was known to do. She got out of bed and walked over to the habitation module, and lifted her nightgown to reveal her stomach.

"There will come a day when all of you will come to know the inside of my tummy!" Zima smile evilly. "What better fate than to surrender to the belly of a goddess? No, more than a goddess, a titaness!"

"What about me?" said Brody. "I'm a skilled tennis player, I can win you more captives!"

Even in her drunk state of mind, this made sense to Zima.

"Yes, your life will be spared!" said Zima. "As long as you win more captives for me! My belly is a never-ending pit for captives! I'll never tire of swallowing them!" Zima still had a wicked smile on her face as she put a sheet over the habitation module so the captives could sleep for the night.

[GastricAztec]

"Planet of the Titans"

Chapter 12

While Darian and Zima were at the bar, Leo was trapped in his jar back in Darian's dorm. His jar was small in comparison to him, a mistake that Darian would later regret; Leo had to stoop over so as not to bang his head on the lid. The air holes had been hastily cut out of the lid with a tool that left holes big enough for Leo to grasp. He began trying to grasp the lid and unscrew it, and sure enough, it began to give way. He struggled harder, and the plastic lid unscrewed and fell to the tabletop below. Logan climbed out and jumped down to the table.

Unsure of how to proceed, the answer came to him like a revelation. He climbed down onto the floor and ran and hid by the door. He would wait for Darian to come home, and make a run for it when the door was open and her back was to him. He had to wait quite some time, but when she eventually came home, he did exactly as he had planned, and made a run for it. His escape attempt was successful. He ran back toward the creek, and about two and a half hours later he was there, back at the spot where they had camped before being re-captured by Darian.

He still had the device that the protester had given him the day Darian had given her speech. He turned it on, and the tutorial informed him that there was a cache of climbing gear hidden at the creek, not far from where he was. Though it was night time and dark out, he was able to track down the location of the secret stash location. There was rope and carabiners, and a pneumatic tube to shoot the rope if he needed to, exactly what he would need to get back into the lab where the Thunderbolt was.

Leo made his way back to the lab, and another two and a half hours later he was there. One thing the tutorial taught him was how to utilize a mind control device in Darian's lab. Once he utilized it, he would have the knowledge to access all the technology in the lab, and he would be able to proceed from there. Once he was outside the lab, he stood below the window they had escaped from, which was now closed. The rope he had was connected to a pneumatic tube, and after aiming for the window and firing it, the grapnel hook at the end of the rope penetrated the window above him and hooked inside the room. Logan pulled on the rope to make sure it was secure, and when he was satisfied, he began his ascent.

Carmen was the first to hear the glass breaking. She woke up startled, and woke her husband Tyler up. Mason, Nolan and Natalie woke up, too.

"What was that?" Carmen asked.

"Is it a giant?" Natalie asked.

From their vantage point, they could see just above the habitation module through the plastic dome, to the window above the space-warp cannon; this was the window they had escaped from when they had escaped from Darian.

"I don't think so," said Mason. "It looks like someone our size is breaking in here!"

"It must be a rescue!" said Nolan.

When Logan reached the window sill, he pulled up the rope he had climbed and threw it through the hole in the window, over the other side and down into the lab. He tied one end of the rope to a handle on the window, so he wouldn't lose the rope. Nolan looked up and spotted Logan.

"It's Logan!" said Nolan.

"It couldn't be Logan," said Carmen, "we saw him get swallowed alive by Darian!"

"Well, he must've gotten puked back up!" said Nolan.

"Nobody shout to him," said Mason, "just let him do whatever he needs to do. He's probably got something figured out!"

Logan climbed down and looked around the lab. The device the tutorial mentioned as the mind control machine was on a shelf in the lab, and Logan located it. He easily climbed up and made his way to the device.

He turned it on according to the instructions given to him by the protester's device, following the tutorial word for word. This mind control device could forge a pattern in the neurons in Logan's brain that would teach him how to operate all the technology in the lab. Logan stuck his head into the emitter and turned on the device to full power. Within less than a minute, he had understanding of all the devices in Darian's lab. He looked around with full knowledge of how everything worked.

"The first thing I need to do is purge myself of the nanobots in my system, or the show's over!" said Logan. He saw another device that was capable of just that on another level of the shelf, and went to it and turned it on. He used a tube to send an electromagnetic pulse through his body. This electromagnetic pulse was strong enough to fry the delicate circuitry of the nanobots in his body so they couldn't send a signal to Darian's equipment. Just to check and see if it worked, he went to another device on the same shelf that could track the nanobots in their systems. He turned it on and saw the signature of the other five captives in their habitation chamber, but his signal wasn't being picked up.


A feeling, something akin to a sixth sense alerted Logan that he should leave immediately. He climbed down from the shelf and made his way to the rope and climbed back up. When he was at the window, he called out to the others in the habitation module.

"Sorry I couldn't help you, but I purged myself of the nanobots so Darian can't track me anymore! When I have a better plan, I promise to come back for the rest of you!"

Logan disappeared through the hole in the window and climbed down the outside.

"Maybe the best we can hope for is to escape from Darian and live out a fugitive existence here on Thanatar!" said Tyler. "Maybe we'll never get back to Earth!"

"Don't say that!" said Mason. "We're going to refuel the Thunderbolt and get back to Earth, somehow! No matter how the odds are stacked against us!"

A few moments later, the door slid open and the lights came on. Darian entered the lab. She had seen that Leo's jar was empty when she got home, and saw the rope dangling outside the lab, coming from the window that concealed the space-warp cannon. She looked around the lab, and saw the equipment that Logan had utilized. She went to the habitation module and took the dome off. The five people from the Thunderbolt were in one compartment, and the dozen or so other captives who had been won when Mason and Leo had played on Arcadia were in another section of the habitation module.

"What in the hell just happened here?" said Darian.

One of the captives who had been won on Arcadia spoke up. "It was Leo! He came back and purged himself of the nanobots so you can't track him!"

"What are his plans?" Darian asked.

"He plans to come back and rescue the others!" said the captive.

"Then I'll be ready for him!" said Darian.

Nolan asked Darian a question while she stood there towering over them. "Darian, I thought you swallowed Leo. What happened?"

"I guess it won't hurt to tell you now that all of you know," said Darian. "This was all part of a psychological experiment. I was going to surprise all of you at the next speech I gave, and re-introduce Logan to you to see how you react."

"Has Zima mentioned me?" said Nolan. "We had an unforgettable night together."

"She hasn't mentioned you, but you're the first tiny person she has ever enlarged."

"I want to stay here on Thanatar and marry her!" said Nolan. "I'm in love with her!"

"At your size?" Darian asked. "Wouldn't that be difficult?"

"No!" said Nolan. "I want her to enlarge me to her scale, so we can be together forever!"

"I'll talk to her about it tomorrow," said Darian. "I'll tell her how you feel!"

Darian turned off the equipment that Leo had activated, and returned to the habitation module. Before sliding the dome back on, she grabbed a captive at random, one of the captives she had won on Arcadia.

"I need something to relieve my stress!" said Darian, and she lifted the captive over her mouth, and dropped him in. She forced him to the back of her mouth with her tongue, and swallowed him. Darian lifted her blouse and looked at her stomach as she laughed to herself. She replaced the dome on top of the habitation module, and left the lab. Before she left, she grabbed the rope that Leo had left hanging from the window.

Meanwhile, Leo was running as fast as he could across the campus, trying to make his way back to the creek so he could find cover. This world was so massive that a creek that was half a mile away to the giants was over thirty miles away from his perspective. When he got there, he collapsed and caught his breath. He pulled out the little device the protester had given him, which was about the size of a small camera. He didn't know what to do from here, but the device would provide him with any information he needed to assist him. If he could refuel the Thunderbolt, he could man the space-warp cannon and launch the Thunderbolt so the others could get home. Mason would have to pilot the space plane while Leo remained on Thanatar, but that was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

Leo activated the device and an image appeared on the screen. It was the woman who had given him the device. "Have you escaped from your captress?" the woman asked. This was a real-time two-way video call, and the device in Leo's hands was acting like a two-way video cell phone.

"Yes!" said Leo. "I got away!"

"Did you purge yourself of the nanobots so she can't track you?" the woman asked.

"Yes, what do I do now?" Leo asked.

"There are some women who work for the resistance. You need to go to one of them. There are several of them near you, one of them is very trust-worthy, she is about twenty of your miles from you, but then there's Melina, she's new, and we don't know if she can be trusted yet, but she's closer to you."

"How far away is Melina?" Leo asked.

"About five miles from you, on your scale, but you would be better off with our contact who is twenty of your miles from you!"

"I'll just trust Melina!" said Leo. "Give me a map that shows me how to get to her! I've done a lot of walking tonight, and I don't want to walk another twenty miles!"

"I'm transmitting it to you right now!" said the woman. When Logan got the map, he memorized it and set out to find Melina before daybreak.

Meanwhile, Darian went and woke Zima up and brought her back to the lab and showed her the hole in the window, as well as the rope (from Darian and Zima's perspective, the rope seemed like thread). Zima was still in her nightgown.

"They're getting brave!" said Zima. "You should set an example and swallow one of the passengers of the Thunderbolt!"

At that exact moment, the captives inside the lab could hear every word Darian and Zima were speaking. Carmen and Natalie were worried.

"One of us is going to get swallowed!" said Natalie.

"How would it look at your next presentation if you had to tell them that one of your captives escaped, and you didn't even punish any of them for it?" said Zima.

"You're right!" said Darian, and she punched in her combination into the keypad and the door slid open. She entered the lab and took the transparent dome off the habitation module.

"One of you is going to pay for Leo's escape!" said Darian, and she grabbed Nolan Ward and stuffed him into her mouth before he could even say anything in his defense. Darian tilted her head back and forced Nolan to the back of her mouth with her tongue, and swallowed him.

"Wait, which captive was that?" Zima asked.

"That was Nolan Ward!" said Darian. "By the way, he's in love with you and wants to marry you!"

"Drink some Gak!" said Zima, as she tossed a bottle of the purple liquid to Darian. "He belongs to me now, and I'm getting kind of attached to him!"

Darian nodded in assent and swallowed some of the Gak, and threw up in a sink nearby. Nolan was alive, and none the worse for wear. Zima walked over and rinsed him off.

"I'm keeping you at my dorm, with Brody and my other captives, okay Nolan?"

"Okay!" said Nolan. "It's great to see you again!"

"It's great to see you again, too!" said Zima with a smile that was lacking that evil glint in her eye that she usually had when she smiled.