"You've got to be kidding me." Staring up at the giant woman in the doorway, Max shook his head in disbelief. Somehow, to add insult to all the surreal injury this morning had already visited on him, the first person to find him here was his own stepmother. 

As usual, the 42-year-old Mexican-American amazon was dressed to the nines. Her wavy shoulder-length black hair looked freshly done, her deep brown eyes, round cheeks and full lips were accented with a layer of heavy but tasteful makeup, and her outfit was just as characteristically flattering as ever. Her low-cut white blouse seemed to be bursting at the seams trying to contain her prodigious breasts, and her tight blue jeans wasn't faring much better against her wide hips, thick thighs and even-more-prodigious butt. Even her fashionable leather sandals were overloaded by her feet—each of which was now big enough to squash Max flat and then some.

"What in the…" Locking onto her shrunken stepson, Victoria took a few steps forward and squinted. "…Max?" 

Meeting his 6'1", 250-pound stepmother's gaze, the three-inch-tall freshman swallowed hard. "H-hey, Victoria."

Max had first met Victoria around this time four years ago, a few weeks into his freshman year of high school. That was when his dad had announced that his new wife and her daughter, Izzy, would be moving in with them. Naturally, the idea of suddenly having a former plus-size model as a stepmom — and a girl his age who'd inherited every bit of her mom's showstopping looks and heavy-duty curves as a stepsister — had been a lot for his hormone-added adolescent mind to process. Still, he'd done his best to respect his dad's decision—and for a while, things had been more or less normal. That all changed when Max's dad got a new job that required him to relocate overseas, leaving his new stepmom as the sole authority figure in the house.

Over the next several years, as Max's dad grew more and more physically (and emotionally) absent, Max became painfully familiar with Victoria's style of parenting—which was, in a word, suffocating. She picked out all of his clothes, cooked all of his meals, walked him to and from school every day and chaperoned him on any extracurricular excursion out of the house. It was like she didn't trust him to make any decision by himself, and while it may have just been her way of trying to help him out of his usual insecure, introverted shell, it quickly took a toll on any limited sense of self-esteem he'd ever had. Her habit of constantly comparing him to Izzy — always casting his new stepsister as the golden child even though she collected detentions and suspensions like trading cards and frequently came home in the back of a police car — didn't help, either.

By the time Max had started applying to colleges, his top priority had been getting as far away from his stepmom and stepsister as possible — which was one of the reasons he'd ultimately decided to go to Ventus, a very safe six-hour drive south from his Bay Area hometown. So far, all the newfound freedom, independence, and breathing room that distance provided was the only part of college that was actually meeting his expectations—and while he'd mainly used that freedom to stay in his room playing video games and watching anime, it was finally his decision to do that. As he watched the buxom giantess approaching his perch on the coffee table, he couldn't help wondering if that brief, glorious era was about to come to an end. 

"There you are," said Victoria, sounding more annoyed than surprised. "I've been looking for you everywhere!" 

"S-sorry," said Max, doing everything in his power not to stare at his stepmom's massive chest. "I just woke up."

"I can tell." Scanning her tiny stepson up and down, Victoria frowned. "What the heck happened to you?"

"I, uh… I dunno." Remembering his own nakedness, Max clasped both hands over his groin. "The last thing I remember is going to a party last night, and then…"

"You? Going to a party?" Victoria scoffed. "You really expect me to believe that, Max?" 

"I…" Max had to resist the urge to groan. "Yeah?"

"Alright, fine, keep lying. See if I care." Victoria let out a long sigh, dripping with her usual mix of frustration and unintentional condescension. "I should have known this would happen."

"This?" Max did a double-take. Surely, he'd heard his stepmother wrong. "As in, me shrinking?"

"Well, something like this." Victoria shook her head. "You're lucky I found you in here before someone else did."

"Yeah," said Max, increasingly unsure how to feel about any of this. On the one hand, he knew his stepmom was probably right—but on the other hand, she clearly hadn't changed a bit since he'd last seen her. The fact that she seemed to have already accepted his sudden, inexplicable loss of size with so few questions also gave him considerable pause. "What are you doing down here, anyway?"

"So far, mostly looking for you." Victoria leaned over the table expectantly, her considerable chest looming over her shrunken stepson. "But we can probably still make the champagne brunch if we hurry."

Max took a step back, blushing in the shadow of his stepmom's boobs. "The champagne brunch… for what?" 

"You're joking, right?" Victoria rubbed her forehead. "For Parents' Weekend?"

"Oh." Max sighed. Of course, in the heat of all the morning's unexpected twists and turns, he'd totally forgotten that it was Parents' Weekend—an event he'd been dreading all month. "Right. Sorry. I mean, uh… shouldn't we, like, find a way to get me back to normal first?"

"Oh, Max." The mature giantess's expression softened into something resembling pity. "You really don't know what's going on here, do you?"

"No," said Max, getting a fresh surge of unease from his stepmom's change in tone. "Do you?"

"Well…" Victoria crouched down beside the coffee table, resting her considerable chest a few inches away from her stepson. "Like you said, you shrank. Which means that someone dosed you with shrinking serum."

"Shrinking..." Max winced. "Serum?" 

"Yeah." Victoria nodded. "It was all over the place, back when I first started modeling. No one I knew ever tried it, but there were always stories. One or two drops, you lose a couple inches. Three or four, you lose a couple feet. Fix or six, and... you get the idea." For a moment, the pitied expression returned to her face. "The thing is, once you shrink... it's permanent."

Hearing this, Max felt his knees going weak. If everything his stepmother was saying was true, and he'd been dosed with one of those permanent chemicals, this wasn't some one-off prank or bad dream. This was now his life, forever—and once he started to come to terms with that thought, several other equally devastating connections quickly followed. 

Obviously, this meant the end of his time in college. He'd have to drop out, and the only place he could go was back home to Victoria and Izzy. Based on how they'd treated him all through high school as a full-sized human being, he really didn't want to find out how he'd fare after today. Then again, it wasn't like he had any other family or friends to take him in…

PRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTT

Before Max could spend any more time spiraling, a long, low, bassy noise snapped him back to reality. A second later, the entire coffee table was overwhelmed by a wave of warm, eggy stink—a smell Max recognized instantly from his years of sharing a bathroom with Victoria. While his stepmother rarely farted in public, she had no reservations about doing so when the two of them were alone—and as a larger-than-average lady with an incessant fondness for cooking and eating Mexican food, her gas had always been particularly gnarly.

"Ugh," coughed Max, crumpling to the table in a coughing fit. "God, that reeks!"

"Oh, get over yourself." Victoria rolled her eyes. "Heaven forbid I remind you what a real woman smells like once in a while." 

"Never mind," Max sighed, well aware that pushing back on his stepmom's habit of letting loose in his presence was a losing game. "So... there's no cure?"

"None that I've ever heard of." Victoria offered her stepson a conciliatory smile. "I'm really sorry, Max."

"Okay. Well..." As the lingering remnants of his stepmom's latest fart began to dissipate, the three-inch-tall freshman managed to get back to his feet. "What if there's one you haven't heard of?"

Victoria pursed her lips—the same way she always pursed her lips whenever her stepson implied he knew something she didn't. "I doubt it, sweetie."

"But if you don't know for sure…" Meeting his stepmother's gaze again, Max had no luck masking his mounting nerves. He'd never been good at asserting himself in front of her, and it was even harder now that she was twenty-something times his size. "Can't we just-"

"Max," said Victoria, staring down at her stepson with a soft but forceful glare. "We are not going to the hospital today, and that's final."

Against his better judgment, Max decided to keep pushing. "Why?"

"Because," sighed Victoria, "I don't see any sense in getting your hopes up for nothing. Now, I can tell you're upset, and I'm sure this is a lot for you to wake up to, but it's really not the end of the world." She smiled again. "I think you'd be very surprised how much a guy your size can still do when he really puts his mind to it."

"T.M.I.," Max grumbled, not enjoying the way his stepmom was eyeing him.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Victoria chuckled. "The point is, we'll get through this. The same way we always get through everything. Together." The mature amazon extended a finger to tousle her shrunken stepson's hair, accidentally knocking him onto his back again. "Heh, whoopsie."

"It's alright," said Max, shoulders slumping. He knew that when Victoria put her foot down, it tended to stay down—and that she didn't take kindly to any resistance past that point. Based on that, he knew he would have to put his hopes of getting to the bottom of this whole thing on hold—at least, for the moment. "So what now?"

"Now?" Max's stepmother pulled out her phone, gave the screen a few taps and frowned. "Well, it's 11:30. So as much as I was looking forward to brunch, we should probably just get this show on the road if we want to beat traffic."

"On the road?" Max's face fell. "You mean..." 

"I mean," chuckled Victoria, reaching out a hand toward her tiny stepson. "We've got six hours of driving ahead of us. And if we wait any longer, it's gonna start cutting into my beauty sleep." 

"Oh." Eyeing his stepmother's huge outstretched palm, Max grimaced. While he rarely pushed back on Victoria's wishes, especially multiple times in one day, he couldn't shake the feeling that this would be his only chance to stand up for the new life he'd started making at school. Even if staying here at his new size was unrealistic — and opened the door to a thousand different outcomes far more unpleasant than the one she seemed to be proposing — he knew he'd regret it if he didn't try. Summoning all the courage at his disposal, he took a deep breath and looked back up at Victoria. "Well, what if..." He hesitated, trying to find the words to say what he wanted to say. "Do you think there's any way I could, like... stay here?"