Shrunk! Shrunken First Semester: Students for Tinies chapter 1 by maximally

Max woke up with his face mashed against a cold, hard slab of plywood. His head throbbed, his muscles ached, and his stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself. The lingering taste of stale beer and something else he couldn't quite place clung to his dry mouth. When he tried cracking his eyes open, the pain around his temples only got worse. Whatever he'd done last night, it couldn't have been good.

 

He had no clue how long he'd been asleep or where he'd woken up. The only thing he knew for sure was that it was Saturday, September 30th. As of today, he'd been attending Ventus University for one month—and so far, things weren't exactly going the way he'd always hoped.

 

He'd spent most of his senior spring dreaming of college life: living on his own, meeting new people, maybe even finding a girlfriend. Now, just four weeks into his first semester, he'd made frustratingly little progress. He was barely passing his classes, hadn't joined any clubs, and hadn't made any friends—aside from his roommate, Zeke, who was stuck with him either way. Worst of all, he hadn't been invited to a single party—not until last night. Sure, maybe some of that was on him. Whenever he wasn't in class, he hid in his room, gaming and binge-watching anime. Still, he couldn't help thinking his choice of school wasn't helping.

 

Like many former women's colleges, Ventus still had an overwhelmingly female student body—something Max had considered a major win when he'd applied. With four girls to every boy in any class, he'd assumed he might have a better chance of finally finding a girlfriend. The school's strong academic rankings, athletic performance, job placement numbers, and sunny Southern California campus didn't hurt either. The only real catch was the school's infamous House System: a network of powerful sororities that dominated every aspect of student life.

 

The school's website bragged that at least 80% of female undergraduates belonged to one of the major houses—Diana (the "Jock House"), Minerva (the "Nerd House"), Juno (the "Goth House"), Fortuna (the "Hot Girl House"), and Proserpina (the "Loser House"). By the end of orientation, Max realized the whole campus social scene revolved around the first four, especially Diana and Fortuna. As a guy, he was banned from joining any of them, so his only shot at getting invited to parties or having any kind of social life was to befriend as many house girls as possible. For a guy who still got tongue-tied talking to any woman who wasn't a blood relative, that was a tall order.

 

As a result, his first month at school had mainly consisted of going to class, studying, gaming, sleeping, and waking up to do it all over again—which didn't represent a significant shift from how he'd spent most of his teens up until that point. The only change was that he was now surrounded by constant reminders of everything he was missing. Every weekend, as the campus came alive with at least four or five wild parties, all he could do was sit in his room in the Unaffiliated Students Dorm and long for some kind of breakthrough. Then, last night, he'd finally gotten one.

 

Yesterday afternoon, Max came back from class to find his roommate waiting. Zeke was a stocky, fluffy-haired Mexican-American nerd—just as much of a dorky gamer and anime addict as Max, but way better-looking and far better at talking to girls. Thanks to this, he was already becoming a campus social butterfly, racking up party invites at all the big houses and never missing a chance to rub it in.

 

But last night, Zeke had a different message. He was heading to another party, and this time, he'd gotten permission to bring Max along. Faced with the prospect of entering a new social situation with only his roommate for backup, Max did what many anxious, introverted college guys might do. Egged on by Zeke, he decided to pre-game—and by the time they left for the party, the less experienced drinker of the two had more liquid courage than he knew what to do with.

 

Now, about fourteen hours later, Max's memory of the rest of the night was a blur. If his current state was any indication, all he had to show for his first big college party was the mother of all hangovers. Then he tried opening his eyes again, and everything got even weirder.

 

"What the…"

 

As Max's eyes adjusted to the light, three things hit him all at once. First, he wasn't in his dorm room. Second, he was completely naked. Third, and most critically, he was tiny. Like, action-figure tiny.

 

"Oh, fuck…"

 

Like any modern teenager, Max had seen plenty of news stories about people getting dosed with drugs at college parties. Still, he'd never heard of anything like this. He was lying on the top of a giant coffee table—and based on the relative size of his immediate surroundings, including several pencils and a half-empty can of Red Bull, he couldn't have been more than a few inches tall.

 

"This can't be happening…"

 

And yet, somehow, here he was—wide awake and shivering, cold air prickling his bare skin. His heart hammered in his chest, and the room spun around him, making it almost impossible to think about anything except his sudden, totally inexplicable transformation.

 

The more he saw, the more questions flooded into his mind. How had this happened? Was there any cure? And where the heck was he?

 

Rubbing his eyes and taking another look around, Max immediately got several clues about his current location. To his right was a huge flatscreen TV hooked up to a half-dozen gaming consoles, current and retro. To his left were several bookshelves packed with manga and steamy-looking romantasy books. Behind him, above a navy blue couch covered in more empty Red Bulls and crumpled-up classwork, two huge posters of Mount Lady from My Hero Academia and D.Va from Overwatch loomed like giant billboards. Putting all of this together, it didn't take a genius to figure out that he had woken up in House Minerva—the sorority known to everyone else at Ventus as the "Nerd House."

 

If the jocks in House Diana were the strongest girls on campus, and the e-girls in Fortuna were the hottest, the nerds in Minerva were quite easily the smartest. They dominated every serious field of study, boasted some of the school's best and brightest alumni, and, as a direct result of their relentless course loads, were also frequently some of the slobbiest and least socially active young women around. Most spent all their waking hours either obsessively cramming for classes or immersing themselves in their favorite games and anime, leaving little time for things like dating, partying, or good personal hygiene. In other words, despite their firmly established place in Ventus's top tier of well-funded, prestigious sororities, the majority of the house's undergrads were far from traditional collegiate popular girls. While they weren't nearly as bad as the straight-up femcels in House Proserpina, the general consensus was that they didn't get out much.

 

Realizing where he was, the freshly-shrunken freshman couldn't help feeling a little relieved. If he had any shot of finding a way back to normal, it would probably start with one of Minerva's many certified brainiacs—and in here, he didn't have to worry about overbearing jocks, kooky goths, bratty e-girls or fetid gooners. These girls knew what a pipette was. Some of them probably knew what had happened to him. After the last few minutes, Max was prepared to consider that a pretty significant advantage.

 

The only question now was whether to try venturing into the hall or stay put. He'd just begun inspecting the distance between the coffee table and the couch when a door opened on the other side of the room, followed immediately by a high-pitched squeal.

 

"Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!"

 

 

Max had seen Sydney Baker around campus before—even at a school full of knockout girls, her cotton-candy pink twin-tails, eye-searingly kawaii outfits, and exaggerated curves were impossible to miss—but her proportions were even more staggering from down here. At a hair over five feet tall, she was the definition of a shortstack: almost disproportionately curvy, with an exaggerated, gravity-defying hourglass that her pink Hello Kitty pajamas were doing a heroic job of failing to contain. The top looked like it was seconds away from surrendering to her chest. The shorts rode so high they might as well have been panties, hems digging into her thighs with every eager step.

 

She skidded to a halt in front of the coffee table, blue eyes sparkling with manic glee, and leaned in until her cleavage loomed over him like a big, soft stormfront. Max instinctively backed away.

 

"Another tiny! And you're so little!" She gasped it like a present. "Did you just wake up? Oh, you poor thing!"

 

"I—I think so." Max tried to keep his voice steady and immediately failed. "I was at a party, and—"

 

"Ooooh, a party?" Sydney leaned even further forward, her chest jiggling a few inches over his head. "Didja watch your drink? Like, at all?"

 

"I can't remember."

 

"Oh, right! Well… that tracks, too!" She shook her head with cheerful expertise, as if this were a very cute version of a campus safety talk. "Shrinking serum. A ton of girls are obsessed with that crap. Especially Junos."

 

"Shrinking serum?"

 

"You just pick a guy, slip a little in his drink, wait a couple hours, and bam!" She wiggled her fingers at him, grin widening. "Super messed up, right?"

 

Max looked from her enormous hand to the Red Bull can towering over the other end of the table. "How have I never heard of this?"

 

"You've seriously never heard any tiny stories?"

 

He had heard people joke about girls making their boyfriends disappear. He'd heard plenty of other ridiculous things about the houses too, most of them from people who seemed to consider getting through orientation sufficient qualification to explain the entire school. Nobody had helpfully separated the genuine hazards from the stupid sorority rumors before handing him a drink.

 

"I thought they were jokes."

 

"Yeah, well. Most people do." Sydney glanced toward the hall. "The girls who actually know stuff don't exactly put it in the orientation packet."

 

That didn't explain nearly as much as she seemed to think it did. Still, she knew a name for what had happened to him, which was more than Max had managed so far.

 

"So… is there a cure?"

 

"Not one I've ever seen!" She said it with the same bright expression she'd worn a moment earlier, which did not help. "But don't worry! I can totally help you out. Just—" She glanced toward the hall and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "—not here. Too many ears."

 

"Wait. My roommate—Zeke—he was with me last night. Can you call him?"

 

"In a sec. First we need to get you somewhere safe. What's your name, cutie?"

 

"Max. Max Calhoun."

 

"Max! That's adorable." She actually bounced on her heels. "I'm Sydney. Now, hang on!"

 

Max opened his mouth to repeat the part about Zeke. He didn't get that far. Sydney's fingers closed around him with the casual confidence of somebody who had done this before, firm enough that his arms pinned to his sides and playful enough that she gave him a little bounce to settle him in her grip. The coffee table dropped away. The room lurched. Cold air became a wall of heat rolling off her chest, perfume fighting a warmer, muskier smell underneath it.

 

"Sydney—wait—I can walk, or—just put me—"

 

"Shh. Too many ears, remember?" She tugged the neckline of her pajama top forward. "And you are way too grab-able to leave sitting out here."

 

The world narrowed to pink fabric and pale skin. She shoved him into the valley between her breasts with a wet squelch of already-damp flesh, then pulled the top up to hide the crown of his head. Pillowy weight closed in from both sides. Her heartbeat thudded against his cheek. The Hello Kitty print scratched his back whenever she adjusted him, and every adjustment pushed him deeper into the humid cleft she'd decided was a hiding place.

 

"There we go," Sydney cooed, giving her chest a testing bounce that mashed him between both mounds and knocked the air out of him. "Comfy?"

 

Max wheezed something that was not an answer. After eighteen years as a kissless virgin, he was not sure how he was supposed to feel about any of this, which did not stop his body from filing a confused complaint of its own. She took the wheeze as a yes anyway.

 

"I'll take that as a yes!" she chirped. "Alright, widdle guy, hold on tight!"

 

She started moving. Each step rolled him against slick skin. Laughter leaked in from an open doorway. A console hummed. Distant bass thudded somewhere deeper in the house. None of it was as loud as the wet shift of her breasts around him, or as immediate as the cotton-candy-and-sweat smell soaking into his hair. By the time a door clicked shut and the rest of Minerva fell away, he was seconds from disappearing completely between them.

 

A giant hand plunged into the top and plucked him free with a sticky pop. He dangled in her grip, legs kicking, while she examined him the way a collector examined a new figure—head tilted, lower lip caught in her teeth, already deciding where he went next.

 

"Mmm. You're perfect." A fingertip traced down his chest. Then she set him on the desk. Polished wood hit overheated skin like a slap of cold. He scrambled upright, clutching himself, and tried to take in the room before she decided he needed relocating again.

 

Sydney's bedroom was a shrine to kawaii chaos. Pink fairy lights crisscrossed the ceiling, casting a soft glow over the mountain of plushies piled on her bed—everything from pastel unicorns to anime waifus. Posters of magical girls and idol groups papered the walls, and a shelf displayed an army of Nendoroids, their glassy eyes seeming to watch him. The air smelled like cotton candy and the faint sour tang of unwashed laundry, a pile of which had been half-heartedly shoved into a corner, a neon pink bra dangling from the top.

 

Sydney clapped. "Okay! First things first—welcome to my super cute room!" She struck a pose, one hand on her hip, the other flashing a peace sign. "Name's Sydney. Biochemistry major, pre-med focus, and—" she winked, "—a proud member of Students for Tinies!"

 

 

Max blinked. "Students for… what?"

 

"Students for Tinies!" she repeated, as if it were obvious. "It's, like, a super secret club for girls who love helping shrunken guys! We rescue guys like you and give them, like, shelter and care and stuff."

 

The hungry gleam in her eyes did not match the brochure. Max forced a nod anyway. "Oh. C-cool."

 

"Yeah!" She clapped again. "But before we can really help you, I gotta run some super quick tests to assess your condition. Standard procedure!"

 

"You said somewhere safe. You said you'd call—"

 

Her palm flattened against his back and shoved him facedown. Fingers splayed around him, pinning his arms. He felt her shift her weight, heard the desk creak, and then she hefted one breast in her free hand.

 

"Test one: boob compression!"

 

The massive orb came down on him like a dropped pillow stuffed with bricks. Air left his lungs. A dime-sized nipple dug into the small of his back. She giggled and ground her chest against him, soft flesh molding around his ribs, the scent of her skin filling his nose until the perfume gave up and the musk took over.

 

"Oooh, you're so wiggly! That's good. Means your motor functions are intact."

 

"Sydney—" His voice came out muffled under the shortstack's left breast. "Can't breathe—"

 

"Aww, don't be such a baby." She lifted just enough to let him gasp, then dropped the breast again with a playful bounce. Flesh avalanched around him. "Next test: butt compression!"

 

She stood, turned, and sat. He saw the motion this time—the way she planted one hand on the desk for balance, the way the pajama shorts stretched as she lowered herself—and still had no way to get out from under it. Her cheeks spread around him. Thin fabric did nothing to mask the heat or the unmistakably funky smell of an ass that had been in those shorts all morning. She wiggled, grinding him harder against her backdoor.

 

"S-Sydney—!"

 

"Shhh. Science is happening." Another grind. "Gotta check your, uh… durability."

 

Every shift of her weight sent a fresh wave of pressure through him. Whatever this was supposed to measure, it was not a medical protocol he recognized. Just when his vision started to swim, she stood, leaving him gasping on the wood, skin flushed and sticky with her sweat.

 

She leaned over the desk again, putting her weight back down on top of him, and this time he felt her settle on purpose.

 

Pbbbbbt

 

A short, hot blast of air rushed into his face. He gasped before he could stop himself. The thick, humid aroma that followed left no room for ambiguity. Sydney had just farted on him. The stench filled his lungs. The warmth clung to his skin. She giggled at the struggle under her, wiggling her hips to make sure he got every last molecule.

 

"A-plus odor resistance!" She stood and clapped, as if that concluded a lab write-up. "You're perfect!"

 

Max coughed, eyes watering. Beneath the humiliation, one thought crystallized: none of this had been a test. She had handled him like a girl who already knew the steps, and nothing he had asked for—a call, five seconds to think—had slowed her down. All those years of being invisible, and the first girl who paid this much attention to him had just used him as a science fair project for her ass. If this was the reality of three inches, he was not feeling particularly hopeful about the rest of her club.

 

She stared at him for a moment longer, blue eyes flickering between excitement and the next impulse, while he stayed plastered against the desk. Every muscle ached from being smothered. His nose still burned. His throat felt like sandpaper.

 

"Can I have some water?" he managed.

 

"Huh? Oh! Sure."

 

By the time Sydney finally let him sit up on her desk, Max's first hopeful assessment of House Minerva had developed several fairly serious problems. His head still hurt, his stomach was still empty, and none of the things she'd just called tests had brought him any closer to understanding what had happened at the party. Under different circumstances, he probably would have had several questions about the Nendoroids. Right now, their resemblance to his own situation was doing a pretty good job of ruining his interest.

 

"Okay!" Sydney clapped again, apparently ready to treat the last few minutes as a successful orientation. "You're doing great."

 

She reached for an open bottle, then hesitated when Max stared up at its rim. After a moment's consideration, she poured a little into the cap and set it beside him with a pleased little flourish, as though she'd just invented the concept of cups.

 

"There. Tiny drink!"

 

Max drank carefully, using both hands. It helped his dry throat without doing much for the rest of him. When he asked for something to cover himself with, Sydney tore off a piece of tissue and handed it over, warning him not to scatter lint across her desk. He wrapped it around himself anyway. The paper clung, tore at the corners, and was still better than nothing.

 

"You said you could help."

 

"And I can!" She pointed a thumb at herself, as if the peace sign from two minutes ago were still doing the work. "That's what the club is for, remember? Shelter and care and stuff."

 

"Could they help me call Zeke?"

 

"Aww, you're really hung up on that."

 

"He's my roommate. He might know what happened."

 

Sydney considered him for a moment, then fished her phone from a distorted pocket on her pajama shorts. "I guess I should probably let the rest of the team know I found you, huh?"

 

"That's not—"

 

"Wasn't asking," she giggled. "Just thinking out loud."

 

From where he stood, Max could just make out the message taking shape on her screen.

 

Syd: Heyyyy girls!!! New tiny!!!!! His name's Max and he's SUPER cute!!!!! Emergency meeting time??? X333

 

Her next message compared him favorably to the last guy she'd found. Max read it twice before looking up at her.

 

"What happened to the last one?"

 

"Pfft. Don't worry about him."

 

"Why?"

 

Sydney paused, thumb suspended above the screen. "Because we're talking about you."

 

The phone lit up before he could decide how to answer that.

 

Lotte: Meet at mine. Door's open.

 

Akane: I'll be there! ^^

 

"There we go!" Sydney put the phone away. "Lotte loves answering questions. You two are gonna have so much fun."

 

"And she'll let me call him?"

 

"You can ask her."

 

That was not the same thing, and Max knew it, but Sydney was already reaching for him with the delighted expression of a girl who had just found a new person to show him off to. After a month of not being invited anywhere, the idea of being taken to meet someone else still landed with an embarrassing little spark. He hated that it did.

 

"Wait. The tissue—"

 

"Bring it if you want! I'm not running a boutique."

 

He clutched the wrap as her fingers closed. The paper shredded along one side immediately. She didn't bother with the hall this time; she popped him straight back into her cleavage, tissue and all, and started walking while he was still trying to keep the scrap from disappearing into the damp crease between her breasts. Heat, perfume, and the same musk as before closed over him. The difference was that he already knew what this ride felt like, and knowing did not improve it. He was sore, thirsty, and completely unconvinced that "the team" meant rescue. He was also still going, because the alternative was staying on her desk.