Chase sighed as he headed towards the girls' dormitory. Michael and Logan had a fun weekend plan, heading up to Logan's dad's ski lodge in Utah. But he couldn't go because his biology class had given him a group project on "The Habits & Behaviors of Insects!" and now he was going to be stuck looking at bugs all weekend.
His assigned partner was Quinn, and he was currently debating whether or not that was a good thing. With Quinn as a partner. They most likely would earn an A on the assignment, as Quinn did every science assignment perfectly.
But it was also pretty likely that Quinn had made this assignment weird somehow. And he wasn't sure that was worth the tradeoff. As he knocked on Quinn's door, he half expected to find a room completely full of bugs while Quinn sat in the middle of it with a magnifying glass. What was actually waiting for him was a whole lot stranger.
"You may enter," Quinn announced loudly on the other side of the door, forcing Chase to steel his nerves to face whatever was waiting for him inside as he twisted the handle, shocked by a flash of light waiting for him on the other side, blinding him. The split-second image of Quinn pointing a strange device in his direction etched into his memory banks.
"Quinn? What the heck did you do that for?" He asked, putting his hands up as he blindly stepped forward, hoping they didn't accidentally find their way to Quinn's breasts. However, Chase soon realized he had more pressing concerns than accidentally groping the nerdy girl.
When Chase's vision cleared, he was looking up into the absolutely immense eye of Quinn Pensky as she stared down at him through an enormous magnifying glass, laying on the ground to closely examine the freshly miniaturized boy in her room.
"Subject appears normal. The shrinking process has maintained correct body proportions. Original blindness appears to be temporary." Quinn said, speaking into her handheld recording device. She moved the magnifying glass away, allowing him to see her whole face now, including her slightly less massive eyes.
Chase could hardly believe what he was looking at, "Quinn, you shrunk me?!" He shouted. "How is that even possible?" he asked, still in awe as he tried to adjust to the giant nerd's new size.
"It's pretty straightforward when you have a thorough understanding of quantum mechanics," Quinn said. "But that's not the science we are focusing on today. Today is about studying bugs, which is why I shrunk you. We have to do a project about you being bug-sized and see how your behaviors and habits adjust over the course of the coming week. I expect we will learn a lot about why insects make certain decisions." Quinn continued to explain, lifting herself off the floor, so she could tower over Chase as if he were actually an insect.
"A week? Quinn? That's insane! Grow me back now!" Chase shouted as Quinn rose to her full height over him, forcing the bug-sized boy to crane his neck in order to participate in this one-sided conversation with her.
"Yes, a week. According to my calculations, it will take a few days before you develop the bug mindset that will enable us to get high-quality data from your experiences. So we first have to focus on getting you used to being a bug before anything else." Quinn explained, ignoring Chase's demands to be restored to his former human-size entirely.
"I'm not a bug! Quinn!" Chase yelled, frustrated with the giant girl's thought process.
"That's precisely the wrong way to think about this," Quinn said, carefully slipping her foot out of her light blue walking shoes. An action that did not go unnoticed by Chase. "But I know just what you need to start thinking like a bug. What do bugs do around humans, Chase?" She asked, escalating the situation with a question that had a million possible answers, expecting just one.
"I don't know, hide? Ignore them?" Chase said, hoping Quinn didn't expect him to do anything too weird.
"They might try to do those things, but they can't help what happens when a human comes along. Inevitably, they get stepped on by a careless or disgusted person." Quinn explained, raising her socked foot over the tiny boy. Chase gulped, realizing what Quinn had in mind to give him his first taste of the "bug" experience.
"No! Quinn! Please! Don't!" Chase yelled, taking a breath between every word to speak as loudly as possible given his current size. But the time for words was over, with Quinn's white sock taking control of the situation.
"Stay still, and I'll try not to squish you." She warned as her foot's shadow eclipsed Chase's puny form, leaving him frozen in terror at the thought of becoming little more than a stain under the geeky girl's sole.
Her toes pushed Chase onto the floor like a schoolyard bully. Quickly overpowering him and paving the way for him to be smothered under the ball of her foot as she stepped on him, in the same manner she would any other bug. Because that's all Chase was to her at that moment. Just another insect, hoping to survive the divine wrath of her sole.
Chase began to squirm, humiliated as Quinn pressed her foot down harder on his entire body, his face buried deep inside the fibers of her sock, forced to breathe the stale air surrounding her foot, which was damp from wearing them for days on end. Was that done intentionally? In preparation for her plan's to shrink him. But why?
Chase soon discovered the answer as Quinn began to speak. "Subject appears to handle being under my foot better than initially expected. Shows promise. Moving on to the entrapment phase." she declared, lifting her foot off the ground, bringing Chase along for the ride, stuck like gum to the bottom of her socked foot.
Chase couldn't tell where he was going, his vision dominated by Quinn's foot as she took a step back, maneuvering her foot into the abandoned slip-on footwear, her toes bulldozing the way for the rest of her foot to follow. She slammed Chase onto her insole, showing little concern for his safety as she carelessly slid her foot into the shoe.
Her heel touched down last, and Quinn promptly began the third phase of her experiment, titled Exploration, exiting her room to start an extended tour of the PCA campus in order to help Chase adapt to his new life under her feet.
As Quinn walked around campus, she continued to take notes on her tape recorder.
"Subject is struggling vigorously and is seemingly very unhappy to be underfoot. Unclear if this is a bug behavior or the lingering human thought process." Quinn said, showing little concern for Chase's safety as a human being, deeming it necessary for the experiment to treat him like a bug as often as possible.
"Quinn, you crazy bitch! Let me out of here, now!" Chase yelled, his demands bouncing around the inside of her shoe, getting lost somewhere between her toes. Though his constant struggles conveyed the message clearly enough, Chase was very uncomfortable being trapped under her feet, almost as if he were scared of them.
"Note to self: test subject under barefoot separately. Need to determine if socks play a role in its fear of feet." Quinn announced into her voice recorder, carrying on with her walk as if nothing was amiss, turning the corner as she passed by Sushi Rox before deciding it would be fun to walk past the science center.
Soon after changing her course, Quinn arrived at a set of stairs going downhill.
*Tip-Tap, Tip-Tap, Tip-Tap* the chorus of her footfalls assaulted an unsuspecting Chase Matthew's, battering him under her foot's digits, as she repeatedly dropped the weight of her entire body onto her toes. The attack was short-lived, but its effects still lingered as Quinn's movements came to a sudden halt. She looked at her foot, noticing the distinct lack of struggles coming from under her toes.
"The subject's squirming has mostly ceased. It is unclear if this is due to physical exhaustion or if the specimen is getting accustomed to position under my toes. I will now adjust its position to test this theory.
Quinn lifted her foot, flexing her toes to lift them off Chase inside of her slip-on sneakers, giving the minuscule boy some much-needed breathing room. Between labored breathes, he wondered if Quinn had come to her senses and decided to end this ridiculous project, never wanting to see or be near her feet ever again.
However, such an explanation was simply too good to be true, as Quinn tilted her foot, allowing the bug-sized boy to slide under the arch of her foot before promptly stomping him back into the concrete beneath her soles. Stunning Chase and reminding him that she was in charge, if Quinn wanted him to serve as some extra padding for her insole, then that was precisely what he would be doing.
She was practically a god. Her will became Chase's reality, and that really pissed him off. Enough to persuade him into attacking Quinn's foot in anger, unleashing a flurry of punches and kicks between his reinvigorated struggles.
With Chase now under the arch of her foot, Quinn felt the return of the boy-turned-bug's pathetic punches and kicks as he tried in vain to fight back against her all-encompassing sole. "Confirmed that decrease in squirming was due to acclimation, not physical exhaustion. Will need to continuously vary subject's situation to ensure it experiences the full range of a bug's experience."
What does Quinn decide to do next?
1. Quinn's made her initial observations but continues her walk to let Chase adapt to spending time under her foot, walking upstairs, through buildings, and on top of grass.
2. Quinn decides that part of being a bug is scavenging food and gives Chase the task of stealing some snacks from Lola and Nicole's movie night in their room.
3. Quinn wants to test how Chase handles navigation in cramped, dark spaces, so she drops him between a napping Zoey's butt cheeks to see if he can find his way out.
4. Quinn decides that she isn't active enough to put Chase through the underfoot experience. So she puts him in Zoey's sneaker instead.
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