Sean turned to run but Ty's mighty hand swooped down like a bird of prey and effortlessly snatched him up. He was pulled into the air with a sickening lurch: Ty's legs and chest passed by in a dizzying blur and a second later he found himself confronted by a gigantic pair of cold green eyes. If anything, he felt even tinier and more exposed under their pitiless scrutiny. There was no escape from it: his powerful muscles strained against the merciless grip that held him pinned, but he might as well have been a gummi bear pinched between Ty's thumb and forefinger, waiting to be popped inside his mouth. As if to confirm his fears the tip of a colossal tongue emerged only a few meters in front of him as Ty involuntarily moistened his lips at the sight of the tiny helpless soccer player. But it seemed his nemesis had no immediate interest in eating him after all; instead, Ty looked past him, nodded, and then deliberately turned the hand containing his new pet so that Sean was forced to see what was going on around them. Sean could only watch in horror as far below on the cold hard tiles of the lockerroom his teammates - his friends! - were chased down and scooped up one by one just as he had been. After a minute or two it was all over. Now they were literally in the hands of Ty and his mates!
********
For Ty the feeling of exhiliration was indescribable. Not just the success of his plan and the delight of finally having complete power over his hated rival, but most of all the incredible fact of how small Sean had become. Ty's eyes gleamed with relish at Sean's futile struggles against the fingers that now dwarfed him. Even so, he was surprised at how light and delicate the tiny player felt; he could feel the little body shaking slightly from sheer terror and the heart fluttering like a small bird's beneath his thumb. It was hilarious to think that just a couple of moments earlier the terrified little plaything wriggling between his thumb and forefinger had been a powerfully-built young guy, just as strong as him and even slightly taller.
Brett, his number two, came up to him. He had Sean's best friend, Mike, firmly clutched in his fist. "What do we do now, boss?" he said. Ty smiled crookedly. "Let's do this properly. First of all let's get these little guys under wraps, then we'll get cleaned up and remove all the evidence. And then, my friend, we'll take them somewhere where we can... deal with them properly." Both titans chuckled nastily at that delightful prospect.
Handing Sean temporarily to Brett, Ty sat down and pulled off his boots and socks. Holding open one of the sweat-soaked socks he said: "Right, we'll have half of them in this one and half in the other - *not* Sean, though!" Once half the shrunken team had been packed tightly and uncomfortably in each sock Ty knotted the ends closed so there was no chance of escape. He dangled the bulging socks carelessly from his hands for a moment and swung them gently about, smirking at the frantic struggles and angry muffled squeaks from inside. Then he dropped each of the sweaty socks into his kitbag. "That should keep them under control while we shower." Then he turned his icy gaze on Sean: "As for you, I know you like to take your games seriously so let's follow an old soccer tradition and swap shirts. I'll take yours a bit later, but you can have mine right now!"
Ty pulled off his dirty, sweaty soccer jersey and stood there shirtless, looming above his miniature rival. Sean could only look up in intimidation at the sight of his mighty bare chest, glistening with perspiration, with the tiny hairs around his nipples and between his pecs slightly darkened and matted down by the moisture. However, he didn't get more than a glance before Ty snatched him from Brett's hand and wrapped him up in the shirt, burying him deep inside the heavy fabric, taking care that the miniaturized footballer was embedded in one of the stained armpits. Almost suffocating from the smell, and with mud and sweat forcing themselves inside his mouth and all across his body, Sean was only peripherally aware of a lurching sensation. He certainly had little idea that the tightly bundled shirt had joined the socks in Ty's kit bag. There was a whirring sound and then darkness: Ty had zipped the bag up.
"Okay guys, listen carefully. We won't have long before somebody notices these little freaks have gone missing, so get showered and changed *quickly*. Don't worry, once we've finished here we'll take them somewhere quiet and you can all have your fun with them - you deserve it!" Ty paused for a second to consider the next step. "Zac, since you and Jeff are already changed I want the two of you to go into those creeps' lockerroom, collect all their stuff and bring it in here. Make sure you don't leave so much as a trace for anybody to find - we want everybody to think they had some kind of "accident" on the way home.
"What about the bus that's waiting to take them back?" asked Brett.
"Don't worry, I've already thought of that. C'mon, let's get cleaned up and I'll explain what we're going to do..." The two lads stripped off their remaining kit and entered the showers, deep in conversation.
********
Trapped in the dark humidity of Ty's kitbag Sean struggled valiantly to free himself from the musty, heavy fabric that held him confined like an ancient Egyptian mummy. He could hear the muffled cries of his friends somewhere nearby and guessed they were still packed like sardines in the filthy socks. That meant he must now be inside Ty's bag too! He cursed the ill-fortune that meant he'd been shrunk while still in his soccer kit: he didn't even have his cellphone to use in an a attempt to call for help. Not that it would have worked anyway - not buried in here. Sadly, Sean knew full well that Ty rarely overlooked details like that. The only thing he could do now would be to wait and hope for some opportunity to escape. Surviving in a world of giants and finding some way to return to normal size would be a whole new problem, but for now the priority was for him and his friends to get away from Ty's clutches; Sean was starting to have serious doubts as to whether Ty ever intended to make them big again, and that certainly boded ill for their future... But then a lurch and a thump broke his train of thought. There was the sound of deep voices from above and then a heavy weight suddenly landed on him, pressing him deeper into the fabric of the shirt...
********
Satisfied that none of his captives had been able to escape their prisons, Ty packed the rest of his dirty clothes and towel into his bag, dumping them carelessly on the socks and shirt containing the minuscule prisoners. His heavy boots were then dropped on top, and Ty smiled as he imagined the muddy soles pressing down on Sean's helpless body, or dropping the tiny player inside one of them then wearing it during a game...
However, Ty's pleasant reverie was disturbed by a sudden disturbance outside. Zac quickly poked his head around the lockerroom door to take a look. "Hey, it's their coach! I bet he's wondering where they got to!"
"Then let him wonder," drawled Ty, "and maybe his curiosity will bring him in here..."
Sure enough, a couple of moment later the door opened and Sean's coach, a stocky man in his mid-40s entered the room. "Hey, have any of you boys seen--" he started to say, but then he noticed the pile of clothing, bags, phones, and other items belonging to Sean and his friends dumped in the middle of the floor. "What the...???"
Before the bemused coach could recover his wits Ty had lifted his "camera" and zoomed in on him.
"Say 'cheese'!" called Ty, brightly. The device clicked and there was a flash of light.
The coach rapidly shrank out of sight behind the pile of clothes. "Whoa! How small did'ya make him, Ty?" exclained Brett, his eyes wide with astonishment.
"Right now he should be roughly one eighth of a millimeter tall!" replied Ty smugly. Sure enough, there on the floor, almost too small to be seen with the naked eye, was a minute speck. "I don't think we need to worry about anybody finding him: he'll probably get swept up into the trash or eaten by a bug. Maybe if he's lucky he'll end up stuck in somebody's treads rather than getting squished. At any rate, nobody's going to think of searching for him in the dirt on a lockerroom floor: shrinking people isn't possible, remember!" Ty rolled his eyes and smirked again. "Now, let's get rid of this rubbish and get out of here!"
Ty aimed the shrinking device once more, this time at the pile of clothes and other items belonging to Sean and his friends. In a second everything had been reduced to the size of a piece of lint. Ty pinched it all together between his fingers, dropped it down one of the toilets and flushed it away. Now anybody who came to investigate would believe that Sean's team had headed off home as expected. Apart from the shrunken team itself, only one loose end still remained...
********
Moving with the predatory care of a pack of hyenas Ty's gang emerged from the building. Above them the evening sky was stained with incarnadine like a prophecy of blood. Brett spoke softly to his buddy and raised his arm to indicate the school bus that was waiting to carry Sean's team back home. The door stood open and in his seat the bored driver waited, reading a newspaper. Ty's deceptively quiet response carried the weight of a death sentence. "Good. Make sure there's no one else around. Then let's deal with it." The others fanned out, checking for wayward students, teachers and other passers-by; probing the momentary tranquillity that had settled upon the campus with the onset of twilight. Satisfied that they remained unobserved Ty once more lifted his miniaturizer and fired at the bus.
The yellow vehicle rapidly diminished to the size of a soda can and the team quickly surrounded it, dancing lightly around the little thing in a sinister parody of their earlier movements on the pitch. The horrified driver stared through the window at the suddenly huge and monstrous world outside: the formerly smooth tarmac replaced by an uneven landscape of rocks and boulders, the trees and buildings transformed into distant blurs the size of mountains - and the immense sneakers, each one far larger than his bus, crashing randomly down on every side with terrifying force. In panic, he started the engine and began driving away as fast as the rough terrain would allows.
Ty and his friends laughed at the sight of the tiny bus trying to avoid their feet; it merely encouraged them to get closer and closer! Finally, Ty hooked one enormous sneaker under the tiny vehicle and sent it tumbling over and over across the ground, one side crumpled from the force. The rest of them quickly joined in, treating the bus as if it really was nothing more than a discarded soda can to be kicked out for fun. It didn't take long before it was little more than a twisted, half-crushed mass of metal, barely recognisable as a school bus. Ty grabbed it and held it in his hand, looking inside for the driver. Miraculously he was still alive, half-curled inside a relatively safe spot within the crumpled wreckage. Ty's voice thundered down at the tiny plaything in his palm: "End of the line. I suggest you get out now while you still can." He gave the driver a moment to crawl out onto his palm, but the man was simply too intimidated by the powerful young titan to risk it. Ty shrugged and carefully moulded the wrecked bus into a rough ball with his hands, trapping the driver in a tiny space within. The footballer walked over to a nearby trash can and casually tossed the crumpled bus inside. It landed on a carpet of torn paper, burger packaging, sweet wrappers - and a couple of less pleasant items... Now Ty and his friends were free to do what they wanted with the miniaturized soccer team!
As they walked through the gates and into the street outside Brett once again spoke up: "There's nobody at my place tonight. We could take them there, get a few beers and make a party of it."
Ty nodded. "I like the sound of that. Alternatively, we could make it a proper challenge: we could dump them somewhere like the mall car park and give them twenty-four hours to survive or find there way back to us."
Brett looked at him in surprise: "You're not planning to grow them back after all this, are you?"
"Of course not! But they don't know that!"
"Damn, that sounds pretty cool too..."
Ty turned and addressed the rest of the team: "Okay guys, this is your party as well. Do we keep these little creeps for ourselves and play with them, or do we leave them somewhere at the mercy of the wildlife, druggies, pimps, drunks, and anybody else who might find them?"
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