I'd had enough of that dragon stealing my thunder. Everyone flocked to him, praising him for all “his" fantastic ideas, when I was the one who really came up with all the work. He just happened to know the right people to make himself look like a genius, and was shameless enough to never credit me for my contributions in the first place.

So when I found a shrink ray on the Internet, I figured it was worth a try. It looked like a gimmicky remote control, just with buttons to change size instead of channels. At worst, it'd be a useless novelty we'd both get a laugh out of. At best… well, I didn't plan on taking it as far as I did, but sometimes things happen. I don't regret it, in any event. Someone else will step up to do the same things he did, hopefully while being less of a sleaze about it.

It was a late Friday afternoon at a conference when I decided to do it. I saw him in the men's room. Nobody else was around. I still had the device in my pocket. “Hey," I said to him. He turned around. I don't know if he even saw the thing in my hand before I pushed the button and simply held it down. At first he tried to speak, but he realized almost immediately something was wrong. HIs confusion mounted when he found himself looking up at me, rather than down. Before, he'd been six inches taller than me. Now, that had been reversed.

His silence from the confusion worked in my favor. His clothing fell to the floor in a pile around him, which also made him not want to run, either. Not that anyone probably would've believed what they were seeing: That an overly-popular dragon had been reduced to the size of a kobold, left as naked as the day he was born, and that he was still getting smaller. And smaller. I started to wonder just how far it would go, though I took the opportunity to kick both him and his clothing into a bathroom stall.

“You know," I said, now towering above him, while the walls of that bathroom stall loomed higher still, “We used to be good friends. But you really like stealing my ideas and the fame for them. Given how much of a fan you are of shrinking and micro, I'm sure you're entirely okay with this. It's what you keep saying you want." I took a step forward, stepping on his clothing just so I could see him again. He'd become so small that he was struggling to even climb out of his pants and shirt; my shoe alone was nearly as tall as he was. Then it was even taller.

I took out my cell phone and took aim at him. “But hey, you're now going to star in your own series of micro porn," I mocked, while taking a couple pictures. I crouched down even closer, giving him far more of a view than he ever truly wanted, and a view he likely only ever had of his imaginary girlfriend in the endless parade of porn he had drawn. “Make sure to strike a pose, since these are the last pictures you're ever going to appear in."

At that moment, the finality of his situation seemed to set in. He went from struggling to climb out to panicking to do so, now that the fibers of his shirt were starting to become usable footholds and handholds. I had to squint to see him at all. I'm sure my voice was painful to him, but that was his problem, not mine. “It was nice knowing you. It was nicer a long time ago."

Once he'd become too small for me to see at all, I just gave him one last wave and walked away. He may still have been shrinking, for all I know. He might have ended up stepped on like a bug - a fantasy he doubtlessly had but never expected to experience - or he may simply have been cleaned up when janitorial services came by later. I only heard one person even ask where he was, but someone else shrugged it off and asked “Who cares?"

The conference went on, with one fewer plagiaristic pest to ruin my weekend.