Special Insoles For Runners

Beyond paying them for their services, most clients don't give Runners the time of day. Which made it all the more surprising when one of Faith's regular clientele handed her a boxed gift, a brand new pair of shoes fitted with some kind of custom insoles. They did note that they expected some feedback on how they felt, as well as how long they ended up lasting, but otherwise they were free of charge. Faith slipped them on while she talked to this generous client, and marveled at how comfy they felt off the bat. She took off once she'd received the actual package she was meant to carry, and was impressed yet again at how great the padding of her new shoes proved to be as she leapt from rooftop to rooftop. Almost a week has passed now of her breaking in her amazing footwear, and they still feel brand new despite the punishment she's put them through. The carbon-thread lining of the insole didn't have a single tear in them, and the cooling gel packets she'd been told about were still intact. She'd been warned that if any part of the shoe were to break it would be them, but she'd yet to feel a splatter of moisture on her beyond her normal foot sweat, so they must still be holding up. Faith had made sure to give detailed reports of the shoe's condition, as well as rave reviews, to the client that had provided them to her every time she saw them. To her delight the impressed client had promised to provide her with new shoes when her current ones eventually wore out, as long as she kept up the good feedback.

Unbeknownst to Faith or any of the other Runners that had been gifted custom footwear, the client wasn't solely interested in starting a clothing line like they thought. They were actually a well established broker for high tech assassinations, and their new interest in shoes was actually a front for a new service they were offering. Plenty of clientele didn't just want their targets shot and cleaned up neatly, preferring brutal vengeance and humiliation over their enemies rather than efficiency. The research department of the business had designed plenty of sadistic poisons and torture devices to match said desires, but their latest invention of a shrinking formula was expected to become a bestseller quickly. While not directly fatal reducing someone to the size of a bug was incredibly demeaning which the clients would love, and it opened up dozens of options for actual disposal. The formula was also designed to make the victim more durable so as to stretch out whatever torment they would be subjected to, and the head of the agency had suggested on a whim that they should make use of Runners to test out the limits of this durability. It was actually a stroke of genius, the damp and toxic climate of the shoe combined with the endless weight and pressure from the unaware giantess made for excellent stress tests, but they company quickly realized the whole arrangement was a great disposal option in of itself. The entrapped tinies were disguised beneath the opaque fabric of the insole, which wasn't airtight so sweat and fumes would still flow down onto them. They barely had enough oxygen to breathe, but could survive for months in the hellish conditions before being smothered to death, or worse popping like a rotten fruit beneath the oblivious tread of their naïve executioners. The layers of degradation and torment would speak volumes to their clients, and the corporation expected to provide plenty of shoes to all the runner's of Cascadia Prime before long...