“You always win at skee-ball,” protested Corey, the brunette with silver-rimmed half-moon glasses and electric blue outfit. “Let someone else try first before you put up the high score.”
Astrid bowed to her friend, then made a sweeping gesture to the shiny new game, all glass and glowing lights, embossed with ‘Lazer Toss’ on the side. “Be my guest.”
Corey plugged a token into the game and picked up her first ball. “Oooh, these look fancy. It’s like they’re glass globes. This one has a little doll inside. She’s cute!”
Corey flung her ball up the ramp, and it bounced off the top lip of the 100 hole before dropping into the 20 ring and draining. “So close... Hey, is that a thousand at the top?”
Astrid walked beside the machine to get a better look. “Yeah, seems like it. Nice!”
Corey sighed as her ball pinged off the thousand hole. It bounced clear of the scoring rings and ended up in the gutter. “I suck at... what’s happening?”
A beam of red light from the side of the machine lit Corey up, and she started to go translucent. A moment later, she vanished and the light cut out. A new ball dropped into the rack, with Corey’s tiny form trapped inside it.
Astrid’s eyes lit up. “Oho! Finally, a worthy challenge!”
“Are you insane?” yelled Bethany, one of the blondes. “That thing just ate Corey!”
Astrid pointed to the machine’s rules. “Score at least 300 points, and you get a ball of your choice restored. Didn’t make sense at first, but now... C’mon, Beth, you can win her back.”
Bethany shook her head violently. “I’d end up inside that damn thing myself. I’m going to go talk to the manager, this can’t possibly be safe.”
The manager insisted that it was, indeed, perfectly safe. The balls were virtually indestructible, and the people inside were held in a form of stasis that meant they didn’t need to breathe or eat.
“My friend is a perfectly safe skee-ball!” protested Bethany loudly.
The manager grinned at her, and pointed to the redemption desk. “One hundred tickets and we’ll let you take her home.”
“What? That’s... Fine. I can make that on the whack-a-mole, I guess. That’ll get her restored?”
“Nope. That’s five hundred tickets. Or, if that’s outside your budget, for an extra fifty I can change the ball to whatever size you like. You could make her pendant sized...”
Bethany glanced down at her chest and the home-made silver-wrapped amber pendant there. A smile teased over her lips. “That would be... Would she be stuck like that?”
The manager shook his head. “Nah, there’s a time limit on it. Default is 7 days.”
“She’ll be stuck for a week? I guess that’s OK, her temp job ended last night.”
“See? Nothing to worry about.”
“I’d rather not be stuck in a ball for a week, given the choice. Can’t you set it shorter?”
The manager shrugged. “I set it to its lowest setting when I got it. One day.”
Bethany glanced downward. “Oh. That’s... Huh.”
“And that’s the reaction everyone gives me when I say that. Which is why it’s currently set for three days. Not enough to cost you a job, but enough that it’ll be an inconvenience if your friends abandon you. Or take you home. There’s a snowglobe option, too.” He gestured to just such a snowglobe beside the register.
Bethany giggled and picked it up and gave it a good shake. Snow swirled around inside it, and the girl there batted at it as it swirled around her. “So cute. Who is she?”
“Dunno. Nobody claimed her last night, so I figured I’d use her as a demo to drum up sales.”
Bethany crouched down to peer at the girl in the snowglobe more closely. “She looks vaguely familiar. I think I went to school with her... Hm. Oh, yeah. Lauren! I guess I’m going to need some tickets. How much for her?”
“I’ll let her go for a hundred, gotta cover the snowglobization.”
“Fifty.”
“Seventy-five.”
Bethany grinned and nodded. “Deal. I’ll be back with the tickets soon.” She headed off toward the whack-a-mole game, then noticed that the crowd around the skee-ball machine had dwindled. She returned to her friends to see what was up.
Astrid was watching with an amused grin on her face as Tansy lined up a shot. Inside her ball was the squirming form of Corey. “Stop wiggling!” hissed Astrid as she flung the ball up the ramp. Close, so close to the thousand ring. Luckily for her, the bounce didn’t quite take it out of the 10 ring, and her score rang up to 60.
“One more ball, Tansy. You can do it!” cheered Astrid.
“Where’d Francine and Nina go?” asked Bethany.
Tansy picked up another ball, this one with a different girl inside. “They tried to save Corey, and screwed up. I’m trying to get good at hitting the 100 ring reliably, but the balls don’t roll quite straight.” She lined up her final shot and cursed as it bounced wide, landing in the penultimate ring for 25.
The machine lit up ominously as it flashed her final score: 85. “GAME OVER” intoned a mechanical voice. The emitter lit up brightly, and a moment later Tansy was in the rack with the rest of the balls.
“What happened?” demanded Bethany.
“There’s a minimum score,” Astrid replied simply. “Your turn.”
Bethany shook her head. “Not a chance. I can redeem tickets to get Corey out, I’ll drop $20 in the whack-a-mole machine if I have to.”
“Boring.”
“I don’t care. You’re the pro at skee-ball, you rescue them.”
Astrid sighed. “I just wanted to see you shrunk down all cute like the rest. Can you blame me?” She dropped a token into the machine, and scooped up the ball with Nina in it. She held the ball up so Bethany could see. “See how cute she is?”
Nina’s eyes made it clear she didn’t think this was cute at all.
“It’d be cute if she was smiling,” conceded Bethany, before glancing up at Astrid with a shy smile. “You’d make a pretty necklace.”
Astrid laughed. “As if.” An expert flick of the wrist sent Nina up the ramp and into the 100 hole. “Now should I go for the safe route... Nah.” Astrid scooped up the ball with Tansy inside, and landed her just short of the 1000. The ball bounced neatly from there into the 100.
“Next time for sure.” Astrid scooped up Corey.
Corey glanced up at her friend and Bethany swore she caught a wink before Corey curled up into as tight a ball as she could.
Astrid grinned as she felt the change in balance. “There, that’s the way to do it...” She lined up her shot, and it was running perfectly... until Corey suddenly spread her arms and legs wide, slowing the spin of the ball dramatically.
The ball skidded and skittered along the ramp surface, tumbling and twisting. It fell short of the hundred cup, bounced off the lip of the 50, and went straight into the gutter.
“Why you little...” cried Astrid as the beam lept up at her. A moment later, she too was in the rack.
Bethany stared down at Astrid in wonder. “Well, well, well. The mighty Queen of Skee-Ball laid low at last. Don’t worry, I’ll have you out of there in a tick with my boring old whack-a-mole.”
Forty-five minutes and many tokens later, Astrid finally had the five hundred tickets she needed. Once the manager had confirmed the count, he opened a drawer under the register and pulled out a small glass rectangle. It glowed bright red at one end, and green at the other. Bethany followed him to the Lazer Toss machine, where the object proved to be a sort of key that let him open the ball storage from the side. “Which one do you want?”
Bethany studied the five pleading faces. “Oooh, this is a tough one. Corey’s my bestie, so she’d be the natural choice. But Astrid’s the prettiest, and she’d be able to rescue the others. I kind of want them all.”
“Well, with five hundred tickets, you’ve got enough to take them all home,” suggested the manager with a jocular grin.
“That sounds like a lovely idea. Three days, you said?”
“Yep. They’ll pop back to normal Monday night.”
Bethany considered the problem. She even went as far to start tapping the balls in turn, singing out a counting song from their youth. Then she nodded. “Give me the lot. How much was the sizing thing, again?”
The manager scooped all five balls out of the machine and into Bethany’s arms. The contents of the balls stared up at her with a mix of expressions, from awe and wonder to shock and horror. “You know what? You’re a regular, I’ll throw in a couple resizings as part of the package deal.”
Bethany grinned at him winningly. “Awesome! Thanks so much.” She belatedly glanced at his name badge. “Mike.”
Mike grinned back at her. “Glad to see the new machine getting some use. Hopefully you and your friends will drum up more business.”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be back.”
Bethany followed him back to the redemption desk, where he put away the glass key, and picked up a chromed hoop with a glass handle that looked almost exactly like a magnifying glass that was missing its lens. “How big do you want ‘em?”
Bethany handed over Corey. “How big can you make her?”
Mike shrugged, and clamped the hoop around the ball. “Let’s find out the fun way.”
Corey’s globe started growing, and she grew with it. The contraption beeped and stopped when the ball was a couple feet across. Once it was freed from the hoop, Bethany wrapped her arms around it and hefted it. “Oh, it’s light! Not like a beach ball, but still, lighter than it looks.”
“Yeah, the balls are mostly hollow. Same with the other?”
Bethany shook her head as she picked Astrid off the counter. “Small enough for a pendant. Like you said.”
Moments later, Bethany cupped Astrid’s ball in the palm of her hand, and rolled it around with a giggle. “Oh my God she’s so cute like this! I’m so turning her into a pendant when I get home.”
“Oh! That reminds me.” Mike handed Bethany a slip of paper. “Care instructions.” He tucked it and all of the balls except Corey’s into a bag, and helped her load up her treasures – Corey in her arms, and the bag dangling from one hand. “You going to be okay getting to your car?”
“Should be. Thanks!”
Once she got to her car, Bethany set Corey in the passenger seat, then giggled and buckled her in. “Safety first, right?”
Corey just raised an eyebrow at her archly, making Bethany giggle even more.
Once she’d safely transported everyone back to her home, a “tiny house” in the back yard of her parents’ house, Bethany pulled them all out of their bag and set them on her little table. “See? Now we can all fit. I’d never be able to have you all over at the same time otherwise.”
Bethany’s phone pinged with a new message, and she pulled it out. Then she grinned down at Corey. “Your phones still work? Cool. Can the rest of you get a signal, too?”
Before long, they were all chatting away in a group message, just like they would do any other night. They kept at it when Bethany pulled out her jewelry-making kit and started wrapping Astrid’s tiny ball in silver wire, though Bethany’s participation became more sporadic.
“Tada!” she declared at last, holding up the caged Astrid. “What do you all think?”
Eyes looked up from phones, and she got a bunch of grins and smileys. “Very cute,” texted Corey. “Are you going to wear her?”
Bethany nodded, and slipped her newest pendant onto her favourite silver chain. Astrid’s eyes went wide as she ended up tucked in between Bethany’s enormous breasts.
A private message pinged onto Bethany’s phone from Corey. “I think Astrid sees something she likes.”
Bethany blushed, and texted back, “Do you really think so?”
A text arrived from Astrid, who’d been quiet for most of the evening. “The view is nice.”
All three of them giggled.
Before long, Bethany decided it was time for bed. She tucked her friends in on her couch, then clambered up to her bunk. She stripped down out of sight of her guests, set her necklace down on her nightstand, then slid under the covers and was drowsing off to sleep when her eyes lit on a wide-eyed Astrid watching her from inside the necklace. Bethany blushed, then blew her a kiss. “G’night, Lazer Queen.”
*** *** ***
In the morning, Bethany carried on as usual for quite some time before remembering that she had house-guests. All the girls ended up with quite the show, but none more so than Astrid. Bethany both blushed and apologized profusely, and promised to do better.
Tansy texted to ask if that promise extended to getting them restored early. Bethany sighed, and shook her head. “Sorry girls. I burned off most of my disposable income on getting you out of the machine. If any of you can cough up enough to be freed, I can go back tonight...”
They all discussed that in the text chat. None of the group had a hard schedule. Corey and Nina were between temp jobs, Francine and Astrid could afford to miss a few nights, and Tansy controlled the schedule of her driving job. Discovering that Bethany’s inductive charger worked on their phones if their skee-ball was placed on top of it also helped keep everyone cheered up.
Bethany had a read through the care instructions she’d been given even so. While it did suggest that the bubbles could be ‘popped’, the forces involved were in the hydraulic press range, and “not healthy” for the occupant. Another section made Bethany’s eyes widen. “Hey Astrid. It says that if there’s no room for you to expand, you’ll be stuck. Looks like I get to keep my pendant.”
“Not permanently, I hope?” asked Tansy. Astrid didn’t seem too worried.
“Nah. The Lazer Toss machine can still restore her. She just won’t change back on her own if she’s still caged on Monday night.”
“Oh,” texted Astrid. “That’s okay then. Though... could you take me to my place Monday night? I bet I’d get lots of extra hits doing a cam show like this.”
Corey grinned at Bethany and gave her a thumbs’ up. And mouthed, “I know what you did.”
Bethany winked back at her.
The next few days passed like an extended sleepover. Bethany pulled up all sorts of movies for them all to watch, gathering her friends in her lap. By Sunday night, she’d even stopped blushing when she undressed in front of her pendant, which always spent the night on the little niche beside her loft bed.
At Astrid’s insistence, the group moved to her place for Monday night. There was enough room in her basement suite for everyone to stand around at full size. Bethany cooked dinner for all of them, and they ate when everyone but Astrid had changed back. Then each in turn hugged Bethany goodnight, and everyone agreed that they should do this again sometime. “Next time, you’re the ball,” added Corey.
Bethany giggled and shook her head. “I still suck at skee-ball.”
Finally, she was alone with Astrid, who texted her the instructions for setting up her computer for a cam show. Once the camera was set to macro mode, Astrid asked if Bethany minded staying in the shot. “I’d love to do the show right here, if you don’t mind your breasts being broadcast to my fans.”
Bethany smiled down at her indulgently. “That sounds like fun. Let’s do it!”
Astrid opened up the stream, and the chat. It took no time at all before she was getting Bethany’s hands involved in the show as well, to prove that she really was as tiny as it looked. Bethany’s description as “a friend” got openly questioned in the chat, and Astrid’s attempts to put the question off just got her fans more and more inquisitive. Astrid called for an intermission, and got Beth to shut off the camera, but not the chat.
“How do you want to answer them?” texted Astrid privately. “This has been fun, but I get the feeling...”
Bethany scooped up the pendant so she could look Astrid in the face. She nodded, smiling shyly. “I like you. A lot. A lot a lot. I’ve had a crush on big brave Astrid for so long now.”
Astrid texted a row of smileys. “Not so big now. Not so scary, I hope.”
Bethany nodded, and took a deep breath. Astrid tried to keep looking up at her, but darted a glance down at the immense heaving chest she’d been living in for the past few days. “I want...” started Bethany. “I don’t know what I want, exactly. More of this. More of you.”
“There isn’t very much of me right now,” texted Astrid, grinning at Bethany’s enormous face. “But what I have is yours for the taking.”
Bethany squealed happily, and hugged Astrid to her chest.
“Want to tell them?” texted Astrid.
“Sure. Um, tell them what exactly? What are we?”
“Complicated,” texted Astrid with a heart-eye smiley. “And figuring it out.”
Bethany nodded and turned the camera back on, focusing it so it could show her head and chest clearly. “Hey there. I’m the terrain that Astrid was playing in earlier. I’m Bethany, and Astrid is my ‘it’s complicated, and we’re figuring it out as we go’.”
There were lots of cheers in the chat at that, interspersed with a few crude comments about how open their relationship might be. Astrid’s response was, “I’m game for anything, you guys know that. Going to let Beth call the shots. Not like I have a lot of choice, I’m stuck as her pendant until we get back to the Lazer Toss game.”
Bethany winced at the comments that came in next. She held up her pendant in front of her face. “That’s not... strictly true. If I cut you out of the pendant, you’ll pop back to normal right away. I lied about what the pamphlet said, mostly to tease... but then you were cool with it, so I decided I wanted to keep you longer. Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Astrid replied in chat. “Get me out of here so I can kiss you already.”
Bethany had a pair of cutters in her purse, and two snips later Astrid was suddenly standing beside her. Due to the activities she’d been doing for her show, she was also quite naked. Bethany blushed, but pulled her into a hug anyway, and the kiss that followed garnered lots of cheering and tips in the chat.
When they finally broke for air, Astrid sat in front of her computer to scan through the requests. “Hey Beth, how far are you willing to go on...” Astrid turned to face her sweetie, and found herself face to boob with a pair of naked breasts. “Woohoo!”
*** *** ***
Two weeks later, Astrid’s cam show had doubled its income thanks to her regular guest star. Bethany’s “BeJewel” line of Lazer Toss jewelry was selling like mad. She’d come up with a way to add a hinge and sturdy latch, so that shrunken skee-balls could be inserted and removed easily. Pendants were the big seller, but she also had some earrings and ‘other piercings’ options that moved well. Well enough that she’d been looking at outsourcing the fabrication and shipping.
Astrid and Bethany joined the other girls at their usual hangout, hand in hand to many cheers and well-wishes. They’d gone from “complicated” to “smitten” on their social media status, so the others knew what was up, but this was the first time they’d seen them all face to face.
Bethany held up her necklace, an empty BeJewel cage. “Any volunteers?”
Astrid reached out to touch it, batting it lightly to make it swing. “Is that the original one?”
Beth nodded. “I welded the cuts, and added the latch like the others have. It’s not quite as pretty as the new ones, but it’s special.”
Astrid grinned. “Let someone else hold it. You and I have a date with the Lazer Toss machine. Loser goes in the pendant.”
Beth had the pendant off in a twinkling, and handed it to Corey. Then she dropped a token in the Lazer Toss machine. She scooped up a ball, then her gaze locked on Astrid’s. She very carefully lined up her shot... and dropped it straight in the gutter. The game’s reduction beam washed over her, and a moment later she was gone, trapped like her friends had been two weeks ago.
Astrid sprinted to the redemption desk. She had thousands of tickets on account there, so before long a tiny Bethany-ball was sitting in her hands. “I might just keep you like this. You’re not the only one making Lazer Toss enclosures, there’s this line of crystalline dildos I have my eye on... it’d be perfect for the show.”
Beth texted her a row of hearts. As the cage closed around her and she dropped between Astrid’s lovely breasts, she added. “I’m yours, for as long as you’ll keep me.”
“That will be a very, very long time. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Awww,” cooed all their friends, gathering about Astrid and the reduced Bethany. “Are you really going to keep her?” asked Corey.
“Well, she’s stuck for three days. After that...” Astrid shrugged. “I’ll probably be missing my sweetie’s kisses too much to keep her there.”
“Too bad you can’t both end up in the same ball,” mused Tansy. “Imagine never needing to breathe while you... kiss.”
The others all chuckled at Tansy’s elision. Astrid looked thoughtful, and asked the manager about it. He just shrugged, and said he’d never seen it happen, even with people who were holding hands. Astrid figured it was for the best, she only wanted to be worn by Beth, and vice versa.
Astrid watched the other girls play Lazer Toss for a while. Each vanished for a time, but they’d all gotten good enough at throwing occupied balls to make sure nobody stayed tiny for long. After the second restoration, a crowd started to gather, and Tansy bet one of the cuter guys that he couldn’t beat her at the game. She won, and he lost badly enough that he was stuck inside the machine. A little later he was looking much happier stuck inside her bra instead.
By the end of the night, half a dozen people had been reduced and ‘rescued’ by friends or casual acquaintances, and Astrid made sure to mention Beth’s online store as a way to keep one’s new trophies safe. She neglected to mention the duration-extending side effect, though Tansy appeared to be whispering the details to at least a couple of girls who’d trapped their boyfriends.
When Astrid returned home that night, she found another text from Beth: “I meant what I said, earlier. Keep me here as long as you like.”
Astrid giggled, and popped the ball out of its cage so she could roll it around in her hand. “Oh, love. That’s not where I intend to keep you at all.” She tucked the ball into her panties, and headed to her computer and camera, humming happily. “This is going to be a fun show...”
Beth’s reply was already up in chat.
[BeJewel has changed alias to YourJewel]
YourJewel: Always.