Chapter 16 - Mini Monsters

Jimmy sighed.  “Great.  Just great.  I guess we better find Katie.  Think she’s somewhere in this pile of pillows?”

Violet shrugged and started digging.  After a moment, Jimmy joined in.  Before long, the octagon was emptied down to bare concrete, and no sign of Katie had been found.

“Maybe she’s hiding?” suggested Violet.  “If she clung to a pillow, or hid outside the octagon to start with...”

“She can be a little sneak,” mused Jimmy, looking up and away.

Violet started digging through the drifts of pillows throughout the rec room.  After a minute she looked over at Jimmy who was still staring off into the distance.  “Care to lend a hand?”

Jimmy turned to look at her.  “Little Jimmy found her.  At least, there’s sound coming from her redecorated toolbox."

Violet dropped the pillows she was holding.  “Let’s go see.”

They both dashed upstairs, and found little Jimmy still climbing to the top of the dresser where Katie’s box was perched.  Violet wasted no time in opening it, to get a hiss from Katie.  “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, I lost you and was worried about you?”

“You weren’t worried about me when you went all sucky-face on my brother.  I bailed when that started.”  Katie shuddered, and turned back to the glow of her cellphone’s screen.

Violet craned her neck to look at it.  “What are you watching?  That looks like monster wars.”

“Yep.  The Hallowe’en extravaganza finally went up on the server last night.  Took them long enough... This one’s my favourite so far.”

Violet reached for the phone, and got a warning nip from Katie. “Mine.”

“Ow, hey.  What was that for?”

Katie tried to look abashed, but her attention kept going back to the screen.  “Still mad at you.  Ooh, this is the best part.”

Violet shuffled around so she could watch over Katie’s tiny shoulder.  What looked like a squirming ball of black tentacles was being savaged by a heavily armored dinosaur.  The tentacles flowed around each slash of the dino’s claws, though the occasional short bit of tendril went flying.  The dino leaned in closer to dig deeper with its claws, and the tentacles finally lashed out, quickly wrapping the dino’s arms and pinning them to each other.  

The dinosaur roared in frustration as it tried to work free.  It bit at the tentacles on its arms, but couldn’t get any leverage.  The tentacles swarmed up its arms and around its body, and a moment later the dinosaur vanished under the wriggling pile.  The pile fell heavily to the ground, then flattened into a shape no longer resembling a dinosaur at all.

“Wow,” breathed Violet.  “That was fast.”

“Wait for it...”

The tentacles flowed away, slithering off of the remains of their prey.  All that was left was a disarticulated pile of bones.

“Holy...  What did it do?”

“Nobody’s saying.  But the Hallowe’en matches were more about showmanship than fighting, so the dinosaur might have been built to be dissolved easily?  Still looks wicked.”

Violet saw Katie’s quivering agitation, and reached down to try to stroke the little snake-girl’s back.  She got another bite for her troubles.  “What’s got you all riled up?”

“Want to fight so bad.”

Violet sucked on the puncture wounds in her thumb.  “Well, pick on someone your own size.”

Katie’s eyes went very wide.  “You could be my size.  We could fight in the octagon!”

“Oh.  Oh!  We could!  It’d be like having our own miniature arena here.  We just have to be tiny monsters.  Let’s...”

Jimmy cleared his throat.  “Um, what about date night?”

Violet studied him with a feral gleam in her eyes.  “Want to join the fight?”

“And beat up my little sister?”

“No holds barred, no recriminations afterward,” chirped Katie.  “You get the shot at me you’ve always wanted.”

“I don’t want to hurt you!” protested Jimmy.  “I just get annoyed when you mess the place up and don’t help.”

“And?” prodded Katie.

Jimmy sighed and looked away from the angry snake.  “I...  Got used to having this place to myself.”

“Are you jealous of her?” asked Violet.

Jimmy’s sigh deepend.  “Probably.  Doesn’t mean I want to hurt her, or make her go away.  I didn’t get to see her for years and years.  I missed my sister, but now that she’s here all the time...”

“Fight me,” chirped Katie.  “Work out that aggression.”

Jimmy glared down at her.  “No.  I saw you in the cafeteria.  You’d wipe the floor with me.  You’re vicious.”

Katie grinned up at him fangily.  “And?”

“And still my sister.  Not going to beat on you.”  

“Feh.  Can I beat up Violet instead?  Pleeeease?”

Violet grinned down at her.  “Sure.”

“Now?”

“But our date!” protested Jimmy.  “We only just started...”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” interrupted Katie.  “Do you want to fuck or not?”

“KATIE!” yelled Jimmy.

Violet glowered down at her.  “Language.”

Katie glared back up at her mutinously.  “Answer the damn question.”

“Yes,” said Violet.

Katie crumpled.  “oh.  I...  Okay.  Go then.”

“But not tonight.  Not without Bailey.”

“Oh?  How... no, wait.  I don’t want to know.  Look, you two go have your fun, just promise me we get to do our own monster war soon.”  Katie bounced up and down, eagerly.  “Really soon?”

“I promise,” said Violet.  She blew Katie a kiss, and closed her box once more.  “Well, now that we know where Katie is, where were we?”

Jimmy pulled her out of earshot of the box, closing the door to Katie’s bedroom behind them.  “Are you serious?”

“About fighting her?  Heck yes.  I’ve wanted to participate in monster wars for ages.”

“No, I meant about the other.”

Violet grinned saucily.  “Oh, like that’s a surprise after agreeing to be a bra on a date with you.”

“I figured that was more about being close to Bailey,” commented Jimmy as they headed back down to the rec room.

“Mmm... yeah, it was that too.  But it also taught me you have nice hands.  Surely there’s some part of me you’d like to touch...”

Jimmy grinned, and let his gaze drop below her face.  “I can think of a few things.”  He glanced back up, saw a smile.  “You’re okay with...”

“God, Jimmy.  Yes, that’s the point.  I’m not going to have sex with you.  Tonight.  But everything else is on the table.”  Violet shucked out of her blouse and tossed it onto a pillow-covered table.  “What do you want?”

Jimmy’s certain grin faltered.  “I honestly don’t know.  If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said it’s you.  But then I saw Bailey dancing, and...”

Violet picked up the plush monsterkitty and hugged it.  “Yeah, I know.  This is stupid.”

“What is?”

“Going on dates with one of us inanimate.  You want Bailey here.”  She handed him the plushie, and he hugged it.  “So do I.  Let’s get her back to human...  No?”

Jimmy was shaking his head.  “She wanted us to have fun on top of her.  She’s here.  All around us.  Maybe not an active participant, but...  She was keen on this.  And on turning me into her stockings... which I have to admit, is starting to seem like it could be a lot of fun.”

Violet smirked.  “I’m sure we can make it memorable.”

“Then we should make this memorable for Bailey.”  Jimmy added an outrageously pious tone to his voice.  “It would be a disservice to her noble sacrifice to do otherwise.”

Violet laughed, and hugged Jimmy and the plush monsterkitty tight.  “Okay.  So what did you have in mind?”

Jimmy put the paws of the plushie on Violet’s breasts, squeezing paws and breasts together.  “Teasing you.  With her.”

*** *** ***

Somewhat later, a sweaty Violet rolled away from Jimmy and further into the pile of pillows.  “Enough.  I...  Sorry, if we don’t stop, I won’t...”

Jimmy sighed sat up, looking around for his shirt.  “Figures.  Just when things were getting good.”

“Sorry.  I just...  Without Bailey, it’s not...”

“Not right.  I understand.”  Jimmy shrugged into his shirt, then handed Violet her skirt.  “Want to go change her back now?”

Violet gave the plushie another hug. “Can we keep this one?  We didn’t muss it up too much.  Or would it be weird to have a plushie-Bailey as well as the real one?”

“I have a mini-me.  Seems fair.”

Once they were dressed, Violet and Jimmy divided the pillows into two heaps, making sure the one they’d take to the mall was well over half of them, as otherwise the pile would disappear in the Venn Machine, and they’d have to repeat the process.  

“Are there really any pillows left in the house?” asked Violet once they’d done loading Jimmy’s car.  “It feels almost as full as last time.”

Jimmy laughed and shook his head.  “The plush and a good pile of pillows are left. Not quite enough to fill the octagon, but enough.  Are we going to bring Katie to the mall with us?”

“Oh!” gasped Violet, putting her hand to her bare neck.  “She’ll want to fight.  Are you okay with that?”

Jimmy sighed.  “Do you want to do it?”

“So badly,” enthused Violet.  “I’ll go get her.”

In Katie’s room, they found her giggling like mad at her phone.  When asked what was so funny, she rewound the video.

Violet stared at what it showed.  “Is that really a tyrannosaur in a tutu?”

“And a xenomorph wearing ribbons.  Black ribbons, good call.”

“And they’re... dancing a waltz?”

“Wait for it...”

The music shifted tone, and the two beasts started a bone-rattling tango that evolved from there into an aggressively violent but still beautifully choreographed freeform dance.  It ended with both beasts bleeding and disheveled, breaking away from their wrestling clinch on the ending beats, then bowing to a cheering audience.

“Wicked,” breathed Violet.

“I know!  Wait, are you two done?  Can we fight now?”

Violet held out a hand, and this time Katie wrapped herself around it instead of biting it.  She swarmed up Violet’s arm to her shoulder.  “Let’s go!”

At the mall, the process of hauling all the pillows back to the Venn Machines went quickly, as a few of the late-night regulars gave them a hand.  Violet stood in the open door of the machine to hold it open as they shoveled the pillows into a precarious pile inside.  A few were left behind as the door finally vanished, leading Violet to exchange worried looks with Jimmy.  A moment later she heard Bailey’s voice through the remaining door of the Venn Machine.  “I’m not going out there half-naked.”

Violet giggled and hopped into the other side of the machine.  “Sorry.  I guess your dress is in one of the other pillows.  Cute bra.”

Bailey mock-glowered at her.  “Just fix it.”

Violet summoned up Bailey’s usual monsterkitty form.  “Want to make any changes?  It’s the weekend, you could be tiny again.”

Bailey stuck out her tongue.  “Wanna be huuge.  How big can you make me and still fit me in Jimmy’s car?”

“Well, I’ll be going home a few inches tall, so... pretty big, you’ll have the back seat and the passenger seat to yourself.”

“Do it!” crowed Bailey.  A moment later, she found the Venn Macine’s booth rather cramped, and had to curl up on herself to fit.  “Mmm, big.  So much better.  Can I stay this size?”

Violet laughed.  “We’d have to make a normal sized mini-Bailey for you.”

Bailey harrumphed and waited for the doors to open.  She loomed out, towering over Jimmy by a head and a half with all her paws on the floor.  The look he was giving her in return made her grin.  “Like what you see?”

Jimmy nodded wordlessly, and snuggled into Bailey’s dark fur.

“So why are you going to be tiny, V?”

Violet explained Katie’s plan, for the two of them to become tiny monsters and duke it out in the octagon.  Katie chirped up at that point to ask for Bailey to change them both, to make it fair.

“Sounds like fun.  Who’s going first?”

Violet immediately volunteered, and after handing Katie off to Jimmy, she set the Venn Machine for eight hours.  Violet and Bailey spent several minutes inside, making Katie jitter with impatience in her brother’s hands.  When Bailey emerged, she snaked around to the other side and scooped up whatever was there.  “Your turn, Katie.”

“I don’t get to see what you did?” protested the tiny snake.

Bailey shook her head, depositing something small and round into Jimmy’s left hand, while scooping Katie out of his right.  “You wanted it to be fair.  No preconceptions.”

While he waited, Jimmy rolled the little black sphere around in his hand. “Going back to the classics, are we?”

Violet hissed up at him cheerfully, winking her yellow eye once before returning to looking like a golf-ball sized featureless black sphere.

Soon Katie emerged as a palm-sized tyrannosaur.  Complete with tutu, which made her dance and giggle on Bailey’s enormous paw.  “Let’s go, let’s go!” she cried.

Bailey chuckled resonantly at the little lizard’s antics as they strolled back to the car.  She was less amused at the wriggling and folding she had to do to fit inside Jimmy’s car, but with the passenger seat laid back as far as it would go she did finally manage to wedge herself inside.

Jimmy drove home carefully, his car’s suspension complaining now and again at the extra weight it was carrying.  As soon as they arrived, Bailey eeled out of the car.  “Freedom!”

Jimmy opened the garage door and bowed Bailey through it.  She squeezed past him and on into the rec room.  Soon she was perched on the edge of the octagon, Katie perched in her cupped hands.

Jimmy sat across from her, also holding something tiny in his hands. “On three.  One, two...”

He released the black sphere into the octagon, at the same time as Bailey let go of the tiny tyrannosaur.  Both took a moment to orient themselves, getting used to how big the octagon was at their scale.  Then the chase was on.  The tyrannosaur tore after the black eyeball, which darted this way and that, evading the tyrannosaur as best it could.  As Katie got used to her body, her speed and dexterity improved, and soon she manage to catch Violet with a talon, sending the ball skittering across the octagon like a soccer-ball, though at her scale it was more like a beachball in size.

Violet fetched up against a wall of the octagon with a thud, and shook herself to clear the disorientation.  As the tyrannosaur charged once more, she unfolded her legs.  Instead of the long spindly ones from the Hallowe’en party she had stubby legs with sturdy joints.  This time, when the tyrannosaur caught up, she was nearly as tall as it and used her legs to trip the beast as she dodged out of its way.  This time, it was the tyrannosaur’s turn to smash into the side of the octagon.

The spider danced a few steps away, waiting for its opponent to rise.  The tyrannosaur approached more cautiously this time, and soon the battle was joined in earnest, with ripping claws and stabbing legs flying faster than the two large observers could see.

The furball ended as the two tiny monsters staggered apart.  The tyrannosaur was missing a forelimb, part of one leg, and most of its tail, and bright red blood was pouring from those wounds and others.

The spider had fared little better, green ichor was oozing from where three of its legs had been, and its carapace looked like it had been cracked in half.

Neither monster rose from where it fell.

“I... guess that’s it then?” asked Jimmy uncertainly.  “I think the fight’s over.  What do we do now?”  As he raised his eyes to his giant monsterkitty girlfriend on the other side of the octagon, Jimmy saw that her eyes were narrowed to slits, ears perked forward.  Her tail was swishing dangerously, and her hips were wiggling as if ready to...

Bailey pounced into the octagon, her massive weight landing with a resounding thud that almost, but not quite, covered up the twin crunches made by her forepaws landing, one on each fallen monster.

Jimmy stared open-mouthed at the display of power.

Bailey pulled each paw up in turn, rasping the remains off each with her tongue.  Once done she turned to her frozen boyfriend and gave her lips one last lascivious lick.  “Cat got your tongue?” she rumbled.

“You... you...  Killed and ate them!” protested Jimmy.

“They asked me to end the pain.  Both of them, while I was changing them.  They’ll be fine.  Oh come on, they’ve both been eaten before, they know there’s nothing to fear.   Come on Jimmy, talk to me.  Please?”

Bailey leaned forward, barely needing to move her feet to put her head in Jimmy’s lap.  She saw how his pupils were dilated, could feel his shallow breathing.  And yet... she felt something press against her jaw.  Before Jimmy could decide which of his body’s reactions to follow she shuffled closer and lifted her face to his, kissing him on the lips.

Jimmy relaxed slightly, then nuzzled into the kiss and wrapped his arms around her enormous neck, hugging her tight.  When the kiss broke, he asked a little too casually, “why do you taste like lime, with a hint of...”

“Strawberry,” Bailey completed.  “I made their blood fruit-flavoured.”

Jimmy started to laugh, a mad cackle.  “You turned them into candy monsters?”

“Not... exactly.  But kinda, yeah.  They were made to be eaten.  Too much?”

“If it wasn’t Katie I was tasting on your lips...  Go gargle or something, please?”

“You’re not going to drag me back to the mall to rescue them?” asked Bailey, monstrous fangs worrying her lips nervously.

“They knew what they were getting into.”  Jimmy snorted. “And who they’d be getting into.  Rrr...  Go.  I’ll be here when you’re done.”

Bailey slunk out of the rec room to find the nearest bathroom.  After she’d lapped up several mouthfuls of water and gargled a bit of mouthwash, she darted back much more eagerly than she’d left.

Bailey looked around the rec room, to find the lights turned romantically low.  Her feline eyes could still see easily, and there was no sign of Jimmy.  Not until she noticed the tiny figure waving from the middle of the octagon.  Mini-Jimmy.

“What are you doing?” breathed Bailey, advancing toward her friend’s smaller half.

Mini-Jimmy looked at up at her bravely, and music started to play.  He began to dance.  Bailey slowly stepped into the octagon, moving on the downbeat to synchronize with Jimmy.  Once all four legs were inside, she started to sway with him, then to dance.  She had to crane her neck to watch him as he danced closer.  Her feet were bigger than he was, and he danced with each forepaw in turn.  The song ended, and he bowed to her left paw, kissing it tenderly.

Bailey giggled and blushed.  “Aww, how sweet.”

Another song started, wild and fast.  Bailey started to dance in earnest, stomping to the tune as mini-Jimmy danced between and even under her feet.  Both of them were grinning like mad.  Jimmy looked up to share the smile and the moment, and that was when he stumbled.  Bailey tried to stop her foot, but there was too much weight behind it to change direction completely.  She pulled some of the weight, but could still feel something crunch under her paw when it landed.

Bailey stopped, standing stock still as she stared down in horror.  Jimmy had made it halfway out from under her paw, leaving his head and torso exposed.  His face wasn’t twisted up in pain, but it was obvious he was doing a good job of covering it up.

“God, Jimmy!  I’m so sorry.”

He wheezed softly, and shook his head.  “Knew it would go this way.  Don’t cry.  Doesn’t hurt as much as it could, Violet made sure of that.”

Bailey sniffed and nodded.  “Okay.  Should we go Venn you back now?”

Jimmy shook his head.  “You know what to do.  Finish it.”

Bailey’s eyes went very wide.  “Really?”  She tried to sound reluctant, but the eagerness leaked out.

“Make it good.”

Bailey snatched mini-Jimmy into the air, and had him dangling above her wide-open jaws in a flash.  He squirmed as she lowered him, and then moaned as her enormous tongue wrapped around him and pulled him down.  A cage of teeth closed around him, and her pleased purr rattled his bones.  A slow, sensual swallow sent his tiny body sliding toward oblivion.

Bailey opened her eyes, coming back to the world around her.  She saw normal-sized Jimmy sitting up, the pillows he’d used for concealment scattered around him.  “You saw that?”

“My girlfriend is a true monster,” he breathed.  Bailey looked worried.  He grinned at her and continued, “and I love it.”

Bailey prowled toward him.  “This kitty is still hungry.  But not for food...”

Jimmy opened his arms invitingly.  “I am all yours.”