Ashley excited jabbed her finger at a picture of you, coated in so much chewed-up cake frosting that you looked like a little sugar snowman. It was snapped the moment your mom had spat you out of her mouth during your eleventh birthday party, having just been chewing on you after Jenna had slipped you into the cake batter earlier in the day. It wasn't a particularly fond memory, but being chewed was certainly better than being swallowed, so honestly it had been one of your better birthdays.
Jenna instantly launched into recounting the tale, especially as this was right before you had even met Mari and Rio, so the two of them eagerly ate up Jenna's theatrical recounting. Ashley and Lauren listened attentively too, though you yourself didn't pay too much attention to the story. You'd experienced it, after all, and thus had no reason to indulge in this particular trip down memory lane.
Instead, you sat and stared at your family and friends, watching their smiles and hearing their laughs. You were under now disillusions that you led a pretty cursed life, saddled with more bad luck than perhaps any other tiny guy in history. Not a day went by without at least a minor incident, and you'd lost thousands of hours of your life to the crushing bodies of your inner support circle. It was far from an easy life, and there were some dark times when you had just wished that fate would leave you alone for a single damn second.
And yet, if pressed, you'd actually have to admit that you still loved your life. Your mother and Jenna gave you constant grief, but they still expressed their love to you frequently (a bit less so with Jenna, but sometimes you still saw that glint of genuine care in her eye). Mari's memory was the single biggest hurdle in your relationship with her, and Rio's indifferent strength-training philosophy was the second biggest hurdle, but you still valued them dearly. Ashley's overly flirty ditz mannerisms were a constant handful, but she was a good and loyal friend at the end of the day. You cherished each of them, along with all your other friends and family members out there.
You had it rough. But honestly...you loved your life, and you loved all of them. And, sometimes, it was enough to just sit and remember that.
For the entire rest of the photo-reminiscing afternoon, you simply sat and smiled.
*****
And so, months passed by. Chaotic months, of course, but you survived them nonetheless.
Your incidents and mishaps remained an almost daily occurrence, of course, your bad luck never once letting up. Jenna was primarily responsible for instigating them, like the week you spent glued onto your mother's living room recliner (suffering under her for hours at a time because Jenna bought her the complete DVD series of her favorite show), or the two weeks Jenna disguised you as a nipple pasty and convinced Ashley her sensitive breasts would be more comfortable if she wore you. And, obviously, your luck threw you into situations even without Jenna, like an on-and-off stint as Mari's stress toy, your girlfriend somehow mistaking you for it each time you reformed and almost got her attention again.
After about two months, Jenna began having help with her mischievous, mean-spirited little pranks, in the form of her new girlfriend, Piper Brooks. The inch-and-half pink-haired tiny girl met your sister at the local arcade, and the two instantly hit it off, beginning dating soon after. Piper had a grudge against tiny-sized brothers (owing to years of abuse from her own affected big brother), and quickly took to the 'fun' of putting you in humiliating circumstances with all the wild frenzy of a little gremlin.
And then, with Piper, came the pinkette's two best friends, Dodger Campbell and Sydney Stein. Much to your dismay, you instantly caught the attention of the two tiny-crazed girls, and they immediately began thrusting their overly-enthusiastic flirtatious affections onto you. They eased off a bit once they met Mari for the first time, but you still found it nearly impossible to spend a day around them without ending up crushed at least one or ten times thanks to their penchant for getting carried away with their antics. At least the music they produced in the band they were a part of with Piper, The Banshees of Inches-Higher, was genuinely really great!
You were still going steady with Mari, even if you were a little tepid about how your relationship had seemed to plateau lately. You still loved her with all your heart, and you were pretty confident she still felt the same way about you, but it was obvious somedays that the two of you were just going through the same motions without working up the confidence to take things to the next step. Maybe you two could sit down for a nice conversation soon? It was tricky, though, as Mari had taken more and more shifts at The Oasis, and was spending a troubling amount of time on and off work with her lifeguard partner Selena, who you knew had a crush on Mari.
Things with Ashley were progressing at a similar rate, though it was a bit frustrating that the redhead seemed genuinely incapable of understanding that you just wanted to be friends, and that you didn't want her to constantly flirt with you. She meant well, at least, and you knew Jenna was mostly to blame for constantly encouraging her best friend's misunderstandings. Bea, Ashley's mother, was taking a more active influence in her daughter's life too, which had spelled disaster a few times over the past few months, as Bea hated no one in the world more than you, and would gladly see you crushed into paste for all time.
Aunt Cass came to visit twice during that time, and, predictably, you spent more time squished onto her prodigious curves than actually interacting with her face-to-face. Still, it was nice to see her, and you did squeeze out a few genuinely nice and quiet moments with her.
On a continual familial note, you tagged along with Mari and Rio on a short trip down to Salvador in Brazil, where her Aunt Sofia and Cousin Serafina lived. You'd met the two extended Fuertes women before, but it had been a few years, and you hadn't realized how much of a handful they'd become in that short time. Sofia brazenly flirted with you whatever chance she got, 'accidentally' squishing you on more than one occasion, and Serafina kept grabbing you and molding you into clothes or objects, seeming to honestly believe it was her right as a spoiled only child. Suffice to say, it was an eventful week.
A few of your old enemies had crawled their way out of the woodwork too, which was a bit distressing. Rika Inoue, your old tiny sitter who had moved to California to pursue modeling, had apparently come back to Oakland after taking a contract with Vivid Videos a two-hour drive away. Similarly, Penelope Graham, your middle-and-high school bully, was back in town, having taken a teaching job at Weston University. Both girls had eagerly sought to get their hands back on you, which terrified you, though you'd narrowly avoided their clutches so far.
During all of this time, you'd applied for jobs in a few different spots, but usually ended up losing them either due to not being selected as the candidate, or because you missed your first day by being smeared onto your mother's butt cheek, or lost in Mari's shoe. It was rough, but you'd eventually just resorted to doing some part-time tutoring work online, since you could at least set your own schedule and work from home. It wasn't much, but it was something. You'd find that perfect engineering job someday!
All in all, it was an eventful but typical few months in your life, and you were still mostly happy with how things were progressing. No matter how many troubling incidents you got into day by day, at least you were still kicking! That was something!
Finally, a special day came up, one that you'd been both anticipating and dreading for quite a while...
1) It's Christmas time, which historically has never gone great for you at the Jacobs household. It's going to be especially rough this year, because of how packed your house will be for the proceedings! It's going to be you, Lauren, Jenna, Piper, Mari, Rio, Ashley, Bea, and even Cass! In a house with so many dangerous ladies, and Jenna and Piper still obsessed with pranking you, do you stand a chance at having a happy holiday?
2) It's Halloween, and there's a huge costume party at Focused Fitness that the whole Oakland community is invited to! Organized by Rio and her fellow fitness instructor Lihua, the largest room has been reserved and decorated extensively to house all the guests, food, and party games. Pretty much everyone you know will be in attendance and in costume, including yourself. Being around that many people has you on edge, to say the least.
3) It's Feast Day of Our Lady Aparecida, a traditional Brazilian holiday. Mari invited you to participate so you can experience a bit more of her heritage's culture. You're currently at her house, along with Rio, and Sofia and Serafina are just about to talk through the door, having flown up for the special occasion. Your last visit of being stuck in a house with the four Fuertes women didn't go so well. Will this time be any different?
4) *Writer's Choice*
5) *Writer's Choice*
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