(21) Family Fight 2 - Overprotective

“Yeah… The battery’s completely drained… That’s right. We need a replacement… Hey! It wasn’t my fault! I already explained it to you. Alice was the one who did i-! … Hey! Don’t yell at me! YES, I’m blaming her!”

“...”

“… Don’t you dare drag Mom into this! This is your stupid machine in the first place. Listen, just come over as soon as you can with a replacement battery. I know the deal was that you stayed away, but my brother’s size has been jumping up and down this whole time. This can’t be good for him!”

“...”

“He was 6 inches tall just an hour ago. Then he shot up to 4 feet, but he’s under three feet tall now. Hang on. I’ll send you a picture… Say cheese, Bro.”

“Does it have to be in this position?” I asked as my sister took a selfie of herself with me held close to her on her bed. She quickly sent it to our aunt mid-call and put the phone back to her ear.

“...”

“See? I told you that it was bad… So you’ll make the trip here right after work ends? Good. We’ll be waiting…”

Lori hung up the call with Aunt Shelly with an exhausted sigh. Having to explain to our aunt what had happened must have been difficult for her. It didn’t sound like Aunt Shelly wanted to hear that Alice was the one who did it. Neither she nor Lori got along with each other, so it was a miracle that our aunt agreed.

Bzzt!

At that moment, I was currently a somewhat comfortable 31 inches tall… no, 33 inches now apparently. l was sitting uncomfortably on my sister’s lap as she sat on her bed. Lori didn’t want to deal with Alice’s mother AND her at the same time, so she had brought me into her room for the phone call with Aunt Shelly. I definitely felt like her little brother at that moment considering I was around the height of a 2 year old. My back was firmly held against her stomach by her arm and her heavy breasts rested on top of my head, threatening to break my neck with their weight. Even with my legs stretched forward, they didn’t even pass her knee.

“Damnit… I hate talking to her. She wouldn’t believe me and thought I was talking out of my ass,” Lori grumbled as she put her phone down. She leaned back and put her hands to her side, freeing my head from the weight of her chest and the rest of my body from her grip.

“I can’t believe she needed photographic proof,” I took advantage of my sister relaxing to break free. I knew she was being protective of me, but it was embarrassing to be held so closely to her. I tried to crawl off my 12 foot tall (relatively) sister’s thighs, but before I could, I felt two warm palms grab me by my armpits. “Whoa!”

Lori picked me up off of her and stood up. She knew I wanted to get off of her, so she took the liberty of doing so for me. She put me down on the floor between her legs. She did it so easily. My body was probably around 10 pounds to her at this size. “There you go, Remy.” 

“Uh, thanks,” I wanted to tell my sister that I could do it myself, but before I could, her hand reached over and landed on the top of my head. I felt its weight, and I also realized her palm was bigger than my skull. “Sorry about all of this, Little Bro.”

“It’s not your fault. And hey, you don’t have to treat me like a kid, Sis,” I grumbled, trying to push her hand off of me. Obviously, I couldn’t fight her. I was so small that my head barely passed the height of her bed. 

“It’s kind of hard not to,” Lori sounded distracted. Her mouth was open, baring her teeth like an animal in fight or flight mode. It wasn’t an expression I had seen on her before. “I’d rather you stick with me safe and sound until we can get you back to normal.”

“I mean, you called Aunt Shelly. All we can do is wait for her to arrive,” I started to head towards the door, but was immediately stopped when her bare legs left the floor. Because I was right between her legs, when the soles of her feet touched right in front of me, I was trapped in place. “Hwuh?”

My sister pulled her legs back. The balls of her feet hit me in my chest and I was pulled back towards where Lori was sitting on the mattress. She then pressed her feet into my chest. There was no breathing room between her legs and the bed. She successfully pinned my body in place. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Mguf!” I tried to push her legs apart, but they were more immovable than steel pillars. And when I tried to shoved her feet down, Lori pulled them further up into my face to force me to stay still. The smell of damp carpet lint from her sweaty feet forced me to hold my breath as I struggled. I had no choice but to answer her honestly as I struggled. “Gak! I was thinking we should tell Alice.”

The moment I mentioned our cousin’s name, Lori’s foot slammed into my side. I spun around. My head turned up and I saw her face. Lori’s mouth opened wider than it did before, exposing her teeth. She wasn’t frowning or smiling. It was as if her body was simply reacting to Alice’s name instinctively. “Tell her? Let me do that. I’m not letting you near her. Alice and Nikki - those two did all of this in the first place. I won’t let them make things worse for you. You’re staying here until Auntie comes. “

“Lori?” I didn’t like the fact that Lori was furious at Alice, but I wasn’t going to say that she should forgive her. What I was more concerned about was Lori’s gaze. She was staring right through me - as if she was looking at something past me.

“I can’t risk you getting hurt,” Lori gave me a little more room between her legs and the mattress to let me breathe, but she immediately gave me an order afterwards. “Just stay right here, Remy.”

“Sis, I can’t just do that.” Now that I could move, I tried to duck to get beneath her legs, but Lori read my intentions and opened up her feet. The moment I stepped forward, I walked up between them. She swiftly pressed them together, clamping my head between them. Her feet were nearly 2’ long from my perspective so each one was bigger than my head. The sweat from her toes and soles stained my hair and cheeks wet as she clamped down on me with her bare feet. “Mgfrgf!”

“And why not? We could just play a few board games or card games while we waited. It’s not like you’re leaving the house at this size” Despite my struggles to break free, Lori did not have to move her legs or feet to keep me in place. I couldn’t push back against the vice grip her soles had on my head. “Besides, you can’t even reach the doorknob like this.”

“Mgff… What? I… totally can! Grk! Just watch me.” I dared to talk back to my sister not only because I didn’t believe her, but also because I knew she’d give me a chance. By saying that, she actually released me just so I could prove her wrong.

“Fine. Go for it, tough guy.” Lori spread her legs apart, letting me stumble forward. I turned around to see her looking down at me. The same open mouth-teeth bared expression she had on earlier was still on her face, but she actually let me get away from her legs’ reach completely.

“It’s not so tough at this size,” I told her as I approached the door. To my annoyance, I saw that the top of my head was well beneath it. I was going to have to jump to try to get a hold of it to turn it. “ Hwah! … Damn… Hup!”

“Can’t reach?” Lori crossed her legs as she watched me struggle to grab the doorknob. She was confident that she was right. “I told you.”

“No. I’ve got it. One more time! Here we go! Damn. Come on!”

“Pfft. Sorry. I know I shouldn’t laugh, but you seriously can’t, Little Bro. Just give up already,” Lori couldn’t resist laughing at my struggle. Even though she was worried, I must have looked comedic having my hands slip off the doorknob every time I managed to grab it. I was thankful when I could finally grab it.

“Hah! Got… it?”

Bzzt!

“Uwoah!”

“Remy?!”

Well… ‘could’ was the key word. My weight successfully turned the doorknob, but I couldn’t pull it before I felt my height start to dwindle again. I felt the floor get further and further away from me. My entire body shrank upwards as I hung onto the door knob. I was pulled along with the door as it opened up. The world had tripled, leaving me at 11”.

“No way! I thought I’d at least be able to open a door!” I shouted. My stomach was definitely not enjoying the random rising and falling that my body was going through. I desperately did my best to pull my body onto the door knob. Even though I knew how the shrinking worked to enhance my body’s endurance, it was a multi-story drop to the floor. I instinctively did not want to fall.

Smack!

“Urk! Gah!” I was smacked by something white in the leg. I lost my grip for a second and nearly slid off the smooth doorknob. I realized what it was when a shadow fell over me as a warm presence came up right behind me. The drawstring of my sister’s shorts had whipped through the air when she rushed over after seeing me shrink.

“I got you, Little Bro!” My sister hovered her hands around the doorknob, ready to catch me.

“Huh? No, it’s fine… Ugh,” I grunted, not wanting to worry her. “You don’t have to watch over everything I do.”

“No way. This is why I said you should just stay in here. It’s scary just how suddenly you shrank there. Do you get it now?” my sister frowned. She kept her hands close to me. While she could easily get me off the door, she didn’t want to pry me off and possibly hurt me now that I was a lot smaller and more vulnerable. “Damnit. I shouldn’t have let you try. Now come on. Get on my hand.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” As nice as it was to get to safety, I felt that if I ended up doing that, Lori wouldn’t let me go both literally and figuratively. She had gotten too protective of me - even more so than before. 

“You’re not!” Lori was frustrated at how I was still refusing. “Let me tell you this: you just shrank towards your center of mass. That’s never happened before. The whole process of your size-changing might have been messed up because of this ‘residual layer’ issue.”

I wasn’t sure what my sister meant by ‘residual layer’, but I didn’t like to hear the fact that even HOW I changed size was going to be unpredictable. “Lori, just to be sure, how small can I get while I’m like this?”

”Uh… Maybe back down to three inches?” Lori’s answer was not confident. “I think we removed the first shrinking layer fully. It’s only the second one that’s still there, so that should be the case… Maybe… Sorry, I’m not really sure. I’ve never seen this happen EVER.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I guess opening doors is out of the question again. Oh well. I’ve gotten pretty used to that these past few months,” I laughed, trying to sound optimistic even though my words clearly weren’t. 

My sister definitely hated the part of my personality that tried to be positive even when everything wasn’t good. I didn’t have to be facing her to know she was shaking her head at me. “Can you be a little more serious about this, Remy? This is absolutely terrible for you, isn’t it? I’m trying to keep you safe here!”

“I know you are…,” I knew things were bad, and that Lori was just trying to care for me after all of the danger I had been through. Still, the way my sister was acting now… She wasn’t actually looking at me when she spoke to me. I realized now that what she was actually looking at was her vision of me being hurt. She wasn’t thinking straight thanks to the combination of lack of sleep, panic over what had happened to me, and confusion over the errors in my size changing. I needed to get her to listen to me somehow. 

“...”

“Come on. My hand’s right here, Little Bro.”

“... Hey, Lori, can you hold still?”

“Hold still?” My sister repeated, not sure why I made such a strange request. She figured out my answer when I stretched as far as I could to grab onto her shorts.

“Got it!”

“Ha-What?!”

Pushing off from the door, I swapped from grabbing onto the doorknob to grabbing my sister’s shorts the moment the drawstring swung close enough to me. The momentum I gave myself was a bit too much so I swung on the drawstring like Tarzan on a vine. One of Lori’s hands reached for me, but the other reflexively grabbed her pants so that they wouldn’t slip off. Unable to consciously control both hands, my sister didn’t have the dexterous muscle control to grab me in time. I didn’t hold onto the string for very long anyways. I slammed into her thigh and gravity started to pull me down. My doll-sized arms wrapped around her leg as best as they could and I slid down her leg slowly until I landed on the top of her left foot.

“Hah! Phew! Safe.”

“Safe? Are you crazy? What part of that was safer than letting me get you down? Did you seriously just try to slide down my leg like a fireman’s pole?” Lori was in disbelief at what I had just done.

“You’re a bit too thick for a pole, Sis,” I chuckled. 

“... I’ll take that as a compliment?” my sister wanted to scold me, but she was still trying to process what I had done. This was good. I had caught her so off-guard with my sudden dare-devil attempt that she was finally trying to think. She rubbed her temples, feeling a headache coming in from having to understand my actions.

This was precisely why I had jumped.

“What’d I tell you? I was fine. I could get down on my own.”

“Didn’t you ask me to stay still so you could use my leg, though? I wouldn’t call that ‘on your own’.”

“Well, you have a point there,” I laughed.

The more I laughed, the more my sister had to rub her temples. I was glad that I, as her younger brother, knew Lori so well. I knew how her brain worked to the point where, even though I was 11” tall, I could do something so ridiculous that she’d have to take some time to clear her head. “Sheesh. You were the size of a speck and suffering thanks to what Alice did earlier. Shouldn’t you have learned to be more cautious from that?”

Lori crossed her arms as she looked down at me on her foot. That strange expression she had earlier was gone. I saw the usual exasperated expression that I had seen Lori give me all my life whenever I did something stupid.

“I don’t want to over-rely on you, Sis. You get that, right?”

“Even at a time like this?” Lori was listening to me properly now.

“The thing I learned from being super tiny was that it’s way better to have my own freedom to move how I like than to be forced around by planet sized giants,” I gave her foot a heavy smack. I was trying to make it seem like I was giving her a pat on the back, but she barely felt it with my doll-sized scale. “Listen, at that scale, your every movement was like a whole new weather phenomenon to me. I’ve gotten a good taste of how much more power you’ve got than me, and I know that’s the same at this scale too. If you end up doing everything for me, that’s not too different from getting dragged around.”

“That’s… Okay, I can see your point on why you’d rather be independent there…,” Lori was stunned that she couldn’t argue against my response. She frowned, thinking back to what she had done just minutes ago. “... Sorry. I guess I went overboard earlier.”

“You sure did!” I laughed at her. As the younger brother, it always felt nice to get ‘one up’ on my older sister.

Of course, Lori was never one to let me bask in my victory for very long. She heard how cocky I sounded, and now that she was feeling better, she had no qualms in knocking me off my pedestal. “Fine. Fine. My bad. I was panicking too much. It must've made you uncomfortable.  Now can you get off my foot?”

“Hwoargh!” My body slammed downwards onto her foot as her foot rapidly ascended upwards like an elevator. Lori lifted it up only a foot off the ground, but she had done it so suddenly that the acceleration caught me off guard. To make matters worse, when she stopped, my body started to slide off. I grabbed onto the close thing that I could - her toes. I kicked my legs in panic as I dangled from her foot like a scrap of toilet paper. “Waah!”

“You’re not that far off the floor, get off my foot already, squirt,” Lori alerted me to the fact that my feet were just an inch off the floor in reality. Even on my scale, it was only a foot high drop, so I didn’t actually have any issue with the landing now.

“Damn. That scared me,” With my knees on the carpet, I relaxed my muscles and sprawled over the top of my sister’s foot in relief.

“Consider that payback for scaring me and laughing at me.” Lori was back to her usual self. “But why’d you get scared from that when you were just fine jumping off the door?” 

“I told you. It’s all about control.” I tried to explain properly. “I CHOSE to jump off. I didn’t choose to get lifted up off the ground by your foot.”

“Okay. You’ve made your point,” Lori was starting to understand my reasoning more, but she also had her own reasoning to add to my argument. “But I’m still worried. You can’t control your size. There’s a chance something crazy will happen if nobody’s looking or in the middle of one of your reckless stunts. I won't make you stay in one place and I won’t forcibly move you around if you don’t want me to, but I still want to keep an eye on you. I’m not like Alice. I’ll put your safety first, so can you rely on me even just a little?”

Even though she could physically force the issue, Lori was trying to negotiate with me. Even though her concerns were still the same as earlier, she was definitely back to her normal line of thinking again. This was the Lori I could trust. 

“... You’re being a bit overbearing, Sis, but fine. Even I know that it’s insane to NOT rely on someone when I don’t even know what size I’ll be the very next second,” I gave her my consent. I could see her smile widen knowing that I trusted her. She must have been scared wondering if my previous experience had traumatized me. “Oh, but do you mind not being so suffocating? You were holding onto me against your stomach and boobs for 15 full minutes earlier.”

“That’s where you’re complaining?” Lori properly laughed at my comment this time. She was quick to counter it as well. “Well, sorry. Did you prefer my feet over my tits? You’re not complaining about that part. In fact, you’re still clinging on to them even though I told you to get off.”

“I-... Hold on!” I was still on top of her foot using it like a bed to rest on even though I had finally gotten down to the actual floor. I pushed myself off of it upon mustering enough strength to do so.

“You just can’t get away from my feet, can you?” my sister was trying to use her snarkiness to lighten up her mood the same way I had been using my optimism earlier. Both of us could recall how many incidents I’ve had at Lori’s feet in the past few hours.

“Don’t remind me. Now come on. I said it earlier, but we really need to let Alice and Nikki know about what you spoke about with Aunt Shelly. They deserve to know too,” I pointed up high above me. I had to crane my head back and look all the way up my sister’s long bare legs before I could see the doorknob that I couldn’t open earlier because I shrank.

“I still say you should stay away from those two until you’re absolutely back to normal… But if that’s what you want, then fine. I’ll make sure everything works out in the end. I promise, Remy,” Lori waited for me to get away from the path of the door. She turned the knob only when I stood up and ran back to her left foot. “Ah.”

“Ah?” I repeated, unsure as to why Lori made such a sound. I realized when I looked in the direction she was facing. Right in front of the door, just standing there in the hallway, was my cousin and her friend. 

“Uh, hey,” Nikki waved, unsure about what to say.

“Um… H-Hi… Lori… Remy…” Alice also nervously broke the silence. It was clear they had been trying to listen into what was going on inside Lori’s locked room earlier. It concerned me as to how Lori was going to react to the two of them waiting right outside her door. I had calmed her down, but there was still a good chance that she was still angry at them and it’d be completely justified anger too.

“Ali-!”

Bzzt!

I started to say my cousin’s name. Before I could finish, however, the world around me shifted in all directions again. I was straining my neck to look up at Alice’s face, but the very next second, I realized that same angle only gave me a view of her knees. 

What was worse though was that my feet were no longer touching the floor. As Lori had feared earlier, I had shrunken towards my center of mass again.

“Gwaaaaaah!” I fell what was now a multi-story descent into the carpet below.  “Urgh! What the…? What happened… Oh…”

I landed on fibers that I could individually distinguish. They were warm… or rather, the air around me was warm and humid. It wasn’t because the carpet was naturally like that though. I realized when I stood up that it was because of the body heat emanating from Lori’s foot.

“Damnit. Not again.” If I had shrunken again, how small did I get for that body heat to make such an impression on my body? The shadow covering my entire body and the monolithic peach structures looming over me that were my sister’s toes gave me a proper object to compare myself to.

Lori’s hypothesis on how small I could get was wrong. Standing in the shadow of my sister’s big toe, I was down to a ½” tall.

Rumble!

“Huh? Where’d Remy go?”

“What? Remy?”

Rumble! Rumble!

Instantaneously shrinking from 11” to ½” tall, only Alice, who had been looking at me the moment I changed size again, realized something had happened to me. However, I had shrunken small enough and quickly enough that it would have looked like I disappeared if she had blinked.

Despite Lori’s desire to have me rely on her more, her concern over me became too heavy again - literally this time. When Alice called her attention to my sudden vanishing act by shrinking, my sister moved to look down at her feet. Unfortunately, because I was so small, she couldn’t see me right next to her toe when she was standing up. She had to shift her weight when she bent over to look past her boobs and onto the floor. While that shift was miniscule on Lori and Alice’s scale, it was multiplied by 144 times to my half inch tall self.

Lori’s foot lifted up a bit more than half an inch - 7-8 feet from my perspective. It jerked forward at an angle by around an inch when Lori leaned forward, surprised to no longer see my doll-sized form at her feet. In less than a second, the sole of Lori’s left foot became my ceiling.

“Lor-!”

Whaaam!

There was no time to run. Before I could even finish Lori’s name, her foot already landed back down on the carpet, slamming down beneath it. The movement was so miniscule, my sister probably didn’t even realize she had done it. The carpet fibers bowed to her foot’s weight, protecting me from being crushed with full force. Still, my entire body outside of my head and neck, was smothered beneath the ball of Lori’s foot. The remainder wound up beneath her second toe.

“Mgfffgh!”

I couldn’t shout. My entire mouth was covered by Lori’s toe. And the sweat that was on her foot covered my entire body, so even if I opened my mouth, it would be filled with the salty, sticky liquid.

“What the-? Where’d he go? Remy! Hey!”

“I… I think he shrunk again… I blinked and he was just gone.”

“What? Oh no, he’s got to still be down there. Don’t tell me he shrunk past the 3” mark. I thought that shouldn’t be possible. Hey, you two. Look for him. It’ll be bad if I move. He was closest to my foot, so I might step on him if I do.”

“R-Right…” “Okay.”

I was concerned about whether Lori would still be mad at Alice, but my sudden size change again forced both of them to cooperate immediately after they met face to face again. While this would’ve been a good thing, there was definitely nothing good about being suddenly crushed beneath the sole of my worried sister who was 800 feet tall to me. This was precisely the sort of experience I had told Lori I was sick of dealing with.

Bzzt!

The weight pinning me down started to lessen. My size was changing again. Unfortunately, this still did not give me any relief. With my size continuing to change beneath my sister’s foot, it was clear to me that the short few hours it would take for Aunt Shelly to come was going to be a long span of time for the miniscule me.