Madison settled deeper into the couch, one arm stretched along the back cushion, the other hand busy with the remote while the LLS pregame show rolled on. Bright graphics flashed across the screen. Team colors. Player stats. Little commentators at a scaled-down desk speaking with impossible seriousness over swelling music and roaring crowd noise.
Cindy sat beside Madison’s thigh, small enough now that the vibration of the broadcast seemed to travel through the couch around her. The whole production was absurdly polished. Smooth transitions. Sharp camera work. Animated overlays. Generitech had spared no expense, as usual.
Madison looked down at the screen, then at Cindy, and smirked.
“Okay, so,” she said, settling in like she was about to give some grand lecture she absolutely was not qualified to give, “Dad got weirdly obsessed with this one team for a while. I think it was the…” she squinted at the corner of the screen, “…the New York Sentinels? Or the Strikers? No, wait, that sounds fake.”
Cindy said nothing.
Madison glanced down at her. “You don’t know either?”
“I never paid much attention.”
“Same,” Madison said cheerfully. “But Dad was, like, super into it. He’d get all serious about rankings and standings and whatever.” She made a vague circling motion with one hand. “He acted like it was real sports.”
Cindy kept her eyes on the television, but the words landed harder than Madison probably intended.
Or maybe exactly as hard as she intended.
Onscreen, the camera cut to an aerial shot of the stadium: a scaled arena packed with thousands upon thousands of Littles in coordinated colors, flags waving, sections chanting, camera flashes blinking in waves across the stands. The commentators’ voices rose with excitement as they hyped the rivalry, the playoff implications, the record-breaking attendance.
“It’s honestly crazy how into this people get,” Madison said, sounding half amused and half impressed. “Like, look at that. That’s… what, sixty thousand? Seventy?”
“More in some cities,” Cindy said before she could stop herself.
Madison immediately looked down at her. “Oh my God, you do know stuff.”
Cindy regretted speaking at once. “Only from Greg.”
Madison’s mouth twitched upward. “That makes sense.”
The screen shifted to player introductions, and the stadium transformed instantly.
Massive arcs of light swept across the field, not just bright but layered, color, motion, projection, cascading over the stadium in synchronized waves. Holographic overlays flickered into existence above the pitch, towering figures of players rendered in glowing detail, their movements trailing streaks of light as they were introduced. The ground itself seemed to pulse beneath them, reactive panels shifting color with each step, each beat of the music.
Then came the smoke.
Not the cheap, drifting kind, but thick, sculpted bursts that rolled across the field in controlled patterns, lit from beneath in shifting neon tones. The Little athletes ran through it one by one, emerging like something out of a stage production rather than a sporting event, each entrance timed perfectly to music that hit with a force completely disproportionate to the size of the stadium.
And that was the strangest part.
Scaled down though it was, nothing about it felt smaller.
If anything, it felt more intense. More concentrated. Generitech had built it with the same level of technology they would have used in a full scale arena, Vegas level spectacle, world tour production values, but compressed into a space where every light, every sound, every effect hit harder, closer, more overwhelming.
The crowd lost its mind.
Thousands of Littles filled the stands, the sound rising in a wall of noise that felt almost too big for the space, amplified, layered, alive. Flags waved. Lights flashed. The energy surged outward like something barely contained.
Madison laughed softly under her breath.
“Okay… that’s actually kind of insane. This is so extra,” she said, though not without admiration. “I kind of love it.”
She reached down absently and ran two fingers through Cindy’s hair, then let her hand rest lightly against the back of her neck.
The gesture was affectionate. Possessive. Casual.
Cindy stiffened almost imperceptibly beneath it.
Madison didn’t seem to notice. Or noticed and liked it.
“I think Dad likes the analyst parts too,” Madison went on, still watching the screen. “Like the trade stuff? Or maybe the player drama. I don’t know. He always got that look.”
“What look?” Cindy asked quietly.
Madison grinned. “That little old man sports look. Like he had opinions nobody asked for.”
Despite everything, the description was accurate enough that Cindy almost smiled.
Almost.
Instead, she looked at the screen and felt the shape of Greg’s absence settle more heavily over the room.
He should have been the one here.
Not because she wanted him reduced to this any more than he already was, but because this had become his strange little pocket of interest now, his one unexpectedly genuine attachment to the broader Little world. At first Cindy had barely paid attention when Greg and Madison started watching it together. She had thought of it as one of those odd little father-daughter rituals that spring up around whatever happens to be on often enough to become familiar. Madison would half-watch and make bratty comments, Greg would actually follow what was happening, correct her when she got names wrong, explain standings or rivalries she did not really care about, and somehow the two of them would settle into it together.
He would have known the teams. Known the standings. Known which commentator Madison was misidentifying and which player she was pretending to recognize. He would have cared in the way she didn’t.
And Madison knew that.
That was the unbearable part.
This was not random. Not really. She wasn’t watching this just because it happened to be on. She was watching it because it was his thing, or close enough to it, and because, it had been one of the things they shared. A small father-daughter space that belonged more naturally to the two of them than to anyone else.
And now Greg was upstairs while Madison was down here with Cindy.
After the way he had invoked McKenzie, after the way he had made Madison feel like second choice, like the lesser daughter, like the one he was merely stuck with until the daughter he really wanted came back for him, Cindy could suddenly see the shape of this evening more clearly. Madison would never say that it had hurt her. Never admit it so plainly. But she was hurt, and this was what Madison did with hurt: she converted it into control.
She was occupying Greg’s place on purpose, even if only for the evening. Filling it. Playing with it. Taking one of the small things that had belonged to him and to them, and making it hers instead.
Madison shifted, stretching her legs farther across the couch and nearly nudging the remote off the cushion in the process.
“Wait, no,” she said, pointing at the television as though correcting herself mattered. “Dad likes that one player.”
Cindy looked up at the screen. A highlight package was rolling now, showing a fast, technical forward weaving through defenders with impossible footwork before scoring to a scream from the crowd.
Madison snapped her fingers. “That one. He was talking about him forever.”
“Him?” Cindy asked.
“Or maybe not him specifically. Maybe that team. Whatever.” Madison shrugged. “You know what I mean.”
She didn’t, really.
That was what made it so strange to listen to. Madison was talking about Greg’s interest the way someone might describe a hobby they had only ever absorbed through overheard fragments. Half-right names. Half-remembered details. Enough to mimic familiarity, not enough to inhabit it.
Enough to borrow his place for an hour.
Cindy felt a dull ache rise in her chest.
Madison was not just keeping Greg upstairs. She was replacing him here, in small domestic ways, with the casual confidence of someone who assumed she could.
“Do you think he’d be mad I’m watching this without him?” Madison asked suddenly.
The question was light, teasing, but her fingers pressed slightly into Cindy’s hair as she asked it.
Cindy chose her words carefully. “I think he would have liked to see it.”
Madison made a small face. “Well, he should’ve acted better.”
There was no venom in it. No heat. Just a lazy, bratty certainty that the consequence made sense because she had imposed it.
She grabbed another chip, crunched it loudly, then glanced down again.
“Besides,” she said, “you’re here.”
The simplicity of it was almost worse than cruelty would have been.
Madison smiled and gestured vaguely at the television. “So now you get to hear all about Little soccer from me, which is honestly kind of an honor.”
Cindy said nothing.
Madison laughed at her own joke and resumed her commentary, now fully committing to it because she enjoyed the sound of her own half-informed confidence.
“Okay, so this team is definitely either really good or they’re just the team with the hottest uniforms. Which, honestly, matters. Branding matters.” She pointed at the screen again. “And that guy? He is either the captain or just standing like he thinks he’s the captain. Same energy either way.”
Another absent stroke through Cindy’s hair.
“You know what, I get why Dad likes this. It’s dramatic.”
Cindy kept watching the screen, but she was barely seeing it now.
What she saw instead was Greg alone in Madison’s room, stuck on the desk where Madison had left him, maybe still looking at the polished phone, maybe still replaying the argument in his mind. And down here, Madison sprawled across the couch in their daughters’ remade living room, talking badly through his program while petting Cindy like a favored little thing.
It was such an absurd image that for a second Cindy almost couldn’t hold it together.
Madison looked down at her and caught something in her expression.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
Madison narrowed her eyes slightly, then smiled in that smug little way she had when she sensed more than she was being told.
“You miss him.”
Cindy didn’t answer.
Madison’s fingers slid slowly down the back of her neck, soothing and proprietary all at once. “He’s fine.”
The words should have comforted her. Instead they landed like ownership.
Madison leaned back against the couch and looked toward the television again, entirely untroubled.
“Honestly,” she said, “if he’d just stop being weird about McKenzie all the time, he’d be having a way better night.”
The commentators on screen erupted over some replay angle. The crowd roared again. Madison grabbed her soda and took a long drink.
Beside her, Cindy sat very still, trapped between comfort and humiliation, and understood with growing clarity that this was the shape of Madison’s power at its most personal.
Not just punishment.
Substitution.
She did not only withhold people from each other.
She stepped into the spaces they left behind.
And for tonight, at least, Greg’s place beside this strange little sport belonged to her.
Why do I feel like Cindy is going to show Madison how she’s wrong here…. I also feel like McKenzie will rock home and ask why dad is upstairs…
i feel that is going to happen too, kenzie walking in and being annoyed Madison did that
“He acted like it was real sports.”
it is real. man this pissed me off lol i also feel like hypocrite about this too cause i’d say the same thing about like darts conrhole and bowling, but knowing more about those things now as an adult, i totally understand them as being sports, just not the typical kind.
anyway, i also like that Madison’s thinking about greg. she is jealous lol she also wants to spend more time with him too. this isn’t just a watching to punish greg, it’s giving her something more to talk with him about. it’s kinda nice. I just wish she could see that her treatment of him is what’s driving him more to Kenzie. and also driving Cindy in a different direction than she’s probably thinking it is.
One thing I’ve been wondering about the whole McKenzie thing is, madsion cannot be left alone while McKenzie goes off with tennis so what will happen there as madsion would have to be 18 ? Also I feel like the best option would be to keep Greg and Cindy together and then split time with the two girls maybe month by month or quarterly?
I am surprised with how well Madison is controlling Cindy, she is being short sighted and not using the soccer match’s as a way to bond and control Greg away from mostly gone Kenz.
Cindy’s hair looks better but Madison must have forgot to dress her lol
1) Ah! “Bread and Circuses”. The masses are pacified and pay less attention to the issues at hand.
The LLS is a method of normalizing the social situation of Littles.
2) “Honestly,” she said, “if he’d just stop being weird about McKenzie all the time, he’d be having a way better night.” Cindy should “suggest” to Madison that perhaps if she treated Greg more like McKenzie does, then he would probably stop doing that.
3) “He acted like it was real sports.” I suspect Madison would have this viewpoint about any Little activity that paralleled a “normal” activity (fashion shows, talent contests, etc…)
4) “Do you think he’d be mad I’m watching this without him?” Madison asked suddenly. She’s hoping that her punishment is hitting home.
5) Madison made a small face. “Well, he should’ve acted better.” Let’s face it, she punished Greg out of jealousy.
6) “Besides,” she said, “you’re here.” Well she did promise some one on one time with Cindy.
7) “You miss him.” She misses the pre-Smallara Greg and her pre-Smallara life (although it was a tainted life).
X) I know you don’t want to write anything explicit, but I feel you need to either show Greg and Cindy in more traditional husband and wife dialog and actions (embracing, kissing, not just “bucking” each other up when they are depressed), OR show how their marriage is falling apart and they are just 2 Littles that share the same habitat. Perhaps explore how they would mentally prepare for the possible schism that would occur if McKenzie took Greg permanently.
I agree. Since Greg is the only male little in their community, do they push the pet person narrative and make him breed with the other littles to sell the babies for money to genitech?