The Anklebiters; A long shortstack story (teaser) (Patreon)

I was more of a disgrace than ever. There wasn't a lot of demand for a half-orc in general: don't have the looks, and don't have the brawn. I'd tried my hand at Murder Ball when I was young, just to reach the bottom of the barrel. The trolls could trample me and the elves could outrun me. Even as a half-orc, I was more stocky than tall; enough of a runt that there were plain humans who were taller than me. I stuck with it as long as I could before realizing I was beat. Luckily, I avoided being sold off as a slave (or worse, the water boy), somebody saw the talent in me as a coach. I was a decently bright guy, and unlike most coaches, I had actual experience from all my practice. They stuck me with a small-time orc team; they didn't respect me, but damned if they didn't listen up when I laid out a play. The meathead had a real good run for a few seasons.

Of course, that fell apart too. We went against an ogre team, and it turns out the Rocktooth brothers had a grudge against Bigsledge's ancestors for some reason they'd both forgotten. They got into a war frenzy and by the end of it, my entire team was dead on the field. The ogres were only mostly dead with a few crippled, which counted as a victory for them. A dead team means a dead reputation, and there I was, drinking the last of my gold away before someone either shanked me over a lost bet or snatched me up for hard labor since I didn't have to cash to prove my worth.

It's when I met my first Anklebiter. The little redheaded dwarf came up to my table, taking a deep breath that did some wonderful things to her chest. "Excuse me... are you really Tanner Burnside?"

I give her a frown. I must stand out with the mixed features. Black human hair that I try to keep trim, and skin a kind of pink and green that looks like a healing bruise. A thick jaw with stubby human teeth and some stubble that refuses to become an actual beard. 6 feet from sole to skull, and broad but not quite muscular. Short version is I get all the worst from each side of my parent. I wear a plain shirt and jacket with some cotton pants; nothing fancy to minimize the attention. So much for that.

Recognition is a lot more fun when you're famous. Less so when you're being spit on in the streets. The people of Domepiece took their Murder Ball very seriously. "That's me. What do I owe  you?" I grunt.

She smiles so big that she catches my eye, heart and dick all at once. "Oh my pantheon! You're really here! I've wanted to meet you for years! I was there when you beat the Northgate Nightmares! I couldn't believe it!"

Ah, that one. Murder Ball had very few rules besides "get the ball over there," and that meant it was impossible to get something as simple as "getting rained out" like other sports. In that particular game, a dragon had attacked the city, and we still won the game while the stadium was on fire. Half the crowd had even stayed to see how it ended. I have to grin a bit and rap a finger on the table. "Yea, that was somethin'..."

"So I have a big favor to ask you..." I size up the dwarf as she talks, and given dwarves, it doesn't take very long. She's a stocky little thing, three feet of fat and muscle packed into a soft little ball of a woman. She's topped with a full head of red hair, drawn into two thick, elaborate braids coming over her shoulders. She has rust-red freckles trailing over her nose from cheek to cheek, and a heaping helping of them over the plump hills of her cleavage. Pouty lips and big hips make her overall a lot bigger than something so small has the right to be. She's wearing a long-sleeved dress with what looks like a combination corset and breastplate, all of which seem to work as a team to heft up those watermelon-sized jugs of hers.

"I don't have a lot to give out right now," I grumble.

"I mean, if you'd just consider," she urges, putting a thick little hand on my thigh. Maybe it's all she can reach from down there, but it gets my attention again (even if that attention quickly gets lost looking down at her tit again). "The girls and I... we're looking for a manager."

My ears open back up. Running little league for the dwarves isn't an ideal position, but it beats a cage. The little guys can't move around too quickly, but they're practically made of iron themselves. Then again... "Did you say 'the girls?"

The dwarf nods and poked a thumb back over her shoulder. I follow her lead and there's a table in the corner of variously drinking, squabbling and cackling women of various species. A halfling, a goblin, a gnome, a kobold, some sort of dark-skinned creature that looked like a very young dark elf... all of them women, all of them 4 feet tall at most.

"You are shitting me," I mutter. "For like... cheerleaders, right?" Don't get me wrong: women were absolutely welcomed in Murder Ball. The Amazon Amazons (they're not great with names out there) had taken the cup a few times in their days. Some even got paid extra for being both eye candy and able to punch and run with the big boys. But some of these chicks were barely bigger than the ball.

"No," the dwarf laughed. "We want to play! We've got enough players and the money between us to enter, but we want to have a coach before we go into pro Murder Ball."

I just stand up to leave. Let them find me and shake my tab out of me. "I don't need this shit," I mutter. "Look, red..."

"Gilda," she corrects, still smiling at me.

"Look, Gilda. If you bunch want some kind of groupie orgy later, come find me. You're cute, and the bunch of you stacked up might even look like a real woman. But if I-"

There's a strangely familiar sound of hard leather grinding on wood. I barely notice that the dwarf's shifted her feet under her dress, and some thick boots slide into view from under the skirt. I don't get to look back at her face before she launches herself the couple of feet between us and shoves both of her palms right into my stomach. Now, I've never been hit by a train, but I've been hit by a troll, and I imagine it's not that different. Being tackled by Gilda was all that squashed down into one little bundle of sexy. It was a cannonball rather than an entire ogre falling on top of you. You get pretty good with gauging distances when you're in Murder Ball, and I must have flown back 10 yards through the air before I even landed on my back. Not even Guntar from my currently deceased Bloodstones could knock me that far in one shot.

I try to shake the cobwebs to gather where I landed and who I pissed off, but Gilda's there before that happens. She smiles down at me, even if her tits block out most of her face from down here, and she plants the sole of her boot right on my treacherously erect cock. She is even heavier than she looks.

"I'd like you to reconsider, sir," she says, still beaming confidently. "I think we've got the stuff. The Anklebiters could really use a coach. Can’t we do ANYthing to convince you?"