Katie Mitchell Vs. The Christmas Cheer-Up (TK)

Fresh out of helping her family save humanity, Katie returns to Kentwood for winter break as the Mitchells celebrate their first Christmas since their daughter got accepted into college. The trouble is, Katie's been an emotional wreck for weeks now, and her blue mood is about to bring down the family's holiday spirit. With the imminent festivities in grave peril, the Mitchells need to do something about her Grinch-ness, and fast!

DISCLAIMER: The following story contains mild spoilers for The Mitchells vs. The Machines. It is recommended to watch the movie itself before reading this story, but such is not required for enjoyment of it.

I know I'm supposed to be working through all the pre-paid commissions on my to-do list, but this story manifested all but fully-formed in my brain while I was trying to sleep two nights before Christmas Day with a raucous warcry of "OH BOY, 3 A.M.!" and wouldn't let up until I got it out there for everyone to see. What can I say? I love this movie with all my heart, and for my taste there's just not nearly enough tickling content for it (and it's so unfortunate that what little I've seen of it has me... concerned, at least from my standpoint). I figured that with its morals and the dynamics among the members of the titular family, it deserved a wholesome fluff story for the holidays, and what better way to go about that than to surprise a depressed Katie with some nice wake-up tickling? I'll admit, I've been writing "cheer-up tickling"-type stories for a while now, and admittedly that plot is a guilty pleasure of mine, but even if I really should try a different kind of tickle fic next time for variety's sake, there really was no other option that made sense for either the characters or the occasion. Whether or not you'll get to see Katie get wrecked again in the future, in written or illustrated form, is a matter of debate due to how busy I am overall, but I hope you've enjoyed what I've produced here and now - and if you haven't seen The Mitchells vs. the Machines for yourself yet, do it. It's available on Netflix if you want to give it a watch, and I promise you won't regret doing so!

There's one more seasonal work I have in-progress, as those of you who've been following me on Patreon have already seen, but I doubt I'll be able to get the final product done until after today, so hopefully this is a good Yuletide standby. Regardless, I hope you enjoy reading this, and as the old saying goes: Merry Christmas to all, and to all, good night! <3

The Mitchells vs. the Machines (c) Mike Rianda and Sony Pictures Animation

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Katie Mitchell Vs. The Christmas Cheer-Up

by Skaea

Contains: */F, F/F, and MF*/F tickling, including both foot and upper-body tickling. SFW.

 

Word Count: 6,389

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Childhood nicknames and pinched cheeks: The two most annoying parts of family reunions. I mean, don't get me wrong, my family is a loving one and I’m happy to have people in my life who care, but believe me, as a college student, it gets old pretty fast.

My name is Katie Mitchell. You might know me and my family if you’ve seen the national news — it all started just last year, shortly after I was accepted into film school in California. I’d already booked a simple flight to Cali to get there, and that would've been that, but my dad just had to argue with me the night before, and then drag — erm, take me and the family on a road trip instead because he thought the relationship between me and the rest of the family was in jeopardy. Things got… a lot wilder from there, to say the least.

See, there was this rogue A.I., PAL, that decided to eject all of humanity into the depths of space, and from what I heard it was because she was declared obsolete by her creator, and was not happy about that. Alone among everyone in America at the minimum, the Mitchells — that’s us — managed to escape capture. In all the confusion, we somehow managed to befriend two of the shiny new androids that PAL had sent after us, and with Eric and Deborahbot 5000 by our side, we made it our mission to stop the killer program before it was too late. It was a long, hard journey, full of misery and feel-good moments and shiny-metal-butt-kicking and, of course, family bonding, but in the end, we managed to shut down PAL for good, saving both all of humanity and the love we had for each other.

So yeah, it had been one crazy week.

Once all had been said and done, we were celebrated as heroes, and rightly so. We got medals of honor and everything! But after that, things just… died down. There wasn’t much of anything that happened after that, at least not on the same scale as what PAL did. If I had to be honest, though, I’m grateful for that. I already had college, a girlfriend, and an amazing family I’d managed to reconnect with, and if anything else tried to take all of that away from me, they’d have another thing coming.

As it was, though, I was mostly away from Kentwood, Michigan, trying to enjoy my time in college, but holiday breaks, naturally, entailed visiting family for a weekend, maybe two. Such was the case for the winter break after that time when we saved the world, and this time, I arrived by plane.

Naturally, the rest of the family was there to greet me at the airport, and Eric and Deborahbot 5000 were, too, attracting no small amount of odd looks as they displayed a giant hologram of my face with the flashing words “WELCOME HOME, KATIE MITCHELL!” above it. What surprised everyone else, though, was the look I had on my face a second before I saw them, forcing myself to smile and greet Mom and Dad and Aaron and the androids as cheerfully as I could. Even Monchi was there, on a leash held by my brother, and petting him as he nuzzled my leg did help me feel better, if only just a little bit.

The usual parental displays of affection (I mean, “Kitty-Katie”? Seriously? I hadn’t heard that since I was like, ten…) were already grating on my nerves, though. It was a wonder I managed to hide the irritation, but it was so uncharacteristic of me that it was actually pretty scary. But there was worse to come.

The car ride home was uneventful, and I did try to look like I was fine, but in truth, I… wasn’t. I didn’t want to get into it, though, because I knew the rest of my family was in much higher spirits and didn’t want to ruin it for them. It was, after all, Christmas Eve. I didn’t talk that much with the others, though, despite Aaron trying to pry me with dinosaur-related trivia as he was wont to do, or my dad worrying every now and then that something had happened that made me want to clam up more than usual. I’d insisted that I was doing okay, but we could all tell it had sounded increasingly forced each time.

It wasn’t until dinner time that everything went straight down the toilet. Because of course it would at that exact time of day, during that specific hour, localized entirely within our dining room.