Never Forget A Birthday

She knew the old man was still there without even turning to face him. She could feel his eyes wandering over her exposed skin. Worse still, she could also feel his gaze fall on the "Friendship is Magic!" that was her ass was now the billboard for.

"Oh God!" Tanya whispered. Summoning up some small amount of courage from the pit of her stomach, she turned to half face her unwanted companion. Unwilling to flash her pony at someone who was obviously two decades her senior, Tanya made a play for his sympathy.

"Excuse me sir, could I ask you to leave please?" She tried to force a smile on to her face, but her body language was almost doubled-over.

She got no reaction from him.

"Excuse me sir... my boyfriend is playing a bit of a prank on me... and I don't think he'd want you to see me kick his ass when he comes out, so... umm... perhaps you could... find somewhere else?"

The older man's breathing was quickening at the point, and a more-than-slightly-creepy grin was breaking across his face.

"You look really nice." he said. If he'd calculated his words to cause maximum embarrassment to Tanya, then the effect on her would have been beyond his wildest dreams.

Tanya spun around so she was facing away from him. Throwing both hands on to her ass, so as to cover the words, she kicked at the cubicle door one more time.

"Mitchell!" she pleaded.

Finally, and even though only thirty seconds had passed, she gave up on trying to get to her clothes. Bolting for another cubicle, she reached the temporary sanctuary and slammed the door shut. Inside the small empty changing area, she was confronted by the sight of herself in a floor-to-ceiling mirror. That did nothing to improve Tanya's state of mind. Even though technically everything was covered, she could see the humiliation etched on her own face, and was painfully aware at just how absurd her adult body looked in such childish, cartoonish attire.

Tanya was a proud woman, and liked to consider that she was fairly mature. She'd outgrown all of this over ten years ago, and right now all she mentally picture was the mental image of an older, maybe forty year old man. A man who was salivating over seeing her in these tight, skimpy pink panties, and a crop top that was basically a glorified bra when forced over her twenty-something frame.

Damn it Mitchell!

She tried to calm herself down and consider her options, a survey that didn't last long at all, and merely resulted in more panic when she realised she had absolutely no options at all.

She could hear somebody outside fumble with something on the floor, undoubtedly the old man still. She realised bitterly that she'd actually been lucky that there had only been one other person there. The shop was busy, and there would be people coming and going from the changing rooms all the time.

Even in the privacy of the changing cubicle, she instinctively covered up with her arms, in as much as she could. As her mind danced from one scenario to the next, she finally heard another cubicle door open. The sound of footsteps echoed through the changing room, heading towards the exit before turning around and covering the distance to her own current refuge.

Mitchell knocked lightly on the door.

"Hey beautiful!" Mitchell called out, cheerfully. "Come on out sweetheart, we've got more shopping to do!"

"Give me my other clothes back first." Tanya shot back. She half-opened the door and stuck a hand out, to receive the clothes that Mitchell had so rudely deprived her of.

After half a minute of waiting, she stuck her face out, with an accusing glare.

"Well," Mitchell did say, maintaining a reasonable tone, "you did say before that you'd do anything I want."

Tanya stomped a foot, and stuck her hand out again. Mitchell looked down at it, and then shrugged his shoulders in a semi-apologetic way.

"Sorry sweetheart, I gave your old clothes to that nice man who you gave a show too. Sort of like a memento to remember you by." he added, with audible amusement.

"?!" was all Tanya could manage at that. "Are you kidding me?" she finally added.

"Well, it's probably true that he'll remember you without needing the memento..." Mitchell conceded, "but I did hate to have to send him away empty-handed."

"So... so... what am I going to wear?!" Tanya said, the defiance knocked out of her, and the pleading returning back to her voice.

Mitchell initially offered polite silence in return, and gave Tanya a mildly confused expression.

Eventually, he broke the silence. "Well, Tanya... let's face it. We both know you forgot my birthday."

Tanya started to object, but then realised she had neither the facts nor the situation on her side. Grumbling, she conceded the point.

"So, you said you'd be my birthday present." Mitchell shrugged. "Fair enough, I'm happy to accept that."

Tanya looked up at Mitchell. "Yes, but I didn't mean..."

Mitchell held a hand up to stop Tanya in mid-sentence.

"'But' nothing, I'm afraid." Mitchell said, firmly, "you're my present and I have selected the appropriate wrapping. I may choose to unwrap my present later on, but for the time being I'm happy with the presentation..."

Tanya's mind raced with the implications of what he might be suggesting. Surely not, she thought. Surely he wouldn't.

"So, as long as you're happy to keep up your promise, I'll leave my present wrapped," Mitchell paused, "for the time being."

Mitchell winked at that, Tanya's defences crumbled.

"So... you're going to make me walk around in this?!" she whined, processing the full horror of what was playing out in front of her.

"Well, we've got to go pay for them first," Mitchell reminded her, "so follow me and we'll get my real present. Once we have that, I think I might be so kind as to relieve you of your ill-advised promise."

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Tanya twisted one way and another before eventually realising that she actually had no real way of escaping this. For any other sins she might be prone to commit, she was a woman to keep a promise, and on one level she was still feeling guilty about forgetting his birthday. Again.

Cautiously at first, and then with a final resignation to her fate, Tanya stepped out of the cubicle. In a daze, Mitchell took her hand one more time, and they walked calmly out of the changing rooms to the wider world outside. Well, Mitchell walked calmly. Tanya walked like she on hot coals, her one free hand flying from panties to crop top with the indecision of someone with too much to cover, and too little to cover it with.

Dragged out into the busy store beyond, there was no one angle to cover up to avoid exposure. Her hand danced around, sometimes protecting her exposed skin, before changing it's mind and trying to hide the humiliatingly childish clothing that was her own source of "modesty".

Mitchell didn't slow down, and it wouldn't have helped Tanya if he did. Instead, he confidently walked up to a cashier, and proudly presented Tanya to a clearly shocked woman.

"I'd like to buy these please." Mitchell said, as if he was buying something as simple and mundane as a t-shirt. After the woman behind the counter made no move to do anything, Mitchell looked bemused at Tanya, and then thought to add "I mean the clothes. Not the woman of course. I apparently already own her today."

Shaking herself out of a shocked stupor, the woman looked deep into Tanya's eyes. Tanya replied with a nervous laugh, and tried bravely to pass this off as normal.

The expression on the assistant's face wasn't helping though.

"Miss. We... we don't normally have our customers wear the clothes out of the store." Left unsaid, but clearly evident in her reaction, was the fact the their adult customers don't normally buy these clothes either.

"Are you perhaps... looking for a larger size in... perhaps something more... grown-up?"

The assistant seemed to be trying to be polite and helpful, but every word she uttered drove the point of Tanya's embarrassment deeper into her soul.

"Can... can we just pay for these and go? Please?" Tanya said, quietly. She was aware she was attracting more and more attention with every moment that passed, and this scene at the cashier's desk was making an already self-conscious woman turn into a red-faced mess of humiliation.

Mitchell held the tags that were still on the clothes, and suggested that the assistant come around and scan them.

"Sorry sir..." the confused woman said, "the scanner won't reach that far."

Mitchell looked briefly at the cable that attached it to her computer, and had to concede the point.

"Well Tanya, looks like you may need to lean over the counter."

Tanya's heart skipped a beat at that thought. She knew what that meant the second he'd said it. She'd be leaning over the counter, and her ass would be stuck up in the air. "Friendship is Magic" she thought, bitterly.

There was no option though. If they didn't pay, she'd have take the items off if they were to leave the store. That didn't even bare thinking about. Especially as Mitchell may think about baring her at any moment.

Steeling herself, and with a groan, Tanya leaned over the counter, and resigned herself to the fact that her ass was now on prominent display to everyone behind her. She heard a few whistles and laughs. She'd always been on show of course, but now she was sticking her ass up like an open invitation to be checked out.

Of course the assistant struggled to scan the barcode. Of course that meant to that the time she was leaned over the counter stretched out into an eternity of embarrassment. She gritted her teeth.

Finally the blessed sound of the scanner successfully reading the barcode chirped in her ear.

Thank God! she thought.

"Ahh.. miss. I need to scan the panties now." The other woman's voice shook with uncertainty. This was clearly new territory for her too.

With clenched fists, Tanya spun herself around so she was now sitting on the desk. She then shimmied closer to the scanner with clear awkwardness, and was horrified to see that the old man from the changing rooms had been standing behind her the entire time she'd had her ass in the air.

"Friendship is Magic!" he said loudly, with a wild grin and perving eyes.

Tanya shut her eyes tight. As the assistant tugged at the label, trying to get it closer to the scanner, Tanya tried futilely to pull the crop top down. Every time she tried to though, it bounced back up when she let go, and she was more than a little fearful that eventually it might bounce up and over her boobs. It was humiliating enough being in these stupid pink tween clothes, without adding "flashing" to the list.

Giving up on top, Tanya opened one eye. She was a little taken aback when she saw that the man - and the dozen or so other shoppers who were now her audience - was no longer looking at her exposed stomach or barely covered breasts.

No, he and the others were were looking further down than that. With dread, they followed their gaze, and let out a yelp when she realised what had happened. When she'd sat on the counter, she'd steadfastly kept her legs closed. Some small measure of modesty that was still within her control.

However, somewhere between the shuffling towards the scanner, the assistant's tugging on the tag, and her own fixation with her top, her legs had parted.

With her legs splayed out on the counter, and facing a full crowd of men and women, she belatedly realised she was showing everyone the Pony covering her pussy.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! Tanya thought, as her mind - unbidden - pictured what she must look like. A twenty something adult woman, with pink frilly panties and a stupid cartoon pony that were way too small and way too young for her. She felt like any sense of her own maturity was melting away, and she looked desperately at the assistant.

"Come on, please!" she said.

With some measure of sympathy, the assistant tried her best to scan the tag, and was finally rewarded with a successful chirp.

Without needing to be told, Tanya hopped off the counter and dropped to her knees.

"Sir." the assistant said, the sheer unrealness of the situation peppering her attempt at a professional tone with a far higher pitch than normal, "that will be $30."

Mitchell grinned.

"Cheap at twice the price." he said, smoothly. Looking at his girlfriend, who was huddled on the ground with her arms wrapped around her legs, he handed over the money and then beckoned for Tanya to follow. With a jaunty whistle, he headed for the exit and the mall beyond.

********

The walk through the mall was excruciating for Tanya. Before today, she would have told anyone who'd asked that the mall she and Mitchell usually went to was a small and modest shopping centre. Now it seemed as large as one of the Great Lakes, and just as difficult to walk across. Every step seemed like a mile, and she was all too conscious of the fact that wherever she went, people stared and pointed.

Mitchell seemed oblivious to this, and was happily chatting away about what he wanted to buy. Tanya hadn't heard a word he'd said. She was only vaguely aware of being steered towards a shop in the west wing of the mall. On the other hand, she was painfully aware that the small panties she was wearing were beginning to ride up into her ass with every movement she made.

Caught between the predicament of wanting to spare her naked ass from being on display, while not wanting some stupid cartoon slogan to humiliate her further, Tanya instead just tried to focus on what was directly in front of her.

She could feel her ears burning as she caught the occasional snigger, laugh, and shouted innuendo from nameless people around her.

Eternity stretched out in front of her as Tanya felt herself become the focal point of discussion wherever she was led. Just as the panties were beginning to ride up, causing some painful bunching and exposing more and more skin around the edges, her wildly inappropriate top was also shifting around her chest.

Tanya lived in fear that the top would flash a boob at some point, or worse yet, that the stretched material would somehow give way. The stitching was cheap, and she could feel it strain. The designers clearly hadn't thought that their large size for a typical eleven year old would one day be asked to cover the breasts of a grown twenty-something woman.

Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, she gripped tight on to Mitchell's hand. Trying to distract herself from the scene that she was creating, and the mental images she was leaving in the minds of whoever saw her, Tanya switched to trying to listen to her boyfriend.

Mitchell was apparently reaching the conclusion of some line of conversation that he'd merrily been continuing all by himself for the past five minutes.

"So," Mitchell finished, "I reckon that with the movie coming out next year, that now's the time to buy it before the price skyrockets any further!"

What the hell was he talking about? Tanya thought. Could the man not see how embarrassed she was, having to parade around in this stupid, tiny pink, girly outfit for the whole world to see? She was a grown woman for fuck's sake. How many grown women walk around a public space in pink My Little Pony panties several sizes too small, and a crop top that barely covers her boobs? None, that was the exact number of women who'd do that, Tanya chided herself. How was she going to live this down if they came across some of their friends?

Not for the first time today, she swore at herself for forgetting Mitchell's birthday, and then making the dumb decision to promise her "compliance" as his gift.

How could she have foreseen it would have led to this though, she thought, grinding her teeth as the wild thought that this may not be the worst of what today would offer.

Looking up, she noticed they were now making a direct line for a nearby shop, and her heart sank as she realised precisely what shop it was. The comic book shop. Oh Christ, Tanya thought, shaking slightly.

She'd been in there before, dragged in by Mitchell after he'd admitted he still read comic books. Tanya remembered snorting derisively at that announcement, but had - in her mind - demonstrated great maturity by looking past such a childish hobby and still loving Mitchell for his other fine qualities.

Quite what those fine qualities were, Tanya could not currently be drawn on.

Her impression of Mitchell's hobby hadn't improved on the one occasion she'd been in the store. The dank smell of sweaty men had not been a turn on, and she recalled feeling slightly superior to the shop's inhabitants. Of course, that was back when she was appropriately dressed. That was back when she wasn't dressed like some immature eleven year old.

Oh no, no, no!

Tanya instinctively pulled back, and tried to silently encourage Mitchell to rethink. Her embarrassment was matched only by his determination though, and within moments she found herself crossing the threshold of the shop, and into a whole new world beyond.

Any conversation that might have been happening between the half a dozen shop regulars ceased immediately as Tanya hovered into view. The sharp light of the store, and the relatively open style of the shelves and aisles, meant there she was clearly visible from all angles of the relatively small shop.

The tall red head actually towered over most of the regulars at the best of times, and there was certainly no indication that they were looking at her face now. No, their eyes were firmly fixed further south, and Tanya gave a short whimper as she resumed her futile tugging at the material.

The noise of a large book hitting the floor announced the fact that the Store Manager was now solely fixated on Tanya.

"Ahh... Mitchell?" he stammered, instinctively pushing at the pair of glasses that hung awkwardly off his face.

The rotund forty year old man wore a Superman shirt that was sharing the same struggles in covering his body as Tanya's top had in covering hers. The only difference was that his top was an extra large adult t-shirt, and had a hefty and hairy stomach to deal with. The shirt was tucked into a pair of dark black jeans, and a mop of poorly combed brown hair sat like a disgruntled ferret on his head.

Tanya resorted back to her old strategy of having one arm across her breasts, and one hand shoved down by the crotch of her panties. That this brought even more attention to her attire was the penalty for not wanting to have these guys to see what decorated her current outfit.

Of the five other people in the store, only one was a woman - a nondescript brunette in heavyset clothing that hid her figure. The Tanya of an hour ago would have recoiled from wearing what the other woman had on, but right now it seemed like the most beautiful and desirable creation of a world-class fashion designer.

Tanya yearned to hide her own exposed body behind those wonderful layers of baggy pants and jumper, and she surprised herself with a clearly audible groan of longing.

The sound of her own uncontrolled reaction served only to embarrass her more, and her face was steadily turning a beetroot red.

Mitchell was already walking up to the front counter, where the manager stood slack jawed in his appraisal of Tanya. Scuttling after him, she heard Mitchell open up by asking immediately for some weird Batman collectable.

Distracted as he was by checking out Tanya's lame attempts at covering up, the manager initially didn't react to Mitchell's attempts at conversation. It took some clicking of fingers in front of his face, and several coughs from Mitchell, before he reluctantly dragged his attention of the beautiful, severely under-dressed redhead standing nervously in front of him.

"Wh... what is it..." he looked with unfocussed eyes at the man in front of him, a man whose name he should easily remembered, and yet struggled to think of who he actually was.