Sablesword
06-15-2006, 01:38 AM
Hyperticklish Part 2
by Sablesword
In the promised fifteen minutes, the admittance buzzer sounded. "Enter," Cecilia called, just as if she had the power to deny permission. She was dressed, as instructed in the prisoner-orange outfit, with her hair put up in a tight and sturdy coil. She'd received training for when and how to be prompt, as well as for when and how to be royally late, at least when it came to simple clothing such as this.
She heard the click-clunk of the exterior lock disengaging, but the door didn't slide open. Instead, after a few moments, her terminal lit up to show the face of Kurt Bonner. "Your Highness," he told her. "Please place your hands behind your back, wrists against the restraint belt." Cecilia complied and felt the belt activate, straps unrolling from the belt to wrap around her wrists and pin them in place. They felt like standard restraint straps, operating on the same principle as the cuffs she had worn when she had been brought on board. They'd hold her wrists in a loose grip most of the time, tightening if she tried to struggle and relaxing when she gave in. And they would not release unless they received a signal from an authorized control unit at least two meters away. So even if a prisoner managed to obtain a remote, she would be unable to free herself.
The terminal went dark and the door slid open. "Thank you, Your Highness," Kurt told her in the flesh. "And now we're wanted in the Catalyst Room."
"Yes, Sir," Cecilia answered.
Kurt guided her down the passageway, a hand resting lightly on her shoulder. "Don't worry about it; you're permitted to get things wrong the first time or two. And in case May didn't tell you: SOP whenever we come for you is to place your hands behind your back, for the restraint belt. Whether we use it or not will depend, but you're always to give us that option."
"All right Sir, I'll remember that."
"And call me Kurt, please. Or 'Sir Kurt' - I once read somewhere that pirates were the social equivalent of knights, to their captives, and I've always wanted to be a knight."
Cecilia heard the smile in his voice and relaxed a bit. "That isn't exactly how that custom worked," she said, "but it will be as you please, Sir Kurt."
The trip to the Catalyst Room wasn't all that short; even a small star-freighter had hundreds of meters of passageway. The deck surface wasn't the livetex shag of the royal quarters, or even the short-pile livetex carpet of the royal yacht. Rather it was a more utilitarian surface, with a woven surface texture like old-fashioned canvas and a very slight give. And it was warm. Overall, it wasn't the best surface to make a barefoot captive walk on, but it was also far from the worst. Cecilia smiled slightly, remembering past encounters with cold stone tile.
The Catalyst Room had three couches, each one similar to the recliner that Cecilia had sat in for her last session with her tutor. But these couches looked sturdier, less elegant and more functional. They were not simulators to allow a tutor to tune a princess's musical laughter and map her ticklishness. They were real, with metallic cones overhead to collect the mirth-energies released by their occupants.
The mirth energies from the Catalyst Room could be piped to the hyperdrive as "live mirth" to greatly increase the drive's performance via some little-understood process. With all three chairs piping live mirth to the drive the Merryweather could, in theory, cut the usual two-week hyperspace jump down to under a day. In practice however, the mirth energies were usually stored in special capacitors, or "cans." This "canned laughter" produced a smaller performance boost than live mirth, but also put much less strain on the system. Normally the Merryweather would make a jump in five to seven days - which was still over twice as fast as the larger starships that did without Catalyst technology.
In addition to the three couches, the Catalyst room held equipment racks along one wall and a workstation wedged into one corner. Frank Wotusu sat at this station, dressed in the same plain spacer-alls and deckshoes as Sir Kurt. Ming MacArthur was in the room as well, sitting on the edge of one of the couches. Unlike the two male crewmembers, she was barefoot, and wore short pants and a blouse of jewel-toned fabric. It was, Cecilia realized, a mass-produced knock-off of one of her custom-made outfits. Former outfits, she corrected the thought. She had left her wardrobe behind, and from now one would only have such clothing as her captors deemed fit to give her.
"We've all received knighthoods, at least for the duration," Kurt announced. "I told you that pirates were the equivalent of knights to their captives. You're Sir Frank, and you're Sir Ming."
"Dame Ming," the crew-woman corrected him.
"Dame Ming, then. And you're both relieved."
"Thank you, Sir Kurt," Frank said. He stood up and threw an ironic salute. "Dame Ming, if you would care for an escort?"
"Certainly, Sir Frank." The two linked arms and walked - swished - out of the room in a deliberate parody of courtly manners.
Kurt shook his head. Stepping back out of the two-meter zone, he released Cecilia's wrists from the restraint belt. "Take the center couch, Your Highness." She did so, and was quickly rendered helpless, her feet in energy-stocks, and her hands above her head in another set of energy restraints. Kurt brought out a portable ticklebot and a set of manual devices from the equipment rack, and set them up. "Manual calibration first," he told her cheerfully as he selected a feather and began to apply it to her right sole.
Princess Cecilia started giggling as soon as she felt the feather surveying her naked foot. She produced further musical giggling, squirming slightly, as the gentle tickling took in both feet, locating all the most sensitive lines and spots. The sensation was much like that her tutor had inflicted on her, but this time would not be like the brief tickles of her tutoring, or even the longer endurance tests she had occasionally been subjected to. Always before, in the back of her mind, was the knowledge that she could make the tickling stop if she pleaded for a full five minutes. Now, however, she was truly a captive, and her captors would simply keep tickling her. And she would be completely helpless and unable to do a single thing about it.
She squirmed and giggled some more, as she saw - and felt - Sir Kurt switch to an implement with a one-centimeter ball at the end. She felt the tickling sensations as it repeated the feather's survey of her bare soles. She knew that it was just a preliminary, a "manual calibration" as Sir Kurt had said. She knew that the couch was recording her reactions, feeding the results into the ticklebot that sat inert to the side. She let herself enjoy the current gentle tickling, her feelings tinged with only a touch of apprehension. Once the real tickling began, she knew, her perception would be of nine parts ecstasy to one part of agony - the ideal proportions for a Princess of Lorane.
Those proportions were the result of training as much as genetics, but Princess Cecilia was confident that they would hold. They hadn't ever slipped during the last two years of her tutoring, except for the one time when her conditioning had been deliberately tested. In that session, when her subconscious mind had noticed the ecstasy ratio slipping, it had triggered hysteria, making Cecilia fight franticly against her bonds and beg shamelessly for the tickling to end. And it did end, after five eternal minutes. More importantly, though, the agony increase was arrested during those five minutes, preventing Cecilia from falling into a helltickle.
The probing tickle-survey stopped, and Princess Cecilia felt her heart pound in anticipation of her first real tickling. She took a calming breath, and watched as Sir Kurt punched some numbers into the inert ticklebot at his side. The tickling machine continued to sit there for a moment, and Cecilia knew it was digesting the tickle-survey's results. Then the indicator lights blinked on, and the 'bot rose on its countergravity. Sir Kurt stepped back and repeated a hoary quip, one whose origins were lost in the mists of time: "And now, Your Highness, we will discuss the location of the hidden rebel base."
Cecilia groaned at the ancient joke as Sir Kurt grinned at her. Then she squeaked as the ticklebot suddenly sprouted a dozen implements. She watched the devices spin and wiggle and slowly wave back and forth as the 'bot extended them toward her helpless soles. She felt them make contact, and once again Princess Cecilia began to laugh.
It was indeed a "real" tickling that the 'bot inflicted on Cecilia's helpless bare feet. A richer tickling than any she had experienced in her tutoring. It made her feet feel supremely present. And alive. And sensitive. The touch of the various brushes, air jets, and slippery-firm probes was irresistible, and Cecilia squirmed and twisted, pulling helplessly against the stocks that held her hands over her head and struggling uselessly to free her feet from the stocks at the foot of her couch. Musical laughter poured out from her. She couldn't stop it, not with a dozen devices tickling the spaces between her toes, and across the balls of her feet, and up and down her instep and in tiny circles on her heel. She felt them applied individually and in combinations, exploiting the tickle-map that Sir Kurt had explored with his "manual calibration."
Over her laughter, Princess Cecilia heard Sir Kurt speaking over at the workstation. "Bridge? Catalyst. We have live mirth."
After what seemed like an eon, the initial intense tickling subsided. Princess Cecilia could catch her breath, but was not allowed to relax. She could feel the ticklebot lick out with an occasional, sudden touch, making her squirm and giggle once again. This period of semi-rest, Cecilia knew, would keep her from becoming desensitized. Not that there seemed to be much danger of that, at the moment. Her feet still felt supremely vulnerable, as the energy stocks held them immobile before the idling 'bot.
She saw Sir Kurt rise from his station and pull another ticklebot from the storage rack. At first she though that he was going to set two 'bots to tickle her two feet, but his actual plan proved much more... interesting.
He pulled Cecilia's tunic up, exposing her midriff, and she suddenly realized just why she had been given the tunic instead of the more usual set of spacer-alls. Just why Power Specialist Dame Ming wore that jewel-toned blouse. And just why her arms had been pinned over her head instead of at her sides.
"Yes, Your Highness," Sir Kurt confirmed. "Here on the Merryweather we do bellies as well as feet." He fingers then began dancing lightly across her belly, performing his "manual calibration," forcing more musical giggles from her. She felt his hands skillfully inflict light tickles along her sides, and a wiggling forefinger explore her bellybutton. Her wiggling did nothing to prevent him from discovering the most ticklish areas of her now-naked midriff, just as they had failed to stop his earlier tickle-survey of her bare feet. Nor did the occasional strokes that the first 'bot, still working on her feet, serve to distract her.
She shivered with anticipation when Sir Kurt stepped back to the workstation, for now it would be the ticklebots' turn. Two 'bots at once...
The first 'bot picked up its pace, and Princess Cecilia laughed helplessly as it worked new variations of its original tickles over the soles of her feet. Toes, insteps, balls, heels - no part was neglected. And now the second 'bot rose over her now-vulnerable midriff and extended feathers and brushes and squirming rubbery tentacles to apply a belly-tickle that matched the stimulation being applied to her feet. Cecilia laughed and writhed and squirmed helplessly as the mostly-pleasant tickling, tinted with just enough torment to make it poignant, extracted her mirth.
Over the next two hours, the ticklebots would often slow down and occasionally stop - but never both at once. The tickling might become slow and lazy, but it never ended. And Cecilia underwent intense tickle-bouts as well, during that shift. Sometimes she felt the 'bots apply their tickling in synchronization: Feet-belly-feet-belly. Sometimes they would both apply intense tickles at once, making her howl and convulse. By the time Sir Kurt finally released her, she was sweat-soaked, tear-stained, and exhausted. And pleased. She was Her Highness Melanie Cecilia Heather Kimiko DuCord, one of the Thousand Princesses of Lorane, and now a pirate captive. And she had just come through her first real tickling.
End of Part 2
by Sablesword
In the promised fifteen minutes, the admittance buzzer sounded. "Enter," Cecilia called, just as if she had the power to deny permission. She was dressed, as instructed in the prisoner-orange outfit, with her hair put up in a tight and sturdy coil. She'd received training for when and how to be prompt, as well as for when and how to be royally late, at least when it came to simple clothing such as this.
She heard the click-clunk of the exterior lock disengaging, but the door didn't slide open. Instead, after a few moments, her terminal lit up to show the face of Kurt Bonner. "Your Highness," he told her. "Please place your hands behind your back, wrists against the restraint belt." Cecilia complied and felt the belt activate, straps unrolling from the belt to wrap around her wrists and pin them in place. They felt like standard restraint straps, operating on the same principle as the cuffs she had worn when she had been brought on board. They'd hold her wrists in a loose grip most of the time, tightening if she tried to struggle and relaxing when she gave in. And they would not release unless they received a signal from an authorized control unit at least two meters away. So even if a prisoner managed to obtain a remote, she would be unable to free herself.
The terminal went dark and the door slid open. "Thank you, Your Highness," Kurt told her in the flesh. "And now we're wanted in the Catalyst Room."
"Yes, Sir," Cecilia answered.
Kurt guided her down the passageway, a hand resting lightly on her shoulder. "Don't worry about it; you're permitted to get things wrong the first time or two. And in case May didn't tell you: SOP whenever we come for you is to place your hands behind your back, for the restraint belt. Whether we use it or not will depend, but you're always to give us that option."
"All right Sir, I'll remember that."
"And call me Kurt, please. Or 'Sir Kurt' - I once read somewhere that pirates were the social equivalent of knights, to their captives, and I've always wanted to be a knight."
Cecilia heard the smile in his voice and relaxed a bit. "That isn't exactly how that custom worked," she said, "but it will be as you please, Sir Kurt."
The trip to the Catalyst Room wasn't all that short; even a small star-freighter had hundreds of meters of passageway. The deck surface wasn't the livetex shag of the royal quarters, or even the short-pile livetex carpet of the royal yacht. Rather it was a more utilitarian surface, with a woven surface texture like old-fashioned canvas and a very slight give. And it was warm. Overall, it wasn't the best surface to make a barefoot captive walk on, but it was also far from the worst. Cecilia smiled slightly, remembering past encounters with cold stone tile.
The Catalyst Room had three couches, each one similar to the recliner that Cecilia had sat in for her last session with her tutor. But these couches looked sturdier, less elegant and more functional. They were not simulators to allow a tutor to tune a princess's musical laughter and map her ticklishness. They were real, with metallic cones overhead to collect the mirth-energies released by their occupants.
The mirth energies from the Catalyst Room could be piped to the hyperdrive as "live mirth" to greatly increase the drive's performance via some little-understood process. With all three chairs piping live mirth to the drive the Merryweather could, in theory, cut the usual two-week hyperspace jump down to under a day. In practice however, the mirth energies were usually stored in special capacitors, or "cans." This "canned laughter" produced a smaller performance boost than live mirth, but also put much less strain on the system. Normally the Merryweather would make a jump in five to seven days - which was still over twice as fast as the larger starships that did without Catalyst technology.
In addition to the three couches, the Catalyst room held equipment racks along one wall and a workstation wedged into one corner. Frank Wotusu sat at this station, dressed in the same plain spacer-alls and deckshoes as Sir Kurt. Ming MacArthur was in the room as well, sitting on the edge of one of the couches. Unlike the two male crewmembers, she was barefoot, and wore short pants and a blouse of jewel-toned fabric. It was, Cecilia realized, a mass-produced knock-off of one of her custom-made outfits. Former outfits, she corrected the thought. She had left her wardrobe behind, and from now one would only have such clothing as her captors deemed fit to give her.
"We've all received knighthoods, at least for the duration," Kurt announced. "I told you that pirates were the equivalent of knights to their captives. You're Sir Frank, and you're Sir Ming."
"Dame Ming," the crew-woman corrected him.
"Dame Ming, then. And you're both relieved."
"Thank you, Sir Kurt," Frank said. He stood up and threw an ironic salute. "Dame Ming, if you would care for an escort?"
"Certainly, Sir Frank." The two linked arms and walked - swished - out of the room in a deliberate parody of courtly manners.
Kurt shook his head. Stepping back out of the two-meter zone, he released Cecilia's wrists from the restraint belt. "Take the center couch, Your Highness." She did so, and was quickly rendered helpless, her feet in energy-stocks, and her hands above her head in another set of energy restraints. Kurt brought out a portable ticklebot and a set of manual devices from the equipment rack, and set them up. "Manual calibration first," he told her cheerfully as he selected a feather and began to apply it to her right sole.
Princess Cecilia started giggling as soon as she felt the feather surveying her naked foot. She produced further musical giggling, squirming slightly, as the gentle tickling took in both feet, locating all the most sensitive lines and spots. The sensation was much like that her tutor had inflicted on her, but this time would not be like the brief tickles of her tutoring, or even the longer endurance tests she had occasionally been subjected to. Always before, in the back of her mind, was the knowledge that she could make the tickling stop if she pleaded for a full five minutes. Now, however, she was truly a captive, and her captors would simply keep tickling her. And she would be completely helpless and unable to do a single thing about it.
She squirmed and giggled some more, as she saw - and felt - Sir Kurt switch to an implement with a one-centimeter ball at the end. She felt the tickling sensations as it repeated the feather's survey of her bare soles. She knew that it was just a preliminary, a "manual calibration" as Sir Kurt had said. She knew that the couch was recording her reactions, feeding the results into the ticklebot that sat inert to the side. She let herself enjoy the current gentle tickling, her feelings tinged with only a touch of apprehension. Once the real tickling began, she knew, her perception would be of nine parts ecstasy to one part of agony - the ideal proportions for a Princess of Lorane.
Those proportions were the result of training as much as genetics, but Princess Cecilia was confident that they would hold. They hadn't ever slipped during the last two years of her tutoring, except for the one time when her conditioning had been deliberately tested. In that session, when her subconscious mind had noticed the ecstasy ratio slipping, it had triggered hysteria, making Cecilia fight franticly against her bonds and beg shamelessly for the tickling to end. And it did end, after five eternal minutes. More importantly, though, the agony increase was arrested during those five minutes, preventing Cecilia from falling into a helltickle.
The probing tickle-survey stopped, and Princess Cecilia felt her heart pound in anticipation of her first real tickling. She took a calming breath, and watched as Sir Kurt punched some numbers into the inert ticklebot at his side. The tickling machine continued to sit there for a moment, and Cecilia knew it was digesting the tickle-survey's results. Then the indicator lights blinked on, and the 'bot rose on its countergravity. Sir Kurt stepped back and repeated a hoary quip, one whose origins were lost in the mists of time: "And now, Your Highness, we will discuss the location of the hidden rebel base."
Cecilia groaned at the ancient joke as Sir Kurt grinned at her. Then she squeaked as the ticklebot suddenly sprouted a dozen implements. She watched the devices spin and wiggle and slowly wave back and forth as the 'bot extended them toward her helpless soles. She felt them make contact, and once again Princess Cecilia began to laugh.
It was indeed a "real" tickling that the 'bot inflicted on Cecilia's helpless bare feet. A richer tickling than any she had experienced in her tutoring. It made her feet feel supremely present. And alive. And sensitive. The touch of the various brushes, air jets, and slippery-firm probes was irresistible, and Cecilia squirmed and twisted, pulling helplessly against the stocks that held her hands over her head and struggling uselessly to free her feet from the stocks at the foot of her couch. Musical laughter poured out from her. She couldn't stop it, not with a dozen devices tickling the spaces between her toes, and across the balls of her feet, and up and down her instep and in tiny circles on her heel. She felt them applied individually and in combinations, exploiting the tickle-map that Sir Kurt had explored with his "manual calibration."
Over her laughter, Princess Cecilia heard Sir Kurt speaking over at the workstation. "Bridge? Catalyst. We have live mirth."
After what seemed like an eon, the initial intense tickling subsided. Princess Cecilia could catch her breath, but was not allowed to relax. She could feel the ticklebot lick out with an occasional, sudden touch, making her squirm and giggle once again. This period of semi-rest, Cecilia knew, would keep her from becoming desensitized. Not that there seemed to be much danger of that, at the moment. Her feet still felt supremely vulnerable, as the energy stocks held them immobile before the idling 'bot.
She saw Sir Kurt rise from his station and pull another ticklebot from the storage rack. At first she though that he was going to set two 'bots to tickle her two feet, but his actual plan proved much more... interesting.
He pulled Cecilia's tunic up, exposing her midriff, and she suddenly realized just why she had been given the tunic instead of the more usual set of spacer-alls. Just why Power Specialist Dame Ming wore that jewel-toned blouse. And just why her arms had been pinned over her head instead of at her sides.
"Yes, Your Highness," Sir Kurt confirmed. "Here on the Merryweather we do bellies as well as feet." He fingers then began dancing lightly across her belly, performing his "manual calibration," forcing more musical giggles from her. She felt his hands skillfully inflict light tickles along her sides, and a wiggling forefinger explore her bellybutton. Her wiggling did nothing to prevent him from discovering the most ticklish areas of her now-naked midriff, just as they had failed to stop his earlier tickle-survey of her bare feet. Nor did the occasional strokes that the first 'bot, still working on her feet, serve to distract her.
She shivered with anticipation when Sir Kurt stepped back to the workstation, for now it would be the ticklebots' turn. Two 'bots at once...
The first 'bot picked up its pace, and Princess Cecilia laughed helplessly as it worked new variations of its original tickles over the soles of her feet. Toes, insteps, balls, heels - no part was neglected. And now the second 'bot rose over her now-vulnerable midriff and extended feathers and brushes and squirming rubbery tentacles to apply a belly-tickle that matched the stimulation being applied to her feet. Cecilia laughed and writhed and squirmed helplessly as the mostly-pleasant tickling, tinted with just enough torment to make it poignant, extracted her mirth.
Over the next two hours, the ticklebots would often slow down and occasionally stop - but never both at once. The tickling might become slow and lazy, but it never ended. And Cecilia underwent intense tickle-bouts as well, during that shift. Sometimes she felt the 'bots apply their tickling in synchronization: Feet-belly-feet-belly. Sometimes they would both apply intense tickles at once, making her howl and convulse. By the time Sir Kurt finally released her, she was sweat-soaked, tear-stained, and exhausted. And pleased. She was Her Highness Melanie Cecilia Heather Kimiko DuCord, one of the Thousand Princesses of Lorane, and now a pirate captive. And she had just come through her first real tickling.
End of Part 2