oneortheother
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Didn't think I would do a sequel to 'The Newest Harem Slave', but life is strange, I guess. Enjoy.
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On Ticklish Tides, Part 1:
Princess Li Wu had spent six months on board The Mistress Ambivalence, and when she glimpsed herself in a bit of glass or a column of shimmering metal, she wasn’t sure she recognised herself. She wasn’t even sure if she could call herself a princess anymore. The silken cheongsam she had worn when she first come aboard had rotted on her skin from prolonged use and exposure to the sun and salt of the sea, so now she wore brown breeches and a grey woollen tunic. Her sandals were the only thing that had survived her time on the ship, though they were a different shade of white than they had been at first. With her sleek black hair pulled back into a ponytail and chopped much shorter than it was—it barely made its way past her shoulders now, she was certain aside from her high cheekbones and regal features, she looked nothing like a princess. Even her pale skin was darker from the time spent in the sun, a serious faux pas to any true lady of China. She looked like some peasant who toiled in the fields.
Much of her time here had been hard. The women who ruled this ship were pirates, though they might dress themselves up and call themselves liberators of women. They stole, they killed, and they bamboozled fools. At a glance, their ship might have seemed like something between a courtesan’s ship and a ship full of slaves destined for the pillow house, but that was why they were so effective. That was why they had been able to break into her palace and seize her in the hopes of a great ransom from her father, the Emperor.
But that had been months ago, and it was only through Li’s quick thinking that she had been able to spare herself from a most ignominious fate. She still remembered keenly that conversation she had suffered through with Captain Ruby.
“Oh, dear, dear, dear, what am I to do with you?” the Captain of Intrigues had said. There were three captains on the ship, an arrangement that confused Li to no end, but it wasn’t the best time to voice such complaints. Captain Ruby stood as straight as a sword, with her shoulder-length auburn hair tousled, and the rubies in her ears glinting in the lamplight.
Li was on her back, her limbs stretched out across the table and bound with hempen rope. She wore nothing but her brown britches. Ruby had a hand on Li’s small feet, which were tied together. Her long fingers could almost cover the entirety of both soles with just one stretching hand.
“Do you have any suggestions?” Ruby said, a grin stretched across her pale, comely face as she spidered her nails along Li’s bare feet. “If you can’t think of anything, maybe I’ll just keep doing this till I can think of something…”
“Let me hehelp!” Li said in between gasps.
“Help with what? Your father won’t pay for you. He’s not a very loving man, is he?”
“No!” Li said, grinding her teeth together. Ruby wasn’t wrong, and in which case, maybe she could use her father’s connections in another way. “I, I can help you!”
“As my personal tickle slave?” Ruby used both hands to really scratch into Li’s soft, wrinkly arches to make her point. “Can’t you do better than that? I’m sure the Nips or the Koreans would love to have a Chinese Princess at their beck and call. Or perhaps the West would want you. Decisions, decisions, decisions…”
Li knew the only difference would be what kind of prostitute she would end up as. “I know my father’s seal! His signature! I’ve seen it a thousand times! I can forge documents for you. Please, let me join your crew.”
And five months had passed since. It was frightening how she had acclimatised to things since then. The ship was in the Sea of Japan, and they had come across a small fishing vessel. The fisherman had thrown a harpoon at them and had eaten a musket for his troubles, leaving only his daughter behind.
The girl could not have been much older than Li, and she wasn’t too ugly for a Jap, even Li had to admit that much as she hated that foul race that constantly waged war across China. The fisherman’s daughter had a slim face, big dark eyes, a lithe body, and short black hair, and if not for the rough hands and tanned skin, she might even have been considered pretty. They had taken her below decks to Tink the Tinkerer’s workshop, where a rack awaited her. The sight alone was enough to get the girl to blubbering.
“Let’s start with your name,” Ruby said as they finished strapping her in—Captain Ruby, Captain Kyra, Tink, Li, and a few others who had a smattering of Japanese.
“Hana,” spoke the girl, blinking back tears.
“Why don’t you tell us everything, Hana, or we might do something like this!” Ruby plunged her fingers into Hana’s toned sides without even waiting for the translator to speak. The thin fisherman’s shrift she wore provided little protection against Ruby’s varnished red nails.
Hana squeaked and squealed, and she quickly decided she wished to tell the crew a great deal of interesting information. There was a rich lord close to here, where the girl had once sold fresh fish to. He was wealthy and lived with many slaves and servants.
“Sounds like our next target,” said Captain Kyra in a flat voice, scrubbed of all emotion. She looked as sombre as a funeral, especially as she was clad all in black as ever in her embroidered tunic and black slacks that when paired with her black hair and black eyes made her look almost like some dark spirit.
“Aye,” Ruby said, “but we’d be fools to just take her at her word.”
“Indeed,” Kyra agreed. “Let’s question her sharply, and see if this story of hers changes at all.”
Hana blubbered and began to shake in the rack, but the shackles that held her limbs tightly to the elevated structure were made for strength and did not move.
Tink, a spectacled young woman in grimy overalls, took this as her cue to start handing out some of the new toys she had been tinkering with. Li took what looked like a tiny miniature scrub brush about the size of her finger which was then attached to a wooden handle and positioned herself by Hana’s right foot. Unfortunately, the feet didn’t look too soft nor sensitive on this girl, but some of the choicer locations, like the girl’s trim stomach or armpits had been already claimed.
Despite this, Li got some good reactions when she brought the brush around Hana’s tanned toes and in between them, though it wasn’t hard to tell with how much the Japanese girl was screeching as half a dozen of these brushes tormented her all over. Ruby and Kyra had an armpit each, and they were asking her more questions even as they scrubbed away at those twitching underarms. Tink and Maya, a burly, dark-skinned girl, had the stomach and sides taken care of, and Rose had charge of the other foot.
Rose, who was all freckles and coy mischief, soon began nibbling and licking the toes in front of her, winking suggestively at Li as she did so. Rose was all right, though perhaps Li simply liked that she was one of the few on the ship who was perfectly content with being tied down and tickled for hours at a time—for most aboard, it was the other way around.
As the dark-haired Jap wailed and spluttered, Li felt a prickle of empathy. Li would have shown this fishing girl mercy if they had been alone, but she couldn’t risk that with so many others watching—she had only recently been promoted to tickling instead of being tickled, after all.
Eventually, the two captains deemed that the interrogation had gone long enough to verify the information, and they sent the girl down to the brig for now. Li made a point to go visit this girl later—partially out of kindness, and partially because this girl would likely be conscripted into the crew, and Li could use every potential ally. She still dreamed of escape.
A few hours later, Captain Natasha, the Captain of War set out with a small party to launch a sneak attack on this Lord’s keep. Natasha was taller than most men, and she looked like she could outdrink and outfight most of them as well. Her short blonde hair blew in the air as she waved at the crew, her grey eyes sparkling in the twilight.
Li waved back. Not so long ago, one dusky evening, Li had found herself spirited out of bed and taken to Captain Natasha’s cabin. Inside, she saw landscape paintings of snowy mountains across the walls, a golden candelabra, and racks of weapons from a dozen faraway lands. She had a good view of this tied to Natasha’s bed, completely naked.
Captain Natasha herself soon came in, her face flushed and her hair tousled. She wore a short-sleeved blue tunic with golden thread work that matched well with her dirty gold hair and dark britches. Li did not fail to note the impressive arms that were rippling with muscle.
She grinned when she came in and saw the sight of Li on her bed. “Ah, how thoughtful,” she said in a Russian accent, making her way over to the bed. From her shaky, lumbering steps, she must have drunk her fair share of booze. “My dear crewmates have left me a fine little present indeed.”
“What a sweet, objectifying thing to say,” Li muttered.
“Oh, don’t say that!” Natasha apparently had very sharp ears. “The crew know I have a… fondness for the cute little ones. I try not to show it when on duty, but it is what it is” She gave Li a pat on the head, smiling. “We just completed a very good raid, so I imagine this is their idea of doing me a favour.”
“Great.”
“Don’t look so glum, little one!” Natasha reached her big hands to Li’s sides and gave them a gentle squeeze. “You have a lovely smile, forgive me for wishing to see it.” She reached over and pulled away the ropes binding Li’s limbs, and it was difficult to see clearly in the dim candlelight, but it seemed to Li that the large, powerfully built woman was blushing.
“I see… well, thanks for letting me go.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Natasha said. “If you leave my cabin, it would seem ungrateful to the crew. Why don’t you stay the night? My bed is certainly big enough for two, little one.”
Li chewed on it, then decided she wanted to push her luck. “I’ll stay… but I’ll need to charge a pillow tax.”
“A what?”
“I get to tickle you too!” Li said, reaching under Natasha’s tunic to skitter her fingers across the other woman’s stomach. She could feel the firm muscles on her abdomen clenching as she spidered her small, nimble fingers along Natasha’s toned belly.
“Ohohohokay!” Natasha had a husky, rumbling laugh, and although she could easily have pushed the much smaller girl off her with those tree trunk arms of hers, she kept them straight up in the air, wobbling. Taking the hint at those outstretched arms, Li went for those armpits next, but this did prove to be too much for the Russian to take, and she surged upward. Li fell backwards and Natasha promptly snatched up Li’s feet, put them in a powerful headlock that must have incapacitated many a fighter, and ran her rough fingers all over the pampered princess’s petite feet.
That night, they had slumbered together, with Li’s head resting on Natasha’s shoulders. Li liked her, and there weren’t many members of the crew she could honestly say she liked very much.
Snapping back to the present, Li hoped the Captain of War would be okay. Her former best friend, Christina Patten, the British girl who had been captured by the pirates at the same time as her, had balked at Li’s early talk of escape, and although they were still friends of sorts, their relationship had been strained ever since.
All their years of friendship in Guangzhou had meant less to Christina than the affections of the pirate girl Sapphire, a former whore, Li was certain. But Li had tried to push that from her mind and be cordial when she ran into Christina, who was now a cartographer for the crew. Christina was one of the ones going off with Natasha right now, in fact, though the dainty fair-haired girl didn’t look too enthused about going off into a war situation.
When she returned several hours later after coming back from the raid, she looked even worse. The whole crew was worse for wear, in fact. Unlike the jubilant whoops, the broad smiles, the joyous songs that accompanied victory, Li saw sombre faces, clothes ripped, bloodstained, and grimy. And there was the undeniable fact that fewer of them had returned, and there was one newcomer, a warrior dressed in the armour of a samurai from the Japanese isles. His face was hidden by the fearsome kabuto helmet he had on, but his hogtie made him appear significantly less intimidating. He said something then Maya smacked him in the head so hard his helmet was knocked off to reveal a handsome, clean-shaven face with thin black eyebrows, a faint white scar under her ear, and a birthmark under the right eye.
“What happened?” Li asked, noticing the katana that lay in a pile on the ground amongst other assortments of loot like carvings, scrolls, and other cloth bundles. “Where’s Natasha?”
“Gone,” Christina mumbled.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“Dead? Captured? She fell behind.”
“And anyone who falls behind is left behind,” said a woman Li didn’t know with bloodstained bandages across her arm. She sounded miserable.
By then, Captains Ruby and Kyra had returned to the scene, and Li heard the announcement at dinner which helped piece together the fragments of the story she had heard. The raid at the Japanese Lord’s house had been unsuccessful, though they had managed to come away with a few trinkets for their trouble. Captain Natasha had turned an ankle on an awkward landing, and when the Lord’s reinforcements had come… it was too much. An arrow from Maya’s bow had caught the Lord in the neck, just under his helmet, but vengeance was a small solace when it seemed your friend might be gone forever.
Many of the women aboard the ship seemed to feel the same way, and they were determined to take out their grief and anger on the samurai, who was paraded in front of the crew. The samurai had been one of the lord’s guards and had slain several of the pirates. He wore robes of green and crimson beneath the strange Japanese armour that was a combination of bamboo and boiled leather, and he struggled mightily as they stripped off his armour, shouting at them, calling them foreign dogs and other fouler things. It soon became clear why the samurai had been struggling so much when Li took a closer look.
The samurai was a woman. The inky-black hair bound in a masculine topknot and the long, willowy frame had tricked her at first, but Li saw chest wraps the samurai had worn to hide her breasts, not that she has much in the way of breasts, and it soon made perfect sense that the slim, comely youth with thin, toned arms and shoulders was merely a woman masquerading as a man.
Of course, this was very bad for her, as if Li had learned nothing from her time on the Mistress Ambivalence, it was that women were very capable of cruelty to their own sex.
“I offer a jewelled dagger from my personal collection to the first woman who makes her wet her smallclothes,” Captain Ruby vowed.
“And I offer a golden brooch to the first one to make her cry,” Captain Kyra declared, not to be undone.
They stripped the squirming and shouting samurai and tied her down to a table in the dining hall where everyone could have a shot at her. There were so many vying to have a turn at this villain that they had to draw lots.
Li sat in the back of the canteen, watching the others vent their anguish on this samurai girl. She wondered why a woman would be so displeased by the sex she had been born with that she would need to pretend to be a man. What decisions would drive you do such a thing?
The samurai girl had decent muscles, and she could see them straining, her face contorted in frustration as no less than four of the pirate overwhelmed her with tickling, quickly forcing the defiance out of her in the form of gusting mirth. Her laughter was boisterous, yet amusing high-pitched, not unlike Li’s own.
They had removed the bandages across her chest so they could torment the poor girl’s chest—an enemy or no, Li found it disrespectful to do that to a warrior who had done nothing but tried to serve with valour in protecting her liege. They were pinching and playing with the girl’s nipples, mocking her all the while as they began to stiffen from the sheer constant stimulation. She didn’t have very large bosoms to speak off, but they certainly seemed sensitive enough.
Samurai girl was starting to sweat and get more dishevelled after each pirate took their pleasure, and each pirate brought their own contributions to this particular conquest, and they left them behind so their comrades could use them to ply their trade next. Currently, in addition to the pirate at the samurai’s chest, another one had two feathers and was twirling in each armpit while the arms strained at the ropes to no avail.
The samurai’s feet were feet were long and slender-looking, especially for one of Asian descent, with high, pink arches. They were proportional to her tallish height, which had likely been a major factor contributing to her ability to pretend to be a man for all those years. They looked toughened from a lifestyle of training and standing guard, so it seemed they weren’t as sensitive as some of the more famously ticklish on board, like Li herself, but they held a few spots that could incite a bit of honest laughter with some earnest work. Christina was demonstrating that fact right now—she wielded a scrub brush in one hand as she yanked back the samurai’s strong toes with the other hand. Christina’s face was still, though tears streamed as she scrubbed harder and harder till the samurai girl’s white flesh was turning pinker and pinker.
The final pirate girl, Captain Ruby herself, was on the remaining untickled foot, and she had a different technique entirely. Instead of trying to brute force tickling those tough small soles, she went for a different target—the tops of the foot. From the way the foot twisted and flexed, with the toes a constant flurry of splaying movement, it certainly worked. Ruby’s long red fingernails scratched along the ankles, the sides, all the way to the tips of the samurai’s toes, and it seemed like Ruby might have been more effective even than Christina’s ferocious brushing. The strong-willed warrior hadn’t cried nor wet herself yet, but she looked like she was well on the path to both.
At the other end of the room, the fisherman’s daughter was in a similar situation, with a handful of pirates punishing this poor girl as well for the sins of her countryman, though there were only three compared to the dozens that clustered around the proud samurai. The Chinese princess watched for a few moments, wondering if it had been a Chinese lord that had eliminated one of the captains if her loyalty would suddenly be questioned. After a while, the ones on Hana walked away, chortling, and Li walked over.
She filled up her tankard with ale and brought it over to the girl’s lips. Hana’s brown eyes were narrow and doubtful, but she drank, making a face at the strange flavours.
“Taste okay?”
“It’s a bit stronger than sake,” Hana admitted, her face twisted in bitterness, “but I thank you for your kindness, no matter how small it is.”
“Do you know who she is?” Li asked, looking over to the samurai.
Hana glanced at the screeching girl, hesitated, but then said nothing.
Li thought about what to say. Should she threaten this girl? Point over to the samurai and say that if Hana didn’t speak this was what awaited her? “If you cooperate, maybe you won’t be tied down here any longer. I can tell the others you helped.”
“And then what?” Hana looked at her with big trusting eyes. “What happens?”
“Why don’t you join the crew? I know they killed your father, but it’s a life… some kind of life, anyway.”
Hana looked away.
Li checked no one was within earshot, and whispered, “I was like you before. They captured me. But a day may come when I can escape from this ship. But to do that, I need to show them I’m valuable. I need them to trust me. Help me, Hana, please. I won’t forget it.”
Hana sighed, and looking like she felt she might regret her words, said, “The samurai girl is Shiro Shirogane, the right hand of Lord Akira. She’s from my village, though we’ve never spoken much before. The Shiroganes are a proud family of soldiers and fighters, but their first two children were daughters. The village though it was a cruel fate of the kami to give a fighting family nothing but daughters. But their third child was a son, and the village rejoiced. But I guess the truth is that they had a third daughter, after all. You can really want something but never get it.”
“Thank you, I’ll remember that.” Li waited till the crowd of pirates had thinned out, and the dining hall was empty. She walked over to Shiro. By this point, the samurai looked all but beaten. Her raven-black hair was a mess, her eyes were bleary and red, and much of her skin was pinkened from where sharp nails and cruel tools had pressed hard into her flesh. Li tried not to pay attention to the faint smell of urine. Even despite all that, Shiro’s body was all wiry muscle, and Li did not doubt she must have been as quick as lightning with her katana.
“You monsters,” spat Shiro, her pitch-black eyes were slanted in anger, “why won’t you just kill me? Does it bring you joy to humiliate a warrior like this?”
“Not particularly, Shiro.” Li saw the samurai’s eyes widen. “Yes, I know who you are, Shiro Shirogane, and I want to say that although your Lord is dead, redemption is possible. You can still live with honour.”
“What are you saying? How do you know who I am? Are you here to free me?”
“Slow down, slow down. I’m Li, a former princess of China.”
“China?” Shiro made that word sound like a curse. “Your people know nothing of honour.”
Li sighed. This was not the place to have an argument fuelled by jingoism. “Do you want to leave this ship?”
She gave a reluctant nod.
“Then we have that in common, at least. It’s not much, but maybe that’ll do for now. I know it’s not easy to trust me, but things are changing around here. And if you can support me like you did your lord… maybe you, we, can all go home.” With Captain Natasha gone, there would soon be an election for a new Captain. There always had to be tree, to keep each other in check. And if Li could be one of them...
“I don’t believe you. How can I? I don’t know a thing about you!”
Li shrugged. “The tops of your feet are really ticklish, aren’t they? I saw how they were tickling you there. I’ve been under Captain Ruby’s nails before, so I know what they’re like.”
Shiro bit her lip and said nothing, though a flush crept across her cheeks.
“My feet are crazy ticklish as well, and not just on the tops,” Li admitted. “You’re luckier than me. There, now you know something about me. Happy?”
“Not really.”
“The moon is too high in the sky, Shiro Shirogane,” Li said, yawning widely. “It’s too late for this. Good night.”
O-O-O
“Everyone knows the code,” Captain Kyra said over the clamour of voices. The dining hall had become like the council meetings Li had once attended with generals, officials, nobles, and ministers. Everyone disagreed with each other, and everyone thought they were the only ones in the room with a lick of sense. “No one likes it, but what’s done is done. The treasure chest has fallen overboard—sending the whole crew into the water won’t change that it’s gone.”
“We don’t know that,” Captain Ruby said. “They might not be dead.”
“And what then?” Clem asked. “They must be in some kind of dungeon, being interrogated. We don’t have the numbers to storm such a fortified location, especially when we don’t even have surprise on our side.”
“Stick to your potions, Alchemist,” spat Maya, who had lost her best friend Rose in the failed raid. “You don’t know that there isn’t a way.”
“And you don’t know that there is one,” Kyra said, twirling a long of jet black hair around her long, spidery fingers. “Regrettable as it is, we must cut our losses and move on. If their torturers wrest the truth from our fallen friends, we have to accept our operations in this area have been jeopardised.” And uneasy silence fell across the hall as all imagined the unimaginable torments their comrades must be going through.
“They’re counting on us to save them,” Tink the tinkerer said in her German drawl. “Are you sure we vant to abandon them?”
“We don’t even know if they’re alive,” Kyra said in a firm voice. “If we get news on their whereabouts and condition, maybe we can coordinate some kind of rescue. But for now, we flee.”
“It seems we must…” Ruby allowed, “but the Mistress Ambivalence needs its three captains. Are you of one mind with me on this, Kyra?”
“I am.”
“Then while we have everyone here, we have a final declaration to make. The Mistress Ambivalence must have three captains to keep everything going as it should be. We will hold an election at the end of the month. All candidates are welcome.”
At this, the dining hall exploded with excited conversation. From what Li could gather, this hadn’t happened in a long time. Li remembered when appetising positions had opened up in her father’s council—uncooperative individuals had disappeared or turned up dead, hostages had been taken to ensure support, hefty bribes had been offered, and extravagant promises were made.
“Are you going to run for Captain?” Hana asked. She sat at Li’s table—the fisherman’s daughter had been released from her bonds after swearing a solemn oath to serve the crew, plus the fact remained that she was the epitome of the harmless yet useful crewmember. Hana was only a tiny bit taller than Li, and the Chinese Princess was a shade under five foot, and a head and a half shorter than just about everyone on board. In addition to her small stature, she lacked strength and martial skill, which made her all but harmless. There was also the fact that Hana’s skill with harpoon, fishing rod, nets, and sailing resulted in an exceptionally useful crewmember—you could never have enough food. Of course, Hana’s own mild temperament helped. Shiro the samurai still remained locked up—her anger had not been quenched, and her skill with a sword made her very dangerous.
“I have to,” Li replied. With captain privileges, Li would have a say in where the ship went. The only reason she hadn’t hopped off the ship every time they dropped anchor was the fact that in Malaysia, in the Philippines, in Korea, in Japan, in Indonesia, she was a nobody. She didn’t speak the language, she had few serviceable skills, and most importantly, she had no friends or allies. But as the captain, she could steer the ship right back home…
“What’s your plan?” Hana asked as they watched a group of drunken pirates proclaim each other as being the best candidate for captaincy. “Who do you trust?”
“I think Christina might back me,” Li said, thinking of her old friend from Guangzhou. “And she’s close with Sapphire, so with any luck, she could be persuaded to help as well.” Christina was respected for the language skills and her skills with navigation, but Sapphire was the truly influential one. The former pillowslave was well-liked, comely, and charming. She had once worked with Captain Ruby, though Christina being her bedmate might shift her allegiance. “Let’s pay them a visit.”
Li and Hana walked down to Sapphire’s cabin. At the wooden door, the aroma of sweet and spicy flavours were strong, and they also heard the muffled sound of laughter. The laughter in itself was not a surprise, but the fact it was muffled seemed to suggest something was amiss, at least to Li, who had heard hearty laughter more than once on her visits here. Hana reached for the doorknob, but Li stopped her. Side by side, they peered through the cracks in the door and the adjoining wall and strained their ears to hear what was happening inside:
“I vas really hoping I could count on your support,” said Tink the tinkerer in her German drawl. She was seated on a chair, wiping her spectacles with a handkerchief. On Sapphire’s plush and large bed, Sapphire and Christina were bound and gagged as two pirates worked over both of them. Their wrists were tired together and tied to the headpost while the same were true for their ankles. The pirates doing the business were a pair of twins with brown tans, short dark hair, and dry, windburnt faces that Li vaguely recognised.
Christina still wore her brown tunic with silver scrollwork—a luxury she had gotten from being Sapphire’s favourite. Her usually melodious laughter was stifled by the rag stuffed in her mouth, and her blonde hair was a wild mess from the constant head-tossing she was doing. The pirate perched over her bare feet wore some kind of strange gloves—doubtless one of Tink’s latest inventions. They were like the grasping hands of some great bird of prey, covered with fur and feathers.
Those hands fondled and stroked Christina’s small, pale feet. Christina’s feet had always been soft and pampered, with the toenails painted red in that queer western tradition. From the way those varnished toes splayed and spasmed as the feathery hands slid along them, they must have tickled ferociously. Li found her toes curling at the sight, especially when those fur-covered hands lodged in between her squirming toes. They wiggled and wiggled, so the wedged fingers scratched all over the highly sensitive skin between each digit. Li had experienced that particular technique before, and she imagined it must be worse with those light and feathery fingers.
Sapphire’s situation was the polar opposite—the only article of clothing that remained to her was her high brown leather boots. Her azure robes were tossed to the side in a pile as the other twin straddled her bare waist. Her honey-blonde hair cascaded across her shoulders and her blue painted fingernails constantly clenched and unclenched as she tried to free her arms. Her eyes were the colour of still water, and they opened and closed constantly in response to the furry fingers that brushed against her bare armpits.
The twin doing the tickling giggled as she stroked and stroked with gentle hands, reminding Li of a cat pawing for some reason. “These gloves work great, Tink!” she said, grinning as she drew slow circles around the hollows of Sapphire’s quivering armpits. “You’re a real genius!”
“I thank you for the kind words,” Tink said, smirking. “I simply hope they prove effective in persuading others how serious I am about my work. I vould make a fine captain, vould I not?”
“I certainly think so,” the twin tickling Christina piped up.
“You’ve got my vote!” said the other twin, who had just decided to trace and stroke her way down to Sapphire’s stomach. She slid the soft and fuzzy fingers and out of the bejewelled navel as Sapphire screeched into the rag balled into her mouth. After a while, those devilish fingers went up to torment Li’s chest, and from the visible stiffness of Sapphire’s nipples, they certainly seem to appreciate their touch, though from Sapphire’s pinched, flushed expression, it was causing her more than a little agony.
“Vell, the only problem is I don’t think I have their votes,” Tink said, using grease-stained fingers to gesture to the two bound women. “Let us continue, shall ve? Ladies, I hope you are vell on the vay to changing your minds! Or Captain Kyra and I vill be paying you two very regular visits…”
“We might have a problem,” Li said to Hana, shaking her head and moving away from the door with quick, rushed steps. “A big one.”
O-O-O
“Captain Ruby, I really thought you’d be more upset about this.”
Li stood with her arms crossed in Ruby’s perfumed cabin with all its jewels and silks, while a nervous Hana hovered behind her. Not only did Captain Ruby look positively indifferent to the news of coercion taking place right on her ship, she looked almost bored by it, choosing to focus on the more pressing matter of the foot massage she was receiving from Clem the Alchemist, who was applying some white, creamy, sweet-solution to the Captain of Intrigues’s feet with sure, practised strokes.
The Alchemist wore a coat stained with paints and chemicals, and she had hair that looked like a messy rainbow. Most of the hair was a dark purple, though there patches and locks of hair that were blue, green, red, and yellow.
“You’re new on this ship, Princess,” Ruby said in a soft, cooing voice. She sat stood with her feet up and her boots off, receiving what must have been a very soothing massage from the relaxed look on her finely featured face. Li’s gaze flitted from those tanned, long feet with crimson toenails to Ruby’s wide smile. “Maybe you don’t know that this is just the way things are.”
“I thought you and Sapphire were almost as close as sisters,” Li said, in a voice that was hard and close to a shout. “You’re going to let them get away with this?”
“It is the nature of democracy, of free voting!” Ruby said with a laugh. “I understand you know not of such queer western notions, but this is how things are done here. People will choose the leaders they want—some people want so-and-so for Captain because she is competent, wise, courageous, and prudent. Others do it because they like her butt. Some do it because they seek favour, or gold, or power. There are even those who do it out of fear. Sapphire knows the game—you think she hasn’t played it before? Many a moon ago, I became captain over her because of the fact I knew a secret spot she had somewhere on that terribly ticklish body of hers. Oh, and my skill with a blade.” Ruby’s voice suddenly turned darker and more sinister towards the end of her speech.
Li found herself taking an involuntary step back, bumping into the two guards at Ruby’s door that had suddenly entered behind them. The Chinese princess cleared her throat and prepared to say what she had come to say. “There’s a candidate you should throw your support behind—me. The reasons the three captains policy works is the power is spread out between three, so everyone has to agree and compromise. If Kyra gets one of her cronies in, she’s going to be the real captain, the bonafide supreme leader.”
“Say, do you like the smell of this?” Ruby extended her bare feet, which glistened from the strange substance that had been rubbed into it. “It’s my dear Clem’s latest creation, and perhaps her most brilliant one yet.”
“Too kind, Cap’n,” Clem said, pulling out a glass tub from her pocket. “I still got plenty more to share with guests, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Isn’t she lovely?” Captain Ruby said with a fond, thin-lipped smile that served to make Li incredibly uncomfortable. From the way Hana was shifting her weight from foot to foot, she was plenty fearful as well. “It’s like she’s reading my mind. It should be no surprise that she’s has my unanimous support for the next Captain. I can trust on your ladies to vote for her can I not?”
Li turned to try to make a break for it—Ruby probably wouldn’t really try to do something too crazy if there were a dozen over people to witness it, but she wasn’t fast enough as the two guards manhandled her and Hana to the ground.
“We really should have seen this coming, shouldn’t we?” Hana groaned as she was hauled to the bed. They were both made to sit on their stomachs with their feet dandling off, and the two guards sat down on them to ensure they wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“My feet feel a lot softer since you put that stuff on,” Ruby said, reaching down to rub her foot. “I wonder if makes areas more ticklish?”
“Oh, that’s a certainty, cap,” Clem said, grinning.
“I trust you, of course,” Ruby said, “but wouldn’t it be much more fun to see it in action?” The Captain of Intrigues and the Alchemist both took liberal handfuls of the oily cream and began smearing at across the soles of both feet.
Li was already giggling when Ruby’s deft, skilled hands (and those long, varnished fingernails) manipulated her toes to make sure the thick potion got into every nook and cranny. Her feet were sensitive enough as they were… she wasn’t sure if she could take more… Ruby squeezed the tiny toes, rubbed spiralling swirls into the high, deep arches with her thumbs, and were firm in their rubbing when she reached the pillow-soft balls of the feet or the heels. It might have been almost pleasurable if not for the trepidation that roiled in her belly.
Hana’s feet weren’t nearly as soft as Li’s, but the lotion seemed to activate rather quickly based on the way the fisherman’s daughter was starting to squeak and gasp with every caress and stroke.
“You ladies certainly sound like you’re enjoying yourselves,” Ruby observed. “Do you see how wonderful things will be once Clem is your captain? Of course, you need to understand that if you displease her, things can also get quite nasty indeed…”
On that, the kind, friendly fingers suddenly turned cutthroat. Li pounded the mattress, her fingers scrabbling back to try to save her slick and damp feet from the sharp fingernails that were scything across them. But the burly guard did not respond to Li’s desperate hands except to slap them away with a snort of laughter. The creamy substance made it feel as if she wearing silk stockings that made everything seem to tickle all the more as Ruby’s fingers glided from shaking heel to trembling toe with ease. The only thing she was able to really do was turn her head back to see what was happening, which didn’t really help, though she couldn’t stop herself from doing it.
From the sounds of Hana’s frantic begging and explosive giggles, she was handling it even worse. The fishing girl had only been onboard for a few days, so she was still getting used to the tickling that seemed to seep into everything here. And she certainly didn’t seem used to having ticklish feet, a fact Clem was more than happy to take full, glorious advantage of by stroking her short, paint-stained fingernails all over the smooth soles.
Clem soon commented on how impressively sensitive Hana’s pink arches were, which prompted Ruby to claim that Li’s arches were far more ticklish. The two pirates spent a fair amount of time trying to prove each other wrong, while the two girls drooled and sweated into Ruby’s bedsheets, which was a moral victory if nothing more.
After an excruciatingly long time, Ruby allowed that she might have been wrong… only she would have to see for herself. At that, the two pirates swapped places deaf to the loud protestations of the two bound girls, applied a fresh lather of the white, creamy lotion, and Hana experienced the touch of Ruby’s fierce, ruby-coloured fingernails while Li had to endure Clem’s expert, measured touches.
All in all, the meeting was an unsuccessful one.
O-O-O
“Not a very good start,” Li said as she whisked her spoon around the carrot and potato broth that served as the crew’s dinner for the evening. She and Hana sat by themselves in a foul-smelling corner of the dining hall where they were unlikely to be interrupted. They had sat in the middle of the hall for a while, which was Li’s usual seat, but when her usual dinnermates sat elsewhere, Li had quickly gotten the hint—news had spread, and people were weary of associating with an overly ambitious crew member.
“Who’s next?” Hana said. “You have other people who can shout your name, right?”
Li hewed her lip. She wanted to say she did, but the truth was, why would those people risk anything for someone who right now stood zero chance of being successfully elected? They were risking the wrath of both Captain Ruby and Captain Kyra, and Li had nothing she could offer but words and promises she probably couldn’t keep.
“You think your buddy might support us?” Li used the wooden spoon to point to where Shiro the samurai was naked and tied to an unused table attended to by half a dozen pirates who had a bigger appetite for revenge than food, it seemed. Shiro hadn’t quite won the freedom to freely wander the ship, as she had stolen a butter knife a few hours ago and had almost cut someone’s throat. Li observed that Clem’s creamy concoction that had been so woefully effective on her own bare feet were being smeared all over the samurai’s lean and scarred body, till her pale body shimmered and shone in the lamplight. Many of the pirates tormenting Shiro at armpit, navel, breast, and feet had some of the small handled brushes Tink had used as well. It seemed that the one thing both sides agreed on how much they wanted to make this Japanese girl suffer. That was an interesting realisation, Li thought, but was there any way she could turn to her advantage? She wasn’t sure she could see how just yet.
“He, I mean, she, had a reputation for being stubborn. Was famous for it.” Hana shrugged. “I thought what happened to us earlier was bad, but wow, they’re really giving it to her.”
The slick, oily potion from the alchemist combined with the bristles had the effect of turning Shiro into a high-pitched squeaking mess, far from the powerful and stoic warrior she no doubt wished to be presented as. Li watched for a while those small, slender brushes swept over the tops of the girl’s pale feet to make the toes spasm and splay. Another brush was dipping in and out of the navel as her stomach shook and quivered. The ones in her slick armpits scrubbed and scrubbed like they were trying to remove the skin.
“Captain Natasha was well-liked,” Li said, and for a moment, she wondered where her dear friend was, and if everything was okay if she still lived…
O-O-O
Natasha’s eyes slowly fluttered open. A groan passed her lips as the aches of half a hundred bruises and cuts made themselves known with her first attempt at movement. The boiled leather and oddments of plate mail that she had worn had been stripped away from her, leaving her in nothing but the snow-blue tunic she had worn underneath, and it was now torn and stained with dirt and bloodily fluids. Her muscles strained against the heavy metal links that shackled her to the wall were so short that she could not even stand. The last thing she remembered was tripping over something, her sprained ankle collapsing under her weight. Her sore ankle felt a bit better now, but that perhaps the only part of that felt okay. Her predicament was definitely nothing less than dire. She was in some kind of dungeon that smelled faintly of urine and excrement. Outside her jail cell—there was no doubt in her mind what this small barred room was—she heard the fast-paced gobbledegook that was the native language of these Japanese. One of them peered in, noticed Natasha was awake, and then scurried off. To fetch their lord, no doubt, though Natasha remembered cutting down a man in ornate robes during the start of the battle. Maybe he had survived?
The person who appeared in front of her jail cell, barked at the guard to open the door, and stepped inside had this lord’s look, but there was a notable difference.
The woman stood with her head tall and her black hair in a stern bun. Her face was plastered with white makeup and her lips were a blood red, which reminded Natasha almost of a flower for a moment, especially due to the floral theme had kimono had, but the malice in those dark eyes killed any such comparison in her mind. At her side, stood a spindly man with spectacles and nervous fidgeting hands.
She shouted something in Japanese at Natasha, which the translator hastily converted to English.
“You are the captain, correct?”
Natasha didn’t answer. Every bone in Natasha’s body said this was a person to be weary of. The woman hovered over her, glaring. She laughed a cold, humourless laugh at Natasha’s silence.
“I have ripped every secret from your crew already. Oh, how they screamed and begged for mercy. Would you like to know which of them were cowards? Which of them gave the information willingly in the hopes they would be spared? Which of them lasted the longest? They gave me much, but you, Captain Natasha, I'm sure you can give me more. And you shall, even if I have to tear it out of you, one word at a time.”
Too cautious to say something in English with that translator there, Natasha muttered under her breathe in her native Russian, declaring how sweet her vengeance would be, what a gruesome fate awaited her, and her things would change once her crew came to spring her out. They would come, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t just leave her.
All the while, the woman smiled, and a few moments later, she said something to her guards and they hauled Natasha out.
The new cell had a wooden rack that was big enough even for Natasha’s large frame, and the leather cords at wrist and ankle kept her body tight and unable to go anywhere. A tray of tools and two smiling women awaited her there. They bowed to Natasha as the Captain of War was strapped in, murmuring soft and polite-sounding words in Japanese. Once Natasha was stripped down to her cloth smallclothes however, what they did was far from nice.
There was an arsenal of tools in this dungeon, and they wasted little time in breaking them out. Natasha had been expecting to be whipped and flayed, but it seemed this lordly woman had some kind of mercy in her in that she did not wish to physically damage her captives too much. This mercy did not amount to much when it came to the fine art of tickle torture, of course. She soon experienced feathers fluttering up and down her quivering sides, wide scrub brushes flying across her pale, large feet in a blur, metal forks ploughing into her armpits, and even wooden chopsticks poking along her sides.
Every half an hour or so, Natasha judged, the two dainty women tending to her ticklish spots would leave, a new duo would appear to assault her areas with fresh enthusiasm. Each of them did it a bit differently, though all made her scream before long.
The women would talk to each other as they rotated, and every one of them seemed to be passing on the information they had so painstakingly gleamed from their exploits across Natasha’s trapped and exposed body. The fact forks worked wonders on the deep grooves of her arches and the fleshy balls of her feet sound became common fact, as every single pairing of women that entered into her cell seemed to spend a great deal of time there. Sometimes, it was one tormenting one foot at a time with two forks, other times it was one tickling each foot, and once it had been two of them going on all attack on just her arches, ignoring the entire rest of her body just to focus on that hellish spot. With her long toes tied firmly back, there was little she could do but tremble and twitch as those forks ploughed away into her arches till she was sure they were blushing a bright crimson.
One of them usually took care of Natasha’s sensitive feet, while the other had mastery over Natasha’s upper body. The midsection was always a fun spot along Natasha’s strong abdominal muscles. They always cooed and giggled over the muscles there as if it were some outlandish, amusing sight. Natasha might have felt flattered if those small, soft hands weren't so devilishly effective skittering across her bare belly and at slipping into her navel. They soon found out her effective a feather was when it was twirled into her navel, and she soon had to contend with that threat constantly.
Natasha’s muscular arms were another oddity to these Japanese women, so naturally fingers were forever darting into her armpits, tracing along the musculature of her biceps and triceps with feather-like touches. Every now and then, Natasha would get a girl with a mole on the right of her eye who simply adored licking away at her underarms, and every lap would make the Russian’s nerve tingle and make every subsequent tickling all the more worse.
And these small, delicate looking women rubbing their fingers all over her bare body... it was perverse, and it fed the growing fire between her legs, though before long, that was just another part of the torment, another sensation to agonise her.
When the end of the day drew near—Natasha could glimpse sunlight from a tiny window in her cell the size of a loaf of bread—the woman returned with her haughty smirk and her translator. “Ready to talk, Captain?”
When Natasha refused to answer, the woman laughed again, picked up a fork, and with a casual, practised air, whisked it along the ball of her left foot in a figure-eight motion. The Captain of War found herself snorting with laughter despite her valiant attempts to contain herself. She stared hard at this cruel, cold woman.
“I can see from your look you are wondering who I am. My name is Aika, Captain, and I am the sister of the noble man you slew. I will not rest till everyone one of your friends are rotting in the ground or screaming in my dungeons. Every night, after my servants have finished preparing you, I will torment you myself. I will not stop till you feel a fraction of the grief and anguish I feel.” She picked up a feather and began twirling it between her sharp, long fingers. “Shall we begin, Captain? Feel free to tell me all your secrets, though it may not spare you.”
---
On Ticklish Tides, Part 1:
Princess Li Wu had spent six months on board The Mistress Ambivalence, and when she glimpsed herself in a bit of glass or a column of shimmering metal, she wasn’t sure she recognised herself. She wasn’t even sure if she could call herself a princess anymore. The silken cheongsam she had worn when she first come aboard had rotted on her skin from prolonged use and exposure to the sun and salt of the sea, so now she wore brown breeches and a grey woollen tunic. Her sandals were the only thing that had survived her time on the ship, though they were a different shade of white than they had been at first. With her sleek black hair pulled back into a ponytail and chopped much shorter than it was—it barely made its way past her shoulders now, she was certain aside from her high cheekbones and regal features, she looked nothing like a princess. Even her pale skin was darker from the time spent in the sun, a serious faux pas to any true lady of China. She looked like some peasant who toiled in the fields.
Much of her time here had been hard. The women who ruled this ship were pirates, though they might dress themselves up and call themselves liberators of women. They stole, they killed, and they bamboozled fools. At a glance, their ship might have seemed like something between a courtesan’s ship and a ship full of slaves destined for the pillow house, but that was why they were so effective. That was why they had been able to break into her palace and seize her in the hopes of a great ransom from her father, the Emperor.
But that had been months ago, and it was only through Li’s quick thinking that she had been able to spare herself from a most ignominious fate. She still remembered keenly that conversation she had suffered through with Captain Ruby.
“Oh, dear, dear, dear, what am I to do with you?” the Captain of Intrigues had said. There were three captains on the ship, an arrangement that confused Li to no end, but it wasn’t the best time to voice such complaints. Captain Ruby stood as straight as a sword, with her shoulder-length auburn hair tousled, and the rubies in her ears glinting in the lamplight.
Li was on her back, her limbs stretched out across the table and bound with hempen rope. She wore nothing but her brown britches. Ruby had a hand on Li’s small feet, which were tied together. Her long fingers could almost cover the entirety of both soles with just one stretching hand.
“Do you have any suggestions?” Ruby said, a grin stretched across her pale, comely face as she spidered her nails along Li’s bare feet. “If you can’t think of anything, maybe I’ll just keep doing this till I can think of something…”
“Let me hehelp!” Li said in between gasps.
“Help with what? Your father won’t pay for you. He’s not a very loving man, is he?”
“No!” Li said, grinding her teeth together. Ruby wasn’t wrong, and in which case, maybe she could use her father’s connections in another way. “I, I can help you!”
“As my personal tickle slave?” Ruby used both hands to really scratch into Li’s soft, wrinkly arches to make her point. “Can’t you do better than that? I’m sure the Nips or the Koreans would love to have a Chinese Princess at their beck and call. Or perhaps the West would want you. Decisions, decisions, decisions…”
Li knew the only difference would be what kind of prostitute she would end up as. “I know my father’s seal! His signature! I’ve seen it a thousand times! I can forge documents for you. Please, let me join your crew.”
And five months had passed since. It was frightening how she had acclimatised to things since then. The ship was in the Sea of Japan, and they had come across a small fishing vessel. The fisherman had thrown a harpoon at them and had eaten a musket for his troubles, leaving only his daughter behind.
The girl could not have been much older than Li, and she wasn’t too ugly for a Jap, even Li had to admit that much as she hated that foul race that constantly waged war across China. The fisherman’s daughter had a slim face, big dark eyes, a lithe body, and short black hair, and if not for the rough hands and tanned skin, she might even have been considered pretty. They had taken her below decks to Tink the Tinkerer’s workshop, where a rack awaited her. The sight alone was enough to get the girl to blubbering.
“Let’s start with your name,” Ruby said as they finished strapping her in—Captain Ruby, Captain Kyra, Tink, Li, and a few others who had a smattering of Japanese.
“Hana,” spoke the girl, blinking back tears.
“Why don’t you tell us everything, Hana, or we might do something like this!” Ruby plunged her fingers into Hana’s toned sides without even waiting for the translator to speak. The thin fisherman’s shrift she wore provided little protection against Ruby’s varnished red nails.
Hana squeaked and squealed, and she quickly decided she wished to tell the crew a great deal of interesting information. There was a rich lord close to here, where the girl had once sold fresh fish to. He was wealthy and lived with many slaves and servants.
“Sounds like our next target,” said Captain Kyra in a flat voice, scrubbed of all emotion. She looked as sombre as a funeral, especially as she was clad all in black as ever in her embroidered tunic and black slacks that when paired with her black hair and black eyes made her look almost like some dark spirit.
“Aye,” Ruby said, “but we’d be fools to just take her at her word.”
“Indeed,” Kyra agreed. “Let’s question her sharply, and see if this story of hers changes at all.”
Hana blubbered and began to shake in the rack, but the shackles that held her limbs tightly to the elevated structure were made for strength and did not move.
Tink, a spectacled young woman in grimy overalls, took this as her cue to start handing out some of the new toys she had been tinkering with. Li took what looked like a tiny miniature scrub brush about the size of her finger which was then attached to a wooden handle and positioned herself by Hana’s right foot. Unfortunately, the feet didn’t look too soft nor sensitive on this girl, but some of the choicer locations, like the girl’s trim stomach or armpits had been already claimed.
Despite this, Li got some good reactions when she brought the brush around Hana’s tanned toes and in between them, though it wasn’t hard to tell with how much the Japanese girl was screeching as half a dozen of these brushes tormented her all over. Ruby and Kyra had an armpit each, and they were asking her more questions even as they scrubbed away at those twitching underarms. Tink and Maya, a burly, dark-skinned girl, had the stomach and sides taken care of, and Rose had charge of the other foot.
Rose, who was all freckles and coy mischief, soon began nibbling and licking the toes in front of her, winking suggestively at Li as she did so. Rose was all right, though perhaps Li simply liked that she was one of the few on the ship who was perfectly content with being tied down and tickled for hours at a time—for most aboard, it was the other way around.
As the dark-haired Jap wailed and spluttered, Li felt a prickle of empathy. Li would have shown this fishing girl mercy if they had been alone, but she couldn’t risk that with so many others watching—she had only recently been promoted to tickling instead of being tickled, after all.
Eventually, the two captains deemed that the interrogation had gone long enough to verify the information, and they sent the girl down to the brig for now. Li made a point to go visit this girl later—partially out of kindness, and partially because this girl would likely be conscripted into the crew, and Li could use every potential ally. She still dreamed of escape.
A few hours later, Captain Natasha, the Captain of War set out with a small party to launch a sneak attack on this Lord’s keep. Natasha was taller than most men, and she looked like she could outdrink and outfight most of them as well. Her short blonde hair blew in the air as she waved at the crew, her grey eyes sparkling in the twilight.
Li waved back. Not so long ago, one dusky evening, Li had found herself spirited out of bed and taken to Captain Natasha’s cabin. Inside, she saw landscape paintings of snowy mountains across the walls, a golden candelabra, and racks of weapons from a dozen faraway lands. She had a good view of this tied to Natasha’s bed, completely naked.
Captain Natasha herself soon came in, her face flushed and her hair tousled. She wore a short-sleeved blue tunic with golden thread work that matched well with her dirty gold hair and dark britches. Li did not fail to note the impressive arms that were rippling with muscle.
She grinned when she came in and saw the sight of Li on her bed. “Ah, how thoughtful,” she said in a Russian accent, making her way over to the bed. From her shaky, lumbering steps, she must have drunk her fair share of booze. “My dear crewmates have left me a fine little present indeed.”
“What a sweet, objectifying thing to say,” Li muttered.
“Oh, don’t say that!” Natasha apparently had very sharp ears. “The crew know I have a… fondness for the cute little ones. I try not to show it when on duty, but it is what it is” She gave Li a pat on the head, smiling. “We just completed a very good raid, so I imagine this is their idea of doing me a favour.”
“Great.”
“Don’t look so glum, little one!” Natasha reached her big hands to Li’s sides and gave them a gentle squeeze. “You have a lovely smile, forgive me for wishing to see it.” She reached over and pulled away the ropes binding Li’s limbs, and it was difficult to see clearly in the dim candlelight, but it seemed to Li that the large, powerfully built woman was blushing.
“I see… well, thanks for letting me go.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Natasha said. “If you leave my cabin, it would seem ungrateful to the crew. Why don’t you stay the night? My bed is certainly big enough for two, little one.”
Li chewed on it, then decided she wanted to push her luck. “I’ll stay… but I’ll need to charge a pillow tax.”
“A what?”
“I get to tickle you too!” Li said, reaching under Natasha’s tunic to skitter her fingers across the other woman’s stomach. She could feel the firm muscles on her abdomen clenching as she spidered her small, nimble fingers along Natasha’s toned belly.
“Ohohohokay!” Natasha had a husky, rumbling laugh, and although she could easily have pushed the much smaller girl off her with those tree trunk arms of hers, she kept them straight up in the air, wobbling. Taking the hint at those outstretched arms, Li went for those armpits next, but this did prove to be too much for the Russian to take, and she surged upward. Li fell backwards and Natasha promptly snatched up Li’s feet, put them in a powerful headlock that must have incapacitated many a fighter, and ran her rough fingers all over the pampered princess’s petite feet.
That night, they had slumbered together, with Li’s head resting on Natasha’s shoulders. Li liked her, and there weren’t many members of the crew she could honestly say she liked very much.
Snapping back to the present, Li hoped the Captain of War would be okay. Her former best friend, Christina Patten, the British girl who had been captured by the pirates at the same time as her, had balked at Li’s early talk of escape, and although they were still friends of sorts, their relationship had been strained ever since.
All their years of friendship in Guangzhou had meant less to Christina than the affections of the pirate girl Sapphire, a former whore, Li was certain. But Li had tried to push that from her mind and be cordial when she ran into Christina, who was now a cartographer for the crew. Christina was one of the ones going off with Natasha right now, in fact, though the dainty fair-haired girl didn’t look too enthused about going off into a war situation.
When she returned several hours later after coming back from the raid, she looked even worse. The whole crew was worse for wear, in fact. Unlike the jubilant whoops, the broad smiles, the joyous songs that accompanied victory, Li saw sombre faces, clothes ripped, bloodstained, and grimy. And there was the undeniable fact that fewer of them had returned, and there was one newcomer, a warrior dressed in the armour of a samurai from the Japanese isles. His face was hidden by the fearsome kabuto helmet he had on, but his hogtie made him appear significantly less intimidating. He said something then Maya smacked him in the head so hard his helmet was knocked off to reveal a handsome, clean-shaven face with thin black eyebrows, a faint white scar under her ear, and a birthmark under the right eye.
“What happened?” Li asked, noticing the katana that lay in a pile on the ground amongst other assortments of loot like carvings, scrolls, and other cloth bundles. “Where’s Natasha?”
“Gone,” Christina mumbled.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“Dead? Captured? She fell behind.”
“And anyone who falls behind is left behind,” said a woman Li didn’t know with bloodstained bandages across her arm. She sounded miserable.
By then, Captains Ruby and Kyra had returned to the scene, and Li heard the announcement at dinner which helped piece together the fragments of the story she had heard. The raid at the Japanese Lord’s house had been unsuccessful, though they had managed to come away with a few trinkets for their trouble. Captain Natasha had turned an ankle on an awkward landing, and when the Lord’s reinforcements had come… it was too much. An arrow from Maya’s bow had caught the Lord in the neck, just under his helmet, but vengeance was a small solace when it seemed your friend might be gone forever.
Many of the women aboard the ship seemed to feel the same way, and they were determined to take out their grief and anger on the samurai, who was paraded in front of the crew. The samurai had been one of the lord’s guards and had slain several of the pirates. He wore robes of green and crimson beneath the strange Japanese armour that was a combination of bamboo and boiled leather, and he struggled mightily as they stripped off his armour, shouting at them, calling them foreign dogs and other fouler things. It soon became clear why the samurai had been struggling so much when Li took a closer look.
The samurai was a woman. The inky-black hair bound in a masculine topknot and the long, willowy frame had tricked her at first, but Li saw chest wraps the samurai had worn to hide her breasts, not that she has much in the way of breasts, and it soon made perfect sense that the slim, comely youth with thin, toned arms and shoulders was merely a woman masquerading as a man.
Of course, this was very bad for her, as if Li had learned nothing from her time on the Mistress Ambivalence, it was that women were very capable of cruelty to their own sex.
“I offer a jewelled dagger from my personal collection to the first woman who makes her wet her smallclothes,” Captain Ruby vowed.
“And I offer a golden brooch to the first one to make her cry,” Captain Kyra declared, not to be undone.
They stripped the squirming and shouting samurai and tied her down to a table in the dining hall where everyone could have a shot at her. There were so many vying to have a turn at this villain that they had to draw lots.
Li sat in the back of the canteen, watching the others vent their anguish on this samurai girl. She wondered why a woman would be so displeased by the sex she had been born with that she would need to pretend to be a man. What decisions would drive you do such a thing?
The samurai girl had decent muscles, and she could see them straining, her face contorted in frustration as no less than four of the pirate overwhelmed her with tickling, quickly forcing the defiance out of her in the form of gusting mirth. Her laughter was boisterous, yet amusing high-pitched, not unlike Li’s own.
They had removed the bandages across her chest so they could torment the poor girl’s chest—an enemy or no, Li found it disrespectful to do that to a warrior who had done nothing but tried to serve with valour in protecting her liege. They were pinching and playing with the girl’s nipples, mocking her all the while as they began to stiffen from the sheer constant stimulation. She didn’t have very large bosoms to speak off, but they certainly seemed sensitive enough.
Samurai girl was starting to sweat and get more dishevelled after each pirate took their pleasure, and each pirate brought their own contributions to this particular conquest, and they left them behind so their comrades could use them to ply their trade next. Currently, in addition to the pirate at the samurai’s chest, another one had two feathers and was twirling in each armpit while the arms strained at the ropes to no avail.
The samurai’s feet were feet were long and slender-looking, especially for one of Asian descent, with high, pink arches. They were proportional to her tallish height, which had likely been a major factor contributing to her ability to pretend to be a man for all those years. They looked toughened from a lifestyle of training and standing guard, so it seemed they weren’t as sensitive as some of the more famously ticklish on board, like Li herself, but they held a few spots that could incite a bit of honest laughter with some earnest work. Christina was demonstrating that fact right now—she wielded a scrub brush in one hand as she yanked back the samurai’s strong toes with the other hand. Christina’s face was still, though tears streamed as she scrubbed harder and harder till the samurai girl’s white flesh was turning pinker and pinker.
The final pirate girl, Captain Ruby herself, was on the remaining untickled foot, and she had a different technique entirely. Instead of trying to brute force tickling those tough small soles, she went for a different target—the tops of the foot. From the way the foot twisted and flexed, with the toes a constant flurry of splaying movement, it certainly worked. Ruby’s long red fingernails scratched along the ankles, the sides, all the way to the tips of the samurai’s toes, and it seemed like Ruby might have been more effective even than Christina’s ferocious brushing. The strong-willed warrior hadn’t cried nor wet herself yet, but she looked like she was well on the path to both.
At the other end of the room, the fisherman’s daughter was in a similar situation, with a handful of pirates punishing this poor girl as well for the sins of her countryman, though there were only three compared to the dozens that clustered around the proud samurai. The Chinese princess watched for a few moments, wondering if it had been a Chinese lord that had eliminated one of the captains if her loyalty would suddenly be questioned. After a while, the ones on Hana walked away, chortling, and Li walked over.
She filled up her tankard with ale and brought it over to the girl’s lips. Hana’s brown eyes were narrow and doubtful, but she drank, making a face at the strange flavours.
“Taste okay?”
“It’s a bit stronger than sake,” Hana admitted, her face twisted in bitterness, “but I thank you for your kindness, no matter how small it is.”
“Do you know who she is?” Li asked, looking over to the samurai.
Hana glanced at the screeching girl, hesitated, but then said nothing.
Li thought about what to say. Should she threaten this girl? Point over to the samurai and say that if Hana didn’t speak this was what awaited her? “If you cooperate, maybe you won’t be tied down here any longer. I can tell the others you helped.”
“And then what?” Hana looked at her with big trusting eyes. “What happens?”
“Why don’t you join the crew? I know they killed your father, but it’s a life… some kind of life, anyway.”
Hana looked away.
Li checked no one was within earshot, and whispered, “I was like you before. They captured me. But a day may come when I can escape from this ship. But to do that, I need to show them I’m valuable. I need them to trust me. Help me, Hana, please. I won’t forget it.”
Hana sighed, and looking like she felt she might regret her words, said, “The samurai girl is Shiro Shirogane, the right hand of Lord Akira. She’s from my village, though we’ve never spoken much before. The Shiroganes are a proud family of soldiers and fighters, but their first two children were daughters. The village though it was a cruel fate of the kami to give a fighting family nothing but daughters. But their third child was a son, and the village rejoiced. But I guess the truth is that they had a third daughter, after all. You can really want something but never get it.”
“Thank you, I’ll remember that.” Li waited till the crowd of pirates had thinned out, and the dining hall was empty. She walked over to Shiro. By this point, the samurai looked all but beaten. Her raven-black hair was a mess, her eyes were bleary and red, and much of her skin was pinkened from where sharp nails and cruel tools had pressed hard into her flesh. Li tried not to pay attention to the faint smell of urine. Even despite all that, Shiro’s body was all wiry muscle, and Li did not doubt she must have been as quick as lightning with her katana.
“You monsters,” spat Shiro, her pitch-black eyes were slanted in anger, “why won’t you just kill me? Does it bring you joy to humiliate a warrior like this?”
“Not particularly, Shiro.” Li saw the samurai’s eyes widen. “Yes, I know who you are, Shiro Shirogane, and I want to say that although your Lord is dead, redemption is possible. You can still live with honour.”
“What are you saying? How do you know who I am? Are you here to free me?”
“Slow down, slow down. I’m Li, a former princess of China.”
“China?” Shiro made that word sound like a curse. “Your people know nothing of honour.”
Li sighed. This was not the place to have an argument fuelled by jingoism. “Do you want to leave this ship?”
She gave a reluctant nod.
“Then we have that in common, at least. It’s not much, but maybe that’ll do for now. I know it’s not easy to trust me, but things are changing around here. And if you can support me like you did your lord… maybe you, we, can all go home.” With Captain Natasha gone, there would soon be an election for a new Captain. There always had to be tree, to keep each other in check. And if Li could be one of them...
“I don’t believe you. How can I? I don’t know a thing about you!”
Li shrugged. “The tops of your feet are really ticklish, aren’t they? I saw how they were tickling you there. I’ve been under Captain Ruby’s nails before, so I know what they’re like.”
Shiro bit her lip and said nothing, though a flush crept across her cheeks.
“My feet are crazy ticklish as well, and not just on the tops,” Li admitted. “You’re luckier than me. There, now you know something about me. Happy?”
“Not really.”
“The moon is too high in the sky, Shiro Shirogane,” Li said, yawning widely. “It’s too late for this. Good night.”
O-O-O
“Everyone knows the code,” Captain Kyra said over the clamour of voices. The dining hall had become like the council meetings Li had once attended with generals, officials, nobles, and ministers. Everyone disagreed with each other, and everyone thought they were the only ones in the room with a lick of sense. “No one likes it, but what’s done is done. The treasure chest has fallen overboard—sending the whole crew into the water won’t change that it’s gone.”
“We don’t know that,” Captain Ruby said. “They might not be dead.”
“And what then?” Clem asked. “They must be in some kind of dungeon, being interrogated. We don’t have the numbers to storm such a fortified location, especially when we don’t even have surprise on our side.”
“Stick to your potions, Alchemist,” spat Maya, who had lost her best friend Rose in the failed raid. “You don’t know that there isn’t a way.”
“And you don’t know that there is one,” Kyra said, twirling a long of jet black hair around her long, spidery fingers. “Regrettable as it is, we must cut our losses and move on. If their torturers wrest the truth from our fallen friends, we have to accept our operations in this area have been jeopardised.” And uneasy silence fell across the hall as all imagined the unimaginable torments their comrades must be going through.
“They’re counting on us to save them,” Tink the tinkerer said in her German drawl. “Are you sure we vant to abandon them?”
“We don’t even know if they’re alive,” Kyra said in a firm voice. “If we get news on their whereabouts and condition, maybe we can coordinate some kind of rescue. But for now, we flee.”
“It seems we must…” Ruby allowed, “but the Mistress Ambivalence needs its three captains. Are you of one mind with me on this, Kyra?”
“I am.”
“Then while we have everyone here, we have a final declaration to make. The Mistress Ambivalence must have three captains to keep everything going as it should be. We will hold an election at the end of the month. All candidates are welcome.”
At this, the dining hall exploded with excited conversation. From what Li could gather, this hadn’t happened in a long time. Li remembered when appetising positions had opened up in her father’s council—uncooperative individuals had disappeared or turned up dead, hostages had been taken to ensure support, hefty bribes had been offered, and extravagant promises were made.
“Are you going to run for Captain?” Hana asked. She sat at Li’s table—the fisherman’s daughter had been released from her bonds after swearing a solemn oath to serve the crew, plus the fact remained that she was the epitome of the harmless yet useful crewmember. Hana was only a tiny bit taller than Li, and the Chinese Princess was a shade under five foot, and a head and a half shorter than just about everyone on board. In addition to her small stature, she lacked strength and martial skill, which made her all but harmless. There was also the fact that Hana’s skill with harpoon, fishing rod, nets, and sailing resulted in an exceptionally useful crewmember—you could never have enough food. Of course, Hana’s own mild temperament helped. Shiro the samurai still remained locked up—her anger had not been quenched, and her skill with a sword made her very dangerous.
“I have to,” Li replied. With captain privileges, Li would have a say in where the ship went. The only reason she hadn’t hopped off the ship every time they dropped anchor was the fact that in Malaysia, in the Philippines, in Korea, in Japan, in Indonesia, she was a nobody. She didn’t speak the language, she had few serviceable skills, and most importantly, she had no friends or allies. But as the captain, she could steer the ship right back home…
“What’s your plan?” Hana asked as they watched a group of drunken pirates proclaim each other as being the best candidate for captaincy. “Who do you trust?”
“I think Christina might back me,” Li said, thinking of her old friend from Guangzhou. “And she’s close with Sapphire, so with any luck, she could be persuaded to help as well.” Christina was respected for the language skills and her skills with navigation, but Sapphire was the truly influential one. The former pillowslave was well-liked, comely, and charming. She had once worked with Captain Ruby, though Christina being her bedmate might shift her allegiance. “Let’s pay them a visit.”
Li and Hana walked down to Sapphire’s cabin. At the wooden door, the aroma of sweet and spicy flavours were strong, and they also heard the muffled sound of laughter. The laughter in itself was not a surprise, but the fact it was muffled seemed to suggest something was amiss, at least to Li, who had heard hearty laughter more than once on her visits here. Hana reached for the doorknob, but Li stopped her. Side by side, they peered through the cracks in the door and the adjoining wall and strained their ears to hear what was happening inside:
“I vas really hoping I could count on your support,” said Tink the tinkerer in her German drawl. She was seated on a chair, wiping her spectacles with a handkerchief. On Sapphire’s plush and large bed, Sapphire and Christina were bound and gagged as two pirates worked over both of them. Their wrists were tired together and tied to the headpost while the same were true for their ankles. The pirates doing the business were a pair of twins with brown tans, short dark hair, and dry, windburnt faces that Li vaguely recognised.
Christina still wore her brown tunic with silver scrollwork—a luxury she had gotten from being Sapphire’s favourite. Her usually melodious laughter was stifled by the rag stuffed in her mouth, and her blonde hair was a wild mess from the constant head-tossing she was doing. The pirate perched over her bare feet wore some kind of strange gloves—doubtless one of Tink’s latest inventions. They were like the grasping hands of some great bird of prey, covered with fur and feathers.
Those hands fondled and stroked Christina’s small, pale feet. Christina’s feet had always been soft and pampered, with the toenails painted red in that queer western tradition. From the way those varnished toes splayed and spasmed as the feathery hands slid along them, they must have tickled ferociously. Li found her toes curling at the sight, especially when those fur-covered hands lodged in between her squirming toes. They wiggled and wiggled, so the wedged fingers scratched all over the highly sensitive skin between each digit. Li had experienced that particular technique before, and she imagined it must be worse with those light and feathery fingers.
Sapphire’s situation was the polar opposite—the only article of clothing that remained to her was her high brown leather boots. Her azure robes were tossed to the side in a pile as the other twin straddled her bare waist. Her honey-blonde hair cascaded across her shoulders and her blue painted fingernails constantly clenched and unclenched as she tried to free her arms. Her eyes were the colour of still water, and they opened and closed constantly in response to the furry fingers that brushed against her bare armpits.
The twin doing the tickling giggled as she stroked and stroked with gentle hands, reminding Li of a cat pawing for some reason. “These gloves work great, Tink!” she said, grinning as she drew slow circles around the hollows of Sapphire’s quivering armpits. “You’re a real genius!”
“I thank you for the kind words,” Tink said, smirking. “I simply hope they prove effective in persuading others how serious I am about my work. I vould make a fine captain, vould I not?”
“I certainly think so,” the twin tickling Christina piped up.
“You’ve got my vote!” said the other twin, who had just decided to trace and stroke her way down to Sapphire’s stomach. She slid the soft and fuzzy fingers and out of the bejewelled navel as Sapphire screeched into the rag balled into her mouth. After a while, those devilish fingers went up to torment Li’s chest, and from the visible stiffness of Sapphire’s nipples, they certainly seem to appreciate their touch, though from Sapphire’s pinched, flushed expression, it was causing her more than a little agony.
“Vell, the only problem is I don’t think I have their votes,” Tink said, using grease-stained fingers to gesture to the two bound women. “Let us continue, shall ve? Ladies, I hope you are vell on the vay to changing your minds! Or Captain Kyra and I vill be paying you two very regular visits…”
“We might have a problem,” Li said to Hana, shaking her head and moving away from the door with quick, rushed steps. “A big one.”
O-O-O
“Captain Ruby, I really thought you’d be more upset about this.”
Li stood with her arms crossed in Ruby’s perfumed cabin with all its jewels and silks, while a nervous Hana hovered behind her. Not only did Captain Ruby look positively indifferent to the news of coercion taking place right on her ship, she looked almost bored by it, choosing to focus on the more pressing matter of the foot massage she was receiving from Clem the Alchemist, who was applying some white, creamy, sweet-solution to the Captain of Intrigues’s feet with sure, practised strokes.
The Alchemist wore a coat stained with paints and chemicals, and she had hair that looked like a messy rainbow. Most of the hair was a dark purple, though there patches and locks of hair that were blue, green, red, and yellow.
“You’re new on this ship, Princess,” Ruby said in a soft, cooing voice. She sat stood with her feet up and her boots off, receiving what must have been a very soothing massage from the relaxed look on her finely featured face. Li’s gaze flitted from those tanned, long feet with crimson toenails to Ruby’s wide smile. “Maybe you don’t know that this is just the way things are.”
“I thought you and Sapphire were almost as close as sisters,” Li said, in a voice that was hard and close to a shout. “You’re going to let them get away with this?”
“It is the nature of democracy, of free voting!” Ruby said with a laugh. “I understand you know not of such queer western notions, but this is how things are done here. People will choose the leaders they want—some people want so-and-so for Captain because she is competent, wise, courageous, and prudent. Others do it because they like her butt. Some do it because they seek favour, or gold, or power. There are even those who do it out of fear. Sapphire knows the game—you think she hasn’t played it before? Many a moon ago, I became captain over her because of the fact I knew a secret spot she had somewhere on that terribly ticklish body of hers. Oh, and my skill with a blade.” Ruby’s voice suddenly turned darker and more sinister towards the end of her speech.
Li found herself taking an involuntary step back, bumping into the two guards at Ruby’s door that had suddenly entered behind them. The Chinese princess cleared her throat and prepared to say what she had come to say. “There’s a candidate you should throw your support behind—me. The reasons the three captains policy works is the power is spread out between three, so everyone has to agree and compromise. If Kyra gets one of her cronies in, she’s going to be the real captain, the bonafide supreme leader.”
“Say, do you like the smell of this?” Ruby extended her bare feet, which glistened from the strange substance that had been rubbed into it. “It’s my dear Clem’s latest creation, and perhaps her most brilliant one yet.”
“Too kind, Cap’n,” Clem said, pulling out a glass tub from her pocket. “I still got plenty more to share with guests, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Isn’t she lovely?” Captain Ruby said with a fond, thin-lipped smile that served to make Li incredibly uncomfortable. From the way Hana was shifting her weight from foot to foot, she was plenty fearful as well. “It’s like she’s reading my mind. It should be no surprise that she’s has my unanimous support for the next Captain. I can trust on your ladies to vote for her can I not?”
Li turned to try to make a break for it—Ruby probably wouldn’t really try to do something too crazy if there were a dozen over people to witness it, but she wasn’t fast enough as the two guards manhandled her and Hana to the ground.
“We really should have seen this coming, shouldn’t we?” Hana groaned as she was hauled to the bed. They were both made to sit on their stomachs with their feet dandling off, and the two guards sat down on them to ensure they wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“My feet feel a lot softer since you put that stuff on,” Ruby said, reaching down to rub her foot. “I wonder if makes areas more ticklish?”
“Oh, that’s a certainty, cap,” Clem said, grinning.
“I trust you, of course,” Ruby said, “but wouldn’t it be much more fun to see it in action?” The Captain of Intrigues and the Alchemist both took liberal handfuls of the oily cream and began smearing at across the soles of both feet.
Li was already giggling when Ruby’s deft, skilled hands (and those long, varnished fingernails) manipulated her toes to make sure the thick potion got into every nook and cranny. Her feet were sensitive enough as they were… she wasn’t sure if she could take more… Ruby squeezed the tiny toes, rubbed spiralling swirls into the high, deep arches with her thumbs, and were firm in their rubbing when she reached the pillow-soft balls of the feet or the heels. It might have been almost pleasurable if not for the trepidation that roiled in her belly.
Hana’s feet weren’t nearly as soft as Li’s, but the lotion seemed to activate rather quickly based on the way the fisherman’s daughter was starting to squeak and gasp with every caress and stroke.
“You ladies certainly sound like you’re enjoying yourselves,” Ruby observed. “Do you see how wonderful things will be once Clem is your captain? Of course, you need to understand that if you displease her, things can also get quite nasty indeed…”
On that, the kind, friendly fingers suddenly turned cutthroat. Li pounded the mattress, her fingers scrabbling back to try to save her slick and damp feet from the sharp fingernails that were scything across them. But the burly guard did not respond to Li’s desperate hands except to slap them away with a snort of laughter. The creamy substance made it feel as if she wearing silk stockings that made everything seem to tickle all the more as Ruby’s fingers glided from shaking heel to trembling toe with ease. The only thing she was able to really do was turn her head back to see what was happening, which didn’t really help, though she couldn’t stop herself from doing it.
From the sounds of Hana’s frantic begging and explosive giggles, she was handling it even worse. The fishing girl had only been onboard for a few days, so she was still getting used to the tickling that seemed to seep into everything here. And she certainly didn’t seem used to having ticklish feet, a fact Clem was more than happy to take full, glorious advantage of by stroking her short, paint-stained fingernails all over the smooth soles.
Clem soon commented on how impressively sensitive Hana’s pink arches were, which prompted Ruby to claim that Li’s arches were far more ticklish. The two pirates spent a fair amount of time trying to prove each other wrong, while the two girls drooled and sweated into Ruby’s bedsheets, which was a moral victory if nothing more.
After an excruciatingly long time, Ruby allowed that she might have been wrong… only she would have to see for herself. At that, the two pirates swapped places deaf to the loud protestations of the two bound girls, applied a fresh lather of the white, creamy lotion, and Hana experienced the touch of Ruby’s fierce, ruby-coloured fingernails while Li had to endure Clem’s expert, measured touches.
All in all, the meeting was an unsuccessful one.
O-O-O
“Not a very good start,” Li said as she whisked her spoon around the carrot and potato broth that served as the crew’s dinner for the evening. She and Hana sat by themselves in a foul-smelling corner of the dining hall where they were unlikely to be interrupted. They had sat in the middle of the hall for a while, which was Li’s usual seat, but when her usual dinnermates sat elsewhere, Li had quickly gotten the hint—news had spread, and people were weary of associating with an overly ambitious crew member.
“Who’s next?” Hana said. “You have other people who can shout your name, right?”
Li hewed her lip. She wanted to say she did, but the truth was, why would those people risk anything for someone who right now stood zero chance of being successfully elected? They were risking the wrath of both Captain Ruby and Captain Kyra, and Li had nothing she could offer but words and promises she probably couldn’t keep.
“You think your buddy might support us?” Li used the wooden spoon to point to where Shiro the samurai was naked and tied to an unused table attended to by half a dozen pirates who had a bigger appetite for revenge than food, it seemed. Shiro hadn’t quite won the freedom to freely wander the ship, as she had stolen a butter knife a few hours ago and had almost cut someone’s throat. Li observed that Clem’s creamy concoction that had been so woefully effective on her own bare feet were being smeared all over the samurai’s lean and scarred body, till her pale body shimmered and shone in the lamplight. Many of the pirates tormenting Shiro at armpit, navel, breast, and feet had some of the small handled brushes Tink had used as well. It seemed that the one thing both sides agreed on how much they wanted to make this Japanese girl suffer. That was an interesting realisation, Li thought, but was there any way she could turn to her advantage? She wasn’t sure she could see how just yet.
“He, I mean, she, had a reputation for being stubborn. Was famous for it.” Hana shrugged. “I thought what happened to us earlier was bad, but wow, they’re really giving it to her.”
The slick, oily potion from the alchemist combined with the bristles had the effect of turning Shiro into a high-pitched squeaking mess, far from the powerful and stoic warrior she no doubt wished to be presented as. Li watched for a while those small, slender brushes swept over the tops of the girl’s pale feet to make the toes spasm and splay. Another brush was dipping in and out of the navel as her stomach shook and quivered. The ones in her slick armpits scrubbed and scrubbed like they were trying to remove the skin.
“Captain Natasha was well-liked,” Li said, and for a moment, she wondered where her dear friend was, and if everything was okay if she still lived…
O-O-O
Natasha’s eyes slowly fluttered open. A groan passed her lips as the aches of half a hundred bruises and cuts made themselves known with her first attempt at movement. The boiled leather and oddments of plate mail that she had worn had been stripped away from her, leaving her in nothing but the snow-blue tunic she had worn underneath, and it was now torn and stained with dirt and bloodily fluids. Her muscles strained against the heavy metal links that shackled her to the wall were so short that she could not even stand. The last thing she remembered was tripping over something, her sprained ankle collapsing under her weight. Her sore ankle felt a bit better now, but that perhaps the only part of that felt okay. Her predicament was definitely nothing less than dire. She was in some kind of dungeon that smelled faintly of urine and excrement. Outside her jail cell—there was no doubt in her mind what this small barred room was—she heard the fast-paced gobbledegook that was the native language of these Japanese. One of them peered in, noticed Natasha was awake, and then scurried off. To fetch their lord, no doubt, though Natasha remembered cutting down a man in ornate robes during the start of the battle. Maybe he had survived?
The person who appeared in front of her jail cell, barked at the guard to open the door, and stepped inside had this lord’s look, but there was a notable difference.
The woman stood with her head tall and her black hair in a stern bun. Her face was plastered with white makeup and her lips were a blood red, which reminded Natasha almost of a flower for a moment, especially due to the floral theme had kimono had, but the malice in those dark eyes killed any such comparison in her mind. At her side, stood a spindly man with spectacles and nervous fidgeting hands.
She shouted something in Japanese at Natasha, which the translator hastily converted to English.
“You are the captain, correct?”
Natasha didn’t answer. Every bone in Natasha’s body said this was a person to be weary of. The woman hovered over her, glaring. She laughed a cold, humourless laugh at Natasha’s silence.
“I have ripped every secret from your crew already. Oh, how they screamed and begged for mercy. Would you like to know which of them were cowards? Which of them gave the information willingly in the hopes they would be spared? Which of them lasted the longest? They gave me much, but you, Captain Natasha, I'm sure you can give me more. And you shall, even if I have to tear it out of you, one word at a time.”
Too cautious to say something in English with that translator there, Natasha muttered under her breathe in her native Russian, declaring how sweet her vengeance would be, what a gruesome fate awaited her, and her things would change once her crew came to spring her out. They would come, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t just leave her.
All the while, the woman smiled, and a few moments later, she said something to her guards and they hauled Natasha out.
The new cell had a wooden rack that was big enough even for Natasha’s large frame, and the leather cords at wrist and ankle kept her body tight and unable to go anywhere. A tray of tools and two smiling women awaited her there. They bowed to Natasha as the Captain of War was strapped in, murmuring soft and polite-sounding words in Japanese. Once Natasha was stripped down to her cloth smallclothes however, what they did was far from nice.
There was an arsenal of tools in this dungeon, and they wasted little time in breaking them out. Natasha had been expecting to be whipped and flayed, but it seemed this lordly woman had some kind of mercy in her in that she did not wish to physically damage her captives too much. This mercy did not amount to much when it came to the fine art of tickle torture, of course. She soon experienced feathers fluttering up and down her quivering sides, wide scrub brushes flying across her pale, large feet in a blur, metal forks ploughing into her armpits, and even wooden chopsticks poking along her sides.
Every half an hour or so, Natasha judged, the two dainty women tending to her ticklish spots would leave, a new duo would appear to assault her areas with fresh enthusiasm. Each of them did it a bit differently, though all made her scream before long.
The women would talk to each other as they rotated, and every one of them seemed to be passing on the information they had so painstakingly gleamed from their exploits across Natasha’s trapped and exposed body. The fact forks worked wonders on the deep grooves of her arches and the fleshy balls of her feet sound became common fact, as every single pairing of women that entered into her cell seemed to spend a great deal of time there. Sometimes, it was one tormenting one foot at a time with two forks, other times it was one tickling each foot, and once it had been two of them going on all attack on just her arches, ignoring the entire rest of her body just to focus on that hellish spot. With her long toes tied firmly back, there was little she could do but tremble and twitch as those forks ploughed away into her arches till she was sure they were blushing a bright crimson.
One of them usually took care of Natasha’s sensitive feet, while the other had mastery over Natasha’s upper body. The midsection was always a fun spot along Natasha’s strong abdominal muscles. They always cooed and giggled over the muscles there as if it were some outlandish, amusing sight. Natasha might have felt flattered if those small, soft hands weren't so devilishly effective skittering across her bare belly and at slipping into her navel. They soon found out her effective a feather was when it was twirled into her navel, and she soon had to contend with that threat constantly.
Natasha’s muscular arms were another oddity to these Japanese women, so naturally fingers were forever darting into her armpits, tracing along the musculature of her biceps and triceps with feather-like touches. Every now and then, Natasha would get a girl with a mole on the right of her eye who simply adored licking away at her underarms, and every lap would make the Russian’s nerve tingle and make every subsequent tickling all the more worse.
And these small, delicate looking women rubbing their fingers all over her bare body... it was perverse, and it fed the growing fire between her legs, though before long, that was just another part of the torment, another sensation to agonise her.
When the end of the day drew near—Natasha could glimpse sunlight from a tiny window in her cell the size of a loaf of bread—the woman returned with her haughty smirk and her translator. “Ready to talk, Captain?”
When Natasha refused to answer, the woman laughed again, picked up a fork, and with a casual, practised air, whisked it along the ball of her left foot in a figure-eight motion. The Captain of War found herself snorting with laughter despite her valiant attempts to contain herself. She stared hard at this cruel, cold woman.
“I can see from your look you are wondering who I am. My name is Aika, Captain, and I am the sister of the noble man you slew. I will not rest till everyone one of your friends are rotting in the ground or screaming in my dungeons. Every night, after my servants have finished preparing you, I will torment you myself. I will not stop till you feel a fraction of the grief and anguish I feel.” She picked up a feather and began twirling it between her sharp, long fingers. “Shall we begin, Captain? Feel free to tell me all your secrets, though it may not spare you.”
