in association with
Scotty Boyo-PPGTKL Productions
is proud to present
The Powerpuff Girls
in
Laughter in Townsville:
Tickled Pink, Green and Blue
Chapter 5C: Revenge is sweet, justice is sweeterButtercup stood, chained to the star-shaped frame in the dark, waiting for the machine that was built around her to whir into life and mercilessly tickle her senseless, she heard a door open behind her; no light spilled into the room, not that Buttercup could turn her head to look anyway.
Bare feet padded across the rough concrete floor, and Buttercup could feel light breathing against her back as the person undid the manacles that held her in place; Buttercup fell to the ground and rubbed her sore wrists and ankles as her muscles started to ache from being held in one position for so long.
"Quickly", the voice said, and the person attached to it gave Buttercup a quick prod in the ribs to get her moving, "when they don't head laughter in a few minutes they'll come looking for you."
"Where are my clothes?"
"Here's your dress - I couldn't find your shoes", it said, apologetically. As Buttercup dropped the dress over herself, the other person left the room by the same door, leaving it open behind her for Buttercup to escape via. Buttercup took her chance and slipped out, careful to stay low in case there were security cameras, motion detectors, or something similar wired up in this facility.
In Princess' nearby accommodations, a passionate embrace was interrupted by a communication from one of Princess' private security force.
"What is it?" Princess asked the guard, clearly pissed off. The young man's voice stammered over the intercom.
"Th-th-th-th-th-the prisoner has escaped, ma'am." Moments later, the guard was nearly deafened by Princess' rather abusive verbal assault. Even Duchess didn't know that many expletives existed. Both girls straightened their clothing and replaced their high-heeled sandals.
"Of course, ma'am. We'll begin a sweep to find her right away."
"Don't forget to use the new artillery, either", said Princess, smirking, as she left the room, followed by Duchess, after grabbing two guns and throwing one of them to her stepsister. They headed off to join the search.
Buttercup had travelled quite a distance before the alarms went off, at which point she thought What the hell..., and began moving much faster. The base was mostly underground it seemed, so flying was out of the question, and she had no idea which way to head to get to the exit. This place was just too damn big.
As she reached an intersection, her hearing picked up the heavy thumping of several sets of boots coming from the corridor to her left, and coming towards her. In all, she counted 6 guards from the sounds alone, and worked out her courses of action; hide, and hope they went straight past her, or fire a pre-emptive attack. After carefully weighing up her options, she shot an optic blast down the corridor before ducking back behind cover.
The guards, not expecting this level of resistance - having never gone against a Powerpuff before - barely ducked in time to avoid the pieces of concrete that were blasted out of the wall by the attack, Buttercup's aim having been off as she was in a hurry.
Both sides prepared for a battle, but Buttercup wasn't prepared for one thing; one of the guards fired a pointless shot past the intersection - Buttercup saw a feather whiz by her field of vision.
"What the...? Tell me that I didn't just see that?" she whispered, incredulous. Leaning carefully around the corner, trying to keep as much of herself behind cover as possible, Buttercup took aim and fired another eyebeam at her would-be gaolers. Sailing down the corridor to where the guards had built a ramshackle entrenchment, the beam pierced their trench's "wall" and struck the team leader right in the chest, knocking him back but not even injuring him. His armour crackled with a greenish energy glow for a moment.
"Great! Now they have eyebeam-proofed armour! What next?" she thought, getting more desperate. A moment later, Buttercup was reminded that she was still partially open to return fire when another shot from one of the guards feather guns sent a single long, thin feather glancing across the side of her neck, and she retreated hastily around the corner as a sharp sensation spread rapidly through her.
Feeling where her neck had been grazed by the feather, she noticed there was a small scratch there where it had the sliced edge-on against the skin, and a fine powder around the edge of the scratch. It didn't smell of anything, and it didn't appear to be doing anything to her, so she just brushed it off and, leaning around the corner, fired another shot.
This time, the guards were expecting Buttercup's return fire, and three several more feathers were launched from guns, grazing her right cheek, her right shoulder and the inside of her upper right arm, leaving further small scratches and more of that useless powder. The guards, meanwhile, had retreated back down the corridor to make Buttercup's aiming harder (they had telescopic sights on their guns), so Buttercup fell back again and considered what to do now.
As she began pondering, she noticed a slight itch on her neck, and scratched it at once, thinking nothing more of it. Then, moments later, similar itches sprang up on her cheek, her shoulder, and the inside of her upper arm. Still not getting the significance of this, she scratched away heartily as she thought about what to do next.
The itches were rapidly becoming more irritating, and were beginning to spread, slowly, from their source points. Buttercup felt an inexplicable urge to giggle, but repressed it as she did not want to give her position away to other troops if possible. Then she realised - itching powder- it was spreading into the scratches...
She scratched harder, trying to get it out, but the powder had already been dug too deep into the scratches, and her shoulder kept jerking as the graduated into a certified tickle. Laughter welled up within her, distracting her momentarily and causing her to stumble out into the intersection by accident.
The guards, having bided their time, took some more pot shots; all but one missed, but that one passed by the side of her knee, and Buttercup gave a small "eep" as she comprehended what had just happened. At once, she took off at a run past the junction, and was out of sight in the distance by the time the guards reached the intersection from their vantage point.
After that, Buttercup simply kept running just as fast as she could, zipping down the many corridors and through the intersections appearing to all the guards merely as a green streak of light. She still had no idea where she was heading, but at least when she was moving this fast they couldn't hit her with any more of those damn feathers.
That is, until the tickling started to become a major issue; Buttercup was by now experiencing tickling that was akin to small, fluffy feathers being stroked over her cheek and down the right side of her neck, continuing past the shoulder and finally ending at just above the elbow. Her right arm hung uselessly at her side, her hand clenching and unclenching spasmodically as the tickling destroyed her control over her own motor functions.
The tickling at her knee wasn't as serious yet, but it was still growing too, and Buttercup soon found that she couldn't continue running at near-sonic speeds, as her knee was feeling vaguely swollen and much weaker. With every step she took, she had to put more energy into springing off the knee onto her other leg as her knee repeatedly buckled under the light tingly feelings running through it. Her breathing was becoming ragged much faster than usual, and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. As she rounded another corner and kept running, the smile that was fighting to grow on her face finally gained a proper foothold and began to spread, followed shortly after by the first gasps and muffled giggle. Finally, the laughter burst through in its fully glory, robbing her of her super-strength immediately and reducing her to more normal "human" running speeds, as she kept up a continual stream of giggles the entire time, her head lolling back.
She found a door and opened it, discovering a small storage cupboard. Figuring that it couldn't hurt to try looking for an antidote to this itching powder - and not fully conscious of what she was doing through her swelling laughter - she hauled herself in and closed the door behind her, locking it as best she could.
Turning around and still laughing her head off, she stumbled across the room towards the room's sole occupant; a man wearing a white lab coat and a large pair of earphones. Clearly, he couldn't hear her, otherwise he'd be doing something by now. The tickling down the right side of her face, neck and upper arm was intense, but not having too much of an effect on her by this point; it was being mostly sublimated by the severe tickling of her right knee, and she shifted her weight more fully onto her left leg. Grabbing the clunky earphones from the scientist, she whirled him around to face her, and he naturally reacted with shock at seeing a manically laughing Powerpuff staring him in the eyes.
"Whahahahahaahahat is hahaahahahahahaahaahaahahaahahahaaahahaapening t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-to...tee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee mee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee...?"
The scientist smirked; Buttercup could see why Princess had employed this guy now.
"That's a special tickling powder you've been affected with," he explained slowly, so she could hear him over her own laughter. "Like itching powder, but many times stronger. It works best when it's in an open wound, quickly and painlessly disabling the subject. And before you ask, we didn't bother finding an antidote."
"Find...hahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ONE NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAOW!" Buttercup said, lifting up both arms and throttling the scientist. His eyes bulged, as he was mildly surprised at how much strength the puff still possessed, even in this weakened state, and he gasped for air. Fumbling around on the workbench behind him, he grabbed up a very pointed feather coated with the powder, and swiped it across her waist. The shock caused by the feeling of the feather slashing across her tummy, leaving another small scratch behind it, made Buttercup inadvertently drop the scientist to the floor, as she herself wobbled and then fell to the ground.
"Wh-hahahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahahaa-why are...why are...hahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH...HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE...WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...?"
The scientist, thinking about nothing more at that moment than simply saving his own neck, swept the feather out again as quickly as he could and sliced it across the first piece of skin he came across - the exposed sole of Buttercup's left foot, from arch to outer edge in a straight line. Buttercup shrieked at that scratch being formed, and burst into new, fresh, ferocious bouts of laughter that almost incapacitated her on the spot. With what little muscle strength remained in her, she staggered to a map on the wall, and committed the exit route to memory as best she could in the circumstances. Then she forced her way out through a nearby door and lurched at a run down this new corridor towards freedom.
Now being swiftly overrun by the tickling feelings in her body - most noticeably the maddening teasing behind her right knee, so that she was limping quite slowly, but also the new tickling growing across her belly button area that was soon leaving her doubled up and gasping for breath, and the tickle that was forming on the sole of her left foot, which made even limping ever more difficult - Buttercup dragged herself up a set of steps, around a corner, through a door, and finally, she was out on the surface. She took another step onto the gravel path, and the tickling simultaneously disabled her from three fronts.
The tickling on her tummy grew to the point where she was bent completely over, hugging both arms to her waist and scratching viciously at her belly as it slowly turned bright red. All the breath was at once forced from her lungs.
The teasing on the back of her right knee reached fever pitch, and the knee buckled totally from under her, reducing her to hopping on her left leg - still bent double.
The titillation on the sole of her left foot intensified so much so that he toes curled up in mid-hop, and she landed grinding her toes painfully into the gravel. Right away, she leapt up again, hopping onto her right foot and cradling her stinging left foot in her hands, forgetting about the terrible tickling she was experiencing for just a moment. Then she came down again and the weakened right knee buckled once more, sending her sprawling across the path, some fifty feet (no pun intended) or so from the rear gates of the Morebucks' estate, still giggling like a silly little girl being tickled by her favourite uncle.
As tears blurred her vision beyond her ability to recognise her surroundings, 3 streaks of light appeared close to the horizon, and flew at great speed towards her location, following the sound of her hysterical laughter. The middle streak was pink, to one side of it was a blue streak and on the other side...a green streak? Buttercup didn't even register this as she was lying flat on her stomach, aching all over from continual laughter and over-exertion. The beings picked up Buttercup without even slowing down, and flew her into Townsville Park, which was oddly deserted given the time of day.
One of the beings - Buttercup couldn't tell if they were male, female, or something else entirely, she was so out of it by this point - forced a phial of some white liquid into her mouth and made her swallow it. After a couple of minutes, the liquid began to take effect, and the tickling sensations surrounding the scratches lightened to a gentle stroking and finally ceased outright. Buttercup remained curled tightly in a ball for several minutes more, unable to stop laughing even though she was no longer being tickled, and at last her panting slowed too.
Uncurling herself on the grass, she looked up at her saviours for the first time, wiping her eyes of the tickle-induced tears that were there; the three were girls, the same age as her or only slightly older, wearing uniform-type dresses that she and her own sisters used to wear all the time.
The girl in pink had brown hair in twin ponytails - with ribbons, rather than a massive clip - to about halfway down her back, and appeared to be slightly taller than the other two. The girl in blue had blonde hair flowing loosely and curled under at the chin, dyed electric blue at the ends. Lastly, the girl wearing green had totally almost neon green hair to her shoulders held back by a simple black headband.
"Who...who are you?" Buttercup managed to make out through her sore throat. The girl in blue gave her a bottle of water, and Buttercup tried to sit up to drink. Her tummy muscles, however, had other ideas, as all that laughter had left her too weak and sore to be able to sit up.
"Don't try to move," the girl in green said softly, and dribbled some of the water into Buttercup's mouth. "You'll be pretty weak for a while yet."
"Where...are my...sisters?"
"Who are they?" asked the girl in pink. "We don't even know who you are. By the way, I'm Berry, this is Bounty", she motioned to her blonde sister, "and this is Bonnie."
"I'm Buttercup. Who created you?"
"Princess Morebucks created us", said Bounty. At once, Buttercup's face hardened (despite her sore jaw), and Bounty hurriedly continued, "but we left 'cos she wanted us to torture you - she seemed annoyed that we were good. That's why I helped you escape."
"We're the Tickle-Torture Girls!" exclaimed Bonnie. Buttercup's eyes went wide in her sockets as Berry reached out and playfully grabbed at Bonnie's waist, but was even more surprised at the lack of reaction from Bonnie, other than snuggling her in a sisterly hug. At this point, Buttercup noticed that the girls clothing, although familiar, was specially adapted; the neckline was slightly lower cut, the dresses were part-dungarees as they had came to the shoulders and were held in place removable straps, and they all wore flip-flop style sandals on their creamy-white feet.
Bounty, not wanting to be left out of the moment, leant over and wrapped her arms around both sisters' waist, and again there was no reaction. The three girls broke up their little love-fest, and turned their excited faces on Buttercup, who backed up across the grass but was unable to get far before they pounced on her.
"Don't worry Buttercup, we don't wanna tickle you," Berry said, pouting adorably.
"What do...you want from...me, then?" Buttercup asked, surprised by this.
"We want you to tickle us", said Bounty, bouncing happily before sitting down and yanking her sandals off her feet, wiggling her toes in Buttercup's direction.
"Can't you just do that to each other?" asked Buttercup, confused. Bounty shook her head.
"Nuh-uh. For some reason, we're not only incapable of tickling ourselves..."
"Well no-one can tickle themself", said Buttercup, before Berry continued.
"...but Princess had her ironic punishment division make us incapable of tickling each other either, which is a pity, as we love being tickled even more than we love the idea of tickling others."
"We don't even know if we ARE ticklish", added Bonnie and her sisters nodded agreement. "We've never found anyone who would help us find out."
"Well," Buttercup said, perking up at the idea of what they were suggesting, "if that's all, I can help ya out." All three girls grew grins so wide they threatened to split their faces in twain.
"Really? That is soooo cool!"
At once, Berry and Bonnie pulled off their flip-flops and all three girls lay flat on the grass, side by side, and waited for Buttercup to begin.
"So," said Berry, "tell us when you're ready, Buttercup."
"I've already started," said Buttercup, feeling a little let down by this turn of events. Being actually asked to tickle 3 girls, and none of them seemed to be even remotely ticklish. Damn.
Buttercup would switch between the three girls at random, so that none of them could know who would be next, but it didn't help; they simply weren't reacting to her tickling, and she had now been doing this for a good five minutes. Toes, arches, soles, heels, between the toes, around the ankles, nothing seemed to work.
The girls sat up so that they could watch Buttercup at work, and gave her tips on what they found worked for tickling (others, of course). Buttercup grew increasingly fed up with this, and chose to stop after several minutes more of exploring.
"Oh pooh!" Bonnie said. All were in complete agreement - it was a terrible shame, but it seemed that they just weren't ticklish. Then a breeze blew up over the park, and as the cooler air wafted past the 3 new puffs' feet, Buttercup noticed their toes began to shift slightly, as though being...tickled! She grinned at them.
"What?" asked Bounty, not understanding. Buttercup didn't answer, but simply lay down on the grass so that her face was right next to the girls feet, and after taking a deep breath in, let it out in one long cool, dry blast against Bounty's feet.
At once, her toes sprang to life, and began to wriggle about wildly, and her feet shook slightly as she strove to hold still. A small grin tugged at the corners of her mouth, and Buttercup - knowing that she was onto something here - took another larger breath and blew it at Bounty's feet again, causing much more squirming and small giggle to slip from between Bounty's pursed lips. She looked to her sisters, a genuine smile forming on her face, and they asked Buttercup eagerly to try tickling them again.
Buttercup turned to face Bonnie's feet next and, after taking the largest breath that she could manage, began blowing it out in a steady stream at Bonnie's feet. At first, this still seemed to have no effect on the other green puff, but after a few seconds her mouth drew into a broad smile and her eyes sparkled with laughter that bubbled up inside her. She chewed her lower lip as the pressure in her chest built up and up...
The sensation faded as Buttercup zoomed off to somewhere, and returned moments later with a large pair of bellows from an abandoned furnace. Buttercup singled Berry out for tickling this time and, pointing the bellows at her, began pumping them in and out about once every five seconds.
The very first blast of air over Berry's soles caused her to squirm in position and her mouth to open into a wide toothy grin. She steadied herself with a large breath, just in time for the second gust, which left her gasping for breath as she began to hiccup involuntarily from the developing laughter, and she pressed her right leg over her left in order to minimise her own writhing as much as possible. The third and final puff from the bellows transformed her hiccups into all-out laughter, as she drew her knees up to her waist and rolled onto her back. Buttercup laughed at watching a simple case of wind tickling someone so efficiently.
"Ha ha! Well, looks like you have a way to tickle yourselves as much as you like from now on, girls," she said, getting up and dusting herself off before floating upwards, as Bounty grabbed the bellows and pointed them at her sisters.
"You're not just...heh heh hee...gonna leave us are ya Buttercup?" asked Bonnie.
"Yeah, sorry", said Buttercup sounding equally disappointed. "My sister's'll probably be looking for me. But I'll come back and visit ya sometime, OK?" The three girls nodded gleefully, and stopped tickling each other long enough to wave goodbye to their new friend.
"Computer: end simulation", Buttercup said, tiredly. She flew to the other side of the Danger Grid, picked up the hopelessly battered Mary-Janes that had dropped some two hundred feet (no pun meant), and dumped them in the trash on the way out, along with many other pairs of shoes and dresses that had been destroyed by monser- and crime-fighting.
Fixing herself a glass of warm milk on the way back to bed, Buttercup thought she heard a sound coming from the lounge, but was far too tired to be bothered; if it didn't attack her, she'd be happy to leave it 'til morning. Right now, she really needed to get to bed.