Kyouko would often say that a good imagination and the compulsion to overanalyze were the most crucial aspects of her job. Imagine as many scenarios as humanly possible and have a theory for every human possibility; meticulously take in and analyze every piece of information like a puzzle so that those theories could be adjusted accordingly before closing in on whatever conclusion was left standing. And most importantly, have a circumspective recognition of the little variables and hidden realities that permeated every case so that the conclusion was really and truly sound; essentially form a new, non-variable reality where there wasn't one before so that only the one, single truth remained.

All of this was at the foundation of her detective's instincts.

And unfortunately, that perspicacious habit -and her inability to turn it off- prevented her from holding down the rising volume of her protests as she was led staggering past the center-dresser that never got used and to the side-most of the room's entryway (easily gathered with or without her eyes facing forward) in what had to have been one of the strangest and most-revolting scenarios she could imagine taking shape before her.

Being given a wedgie; having her expensive underwear forced from the pleated protection of her skirt -like a black cat chased from its den- as a puerile form of torture. All because the torturer -in her warped preconceptions of what constituted a prize- felt no shame reducing her to a personal toy akin to some worn-down childhood ragdoll merely from winning a bet. Poorly-thought as it was that she'd gone and agreed to it, but still a mere bet.

A warped, puerile bet whose degrading penalty reduced her normally-comfortable panties to this newfound instrument of her torture; reduced her to a wedgie toy.

From all the strange and revolting turns this night had taken, the expanses of her powerful imagination ran wild with the strangeness and revulsion that was to come.

Could Celestia have prepared other, harsher instruments threatening to humiliate her further? Perhaps the card shark planned to put that spider's efficiency to a mortifying use leaving her tightly, helplessly bound up in some humiliating position? Or maybe the rope-fiend was going to parade her through the halls of Hope's Peak Academy with her panties in bridled tow so that this humiliation could be captured on its security cameras forever.

Even knowing firsthand how this queenly young woman was too selfish to go sharing 'her prize' with anyone else, the colorful collage of personality defects that colored her chimerical, variable-filled mind gave little reassurance. So long as it satisfied some narcissistic demand for dominance, she just might be crazy enough to actually do it.

So long as the small chance existed for these kinds of strange and revolting ideas to enter her head -and the chance only grew more likely as door grew closer- Kyouko couldn't dismiss the worry any more than she could dismiss that nervous adrenaline jittering through her which those worries had bourn.

Please don't let any of those realities be formed.

Please...

Wait a second...

What...?

Was she being turned away from the door?

Soon...

So very soon...

Soon she'd be fervidly reaping the pay-off of a good call on an even greater ante, won like so many pots taken before it. This jackpot of hers, all hers, taken purely, cleanly, through her myriad wits and cunning, like so many prizes taken before it; she never failed to reach out and grab them.

And thanks to so much outstanding talent and masterful brilliance, soon she'll have tamed the Super Highschool Level Detective, just like every other rival before her; teach the insolent young lady just why she -the Super Highschool Level Gambler and the greatest high roller of them all- always comes out on top when the stakes were raised this high.

'It's her own fault' said the high-roller to herself, so very many times. After all, who had been the one to raise those stakes so high? Who had so dreadfully brought it all to this point? Who had been the one to so nakedly flaunt such ignorance of her place, like only a true D-rank would dare? The presumptuous little minx would pay the price of all this guilt with her dignity.

So very soon...

Celestia, so observant as her profession required, caught notice of her dreadfully laggard captive's struggles and complaints dampening pathetically as the line of closets flanking the entryway drew closer. How adorable!

She was sure the girl with wide eyes spotted the closet standing out among the rest by its bareness, the raison d'être of her every act in this play thus far: no painstakingly constructed and silken and sewn dresses whose like normally hung so immaculately within its walls could be seen; fully, completely bereft.
(oh, how she loved those wide eyes so full of comprehension as her fully-revealed hand slithered into view)

Yes, it had been a small sacrifice to make this dread her favorite opponent -and new favorite toy- was feeling possible. But if cramming the vestments which made her Celestia Ludenberg into their temporary home inside the cabinet-dresser was what it took to cram this defeat into the stubborn girl's oversized-and-overused skull, then she would make it a worthy investment. Oh so very worthy...

She had had the lone bar fixed across the sleuth's prison-to-be reinforced past the point needed for bearing such dainty, frilly garments; more than enough to bear the dainty, frilly garments it was about to.

One lone bar fixed in place: more than enough to hold and correct the undisciplined prisoner whom it waited to imprison, ego and all.
A lone bar locked in mid-air: more than enough to take her up to a good height while taking her down by an even greater peg.
No, it wasn't just a lone bar locked inside a prison-to-be: it would be enough to take down that dreadfully massive ego of hers fully and completely.

Oh so very soon...

"And that, Detective, is the finale."

"Regret" wasn't a word she would associate with these few, simple years she'd tolerated Celestia's quirks; even granting her reasons for that sentiment being so simple and so few.

One novel skill Kyouko had to show for all the "games" they'd played together -and she'd won all of them up till now so she'd seen the upper levels of the gambler's frustrations- was how to read past the poker face which she prided herself on enough to believe in its perfection. But detectives don't believe in a perfect deception: and so she learned to read something painted to be unreadable.

That was just her nature; she made a point of being able to read everyone in class, imperfections and all. Celestia's inability to exclude herself from that assessment exemplifying her imperfection so plainly may have unintentionally exacerbated those frustrations. But that was just her nature...

Evidence of the assessment's absolute accuracy, every readable thing -from every shift on her pale-powdered cheeks, every sparkle in her deep-red eyes and every step to her deep-redder Mary-Janes- everything on, around and about that familiarly-proud poker face in that moment was palpably, shamelessly screaming out that she was serious.

To reiterate:
She. Was. Serious.

So against all the ways this girl who clothed herself in lies had unwittingly helped exercise her intuition for catching those imperfect lies...
Right in that moment the word "regret" suddenly felt rather apt.

Too apt.

Oh God, she was serious!

A look of wide-eyed trepidation had replaced the poker face she too usually wore as an undesirable reality was replaced with another in the closet standing tall before her. Tracing a trepidatious line up the wall painted in deep-red, those widening eyes quickly twisted into a deep-cutting glare as they landed on the uncuttable steel bar staring back down at her, coldly impartial and coldly imposing all at once.

And so with cold, uncuttable steel shaping the last piece, the pieces all piled together to shape the puzzle's twisted picture; the strange and revolting image of a harsher instrument prepared in advance that threatened to humiliate her further. "Just how spiteful are you?"

She bellowed those interrogating words less coolly than she'd have preferred. But still...

Parlor trick or not -coming from such a capricious brat or not- Kyouko had kept both eyes locked onto the gambling prodigy who lacked the paranoia to explain being this well-prepared since setting foot in that stupid Rec Room. Thinking back, that first step into the gaming den her 'mark' haunted like a real den was really the first limb she would tangle in the spider's web.

She knew the girl well enough to know she wouldn't just compromise the pillar of vanity that was her beloved wardrobe on some off-chance at exacting vengeance; because in spite of her title, she never truly left anything to chance.
And she knew this girl wouldn't be carrying ropes and bindings and whatever other instruments of indignity she might be hiding by coincidence unless they served a purpose towards her hedonism; because in spite of so much caprice, she never truly did anything without purpose.
But beyond those two things, the one thing she knew above all else was that the fiercely conniving Celestia Ludenberg she knew, by virtue of the previous two factors existing simultaneously, would never make such a deal otherwise.

The only conclusion left standing was that somehow this prideful, capricious and conniving girl had set it all up for a spite that only made sense in her vain, hedonistic little mind.
Childishly manipulated her own classmates and acted as live-bait for this job out of childish spite.
Maliciously hired her own 'hitman' by proxy and prepared a retaliation in malicious spite.
Forged a labyrinth of lies whose design only her liar's eyes could see while playing on the playfulness that allowed the huntress she hunted to accept that job in the first place.
All just as she did best, all for spite.

Somehow.

(she was wrong about the intentions behind their past 'games')

Somehow...

(her frequent challenger had probably been stalling earlier in the Rec Room)

Somehow...

(no one would put any of it past her)

Somehow...?

"...!"

"Ow-www...!"

Kyouko could only wail girlishly through the fully and completely totaled spite that was Celestia channeling her distaste for the interrogation in a totalling affirmation of that spite, lifting both rope-ends tangled rigidly in each hand their highest yet at the peak of both girls' shoulder blades, again wrenching up the sturdy twin-openings normally meant for Kyouko's legs till they pushed up threateningly close to the same punishing height.

"Ooouuuh..." the punished girl whined as the shock subsided.

Even inflicted on a detective hardboiled enough to hide all but the most hardwired of her responses and reactions, such fresh stinging beside the raw sensitivity of so many accumulated stings gone sore before it made her soft voice go louder than it had gone all night -probably louder than in all her student career- only to peter out and soften again to a nigh-inaudible groan with the subsiding shock.

Perhaps all done to test the rope's disciplinary strength, but more likely done so Celestia could test her prisoner's weakness in being disciplined; also because, in her infinite whimsy, she just wanted to. "I'd say that question is the least of your concerns... Detective."

Acting fast before the rattling aftermath of her 'test' could be shaken off by its fast-rattled testee, Celestia cast a rope-end over the cold, awaiting bar with an urgency burning crimson-hot to reach out and grab the fantasy she'd kept of a mortified lady-sleuth left tightly, helplessly bound up in a humiliating position.

Like a gambler would, she would bet anything the mortified young lady whose fortunes landed her in the prize-position of that fantasy should have reached the same vivid image burning furiously somewhere within her superabundant suspicions like a detective should.

With a crimson-eyed glint that looked so-gleefully forward to confirming that suspicion -a climactic play amongst the other humiliating plays she had up her sleeve- Celestia reached out and grabbed the rope's fluttering tail like it would scurry away if she didn't. She then quickly joined her pre-prepared and pre-practiced tools of scraggy hemp and cold steel by the same spider's efficiency she'd shown earlier, quicker than before and quicker than her humiliated plaything could regain her rattled mental footing.

"No..." groaned the rattled lady-sleuth less audibly than ever as her mental footing came slowly back; more than enough to comprehend.

By so little failure needed to make it happen, by both tightly-knotting rope and her own rapidly-tightening panties sealing shut the sturdiest of her prison's locks, Kyouko knew she was trapped. The theoretical turns this strange and revolting scenario could take depleted so hopelessly fast that she was given no chance to react, and the reality remaining left her so hopelessly trapped that she was given no chance to escape.

Kyouko knew morbidly well from employing these mental tactics on many a guilty culprit during her work -helping them walk into their own conviction defending themselves so stupidly as they so stupidly often did- that the harder one struggles against a well-laid trap, the harder it'll constrict its catch. Regardless of what morbid form that trap took. The aggravating feeling that all those same stupid culprits would all be laughing at her right now only made this bitter reversal of positions taste that much bitterer: because so long as this pitiless girl held all the cards, the same pitiless constriction would hold true for her own struggles.

A bead of uncomfortably hot sweat trailed slowly down Kyouko's fast-reddening cheek, and just like before when her defeat was slowly sinking in, she was shaking weakly even against the uncomfortable heat spreading fast all over her body; through a uniquely-aggravating regret like she hadn't felt in years suddenly given life all in one night, it came on like a familiar and yet new kind of defeat.

Regret... goddamn regret. As if she needed another word like that wallowing so bitterly in her mouth. Should she count all the ways?

Maybe she regretted that steadily-growing boredom sown by so many banal cases and so few truly intriguing mysteries worthy of testing her numerous -yet consequently unsharpened- skills against that had allowed her to take on this novel challenge.
She probably regretted the dangerous pride in her fundamentally more intellectually-intensive Super Highschool Level talent -presumably built by all those easily-solved cases- that had allowed her to foolishly trespass on the minefield-like territory of another.
And she definitely regretted that self-indulgent childishness -likely stirred by both pride and boredom's daredevil alchemy- needed to involve herself with and play along with all these silly games dreamt up with her ruin in mind, which she had then allowed this horrid girl to play upon for her own childish purposes.
But most of all, her choice to associate with such a girl long enough to grow these many sinkholes of regret across these few, simple years so that all these dangerous weaknesses she'd left bare could be ruinously exploited trounced every regret before it.

Of course a professional gambler wouldn't make such a deal otherwise; she didn't need 20/20 hindsight to know that was obvious. Did she have unsharpened skills or foolish pride to blame for how long it had taken her to figure that out...?

Damn it all...

Damn all this humiliation, damn all this apprehension, and damn all this regret! She was a detective, dammit, not some toy to be played with and worn out by this horrid, shamelessly-spiteful brat!

...

'Who would have thought simply pulling up her undergarments would pull out this many emotions?'

Like many things, all this red-hot emotion boiling over from a girl usually so emotionally-cold wasn't lost on the ever-observant Poker pro, their bodies edging close enough for her to follow every body-lingual jolt and jitter. 'I mean, really... this kind of reaction already?' she thought to herself both impressed and disappointed, as if she'd wanted the young lady's infamous fortitude to last even longer purely for the chance to tear it down even more. But no matter: this still seemed too good an opportunity to get in another barb or two..

"Scared, Detective?"

As she turned to the source of that simpered half-taunt, Kyouko's usually-emotionless visage showed nothing like fear; only true frustration.

"Well then you'd best prepare yourself..." her simper grew poisonous as she added the tiniest of pulls, "because if you don't, this next part is going to hurt like an ever-living hell."