Right then, by a basest physical instinct to evade suffering and against a detective's instinct to read her situation's inevitable conclusion, Kyouko turned sharply on her just-planted heel towards the last reprieve that was the door so few steps away in a last break towards evading inevitability.

So many thoughts of escape had floated up in her mind and been analyzed so many times through all the stings she'd shut down her self-preservational instincts to endure: exit points, exploitable weaknesses, opportunities to put a stop to this. Painful as it all had been, she knew she could take it all in stride if only to honor the bet she'd agreed to; this much suffering was permissible. But knowing just how painful this stupid prank she'd suffered through could become was enough to know that this was far too much; Kyouko remembered weighing 48 kg and standing 167 cm tall last she checked. Knowing how unbearably painful this was going to be with those two facts in mind -all that pressure focused into a single, vulnerable spot- was more than enough to know that she had to get away.

Even if it meant throwing away what was left of her thoroughly-damaged and dwindling pride by going back on her word; the flickering hope that she could get out of this when logical deduction said that she couldn't.

...

..!

"Ah!" gasped the vainly-fleeing girl as her unplanted heel and her momentum's sharpest pivot set upon each other clumsily enough that she nearly tripped in place. That cornered prey's last break didn't get her very far.

Scoffing softly, Celestia effortlessly reeled her captive back into captivity beneath the bar without so much as a pause for her meticulous work on the ever-tightening knot and the pulley it lead to. "Still defying me, I see... further proof of how much you need this sort of humbling." She paused intentionally to smirk mid-knot. "Why not think of all this as a learning experience, my egocentric friend?"

With that invitation to acceptance, Celestia took the clinching rope holding her rigging tight in both hands and yanked downward with an unacceptable intensity, smiling as the bar played its part and her grievously-humbled captive was yanked off her heels one last time; that would be the last in a long time those two vertigo-entangled heels would be allowed sweet contact with the ground.

Choking down the painful moan drying in her throat just to deny Celestia the satisfaction, Kyouko knew there was simply no point correcting the girl's inane delusions; a tormentor this blatantly gleeful would likely use any snarky remarks she might dispense to justify taking the torment further. The last thing she wanted was this oncoming agony taking on a set of weights strapped to her ankles atop its agonizing payload; Lord knows this room hid such a thing lying in wait somewhere for just such a purpose.

So even through gritted teeth and lips curling sourly in throbbing strain, she kept her mouth shut -the best she could manage- as her final chance to escape faded from sound possibility fully and completely. Before she'd had enough time to at least do like she'd been told and accept her fate, Celestia hauled the rope's other end through the cinch she'd made and heaved the rope's quietly heaving captive into the air with a quiet glee.

"Oh!" Kyouko gasped as her center of balance jettisoned dizzyingly-fast into the pit of her stomach with her already-unstable toes -her last line of defense holding this all back- slowly joining her heels in only just reaching the ground, dangling.

...

It began, fully and completely, more electrifying and unsettling than it felt the first time.

There was no haste in the pattern Celestia wielded to haul the rope like there'd been before where she would madly hitch the underwear up in every mad direction on her every petty whim. Worse, this was a slow burn, but there was no disguising just how badly it burned. Celestia hauled the rope with a quiet precision that utterly basked in its own slowness. So slow that Kyouko couldn't discern where its inexorable rhythm ended nor where it began; it just hammered at her over and over like an erratically-knotted string of pithy, elasticky bounces linking up high at the softest curves of her waist and traveling down the conduit of her trembling legs.

Celestia's unhasty fingers seemed to linger savorily over the braids as her palms closed around them, and both girls felt every single, tiny shudder -weight all shifting and shaking in every direction pointlessly- carrying through the deliberately slow rope at each end as those lumbering braids crawled over the bar like a slug; one by one by painful one.

"Oooowww..." was the softest and only noise she had left, every sharp convulsion and every tremulous breath within those noises swelling gross with tiny vibrations all teasing her in a row through a bluffed stillness only to make way for the next. The grating of the jagged frills and dragging lace so teemed to turn against their wearer was so constant -so mechanical and automatic in its chaos- that as it all pooled inward at her very-most center, the wicked meeting of weight, tension, heat and abrasion growing together out of control felt like they were all battling fiercely, mercilessly, with her caught in between; at each's mercy and bearing each's brunt. All these painful facts came together to prevent her from accepting her fate no matter how much she tried.

Yet another wave of hot sweat washed across her body and with it a hot rush of blood flowed up into her already-dizzied head as her feet really and truly separated from the ground by at least half a meter, like she were hovering. It wasn't like before where the pressure rose and fell akin to a shallowing tide, her feet planted here and there by however motivated Celestia was feeling -here and there- to keep her from that relief. At least then she could look forward to the unwanted separation lasting mere moments beside longer moments. At least then even her merest struggles might earn her some reprieve against Celestia's wiry grasp.

This time her opponents were endlessly enduring gravity and the ungodly durable fibers making up her panties, neither likely to give before she did. As she endlessly tried and failed to detect some point of reprieve against these fearsome opponents, the pressure steadily became so raw and so painful -like tongues of steadily spreading flame licking at her most sensitive places- that even for someone like her who could drown out her very emotions, it was wreaking havoc on the physical threshold that kept the agonized whimpers and moans from squeaking past her lips. And so endlessly she cried out, pointlessly.

"It hurts" ran rappidly through her mind over and over, and it creased across her pale features against her best efforts; no sardonic warning from a pair of poisonous lips could have been enough to prepare her for this ever-living hell, and it too showed on her face against her best efforts. Against herself.

"Hmm-hmmhmmm..."

Speaking of poison...

Celestia could honestly say she thought this side of the detective looked positively adorable. Far preferable to that aloof and taciturn young woman she seemed so keen to present herself as. Watching her instead squirm like a perfectly pathetic worm on the end of a fishing hook uselessly trying to get loose while her usually tight-lipped mouth went perfectly ovular every time those girlishly high-pitched whimpers escaped past her perfectly gritted teeth every single time the threads decided to burn her from some new, oblique direction... simply delectable.

So very delectable...

...

Dammit!

This was too much; far too much for her -in stable body and longanimous mind- to take.

Her head moved from its weakly lolling nod -slowly as not to encourage any more pointless shudders than were necessary- needing, above all else, to make these many grievances known. She exhaled once before amethyst eyes pinpointed into deep wine-red ones.

"I don't think you actually realize how... painful this is..." she spoke slowly too as not to encourage any more of those tremulous breathes that unfailingly sent her spiraling into another inexorable rhythm.

"Hmmhmm..."

With just a sample of her amusement showcased by a chortle hummed to herself, Celestia could honestly say she was impressed Kyouko managed to keep her iron-will composure intact under these circumstances. Not that she would do anything to make that impression known; absolutely nothing of the sort would she allow. "...And your point being?"

Kyouko didn't know how much of the wince in her left eye and the subsequent groan slipping quietly from her mouth came from pain and how much came from the total exasperation layering every level of her being. "My 'point' being... that I would never... have done something so juvenile," her glare sharpened there, "if the tables were turned... This is way too far!" She ignored that moment's spiraling set off by her own sudden rise in volume.

Celestia's contumelious giggle came out so very acted, like a great villain on stage delivering the play's most shocking twist as if to twist further the knife of her condescension. "Kirigiri, I'm a gambler: the tables are always turned in my favour." Kyouko's nose scrunched in successfully-furthered frustration at such an asinine admission of guilt, which only led to another of the gambler's amused giggles that she let last in full before speaking again. "And I'll be the one to decide when 'too far' is." She hauled at the rope again, for the last time, and so many more agonized whimpers came rushing out Kyouko's mouth.

"Aaahhhaaa... "

This last grueling haul of the night didn't take a seasoned master like Celestia long at all, but for a first-timer like Kyouko it was truly a long fall into hell.

"Ooohhhouuu...!"

Before long, the gambler grew fully, completely satisfied with the height she'd left her doll strung up at, and so completed her last knot even fuller and faster than any before it, both offending ropes spread far apart with Kyouko at their center like a hanging triangle. Soon after, she produced another object from some sleeve or pocket and snipped off the errant rope end so that it fell outside any range Kyouko might have been able to manipulate it from. Twisting the knife still, she allowed the sewing sheers to linger within the detective's purview before pulling them away, teasing again with how easily such a small tool could have offered her an escape.

Celestia stepped back again to inspect if all was in its right place, taking the opportunity to stroke and then pluck the undulating rope without a thought for the girl it was confining, perhaps to test its strength again but more likely because she just wanted to. As if she wanted to test how many new sounds she could bring out from behind the detective's stone-cold lips with every cruel new sway and sudden, snappy percussion; see what faces she'd make when her stoic mask had fallen.

But again, all of that may have happened because she just wanted to.