A sedan with tinted windows entered the parking garage of the run-down apartment building. Minutes later, the doorbell rang. Pinstripe Potoroo loaded his tommy gun and signaled one of his goons to answer the door.
“Who is it?” the suited platypus asked with a gun in hand.
“Special delivery for Pinstripe.”
Pinstripe smiled.
“About time.”
A hulking rodent with a crooked nose and half his whiskers missing walked in with what looked like a large sack of potatoes over his shoulder.
“Leave it in the guest room.”
Once the rodent left, him and the two goons he had with him in his small apartment squeezed into the unfurnished room to inspect the goods.
“Get ‘im out,” he said.
His goons took the burlap sack from the edges and turned it upside down until someone fell out. A bespectacled blue kangaroo donning a top hat and a burgundy bowtie. And if you looked past the straightjacket and the complete lack of pants, you could say he had the air of an intellectual. The kangaroo’s eyes widened when he saw Pinstripe.
“Well, well, well, look who’s here. Ripper Roo in the flesh.”
“Oh! P-Pinstripe! To what do I owe the pleasure?” The kangaroo’s tone was dignified but clearly nervous, as was expected from someone who had just spent a long car ride in a trunk inside a potato sack.
“Youse the smart guy so tell me!”
The kangaroo started sweating. “Erhm… I suppose this is about the loan for the museum.”
“Ay, see? Youse do know.” Pinstripe said, throwing his arms up in an exaggerated gesture of celebration. “Now I ain’t so good with numbers so help me out here. How much do ya still owe me?”
“Well, uh… Q-Quite a lot, if memory serves.” Roo said, averting his gaze to the scratched vinyl floor. “I needed a large sum to cover the damages done by my erh… other half. I promise I’ll pay you back as soon as I’m able.” He cursed the day he had decided to take out a loan from Pinstripe. But then again, it’s not like he had had a choice. He needed to keep his museum open somehow and not bank was insane enough to lend him money.
“That just ain’t good enough, Ripper. Just ain’t good enough.”
He signaled his men to seize the kangaroo which they quickly did. Then they stripped him of his straightjacket and held his arms above his head, making him vulnerable.
“Wait! P-Please! I’ll have your money! I promise!” The panicked kangaroo pleaded.
“I don’t want money no more.”
“P-Please! Don’t hurt me!” Roo whimpered. “I don’t want any trouble!”
Pinstripe grinned wickedly. “Hurt ya? No no no, I ain’t that kinda guy.” He laughed and began pacing around the kangaroo. “Youse gonna pay me back. That’s non-negotiable. What is negotiable is the currency. Lucky for you, I accept things other than cash.”
“What things?”
Pinstripe stopped just behind the kangaroo.
“Laughs.”
Without warning, he poked both of the kangaroo’s armpits with his fingers.
“Pffft! Hehehey!” Roo laughed and tried to free his arms from the goons.
“Whassamatha? Ticklish?”
“Yehehehes!” Ripper nodded frantically. “Plehehease! Anythihihing but thahahahat!”
“Aww, can’t stand a lil’ tickle? That’s too bad.” He scratched Roo’s armpits faster, raising the tone of the poor marsupial’s laughter by a full octave. “Y’see, we’re in the middle of a transaction right now. Just entertain me and the boys for an afternoon and your debt is gone. Sweet deal, eh?”
“I’ll gehehet the mohohoney!”
Pinstriped frowned. “Grr, you shoulda gotten it last month! Now? Fuggedaboutit.” He walked in front of Ripper and squeezed his pudgy round belly.
“BWAAAHAHAHAHA!”
Unfortunately for the kangaroo, his belly was even more ticklish than his armpits. In fact, he had been cursed since his conception via Dr. Neo Cortex’s Evolvo-Ray with unbearable ticklishness all over his body. Every scratch and squeeze made him squeal like a pig and laugh like a hyena as he tried desperately to bargain his way out of this predicament.
“YOU CAHAHAN HAHAHAVE THE MUHUHUSEHEHEUHUHUM!” he shouted in a last-ditch attempt to save himself from more tickles.
“Not interested.” Pinstripe said as he now tickled both his belly and his armpits at the same time. “I got all I want riiight here.”
Ripper’s psyche began to fracture, and something he had long since buried threatened to slip out from between the cracks.
“STOP STOHOHOP PLHEHEHEASE!”
To his surprise, Pinstripe did actually stop.
“Is it… over…?”
The potoroo smirked and looked at his goons. “Sit him down and hold his legs.”
Roo’s heart skipped a beat.
“Wait! No! Anywhere but there! Please!”
The goons sat him down on the floor with his legs forward and held them down like they were told to. This position revealed Ripper Roo’s impressively large feet which he used as hands half the time, given how his were usually locked away in his signature straightjacket.
“Why not? Are these feet of yours really that ticklish?”
Roo wanted to say yes but he was suddenly hit by a wave of embarrassment. Pinstripe knew exactly what he was doing.
“Please! I-I’ll pay you double what I owed you! Just please don’t tickle my feet! If you do, he’ll… he might…”
“Youse gonna lose your marbles again, right? I’m counting on that.”
Roo shook his head. “No! Please, I’ll do anything!”
“You already know what I want.”
Pinstripe knelt down and inspected Roo’s soles closely. They were a lighter shade of blue than the rest of his body which gave them a soft appearance. They had three large toes each that currently trembled with anticipation. There was something almost hypnotic about the shape and texture of those soles. He touched them.
“GAHAHAHAHA!”
Ripper Roo threw his head back and let his tongue out. His laughter echoed through the whole apartment. All this in response to a single finger gingerly running up and down one of his soles.
“Woah! These things are sensitive!” Pinstripe remarked in amazement. “You’re in for a rough ride.”
The mobster unleashed a full-on assault against the kangaroo’s ticklish soles. Not a single square inch of their broad surfaces went untouched. He traced circles around their well-defined arches and scratched his wide heels. Then he moved north towards his curled toes and forced them back to scrape against the stems with his claws.
“BWAAAHAHAH! GUH! GUHUHUHU!!”
Something was happening to the kangaroo. Weird guttural noises came out between peals of laughter.
“So soft. So ticklish.”
Pinstripe, for his part, seemed to be under some kind of spell. The more he tickled Roo’s feet, the more entranced he became. The texture was impossibly soft. The toes wiggled so enticingly and the little wrinkles that appeared on the sole when they curled left the mobster wanting to lay his head on them as if they were pillows. In fact, he had already subconsciously gotten his face quite close to the Roo’s soles.
If his henchmen had any thoughts about the situation, they didn’t verbalize them. They knew better than to speak out of line.
“GUHUHU GWHAHAHAHA BWAAAAHAHAHAHA!”
Then the potoroo did something that surprised even himself. He licked the soles of his victim’s feet.
“IHIHIS THAT YOUR TOHOHONUE?” he commented, baffled that the mobster did such a thing. His hopes of a quick end to his torment were dashed. This wasn’t just a way to punish him for not paying his debt. Pinstripe liked his feet. These were the last thoughts on his mind before his laughter became strange and dissonant. Some of it sounded like made-up noises rather than genuine laughter.
And then he snapped.
His body shook like an old washing machine on the fastest spin cycle, sending the hat, the glasses, the bowtie and even the mustache flying in different directions.
Pinstripe didn’t even take notice. He was too focused on rubbing his cheek against the kangaroo’s soft soles to see how his eyes now had a red spiral on their yellow sclera and the left one looked in a different direction than the right.
“Guhuhuhwahahaha! Brrt!”
The strange noises finally seemed to register and Pinstripe begrudgingly looked up over Roo’s toes which now splayed invitingly instead of curling defensively.
“There’s the crazy one! I missed ya, ya know? The other one yapped too much.”
The kangaroo blew a raspberry.
“Youse gonna take your tickles. Won’t ya?”
He nodded. “Sounds like fun! I can tell you like my feet.” He wiggled his toes and grinned ear-to-ear, the kind of crazy, toothy grin of someone who belonged in the loony bin. “You really, really like’em, don’t you~?” he giggled.
“Cat’s outta the bag now, huh? Yeah, I do like ’em. Now where were we? Ah, right.” Pinstripe knelt down in front of Ripper Roo’s soles again and smirked before letting his tongue out and giving the left sole a long lick from the heel all the way up to the tips of his wiggling toes.
“BRRRAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Ripper Roo went crazy once again. Or perhaps crazier* *was a more appropriate descriptor. It didn’t matter to Pinstripe. He was obsessed. Roo’s paws looked fantastic, smelled and tasted great (they faintly reminded him of Wumpa Fruit with slight undertones of TNT), felt softer and plushier than any pillow he had every laid his head on and, best of all, they moved in the most enticing of ways.
“Betcha take real good care of these, huh? No way they’re naturally this soft,” he commented before slurping on his toes like they were lollypops.
“GUHUHUHUHU! BWAHAHAHA!”
Time flew by quickly for both of them. Pinstripe was having the time of his life and Ripper Roo… Well, he was Ripper Roo. It was hard to tell what was on his head now that his highly intelligent alter ego had been tickled away into the depths of his subconscious.
It took about an hour of non-stop tickling and licking for Ripper Roo to become too exhausted to move. At some point, Pinstriped allowed his henchmen to help by tickling the kangaroo’s upper body. Just the upper body, though.
The feet belonged to him.
Ripper Roo’s reactions - both of his personalities’ reactions, for that matter - were some of the most amusing he had gotten in years of using this method. The kangaroo was extremely ticklish and he even came in a two-for-one package! What a shame it would be if this was the last time he got to play with him.
Then he was struck by an idea.
“Well, that was fun.” Pinstripe said as he stood above the exhausted kangaroo who was limp on the floor and smiled. “Consider your debt paid… partially. I’ll be coming back later to collect interest.”
The kangaroo made a sound that was like a mix between a sigh and a snort. He may crazy and bursting with energy, but even he got worn out after having his most sensitive spots tickled for a long time. He was simply too ticklish.
Then the doorbell rang again.
“Ah, just in time.”
With that, Pinstripe and his goons left the room and locked the door behind them.
Ripper Roo closed his eyes. But before he dozed off into a much-needed nap, he heard the mobster’s voice faintly through the walls.
“In the living room is fine… Well, well, well, look who’s here. Dingodile in the flesh.”