One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
There isn’t a place in the world where that statement rings truer than in a junkyard. Every heap of rusted metal and every corroded circuit board a storybook. Machines, after all, live much like people do. They are born, live out their lives and die. In that regard, it can be said that a junkyard is more like a cemetery. But unlike a cemetery, where digging up the skeletal remains of the deceased is generally distasteful and broadly illegal, the junkyard invites mechanics, engineers and general handy folk to rummage through those old discarded storybooks and read the stories they have to tell. And, to those who are skilled enough, to add to those stories.
Chance and Jake were more than skilled enough.
To the pair of feline mechanics, their local junkyard was a world of possibilities.
“Hey Jake, check this out!” The burly, tan-furred feline held up a loose piston as big as (and heavier than) himself. A drop of oil rolled down the old hunk of aluminum and added another stain to his overalls.
“Whoa! That thing looks powerful enough to lift the Turbokat!” the smaller, golden-brown feline beamed with excitement. “Can you put it in the truck?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Careful. Those clumsy feet of yours always find a way to trip over something.”
The comment got a laugh out of Chance. He heaved the piston over his right shoulder and wrapped his arm around it. Old plastic and other crinkly odds and ends snapped under his boots as he made his way over to the truck until something curious caught his eye.
“Is that…”
“What is it?”
“A door, I think. Behind that heli.”
“Why would anyone drop off a door in a junkyard.”
An old metal door leaned against a pile of junk behind the decrepit chassis of what was once a helicopter. Chance lay the piston on the ground and whispered “I’ll come back for you” before approaching the strange door. It was a dull blue and the hinges were being eaten by rust. Upon closer inspection, it became clear that there was a passage behind that door. It’s concrete outer walls barely visible among the heap of assorted junk
“Suspicious,” Jake said, stroking his whiskers.
“You think it’s military?”
“No idea. Is it locked?”
Chance placed a hand on the handle and turned it. The door swung open with a loud creak and startled a flock of pigeons that had been perched on the blades of the helicopter’s carcass. Behind it was a staircase that descended as far as the eye could see. There was an old power cable along one of the otherwise bare walls but no light switch anywhere. From the darkness came a chill that betrayed its depth.
“Could be an old bunker,” Jake supposed.
“Or a hideout. I say we investigate.” Chance’s right foot was on the first step before he finished his sentence.
“Wait! It could be a trap!”
The larger cat shrugged. “In the middle of a junkyard? Look at the walls. The cobwebs have cobwebs! Place looks abandoned to me.”
“I suppose.”
“And think of all the scrap we can pull from an old bunker!”
Jake thought about it for a moment and decided that Chance was probably right. The tunnel looked older than them. If there had ever been any traps, chances are they had been sprung a long time ago. Granted, that also decreased the probability of there being anything valuable down there. He shrugged.
“Fine. You win. I’ll go get flashlights.”
The pungent smell of humidity and black mold permeated the air past the first eight hundred steps. The entrance was now a tiny speck of light to their backs and, even then, the beams from their powerful flashlights failed to reach the bottom of the stairs.
“How deep… are we…?” Chance said between labored breaths.
“I don’t know. Half a mile, maybe?” Jake replied, looking much spryer than his partner.
Another four hundred steps went by and the bigger cat’s legs were as wobbly as the bad leg of an old stool.
“Wait! J-Jake… I need… a minute…” Chance sat down on the steps and massaged his screaming calves. “Can’t feel… my legs…”
Jake smiled and nodded. “Fine. Let’s take a breather.”
He shone his flashlight down the tunnel and still saw no end to it but something else caught his eye. A faint glimmer just a couple of steps down.
“I think I see a door.”
“If it’s more stairs I’m turning back.”
It wasn’t stairs. It was as small room made of the same featureless concrete as the rest of the tunnel. Empty - apart from a very out-of-place object lying enticingly on the floor.
“Now what’s a feather doing all the way down here?”
“Wait, Chance, don’t!!”
It was too late. Just as Chance picked up the bright red plume, the door closed shut behind them and a loud hissing noise filled the room.
[center]***[/center]
Jake knew something was up the moment the sleeping gas started seeping into the room. No, ‘seeping’ was the wrong word. That made it sound accidental. Someone waited for them to get close to the feather before pumping the room full of gas. He could guess why. The biggest question on his mind now, even as it was still groggily coming out of a chemically induced nap, was this:
Who’s behind this?
“Jake! You okay, dude?”
Jake blinked away the blurriness in his eyes. He was in a small concrete room filled with the same musty air from before and the frigid glow of fluorescent tubes. He looked to his right and found Chance in a rather peculiar predicament. A predicament he seemed to share, in fact.
“I’m alright. You?”
“Fine, I think. I just woke up. Where the heck are we? And where are my boots?”
The pair sat on metallic recliners with missing armrests. Not a problem for them since their arms rested snuggly inside canvas straitjackets. The footrest was raised excessively to the extent that their feet were almost higher up than their heads. A puzzling arrangement until you considered the rest of the setup. The footrests had been stripped of their upholstery and had inch thick metal plates welded perpendicular to their ends, each with two ankle-sized holes drilled into them. Up in one of the corners, there was a security camera aimed right at them.
Chance and Jake’s legs were trapped in the makeshift foot stocks and their feet lay bare and on full display on the other side. As if that wasn’t enough, their big toes were tied with thin but sturdy pieces of string to hooks at the top of the stocks which almost completely eliminated whatever tiny range of motion they might have still been capable of should their toes have been left free.
“I don’t have mine either,” Jake said.
“Grr! There’s something on my toes!”
“Mine too.” He gave them a wiggle. “I’m guessing whoever’s behind this wants to do something to our feet.”
“Our feet?!” Chance exclaimed wide-eyed. “No one’s getting near my feet unless they want a kick to the face!”
The bigger cat was the strongest, physically speaking, so he had the best shot at breaking free through sheer brute force, and yet no amount of flexing his muscles or tossing around in the straitjacket got him any closer to freedom.
If Chance couldn’t break it, Jake didn’t see a point in trying.
“Are you finished?”
They froze.
The voice came from behind but they did not hear a door open. This person was in the room with them since the beginning.
“Who the heck are you?!”
“Show yourself, coward!”
A laugh.
“As you wish.”
The man walked into view from between the recliners without so much as glancing sideways at either of the cats until he was in front of them. He turned around and gave them a smirk.
A dragon. That alone was enough to startle the cats as they had never seen one or thought them real. But this one was very real indeed. He walked on two legs and wore clothes like any other person. A black jacket with a gold brim and a pair of jeans, to be precise. Dark purple scales covered his body with the exception of his belly and the membranes of his folded wings which were both a bright crimson. Red markings adorned his muzzle and a long pony tail sprouted from between his horns. His tail slithered in delight behind him as he scanned the cats’ soles with his ruby eyes.
“You gonna tell us who we are or would you rather just stare at our feet?”
“I would, as a matter of fact.”
Jake rolled his eyes.
Great. We got caught by a weirdo…
“Tell us your name, at least?”
“I have many names.”
The cat groaned.
“But in most universes, I’m simply known as the Ticklish Paw Hunter.” He stepped back and took a bow. “TPH for short.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Now that they knew the name of their captor, the rest of the dots were fairly easily to connect. The feather trap, the way there were tied up… Suddenly, they were both acutely aware of how vulnerable their feet were.
“Now you two clever kitties can probably guess what I’m about to do,” the dragon said. “But I’d like to ask you a question first. You see, there’s this crimefighting duo that I’ve been dying* *to meet.”
The cats went stiff.
“They’re called SWAT Kats - with a ‘k’ - and they look an awful lot like you two.”
“Never heard of them!”
“SWAT Katz? What a dumb name!”
The dragon smiled as if they had somehow given him the correct answer.
“I figured you might say that.” He wiggled his fingers in the air dangerously close to the cats’ bare soles, ready to live up to his monicker. “Is that your final answer?”
“Let us go you freak!” hissed Chance.
“You’ve made your choice.”
Two claws. That’s all the TPH needed to shut them up. Two lazy claws. One tracing circles on the ball of Chance’s left foot and another going back and forth along the arch of Jake’s right one.
The cats clenched their jaws shut and tried to hold back the laughter that so badly wanted to escape their throats. Chance’s larger and somewhat flatter feet shook in their bonds but could never get away from the wandering claw. The cat tried curling his chunky toes to at least try and suppress some of the sensations but the ties around them kept his soles nice and taut. Jake’s smaller and archier soles twitched like they were getting zapped with electricity with each poke of the claw. They wagged from side to side but, much like in his larger-footed partner’s case, the toe-ties made it so he had no choice but to present his foot in ideal tickling conditions: taut and vulnerable.
“Coochie coo, kitty cats! I can see you smiling!”
“Grr! G-Get away from my feet!”
“Not a chance, Chance! They’re too big and ticklish for me to not play with!” He gave Chance’s big toe a playful pinch before scratching just under it, earning a snort from the big cat. “But yours are just as cute, Jake!” He scritch-scratched the smaller cat’s arch and made him screw his eyes shut and show a toothy smile. “Yes.” The dragon smirked again, barely able to control himself. “We are going to have so much fun together!”
Neither of the cats thought this was fun.
They wanted to break free from their bondage and punch the dragon in the snout. Better yet. Tie him up and tickle his* *feet for an hour or ten. See how he likes it.
Pointy claws danced about their twitching soles, an equal amount for each pair. Even when the TPH decided to give one of the cats a higher dose of torment, he still made sure that didn’t mean the other could rest. He used both hands to scratch Chance’s soles like a kitten destroying a scratching post while the tip of his tail traced imaginary lines along Jake’s arches.
“Pffft! G-Get awahay!!”
“I can tell how much you want to laugh, Chance! Why not just let it all out? It’s so much easier to give in.”
“Leave him alone, you creep!”
The dragon smirked and took his hands off Chance’s feet. “As you wish.”
“Wait! No! Pfffttt!!!”
Jake almost gave in a laughed as ten pointy claws replaced the tail.
“Isn’t this so much fun?” The dragon mused, brimming with joy.
He’s deranged, they both thought. But voicing that opinion out loud might just earn them harsher treatment so they kept quiet about it - or at least as quiet as they could considering the circumstances.
“How delightful. Two strong vigilantes reduced to mewling kittens and all it took was a little tickle on their bare feet! How would all your fans feel about that?”
“We’re not-”
Chance had to cut himself off when he felt the dragon’s claws come dangerously close to his toes. His humungous, fist-sized, impossibly soft, hyper-ticklish toes.
“You’re not what? The SWAT Kats? The Sweaty Whiny And Ticklish Kats?”
The dragon forcefully pried two of the cat’s toes apart and jammed his claw between them. The last strands of Chance’s feeble resistance were gone in seconds.
“Yes! That’s a good kitty!”
“Fwahahahaha!!”
“No!” shouted Jake. “Keep it together, Chance!”
Poor sensitive Chance crumbled into mewling laughter, unable to cope with the unbearable toe-tickles. More claws joined in, tap-tapping against the trembling digits and the spaces between them. The dam had burst and there was no fixing it. Not until the dragon decided to show mercy. And judging from his ear-to-ear grin, that might still be far off.
“One down. One to go.”
The TPH knew Jake wouldn’t last much longer after Chance broke. He was used to dealing with all sorts of ticklish groups, and something he found to be true in almost all duos is that when one of them broke, the other was never far behind.
With one set of claws planted firmly between Chance’s toes, the other began exploring Jake’s digits. The smaller cat joined his friend in a duet of crazy cackling, his laughter coming out as a high soprano while Chance’s was a deeper tenor.
“Ahahahaha! Stohohop!!”
“See? You never stood a chance. Ready to talk now?”
Laughter.
“No? Good. I like a challenge.”
For the first time since putting his hands on them, the TPH left their paws alone and disappeared from their view. The cats took the chance to catch their breath and prepare to face the punishment for their reluctance to admit they were indeed the crimefighting duo. They shared a reassuring look. It wasn’t the first time their endurance was being tested and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. It came with the job. Whatever happened next, they had to endure it for the good of their secret identities. There was no telling what would happen if the secret got out.
The rattle of small metal wheels on the bare concrete floor filled the room as the dragon came back into view pushing with a strange machine in tow and a laptop under his arm.
It was a cylindrical device with a water reservoir mounted on top, not unlike a typical water cooler that can be found in office buildings and similarly boring places. Except this one was mounted on a wheeled base and, instead of a faucet, it had eight small metallic nozzles mounted bellow the reservoir. The TPH stationed the device in front of their soles equidistant to each pair and opened the laptop, holding it with one arm while typing with the other.
“Have you kitties showered today?”
They were gonna say something snarky but were quickly distracted by the whirring of a pump - a rather powerful one judging by how loud the noise was.
“What the heck is that?”
“Something to help you both be more honest.”
“We won’t break!” Chance asserted, having gained back some of his defiance.
“I know you won’t.” The dragon typed something more on the laptop and the nozzles were divided into two sets of four, one set for each pair of feline soles. They aimed at their ticklish targets and began salivating, waiting for their master to press the enter key. “You’ll crumble.”
Eight pressurized jets of water assaulted their soles and made them feel something new. A rough stationary scratching unrivalled by any claw or brush. A chilling stream that awakened each and every hypersensitive nerve and made it beg for an end. Pure tickle torture.
“BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!!”
“CRAP! CRAP! CRAHAHAHAHAP-”
Music to the dragon’s ears. The water jets were one of his less used tools precisely because they were some of his most implacable. The TPH was a playful creature at heart - he enjoyed toying with his captives for a good long while before he broke them, and the use of this particular machine normally meant an end to his fun as it would usually break his victims instantly. Not what he wanted with most others, But these cats… These cats had a part to play in his plans. He needed to quickly strip them of any delusions of being anything more than just ticklish kitties so that he could set said plans in motion.
Oh yes.
Them the real fun begins.
“What’s wrong, kitties? Don’t like getting your paws washed?” The dragon teased as his fingers bounced between the keys on his laptop. “How about a massage instead?”
The nozzles started moving again, slowly dragging their jets across the increasingly rosy soles of the chortling felines. While they remained stationary, the jets felt like a focused scratching that somehow seemed as if it was moving. Now that they were actually moving, they felt a thousand times worse.
“PLEHEHEASE STOHOHOP!!”
“Please, you say? How polite! I think the tickling is doing wonders for that attitude! Let’s keep going, shall we?”
Zig and zag. Up and down. The jets moved mercilessly across their soles in semi-random patterns, making it impossible for the cats to predict exactly where they would go next. One minute it was their arches, the next it was their heels! The one constant was that they seemed to avoid their toes but that was because the dragon was saving the best for last. He keyed another command.
“Playtime’s over. Time to squeal!”
He pressed the enter key.
The two groups of jets that up until now had worked more or less independently all converged in a single horizontal line at the middle of the cat’s soles and started slowly moving up. They reached the arches.
“KEEHEHEHEHEHE!”
Then the upper part of their soles, just beneath their splayed toes.
“FU- FU- FWAAAHAHAHAHA!”
And then they finally reached them.
“AAAAA-”
They fell silent. There wasn’t enough laughter in their aching lungs to react appropriately to the feeling of the jets ravaging their toes. The whirring of the pump and the dripping of the water running between their toes and falling down a drain in the middle of the room was all that could be heard. Their bodies went stiff, not knowing how to cope with what was, up until that point in their lives, the most intense tickling they had ever felt.
The dragon knew they wouldn’t last much longer. He kept his eyes on the screen of his laptop.
“Three… Two… One… and…”
The pump turned off and the nozzles stopped spewing water. Chance and Jake slumped in their restraints, their bodies limp and motionless apart from their heaving chests; soles drenched in water.
“F… Fine,” Jake panted. “We’ll… talk…”
The dragon leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms - that trademark smirk never leaving his muzzle.
“Then talk.”
Jake hesitated, but the lingering tingles on his soles and toes made him quickly discard any and all second thoughts.
“You win,” he looked over at Chance apologetically before turning his gaze back to the dragon. He took a deep breath. “We’re the SWAT Kats.”
“Oh, I’m well aware.” The dragon snorted. “I just wanted to see how long it took for you to break.”
“Y-you…!”
“Ah! Mind your tongue, Jake!” He hovered his index finger above the enter key.
Jake’s eyes went wide and his toes curled the best they could.
“Good boys!” He closed the laptop. “I have a proposition for you which I think you’ll quite like.” He began pacing around his captives who didn’t even make an effort to keep him in sight. “As I’m sure you’ve realized by now, I have a rather particular hobby. You see, I’m something of a collector. I collect tough guys like you two and show them they’re really not that tough.” He had completed a full circle around his captives and now stood back in front of them. “And you’re going to help me.”
“Like hell we will.”
“Yeah! Take your freaky hobby and stick it where the sun don’t shine! We’re not helping you put anyone else through this!”
The dragon stood perplexed. Their bravery and sense of altruism was as truly admirable. Most captives would sell their own brother at this point in order to stop the tickling. This was new.
“I’m surprised there’s still some fight in you! I thought I wasn’t going to have to use this, but…” He hopped on over behind the chairs and grabbed a bucket filled with soapy water which he set on the floor by their paws before taking two large brushes.
The cats didn’t even flinch. Some more wet scrubbing didn’t seem so bad after the hell they had just been through with the jets.
“Last chance. Join me or laugh.”
Silence.
“You’ve made your choice!”
“PFFFTTTAHAHAHAHA!”
Ragged laughter echoed anew in the room as their feet are once again subject to torment. It turns out that after the powerful jets from earlier, their soles were now a LOT more sensitive than when they first woke up. Their overconfidence quickly evaporated.
They shook. They fought. They laughed.
Tears rolled down their reddened cheeks and there was drool on the straightjackets. It was getting harder and harder to form any coherent thoughts that didn’t distil down to wanting the tickling to stop at any cost, even if it meant having others take their place.
“OKAY, OKAHAHAHAY! STOHOHOHOP!”
They didn’t know how long their paws were brushed. Keeping track of time was hardly a priority when breaths were few and far between.
The dragon stopped and crossed his arms, looking at the cats without saying a word.
“You win…” Jake swallowed a lump in his throat. “We’ll help you.”
The pair of Bengal tigers on the other side of the one-way mirror looked like they were about to explode. They had been stripped of their shirts and shoes and strapped to metal tables where their bodies were subject to a small army of metallic claws mounted on articulated arms.
Pits. Sides. Belly. Paws.
Nowhere was safe.
Two nameplates hung from the tables reading “Onaso” and “Nerev”. A middle-aged, chubby tiger and a younger, slimmer one respectively. Father and son.
“NOHOHO! IT TIHIHICKLES!”
“TOO TIHIHICKLISH! I’ M TOO TIHIHICKLIIHISH!”
Chance and Jake looked on with regretful scowls and a somewhat twisted sense of pride from having built this machine that tormented the tigers within the seven-day deadline given to them by the TPH.
“Poor guys.” Chance, said.
“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “This sucks.”
“Not like we have a choice. That bastard said he’ll release the video of us being tickled if we refuse to keep building these awful machines.”
Such was their predicament. Every week, they had to present the sadistic dragon with a new tickling machine that would be immediately used to torment a new batch of victims. That was the price they had to pay in order to keep their secret identities (and the fact that they were unbearably ticklish on their feet) under wraps.
Jake framed it as a trade. The suffering of a few for continued safe streets. Not a deal he was happy to make, but he had had no choice.
“C’mon,” Chance turned his back on the felines. “We need to come up with a new design. I’ve had uh… some ideas.”
“Yeah,” Jake mumbled taking one last look at the poor tigers before he too turned his back on them.