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Late on another cold night, a tall hulking figure in black and glowing red made a mechanized march through the fog toward the Heylin Seed Temple. Entering and pushing past overgrowth with a few swings of his robot-suit arm, the red-haired one came to the top of the secret statue-guarded stairs. He paused for a dry chuckle, then proceeded down, striding through the sliding red doors to face the coiling gold dragon-chest statue against the wall.
Spying the Eye of Dashi and the tape recorder on the floor, he crouched, quickly snatching them up and pocketing the former while crushing the latter instantly with a forceful metal finger curl. As he opened his hand to let the pieces clatter to the floor, he snorted, chuckling again, a bit louder. “That takes care of that,” he said in a low content rasp. For a moment, he caught his reflection in the shiny serpent. “Whoaa, man…I’ve really let myself go! No wonder I’ve been feeling so weary even though I’ve got all my enemies at my feet. Man…”
___
Though the prisoners on display were in talking distance from each other, they declined. There hadn’t been much more to talk about in the last few decades of captivity, besides the occasional reiteration of “Jack is still a pathetic jerk, isn’t he?”
Suddenly, they all heard rapid footsteps echo off the stairs, and the voice of the world’s worst evil emperor himself. With a snicker, the rejuvenated redhead darted over to the renegade monk. “Hey! Hey, Chase! Heh, looks like you’re not the only YOUNG person around here now, huh? Ha! Huh? Huh? …Hey, look at when when I’m talking to you, ya spineless little soup bone!”
With an irritated sigh and a roll of his eyes, Young lifted them to see once-again-teenage-Jack’s Cheshire grin. “Hmph,” the boxer-clad one uttered, “so I see you’ve gotten rid of your wrinkles. You don’t look any different than you ever did — spastic and clueless.” With that, he returned his gaze to his giant brass manacles.
Arms folded, Spicer quipped “Yeah, yeah — y’know that’s real funny coming from where you’re — uh, hanging! C’mon, don’t ya even wanna know how I did it?”
Begrudgingly, Chase muttered “Well, you obviously didn’t have a bowl of Lao Mang Lone — you might actually be competent for once if you’d done that. So I’m not surprised you didn’t,” punctuating his words with another snort.
“Nope!” Jack announced with a swing of his arm and a raised index finger. “Totally used the Moby Morpher! I mean, it can turn you into anything — and like I found out, even a younger version of yourself! Pretty neat, right?” He leaned in to give Young’s ribcage a few nudges. “Huh, huh? C’mooon…”
Oddly, the renegade monk seemed to twitch, though he said nothing and made no movement otherwise. Spicer paused, blinking rapidly. With narrowed eyes, he gave him another light jab with a finger. Again, Chase made the same twitch, eyes closing and letting out another dismissive curt sigh.
Another thoughtful pause before Jack vocalized “Waaaait a MINUTE…!”
“Don’t you have some cheap tin cans to tinker with or something?” Young snapped.
“Nah, I’ve got Jackbots that build Jackbots to fix other Jackbots — I’ve got aaall the evil time in the world!” Now the redhead quite deliberately swiped a finger from just above Young’s right hip across to just under his arm. Now the boxer-clad one outright shivered, turning his head to mask his flinch.
“Ooh, ooh! Could it be?” Spicer began dramatically, cartoonishly popping up on Chase’s left. “Is this why you practically slept and showered in your armor? COULD IT BE that the great and invincible Heylin warrior has a weakness? A weakness that is…being tick-le-ish? Ish?...y-ish? Hm, hmmm?”
Another eyeroll from his captive. “You always did think like a CHILD,” Young spat, though tensed again when Jack resumed spidering fingers at the small of his back, slowly crawling up his spine.
From his cage, Hannibal gave a dry chuckle. “Well, it may not be a showdown to the death, but this is getting interesting…”
Chase reflexively shot him quite a death glare — that turned to a forced grin when Spicer tweaked the back of his legs and wiggled a finger behind his knees. Lips twitching over beared teeth, the renegade monk let out a “...KHNnn…!”
“Oh, man…” Jack said, taking a step back to review his previous setup, “I’m gonna have to redo this — I’m gonna hafta redo this whole thing!” With a last side tweak, he bid “Hang tight, CY!” and dashed off back to his lair, his triumphant laughter echoing.
“Like I wasn’t already?” Young said, glancing back though he couldn’t see.
The giant red bean let out another old man’s cackle. “You’re cooked now, aren’cha?”
“Say another word and I’ll see to it you’re boiled alive in a chili pot!”
“You say that like you got ANY credibility left after that all just happened.”
Chase visibly seethed, muttering quieter to himself “Now that I know his ridiculous little plan, I can be ready for…whatever comes next. You’ll see, he’ll see — this means NOTHING.”
Some time later, the gloating goggle boy returned, grinning as if he’d never left. Out of the corner of his eye, Young tried to stifle a twitch as he spied the long white feather fan that had previously been staple autocratic air conditioning from Spicer’s seat in the coliseum.
A few bots hovered around the contraption, disassembling the perpetually moving paintbrush and even the typically torturous water drip. Though he daren’t admit it, the paint-sopped bristles did tickle — though only a faint knismesis that the drops pounding steadily on his crown easily distracted him from.
Soon, the droplets returned in force — but they felt slicker than water, likely oil, he supposed. Then he felt the first wide sweep of the white feathers that not only stroked across his belly and chest but frequently slipped under his arms as well. Brief though it was, the tingles lingered, only making each successive swipe less avoidable. He shivered; eyes shut tighter, teeth gritted behind firmly closed lips.
He was ripped from his concentration again when he swore he felt cool air on his soles — followed by what was unmistakably Jack raking his fingers down then, pausing to slide one at a rather maddening swift pace across his toes. He tried curling them but the adjusted pressure around his ankles left him unable to do so.
“HMMmmnn…nngh!”
“C’moon, tall, dark and stone-faced, let’s see a smile!” the red-haired boy coaxed as if he were talking to a puppy. If Chase’d had hackles, he’d’ve raised them high.
“If…I do it’s because — nn! …I’m just imagining you…ripped into a thousand pieces by your own — nng! Soup cans!”
“Yyyyeah, right…” Spicer bid, lids drooped in a calm smirk. “I can do this aaaall day…” Pausing with an upward glance, he cheerfully corrected “Actually, I AM gonna do this all day!”
The renegade monk let out a brief snarling roar before letting gravity take the weight of his head, face buried in his hair. He trembled and twitched more at Jack’s continued prodding and scritching — intensifying the feather’s unrelenting tickle.
Leaving a Jackbot with less sharp claws to take his place, the goggle boy swung around in front of his captive, leaning down in a crouch with his hands on his knees and a sneer on his face. Young could feel his stare practically boring through his skull.
The red-haired boy tried to catch his eyes through the long hair, though when he couldn’t he settled for clawing it aside with his fingers, grin maniacal when he spied the corner’s of Chase’s mouth helplessly twitching farther upward. “There we go, see? Was that so hard? Hm? Hmm? Hmmmmmmm?”
The renegade monk let out sharp snorts, seemingly on the very verge of letting his composure slip.
Unbeknownst to Spicer, he then spoke the exact same words Young mentally confessed to himself. “Immortal or not, you can’t hold out forever, y’know…” With a calculated pause, Jack grinned at his most mischievous and dove fingers under Chase’s arms, swiftly spidering his fingers with a chuckle of his own, adding “Tickletickletickle!”
That did it. Chase seemed to nigh-literally snap, jaws flying open with wide eyes and a “PWAHAHAHAaa!”
“Yes!” the red-haired boy exclaimed, withdrawing with a triumphant yank of his arm, hand in a fist.
Chase uttered a last few breathy sparse chuckles before wearily saying “So you’ve won…just one battle, hardly the w —”
“So why don’t you just go ahead and say it?” Jack mused, leaning back with arms folded.
“Say what?” Young echoed, lifting his head, looking a bit dazed.
“You know…” the red-haired boy added, with a slow wrist twirl. “Just say it.”
Now the renegade monk seemed to catch on, face twitching between a more exhausted form of his usual annoyance and borderline genuine humility. “Why say what we already know?” he muttered. He still bore a less-than-willing smile at the feather fan’s continued flit.
Leaning down again, Spicer went on, voice low “’Coz I wanna hear you say it. What’sa matter? Cat Warriors got your tongue?”
“MmmnnNN!” Young uttered. Unable to help a physical weakness was something that couldn’t be helped, but audibly admitting defeat was a bit weightier, as such he grappled with it even now. Still.
With a sigh, Jack straightened himself, eyes darting away with a plotting grin, one elbow in hand, the fingers of the other tapping his bottom lip. Taking a break, he began “WELL…if you need a little more convincing, then —” he quickly dug into his pocket, prying out what looked like a decorative brass cloche on a stick “— there’s always these babies!” and gave the cover a brief pat.
Chase glanced up, eyes wide for a fraction of a second before squeezing them shut again. He peeked one open, feeling Spicer hover close to his face again.
“All you have to do is say two little words — okay, maybe three — and I’ll won’t turn you into an ant farm. Unless…you’re into that…” He raised a brow with a light brow rise and head tilt. Now the renegade monk had no problem deadpanning — if only for a few seconds before his helpless grin returned. “…yes? No? Maybe? We’ll find out later?” As he backed away, he continued “OK…no but seriously…hey, I’m giving you the chance here. I mean, there’s no way I’m ever letting you live this down, but…just trying to be nice, y’know? Well, as nice a true evil genius can get, I guess…” He glanced up again for a moment with an idle scratch at his temple.
“If you intend to break me, then I suggest you do it,” Chase managed to say before his face scrunched into another unwilling grin with quivering lips. Another chucklesnort burst from his jaws as Jack swept a flat hand across his right ribs and side, rubbing in the oil and dancing and raking fingers slowly but steadily. “KHMmmHMhmhmHMmm!”
“Oh, I’ll do it!” Jack said proudly, though not relenting, still hoisting the picnic pests on a Shen Gong Wu platter. “You definitely don’t have to worry about that, hehehh…but y’know, well — y’know all those times you kept saying stuff like –“ and proceeded to strike several poses in turn mimicking the renegade monk’s usual demeanor – “‘Oh, your evil execution is such a pathetic failure!’, ‘Jack’s an insect that I like to keep squashing!’, ‘You’re so bad at being bad you’re practically good!’, ‘I’m the most powerful Heylin monk ever and I’m so evil and I’m gonna take over the world! And you couldn’t even take over a tea shop, blahblahblah!’ and half-wittingly tapped fingers to thumb a few times with a roll of his eyes. Sinking to another crouch once again he more gently tugged Young’s now shinier oil-soaked hair away from his eyes as he stared between them. “Yeah, gee…looks like this pathetic practically goodie-goodie insect got to it first, huh? Huh? Whaddaya think about that now? Huh?” Adding “I bet you think that’s hilarious, right?” with a smirk, he slid a hand under to his former idol’s belly with another more relentless rapid fire finger wiggle that he timed in tandem with the fan.
With the oil’s sensitizing slickness and fingers and feathers both, the renegade monk quickly failed to stifle another “BAHAHAhahahaHA!” trembling and twitching most noticeably in his bonds. “Y – Y –…You…Youhouhouhou — HAHA!”
“Oooooh,” Spicer echoed, “Hey, is this your tickle spot? Heheh, I mean, obviously you’ve got more than one — but which one is the worst one?” as he withdrew, rising again, he glanced over to the ankle stocks with a frown. “HEY! Who is shirking on their duty here?” he asked, gesturing widely as the bot returned to a hover at Chase’s heels. “That’s like your sole duty right now!” the red-haired boy paused “Heh! Get it? Get it? No, but seriously…”
“AHAhe doHOn’t know whiHIch is wohorse!” Young spoke up, with a grinning half-flinch “YouHOUr kiddie games ohoHOr your paHAthetic puns!”
“I know,” Jack mused with a knowing sneering face-splitting grin. “I know…” and gave a sigh, hands clasped with an exaggerated bat of his eyes “Isn’t life punderful?”
“NnngaaHAhahaha!” was all Chase could muster in lieu of a groaning sigh.
“Hmm…I guess it’s not exactly a ticklebot, though —” and briefly stared stilly before foreheadpalming. “Oh, DUH! I have one of those! Haven’t used it in forever, but this’d be a GREAT way to take it out for a spin! …of course, I don’t exactly want to switch up restraints here…” Head lightly cocked, he again tapped finger to lip, then with a snap that he ended with a raised finger, exclaimed “Oh, I know! I can just detach the main tickle mod from the restraint base. AND! THEN I can work on porting the blueprints to mod my other bots! …I’m gonna need a larger bot…I’m gonna need a LOOOT of larger bots…and heck, probably even some birds!”
With the feathers still fanning and the current bot still deftly tracing its pincers over his feet — especially slipping between his toes and tweaking them, the renegade monk now couldn’t even close his jaws enough to form words, which in any case his reeling mind was too distracted to string a quip together. “HAHAHAA! AHAhahaha! GYAhahaHAHAhahaa!”
“Hold tight, I’ll be RIGHT back!” Spicer bid, ducking out — then just as rapidly darting back in and standing in front of his former idol, hands clasped. “But, uh, before I go make some upgrades, waaas there anything…you wanted to say?” Glancing up he held out a hand, ordering “Uno momento, JB!” then resumed “Any…tiny little info nugget you wanted to…maaaybe just admit already?”
Despite his dam of will being soundly burst, without the persistent tickles at his feet, Young seemed to regain a bit of his former self-control — though not much. Brain still buzzing, he averted his eyes with an exhausted “Hmph! Eheven if I were toho do what you asked, whahat difference would it mahake? Youhou’re going to torture me anywayhehe —!”
Jack gave the Wu a pat. “Yeah, but like I said, I wasn’t gonna use these — buuut hey, if that’s what you WANT…”
When the goggle boy’s gaze was diverted, Chase allowed himself a brief look that begged the opposite — shutting his eyes as Spicer’s refocused on him. Still chucklesnorting, he held his tongue.
“Okay, goin’ once, goin’ twice…and WU FOR YOU! Ants in the –…er, boxer shorts, I guess!” the red-haired boy declared, striking a dramatic stance and yanking off the lid. As the formica flowed forth, he added “Psst! You guys are magical — less itch, more tickle! …in fact like, no itch, ALL tickle! Get to it, precious…s…eses…!”
Head hanging, eyes shut tightly, fingers curled where his toes still couldn’t, Young tried to brace himself, but still twitched and shook violently when the ants finally swarmed him. True to Spicer’s specifications, the skittering legs that had once raised an itch worse than poison ivy now only got Chase giggling again, barely getting a breath before he bellylaughed it out. The insects streamed effortlessly beneath what little clothing he had left, leaving barely any skin if any untouched or untickled.
The intensity had upped fierce enough to wrench an “AYAAaaaHAIIEE!” from the renegade monk — at the exact time that Jack returned, flinging the door open with a wide swing.
“Wow! Even I never shrieked that high…” he said pausing again with a malicious glint “…that means it’s working! Ahh, evil music to my evil ears!”
“I wouldn’t say that much,” Roy piped up again, tendrils to presumably his ears, “Sounds more like noisy squawking! …heh, guess that means you’ve officially turned Chase Young into Chase the Ying Ying Bird! …I always did think about getiin’ another one…”
After several more minutes of watching Chase squirm in earnest, catching a flash of humble weariness on his face, at which Spicer snapped his fingers again, recalling the crawlers. The renegade monk let gravity take his weight, unable to mask his audible breaths.
As Hannibal let out another heckling chuckle, the red-haired boy approached the long black-haired one. “Well, that was fun! …but hey, you look pretty beat — cleanup time!”
In barged two more task-oriented Jackbots who doused Young in hot but not scalding water, and applied heavily soaped sponges and brushes, respectively. Still winded, the renegade monk launched into a more subdued laughing fit — especially when the small mechanical hands reached his pointy ears and yet again dipped between his toes. “HahaHAAhaah…ahahaa…!”
“Hey, gotta get all the hard to reach places — behind the ears, between the toes. Maybe we should do two rinse cycles, JUST to be sure…”
“Guuwaaah…!” came Chase’s watery burble before he reflexively tried to shake himself off, hair whipping like a dog’s fur; then snorted and spit a small stream.
“HehehHEH! He looks like a little poodle at the groomers!” the bean quipped. “Say, O Ever Evil Lord Jack, heh, you might even think of givin’ him a nice trim! Put a cute little bow on it!”
“Hey, hey, not a bad idea!” the red-haired boy chimed. “You keep comin’ up with those and I just might let you outta there after all, ya big spooky adzuki!”
“Let’s keep the kid talk to your new pet bird-dog, mm?”
“Eh, whatever.”
When the two cleanerbots had run their final cycles, they floated away only for three more to take their place, unsheathing multiple plume-bearing arms. They paused while Spicer slid a finger up Young’s spine, making him jump and shiver.
“Yep, you’re super squeaky clean, we’re good — have at ‘im, Ticklebots Mark Two!”
The renegade monk jolted at the feathers’ graze, not struggling so much to suppress a tired flustered whine of “Hmmnnng…GAHAhahahaHAHAhaaa!”
As the goggle boy and the oversized kidney looked on in equal amusement, Hannibal snuck an aside glance, tugging Jack closer and just above a whisper said “Chase always had the strongest armor he could find forged, but, uh, I’ll just say his boots were the thickest,” and promptly winked.
“OooOOooohoo!” Spicer said, rubbing palms together. “You ARE good at this — okay, c’mon outta there and help me have more fun!” He only had to sweep an arm for another idle bot to glide over and wrench off the cage’s front wall.
“With pleasure!” Roy acknowledged, rubbing his tendrils likewise. He loomed over his previous protégé. “I still owe you for crossin’ me over and stickin’ me in the Ying Yang World with no way out!”
Jack looked on, leaning back against the near wall, one leg crossed over the other and tugged down his lower eyelid while sticking out his tongue.
“HaHAnnibahall!” Chase piped up, in another slightly squintier grinning half-wince, “Ihit’s all for the goohood of eHEHEvil! Soho to speak…i – if it were youhou ihin my place, you’d’ve dohone the SAME THIHING!”
A tendril thoughtfully to his lower jaw, the big bean glanced up. “Hm, well, I suppose I would have…” then lowered it, undulating both arms in a tantalizingly close hover. “But you were the one that did it, so I’M the one that gets to give it to you now! And I am gonna ENJOY this…!”
Spicer bunched his arms up against his sides, hands in fists with a definitive squee before bounding over to the same spot directly in front of the renegade monk once more. “Okay, Roy Roaster, you take the back, I take the front! Jackbots, you take the sides! …and undersides! …and…basically anyplace neither of us can reach from here, comprende? Awesome, let’s do this!”
“Heh, yeah, let’s get ticklin’ and see who can make this little salamander cry ‘Wǒ shòu bù liǎo’ first!”
“Yesss! Shouldn’t take too long since this Lao Mang Long drinker is so deliciously wǒ pà yang already! …uhh, Gong Yi Tanpai? Ooh! Nonononononono — YOUNG Yi Tanpai! Yeah!”
With a hearty chuckle, the bean nodded, joining in as Jack repeated “YOUNG YI TANPAI!”
Fully wincing and trembling and snapping hands into fists once more, Chase let out a frantic roar and gave a last attempt at a thrash — though ironically, he strained the restraints even more when Hannibal’s multiplied tendrils touched down, sliding and dancing over every inch of his feet, worming between all ten toes which dug out another “YAAIIEEHE!” from the renegade monk.
The red-haired boy hopped down to a crouch, fingers flying under their human showdown-ground’s arms and up around his shoulders, neck and ears. In addition to that two-front tickle war, the fan and the bot-controlled feathers mushroomed to such a sensory overload that Chase couldn’t even begin to think of struggling to try to contain himself. He let gravity take his weight when his body wasn’t spazzing far beyond even the farthest limits of his own control.
“KYAHAHAHAIIEHEHE! HAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAAAAHA! BOHOHAHA! BOHOTH OHOHOHO! BOHOTH OF YAHAHAHAA!”
Finally, after what felt like another fifteen-hundred years, they relented and withdrew at last. Young hung dazed, vision blurry, head swimming, chest and belly aching as they heaved at a dog’s pace while tingles lingered on his skin. His mind and very soul seemed to be in some kind of stasis; on an emergency offline pause while he slowly recuperated, voice returning gradually in scratchy bleats.
“That…was…SO MUCH FUN!” Spicer cheered, throwing his arms up. “And so evil! And so, SO much evil fun! HaHAAaaa!”
Roy nodded sagely. “Mm, I have to agree. Although, I almost feel like there’s still some tidbit of vengeance I could square out, but I think we’ve done plenty today for now…don’t you think so, dragon boy?”
The renegade monk only continued to pant wheezily for the moment.
“But wait! Shoot, I guess he lost his voice around a few hours ago — so sure, we’re done, but who won?”
“I suppose we could call it a draw, for now,” the bean suggested.
“Xiaolin Rematch tomorrow?”
“Sure! Heheheh…”
Now Jack sank to a cross-legged sit in front of his prized captive, gently cradling Chase’s oily sweaty jaw. “Hey, so how about you finally —”
With what would have been a discernible shudder half a day ago, Young professed in an exasperated rasp “All right, ALL RIGHT, I’ll SAY it! …I’m…” he paused for one last breath, “I’m ticklish.”
There was a pause, the red-haired boy glancing up again for a moment tapping knuckle to chin, then raising his fingers. “Three words.”
With a very faint flinch, the renegade monk reiterated “I’m very ticklish.”
“…five words?”
A last sigh, though he quickly echoed “I’m very…very, very ticklish.”
Jack beamed, lids drooped, patting his cheek again. “Yes. Yes you are — and that’s adorable.”
TO BE CONTINUED…?