Work Text:
Alexander the First, Perdiccas the Second, Archelaos the First, Aeropos the Second, Amyntas the Second-
Ulysses continued to mumble to themselves, as they wrote down the names of the ancient Macedonian rulers into their journal. Their already-hunched body was hunched further down, until their nose was mere seconds away from smudging the ink their feather quill left on the pages.
Because the only other option would be to look Wenona in the eyes.
It has been a mere day since Cassidy, Diana, and Ulysses inflicted their torturous tickles onto the entrepreneur. Or rather, Cassidy inflicted the torturous tickles, while Ulysses and Diana ran after the power high left by a thoroughly exhausted and humbled Wenona. And, even though she continued to walk around with her usual frowns and smirks of disdain, Ulysses knew it was only a matter of time before they all got punished for their actions fueled by this minor power trip.
Pausanias, the first reign of Amyntas the Third, Argaeus the Second, the second reign of Amyn-
“You know, Ulysses…”
At the sound of their roommate’s voice, Ulysses’ blood ran cold, stopping both their writing and thinking in its tracks. Their body was frozen stiff, seemingly unable to fold out from their shrimp-like posture.
“I’ve had quite the…encounter…with Diana, a couple of hours earlier.”
“H…Have you?”
“Indeed.”
All Wenona wanted to do was to not trifle herself with her fellow captives and simply get some laundry done. Which, as she is currently finding out, is very difficult when a pair of pink puppy-esque eyes are staring at you from a mere foot away. And yet that was the precise predicament the Ultimate Entrepreneur found herself in, as stray sniffles of a certain cosmetologist interrupted the calming hum of the dryer. Begrudgingly, Wenona finally turned her attention to the girl behind her.
“Do dry your tears, Diana.”
Upon hearing Wenona finally speak, Diana’s hands desperately tried to wipe away her guilt-induced tears before they made it out of her eyes, as she muttered out apology after apology. Whether it was for expressing anything apart from joy in front of another person or for the “torture” she enabled Ulysses to put Wenona through, the entrepreneur couldn’t tell and wasn’t particularly keen on figuring out.
“B-But…I can’t help it! You just-You looked so upset, and I just can’t handle seeing you like this!”
Wenona made a mental note of Diana’s sudden regret.
It was quite hard for her to mentally render this remorse as sincere, considering how much Diana baby-talked the entrepreneur and did nothing but egg Ulysses on throughout that whole tortuous ordeal. She especially resented the moments in which Diana called Wenona a “wiggly giggly wittle girl”, in a tone much more appropriate for issuing belly rubs to a puppy, and encouraged Ulysses to ratchet their efforts up, until Wenona was forced to admit to being such. Not that that even mattered, as admitting to being a “wiggly giggly wittle girl” did nothing to stop either of them, as they both continued to tickle her until her face was blue and her laughter was silent.
And the worst part of all of this? Diana’s cheerful and saccharine taunts only ended up amplifying the ticklish sensations, much to the entrepreneur’s already-apparent humiliation.
As if she had a sudden epiphany, however, a wide smile returned to the face of the young cosmetologist. An extended finger confidently pointed in Wenona’s direction.
“But, I have a way to make it all right!”
A look of skepticism crossed Wenona’s face, as she shoved Diana’s outstretched finger away from her line of vision.
“Do you now? And just how are you hoping to atone for the torture both you and Ulysses put me through yesterday?”
“Isn’t it obvious? All I have to do is let you tickle me back!”
…What?
Ignoring the fact that Diana shouldn’t be able to say that word out loud in such a cheerful tone of voice, Wenona had better things to do than to regress to such childish means and sink to the lows of Cassidy Amber. Just the very thought of the streamer’s name simply brings to mind those childish yet effective taunts. Her smug and irritating grin. The intrusive fiends that were her fingers.
Any person well worth their dignity would simply decline Diana’s request and move on.
That was, until, a devious idea implanted itself into Wenona’s mind and shifted the humiliating flashback to something far more satisfying. Their narrative and physical positions suddenly flipped, as Cassidy’s (hypothetical) laughter replaced her own laughter, and the entrepreneur was the one straddling and looking down onto the tortured smile of a cackling pro gamer.
But with Cassidy outclassing her in strength, energy, and sheer deviousness, Wenona needed all the help she can get. And, for once, she can get behind that model of thinking.
“Uhh…Wenona. Are you okay? Your smile is kinda scaring MEHE!”
A stray scribble to Diana’s stomach area cut off her concerned question, as laughter was easily forced out of her system and she jumped a couple of feet back.
“Oh, pay it no mind. Now…where should we start?”
With her fingers already splayed and wiggling, Wenona, like a bear in the middle of a rushing river, advanced onto her new prey with a rapidly-growing grin.
“I must say, considering how eager she was to be tickled, it was surprising how quickly embarrassed she got when I managed to successfully scope out all of her notable tickle spots. Her sides, stomach, and armpits proved especially ticklish. I was quite taken aback when a mere tickle behind her ears reduced her to incoherent shrieking. Until then, I never knew that one could be ticklish behind one’s ears. In fact, you could say that it…tickled me? Not as much as Diana was tickled, though.”
Ulysses’ face continued to flush redder and redder, as they were unable to fight the smile threatening to stretch across their face. As Wenona prowled across the bed and got closer and closer to her roommate, the entrepreneur ended up practically whispering every minor detail of her torment of Diana into the historian’s ear. And for every tickle spot that Wenona discussed, odd tingles resounded throughout Ulysses’ body, making it much harder for them to keep a straight face.
A stray giggle finally escaped Ulysses’ tightly-pursed lips, and it was as though the room’s atmosphere dropped by many degrees, freezing both roommates in place.
Until, Wenona’s detached tone broke though the seemingly-eternal silence. It was only now that Ulysses noticed just how close Wenona was to them.
Or, rather, how close her hands were to their midsection.
“Do you find something amusing about my recollection, Ulysses?”
“Uh…no.”
Even though there was a considerable amount of distance between Wenona’s sprawling fingers and Ulysses’ vulnerable midsection, there was little the poor historian could do to stop the flowing stream of repressed giggles coming from their mouth. The fact that they previously removed both their blazer and sweater vest, leaving them in a mere button-up, only made them seem like even more of a sitting duck.
Ulysses’ weak attempts at steeling their core were instantly rendered useless, as the fingers of a clearly-unconvinced entrepreneur swiftly dug themselves between the historian’s ribs. The very second those devious digits made contact with their skin through the thin fabric, Ulysses threw their head back in uncontrollable laughter. This allowed Wenona to wrap her legs around the historian’s waist and trap them in place, in an odd bear hug.
“Lying is very unbecoming of you…”
Ulysses tried their hardest to argue to the contrary. However, even if they weren’t being tickled senseless, they were no Ultimate Debater. So, unfortunately for the very-ticklish historian, the only thing that could come out of their mouth was hooting laughter intercepted with snorts and complete gibberish that only vaguely resembles a coherent argument.
Wenona had a pensive look on her face that immediately shifted into a devious smirk, upon realizing just how easily Ulysses was practically incapacitated with mere attacks to their ribs. She pushed away any other thoughts she had about her roommate’s cute laugh, for she had to shift as quickly as possible to the next stage of her plan. As much as it pains her to admit it, even to herself, she feels inclined to follow both Cassidy and Diana’s example and “play with her prey”.
“Say, Ulysses…do you know how many ribs the human body has?”
With that specific factoid being outside of their sole wheelhouse of knowledge, Ulysses was completely hopeless in answering Wenona’s seemingly-random inquiry, and could only respond with yet even more laughter.
“Hmm…I am quite clueless on the matter myself. Perhaps we can…test this out?”
Normally, Ulysses would be overjoyed by the phrase “test it out”, especially if it came from Wenona. However, with the situation they found themselves in, combined with the overwhelming tone of sadism in which the entrepreneur spoke, the historian was far more hesitant to answer. This hesitance continued for a fair bit of time, even as Wenona pulled her hands away from her roommate’s ribs, allowing them a brief moment of reprieve.
Not that the hesitance meant anything, as the grip of Wenona’s legs on Ulysses’ sides did not loosen up in the slightest, and her fingers dove right back in-between the grooves of their ribs.
As opposed to the haphazard and sprawled-out tickling of her previous attempt, Wenona made a point to draw out both the counting and tickling of each and every rib bone with apex precision. If, at any point, Ulysses made Wenona lose count (which, whether intentionally or not, was shockingly easy), the entrepreneur would simply grumble about her roommate being “uncooperative” and start over, punishing them by stretching out the ticklish increments even further.
She later got bored with not being able to make it past eight of Ulysses’ ribs, and started to scope out the rest of the historian’s body for new tickle spots. Although they could easily be considered a walking tickle spot, Wenona took special note of two spots: their neck and their knees.
For the latter, as opposed to the long string of laughter that came from getting their ribs tickled, Wenona noticed that Ulysses lets out loud snorts and awkward squeaks, as her fingers squeezed their kneecaps and maneuver their way into the pits of their knees. Their legs pathetically kick into the air in a half-hearted attempt to move the intrusive fingers away from either spot, to no avail. Even if Wenona had to loosen her grip on Ulysses’ waist to access the intriguing new tickle spot, they were too exhausted to even attempt to move away from the entrepreneur’s grasp.
And for the former, the entrepreneur took note of the fact that Ulysses already-owllike laughter reaches its peak, whenever her fingers scratch around their neck and underneath their chin, sounding more like the calls of an actual owl rather than laughter. The historian couldn’t fight either the smile or blush that involuntarily appeared on their face, and neither could their roommate. Whether it was out of endearment towards the adorable noises and cute smile coming from the historian or simply sadistic glee, Wenona was grinning and blushing all the same.
After what felt like hours, Wenona finally moved away from Ulysses, allowing her roommate the opportunity to breath. It took several long minutes for them to finally be able to speak and get all of the residual laughter out of their system.
“Finally…that was…torture…”
“Consider that retribution for yesterday’s transgressions. But, the retribution is still far from over.”
Once she noticed the terrified widening of her roommate’s eyes, the entrepreneur spoke further.
“And I will require your assistance going further…along with some extra assistance. Tell me, Ulysses. Have you ever yearned to gain dominance in this hellscape of a kidnapping scenario?”
Despite having been tuckered out mere seconds ago, the second Wenona raised the question, Ulysses did the same from their slumped position on the bed.
The Ultimate Pro Gamer, Cassidy Amber, ended up in quite the odd predicament. One second, she was simply dilly-dallying around the academy, out of little more than boredom. And, the very next, she ended up tackled by a mysterious force, and held down in a spread-eagle position by four of her friends. Holding down her left and right legs were, respectively, Ulysses Wilhelm and Diana Venicia. And holding up her left and right arms were, respectively, Damon Maitsu and, much to her shock and despair, Eva Tsunaka.
Cassidy glared in betrayal and disappointment at her gaming buddy, only to get instantly snubbed, as the mathlete muttered something about all being fair in “love and t-wording”. A shadow was casted over the Cassidy’s body, and looking up, the streamer saw none other than-
“You bourgeoisie scum! I should have known that you’d be behind this devious plot to brainwash me into capitalism! Well, it’s not going to work! I have a mind like an iron wall.”
Wenona’s smirk momentarily turned into a confused glare at the ramblings of her ideological opposite, before pushing any and all potential rebuttals to the side, reminding herself of her intended plan.
The simple wiggling of Wenona’s fingers, as well as Ulysses and Diana’s loosening of her boots, instantly clued Cassidy in as to what the actual plans of the entrepreneur were. In a second, the streamer’s rage and bravado evaporated instantly, as she could do little more than sweat and babble out bargains.
“H-Hey…Wenona! Ol’ rival! Ol’ bougie! Y'know...it d-doesn’t have to be like this! Look, I’m s-s-sorry for t-tickling you! I was just bored and d-decided to have and share a little laugh with a good ol' frenemy! We can always have a…nice and friendly negotiation over a…n-nice cold cup of ch-chocolate soda?"
But, for once, this capitalist isn’t ready to hear out any potential sales pitches, as her smirk only widened, and eerie giggles endlessly flowed out of her mouth.
“You’ve raised this inquiry towards me yesterday…so allow me to ask you…are you ticklish, Cassidy Amber?”