Xei was lightly walking down the hall, keeping an eye on everyone’s comings and goings as she often did. Today there seemed to be an unusual amount of activity near the bath area, and it had continued long enough in Xei’s opinion to merit further observation and a possible course of action to take should that become necessary… however, for the time being, sitting on the sidelines was of course the best thing to do…
Jelex, Rei, Usagi, Syia, Ami, Minako and Felin had all passed through here within the past hour. Xei began computing all the possible permutations of who could be where, but frowned as the heavy analysis caused a slight whirring to commence from her internal processors. Moving silently was her number one priority, for the best results inevitably came to those who waited and planned, or so Felin had said and so demonstrated by her favorable ratio of dominant-to-submissive results in the myriad encounters that occurred each day. After a microsecond’s contemplation, Xei reduced the scope of her analysis to only who might be in the bath at the current time and arrived at an answer soon afterward.
Then Xei heard a noise consistent with footsteps and occurring at a frequency to indicate that whomever was making the noise was running at a high rate of speed. Xei rejected the notion of computing who might be coming, deciding that the more important action would be to remain hidden. The nearest unlocked door was Jelex’s room, and a rapid playback of her memory told Xei that Jelex had not returned to her room after leaving it and was, upon further analysis, unlikely to do so for some time. She slipped inside and concluded that the danger of detection was now nearly zero.
Jelex’s room was, as usual, a complete mess. Xei’s curiosity was stoked, and she began to look around the room for things that might be of interest to her, or so she rationalized. It amused her, as always, that a computer could find a way to rationalize, but to ostensibly present a reason for being somewhere she generally should not be, Xei drew the feather duster she kept tucked into her apron and gave the surfaces of the room cursory swipes with it. Xei’s feather duster was not a generically manufactured type for regular domestic use. Those, she had discovered, did not have properties sufficient to what she wanted, being that they simply did not provoke a good enough reaction when applied to skin instead of wood or stone. Therefore, Xei had requisitioned better equipment from Felin, who had promptly designed for her an improved version of a feather duster, in which the feathers were markedly stiffer and held their shape better, thus exerting enough pressure to cause a reaction that was pleasing to Xei.
Caught up in her sorting and recalling of recent events, Xei’s processor was caught unawares for a microsecond when the sensors in her skin reported a change in the floor texture. As Xei knew full well and was unable to stop by her own doing, this momentary lapse in her ability to process a sensation of that kind caused an automatic subroutine to execute; this, of course, was the involuntary jerking back of her foot from the surface of the floor and an accompanying giggle. Stimulated by the soft surface of Jelex’s carpet, Xei’s foot sensors were still causing a tingling feeling to report, which she had to eliminate by simply rubbing her foot. It was designed to be a very human reaction to a human phenomenon, yet Xei was very much susceptible to that…
Now paying attention to her steps so that she would not burst into another telltale giggle, Xei proceeded across the carpet to Jelex’s dresser and the part of her programming which handled tasks twitched. When Felin had assigned her the nominal role of ‘maid’, she had filed that description and accompanying routines into her processor so that the ‘work’ part of her programming would not send irritating messages demanding a role. This had the side effect of sometimes causing her to actually perform a maid’s duties even though Felin had told her she was not expected to work. Still, simple tasks like this did not hinder any analytical tasks she might wish to perform, so Xei often let the work programming construct a cleanup routine when it decided to do so.
As a result of this, Xei began to clean off Jelex’s dresser, beginning with the undergarments that were stuffed into the top drawer and not folded whatsoever. Xei smiled and instructed herself to refer to them as ‘panties’, causing a giggle. After this, Xei concluded, it should be safe to go out in the hall again, pending the result of a visual search. Content with that, Xei directed her thoughts back to the room she was in, unfortunately not focusing on her physical senses as much as she should have…
Xei jumped with surprise when the door banged open, and while she raced for something appropriate to say to the gaping Jelex who stood in the doorway, the taller, stronger girl closed the door and took a few steps forward. “Oh, look who we have here… I guess Felin’s really got her panties in a knot over that manga, eh?” Jelex chortled. “She’s even sent you searching our rooms pretending to clean so you can look for it, right?”
“That would be incorrect,” Xei replied, carefully folding the last pair of panties in her hands and sliding the drawer closed. “Felin asked of me no such thing, I simply was in here on my own initiative.”
“Your ‘initiatives’ are usually the same as Felin’s,” Jelex said. Xei took a step back as Jelex took two more forward, noting that Jelex did not seem to be dissuaded from her mistakenly held notion by logic alone. Realizing that any further talk would just strengthen Jelex’s position while weakening hers, Xei launched into a lunge for Jelex’s upper body, hoping to hit her far enough above her center of gravity to overbalance and cause Jelex to topple backwards.
“I knew it!” Xei realized too late that her decision had been hasty, and Jelex’s words hung in the air even as she somehow fell to the ground, avoiding Xei’s attack with ease. Xei braced herself to kick off the wall and face Jelex again, but she never got there. Her flight through the air was suddenly arrested as something closed around Xei’s ankles, causing her to tilt forward at the same time that Jelex somehow twisted… the end result was that Xei hung from her ankles, caught between Jelex’s shins, while her back rested against Jelex’s legs.
“Now, let’s see if you’re a little more chatty…” Jelex’s chuckle told Xei all she needed to know, as her fingers began to stroke upon the flesh of Xei’s bare feet. Xei knew that she would have no chance at all of resisting Jelex’s tickling, even as she failed to fight back the burst of giggling and began to squirm and twist around, her hair pooling all over the floor as her head swung just inches above the surface.
“Pleheheheheheheheheheze no! Tee hee hee!” Xei cried, involuntarily, a little embarrassed at the cute, pleadingly helpless laughter she always seemed to produce when tickled, and knowing there was very little she could to do stop it. “Hee hee hee heee hahahaaha Jelex!!!” Xei called out Jelex’s name, an implied request for her to stop, which she of course would not, confirmed by Jelex’s own giggle and her speech that continued immediately thereafter:
“Xei, I’d like to know what you were doing sneaking around in my room! You’d have no reason to be going through my underwear drawer unless you were trying to find something! And trust me, my underwear drawer isn’t the hiding place for my manga.” Jelex coughed, and Xei realized she had been about to say too much before catching herself. “So either ‘fess up and tell me that Felin sent you or tell me what you were doing here goin’ through my stuff.” To accentuate her demand, Jelex ran all of her fingers down the android’s feet, although she knew that this position could not be maintained long. Her legs were pointed straight up at the ceiling, holding Xei’s legs between them, and her abdomen was curled up so she could reach Xei’s feet with her hands, causing her body to be curled in something like a J-shape.
“I swheheheheehehe hehee ehehe hahaha swear I was only trying to clean!” Xei burst out, noting again the reduction on the level of her speech as the laughter forced her to enunciate the first thing she could think of to say. “Hee heee hee heee plehehehheeze stop ticking meheheeee!!!”
“Only trying to clean? Phht, I’ve said before I don’t need you to clean my room and you usually don’t. So why pick now to start cleaning?” Jelex stopped tickling for just a moment, grinning and considering her next move.
“I… ah…” Xei grumbled inwardly, awarding the victory of the exchange to Jelex for catching her in an inconsistency. If only being tickled didn’t make her processing capability so erratic… then again, if Jelex didn’t tickle for long enough, Xei could surely turn the tide of this encounter with her multiple tricks… “Eeeeeek!” Again, a preprogrammed reaction, this one for the shock of Jelex’s somehow flinging her into the air in the direction of Jelex’s bed. She only was able to see Jelex leaping into the air above her before falling with a thud onto the bed.
“There… this is much more comfortable, wouldn’t you say?” Jelex asked with a grin, the maneuver resulting in Xei’s arms trapped beneath her legs. For good measure, and because there wasn’t any good trick for holding her legs from this angle, Jelex’s hands materialized from the bed and firmly gripped Xei’s ankles. “Now, about that cleaning?” Jelex’s fingers skated across Xei’s ribs, through the material of her maid’s costume.
“TeeheeheeePLEHEHEHEHEEEHHEEZE don’t do that!” Xei squealed, knowing that Felin’s devilish costume made her slightly more ticklish than even bare skin. Her body shook and quivered with involuntary motions as Jelex’s fingers probed and tickled along her sides, into her ribs, under her arms, Jelex’s preferred scritching motion reminding Xei of Felin’s ticklish claws… the mere thought of them seemed to amplify the sensations Xei felt. “HEhehHEEHEHEHEHEHh ahahaah ahahah ahahaaaall right heheee!! I didn’t come to cleheheeean!”
“Ah, much better!” Jelex said with a smirk. Her fingers stopped tickling so hard, producing just small, gentle swirling motions on Xei’s lower ribs. “Now tell me why you were here!”
“I wahhaa was hiding!” Xei squeaked. “Someone cahaha came running up the stairs and I didn’t want to be spotted!”
“That’s it?” Jelex frowned, letting her hands fall back to her sides with a disappointed humph. “You and your stupid hiding. It’s much more fun to actually be out and about, y’know? None of this stealth crap like it was some kind of contest.”
“But Jelex, you know that I’m so very ticklish,” Xei replied. “I have a very difficult time extricating myself from tickle traps because I am poor at controlling my actions when I get tickled. Therefore the best way for me to expand my options is to remain out of the spotlight for as long as I can and make my move when the time is ripe. You have a strong body and martial training which allows you to escape – “
“Oh shush,” Jelex said. “Strong body and martial training my ass. I’ve seen you pull Matrix-like stuff to get out of some of the situations I’ve seen you in. You’re stronger than anyone, Xei, you just usually don’t apply all of it.”
“Well, no,” Xei conceded. “That would be unfair. I’m not attempting to dominate this dwelling, and you know that I enjoy being ‘gotten’ to a certain degree… so I have capped my physical capacity at a certain level to ensure that the probability of being caught or catching is acceptable…”
“You sound like Ami,” Jelex cut in, tickling Xei under the arms again to make her be quiet. “All this math and science and whatnot. Although I guess it is fun to have you around.” Jelex grinned and got off of Xei. “I suppose I can letcha go now…”
Xei contemplated a counterattack, but decided that with Jelex fully aware of her and ready for any such thing, she would fail yet again and likely be tickled worse. She decided instead to favor Jelex with a short bow and said, “Then I will see you later. Thank you for your kindness…” Xei slipped out the door without stopping to look, and no more than a few steps into the hall ran into Felin. “Oh!”
“Hello there Xei,” Felin said… Xei noticed that her grin, her eyes, her ears and tail, were all held in a very aggressive posture. Certainly this was what Jelex had been talking about… “Say, I was wondering if you could help me with something.” Xei certainly did not expect Felin’s claws to reach her sides so fast and couldn’t help collapsing with giggles.
“I know you’re not waterproof, but maybe you can help me persuade someone else besides Jelex to help me with my problem… won’t you do that, Xei?” Xei could only nod in assent. Felin’s scritching left no room for mercy and Xei knew firsthand how quickly prolonged claw-tickling could reduce her programming, or anyone else, to subservience… best to accede quickly, but somewhere inside of Xei, that little corner of her that delighted in teasing Felin lit up, causing her to reply with a little grin…
“You’ll
have to make me first!”