Motivation can be a hard thing to find, but it helps if your pride has been bruised after being one-upped by the least respected supervillain in the city.
Starlight Glimmer paused as she walked down the corridor of her safe house, one of many that she had set up throughout the city. The “Great and Powerful” Trixie was technically her bestie, in costume as well as out. She could not begrudge her best friend the success of finally capturing the young Mare-Do-Well, unmasking her, and putting her through the most wicked tickle torture Starlight had ever seen. It was truly an accomplishment for a D-list villain.
Sometimes the accomplishment of others can be a great source of motivation. It helped that Starlight Glimmer, or rather, The Equalizer as she was known, was a very competitive mare.
She picked up the pace towards her destination. It was easy to feel secure in knowing that she was not only deep underground, but that she had more than a few expert level spellwards in the area to insure that even Supermare’s extraordinary senses would not spot or hear her down here, or her special captive. Her hired goons would also keep watch, and maybe if one of them pleased her, she would consider rewarding him or her with a little private time with said captive.
Once Starlight arrived to the special cell room, she gave another lingering thought to Trixie. She decided then and there that her bestie would get first dibs on the latest little heroine to be captured. It was important to keep things equal in their criminal partnership after all.
“Oh good, I’d hope you’d be struggling,” Starlight chuckled as she entered the cell room, locking the door behind her with a spell, leaving her alone with a tightly bound and very frustrated Superfilly.
The little Filly of Steel shot The Equalizer a death glare that, had it not been for the small shard of kryptonite swinging from around her neck, might have actually resulted in Starlight being burnt to a crisp. The glowing green gem had made it all possible, having just the right levels of kryptonite radiation to depower a preteen superheroine without making her sick. Superfilly could struggle to free her arms from behind her back and kick her legs free of the padded stock holding her ankles, but she would not be freeing herself no matter how hard she tried.
“It must be so frustrating, going from being an unstoppable force to being held prisoner with just a few straps and chains,” Starlight taunted, walking confidently up to face the young filly, “consider this a lesson, bringing you, and soon your big sister, down to equal footing with lowly mortals like us.”
“You’re not gonna get away with this!” Superfilly shouted, her eyes taking on a soft red glow that lasted only for a second, before disappearing. It was enough to get Starlight’s heart racing from fear that the kryptonite might not be enough to hold her captive. Once the glow in Superfilly’s eyes passed, fear was replaced by the thrill of knowing her super prisoner was truly at her mercy!
“Do they teach you those comic book phrases in superhero elementary school?” Starlight deadpanned, rolling her eyes while Superfilly tried harder to free her arms again. “This is real life, and the bad guy in this story has almost won.”
Superfilly’s glare never stopped, but her fruitless struggling slowed down. She remembered what her big sister told her once about super villains, how they loved to hear themselves talk, wasting time while the hero managed to work out an escape plan. Now seemed like a good time to put that theory to the test.
“Almost won, huh? Let me guess, you’re gonna use me as bait to lure mah sister out and set a trap for her?”
Equalizer smirked, and patted Superfilly’s red head before walking away to a nearby metal closet. “Aren’t you a smart one? Brains and brawn, that’s a deadly combinations to have.”
With her back towards Superfilly, Starlight began gathering the necessary tools she would need for what was to come. “If I was a lesser villain, I suppose I would do just that. Use you as bait, set a trap that Supermare would obviously fall into, then break free from, and ultimately rescue you and put me in a jail somewhere far away. I like to think outside of the box though.”
Taking what she needed, Starlight teleported a plush velvet pillow by her side, hovering it in front of her to place her instruments on.
“And what I came up with is, I think, pretty genius.” Starlight turned to face Superfilly once more, this time holding in her hands the pillow with the things she had gathered: ten small rings lined with a texture Superfilly did not recognize. Near them were a paintbrush and a square glass bottle with a deep purple liquid inside it.
Starlight continued, “My plan is simple. I’m going to have you tell me the secret identity of Supermare, where she lives and works, the names of her friends, and anything else I feel like knowing.”
Silence lingered in the air, so thick that a pin could be heard dropping in the room, before Superfilly exploded with laughter.
“You’re crazy in the coconut! You really think I’d tell you any of that?” Superfilly continued to laugh, while Starlight the Equalizer just smiled patiently, enjoying the sound of laughter from her captive, and eager to know how that sound would change in a few minutes.
“You don’t scare me none,” Superfilly said after she finally stopped laughing at Equalizer, “you may have me in a little tough spot right now, but I’ve gone up against bigger, scarier villains than you. Even if I don’t have all mah strength right now, you can’t intimidate me into telling you nothing!”
The smile that slowly grew on Starlight’s face unsettled Superfilly. The villain clearly had something up her sleeve that the little heroine was not aware of.
“You make me sound like some kind of monster. As if I would stoop so low as to scare a kid… why, that would make me no different from a common bully. No no no, Superfilly, I treat all you superhero-types as equally deserving of my… skills. I have other ways to get what I want, ways that always work. And besides…”
Starlight walked around her prisoner, eyes on the upturned feet of her captive, “you have a very pretty laugh. I want to hear more of it.”
Superfilly tried to move as Equalizer took hold of her upturned feet by the ankles. Equalizer's horn lit up and, with a sudden burst of magic, blasted the soles of Superfilly's boots. The blackened bottoms crumbled away to reveal the soft bottoms of her captive’s bare feet.
“Oh ho, that was quicker than I thought it would be,” Equalizer laughed as an indigent Superfilly struggled to pull her stocked feet away. The heavy chains keeping her legs bent upward made it hard to move her bare feet more than a few inches away, and with all the pressure on her knees, even with a plush pillow under them, there was little way of moving at all. The most freedom of movement she had was to turn her feet from side to side.
“Perhaps the kryptonite around your neck also weakens your silly costume too? I can only hope you last a little longer than your boots did.”
“I’m tougher than I look! If you’re going to start blasting me with your magic, go ahead! I’m not scared of a little pain.”
Starlight did not respond to her captive’s bravado, focusing her attention instead to take hold of Superfilly’s right foot, running a finger from her heel to her big toe.
“My my… such soft feet. Almost like silk.” Starlight sighed happily, earning a disgusted look from Superfilly.
“Don’t touch me, sicko!” Superfilly shouted, thrashing and twisting her body, frustrated that she could not stop the villain from rubbing her hands on her bound feet.
The Equalizer was not bothered in the least by Superfilly’s shouts or struggles, and continued to feel the softness of her captive’s foot, pushing her fingers between wiggling toes and rubbing at the arch of Superfilly’s foot.
“Stop it! Don’t touch mah feet!”
At that, Starlight paused and looked up to meet Superfilly’s angry eyes. “Oh? Are you ticklish?”
“Hardly. Bullets bounce off me and I hardly feel them. Trust me, I ain’t ticklish.”
“Is that a fact?” Starlight asked, finally pulling her hands away from Superfilly’s exposed feet, bringing the pillow she had taken earlier to her side, allowing Superfilly to better see just what the villain had collected.
“I don’t think that’s really fair, you not being ticklish. It is such a common thing for a person to be, but I suppose heroes like you and your sister are above those petty concerns, aren’t you? Well, let’s make things equal. Do you know what I have here?”
Superfilly strained to keep her head turned, seeing the pillow with the rings and brush, and the label of the bottle she could now read: Sensitivity Lotion XL-7.
“W-what are you going to do?”
“Well, I don’t like to monologue too much, but I did already say what my plan is. I will get you to tell me everything I want to know about Supermare. It might not happen today though. Or tomorrow. It might even take a week or more for you to… see things my way. Even the greatest journeys have to begin with a first step. With that said though… let’s get ready for your new life.”
At that, The Equalizer’s horn lit up, levitating two small lengths of rope to hover by Superfilly’s bare toes.
“Let’s get those toes bound back first.” With practiced motion from Starlight, Superfilly watched with growing concern as her toes were each bound and pulled back, creating a space between each of her toes; just enough space for the paintbrush to get between. She tried pulling her toes back, but the ropes holding them were now secure to the stock holding her feet. She could not even move her feet anymore.
“This isn’t going to work. I told you I’m not ticklish!”
“Oh I believe you,” Starlight said as she checked the small ropes, satisfied that no amount of struggling would loosen her knots, “that is why I’ve brought something to help with that. A little solution I’ve been working on. I’m sure with your invulnerability, this wouldn’t have worked at all. But then again, you’re not invulnerable anymore.”
Starlight’s magic took up the bottle of sensitivity lotion, holding it up for Superfilly to see. The liquid inside was thick like syrup.
“Take a good look, Superfilly,” Starlight said softly as she took hold of her paintbrush, letting Superfilly watch as her magic began to unscrew the lid of the lotion bottle. “This lotion will be applied to enhance the sensitivity of the roughly seven thousand nerves in your feet. Every touch, no matter how gentle, will be magnified in ways I doubt you’ve ever experienced before.”
With the bottle open, Superfilly watched in growing concern as Starlight dipped the paintbrush inside. “I’m sure you’re so used to not feeling things like bullets ricocheting off your body, so can you guess what it will feel like to suddenly become hyper sensitive to the touch? You’ll want to move, want to do something to stop the sensations your feet will be awakened to, but won’t be able to.”
“I... I don’t believe you. I’m not scared,” Superfilly said, trying to keep her brave face up as she watched the paintbrush get pulled out of the lotion bottle.
“Perfect! Now here it comes!” Starlight giggled, no longer able to contain her own excitement as she brought the brush close to Superfilly’s helpless feet. She barely made out the urgent whimper of “N-no!” from her captive before brushing a small purple streak on the arch of Superfilly’s foot.
The response Starlight got was exactly what she wanted to see. Superfilly’s eyes opened wide as she sucked in air between her teeth. The little hero’s body language had completely changed, and her toes began to tremble.
“First comes the sensation you can’t quite name,” Starlight spoke as she slowly twirled the brush on the purple spot she had made on Superfilly’s foot, spreading the lotion a little more, “It starts small, small enough that if you focus, you can ignore this feeling. At least, you could if I pulled the brush away. But I won’t.”
Starlight dragged the brush closer to Superfilly’s tied toes, spreading the lotion in a thick purple layer, being deliberately slow in her application. “Feel the pointed tuft of this brush sliding up the inner arch of your foot to the base of your big toe? You’re starting to get a name to identify the sensation that’s spreading with this lotion: an itch. A slow, warm itch like you’ve never felt before. Why, I bet when you had your superpowers, you couldn’t even describe what an itch felt like. I bet your brain is struggling to understand what your foot is feeling right now, but all you can think of is that the itch is there, and it’s spreading.”
Superfilly was starting to breathe a little faster, her head turned away from Starlight as she started to pull on the restraints on her arms. “This won’t work… you’re wasting your time.”
“Am I? Or are you just trying to get your mind off the hundreds of individual mink hairs spreading this lotion in the gap between your big toe and your index toe?”
Superfilly whimpered, and Starlight began to see she was trembling.
“Getting itchy?” Starlight asked.
Rather than reply, Superfilly tried pulling harder on her bound arms, grunting with effort as her struggles made the small chunk of kryptonite swing from around her neck.
“No? I guess I should apply more then.”
Starlight pulled the brush away, dipping it back into the lotion bottle, but much to Superfilly’s shock, the sensation of the brush hairs could still be felt, like phantom pain.
“I didn’t realize before, but since you’re so young, your feet are rather small. I could take my time running this brush back and forth, or I could be a little quicker, start coating your big toe first,” Starlight said as she started making short, fast strokes of her brush, smearing the purple lotion all over Superfilly’s large toe, and then quickly jumping to the index toe.
“Your toes only get smaller as I keep going. It won’t take any time at all to spread this lotion over each and every one of them. I may need to spend a little more time just coating in-between your toes, like this.”
Starlight changed from short strokes to twirling the tip of the brush between Superfilly’s tied toes, hearing her captive gasp through clenched teeth in raw frustration. Even her short tail was starting to twitch and flick as the itching started to get stronger.
“Nnng… s-stop.”
Starlight laughed, surprised that her captive was already starting to crack when she hadn’t even finished applying her lotion to the rest of her foot. “Oh my! It must tickle and itch so bad…”
She let the question linger, never stopping her hand as she continued to spread her lotion. “It does tickle now, doesn’t it? That’s how this works. The itch spreads, and your nerves light up. You don’t know if you want the brush to stop or not, but the sensation won’t end no matter what. I’ve already got half your foot coated, but it feels like my brush is still between your toes, still on the inner arch of your foot, even though I’m clearly guiding it lower, right here, on the outer arch. Feel it?”
Superfilly whimpered and shut her eyes. Her body was turning, twisting a little more from frantic movements.
“H-heh… S-stop…”
“Tickle tickle tickle,” Starlight sang, applying even more lotion to her brush, “being tickled for the first time… I can’t even imagine what that must feel like for you. These sensations, feeling it grow stronger and stronger the more this lotion spreads…”
“Heh… hehe…”
“Just a little more, and this foot will be nice and coated.”
Superfilly struggled harder, her breathing becoming sharp and her hands open, fingers twitching as if wanting to rub the burning itch in her foot.
“You don’t know how to handle this, do you?” Starlight asked, just as she finished painting the entire left foot of her captive. “Oh, you can’t handle this. This isn’t something you can punch your way out of. You can’t fly away from the itchy feeling that’s only getting stronger with every word I say. All those ridiculous superpowers, and none of them could have prepared you for the slow burn of a simple paintbrush suddenly running circles on your foot like this!”
Starlight suddenly dragged the tip of her brush in fast circles over Superfilly’s foot, cracking the heroine’s resolve and getting the first really bout of laughter that she had been struggling to hold in.
“Nnnnhhah HEHEHA! NO!”
As soon as it started, Starlight stopped, grinning from the results.
“No? Silly girl, you’re in no position to stop me, and I still have the other foot to work on.”
Superfilly was beginning to pant and sweat, her face twitching from the non-stop phantom sensations on her painted foot. From where Starlight stood, she found herself impressed with the little hero; she was cracking far easier than she would have imagined.
“Let’s start right away, there’s still a lot of work to be done with you,” Starlight teased as she brushed on a thick swab of the sensitivity lotion.
“EEEE!!” Superfilly screamed, shaking her head hard as she desperately kept up her struggling.
Starlight simply chuckled, adding stroke after stroke of the lotion over the outer arch of Superfilly’s other foot, taking time to spread the solution in small clockwise circles that started slow and became fast, only to switch back to slow once more. Every sensation added to the bonfire of sensation burning on the heightened soles of the trembling heroine’s exposed feet, and every second that passed brought another choked chuckle to chip away at her resolve.
“Hehehehaha mmmmphph!”
Superfilly bit her bottom lip hard, desperate to do anything she could to resist the terrible itching in her trembling feet. Her wrists hurt from the effort of trying to pull free from the straps holding them back. Her outstretched fingers waved and wiggled in a hopeless attempt to reach the buckle of the strap keeping her arms behind her. It amused the Equalizer to no end, watching Superfilly’s fingers sporadically flail about as the nerves in her feet became more and more sensitive.
“Oh, you’re being so tough and brave right now. Your big sister would certainly be impressed. I suppose this must mean I am not using nearly enough lotion?” Starlight asked, seeing Superfilly’s panicked reaction.
“HEHENO! D-d-don’t HAHA no m-more!”
“Maybe I should just pour this stuff on, like this?” Starlight grinned wickedly as her magic brought up the whole bottle of sensitivity lotion and tipped it over, spilling the thick, syruppy solution over the entirety of Superfilly’s foot.
“EHEHEHAAHAAHAA!!”
The tears were finally starting to come as Superfilly pushed her head back, shutting her eyes tight as she laughed uncontrollably from Starlight’s brush spreading the mess of lotion over the whole arch of her foot, pushing the thick substance between her toes evenly.
“Still seems like you’re handling this just fine. Oh, but course you are, I forgot the other part to this!” Starlight laughed, her magic taking up a set of five little rings she had placed on the pillow by her side earlier. Each ring opened and latched around the base of Superfilly’s pulled-back toes of her left foot, locking in place with an audible snap.
“W-w-whahat ar- EEKKEKHAHAHA!”
A spark of magic was set off, and all five toe rings became active. The textured insides of the rings became alive, spinning around the base of Superfilly’s toes, tickling the oversensitive skin.
“See, now you’re starting to crack,” Starlight smiled, doubting Superfilly even heard her. The heroine was laughing uncontrollably now, her cheeks already wet with tears.
“EEHEHEHAHO NO NONO EEK P-PLEASENO! STOP IT!”
“Almost done, cutie. Those tickle rings must be so unbearable.” It was getting hard for Starlight not to laugh as well, seeing Superfilly already begging for mercy, with no idea that this was only just the beginning of her torture.
“At least, I’m almost done covering these adorable little feet. Better not forget the toe rings for this foot too.”
Starlight didn’t care if Superfilly was paying attention to her or not anymore. Her laughter was getting louder and more hysterical, but Starlight knew it could sound even more desperate than it already did. She quickly latched on the other five rings, activating them to spin counterclockwise.
Superfilly’s reaction was to scream the loudest Starlight had heard her scream before. If not for being underground and having the magical wards up, Starlight was sure that her hired help would hear those screams. Even Supermare, wherever she was, might have heard her little sister’s screams of laughter.
“EEEE MERCY!” Superfilly begged, drool running down her chin as she wiggled and squirmed. Despite that Starlight had stopped using the paintbrush, her feet could still feel the unending motion of those tiny stiff hairs moving along her soles. The sensations was being burned into her feet, and just like an itch that wouldn’t go away, those sensations repeated themselves, lighting up Superfilly’s nerves in ways she never could have imagined.
“NO MORE! HAHAHAHA! IT’S DRIVING ME MAD! TOHOHOHO MUCH!”
“There we go,” Starlight grinned with satisfaction at a job well done, “now we just let this lotion do its job. I would say an hour should be enough. Then your training can really start.”
“STAHART?!”
“Oh yes. There’s so much more to do before I make you ready to tell me everything I want to know about you and your sister. We have hours, and hours, to start your training. I’m in no rush, and you’re certainly not going anywhere.”
Superfilly was starting to throw her body from side to side, desperate to do anything she could to stop tickling of her feet, but her bounds held her secure. She was helpless, she knew it, and it was driving her crazy. Her feet tickled so bad that it was hard for her to think of anything but the phantom sensations still buzzing on her painted soles. Her face was hurting from laughing so far, her vision foggy with tears that were not stopping. Even breathing was taking effort now, as pain began to flare in her sides.
If this kept up for hours as Starlight threatened, even controlling her bladder would become hard.
“HELP MEEE HEHEHE! SIS! SIS! MERCY HAHAHAHA!”
“I was right,” Starlight said more to herself than to her captive as she set a timer on her watch, while her horn lit up and brought out the hidden camera in the room, bring it closer for her to hold, “you really do have a very pretty laugh.”
