Work Text:
“Ugh, I am so tired.” Mira groaned as she staggered down the hotel corridor, leaning on her gleaming spear. “This tour can’t end soon enough.”
“We’re almost there,” Rumi assured her. “Two more shows, and then we’re done.”
“Yes! And then… couch!” Zoe exclaimed.
“Too tired to think about the couch,” Mira said, opening her door.
“Then get some sleep. And put your spear away!” Rumi called as the door closed behind her.
Mira sighed, leaning against the door, and let her spear clatter to the floor. “Too tired,” she muttered. The slender young woman didn’t even bother to pull the ties out of her hair, leaving it in the wavy pink-red pigtails and locks she preferred. She pulled off her black t-shirt and undid her yellow skirt, letting them fall to the ground around her as she staggered towards her bed. Even the time needed to unbuckle her boots seemed like too much. She would get to it in a minute.
Mira flopped face-first onto the bed, arms at her sides as the warm blankets caught her. “Mmm…” she mumbled. “Bed…” The boots were forgotten. Pyjamas were forgotten. She closed her eyes, ready to drift off to sleep.
She didn’t see the shadows lurking in the corners of the room. Didn’t see the long, grey arms reaching out from under the bed, lifting the edges of her blankets. The first hint that she had that something was wrong was when the blankets were lifted up and wrapped around her.
“Zoe…” Mira grumbled, half-cracking open one eye.
And then there was a massive cloud of foul-smelling purple smoke around her. Mira’s eyes shot open as she gagged on the stench. “What the hell?!”
She tried to surge to her feet, but it was too late.
Her bed was gone; instead, she was lying on the concrete floor of an old, abandoned warehouse. Her blankets had been wrapped tightly around her, pressing tightly against her bare skin; her head was poking out of the top like a burrito, and her boots were sticking out of the bottom, but otherwise she was totally stuck. And she was surrounded by at least a dozen demons, looming over her as they chuckled.
“We caught ourselves a Hunter,” the lead demon crowed. His crimson skin flickered in the dark, the familiar patterns glowing a faint purple. “Didn’t even look for us.”
“Oh, come on!” Mira’s hand clenched as she moved to summon her spear… only to remember that it was still lying on the floor of her hotel room. “I just want to sleep!” she moaned. “Killing you all is going to take so much time!”
The red demon laughed again. “You’re not killing anyone,” he said. “You’re going to join us.”
Mira sighed. “Oh, great. You’re going to do the whole ‘become a demon, eat the world’ thing? Pass.” She strained against the blankets, without much luck. The others would find her soon.
“If we can corrupt a Hunter, we will be showered with praise,” Crimson said, ignoring her. “You will beg Gwi-Man to take you.”
“Torture? Please. You can’t find a torture worse than your skritchy voice.”
Crimson’s eyes narrowed. “You have a sharp tongue. Let’s see how well you use it.” He gestured, and two demons scuttled forwards. Their claws reached out for Mira’s feet.
“Try it, ugly!” Mira tried to kick at the demons, but more raced forwards, pressing her face-down into the concrete. Two smaller creatures hopped onto her back, the weight holding her still as they reached around her and dug their claws into the floor to pin her down even more securely. She squirmed against her restraints, a rush of fear threatening to push aside the anger. She was almost helpless like this. What were they going to…
There was a tearing sound as the demons’ claws pulled off the soles of her boots. Anger came back to the fore. “Hey!” Mira shouted. “Those are my favorite boots!”
“And you will wish you still had them, soon…” the demon at her feet said mockingly. Mira’s bare soles were now on display, toes and heel still trapped in the frame of her boot. “Not even socks,” he said. He raised one long, sharp fingernail, circling around the edge of her foot. “You must be so… sensitive… down there…”
Mira’s breath caught. “Don’t you fucking dare… nngg!”
The monster’s nail ran down the centre of her sole, and Mira’s entire body went tense. The assembled demons roared with laughter, watching her bite her lip. “Something wrong, Hunter?” Crimson teased. “Do you have… a vulnerability?”
“Let me up, we’ll seee who’s vulnerab-uh-uhll!” Mira’s voice hitched as a second nail joined the first, running light circles across the skin of her feet. How did they know? She always wore her boots when she was fighting. Zoe knew, but she’d promised never to do anything about it. Even at the spa, she didn’t let anyone touch her feet.
The spa. Mira’s eyes grew wide. They were watching the spa.
She tried to squirm free, but the demons had tied the blankets around her well when they’d kidnapped her. Rumi and Zoe had no idea where she was. And her spear was in her room. She was trapped, and the demons knew her secret.
Mira’s feet were so incredibly ticklish.
“We have so many ways of playing with you,” Crimson said, as the blue demon’s nails began to dance lightly up and down Mira’s left foot. It twitched and curled, but her toes were caught in the mangled remains of her boot, holding her stiff. “You just have to lie down… and laugh…”
She couldn’t see what they were doing, not with the blankets around her neck. She was stuck, staring at the floor, breath already ragged from trying not to laugh and from the demons pressing down on her back. Her breasts were pressed against her lungs, and she could only draw shallow breaths. “Fuck yyyaaaahahaha NOO AHAHAH FUUUUUUCKK!!!”
Another demon had slipped up to her right foot while the grey one distracted her. His mouth had slipped open, a long, prehensile tongue slipping into her right boot. It ran up into the hollow between her trapped toes, licking back and forth as it looped around each one in turn.
The sensation was like nothing Mira had ever felt. She’d thought she knew what it was like to be tickled, but the demon’s tongue was feathery-light, with tiny bristles like sandpaper running in thin lines across her skin. Her restraint dissolved in an instant, head arching back as her eyes bugged out. “I’LL KI-HIII-HIII-LLL AAHAHAHAH ALL OAAAF Y-UH-UH-UH-AAAAAHAHAHAH NOOO!!” Her lips pulled back in a snarl as laughter poured from her mouth, screams of desperate rage echoed by the mocking laughter of the demons surrounding her.
The air was thick and filled with smoke, her eyes were watering, mascara running down her face with the tears. Another demon joined the two, this one with literal feathers along its fingers, running them across Mira’s soles in alternating patterns of the two that were already tormenting her. Someone grabbed her by the hair, pulling her head back as she howled and spat insults and promised deadly threats, and she felt nails lightly brushing across her ears, adding ticklish hell to her top to go along with her feet. “NOOO! NOOOO!! AHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!”
“Come on, I want a taste,” a demon in the back complained. The long-tongue demon pulled back, his tongue leaving a pitter-patter of laughter as it withdrew.
“Of course,” he said. “She’s delicious. Try her big toe.”
“Oh, I will.” This demon opened his mouth, large and slavering. Reaching down, he tore the top of Mira’s right boot clean off, leaving her toes poking down at the ground. He slid down, opening his mouth, and slid it around her whole foot.
“EWEWEWAAHAHAHAHH NOO YOU FUCKER I WILL AAHAHAHH!” Mira hadn’t thought that there could be a sensation worse than the one she was already dealing with, but this demon’s saliva was faintly acidic. It prickled at her skin, creating a terrible itching feeling that was almost enough to make her pass out. His teeth scraped lightly against her toes, biting down just enough to hold them still as his grotesque tongue licked delicately down into the gaps between them.
Insults weren’t possible any more. “AHAH–hhh—aahahah—-hhhhhh–aahhha—hhhhh…” Ripples of gasping laughter were interspersed with croaking attempts to draw in breath. Mira was light-headed, her mind spinning. She didn’t know how long she had been here. A few minutes? A few hours? Another demon took over her left foot, this one with ten-fingered hands whose nails buzzed and vibrated, digging into her skin and drawing out new gurgling screams. She was going to kill every one of them. Every one of them… she was… she couldn’t think…
"Beg for Gwi-Man to take this curse from you,” Crimson hissed into her ear. “He will take away these sensations, leave you free to rage to your heart’s content. Wouldn’t that be nice? To burn everything down, destroy these demons and make them suffer for what they have done to you?”
“Hey…” one of the demons at Mira’s feet said. “What do you mean, destroy u-uurk!”
A throwing knife passed through his face, and he dissolved into a cloud of smoke.”
“It’s the Hunters!” a demon in the back screamed, a moment before a sword took off his head.
The room dissolved into chaos. The demons holding Mira down panicked, running in two directions. And as Crimson stared in horror, a gleaming spear sliced into the blankets holding Mira down, and her arm shot out to catch it.
“There you are!” Crimson said desperately. “You passed the test, and, uh…”
Mira stabbed him through the heart as fragments of blanket fell around her.
She stood, leaning heavily on her spear, panting as she turned to look around the room. The last of the demons were gone, smoke still lingering in the air. “Hey,” Rumi said. “You okay?”
“Never better,” Mira grunted. “Demons thought they could break me. Never had a chance.”
“Your makeup, uh…”
“Just tired.” The tone made it clear that the conversation was over. “Bed.”
“Yeah.” Rumi held out a hand, and Mira leaned on her as the three hunters walked out of the warehouse. “Let’s all get some sleep.”