Gargalesis Ghost
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I wrote this a while back, but this started bubbling up literally on TotK's launch day when I saw the mechanical arms in every map tower along with Purah's new design. Enjoy!
“Robbie, wrench,” Purah said, sticking her hand out into the open air and waiting. After a moment, when a wrench didn’t conveniently land in her upturned palm, she cleared her throat. “Robbie, I said wrench.” To emphasize her need, she waved her hand up and down and grasped at the air as though she was closing her fingers around the handle of a tool, and when a wrench still didn’t materialize, she groaned and started wiggling her way out from where she lay beneath the new Skyview Tower.
By the time she made it out, she’d bumped her head and knocked her goggles askew, mussed up her hair and lost the pin holding it up, and her face was streaked with an unpleasant mix of sweat and dirt. She sat, her back to one of the support beams of the Tower, pulled her goggles the rest of the way off and slid them up to the top of her head, and surveyed what she could see of her new base of operations, a small fort outside of the ruined Castle Town dubbed Lookout Landing. Soldiers drilled off in the distance, using wooden sticks on her orders to preserve what little integrity the decayed weapons had in the wake of the Upheaval. Near them, one of the Hudson Construction workers was taking stock of lumber and chatting with the stable master that had just been brought in. The whole area crawled with people, and not a single one of them was Robbie, much to her annoyance. “Where did that pint-sized lunatic wander off to?” Purah asked herself aloud, chewing on her bottom lip and adjusting her glasses, then growling when her hands left a long, dirty streak across one lens.
She caught sight of Josha out of the corner of her eye and waved the girl over. Though she was still young, the Sheikah girl showed incredible promise as a researcher and Purah had taken her under her wing recently, eventually putting her in charge of the artifacts that seemed to get pulled up almost non-stop from the Chasms these days. Since they couldn’t get into the castle proper with it floating up in the air, she hoped that the newly opened Chasms would provide some clue as to where Link and Zelda had vanished to, but Purah was too busy to head up the research into them herself.
“Lady Purah, what’s wrong? You look upset,” Josha said, her face wrinkling with worry as she spoke.
“It’s nothing a bath won’t fix. Have you seen Robbie anywhere? He was supposed to be helping me, but it looks like he wandered off while I was beneath the Skyview Tower.” Josha shrugged and Purah sighed.
“How is the work on the Tower going?”
“It’s almost done,” Purah told her, craning her head back to look up at the tower itself. “Just some fiddling to do with the inner workings, then they should be ready to activate any time.” She frowned. “If Robbie hadn’t wandered off, I might already be finished with them.”
“Do you really think they’ll help us find Link and Zelda?” Josha asked, following Purah’s gaze up the tower.
“I’m not so worried about Linky, but having good maps will definitely help us search for the princess.” Purah pulled her goggles off her head and made a face at the dirt caked on them. “How’s your research into the chasms going?”
“One of the teams just brought back a broken tablet and the head of a statue that I’m eager to take a look at,” Josha said, her eyes sparkling at the idea of spending the next few days bent over musty old artifacts and books, “but the research itself would be much easier if I could go down the chasm myself.”
“Out of the question,” Purah said immediately. “They’re far too dangerous for a child. They’re arguably too dangerous for the research teams too. Link is just about the only one that I wouldn’t worry about down there, but he’s still missing.”
“Hey, they’re trying their best!” Josha said. She’d become close with most of the teams helping them research the Upheaval and the ruins from the sky as well as the Depths and wasn’t too happy when Purah was critical of their abilities.
“I know, I know,” Purah sighed. “Look, it’s not that they’re not trying. I’d just feel better if we had more manpower. Especially with all the available weapons in such a sorry state. I’m just… on edge.” She turned from the Skyview Tower and watched the bustle of Lookout Landing. “I think I’m going to go clean up. Would you do me a favor and tell Robbie to come by and see me if you run into him?”
“Of course,” Josha said, nodding. Purah watched as the young Shiekah scrambled off to her makeshift laboratory, visibly excited to start work on the newest findings from the Depths that she’d mentioned. Well, all things considered, I’m glad she’s excited. Purah looked up at the nearly finished tower again, then turned her gaze towards her makeshift laboratory, her thoughts turning to the bath tub contained within. The Skyview Tower could wait.
______
Robbie had a vague notion that he was supposed to be doing something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it might be, which meant it wasn’t as important as the idea he’d just had to improve the Purah Pad’s functionality. When brilliance knocked it was a fool that didn’t answer, after all. He sat on a bench in Josha’s lab, at a table borrowed for his own purposes, with a Purah Pad partially taken apart and strewn across the table top. One after another, he picked up components and held them up to the light, his custom work goggles whirring as they focused in to give him a better look at everything.
“Robbie?” The voice came from somewhere behind him, and he grunted in response, hoping whoever was speaking would go away. “Robbie!”
“What is it?!” Robbie growled, spinning on his stool to face his distraction only to find Josha standing behind him. Like Purah, he’d taken a shine to the girl and her zeal for research, so he cleared his throat and changed his tone. “Sorry, I was a bit distracted. What’s the problem?” he asked, hopping down to stand face to face with her. The two were nearly the same height, though his diminutive stature came mostly from advanced age.
“Purah was looking for you! She said you were supposed to be helping her with the Skyview Tower!”
“Oh, that.” Robbie scratched the top of his head. What hair he had left stuck out at odd angles, framing an almost entirely bald skull. “I do seem to remember her asking for help with the finishing touches on it. When did she want to do that again?”
“Apparently an hour ago,” Josha said. “She was pretty upset when I saw her, said you were there when she crawled under the Skyview Tower and disappeared by the time she needed help.”
“Ah.” Robbie scratched the top of his head again, then pulled his goggles off, a rarity for him of late, and looked at Josha. “You said she was upset? But I was working on the Purah Pad! I think I’ve found a way to add a tracking function to it.”
“That’s all well and good,” Josha shrugged, walking past where Robbie stood and inspecting what appeared to be the head of a strange, almost person-shaped statue, “but you know how she can be. You should probably go apologize. She said she was heading back to her lab to clean up.”
“Out of the question,” he snapped back immediately, gesturing to the parts strewn across his table. “I’m busy with this. Adding a tracking function will no doubt help with the search for Princess Zelda and Link. This is important.”
Josha slid her glasses off and wiped them with the hem of her shirt, then peered through them and, satisfied, placed them back on her face. “I don’t disagree with you, but getting the Skyview Towers running so we can map out all the changes across Hyrule will also help tremendously with the search. Right now, we’re not even sure what all is going on outside of the area around the castle and the southern chasm. There have been all kinds of weird rumors coming out of the other major towns around Hyrule, but we’re not even sure how feasible it would be to travel to any of them. You should go talk to Purah.”
“I, well, but…” Robbie started, then saw the expression on Josha’s face. “Oh, alright, fine. I’ll go see her. But I want to look at your research notes when I get back!” Josha nodded and beamed.
______
Purah pulled the pins out of her hair and let it fall down her back, shivering a little as the strands tickled gently against her bare skin, then sunk into the tub of soapy water and sighed. All things considered, the bath was the first thing that day that had gone right. The water melted away her annoyance along with the grime, and she found herself dreamily staring through the steam at her toes as she lifted her leg and inspected her foot. She lowered it back into the water and found herself staring into the goggled face of Robbie and jumped in surprise.
“Robbie! Don’t they knock up in Akkala?! I’m in the bath!” Purah instinctive sunk deeper into the water to hide her nakedness, her face flushing crimson. “What do you want? If you can’t be bothered to help me when you’re supposed to, you certainly don’t get to disrupt my relaxation time!”
“Josha said you were upset about today,” he muttered, his gaze darting everywhere around the room to avoid looking Purah in the eyes, “so I just wanted to come by and apologize. I didn’t mean to wander off, but I had an idea for an improvement to the Purah Pad and needed to look at it more in depth.”
“Oh?” Purah shifted around in the tub and looked at him, intrigued, then grabbed her glasses off the nearby table and slid them on. “Go on.” The Purah Pad was their brainchild, a device based on the old Sheikah Slate technology that she herself had pioneered before the Calamity had brought Hyrule to the brink of death. All the old Sheikah Slates had gone dark after Link and Zelda defeated Calamity Ganon, but with her old notes and the remnants of the Sheikah technology, she and Robbie had reverse engineered their own version of it a couple years before and given one to the princess to test out in the field.
“Well, you remember the old Sheikah Slates could track specific things that they had data stored on? I think if I go back to the Hateno Lab then I can add that same function to the Purah Pad. I just don’t seem to have the right equipment to do it here."
“That’s all well and good,” Purah said, shifting around in the tub and resting her ankles on the rim, “but we still need the Skyview Towers finished first. And I thought you were assisting Josha with her research as well? I really can’t afford to let you scuttle back to Hateno and shut yourself in the lab just yet.” Robbie stared at her for a moment, taken aback not only at her words but at the prominent display of her feet, shiny and wet, almost close enough to reach out and touch. He’d always had a bit of a thing for them, his wife could attest to that, and Purah’s were exquisite, petite and high arched. She scrunched her toes and peered around her legs at him. “Robbie, are you listening to me?”
“Oh, um, yes,” he fumbled, trying to look anywhere in the room but at Purah, then finally sighed. “Could you… cover up a bit? You’re almost a hundred and thirty years old, you should be a bit more modest. When are you going to use that device of yours to go back to your actual age? I’d have thought being stuck in a child’s body for so long would have killed your desire to keep experimenting with it.”
Purah looked down at herself, took in the soft curves of her body and her clear, smooth skin. “Why,” she asked, her voice incredulous, “would I want to go back to looking like I’m a hundred and thirty? You should let me fire it up for you, at least enough that you could grow some of that hair back. The glare off your skull is blinding at the wrong angle!”
“You are truly an awful research partner,,” he sighed, shaking his head.
“Am I? At least I show up when I’m supposed to.” She leveled her gaze at him. “Tomorrow. Skyview Tower. First thing in the morning. Then you can go work with Josha or tinker with the Purah Pad, but the tower comes first. Got it?” Robbie grumbled incoherently in response, but somewhere in the jumble she caught an affirmation and smiled. “Good. Now get out of here before I go tell Jerrin how hard you were staring at my feet.”
“Ah!” Robbie straightened up and stared at the wall. “You, uh, caught that?” Purah nodded slowly, the smile spreading across her face telling him everything he needed to know. “Right then, first thing tomorrow! I’ll leave you to your bath!” He hustled out, fighting the urge to glance back as Purah watched him go.
Once the door shut, she sank back into the water. A moment later she groaned. “It’s gone cold,” she said to the empty room, then stood and reached for a nearby towel.
______
“Are you sure you want to mess around with this today?” Robbie asked, looking over Hyrule Field and making a face at storm clouds gathering in the distance. “Looks like we’ll only have an hour or two before it starts raining.”
“Yes. You’re going to be the one working under the tower anyway, so you’re the one that’ll get muddy if you waste too much time.” Purah pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and glared at him when he opened his mouth to protest, her gaze withering his words before they made it out of his mouth.
“Fine. What still needs to be done?”
“The mechanism that inflates and launches the surveyor into the air needs to be fine-tuned and the guardian arms that check their equipment and connect their Purah Pad to the tower need to be tested and calibrated. I’ll be working on the activation console and the launch platform from above while you’re under the tower. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get started, then.” Robbie shot one last glance at Purah, his displeasure plain on his face, then rolled up his sleeves and squeezed his way underneath the Skyview Tower while she watched. Purah had to crawl to make it below, but Robbie, his stature shortened over the years, only had to duck, and seeing how easy it was for him irritated her. It was not nearly as irritating as the fact that they could be finished already if he hadn’t been dodging the work for days.
“No use fretting about it, just focus,” she said to herself, then pulled her goggles off the top of her head and placed them over her glasses. “Let’s get to work!” She climbed the steps to the entrance of the Skyview Tower and slid the double door open. The structure itself was narrow and inside only held a control console to activate the tower and a platform that would launch a surveyor skyward so a Purah Pad could scan the area from above. Purah stepped to the console and, not wanting to risk losing her balance, slid off the heeled sandals she wore before she kneeled down and opened a panel on the front of the device.
The control panel, like the launch platform and the guardian arms built into it, had all been reappropriated from the defunct Sheikah technology that littered Hyrule after the Calamity was defeated. Once Ganon had been put down, nearly all of it had up and stopped working, and Purah had spent the last few years working alongside Robbie, Zelda, and the Hudson Construction people to get the bulk of it cleared out while she took choice pieces to use in her own new inventions.
The problem was that the old technology was incredibly finicky. It amazed her that it all ran like clockwork for ten thousand years, and that was a testament to the brilliance of her forebears, but its age was definitely starting to show. Something inside the panel popped and sparked, flashing with a bright blue light that would have left her dazed without the goggles, and Purah cursed and pulled her hand away, sucking on two singed fingers.
“What just happened? Are you okay up there?” Robbie’s voice floated up from the floorboards beneath her, and she thumped them with the palm of her hand.
“I’m fine, just a little shock! Did you hook something up down there?”
“Yeah, one of the cables connecting the arms to the power source was loose!” So it was you, Purah thought bitterly.
“Well, next time knock on the floorboards or something so I know when you’re going to mess with the power source! What if I’d gotten fried?” She stood, happy with the connections of the control console outside of the sudden pop of energy, and closed it. “The control panel looks good. How are things down there, aside from that one bunk connection?”
“I’ve made a few minor adjustments,” Robbie yelled through the floor, “but so far most of it has been fine!”
“Okay, I’m going to check the launch platform. Don’t touch any of the mechanisms connected to it while I am!” She left her sandals at the control console and stepped the short distance to the launch platform in just her long socks, her feet swishing softly against the wooden floor. The device itself was another part from the old Sheikah Towers, though modified and carved down to a circular platform set into the floor. When the tower was activated, a burst of energy from below would launch it upward on a rail and send anyone on it high into the air. There were small hidden panels built into the floor around it to allow the mechanical arms below to pop out and perform their functions, and Purah checked each of them, making sure they opened and seeing that the wiring beneath the floor was undamaged by Hudson Constructions installation process. Satisfied, she stood and stretched her arms above her head, then let out a happy little squeak when her back popped.
“Are you done with the platform? I’ve found something strange down here that I need to check, but I don’t want to activate anything you might be standing on!” It sounded as though Robbie was directly beneath her.
“I’m done, it all looks good up here. Go ahead,” Purah called down, then stepped off the launch platform. Or tried to, but stopped short when the fabric of one of her socks, apparently bunched around her toes while she knelt earlier, caught in a small crevice between the platform and the wooden floor. She pulled at it, but it wouldn’t come loose.
“Okay, good to hear!” Robbie said from below, and she heard something click.
“Robbie, wait!” Purah pulled at her stuck leg, but her sock still wouldn’t come loose as she felt the platform beneath her shudder. She twisted and stepped halfway off just a second before it launched upward and took her trapped foot with it, her stomach lurching uncomfortably as the force of it pulled her and flipped her upside down. Her goggles flew off, then the world blurred as her glasses followed shortly after, and with a mad giggle escaping her throat she thought so this is how I die. Then she felt her sock tear and suddenly she was plummeting face first towards a huge blur that formed itself into a wooden floor as she seemed to fall towards it in slow motion. Purah heard something whir to life in the tower, and as she approached the floor she saw the mechanical arms hidden beneath the platform pop out, their metal claws reaching up towards her, and she screamed. Two of them clacked their claws at her, while the others held a large spool of cable meant to hook into a Purah Pad for data transfer. The two weaved side to side like snakes preparing to strike, and suddenly everything came to a halt as they darted forward and caught her by the ankles before she smashed into the floor, then held her dangling upside down with her nose mere inches from the floor. Something else made a sound, and she looked towards the top of the tower, between her feet above, and saw that the platform froze in midair instead of returning to its original position. She noted that the foot that had been stuck was now bare, her toes trembling in the exposed air, and insanely remembered that Impa had made those stockings for her and that they’d been her favorite pair.
“What happened up there? Are you okay? I’m coming up!” Robbie’s voice floated up from directly below the floor her nose dangled above and Purah groaned. The last thing she wanted was for her subordinate to see her in such a demeaning position. She squirmed, hoping to free herself from the arms holding her in the air, until a new whirring sound startled her. More guardian arms approached, the ones holding the spool of cable specifically, and one started grasping at her waist, trying to find a Purah Pad to plug the cable into.
“Ah, stop! Don’t grab me there, it’s ticklish! I don’t have a Pad, you stupid machine!” Her face grew hot as the claws pinched around her waist again, this time ticklish enough that she uttered a high pitched squeal. “I said stop!”
The lack of a Purah Pad seemed to give the arms pause as they circled her, one set still holding the now purposeless spool, then the one that pinched her waist a moment before began to pull cable from it, passing it to other waiting arms, and they began to work in tandem to wrap it around Purah. “What?! Why?!” she cried helplessly as the arms wrapped the cable around her roughly, squealing whenever one pinched at her, and she felt her overcoat slip downward before the arms tore it away. In a panic, she tried to lift her upper body towards her trapped legs and slap at the offending arms, but all that earned her for her troubles was cord getting wrapped around both her wrists, hobbling them, before another ticklish pinch sapped her strength and she fell back to dangling.
Behind her, she heard the sound of someone clearing their throat, and twisted around enough to catch sight of Robbie out of the corner of one eye, his arms on his hips as he surveyed her predicament.
“Purah, I, uh, didn’t realize you were into this sort of thing.” The eyes of his goggles rotated in different directions, taking it all in and feeding the information to him, and he grinned as Purah’s face turned the color of a Hylian tomato.
“Robbie! No, of course I’m not into this kind of stuff! You have a Purah Pad with you, right? See if you can use the console to deactivate them!” She watched as he stepped carefully towards the console, making sure to stay out of the reach of the metal arms, and unhooked the Pad that he wore at his waist. Then looked up at her and stood, holding the Pad in his hands but scanning it against the console.
“You know, I’ve had something on my mind,” he said slowly, and Purah recognized his tone. It was his ‘bruised ego’ voice, a petulant, whining tone that had grated on her nerves a hundred years ago and had only gotten worse since then.
“Robbie, this isn’t really the best time. Get me down and we can discuss whatever it is that’s bothering you,” she said, trying not to sound too irritated.
“No, I need to get this off my chest. As you know, you designated me the head of development for the new Purah Pads, and I’ve been trying my best to not only emulate the functionality of the old Sheikah Slate, but to actually improve upon it.” Purah sighed and nodded to indicate that she followed along, then bit her lip and squeaked at another ticklish pinch, this one tearing away a bit of the fabric of her robe and leaving a spot of exposed belly flesh. “If that’s the case, then why is the device called the Purah Pad? Don’t you think it should be named after its chief developer?”
“What?” Purah asked him incredulously.
“Well, it’s been bothering me. If I’m burning the candle at both ends to expand the Pad’s functions, then it should be named after me. I’ve been thinking that ‘The Robbie Reader’ would be a sufficient moniker for it. What is your opinion?”
“My opinion? My opinion?!” Purah couldn’t believe her ears. She was stuck upside down with robots literally tearing her clothes off and still prodding her body to find a spot to plug the cable in, and he was standing there, top lip quivering like an upset child, and complaining about an invention’s name! “My opinion is that you should get me down from here right now, Robbie! I can’t believe that’s what you’re worried about while this,” she snapped, pausing to gesture upwards with her bound hands, “is what’s happening to me! Have you gone senile?”
“Senile?! You’re older than I am!” Robbie stared at her a moment longer, then a sly grin spread across his face and he began fiddling with his Purah Pad.
“What’s that look for?” Purah asked, suddenly suspicious.
“Nothing, just a little program I’ve been working on for my own Purah Pad,” Robbie explained, still grinning wide. “Originally, it was going to be tested on Jerrin, but I think this is a good opportunity.”
“The only opportunity you have is to help me down!”
“Oh, not quite,” he said, then held the Purah Pad up to the console. Whatever he’d just done, the brightened blue and orange glow told Purah that the machine had accepted it. The guardian arms surrounding her suddenly froze, then in a frenzy they burst into motion, pulling at her robe and tearing it away, bit by bit, until she was left dangling in nothing but her underclothes and one stocking.
“What did you do?! You said you were going to use this on your wife?! You really have gone senile, Robbie!”
“For your information, Jerrin quite likes the ‘damsel in distress’ sort of play in the bedroom. Not that it’s any of your business. Still, it’s good to see the first program functioning.” Robbie paused, noticing that one of her feet was still covered, then made a face. “Well, mostly functioning,” he corrected himself, then with a couple swipes on the screen guided one of the arms to Purah’s foot and manually had it remove the last of her stocking.
“I didn’t need to know that,” Purah growled, though she was distraught at her predicament and what her old assistant might have in store next. “So your new Purah Pad feature works, right? That means you can let me down now and maybe I won’t feed you to the next moblin that wanders near Lookout Landing.”
Robbie ignored her, pressing the screen of his Purah Pad several times, then flipping it around to show it to Purah. The screen had an outline of a basic body splayed out, and an overlay of color ranging from a light yellow to a deep, dark red with numerous shades in between. “Interesting,” he mused, looking at the nearly naked Purah dangling red faced in front of him. “Do you know what this is?”
“No, I don’t, but I’m guessing it’s part of your weird new feature.”
“While they’ve been holding you and removing your clothes, the guardian arms were also doing a full scan of your body. This diagram shows a map of your sensitivity to touch. It’s interesting because this is the first time I’ve ever seen this not show greens and blues.”
“What are you saying?” Purah looked at the diagram again, her attention actually drawn to it after his explanation, and felt her stomach lurch with worry.
“I’m saying that you seem to be hyper-sensitive. And judging from the position of these dark red areas, you might just be the best and worst person in Hyrule to try out the other functions of this new program on.”
Ugh, he’s monologuing like a poorly written villain, Purah thought, then out loud said, “Robbie, stop dancing around whatever your plan is and just say it. You have a captive audience.” It hadn’t escaped her notice that the darkest red areas on the diagram were spots like her feet, thighs, underarms, and crotch.
“Well, judging from the diagram, it’s a safe bet to assume that you are quite ticklish, correct? And your giggles earlier while the arms were grabbing at you weren’t exactly quiet. Which means I’m in luck, as the other function of this particular rune is precisely that.”
“Precisely… what?”
“Jerrin is really quite submissive in bed, you know,” he said, stepping back up to the console and holding the Purah Pad dangerously close to the glowing Sheikah Eye. “But she’s not all that fond of pain, which is fine by me since I’ve never had a taste for causing it myself. However, she does like being tortured, so the middle ground we found was tickling.”
“You mean to tell me that you, one of the foremost scientists in Hyrule over the last hundred years, have used reappropriated ancient weapons and the new Purah Pad to engineer a tickling machine?”
“I don’t need to hear that from someone that invented an anti-aging device just so she could have clear skin,” Robbie grumbled, then held the Pad up to the console until the light grew brighter. The arms sprung to life immediately, twisting and circling around Purah’s helpless form, their multi-jointed claws clicking together gleefully as they neared her body.
Purah locked eyes with Robbie, the red of her irises spelling murder in bold text, and she said, “I think I hate you right now.” Then the guardian arms fell upon her, gently pinching and kneading her torso, and her words ended in a bubbling giggle. To the casual onlooker, the claws tipping each of the prehensile arms looked clumsy, but thanks to ancient Sheikah technology each was actually incredibly flexible, possessing several tiny joints so they could almost mimic the full range of movement that a creature made of bone and muscle was capable of.
Robbie stepped back and watched his handiwork. Two arms still held Purah aloft by her ankles but the other four darted around her body, poking and tickling randomly, while her face reddened and her laughter deepened from a giggle to full on whooping belly laughs when they started honing in on her hips and underarms. He glanced down and saw that more data was being fed to the Purah Pad as the arms continued to tickle her and smiled.
“What are you grinning at?” Purah managed to ask, her voice trembling while she held the laughter in for a moment. The arms, seemingly sensing her composure being regained, redoubled their efforts, all four focusing on her rib cage, until she cracked and hung limp, cackling helplessly.
“Just this. Rather than depend on a wired connection, I outfitted my personal Pad with the capability to communicate with other machines remotely so the Skytower console has been feeding me more information as it works on you. And some of it is very interesting.” He tapped the screen a few times, then held the Pad up to the console again. “I’m updating their program,” he explained as the console lit up and the arms froze in place for a moment, giving Purah precious seconds to catch her breath.
“Your update better be deactivating them and letting me down,” Purah said once she stopped gulping down air. The arms still hovered too close for comfort, and being upside down so long was making her lightheaded, and the lack of oxygen from laughing only made it worse.
“Hmm. Are you okay with renaming the device the Robbie Reader?”
Purah blinked at him, then her expression hardened into a scowl. “Not a chance.”
“Fine then,” he sighed, tapping the Pad a few more times. “I suppose it’ll just have to stay the Purah Pad for now, but I can at least give you some more time to think on it.” The machinery below them whirred to life again, the whole Skytower filling with the thrum as the unseen mechanisms moved beneath their feet. All the arms aside from the ones holding her ankles retracted below, sliding into the dark hole that should be covered by the launch platform.
“Finally! Now get these two to let me go and we’ll forget all about this!” Purah said, eager to be free of the machine’s clutches.
“Hmm? I don’t recall saying that my experiment was over with yet.” He held the Pad up to the console one last time and the four arms returned, snaking out of the tower’s bottom and reaching towards Purah once again, but now…
“What is all of that?!?” The arms had all changed, each donning new appendages rather than the standard claws that she’d seen on every other piece of old Sheikah tech. One seemed to have some sort of feathers in place of its former fingers, and another had replaced its fingers with some sort of round brushes that spun threateningly. The third still had claws, but now they were spindly, pointed things, making Purah think madly of spider legs. Finally, the fourth arm lacked appendages all together, instead donning some sort of bulbous apparatus.
“Oh, they’re just a few upgrades I thought of,” Robbie chuckled. The spindly clawed arm hovered near her underarms, clicking its sharp fingers together almost hungrily as it inched closer to her sensitive hollows. Nearby, the feathery one brushed its fingers gently across her belly and Purah’s whole body shuddered. Worse, the one with the strange spinning brushes had disappeared from sight altogether, but she heard them whirling and buzzing and the sound came from much too close to her helpless feet for comfort.
“Robbie,” Purah said, her red eyes flashing and her hair, long freed from its ties, whipped around as she shook her head, “don’t do it. I’m serious.” He looked at her, seemingly considering her words for a moment, then wordlessly held the Pad up to the console again and all three of the arms attacked. “No!” Purah managed to squeal before they fell on her, but even that short word was lost in the gale of laughter that followed. The spindly arm raked mercilessly at one underarm, then the other, and it seemed to be trying to hook one of its claws beneath the wrapping over her breasts in an attempt to free them while the feathery one darted back and forth between her belly and her thighs, its touch less severe but far more insidious as each little stroke brought helpless squeaks from her lips. Worst of all was the arm now tipped with the strange brushes. Purah’s feet had been ignored in the first ticklish onslaught, but now the arm meticulously explored both arches and the underside of each toe, the soft bristles spinning relentlessly as every spot it touched sent a new jolt of ticklish agony ripping through her.
Robbie watched, almost squirming with excitement as his superior for the last hundred some odd years broke further and further down, her laughter reaching what seemed like an impossible volume as the guardian arms, oblivious to her feelings on the matter, kept working Purah’s body with cold, mechanical efficiency. Every bit of exposed flesh was tested and teased, the Purah Pad in Robbie’s hand flashing every few seconds as the map of her body’s sensitivity updated with a new discovery.
“Please,” she managed to force the word through her trembling lips, the lone word uncharacteristically meek sounding mixed into the gales of helpless laughter, and it was lost entirely a moment later when the spindly fingered arm finally succeeded in loosening the linen wrap around her chest and it fell away, baring her breasts.
“Purah, do you perchance like this? Your nipples are erect.” She glared at him, or tried to, but the relentless attention to her body made it impossible to focus on anything for more than a second. Then the spindly hand sprung into action again, its sharp fingertips stroking the puffed put, hyper-sensitive nub of one nipple with one appendage while the others gently cupped her breast and glided the other claws along its underside. It tickled horribly, almost enough to drown out the sensations from the other arms, but worse was that Purah found that she was enjoying it, moans and gasps working their way in between her giggles.
“N-no,” she lied, her face flushing a brighter red than Robbie could remember seeing in the last century.
“Hmmm. Let’s try this then.” Robbie tapped the Pad and the fourth arm, the one with the strange bulb, sprung to life, weaving between the others until it hovered in between Purah’s legs.
“Wh-what does that one do?” Purah asked, then as if in answer it buzzed to life, vibrating hard enough that its hum was audible over the other sounds of machinery around her. “Robbie, no.”
“What was that? I didn’t quite hear you. Must be old age,” he quipped as the bulbous attachment descended. The claws holding Purah by her ankles spread apart, opening her legs for the new device, and it settled easily right onto her crotch, buzzing and vibrating even harder once it found its mark.
“No! No, please!” Purah wailed, arching her back and thrashing as waves of nearly unbearable pleasure intermingled with the tickling, shocking and consuming every nerve in her body. She cackled, moaned, twisted from side to side, but no matter how she tried to squirm away the arms followed, all four intent on their tasks. Then the spindly arm slid upwards and started tracing her hip bones while the brushes pressed into the undersides of the toes of her left foot, managing to get its bristles spinning against each sensitive pad, and the feathered hand moved down, its plumed fingers teasing over her breasts and collarbone all while the vibrating bulb pushed against her, buzzing into her nether regions until it found just the right spot that its vibrations fell almost entirely on her helpless clitoris.
Purah arched her back and came hard, her laughter falling into a silent, whispery sound as first one, then another, and finally a third orgasm rocked her body. The guardian arms pulled back a little, almost like they were watching to see what was happening to her, and her eyes rolled back into her head as she hung there, a sweaty, trembling, giggling mess. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, hammering through her skull as her heart pumped triple time. As she hung she fought unconsciousness, struggling against a daze that overtook her, a combination of lightheadedness from hanging upside down and overstimulation. Finally, her nerves still crackling, Purah whimpered, a small, broken sound, and began to softly cry.
“Hmm, interesting,” Robbie mumbled, studying the readout on the Purah Pad. “According to this, right now you would be even more ticklish than before if I reactivated the program.”
Purah swooned, trying to say something, but words seemed difficult things, and she couldn’t get them out, instead blurting a sort of jumbled nonsense.
“I didn’t quite catch that. Could you try again?”
Slowly, her mouth working to slick her tongue with spit so the thing would actually move instead of just sticking to the roof of her mouth, Purah uttered, “F-fuck… y-y-you…”
Robbie looked at her, the lenses of his goggles clicking as they refocused, then he made a sound in his throat, a loud harumph, and tapped the Purah Pad. More machinery hummed beneath his feet, and Purah looked into the hole she dangled above and screamed when she saw it writhing with at least a dozen more guardian arms, each donning claws, feathers, or the horrible little spinning brushes. They seemed to reach towards her hungrily.
“You can’t!” Purah sputtered, “I’ll go mad!” Unconcerned, Robbie tapped the Pad again and the arms holding Purah’s ankles let go, dropping her head first into the hole. Within seconds, the whole Skytower rebounded with the whir and hum of machinery overlaid with booming, cackling laughter. One more tap of the Purah Pad and the launch platform hitched and came to life, sliding back to its original place and covering the whole, leaving Purah trapped in the darkness with the countless tickling arms.
“I’ll just leave you down there for a bit of self reflection,” Robbie said. “A researcher using such foul language! I’m disappointed!” he added, stamping his foot on the floorboards so Purah might hear him over her torment.
______
“You said the strange sounds were coming from here?” Flaxel asked, sliding her sword from its sheathe. The other captains from the monster control squad were out on patrol, so she was handling the security of Lookout Landing while her own group got some rest.
“Yeah, it’s coming from under here,” Karson nodded, pointing to the base of the Skyview Tower. “I heard that Lady Purah and Robbie were working on it yesterday so I thought I would come by to make sure the outer structure was still okay and that’s when I heard it! It has to be some sort of demon!”
“Here? In the Landing?” Flaxel shook her head. Hyrule might be slowly getting overrun with monsters, but Lookout Landing should be safe enough, even in the shadow of Hyrule Castle. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but let’s go ahead and take a look. You can open the panel that goes underneath the Skytower proper?” Karson nodded, pumping a fist, then led her to a section of wall that was off-color from the rest.
“It’s here,” he whispered, pointing. Flaxel stepped past him and put her ear to the board. Whatever was under there, it sounded terrifying. Something was making a sound like a bokoblin being boiled alive, gibbering and squealing loud enough that anyone within a few paces of the tower would be able to easily hear it.
“Right, open it up and then get out of the way,” Flaxel told him. He pushed the panel from the bottom and it creaked, then the top swung forward and Karson caught it and lifted it away, revealing a passage large enough for someone to stoop and crawl into. Flaxel took a deep breath, then crouched and made her way beneath the tower. The space was tight and she bumped her head more than once, and the sounds were worse the closer she got.
Then she rounded a corner and saw it. Purah squirmed weakly in the grasp of what seemed to be countless mechanical arms, many of them twining around her, fully naked while many of them, all tipped with bizarre looking apparatuses, relentlessly explored her body. Tears and drool ran down her face, puddling below along with… well, judging by the smell and the two vibrating things that buzzed both in front and behind Purah’s crotch, the rest of the puddle didn’t seem to be urine. Flaxel watched a moment, entranced, realizing that while squeals and moans were mixed in, the majority of the sounds coming from Purah were weak, tortured giggles, and noticed that most of the strange devices were focusing on spots like her feet and ribs.
“Lady Purah,” she whispered, “what happened?” Purah looked up at her, her red eyes dazed and clouded, and chuckled. “I’ll see if I can get you away from them.” There wasn’t much room, but Flaxel managed to swing her sword at the nearest arm, and when the blade struck it the rest froze. Good, maybe this will work!
Then, on the second strike, the blade shattered. Everything was silent for a moment, the air beneath the Skytower heavy, then Purah wailed as the machines began their torment anew. Some did, anyway. Others broke away and reached towards Flaxel, who backed away, flailing at them with the useless hilt of her weapon.
“Damned decayed blades!” she spat, then her foot caught something as she backed up and she fell backwards. The guardian arms shot forward, grabbing her before she hit the ground and dragging her towards the laughing Purah. “K-Karson! KARSON! Help! Go get Josha and Robbie!” Flaxel screamed, then her boots slid off and her screams became bubbling laughter, twisting and meshing with Purah’s.
______
“Robbie, wrench,” Purah said, sticking her hand out into the open air and waiting. After a moment, when a wrench didn’t conveniently land in her upturned palm, she cleared her throat. “Robbie, I said wrench.” To emphasize her need, she waved her hand up and down and grasped at the air as though she was closing her fingers around the handle of a tool, and when a wrench still didn’t materialize, she groaned and started wiggling her way out from where she lay beneath the new Skyview Tower.
By the time she made it out, she’d bumped her head and knocked her goggles askew, mussed up her hair and lost the pin holding it up, and her face was streaked with an unpleasant mix of sweat and dirt. She sat, her back to one of the support beams of the Tower, pulled her goggles the rest of the way off and slid them up to the top of her head, and surveyed what she could see of her new base of operations, a small fort outside of the ruined Castle Town dubbed Lookout Landing. Soldiers drilled off in the distance, using wooden sticks on her orders to preserve what little integrity the decayed weapons had in the wake of the Upheaval. Near them, one of the Hudson Construction workers was taking stock of lumber and chatting with the stable master that had just been brought in. The whole area crawled with people, and not a single one of them was Robbie, much to her annoyance. “Where did that pint-sized lunatic wander off to?” Purah asked herself aloud, chewing on her bottom lip and adjusting her glasses, then growling when her hands left a long, dirty streak across one lens.
She caught sight of Josha out of the corner of her eye and waved the girl over. Though she was still young, the Sheikah girl showed incredible promise as a researcher and Purah had taken her under her wing recently, eventually putting her in charge of the artifacts that seemed to get pulled up almost non-stop from the Chasms these days. Since they couldn’t get into the castle proper with it floating up in the air, she hoped that the newly opened Chasms would provide some clue as to where Link and Zelda had vanished to, but Purah was too busy to head up the research into them herself.
“Lady Purah, what’s wrong? You look upset,” Josha said, her face wrinkling with worry as she spoke.
“It’s nothing a bath won’t fix. Have you seen Robbie anywhere? He was supposed to be helping me, but it looks like he wandered off while I was beneath the Skyview Tower.” Josha shrugged and Purah sighed.
“How is the work on the Tower going?”
“It’s almost done,” Purah told her, craning her head back to look up at the tower itself. “Just some fiddling to do with the inner workings, then they should be ready to activate any time.” She frowned. “If Robbie hadn’t wandered off, I might already be finished with them.”
“Do you really think they’ll help us find Link and Zelda?” Josha asked, following Purah’s gaze up the tower.
“I’m not so worried about Linky, but having good maps will definitely help us search for the princess.” Purah pulled her goggles off her head and made a face at the dirt caked on them. “How’s your research into the chasms going?”
“One of the teams just brought back a broken tablet and the head of a statue that I’m eager to take a look at,” Josha said, her eyes sparkling at the idea of spending the next few days bent over musty old artifacts and books, “but the research itself would be much easier if I could go down the chasm myself.”
“Out of the question,” Purah said immediately. “They’re far too dangerous for a child. They’re arguably too dangerous for the research teams too. Link is just about the only one that I wouldn’t worry about down there, but he’s still missing.”
“Hey, they’re trying their best!” Josha said. She’d become close with most of the teams helping them research the Upheaval and the ruins from the sky as well as the Depths and wasn’t too happy when Purah was critical of their abilities.
“I know, I know,” Purah sighed. “Look, it’s not that they’re not trying. I’d just feel better if we had more manpower. Especially with all the available weapons in such a sorry state. I’m just… on edge.” She turned from the Skyview Tower and watched the bustle of Lookout Landing. “I think I’m going to go clean up. Would you do me a favor and tell Robbie to come by and see me if you run into him?”
“Of course,” Josha said, nodding. Purah watched as the young Shiekah scrambled off to her makeshift laboratory, visibly excited to start work on the newest findings from the Depths that she’d mentioned. Well, all things considered, I’m glad she’s excited. Purah looked up at the nearly finished tower again, then turned her gaze towards her makeshift laboratory, her thoughts turning to the bath tub contained within. The Skyview Tower could wait.
______
Robbie had a vague notion that he was supposed to be doing something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it might be, which meant it wasn’t as important as the idea he’d just had to improve the Purah Pad’s functionality. When brilliance knocked it was a fool that didn’t answer, after all. He sat on a bench in Josha’s lab, at a table borrowed for his own purposes, with a Purah Pad partially taken apart and strewn across the table top. One after another, he picked up components and held them up to the light, his custom work goggles whirring as they focused in to give him a better look at everything.
“Robbie?” The voice came from somewhere behind him, and he grunted in response, hoping whoever was speaking would go away. “Robbie!”
“What is it?!” Robbie growled, spinning on his stool to face his distraction only to find Josha standing behind him. Like Purah, he’d taken a shine to the girl and her zeal for research, so he cleared his throat and changed his tone. “Sorry, I was a bit distracted. What’s the problem?” he asked, hopping down to stand face to face with her. The two were nearly the same height, though his diminutive stature came mostly from advanced age.
“Purah was looking for you! She said you were supposed to be helping her with the Skyview Tower!”
“Oh, that.” Robbie scratched the top of his head. What hair he had left stuck out at odd angles, framing an almost entirely bald skull. “I do seem to remember her asking for help with the finishing touches on it. When did she want to do that again?”
“Apparently an hour ago,” Josha said. “She was pretty upset when I saw her, said you were there when she crawled under the Skyview Tower and disappeared by the time she needed help.”
“Ah.” Robbie scratched the top of his head again, then pulled his goggles off, a rarity for him of late, and looked at Josha. “You said she was upset? But I was working on the Purah Pad! I think I’ve found a way to add a tracking function to it.”
“That’s all well and good,” Josha shrugged, walking past where Robbie stood and inspecting what appeared to be the head of a strange, almost person-shaped statue, “but you know how she can be. You should probably go apologize. She said she was heading back to her lab to clean up.”
“Out of the question,” he snapped back immediately, gesturing to the parts strewn across his table. “I’m busy with this. Adding a tracking function will no doubt help with the search for Princess Zelda and Link. This is important.”
Josha slid her glasses off and wiped them with the hem of her shirt, then peered through them and, satisfied, placed them back on her face. “I don’t disagree with you, but getting the Skyview Towers running so we can map out all the changes across Hyrule will also help tremendously with the search. Right now, we’re not even sure what all is going on outside of the area around the castle and the southern chasm. There have been all kinds of weird rumors coming out of the other major towns around Hyrule, but we’re not even sure how feasible it would be to travel to any of them. You should go talk to Purah.”
“I, well, but…” Robbie started, then saw the expression on Josha’s face. “Oh, alright, fine. I’ll go see her. But I want to look at your research notes when I get back!” Josha nodded and beamed.
______
Purah pulled the pins out of her hair and let it fall down her back, shivering a little as the strands tickled gently against her bare skin, then sunk into the tub of soapy water and sighed. All things considered, the bath was the first thing that day that had gone right. The water melted away her annoyance along with the grime, and she found herself dreamily staring through the steam at her toes as she lifted her leg and inspected her foot. She lowered it back into the water and found herself staring into the goggled face of Robbie and jumped in surprise.
“Robbie! Don’t they knock up in Akkala?! I’m in the bath!” Purah instinctive sunk deeper into the water to hide her nakedness, her face flushing crimson. “What do you want? If you can’t be bothered to help me when you’re supposed to, you certainly don’t get to disrupt my relaxation time!”
“Josha said you were upset about today,” he muttered, his gaze darting everywhere around the room to avoid looking Purah in the eyes, “so I just wanted to come by and apologize. I didn’t mean to wander off, but I had an idea for an improvement to the Purah Pad and needed to look at it more in depth.”
“Oh?” Purah shifted around in the tub and looked at him, intrigued, then grabbed her glasses off the nearby table and slid them on. “Go on.” The Purah Pad was their brainchild, a device based on the old Sheikah Slate technology that she herself had pioneered before the Calamity had brought Hyrule to the brink of death. All the old Sheikah Slates had gone dark after Link and Zelda defeated Calamity Ganon, but with her old notes and the remnants of the Sheikah technology, she and Robbie had reverse engineered their own version of it a couple years before and given one to the princess to test out in the field.
“Well, you remember the old Sheikah Slates could track specific things that they had data stored on? I think if I go back to the Hateno Lab then I can add that same function to the Purah Pad. I just don’t seem to have the right equipment to do it here."
“That’s all well and good,” Purah said, shifting around in the tub and resting her ankles on the rim, “but we still need the Skyview Towers finished first. And I thought you were assisting Josha with her research as well? I really can’t afford to let you scuttle back to Hateno and shut yourself in the lab just yet.” Robbie stared at her for a moment, taken aback not only at her words but at the prominent display of her feet, shiny and wet, almost close enough to reach out and touch. He’d always had a bit of a thing for them, his wife could attest to that, and Purah’s were exquisite, petite and high arched. She scrunched her toes and peered around her legs at him. “Robbie, are you listening to me?”
“Oh, um, yes,” he fumbled, trying to look anywhere in the room but at Purah, then finally sighed. “Could you… cover up a bit? You’re almost a hundred and thirty years old, you should be a bit more modest. When are you going to use that device of yours to go back to your actual age? I’d have thought being stuck in a child’s body for so long would have killed your desire to keep experimenting with it.”
Purah looked down at herself, took in the soft curves of her body and her clear, smooth skin. “Why,” she asked, her voice incredulous, “would I want to go back to looking like I’m a hundred and thirty? You should let me fire it up for you, at least enough that you could grow some of that hair back. The glare off your skull is blinding at the wrong angle!”
“You are truly an awful research partner,,” he sighed, shaking his head.
“Am I? At least I show up when I’m supposed to.” She leveled her gaze at him. “Tomorrow. Skyview Tower. First thing in the morning. Then you can go work with Josha or tinker with the Purah Pad, but the tower comes first. Got it?” Robbie grumbled incoherently in response, but somewhere in the jumble she caught an affirmation and smiled. “Good. Now get out of here before I go tell Jerrin how hard you were staring at my feet.”
“Ah!” Robbie straightened up and stared at the wall. “You, uh, caught that?” Purah nodded slowly, the smile spreading across her face telling him everything he needed to know. “Right then, first thing tomorrow! I’ll leave you to your bath!” He hustled out, fighting the urge to glance back as Purah watched him go.
Once the door shut, she sank back into the water. A moment later she groaned. “It’s gone cold,” she said to the empty room, then stood and reached for a nearby towel.
______
“Are you sure you want to mess around with this today?” Robbie asked, looking over Hyrule Field and making a face at storm clouds gathering in the distance. “Looks like we’ll only have an hour or two before it starts raining.”
“Yes. You’re going to be the one working under the tower anyway, so you’re the one that’ll get muddy if you waste too much time.” Purah pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and glared at him when he opened his mouth to protest, her gaze withering his words before they made it out of his mouth.
“Fine. What still needs to be done?”
“The mechanism that inflates and launches the surveyor into the air needs to be fine-tuned and the guardian arms that check their equipment and connect their Purah Pad to the tower need to be tested and calibrated. I’ll be working on the activation console and the launch platform from above while you’re under the tower. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get started, then.” Robbie shot one last glance at Purah, his displeasure plain on his face, then rolled up his sleeves and squeezed his way underneath the Skyview Tower while she watched. Purah had to crawl to make it below, but Robbie, his stature shortened over the years, only had to duck, and seeing how easy it was for him irritated her. It was not nearly as irritating as the fact that they could be finished already if he hadn’t been dodging the work for days.
“No use fretting about it, just focus,” she said to herself, then pulled her goggles off the top of her head and placed them over her glasses. “Let’s get to work!” She climbed the steps to the entrance of the Skyview Tower and slid the double door open. The structure itself was narrow and inside only held a control console to activate the tower and a platform that would launch a surveyor skyward so a Purah Pad could scan the area from above. Purah stepped to the console and, not wanting to risk losing her balance, slid off the heeled sandals she wore before she kneeled down and opened a panel on the front of the device.
The control panel, like the launch platform and the guardian arms built into it, had all been reappropriated from the defunct Sheikah technology that littered Hyrule after the Calamity was defeated. Once Ganon had been put down, nearly all of it had up and stopped working, and Purah had spent the last few years working alongside Robbie, Zelda, and the Hudson Construction people to get the bulk of it cleared out while she took choice pieces to use in her own new inventions.
The problem was that the old technology was incredibly finicky. It amazed her that it all ran like clockwork for ten thousand years, and that was a testament to the brilliance of her forebears, but its age was definitely starting to show. Something inside the panel popped and sparked, flashing with a bright blue light that would have left her dazed without the goggles, and Purah cursed and pulled her hand away, sucking on two singed fingers.
“What just happened? Are you okay up there?” Robbie’s voice floated up from the floorboards beneath her, and she thumped them with the palm of her hand.
“I’m fine, just a little shock! Did you hook something up down there?”
“Yeah, one of the cables connecting the arms to the power source was loose!” So it was you, Purah thought bitterly.
“Well, next time knock on the floorboards or something so I know when you’re going to mess with the power source! What if I’d gotten fried?” She stood, happy with the connections of the control console outside of the sudden pop of energy, and closed it. “The control panel looks good. How are things down there, aside from that one bunk connection?”
“I’ve made a few minor adjustments,” Robbie yelled through the floor, “but so far most of it has been fine!”
“Okay, I’m going to check the launch platform. Don’t touch any of the mechanisms connected to it while I am!” She left her sandals at the control console and stepped the short distance to the launch platform in just her long socks, her feet swishing softly against the wooden floor. The device itself was another part from the old Sheikah Towers, though modified and carved down to a circular platform set into the floor. When the tower was activated, a burst of energy from below would launch it upward on a rail and send anyone on it high into the air. There were small hidden panels built into the floor around it to allow the mechanical arms below to pop out and perform their functions, and Purah checked each of them, making sure they opened and seeing that the wiring beneath the floor was undamaged by Hudson Constructions installation process. Satisfied, she stood and stretched her arms above her head, then let out a happy little squeak when her back popped.
“Are you done with the platform? I’ve found something strange down here that I need to check, but I don’t want to activate anything you might be standing on!” It sounded as though Robbie was directly beneath her.
“I’m done, it all looks good up here. Go ahead,” Purah called down, then stepped off the launch platform. Or tried to, but stopped short when the fabric of one of her socks, apparently bunched around her toes while she knelt earlier, caught in a small crevice between the platform and the wooden floor. She pulled at it, but it wouldn’t come loose.
“Okay, good to hear!” Robbie said from below, and she heard something click.
“Robbie, wait!” Purah pulled at her stuck leg, but her sock still wouldn’t come loose as she felt the platform beneath her shudder. She twisted and stepped halfway off just a second before it launched upward and took her trapped foot with it, her stomach lurching uncomfortably as the force of it pulled her and flipped her upside down. Her goggles flew off, then the world blurred as her glasses followed shortly after, and with a mad giggle escaping her throat she thought so this is how I die. Then she felt her sock tear and suddenly she was plummeting face first towards a huge blur that formed itself into a wooden floor as she seemed to fall towards it in slow motion. Purah heard something whir to life in the tower, and as she approached the floor she saw the mechanical arms hidden beneath the platform pop out, their metal claws reaching up towards her, and she screamed. Two of them clacked their claws at her, while the others held a large spool of cable meant to hook into a Purah Pad for data transfer. The two weaved side to side like snakes preparing to strike, and suddenly everything came to a halt as they darted forward and caught her by the ankles before she smashed into the floor, then held her dangling upside down with her nose mere inches from the floor. Something else made a sound, and she looked towards the top of the tower, between her feet above, and saw that the platform froze in midair instead of returning to its original position. She noted that the foot that had been stuck was now bare, her toes trembling in the exposed air, and insanely remembered that Impa had made those stockings for her and that they’d been her favorite pair.
“What happened up there? Are you okay? I’m coming up!” Robbie’s voice floated up from directly below the floor her nose dangled above and Purah groaned. The last thing she wanted was for her subordinate to see her in such a demeaning position. She squirmed, hoping to free herself from the arms holding her in the air, until a new whirring sound startled her. More guardian arms approached, the ones holding the spool of cable specifically, and one started grasping at her waist, trying to find a Purah Pad to plug the cable into.
“Ah, stop! Don’t grab me there, it’s ticklish! I don’t have a Pad, you stupid machine!” Her face grew hot as the claws pinched around her waist again, this time ticklish enough that she uttered a high pitched squeal. “I said stop!”
The lack of a Purah Pad seemed to give the arms pause as they circled her, one set still holding the now purposeless spool, then the one that pinched her waist a moment before began to pull cable from it, passing it to other waiting arms, and they began to work in tandem to wrap it around Purah. “What?! Why?!” she cried helplessly as the arms wrapped the cable around her roughly, squealing whenever one pinched at her, and she felt her overcoat slip downward before the arms tore it away. In a panic, she tried to lift her upper body towards her trapped legs and slap at the offending arms, but all that earned her for her troubles was cord getting wrapped around both her wrists, hobbling them, before another ticklish pinch sapped her strength and she fell back to dangling.
Behind her, she heard the sound of someone clearing their throat, and twisted around enough to catch sight of Robbie out of the corner of one eye, his arms on his hips as he surveyed her predicament.
“Purah, I, uh, didn’t realize you were into this sort of thing.” The eyes of his goggles rotated in different directions, taking it all in and feeding the information to him, and he grinned as Purah’s face turned the color of a Hylian tomato.
“Robbie! No, of course I’m not into this kind of stuff! You have a Purah Pad with you, right? See if you can use the console to deactivate them!” She watched as he stepped carefully towards the console, making sure to stay out of the reach of the metal arms, and unhooked the Pad that he wore at his waist. Then looked up at her and stood, holding the Pad in his hands but scanning it against the console.
“You know, I’ve had something on my mind,” he said slowly, and Purah recognized his tone. It was his ‘bruised ego’ voice, a petulant, whining tone that had grated on her nerves a hundred years ago and had only gotten worse since then.
“Robbie, this isn’t really the best time. Get me down and we can discuss whatever it is that’s bothering you,” she said, trying not to sound too irritated.
“No, I need to get this off my chest. As you know, you designated me the head of development for the new Purah Pads, and I’ve been trying my best to not only emulate the functionality of the old Sheikah Slate, but to actually improve upon it.” Purah sighed and nodded to indicate that she followed along, then bit her lip and squeaked at another ticklish pinch, this one tearing away a bit of the fabric of her robe and leaving a spot of exposed belly flesh. “If that’s the case, then why is the device called the Purah Pad? Don’t you think it should be named after its chief developer?”
“What?” Purah asked him incredulously.
“Well, it’s been bothering me. If I’m burning the candle at both ends to expand the Pad’s functions, then it should be named after me. I’ve been thinking that ‘The Robbie Reader’ would be a sufficient moniker for it. What is your opinion?”
“My opinion? My opinion?!” Purah couldn’t believe her ears. She was stuck upside down with robots literally tearing her clothes off and still prodding her body to find a spot to plug the cable in, and he was standing there, top lip quivering like an upset child, and complaining about an invention’s name! “My opinion is that you should get me down from here right now, Robbie! I can’t believe that’s what you’re worried about while this,” she snapped, pausing to gesture upwards with her bound hands, “is what’s happening to me! Have you gone senile?”
“Senile?! You’re older than I am!” Robbie stared at her a moment longer, then a sly grin spread across his face and he began fiddling with his Purah Pad.
“What’s that look for?” Purah asked, suddenly suspicious.
“Nothing, just a little program I’ve been working on for my own Purah Pad,” Robbie explained, still grinning wide. “Originally, it was going to be tested on Jerrin, but I think this is a good opportunity.”
“The only opportunity you have is to help me down!”
“Oh, not quite,” he said, then held the Purah Pad up to the console. Whatever he’d just done, the brightened blue and orange glow told Purah that the machine had accepted it. The guardian arms surrounding her suddenly froze, then in a frenzy they burst into motion, pulling at her robe and tearing it away, bit by bit, until she was left dangling in nothing but her underclothes and one stocking.
“What did you do?! You said you were going to use this on your wife?! You really have gone senile, Robbie!”
“For your information, Jerrin quite likes the ‘damsel in distress’ sort of play in the bedroom. Not that it’s any of your business. Still, it’s good to see the first program functioning.” Robbie paused, noticing that one of her feet was still covered, then made a face. “Well, mostly functioning,” he corrected himself, then with a couple swipes on the screen guided one of the arms to Purah’s foot and manually had it remove the last of her stocking.
“I didn’t need to know that,” Purah growled, though she was distraught at her predicament and what her old assistant might have in store next. “So your new Purah Pad feature works, right? That means you can let me down now and maybe I won’t feed you to the next moblin that wanders near Lookout Landing.”
Robbie ignored her, pressing the screen of his Purah Pad several times, then flipping it around to show it to Purah. The screen had an outline of a basic body splayed out, and an overlay of color ranging from a light yellow to a deep, dark red with numerous shades in between. “Interesting,” he mused, looking at the nearly naked Purah dangling red faced in front of him. “Do you know what this is?”
“No, I don’t, but I’m guessing it’s part of your weird new feature.”
“While they’ve been holding you and removing your clothes, the guardian arms were also doing a full scan of your body. This diagram shows a map of your sensitivity to touch. It’s interesting because this is the first time I’ve ever seen this not show greens and blues.”
“What are you saying?” Purah looked at the diagram again, her attention actually drawn to it after his explanation, and felt her stomach lurch with worry.
“I’m saying that you seem to be hyper-sensitive. And judging from the position of these dark red areas, you might just be the best and worst person in Hyrule to try out the other functions of this new program on.”
Ugh, he’s monologuing like a poorly written villain, Purah thought, then out loud said, “Robbie, stop dancing around whatever your plan is and just say it. You have a captive audience.” It hadn’t escaped her notice that the darkest red areas on the diagram were spots like her feet, thighs, underarms, and crotch.
“Well, judging from the diagram, it’s a safe bet to assume that you are quite ticklish, correct? And your giggles earlier while the arms were grabbing at you weren’t exactly quiet. Which means I’m in luck, as the other function of this particular rune is precisely that.”
“Precisely… what?”
“Jerrin is really quite submissive in bed, you know,” he said, stepping back up to the console and holding the Purah Pad dangerously close to the glowing Sheikah Eye. “But she’s not all that fond of pain, which is fine by me since I’ve never had a taste for causing it myself. However, she does like being tortured, so the middle ground we found was tickling.”
“You mean to tell me that you, one of the foremost scientists in Hyrule over the last hundred years, have used reappropriated ancient weapons and the new Purah Pad to engineer a tickling machine?”
“I don’t need to hear that from someone that invented an anti-aging device just so she could have clear skin,” Robbie grumbled, then held the Pad up to the console until the light grew brighter. The arms sprung to life immediately, twisting and circling around Purah’s helpless form, their multi-jointed claws clicking together gleefully as they neared her body.
Purah locked eyes with Robbie, the red of her irises spelling murder in bold text, and she said, “I think I hate you right now.” Then the guardian arms fell upon her, gently pinching and kneading her torso, and her words ended in a bubbling giggle. To the casual onlooker, the claws tipping each of the prehensile arms looked clumsy, but thanks to ancient Sheikah technology each was actually incredibly flexible, possessing several tiny joints so they could almost mimic the full range of movement that a creature made of bone and muscle was capable of.
Robbie stepped back and watched his handiwork. Two arms still held Purah aloft by her ankles but the other four darted around her body, poking and tickling randomly, while her face reddened and her laughter deepened from a giggle to full on whooping belly laughs when they started honing in on her hips and underarms. He glanced down and saw that more data was being fed to the Purah Pad as the arms continued to tickle her and smiled.
“What are you grinning at?” Purah managed to ask, her voice trembling while she held the laughter in for a moment. The arms, seemingly sensing her composure being regained, redoubled their efforts, all four focusing on her rib cage, until she cracked and hung limp, cackling helplessly.
“Just this. Rather than depend on a wired connection, I outfitted my personal Pad with the capability to communicate with other machines remotely so the Skytower console has been feeding me more information as it works on you. And some of it is very interesting.” He tapped the screen a few times, then held the Pad up to the console again. “I’m updating their program,” he explained as the console lit up and the arms froze in place for a moment, giving Purah precious seconds to catch her breath.
“Your update better be deactivating them and letting me down,” Purah said once she stopped gulping down air. The arms still hovered too close for comfort, and being upside down so long was making her lightheaded, and the lack of oxygen from laughing only made it worse.
“Hmm. Are you okay with renaming the device the Robbie Reader?”
Purah blinked at him, then her expression hardened into a scowl. “Not a chance.”
“Fine then,” he sighed, tapping the Pad a few more times. “I suppose it’ll just have to stay the Purah Pad for now, but I can at least give you some more time to think on it.” The machinery below them whirred to life again, the whole Skytower filling with the thrum as the unseen mechanisms moved beneath their feet. All the arms aside from the ones holding her ankles retracted below, sliding into the dark hole that should be covered by the launch platform.
“Finally! Now get these two to let me go and we’ll forget all about this!” Purah said, eager to be free of the machine’s clutches.
“Hmm? I don’t recall saying that my experiment was over with yet.” He held the Pad up to the console one last time and the four arms returned, snaking out of the tower’s bottom and reaching towards Purah once again, but now…
“What is all of that?!?” The arms had all changed, each donning new appendages rather than the standard claws that she’d seen on every other piece of old Sheikah tech. One seemed to have some sort of feathers in place of its former fingers, and another had replaced its fingers with some sort of round brushes that spun threateningly. The third still had claws, but now they were spindly, pointed things, making Purah think madly of spider legs. Finally, the fourth arm lacked appendages all together, instead donning some sort of bulbous apparatus.
“Oh, they’re just a few upgrades I thought of,” Robbie chuckled. The spindly clawed arm hovered near her underarms, clicking its sharp fingers together almost hungrily as it inched closer to her sensitive hollows. Nearby, the feathery one brushed its fingers gently across her belly and Purah’s whole body shuddered. Worse, the one with the strange spinning brushes had disappeared from sight altogether, but she heard them whirling and buzzing and the sound came from much too close to her helpless feet for comfort.
“Robbie,” Purah said, her red eyes flashing and her hair, long freed from its ties, whipped around as she shook her head, “don’t do it. I’m serious.” He looked at her, seemingly considering her words for a moment, then wordlessly held the Pad up to the console again and all three of the arms attacked. “No!” Purah managed to squeal before they fell on her, but even that short word was lost in the gale of laughter that followed. The spindly arm raked mercilessly at one underarm, then the other, and it seemed to be trying to hook one of its claws beneath the wrapping over her breasts in an attempt to free them while the feathery one darted back and forth between her belly and her thighs, its touch less severe but far more insidious as each little stroke brought helpless squeaks from her lips. Worst of all was the arm now tipped with the strange brushes. Purah’s feet had been ignored in the first ticklish onslaught, but now the arm meticulously explored both arches and the underside of each toe, the soft bristles spinning relentlessly as every spot it touched sent a new jolt of ticklish agony ripping through her.
Robbie watched, almost squirming with excitement as his superior for the last hundred some odd years broke further and further down, her laughter reaching what seemed like an impossible volume as the guardian arms, oblivious to her feelings on the matter, kept working Purah’s body with cold, mechanical efficiency. Every bit of exposed flesh was tested and teased, the Purah Pad in Robbie’s hand flashing every few seconds as the map of her body’s sensitivity updated with a new discovery.
“Please,” she managed to force the word through her trembling lips, the lone word uncharacteristically meek sounding mixed into the gales of helpless laughter, and it was lost entirely a moment later when the spindly fingered arm finally succeeded in loosening the linen wrap around her chest and it fell away, baring her breasts.
“Purah, do you perchance like this? Your nipples are erect.” She glared at him, or tried to, but the relentless attention to her body made it impossible to focus on anything for more than a second. Then the spindly hand sprung into action again, its sharp fingertips stroking the puffed put, hyper-sensitive nub of one nipple with one appendage while the others gently cupped her breast and glided the other claws along its underside. It tickled horribly, almost enough to drown out the sensations from the other arms, but worse was that Purah found that she was enjoying it, moans and gasps working their way in between her giggles.
“N-no,” she lied, her face flushing a brighter red than Robbie could remember seeing in the last century.
“Hmmm. Let’s try this then.” Robbie tapped the Pad and the fourth arm, the one with the strange bulb, sprung to life, weaving between the others until it hovered in between Purah’s legs.
“Wh-what does that one do?” Purah asked, then as if in answer it buzzed to life, vibrating hard enough that its hum was audible over the other sounds of machinery around her. “Robbie, no.”
“What was that? I didn’t quite hear you. Must be old age,” he quipped as the bulbous attachment descended. The claws holding Purah by her ankles spread apart, opening her legs for the new device, and it settled easily right onto her crotch, buzzing and vibrating even harder once it found its mark.
“No! No, please!” Purah wailed, arching her back and thrashing as waves of nearly unbearable pleasure intermingled with the tickling, shocking and consuming every nerve in her body. She cackled, moaned, twisted from side to side, but no matter how she tried to squirm away the arms followed, all four intent on their tasks. Then the spindly arm slid upwards and started tracing her hip bones while the brushes pressed into the undersides of the toes of her left foot, managing to get its bristles spinning against each sensitive pad, and the feathered hand moved down, its plumed fingers teasing over her breasts and collarbone all while the vibrating bulb pushed against her, buzzing into her nether regions until it found just the right spot that its vibrations fell almost entirely on her helpless clitoris.
Purah arched her back and came hard, her laughter falling into a silent, whispery sound as first one, then another, and finally a third orgasm rocked her body. The guardian arms pulled back a little, almost like they were watching to see what was happening to her, and her eyes rolled back into her head as she hung there, a sweaty, trembling, giggling mess. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, hammering through her skull as her heart pumped triple time. As she hung she fought unconsciousness, struggling against a daze that overtook her, a combination of lightheadedness from hanging upside down and overstimulation. Finally, her nerves still crackling, Purah whimpered, a small, broken sound, and began to softly cry.
“Hmm, interesting,” Robbie mumbled, studying the readout on the Purah Pad. “According to this, right now you would be even more ticklish than before if I reactivated the program.”
Purah swooned, trying to say something, but words seemed difficult things, and she couldn’t get them out, instead blurting a sort of jumbled nonsense.
“I didn’t quite catch that. Could you try again?”
Slowly, her mouth working to slick her tongue with spit so the thing would actually move instead of just sticking to the roof of her mouth, Purah uttered, “F-fuck… y-y-you…”
Robbie looked at her, the lenses of his goggles clicking as they refocused, then he made a sound in his throat, a loud harumph, and tapped the Purah Pad. More machinery hummed beneath his feet, and Purah looked into the hole she dangled above and screamed when she saw it writhing with at least a dozen more guardian arms, each donning claws, feathers, or the horrible little spinning brushes. They seemed to reach towards her hungrily.
“You can’t!” Purah sputtered, “I’ll go mad!” Unconcerned, Robbie tapped the Pad again and the arms holding Purah’s ankles let go, dropping her head first into the hole. Within seconds, the whole Skytower rebounded with the whir and hum of machinery overlaid with booming, cackling laughter. One more tap of the Purah Pad and the launch platform hitched and came to life, sliding back to its original place and covering the whole, leaving Purah trapped in the darkness with the countless tickling arms.
“I’ll just leave you down there for a bit of self reflection,” Robbie said. “A researcher using such foul language! I’m disappointed!” he added, stamping his foot on the floorboards so Purah might hear him over her torment.
______
“You said the strange sounds were coming from here?” Flaxel asked, sliding her sword from its sheathe. The other captains from the monster control squad were out on patrol, so she was handling the security of Lookout Landing while her own group got some rest.
“Yeah, it’s coming from under here,” Karson nodded, pointing to the base of the Skyview Tower. “I heard that Lady Purah and Robbie were working on it yesterday so I thought I would come by to make sure the outer structure was still okay and that’s when I heard it! It has to be some sort of demon!”
“Here? In the Landing?” Flaxel shook her head. Hyrule might be slowly getting overrun with monsters, but Lookout Landing should be safe enough, even in the shadow of Hyrule Castle. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but let’s go ahead and take a look. You can open the panel that goes underneath the Skytower proper?” Karson nodded, pumping a fist, then led her to a section of wall that was off-color from the rest.
“It’s here,” he whispered, pointing. Flaxel stepped past him and put her ear to the board. Whatever was under there, it sounded terrifying. Something was making a sound like a bokoblin being boiled alive, gibbering and squealing loud enough that anyone within a few paces of the tower would be able to easily hear it.
“Right, open it up and then get out of the way,” Flaxel told him. He pushed the panel from the bottom and it creaked, then the top swung forward and Karson caught it and lifted it away, revealing a passage large enough for someone to stoop and crawl into. Flaxel took a deep breath, then crouched and made her way beneath the tower. The space was tight and she bumped her head more than once, and the sounds were worse the closer she got.
Then she rounded a corner and saw it. Purah squirmed weakly in the grasp of what seemed to be countless mechanical arms, many of them twining around her, fully naked while many of them, all tipped with bizarre looking apparatuses, relentlessly explored her body. Tears and drool ran down her face, puddling below along with… well, judging by the smell and the two vibrating things that buzzed both in front and behind Purah’s crotch, the rest of the puddle didn’t seem to be urine. Flaxel watched a moment, entranced, realizing that while squeals and moans were mixed in, the majority of the sounds coming from Purah were weak, tortured giggles, and noticed that most of the strange devices were focusing on spots like her feet and ribs.
“Lady Purah,” she whispered, “what happened?” Purah looked up at her, her red eyes dazed and clouded, and chuckled. “I’ll see if I can get you away from them.” There wasn’t much room, but Flaxel managed to swing her sword at the nearest arm, and when the blade struck it the rest froze. Good, maybe this will work!
Then, on the second strike, the blade shattered. Everything was silent for a moment, the air beneath the Skytower heavy, then Purah wailed as the machines began their torment anew. Some did, anyway. Others broke away and reached towards Flaxel, who backed away, flailing at them with the useless hilt of her weapon.
“Damned decayed blades!” she spat, then her foot caught something as she backed up and she fell backwards. The guardian arms shot forward, grabbing her before she hit the ground and dragging her towards the laughing Purah. “K-Karson! KARSON! Help! Go get Josha and Robbie!” Flaxel screamed, then her boots slid off and her screams became bubbling laughter, twisting and meshing with Purah’s.
