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[ff,m - feet tickling, worship, upper body tickling, ribs, hips, minor explicit content], [f,f - upper body tickling, hips, belly, extremely minor explicit content]
Almost three weeks since my last story? A new personal best! I'm moving up in the world :stickout. I've decided to divide this chapter into two parts because I have a feeling that the second part will be a bit longer, maybe twice the size of the first part (which isn't saying much, because the first part is roughly three thousand or so words), and I felt that it would be easier to read in general. That said, it was a pleasure to write and I hope it is a pleasure to read! Enjoy!
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“Prrr... That was delicious…”
Lani blinked the tears out of her eyes, drawing panting breaths that were shrouded in a blanket of weary giggles. Struggling, she lifted her head and saw that the werecat atop Aidan was still relentlessly tickling her partner. His wild laughter would have been enjoyable to her were it not for the fact that just a few seconds ago she wouldn’t have heard it over the deafening noise of her own screaming mirth. His bare soles twitched and danced a few feet away, the rest of him was obscured by the mamono that clung to his torso, licking his ribs and squeezing the sides of his abdomen with her paws.
“Come try this one! He’s still fighting!”
“Nyaww! That’s so cute!”
Lani felt the weight lift form her lower back and let her head slump. She tried her arms but they were still bound tightly. She cursed to herself; of course accepting an assignment so close to deeper woods was a bad move, but she never thought they would be ambushed by two werecats. Worst yet, she had no idea that they would figure out to use the surrounding, bendy branches as makeshift ropes.
“OHOHOHOHO GAHAHAHADS GEHEHEHET OFF HAHAHAHAHAHA! STAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHA!”
Aidan’s screamed with peals of laughter, even louder than before. Lani lifted her head again and saw that the mamono sitting on Aidan’s lap had cuddled closer to him to let her friend sit on his legs. That werecat was stooped over his feet, her mouth firmly clamped over the toes of his left foot and her paws raking her nails all over the soft, pink flesh of his soles.
“Mmm, they’re not bad, but not as good hers. I could smell her feet a mile away!”
Despite what preference the werecat’s words implied, she kept her mouth firmly over Aidan’s toes, letting her tongue lavishly glide over each madly struggling digit, her eyes shut and her face an expression of bliss. The foot held by her mouth allowed her the easiest variety of tickling, with his toes unable to clench and sole held taut and only able to twitch madly under the long stroking scratches of her paw. Aidan’s free foot still did him no good. His foot twisted and scrunched its toes every way it could, but the werecat’s other paw stayed firmly on it, digging underneath his toes and scraping all over the smooth depths of his arches. Aidan bucked and twisted against the unbearable sensations; his hair matted to his forehead and obscured his vision. The mamono on his lap was bad enough, but with a second assaulting the sensitive soles of his feet, he didn’t know how much more he could take. Their agonizing touch invaded him on two fronts and somehow worked together to make each target more responsive. That he couldn’t see only made his frenzied laughter all the louder. And the bitches were enjoying it! He was aware of their giggles as their finger pads and nails were doing all that they could to tickle him out of his sanity.
“Nya! I think he’s starting to like it!”
“NAHAHAHAHAHAHO PLEHEHEHEASE!”
The werecat sitting on his lap giggled to herself when his laughter became even more desperate. She squeezed herself closer yet to him, pinching the sides of his stomach and ribs to great effect. Every second was humiliating agony, now that another problem had presented itself. Aidan became all too aware of how closely the mamono was sitting, hugging herself tightly to his lap as she pinched the delectable sections above his hips. She was aware of it as well. She looked up into his face as she tickled even harder, grinding herself down on his growing erection with a broad grin.
“Aww, I think someone likes hugging,” she purred and bit the edge of her lip in a coy, devilish smile. The werecat brought her cute, happily purring face to his neck and began to nibble, all without removing her paws from where they so excruciatingly wreaked ticklish havoc. Tears streamed down his face. He no longer had the strength or sense of mind to plead.
“Lani!” he managed to gasp through a breathier torrent of laughs.
“Lani...”
“Lani?”
She blinked and looked around. Where was the forest? The fresh sight of her office greeted her vision. Ahead of her desk, Aidan was sitting in front of her, on a plain wooden chair that was all that they could afford for the office.
“Hm? Yes?” was all she said before her face flushed with warmth and embarrassment. She was daydreaming!
“How’s the first draft look?”
Lani’s eyes fell upon her desk where the two pages of information on the werecat were resting. Had she finished reading them before she wandered off into her daze? She picked them up and quickly skimmed over them. Her blush deepened when she realized at what part her mind was overcome by the flashback.
“It looks good. Sorry, I’m still a little overwhelmed.”
She looked up at Aidan’s bright smile. The way it lit his face immediately let her grow easier.
“I’ll go grab us something from the pub.”
“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think we need a break from bar food today.”
“I’ll see what else I can find then.” He got up and stooped over the desk to give her a warm kiss on the cheek before heading out. She sat back in her chair as she watched him go and kicked her feet up on the desk when he was finally gone. Her new boots were every bit as comfortable, durable, and stylish as her last pair, but she couldn’t help but scowl as she studied them. They simply didn’t have that same history that the old pair did.
Lani looked over her office—just a week ago she would still be sitting in someone else’s, being told what to do and how to do it. This helped ease her scowl into a smile. After their night of blasphemous merriment at the expense of the guild, they resigned the next morning, with Lani leaving a few choice words for their former employer. The day that followed was one filled with paperwork and tallying. With their rooms at the Cartographer’s Guild gone, they had to find comfortable lodgings and a place of business, preferably all in one building—something roomy and with enough doors to separate their private life from their new professional one. What they found was a two-story dwelling on the outskirts of the business district; cozy enough for their needs at home in the second floor and with enough room below to conduct meetings and set a print multiplier station when they were ready to publish their findings. Because the building was purchased for commercial purposes, it cost them a little bit more than they had originally intended to spend, but Lani thought it was a small price to pay to begin their venture. The office was full of options, the residential area came pre-furnished, and really she was just glad to be alone with Aidan.
The last thing on both of their minds was that they would have trouble living together. Years of travelling and sharing the earth as a common bed deepened their friendship. They learned and adapted to each other’s personal quirks and she honestly found that it was so much more pleasant now that she could freely express herself to him. As much as she personally enjoyed thrills, this was one that she was glad to do without.
Her thoughts turned to Aidan’s return with provisions when she heard the muffled sound of a door opening. Another came after, louder this time, it was the room before hers. Finally the door to her office opened, just in time for Lani to put her feet down, and in barged two young women, one with blonde hair in a short bob cut and another with chestnut hair that fell in tight ringlets down to her shoulders.
“I told you this was the place!” the blonde one erupted.
“But this is where the old showroom used to be,” her companion returned.
“Yeah, like, forever ago maybe.”
“Not that long ago.”
“Can I help you?” Lani asked and straightened herself.
“Maybe,” the blonde one replied, “are you that mamono inquiry place?”
Lani knew she should have hired a receptionist first, but the past few days flew so quickly that she had hardly given any thought to what kind of atmosphere she wanted to create. Hell, she barely felt professional in her own sparse office.
“The Mamono Information Station,” Lani narrowed her eyes. “Yes.”
Now that she thought about it, the name did sort of leave her tongue in a funny way. When Aidan returned she would have to brainstorm with him again; hopefully he wouldn’t tease her—it was her idea to go with that name.
“Good! We want to help!”
“That’s good to hear. Please, sit down. Uh... I’m sorry that we don’t have another chair.”
“That’s okay,” the chestnut-tressed woman smiled politely. She would have said more about understanding that the place looked like it was opened on short notice and that there weren’t that many decorative options to work with to begin with, but something about the other woman’s sharp gaze frightened her. She was beautiful, but the scowl of her mouth kept her from appearing amicable, not to mention her position behind the desk added some professional distance.
“I’m Reena! The quiet one is Jezzine! We’re local merchants!”
Of course they were—Lani could tell that they had a lucrative upbringing from the richness of their colourful dresses and belted ochre aprons. The question now was how to proceed with the interview. She had some idea based on how Silas had conducted her questionnaire when she first joined the Cartographer’s Guild, but she knew that a certain degree of improvisation would be required now.
“Merchants in Dewdale? Why stop by? I imagine with how well the city’s doing, the last thing on your mind would be money.”
“The first thing on my mind is money,” Reena shouted back, as if personally offended, and slammed her fists on the desk. Lani fought the instinct to jump, but she liked the fire in the young woman’s eyes; there was something promising about it. “Our family’s the rich ones! We’re tired of riding their fucking coattails! We wanna branch out into our own enterprises!”
“Are you two sisters?”
“Yes!”
“No,” Jezzine spoke this time and Reena looked at her with a pouty look of dramatic distress. “Her father married my mother for a joint business arrangement; we’re stepsisters.”
“But we’ve known each other for, like, our entire lives.”
“Yup. I love her and everything, but I don’t think I can handle being actually related.”
“That was very mean, Jezz!”
“Alright,” Lani interrupted. “Why start here then?”
The two young women looked at each other.
“It’s new! Information’s always worth good coin—and we know that what you’re doing will totally work.”
Lani had to bite.
“How do you know that?”
“Because everything you put up in the ad, we already knew,” Reena began to explain. “We know that mamono are ticklish and it’s the only thing that can stop them—but for some reason nobody else tries it! Maybe because they’re too tired before they can do anything? Too scared? A lot of the time it’s, like, a situational problem: where the victim’s tickled out of their wits before they can even do anything, but then the other half is with people running away and being chased down. It’s really hard to outrun a mamono, so why not fight?”
“Out of every mamono encounter we’ve ever had, we make it out half the time,” Jezzine said.
“So you two are experienced.”
“Not really,” Reena admitted. “We only know what you know. But we really like that you’re trying to expand that and help others with it!”
Lani hesitated. She couldn’t believe what she was going to ask next.
“What about as ticklers?”
“Oh we have loads of experience! Watch!”
Without further warning, Reena turned to her friend and leapt on her from her chair, knocking Jezzine to the ground and climbing on top of her while she flailed and squeaked in protest.
“Aiieeeeeeehehehe!! Rehehehenahahaha!”
“You can stop now,” Lani said as she felt the slightest tinges of red warm her cheeks.
“It’s okay!” Reena called back, “she likes it!”
“I dohohohohoho nahahahahat!” Jezzine cried. Reena turned back to her suffering friend with a gleeful smile and let her fingers respond in turn. They scrambled underneath her shirt and found the warm flesh underneath, pinching and squeezing the soft bases of her hips and belly while Jezzine slapped helplessly at them. The look of pleasure on Reena’s face as she leaned in closer to the flurry of hair and shrieking laughter beneath her was a little bit alarming—almost mamono-like in and of itself.
Lani jumped when the door to her office suddenly opened and Aidan stepped in. Reena stopped tickling immediately and looked up; Jezzine lifted a trembling hand to brush the hair from her eyes so she could see. His eyes swept over the room, from Lani’s blushing face to the two women on top of each other on the floor, the one beneath the blond still panting, her breasts heaving with effort. Aidan’s eyes widened. He could almost see the edge of her areolae from how displaced her breasts had become in the struggle. But immediately he shot his gaze back up to Lani, who was now narrowing her eyes at him. Shit! Had she seen him?
“I uhh,” he swallowed hard as his eyes darted around the room. His thoughts raced for a way to get out of the situation, and then he lifted the reed basket he was holding. “I brought dumplings.”
A few moments and clothing adjustments later, Aidan had brought down two more chairs from upstairs and the four were sitting around the desk.
“Wow. This is really well done,” Reena commented as she turned over the first draft on the werecat. “I can just imagine a bunch of these, all in a little book. We definitely could have used this info, like, a few weeks ago.”
“What happened a few weeks ago?” Lani asked after she swallowed her dumpling.
“We were in the nearby forest and trying to figure out a shortcut we saw on a map,”
“It wasn’t a shortcut... you’re terrible at reading maps,” Jezzine said with a frown, “and you didn’t listen to me when I told you we’d get lost.”
Reena frustratingly puffed her cheeks at her friend.
“We did get lost,” she grumbled. “And it was getting dark so we had to camp out for the night. Then woosh! Like, two cat things jump us out of nowhere and start licking our feet! I thought I was gonna die laughing!”
Jezzine said nothing and tried to hide the crimson flush that crept up her face behind another dumpling.
“And, like, it was only just getting dark but I could still see them, and the one that was on my feet had such stupid clothes. She was wearing these old shorts and a bright gr...” Reena trailed off and looked up at the wall behind Lani. Hanging by a nail was the same lime-green cloth that Lani had used to wrap her bare foot, the very same cloth worn by the mamono that had attacked her and Reena.
“Oh my gods!” her blonde hair bobbed as she jumped excitedly in her seat. “You got her!”
“Just a few days ago. It’s what gave us the idea to start,” Lani said, not without a touch of pride as she remembered her satisfaction in doling out ticklish vengeance on the werecat. She looked up at Aidan and smiled. “And I did have help.”
“So you guys are serious.”
“Very,” Aidan said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have set this up.”
The two young women looked at each other and turned back to Lani.
“Sign us up then!” Reena exclaimed. “We want to get started as soon as we can.”
“It’ll be dangerous. I can’t guarantee your safety,” Lani warned. “Are you sure you want to join?”
“Yes! We wanna help!”
Lani smiled and cautiously collected her breath. She couldn’t believe it. They had their start; everything was going exactly as it was supposed to.
“Alright,” Lani opened her desk and pulled out a few pieces of parchment. Aidan pushed away the dumplings on their side to make room for the papers.
“There’s a few things you need to look at, these documents are your terms. We’re going to pay you per necessary expedition and we reserve the right to deem the expeditions necessary. You can do your own little hunts yourself if you want to clarify extra stuff, but we’ll be paying you per piece of additional information then, not per expedition.”
Reena and Jezzine both nodded as Lani explained. They had already begun to pour over the parchments. A lifetime of dealing with complicated trade agreements had rendered the legislative jargon of the documents an easy read.
“All provisions and travel necessities will be paid for by us. You’ll receive about two weeks worth, but if you’ll be going for a longer time, we’ll pay for that too. All calculations are based on average reports,” Aidan said. He finished jotting down a few things on an empty parchment and handed it to them. It was an outline of the categories in the werecat’s first draft.
“This is the format for you to keep in mind. It doesn’t have to look like what I did in the werecat entry, but I do want it to be organized. You can have extra paper to jot down whatever notes you want to add.”
“And don’t make anything up.” Lani looked at them crossly. “Our information must be absolutely accurate and reliable. People’s futures are at risk.”
The two nodded.
“Also, try to bring back something from the mamono’s that we can display.” She motioned to the cloth hanging behind her. “I want to have a trophy wall; they’ll be personal achievements for others to look at.”
“Ohhh! I like that idea!” Reena chirped. “You should put names under the trophies! Like who brought it back!”
“Gods... you’re really going to pay us this much?” Jezzine looked up from the parchments.
Lani tilted her head at the look of amazement on Jezzine’s face.
“Is it too little?”
“N-no! The opposite!”
“We figured that there’s a lot of wiggle room for what makes a finished product,” Aidan said. “This’ll keep you interested and, well, there’s a danger fee. Not every mamono’s like the werecat. You could be stolen for tickling and never heard from again and we want to cover that.”
The three didn’t notice when Jezzine bit her lower lip and flushed pink at the thought.
“We’ll get your travelling provisions and extras in order now, the actual commission will be given when you return with what information you’ve gathered,” said Lani.
“I can’t believe you have this kind of money,” Jezzine marvelled.
“Well, we squirreled away a lot when we still had work with the Cartographer’s Guild,” Lani leaned back in her seat. She had always been shrewd with money, and that Aidan was as well only made her all the more certain that they would work well together.
“Are you still sure about this?” she asked.
“Of course!” Reena beamed broadly. “More than ever now! We’ll put all the money away and have our own venture set up in no time!”
“Great! Sign on all the dotted lines. Here are the papers for you, Jezzine.” Aidan and Lani looked at each other with slightly silly smiles. Their first day of advertising and they already had found willing participants. It was certainly something to be proud of.
“There,” Reena said with a grin, “all done!”
Jezzine handed her papers to Aidan after Reena. Lani looked over his shoulder while he double checked the documents and Reena sat twiddling her thumbs.
“What now?” she finally asked.
Lani and Aidan looked at each other. Truth be told, they had no idea how to proceed. They had their doubts that they would have progressed so far so quickly.
“We commission for you an assignment,” Lani finally said after some thought. “But we haven’t thought about what mamono to do next. Do you have any suggestions?”
Jezzine’s eyes widened and she turned to Reena, whose face was already overtaken by an enormous, impish grin.
“I may have one...”
Almost three weeks since my last story? A new personal best! I'm moving up in the world :stickout. I've decided to divide this chapter into two parts because I have a feeling that the second part will be a bit longer, maybe twice the size of the first part (which isn't saying much, because the first part is roughly three thousand or so words), and I felt that it would be easier to read in general. That said, it was a pleasure to write and I hope it is a pleasure to read! Enjoy!
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“Prrr... That was delicious…”
Lani blinked the tears out of her eyes, drawing panting breaths that were shrouded in a blanket of weary giggles. Struggling, she lifted her head and saw that the werecat atop Aidan was still relentlessly tickling her partner. His wild laughter would have been enjoyable to her were it not for the fact that just a few seconds ago she wouldn’t have heard it over the deafening noise of her own screaming mirth. His bare soles twitched and danced a few feet away, the rest of him was obscured by the mamono that clung to his torso, licking his ribs and squeezing the sides of his abdomen with her paws.
“Come try this one! He’s still fighting!”
“Nyaww! That’s so cute!”
Lani felt the weight lift form her lower back and let her head slump. She tried her arms but they were still bound tightly. She cursed to herself; of course accepting an assignment so close to deeper woods was a bad move, but she never thought they would be ambushed by two werecats. Worst yet, she had no idea that they would figure out to use the surrounding, bendy branches as makeshift ropes.
“OHOHOHOHO GAHAHAHADS GEHEHEHET OFF HAHAHAHAHAHA! STAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHA!”
Aidan’s screamed with peals of laughter, even louder than before. Lani lifted her head again and saw that the mamono sitting on Aidan’s lap had cuddled closer to him to let her friend sit on his legs. That werecat was stooped over his feet, her mouth firmly clamped over the toes of his left foot and her paws raking her nails all over the soft, pink flesh of his soles.
“Mmm, they’re not bad, but not as good hers. I could smell her feet a mile away!”
Despite what preference the werecat’s words implied, she kept her mouth firmly over Aidan’s toes, letting her tongue lavishly glide over each madly struggling digit, her eyes shut and her face an expression of bliss. The foot held by her mouth allowed her the easiest variety of tickling, with his toes unable to clench and sole held taut and only able to twitch madly under the long stroking scratches of her paw. Aidan’s free foot still did him no good. His foot twisted and scrunched its toes every way it could, but the werecat’s other paw stayed firmly on it, digging underneath his toes and scraping all over the smooth depths of his arches. Aidan bucked and twisted against the unbearable sensations; his hair matted to his forehead and obscured his vision. The mamono on his lap was bad enough, but with a second assaulting the sensitive soles of his feet, he didn’t know how much more he could take. Their agonizing touch invaded him on two fronts and somehow worked together to make each target more responsive. That he couldn’t see only made his frenzied laughter all the louder. And the bitches were enjoying it! He was aware of their giggles as their finger pads and nails were doing all that they could to tickle him out of his sanity.
“Nya! I think he’s starting to like it!”
“NAHAHAHAHAHAHO PLEHEHEHEASE!”
The werecat sitting on his lap giggled to herself when his laughter became even more desperate. She squeezed herself closer yet to him, pinching the sides of his stomach and ribs to great effect. Every second was humiliating agony, now that another problem had presented itself. Aidan became all too aware of how closely the mamono was sitting, hugging herself tightly to his lap as she pinched the delectable sections above his hips. She was aware of it as well. She looked up into his face as she tickled even harder, grinding herself down on his growing erection with a broad grin.
“Aww, I think someone likes hugging,” she purred and bit the edge of her lip in a coy, devilish smile. The werecat brought her cute, happily purring face to his neck and began to nibble, all without removing her paws from where they so excruciatingly wreaked ticklish havoc. Tears streamed down his face. He no longer had the strength or sense of mind to plead.
“Lani!” he managed to gasp through a breathier torrent of laughs.
“Lani...”
“Lani?”
She blinked and looked around. Where was the forest? The fresh sight of her office greeted her vision. Ahead of her desk, Aidan was sitting in front of her, on a plain wooden chair that was all that they could afford for the office.
“Hm? Yes?” was all she said before her face flushed with warmth and embarrassment. She was daydreaming!
“How’s the first draft look?”
Lani’s eyes fell upon her desk where the two pages of information on the werecat were resting. Had she finished reading them before she wandered off into her daze? She picked them up and quickly skimmed over them. Her blush deepened when she realized at what part her mind was overcome by the flashback.
“It looks good. Sorry, I’m still a little overwhelmed.”
She looked up at Aidan’s bright smile. The way it lit his face immediately let her grow easier.
“I’ll go grab us something from the pub.”
“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think we need a break from bar food today.”
“I’ll see what else I can find then.” He got up and stooped over the desk to give her a warm kiss on the cheek before heading out. She sat back in her chair as she watched him go and kicked her feet up on the desk when he was finally gone. Her new boots were every bit as comfortable, durable, and stylish as her last pair, but she couldn’t help but scowl as she studied them. They simply didn’t have that same history that the old pair did.
Lani looked over her office—just a week ago she would still be sitting in someone else’s, being told what to do and how to do it. This helped ease her scowl into a smile. After their night of blasphemous merriment at the expense of the guild, they resigned the next morning, with Lani leaving a few choice words for their former employer. The day that followed was one filled with paperwork and tallying. With their rooms at the Cartographer’s Guild gone, they had to find comfortable lodgings and a place of business, preferably all in one building—something roomy and with enough doors to separate their private life from their new professional one. What they found was a two-story dwelling on the outskirts of the business district; cozy enough for their needs at home in the second floor and with enough room below to conduct meetings and set a print multiplier station when they were ready to publish their findings. Because the building was purchased for commercial purposes, it cost them a little bit more than they had originally intended to spend, but Lani thought it was a small price to pay to begin their venture. The office was full of options, the residential area came pre-furnished, and really she was just glad to be alone with Aidan.
The last thing on both of their minds was that they would have trouble living together. Years of travelling and sharing the earth as a common bed deepened their friendship. They learned and adapted to each other’s personal quirks and she honestly found that it was so much more pleasant now that she could freely express herself to him. As much as she personally enjoyed thrills, this was one that she was glad to do without.
Her thoughts turned to Aidan’s return with provisions when she heard the muffled sound of a door opening. Another came after, louder this time, it was the room before hers. Finally the door to her office opened, just in time for Lani to put her feet down, and in barged two young women, one with blonde hair in a short bob cut and another with chestnut hair that fell in tight ringlets down to her shoulders.
“I told you this was the place!” the blonde one erupted.
“But this is where the old showroom used to be,” her companion returned.
“Yeah, like, forever ago maybe.”
“Not that long ago.”
“Can I help you?” Lani asked and straightened herself.
“Maybe,” the blonde one replied, “are you that mamono inquiry place?”
Lani knew she should have hired a receptionist first, but the past few days flew so quickly that she had hardly given any thought to what kind of atmosphere she wanted to create. Hell, she barely felt professional in her own sparse office.
“The Mamono Information Station,” Lani narrowed her eyes. “Yes.”
Now that she thought about it, the name did sort of leave her tongue in a funny way. When Aidan returned she would have to brainstorm with him again; hopefully he wouldn’t tease her—it was her idea to go with that name.
“Good! We want to help!”
“That’s good to hear. Please, sit down. Uh... I’m sorry that we don’t have another chair.”
“That’s okay,” the chestnut-tressed woman smiled politely. She would have said more about understanding that the place looked like it was opened on short notice and that there weren’t that many decorative options to work with to begin with, but something about the other woman’s sharp gaze frightened her. She was beautiful, but the scowl of her mouth kept her from appearing amicable, not to mention her position behind the desk added some professional distance.
“I’m Reena! The quiet one is Jezzine! We’re local merchants!”
Of course they were—Lani could tell that they had a lucrative upbringing from the richness of their colourful dresses and belted ochre aprons. The question now was how to proceed with the interview. She had some idea based on how Silas had conducted her questionnaire when she first joined the Cartographer’s Guild, but she knew that a certain degree of improvisation would be required now.
“Merchants in Dewdale? Why stop by? I imagine with how well the city’s doing, the last thing on your mind would be money.”
“The first thing on my mind is money,” Reena shouted back, as if personally offended, and slammed her fists on the desk. Lani fought the instinct to jump, but she liked the fire in the young woman’s eyes; there was something promising about it. “Our family’s the rich ones! We’re tired of riding their fucking coattails! We wanna branch out into our own enterprises!”
“Are you two sisters?”
“Yes!”
“No,” Jezzine spoke this time and Reena looked at her with a pouty look of dramatic distress. “Her father married my mother for a joint business arrangement; we’re stepsisters.”
“But we’ve known each other for, like, our entire lives.”
“Yup. I love her and everything, but I don’t think I can handle being actually related.”
“That was very mean, Jezz!”
“Alright,” Lani interrupted. “Why start here then?”
The two young women looked at each other.
“It’s new! Information’s always worth good coin—and we know that what you’re doing will totally work.”
Lani had to bite.
“How do you know that?”
“Because everything you put up in the ad, we already knew,” Reena began to explain. “We know that mamono are ticklish and it’s the only thing that can stop them—but for some reason nobody else tries it! Maybe because they’re too tired before they can do anything? Too scared? A lot of the time it’s, like, a situational problem: where the victim’s tickled out of their wits before they can even do anything, but then the other half is with people running away and being chased down. It’s really hard to outrun a mamono, so why not fight?”
“Out of every mamono encounter we’ve ever had, we make it out half the time,” Jezzine said.
“So you two are experienced.”
“Not really,” Reena admitted. “We only know what you know. But we really like that you’re trying to expand that and help others with it!”
Lani hesitated. She couldn’t believe what she was going to ask next.
“What about as ticklers?”
“Oh we have loads of experience! Watch!”
Without further warning, Reena turned to her friend and leapt on her from her chair, knocking Jezzine to the ground and climbing on top of her while she flailed and squeaked in protest.
“Aiieeeeeeehehehe!! Rehehehenahahaha!”
“You can stop now,” Lani said as she felt the slightest tinges of red warm her cheeks.
“It’s okay!” Reena called back, “she likes it!”
“I dohohohohoho nahahahahat!” Jezzine cried. Reena turned back to her suffering friend with a gleeful smile and let her fingers respond in turn. They scrambled underneath her shirt and found the warm flesh underneath, pinching and squeezing the soft bases of her hips and belly while Jezzine slapped helplessly at them. The look of pleasure on Reena’s face as she leaned in closer to the flurry of hair and shrieking laughter beneath her was a little bit alarming—almost mamono-like in and of itself.
Lani jumped when the door to her office suddenly opened and Aidan stepped in. Reena stopped tickling immediately and looked up; Jezzine lifted a trembling hand to brush the hair from her eyes so she could see. His eyes swept over the room, from Lani’s blushing face to the two women on top of each other on the floor, the one beneath the blond still panting, her breasts heaving with effort. Aidan’s eyes widened. He could almost see the edge of her areolae from how displaced her breasts had become in the struggle. But immediately he shot his gaze back up to Lani, who was now narrowing her eyes at him. Shit! Had she seen him?
“I uhh,” he swallowed hard as his eyes darted around the room. His thoughts raced for a way to get out of the situation, and then he lifted the reed basket he was holding. “I brought dumplings.”
A few moments and clothing adjustments later, Aidan had brought down two more chairs from upstairs and the four were sitting around the desk.
“Wow. This is really well done,” Reena commented as she turned over the first draft on the werecat. “I can just imagine a bunch of these, all in a little book. We definitely could have used this info, like, a few weeks ago.”
“What happened a few weeks ago?” Lani asked after she swallowed her dumpling.
“We were in the nearby forest and trying to figure out a shortcut we saw on a map,”
“It wasn’t a shortcut... you’re terrible at reading maps,” Jezzine said with a frown, “and you didn’t listen to me when I told you we’d get lost.”
Reena frustratingly puffed her cheeks at her friend.
“We did get lost,” she grumbled. “And it was getting dark so we had to camp out for the night. Then woosh! Like, two cat things jump us out of nowhere and start licking our feet! I thought I was gonna die laughing!”
Jezzine said nothing and tried to hide the crimson flush that crept up her face behind another dumpling.
“And, like, it was only just getting dark but I could still see them, and the one that was on my feet had such stupid clothes. She was wearing these old shorts and a bright gr...” Reena trailed off and looked up at the wall behind Lani. Hanging by a nail was the same lime-green cloth that Lani had used to wrap her bare foot, the very same cloth worn by the mamono that had attacked her and Reena.
“Oh my gods!” her blonde hair bobbed as she jumped excitedly in her seat. “You got her!”
“Just a few days ago. It’s what gave us the idea to start,” Lani said, not without a touch of pride as she remembered her satisfaction in doling out ticklish vengeance on the werecat. She looked up at Aidan and smiled. “And I did have help.”
“So you guys are serious.”
“Very,” Aidan said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have set this up.”
The two young women looked at each other and turned back to Lani.
“Sign us up then!” Reena exclaimed. “We want to get started as soon as we can.”
“It’ll be dangerous. I can’t guarantee your safety,” Lani warned. “Are you sure you want to join?”
“Yes! We wanna help!”
Lani smiled and cautiously collected her breath. She couldn’t believe it. They had their start; everything was going exactly as it was supposed to.
“Alright,” Lani opened her desk and pulled out a few pieces of parchment. Aidan pushed away the dumplings on their side to make room for the papers.
“There’s a few things you need to look at, these documents are your terms. We’re going to pay you per necessary expedition and we reserve the right to deem the expeditions necessary. You can do your own little hunts yourself if you want to clarify extra stuff, but we’ll be paying you per piece of additional information then, not per expedition.”
Reena and Jezzine both nodded as Lani explained. They had already begun to pour over the parchments. A lifetime of dealing with complicated trade agreements had rendered the legislative jargon of the documents an easy read.
“All provisions and travel necessities will be paid for by us. You’ll receive about two weeks worth, but if you’ll be going for a longer time, we’ll pay for that too. All calculations are based on average reports,” Aidan said. He finished jotting down a few things on an empty parchment and handed it to them. It was an outline of the categories in the werecat’s first draft.
“This is the format for you to keep in mind. It doesn’t have to look like what I did in the werecat entry, but I do want it to be organized. You can have extra paper to jot down whatever notes you want to add.”
“And don’t make anything up.” Lani looked at them crossly. “Our information must be absolutely accurate and reliable. People’s futures are at risk.”
The two nodded.
“Also, try to bring back something from the mamono’s that we can display.” She motioned to the cloth hanging behind her. “I want to have a trophy wall; they’ll be personal achievements for others to look at.”
“Ohhh! I like that idea!” Reena chirped. “You should put names under the trophies! Like who brought it back!”
“Gods... you’re really going to pay us this much?” Jezzine looked up from the parchments.
Lani tilted her head at the look of amazement on Jezzine’s face.
“Is it too little?”
“N-no! The opposite!”
“We figured that there’s a lot of wiggle room for what makes a finished product,” Aidan said. “This’ll keep you interested and, well, there’s a danger fee. Not every mamono’s like the werecat. You could be stolen for tickling and never heard from again and we want to cover that.”
The three didn’t notice when Jezzine bit her lower lip and flushed pink at the thought.
“We’ll get your travelling provisions and extras in order now, the actual commission will be given when you return with what information you’ve gathered,” said Lani.
“I can’t believe you have this kind of money,” Jezzine marvelled.
“Well, we squirreled away a lot when we still had work with the Cartographer’s Guild,” Lani leaned back in her seat. She had always been shrewd with money, and that Aidan was as well only made her all the more certain that they would work well together.
“Are you still sure about this?” she asked.
“Of course!” Reena beamed broadly. “More than ever now! We’ll put all the money away and have our own venture set up in no time!”
“Great! Sign on all the dotted lines. Here are the papers for you, Jezzine.” Aidan and Lani looked at each other with slightly silly smiles. Their first day of advertising and they already had found willing participants. It was certainly something to be proud of.
“There,” Reena said with a grin, “all done!”
Jezzine handed her papers to Aidan after Reena. Lani looked over his shoulder while he double checked the documents and Reena sat twiddling her thumbs.
“What now?” she finally asked.
Lani and Aidan looked at each other. Truth be told, they had no idea how to proceed. They had their doubts that they would have progressed so far so quickly.
“We commission for you an assignment,” Lani finally said after some thought. “But we haven’t thought about what mamono to do next. Do you have any suggestions?”
Jezzine’s eyes widened and she turned to Reena, whose face was already overtaken by an enormous, impish grin.
“I may have one...”
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