The Piltover Punishment Act

by MrMoonchaser

Summary:

As Piltover's foremost technological and scientific pioneers, Jayce and Viktor are tasked with inventing a new form of ethical interrogation and crime deterrent.

But when Viktor takes control of the project, Jayce finds out the hard way just what his introverted partner has in mind...

Chapter 1: The Commission

A knock on the door. "Councillor Talis? A gift has arrived for you." The servant said, knees almost buckling beneath the weight of a gigantic hamper he gratefully placed on the work bench at Jayce's instruction. The gilded basket was erupting with flowers and bottles of wine, honey, sweets, chocolates, beautiful ornate drinking glasses and a very large bottle of a very expensive whiskey.

"Thank you, Koel. That will be all." Jayce dismissed the servant, then inspected the new gift. "Goodness. Kilnamore Whiskey. That stuff is expensive." He rummaged roughly through the basket. "Nice wines, some dates...hey, Vik, your favourite...chocolate!" The inventor grinned as he teasingly waved the tastefully wrapped bar.

Vikor hadn't even looked up from his work on the desk. "Another one. The fifth this week. You are a popular boy, aren't you, Mr Talis?" He blew the pencil dust off his papers and glanced up at his partner. "Who wants to kiss your heavenly rump today?"

Jayce rolled his eyes at his partner, pessimistic as always, then read the note attached to the hamper, daintily inscribed with immaculate, spidering cursive. "Madame Millicoat. From the university. She wants to send her warmest regards to the Man of Progress...and his wonderful partner in science, for their continued betterment of Piltover with their ingenious Hextech. And if we would ever want to join their research project at the university we would be more than welcome." Jayce grinned, eyes flashing with wan amusement. "How kind."

"You added that part about me." Viktor said, back to scribbling.

"What? No I didn't." Jayce lied, pretending to reread the card. "The Man of Progress and his amazing partner in science. It's for both of us."

"Funny, I could have sworn I was wonderful before, but now I'm amazing. What is Madame Millicoat's research project again? Magical shapeshifting ink?" He shot Jayce a dead-eyed look. "I don't care, Jayce. I like being out of the spotlight. That is a burden I am more than happy for you to carry."

Jayce tugged his collar awkwardly, caught in his lie, and let the conversation lapse. He was still basking in the way people treated him after Hextech, like some heaven-sent protector of the city, friend to all and enemy to none but the lowest of the undercity's criminals. A benevolent hero. People called his name when he walked in the street, gave him gifts, flowers, held out babies for blessings of good fortune, insisted on doing things free of charge - 'Make the Man of Progress pay in my shop? Not while I'm still breathing, sir!'

It was quite the learning curve to be sure - and certainly different from his life as a scholarship student working on an experimental technology everyone thought was nonsense - but it was a lifestyle Jayce had very much come to enjoy. Viktor on the other hand found even being in close proximity to such adoration an unacceptable pressure on their work. He wanted to be rewarded when it was deserved, and left alone the rest of the time.

Jayce tugged the wardrobe open and fished out his suit, pulling a shirt over the vest he had been wearing - it was a sweltering day in Piltover - and started dressing himself appropriately; the two Men of Progress, as Jayce liked to think of them, had been summoned by the rest of the council for a meeting this afternoon to discuss plans for some project he wasn't privy to. He wished the council had the mercy to allow him to dress down in such blistering heat, but he pulled on his jacket all the same. Presentation was everything.

"Are you ready to go?" Jayce said, looking at Viktor still scribbling away at his notes.

Viktor sighed, stood with his crutch and made his way to Jayce who was standing by the door. "Ready as I'll ever be. After you, Man of Progress. Or should his wonderfully amazing partner in science go first?"

"Shut up." Jayce poked him in the side. "I'm sorry. I'm a bad liar."

"And thank goodness for that. There has to be something you're bad at."

-

"Councillor Talis. Vikor." Mel Medarda said, her voice projecting with little effort across the cavernous Council Chamber. It was weird hearing Mel call him that instead of Jayce. It made him feel like he was in trouble for something. Like she was going to punish him. He flushed hot. Don't think that! "Thank you for coming. The council has summoned you today to discuss a change in Piltover and the undercity's policing. You may know - especially you, Councillor Talis - that the Council recently decided to pass the Piltover Punishment Act that explicitly outlaws cruel punishments for prisoners or suspects. Some reports have emerged of Enforcers using overly forceful methods to extract information from suspected criminals. They are...unpleasant, to say the least."

Irius Bolbok took over, his whirring gears tinkling with apparent displeasure. "And while this act passed by a slight margin, it passed all the same. However, the need for thorough and effective policing is more important now than ever, with increasingly brazen shows of defiance from the terrorists of the undercity. We cannot let the passing of this act be an obstacle to the protection of Piltover from those who would see it razed to the ground!"

"Yes. Thank you, Councillor Bolbok." Mel said, forcefully yanking the reigns of the conversation from her fellow. "The need for an ethical, legal and effective interrogation tactic is pressing. The development of such a method - a device, a process, anything - is vital to the continued safety of the citizens of this city. Luckily for us, two of the greatest inventors in the city's history are under our patronage, and we believe that the pair of you, with the added power of Hextech, can unknot this little tangle. The Council of Piltover is comissioning you to solve this issue in the timeliest manner possible. Something replicable, that gets the job done cleanly and quickly, is vital. The budget is unlimited, provided your solution is timely and affordable, and you will obviously be generously rewarded for your work."

Councillor Shoola spoke, her neck-ornament ticking. "The specificities of the Punishment Act are being sent to your laboratory as we speak. It goes without saying that your solution must obey the restrictions set out within. Any questions?"

Jayce darted a glance at Viktor beside him, then returned to the Council. "I'm assuming we don't have much say in the matter?"

Shoola smirked. "You'd be correct. As Councillor Medarda stressed, this is of utmost importance to the continued functioning of Piltover's crime-fighting operations."

Viktor raised a finger sheepishly. "And a time you need this...solution...by?"

Mel answered this time. "As soon as possible. But if you need a deadline to light a fire under your kettle, let us say in exactly one fortnight. Is everything clear, Viktor, Councillor Talis?"

Jayce put on his best diplomatic smile. "Crystal."

-

"What the fuck are we going to do?" Jayce huffed, pacing up and down the lab, jacket and dress shirt hastily removed as soon as he was out of sight of anyone who cared. "We're already behind on hextech, now we have a fortnight to invent an ethical interrogation technique? Oh, pardon me, an easily replicable ethical interrogation technique. Do they think we're psychologists? Criminologists?" He sat down in the chair with a growl. Sweat was beading on his forehead. "Fuck, it's hot!"

Vikor smiled. "Jayce, Jayce, relax."

Jayce stopped fanning himself, turned to his partner, who was smirking in the corner as he leant on his stick, a smug air floating around him. Viktor could ger excited, sure, but he rarely got so brazenly sly and cocky. "What, Viktor? I don't like the look on your face. Unless you have a handy solution to our little predicament, I wouldn't be smiling. 

Viktor beamed even harder. "Well that's perfect, because I think I already have a plan for what the council requested."

Jayce cocked an eyebrow. "What? Been doing some little side projects, have we? What could you possible have come up with that fits this niche request? We can't exactly use a Hex-blowtorch to make them squeal; it seems the enforcers were doing that anyway."

His pasty partner shrugged, revelling in his luck as he meandered towards his desk. "Oh, you know, just some light drafts I tinkered with a few months ago. I believe they could be tweaked into suiting our needs quite perfectly."

Jayce shook his head, dumfounded. If Viktor really had a solution to their tricky commission then that would be a remarkable boon...but he was sceptical. He trusted his partner, but such a convenient solution felt unlikely. He picked up the sheet of parchment Councillor Shoola had sent to their laboratory, stipulating the new rules of interrogation under the Piltover Punishment Act.

The handsome inventor cleared his throat. "And your solution...let's see...does not inflict unreasonable pain on the subject?

"Yep." 

"Does not inflict permanent and/or irreversible damage to the subject's mind or body?"

"Yep."

Jayce licked his lip, scanning the list for the rules most likely to be breached. "Does not involve the subject being bound and/or kept in bondage for periods exceeding six hours - excluding stress positions, which are now unacceptable for any amount of time."

Viktor tapped his chin, staring at the ceiling. "Hmmm, yep, should be fine."

Jayce frowned in puzzlement at that last response. "...What is it you're planning, Viktor?"

Viktor hobbled over and placed a comforting hand on Jayce's shoulder. "Just let me cover this request. That way you can continue working on hextech, we get our reward, and everyone's happy."

"But...it's not fair for you to do all the work." Jayce protested. And I would like a little say in something I'm putting my name next to.

Vikor waved his concern away. "Like I said, I have blueprints and plans already suited to the council's commission. If I need you to whip up a component or two, I'll let you know." Viktor gazed into his partner's moody eyes, watching them mull the unusual suggestion over. "Sound like a deal?"

It was unusual, it was suspiciously convenient...but it was so damn hot, and the idea of applying even one second of brainpower to an enirely new conundrum at the moment sounded like torture. He had to get out of these shoes, these socks, these stifling fucking trousers. He needed a cold shower. "Sounds like a deal." Jayce said, smiling uneasily, shaking Viktor's bony hand. Then again, he may as well have some idea of the project. "So...what exactly are these plans of yours?"

The Zaunite tapped his nose as he swept back to his desk, grinning. "Confidential, dear Jayce. Team members only..."

Jayce looked agape at his cheeky friend. "You teasing bastard! Tell me!"

But no matter how many times he prodded for information, even under threat of tickling his sides, Viktor stayed shtum. The Man of Progress would just have to wait and see what his secretive friend had in mind for the crooks and criminals of Piltover and the undercity, as much as it pained him to be out of the loop.

Or... Jayce thought, as he headed to take a shower, yanking his vest off, hearing Viktor furiously scribbling away at his desk, I could just get more sneaky...

Chapter 2: Contraband

The deadline for their commission was approaching, and Vikor hadn't let up on his secrecy surrounding the project. He'd been working day in and day out on something, whatever it was, in one of the rooms off their laboratory space, driving Jayce half mad with curiosity. He kept it locked whenever he wasn't in it, keeping any nosy Men of Progresses firmly out. Any time he'd tried to sneak a peek in the room or at his notes, Vikor had whacked him with his stick and sent him packing. "Patience is a virtue, Mr Talis! Be gone!"

His desire to know was so great that it was distracting him from working on their other hextech research, glaring moodily over his shoulder every time Viktor emerged from his den, then - childishly, he'd admit - sticking his tongue out at his partner's back; he might as well have joined Vikor on the interrogation project in the first place, such was the interruption to his work!

Not that Viktor had seemed open to having a helper on this one. He was being awfully cagey and protective. Strange, for something that would inevitably have to be presented to the council together.

An opportunity arose one night, three days before the hard deadline for 'their' solution. Viktor, for once, had been the first to leave the laboratory; normally Jayce was fighting yawns and heading home while Viktor nodded goodbye and continued working under lamplight. But not this time. The Zaunite had bags under his eyes - more pronounced than usual - and was clearly struggling to keep his peepers open as he exited his room and locked it tight behind him. Working flat out for a week and half must have been doing a number on the frail man.

"I think I will head home for the night." Viktor announced tiredly, collecting his stuff and scooping it haphazardly into his satchel, then slinging it over his head. He was smiling slightly through his fatigue. It was strange to see the dour man looking so very content. A nice change.

"Sure, Vik. You look like you could use some rest." Jayce said, trying to mask his elation at this sudden opportunity. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Good evening, Jayce." Viktor waved as he slunk from the room.

The muscular man let the grin leap onto his face as soon as the door shut behind Viktor. This was a delicious little boon Jayce had been hoping for but certainly not betting on. Viktor was rarely not in the lab, so guarding his secret project had been easy. Jayce would have had to knock him out and tie him up to get through that door otherwise, but he wasn't that curious.

Although...close enough.

He waited five minutes to make sure Viktor really had gone, creeping to the window and watching his shadowy figure heading for his apartment. Excellent. It was approaching midnight, and there would be practically nobody else in the entire building - a few guardsmen, some cleaners perhaps - so Jayce was free to do what he'd been pining for so desperately these past few days. Have a good old-fashioned snoop around.

The heatwave was still roasting Piltover like a market chicken, so Jayce wore just his vest on his top half, but now he was alone the thought did cross his mind that he could strip entirely to cool himself in this blasted nighttime heat. He resisted the alluringly stupid temptation. Getting caught nude in his laboratory in the dead of night would be worse than any amount of heat. Imagine the rumours.

He reached into his jacket pocket, hung up on the back of the door, and retrieved his little piece of contraband. Jayce couldn't help but feel like a naughty child as he admired the deft metal creation, about the size of a hairbrush handle. It had cost him a pretty penny, not to mention his having to journey into the undercity in order to purchase it, under the noses of the Enforcers. He was fairly sure he'd been severely upcharged once the seller had whiffed his Piltover accent, but alas, the tool was a necessary buy.

Spindly metal rods protruded from one end of the handle, able to rotate and kick and wiggle in various patterns. To the untrained eye it looked like a child's toy, or a kooky knick-knack, but anyone in the know would recognise it instantly and the Man of Progress would be in a lot of trouble. Not public trouble, not get-sent-to-prison trouble, but certainly a firm word and a harsh spanking from the council behind closed doors. Stop thinking of spanking and Mel in the same sentence!

The overheating man whispered into his new toy. "Come on, buddy, don't let me down." Even though nobody could feasibly hear him - nor would anyone but Viktor truly care what he was doing - he crept to the secured door and inserted the lock-picker into the gilded hole of the latch. A button on the side activated the pent-up clockwork energy and the rods started wriggling, ticking, prodding and twisting invisibly in the recess of the door.

Jayce just held his breath and wiggled the thing a little, and when the lock popped with a satisfying click the inventor gasped with delighted surprise. "Bless you!" He kissed the illegal lock-picker and placed it back in his jacket pocket; if he was gonna be caught doing anything in his lab, posessing an illegal tool from the undercity was a tad worse even than being caught stark naked cooling his family jewels. But only by a little.

He smiled, extremely satisfied and swept back across the room to the door, turning the handle and pushing it open, curiosity overpowering caution.

At the centre of the remarkably tidy room stood a bulky, box-like chair. It had a seat padded with brown leather, and a slight recline, even a padded head rest. Everything else about it was very blocky - underneath the seat was at least two cubic metres of opaque space wrapped in metal and wooden panneling. It was as if someone had carved a barber's chair into a large cube.

Jayce puzzled, hesitating at the threshold, then entering deeper. It certainly didn't look like anything Viktor had discussed with him in the past. "What a secretive little minx." He scoffed, impressed and offended at the same time. He scoured the room for any notes revealing the purpose of the chair, but the Zaunite must have taken them all with him. Paranoid bastard, Jayce cursed, but then again, he had just broken into his room with an illegal tool favoured by criminals, so maybe it was warranted. It still didn't sit right that his partner in Progress was being so coy.

When not one scrap of paper could be found Jayce resorted to fondling the chair itself. It was heavy, and dense - he could only move it about an inch at a time with one great heave - and it was lined with seams and hinges and grooves, but none of them opened, and none of them gave any clue as to what the chair was for.

The mystery was gnawing at Jayce furiously now, the councillor and hero of Piltover not used to being so in the dark. How could he have broken into the damn room and still be none the wiser? A chair! Was Viktor planning on therapising the criminals of the undercity into confessing?

The olive skinned man took a deep breath. Calm. You can work this out.

He got on his hands and knees again, returning to the only significant opening on the surface of the chair; a circular indent on the right-hand face of the chair with a hemispherical hollow in the centre, of a diameter he recognised instantly.

If there was anything he knew off-by-heart, back to front and in the dark of a nighttime laboratory, it was the precise diameter and volume of the damn sphere that hollow was so clearly designed to hold.

"Hexcore." Jayce whispered, face lighting up in a grin. How could he not have realised it before? Obviously Viktor would craft something powered by hextech! What had Jayce been thinking? Steam and clockwork was a thing of the past, and nowhere more than this laboratory. He pounced from his crouched position and sprinted into the laboratory, opening his ornate chest and taking one of the glowing blue orbs from the velvet cushion that rose out of it.

The hexcore slotted perfectly into the hollow, and stayed there with its static magic. Instantly the machine began to whir to life. Cobalt lifeblood started filling the crevices and grooves of the machine, and smooth motors started ticking and clicking and buzzing and humming. 

"Now we're getting somewhere." Jayce purred. 

Viktor's creation was certainly awake now, but its purpose was still frustratingly unclear. There was no control panel, no button pad on a cable connecting to the machine. The puzzle box, it seemed, still needed its key.

After another ten seconds, about forty total since Jayce has inserted the hexcore, a metal panel next to the core flipped, revealing words illuminated from the inside by the lapis shine.

Ready for subject.

"Really, Vik?" Jayce groaned. "Couldn't have put a little more detail? How are newbie Enforcers meant to know how to use this thing?"

He waited another minute, but nothing else changed. No more signs, no more instrutions. The chair had settled into a gentle background hum, its start-up noises dying down completely. Jayce weighed up his options in the almost-silence.

With this little information, and no other keyholes or slots or knobs or buttons, the only other possible input is...

"Me." He finished his thought out loud.

Damn. Curiosity was one thing, but leaping into the unknown was entirely another. This was an unknown, presumably untested piece of tech.

But then again...what was the worst that could happen? Viktor wouldn't have designed the machine to hurt people - even if it was allowed, which it most certainly wasn't, he wasn't that kinda guy - and it didn't have the air of a piece of unfinished tech. It looked pretty darn complete to Jayce, and he knew a slick piece of kit when he saw one.

Plus, now that he thought about it, Viktor had been tired tonight. Tired and smiling. And going home at a reasonable hour? "He finished it tonight." The man said with a satisfied smirk, making sense of his friend's unusual behaviour.

Jayce paced, sucking his teeth in contemplation. It was finished, and therefore safe, that Jayce was sure of. Now it was more a question of whether Viktor would be angry...or whether Viktor would even know it had been used...

"It's not like I'm gonna break it." Jayce whined, clutching for reasons not to satisfy his burning curiosity. He couldn't find any. None that were convincing, anyway.

"Sorry, Vik. I'll ask for forgiveness afterwards." 

And with that, the handsome prodigy approached the machine and sat himself on the slightly reclined, padded leather chair, placing his arms on the rests in the grooves he now realised were ergonomically desgined for forearms.

"Surprisingly comfortable..." He murmured, cocking an eyebrow. If he wasn't careful he would accidentally fall asleep here in the warm room, on the soft chair, and Viktor would find him in the morning, lounging on his secret project, having brashly broken into the room he had so jealously guarded.

Then the chair woke up, and all illusions of sleeping exploded like a dropped proto-hexcore.

Notes:

Next instalment coming VERY soon. Had a fairly robust draft of this and writing it up into a full story was fairly easy; it was just desperate to burst outta me and onto the page…metaphorically of course…

Chapter 3: The Man of Progress Meets His Match

Summary:

An over-curious hottie learns the hard way that snooping is not a good idea

Cuffs sprang from the armrests and lashed his wrists to the bulky outcroppings as the chair recognised the weight of a subject and activated its programme cycle. It all happened in one fell swoop, so fast that Jayce couldn't even think to react. The bottom of the chair sprang up like a recliner with the speed of a bear trap, launching his legs in the air, and a pair of stocks unfolded from underneath the leg rest, clamping around his ankles.

"Oh, shit!"

Simultaneously the arms of the chair - now with Jayce's wrists firmly clamped to them - started to lift and rotate around the wrist cuffs, dragging his arms upwards and backwards with them until he was reaching for the sky, the vest leaving his armpits wide and exposed.

All of this in about three seconds, before the cocky genius could even ponder what he might have just signed himself up for.

The box-chair revealed the true exent of its mechanical density to the inventor, and even Jayce Talis was impressed, if a little scared. He was truly locked tight, all his muscle powerless against the strength of the wrist and ankle clamps. Slender mechanical fingers on the far side of the stocks wiggled into action, bobbing forwards and backwards until they had hooked the laces of his polished black boots undone. Like a beautiful waltz the components of the machine worked in glorious harmony towards a sinister end. As soon as his laces slipped undone two clamps gripped his boot heels and tilted the shoes off his thrashing feet, tossing them to the floor where they landed neatly, and retracting back into the bulky stocks. The metal fingers that had untied his laces then resumed, this time with the ominous purpose of gripping the toes of his stockings and starting to scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, millimeter by milimeter tugging the cotton up, up, up his soles in an act more dread-inducing than Viktor has ever intended, Jayce was sure.

"No, no! Shit. Get off me! Leave my stockings alone." He exclaimed lamely, the machine utterly deaf to any complaints he may or may not have.

At his stretched upper body a small, precise laser-arm - like the ones they'd put on their protoype Hextech sewing machines - had been swanning all around Jayce's torso, periodically blipping its laser on and off with the calm and precision of a master surgeon, slicing through the seams of his cotton vest with savage ease. When it had done it gripped the front of the poor man's vest in its pincer - Jayce was for half a moment happy that the heatwave had spared his embroidered jacket and shirt from being sliced to pieces - and with one swift tug removed the thin cotton fabric in one piece, leaving the inventor completely bare-chested and supremely more nervous than before. For such a light and airy bit of clothing, he felt mightily exposed without it.

Meanwhile, and much to Mr Talis' whinnying dismay, a rounded compartment sprang up between his meaty thighs and belched out a rubber tube, which nestled its way into his crotch, unbuttoning his fly with a small retractable arm. Once inside his trousers - a remarkable job considering how much Mr Talis was thrashing his hips away from the thing - it proceeded to nuzzle its way through the front of his cotton draws and slip its soft rubber entrance onto Jayce's flaccid cock head, and then itself go limp. Disturbed, Jayce twisted and thrusted and twitched, but the tube was not coming off, and the Man of Progress had more pressing things to worry about: his socks had finished their treacherous crawl up and off his feet, leaving them bare, more bare than they had ever felt, and the same flexible fingers that had so efficiently stripped his feet then looped around his big toes and tugged them back slightly, stretching his huge soles taut.

It was safe to say that at this moment Jayce was regretting sitting on this blasted chair. A phrase about cats and curiosity crossed his mind and he slapped it out with indignant rage, like a dog barking at a squirrel in its garden. The strong man strained at his bondage, but it held fast, just like he feared it would. Understandably the acclaimed hero of Piltover was panicking thoroughly now, stripped as he was to just his trousers and bare feet, and he still didn't have the slightest clue what this machine was designed to do. In fact, in his stirred-up state he worried he'd severerely underestimated his lab partner and he was in fact about to be subject to brutal shocks from the chair, or burning brands or whips or saws or any manner of horrific things. Then he remembered it was Vik he was talking about and banished the treacherous thoughts from his mind.

A welcome silence - only broken by Jayce's panicked panting - filled the room as the clinking clonking machine seemed to have finished its work.

All in all, he'd been strapped, stretched, stripped, unshod, had his socks removed, his toes tied back and his cock inexplicably cocooned in around a minute. He would have been proud of Viktor's efficiency if he hadn't been shitting himself with apprehension.

A heart-pounding whirring sound shortly started emminating from within the guts of Jayce's prison, and the poor captive flooded with dread.

Phase two was beginning, and this time the purpose of the machine became clear as day.

Roller brushes dripping with oil burst forth from the stocks and started spinning horizontally against his wide, masculine feet, migrating upwards at a torturously slow pace from his heels, up his deep arches, to the balls of his immobilised feet. Individual thin, spinning feathers began plunging themselves in and out of each of his toe-gaps, their soft plumage titillating the virgin flesh of the base of his toes and between the static digits. Two wide feathers even began to waft over the tops of his nude feet, a place he didn't even know one could be ticklish.

At the exact same instant, cruelly, as if to overwhelm the subject's senses, the body of the chair exploded into action. Blunt, claw-like fingers leapt from the chair and focused solely on stroking Jayce's sides, from the base of his hips, along his waistband to his soft, taut, hairy mons pubis, all the way up to his ribs, up and down, up and down, like ten devious, long nailed women had snuck up behind him and all decided to tickle his sides like their lives depended on it. Then, naturally, two bulbous, rubbery nodes, each about the size of an apple, sprang forth and began vibrating fiercely, lowering menacingly towards the tanned man's wide open pits until they crash landed snugly and firmly deep in the base of his hairy hollows, shaking the sensitive skin within with reckless abandon. Two thin, articulated arms snaked over his chest and lowered two slender glass domes - like the bottom of test tubes - over his nipples. The tubes promptly pressurised, sucking his nipples into a heightened state of sensitivity. Then, within the glass tubes, and before Jayce's incredulous eyes, two fluffy, spinning feathers lowered towards his tingling nipples and began to stroke them relentlessly, trapped in their own personal tickle chamber.

As if that wasn't enough, a final sadistic little touch made itself known in the form of a very thin, pointy feather on the end of another dainty articulated arm that pounced from somewhere in the body of that demonic chair and started stroking around the unlucky man's deep bellybutton, completeing fifteen revolutions of the rim before slinking into its new home, tickling the sensitive crater of his navel.

In a matter of seconds, Jayce was - very understanably - losing his mind. That this chair was a tickle chair was beyond his worst nightmares. Such a concept hadn't even crossed his mind; perhaps he was naive, or he thought it too childish, or silly, or else too sadistic, too cruel and unusual, too much an exploitation of a near-universal human weakness.

Clearly Viktor did not have the same qualms.

Jayce howled.

"HAHshauhauShiT BOAAHHA NOA Aha HAHAHA FUCkC ANoAaahahaahaNAOANNNOOONAH! AHAHAHAHASNOO! OAHAHOAHahahahoahhaOHOHOhohohhheheheheheahehHEAHEHehheh!"

The sensations blitzing his brain from the torture on his wide bare soles were bolstered by the spinning in his toes, the soft feathers on his foot-tops. His armpits screamed for help as the vibrating nodes nuzzle into his hairy and vulnerable pits. His nipples and bellybutton were a lost cause, but he tried valiantly to buck away from the scribbling claws on his ribs and sides. Alas, they followed him wherever he tried to hide, like bloodhounds snuffling out their ticklish prey. In the small corner of his mind that could still think straight he remarked that this was likely the most intense sensation anyone had ever felt at once. Around a minute and half ago he'd sat on the chair, and now he was in the throes of the most determined tickling he could have ever conceived of. Pure, unadulterated panic filled the ticklish scholar. Just like that, a weakness he'd tried his hardest to keep secret from most everybody was being used against him in the most savage manner, entirely by coincidence. The frustration, the unfairness of it only intensified the torment.

"PuhUhuHpUHuhlAEAAHAHSEEE! FUCHUAHUCK! HOHOHOAHoahohohoaOAOahHhah! FUcking holy shit, anything but this, anything but thiHIHIHSHSHSA AHAHAHAAHHAHA!"

His soles. God, he wished he was being zapped or branded or whatever else instead of the unadulterated torture he was undergoing at the stocks. He'd known he had ticklish feet, but this was a different level of stimulation. The slippery rotating brushes mowed the sensitive expanse of his bare soles like they owned them, owned every nerve ending and were free to tickle them beyond any reasonable level at any time they wished. Then there were those writhing, spinning plumes of hellfire in his toe-gaps, the poor man unable to scrunch or defend the untouched flesh even partially. Not the toes, not the fucking tohohohohoes! And, like a full-force spit in the eye, the tickling on his feet tops was just a frustrating tittilation, more to say Aww, you didn't think you could be ticklish up here, did you, Progress Boy? What delightfully ticklish tootsies you have! than to tickle him. Mocking him, letting him know the machine could and would tickle him just for the sake of it. The wafting, excruciating feathers were playing psychological games with him. Rubbing salt in a very, very ticklish wound.

"PLEAHAHAHSE!" He screamed to nobody in particular on the odd occasion he could stop himself from cackling maniacally. Oh, how he wished the robed sorcerer would take pity on him once more and emerge from the shadows to free him from his torturous bondage. Is that who he was begging, filling the air of the room with prayers and pleas? If it was, he didn't show any signs of showing up.

He could hear the vibrations from the probes in his pits through his thick biceps pressed nearly to his ears, and they tickled every muscle within a quarter-foot radius: ribs, biceps, triceps, upper obliques. The sensation of them in his pits almost made him dizzy with ticklish madness. It wasn't prodding, or scribbling, or feathering that tickled someone's armpits the most, he discovered, but vibrations. "IHIHIH'MMM GohohohoNNA FAIAIHAinT!" Jayce Talis screamed, but he should have known nothing so lucky would happen. He remained conscious to feel every scrape on his ribs, every hum in his pits, to feel his very sanity being eroded by the tickling of his poor, stretched bare feet.

The shock of the inital tickling - that the machine was going to tickle him, relentlessly, was a night terror come to life for Mr Talis - subsided into bone deep panic as seconds stretched into minutes of tickling, and the flustered inventor realised this wasn't a joke, wasn't a prank. Viktor wasn't waiting round the corner to say 'boo!' and get Jayce out. This was a tickle torture machine.

Jayce splayed his hands in desperation - it was one of the few places he could still move freely - and reached for the ceiling in an instinctive plea for help as his tickling threatened to overwhelm him. He thrashed furiously at the stocks, the wrist cuffs, but you'd need a hefty shot of Shimmer to stand a chance of breaking those bonds. For someone like Jayce, who prided himself on his strength, being so effortlessly detained by the chair was embarrassing, almost emasculating. Not to mention the fact that the torture itself was humiliating. Tickling? What a stupid, immature thing to drive a grown man utterly wild with panic and whooping laughter. Although, to be fair, even a person who wasn't sensitive would struggle in this device...but Jayce was in the extra unfortunate position of being quite the ticklish little prince.

In his giggling, laughing, gasping reality, he was beginning to feel as if the machine had it out for him. There was a spot, right at the top of his right heel, where it met the bottom of his arch, that he was convinced the spinning brush was lingering on longer because it knew how much of a death spot it was. It revelled in hovering there and making him screw his eyes shut and bay like a hound, flexing his toes desperately against the restraints, kicking with futility. He knew it was impossible, he knew the machine wasn't thinking, knew nothing about the spot, but he also knew it was entirely true that it revelled in driving him mad. He would give anything for the foot tickling to end. Anything for a sock, just one of his socks to be back on his foot and not strewn uselessly on the floor, that 1/10th of an inch holding back even a miniscule amount of sensation. Anything would be better than this, anything. He saw stars every time the spinning brushes carved their way up his insteps, thrashing his head wildly with frantic guffaws and pitiful groans.

The possibility tormented him cruelly. The hexcore was utterly out of reach. Even if he somehow managed to snap the metal clamps pinning his wrists above his head, stretching his naked pits wide so those fucking probes could take a sledgehammer to his brain, he wouldn't be able to reach far enough to pluck the core from the hollow. Maybe if he'd put the lock-picker in his trouser pocket instead of his jacket pocket he could...what? Still be utterly immobilised. Even if he could reach it, there were no damn locks to pick on this infernal machine!

There is no way out of this. 

It was a distant thought coming more into focus as - ten centuries-long minutes later - the intial panic of the ticklish onslaught turned into a kind of fevered battle of will: him vs the machine. Man of Progress vs Machine.

But it was becoming unignorable.

There is no way out of this.

Through his cackles and his pleading and his cursing and his thrashing, a horrible realisation was starting to turn his stomach.

No one knew he was here. No one was waiting for him at his apartment, would miss him and come looking for him. The cleaners had already come yesterday, and even if they swept the hallway outside, they wouldn't hear him, two rooms deep in the thickly walled lab. Nor would the security guard doing his rounds. Viktor didn't know he'd broken in to his project room, he would be sound asleep, satisfied with his day's work, the same day's work that was currently tickling torturing Jayce Talis, the Man of Progress, into fevered insanity.

The hexcore was never going to run out of power.

The machine was never going to turn off.

"OhhohohohAhGOHOHOHOD!" The man despaired as the tickles crashed over him in a drowning wave.

Jayce prayed it would malfunction, or the program would have a time limit, but he knew deep down neither would come true; Viktor's machines didn't have a habit of going kaput on their maiden voyage, and the lack of controls on the chair implied it was a binary you're-getting-tickle-tortured or you're-not kind of device.

Good enforcer, presumably, would take out the hexcore and say they understand, just tell them what they want to know and this would all be over, and then bad enforcer would ram it right back in and watch with glee as the stubborn criminal started screaming again.

Jayce could have cried. He almost wished he was being tortured for information just so he could spill his guts like a pathetic little snitch and be free. Instead he was being tortured for no reason at all, with no end in sight. No answer he could scream into the void would make the tickling stop.

Vikor, I am going to fucking murder you.

And to think, he had been worried that he might break the machine. How foolish he'd been to not even think for a second that it could be the other way around?

Sweat poured down the gorgeous man's golden skin, cascading down his forehead, his chest, helping the spidering claws on his ribs and sides and hips slip and scrape more easily, making the vibrating probes feel like warm tongues lapping at his devilishly ticklish pits. He shook with raucous, open-throated belly laughter, laughter like the world had surely never seen before, belching half-gasped prayers, yipping and yapping and screeching and cackling. Time was melting. All he knew was tickles. Tickles on his soles. Tickles in his pits, his sides, his fucking bellybutton. Oh the bellybutton. He bucked and wriggled and sucked in his stomach, but the determined, tiny feather remained there to mine the laughter from his little cave to hell, like an itch it was impossible to scratch. Tickling was all he knew.

"AHSahaohsaohahsshooohnoooonononoAHAHASonofacuntingHAOhdoahoashshoaHAHhahahhahahAHHAHAHohohohoehhehehehHehHEEEEEheHEEHEEHEEHEE!"

Tickling. And tickling. And tickling.

Tickling and...something else.

An unintended side effect of Viktor's device, something the practically asexual scientist hadn't considered fully. 

The tube rudely intruding into his trousers - which Jayce was realising, now that he was at the mercy of the chair's torture techniques, was a drainage tube for when the unfortunate subject inevitably pissed themselves with laughter - was insufficiently insulated from the general pounding hum of the machine as the hexcore pumped power through its mechanical veins. The tube had been vibrating constantly the entire time - as well as being on a permanent gentle suction mode to hoover any bladder releases - swiftly teasing the heavily restrained man into a burgeoning semi.

Jayce hadn't even realised the secondary effect the chair was having on him - distracted as he was by, you know, the unimaginable tickle torture - until the vibrations and the endless fluttering feathers on his nipples coaxed the flustered hunk into full erection, the soft rubber tubing tightening blissfully around this unexpected expansion in an agonisingly arousing feedback loop. Had Viktor realised that nipples could be powerful erogenous zones? Had the thought even crossed his mind, or was he too focused on using them as pragmatic tickle spots to realise having one's nipples sucked and stroked with soft feathers was a one-way ticket to climax-ville for a lot of people, one Jayce Talis included.

Unfortunately for the newest councillor, his dark, pert nipples were just as sensitive as the rest of him, and eventually the playful tittilation lead to reluctant moans of pleasure mixing in with the chorus of mirth.

"AoahoahmmmmphahaHAHAHAHhaooohohgoodgracious! NOAahHAHNNNpphhhhhh!" His well-endowed cock now straining in the tight, soft, humming and sucking tube, Jayce was stunned at how remarkably well intense tickling and erotic stimulation blended together. Before this he might have asssumed they dimished each other, or that tickling overpowered the other significantly. Instead he felt under attack from a pair of close siblings, one a sadistic, masculine brute determined to ruin him and watch him scream, the other softly kissing and nibbling and sucking the wounds all better. They worked in perfectly in tandem...to ruin Jayce Talis' life.

Wires were becoming crossed in his addled mind; the tingling emanating from his crotch somehow made his skin fizz with heightened sensitivity. Every oily bristle of the spinners ravaging him down at the stocks could be felt like an army of demonic soldiers marching over the foothills of his soles, purposely dragging their feet. Was it just his imagination, or had the nails on the fingers squeezing his sides gotten slightly sharper, even better to stimulate the sensitive flesh? He could have sworn the probes in his pit dug even deeper into the muscle there, his laughter whooping up an octave, his head lolling back with abject exhaustion as the laughter was drilled out of him relentlessly.

The feather in his bellybutton seemed to revel in strumming a nerve that fizzed straight to his cock and made it twitch and tingle, like it needed any help in that regard!

"NughhhHHHH!! BLEUGHHEHEMMMMM!" Jayce grunted and groaned, laughter changing shape as he slipped into the most intense orgasm of his life, blacking out for a second as he bucked his hips into the leech latched to his length, spurting down the handy tube and howling with pleasure, furious climax bolstered by every sensitive nerve on his body being tickled to death as his muscles spasmed with ecstasy in the harsh restraints.

If he hadn't been undergoing the most personal, sadistic torture he could have fathomed, that would have been the best orgasm of his life.

Then the wave crested and crashed, and the golden glow slipped away, and the machine was still ploughing on doggedly in its programmed task; break the Man of Progress into a thousand pieces.

He kicked his knees in futile protest as the sensations at his feet pounce up his nerves and suckerpunched his brain once more. His feet, his poor, ticklish, naked feet, glistening with oil and sweat, trapped in their own personal prison. The lick of a feather as it spun and whipped though the gap between his big and second toe on his left foot - a spot he hadn't even known was so unbelievably ticklish - made his eye twitch, and the brush, it was doing that thing again! It was lingering on the ticklish spot at the top of his heel, it was, it was! It knew where Jayce was ticklish, it was sniffing his weaknesses out and tormenting him with them, staying extra long on them, scribbling and wafting and humming extra hard. It was a sadistic beast that revelled in breaking men, breaking men like Jayce. He was innocent! He didn't deserve this! NOBODY deserved this!

HIs reluctant, forceful orgasm had made everything worse. If he didn't know his friend so well, he could have believed that the inventor of this device was the most sick, sadistic motherfucker alive, but the worst thing was, Jayce was probably undergoing this ruthless tickle torture accidentally! Viktor likely didn't know the true extent of the tickling, the endless bombardment of the senses, addling your brain, your reasoning. If he thought a criminal could ever give a straight answer after a session in this chair, he was sorely mistaken!

Beads of sweat flicked across the room as Jayce swung his sodden head back and forth in agonised peals of laughter, then flung his shimmering head back furiously and howled at the ceiling, tears of rage, of self-pity, of ticklish agony poured from his big, beautiful eyes, his handsome face screwed up in a primal, terrifying, unwilling grin.

Oh how he wished he'd been caught with the lock-picker before he'd even opened the door. He wish Enforcers had burst in and cuffed him roughly, dragging him down to the square and locking him in a pillory to have rotten fruit thrown at him, or be flogged, or locked in stocks and his his soles whipped - bastinado, wasn't that the name - anything, anything at all but heaven forsaken, demonic, arcane tickling.

"IihihCAN'T!" He screeched. "I CAHAHAN'T TAHAHAHAKE IHIHIT! PLEAHASHAHAHAShehahaohaohahoahohasjsnunnnnuuhuhuhuhuh"

His cock, partially deflated following his large release, was beginning to perk up for round two, the tube still vibrating and slurping, the feathers still stroking his pulsing nubs in their vacuum chambers from hell. Jayce could hardly think straight long enough to dread what would happen when his cock got hard again, and at this point he hardly cared; what was one more torture to add into the mix, eh? As if getting tickled mechanically and ruthlessly wasn't enough, Jayce was now facing the prospect of being forced into orgasm after orgasm with the soft, tight, vibrating rubber strangling his cock into submission, slurping away his release. His partner had - whether on purpose or not - created a cow-milking machine....for human men. A machine that seemed hellbent on whittling away its captive into a ticklish, cumless husk. Jayce Talis could only laugh. Tears of mirth and tears of desperation are indistingushable when you're being stimulated beyond all reasonable measurements. Tickling was all he knew; laughter was his only escape.

The clock gonged out in the laboratory, the sound piercing through Jayce's delirous haze with every metallic reverberation.

Twelve gongs.

Midnight.

I've only been here for half an hour.

His eyes widened with unabashed shock...and then Jayce laughed, not because of the tickling this time, but because of the sick and twisted joke the universe must be playing on him. Half an hour. He could have sworn he'd been here for at least two. Maybe even three.

His salvation was still hours away.

Jayce barked out a harsh laugh, then a giggle, then a cackle, then a howl. He belly-laughed, and kicked and screamed with warped mirth, the shirtless, barefoot man, sodden with sweat, did the only thing he could. He guffawed like his life depended on it, but whether it was because of his own little inside joke, or the neverending tickling of his most sensitive areas, or because he'd finally been driven to true madness, only the Man of Progress knew.

 

 

Notes:

Hey. Can you tell I find Jayce Talis really fucking hot and have wanted to write an intense tickle fanfic about him for years? I'm trying to be subtle about it :P