#rescuers down under | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

toweroftickles · 1 year

Text

REIMAGINED TICKLING #4: The Shmorgasbord

A lot of times when I see a tickling scene in a movie or TV show, I imagine how fun it would be to see other characters in those same situations. You know, like "Oh I wanna see X character get tickled like that." So I thought I'd try writing a few drabbles where I'll take a famous tickle scene and reinterpret it with new characters in new settings.

This is Part 4 of an ongoing series…I had a bunch of ideas for shorter crossover scenes, so they’re all smashed together!

Rescuers Down Under/Kid Icarus

"WAHOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

The warm spring wind whipped through Pit's locks. His foot carved a canyon slice into the top of a low-hanging downy cloud as he soared through the sky with the speed of a rollercoaster. But the Power of Flight wasn't giving lift to his own feeble wings. This time, Pit was instead dangling in the breeze, carried aloft by the arms of the newly-reborn Phoenix.

In its adult form, the flaming bird had once been much more gargantuan...just one of its mighty talons was bigger than Pit himself...but Pit liked this younger reincarnated version better. For one thing, it didn't try to eat or step on him. It was the perfect size to grasp the angel boy's biceps and airlift him across the sprawling human continent below.

What a rush!

"And unlike some of us, HE doesn't have a five-minute time limit." Viridi's snarky voice reverberated in between Pit's ears, descended from on high as if she were speaking right next to him. "Just imagine, if you came to work for the Forces of Nature instead..."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Palutena, Goddess of Light, uncharacteristically smarmy, butted in. "I'm sure my Captain would rather have five minutes of flight and MY wisdom at his disposal, than that overgrown turkey and YOURS."

"What?!"

"I-I'm perfectly happy with everything you both can do for me, Lady Palutena....Viridi..." Pit insisted, desperate to break the tension.

Unseen by either, Viridi rolled her eyes…and her giant new pet followed suit.

Suddenly, Pit gasped. A sharp claw stabbed at his belly, but it wasn't trying to tear him open. The Phoenix's digit was scratching his ribcage, in between and underneath the bones, pressing into him like he was a squeeze toy.

"HAA-Ha!! Heehee-Heehee-Hee!!! Pff! HngHng-HNG!!" Pit's voice cracked as he burst into loud, uncontrolled spasms. He flailed his desperate limbs around, kicking in all directions, and the Phoenix could barely maintain its grip on the squirmy centurion. He looked like a jumping bean having a seizure.

“Sheesh, what’s wrong with you?” Viridi scoffed.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Palutena giggled, a knowing twinkle in her voice. “Pit’s very ticklish. Aren’t you, Pit?”

“AHH! *gasp* Hmhm-Hng!! Hee; n-hohohoheh! *heave* Ha-Huh…AH! You’re poking; you’re pohokihing!!” the hysterical angel boy squeaked. Tears were welling up in the corners of his eyes.

No! No no no stop! I'm gonna fall!!!

The Phoenix wouldn’t quit; its talon was jabbing into a soft spot above Pit’s liver, clawing up and down along his side, tracing circles around his belly button…the goddesses were laughing as they watched him gleefully wiggle…

It was only a few more moments before the tickling stopped, but to Pit, it felt like ages. He slumped over in the bird’s arms, struggling to catch his breath in the harsh wind. His tummy was sore.

“WHEW……whoooo….Ha….Ha-ha…”

"Heehee...awww, are you ok, little guy?"

Pit blushed. He'd gotten used to Palutena teasing him over the years, but it was always worse when someone like Viridi was around.

"Heh-Heh...whew...yeah; I don't want him to do that again though!"

"Well don't wiggle too much, or you'll end up flat as a pancake!" Viridi giggled smugly.

"Mmmm...pancakes...."

Few things could pull down Pit's chipper mood. Barrel rolls and aerial somersaults carried him on the wind and toward the sun, no longer besieged by Underworld forces...toward home, where breakfast awaited him.

It always felt good to fly.

Samurai Pizza Cats/Street Fighter

The noonday spring sun blazed proudly overhead. Sporting her green-and-orange summer vacation duds, Makoto looked like a lost Mario Brother (er, Sister). But she felt like a change. After all, this wasn't the usual Shadaloo-funded recruitment tourney with a massive prize pool and worldwide media coverage. This was a proper, no-holds barred, pure-cut street brawl...the only rules this time were "no biting" and "no dismemberment." Tons of combatants were trying out all new weapons, all new fighting styles...anything they could imagine. But Makoto? She was still determined to be just as great as Ryu in her own ways. Only her honor mattered.

Defiantly twisting her hat, she stamped her sneaker into the dusty marketplace street. A chalk ring was drawn around as the innumerable food stalls were pushed apart. A crowd of hundreds gathered to watch, and out of the teeming mass stepped a slightly more solidified mass...one named Rufus.

(“Waddled” may be more accurate than “stepped.”)

“Hey, Rufus! Whatcha hiding behind your back?” Makoto asked him, genuinely friendly as usual. “Don’t be shy; I’m sure you’ve got something awesome!” Her question, though, was met with something truly bizarre.

On the ends of Rufus’ hands were rubbery fake thumbs, easily longer than his other fingers, and so round they were almost teardrop-shaped.

“Rufus is fighting with an apparently all-new and ‘totally awesome’ style that he did not feel like disclosing to our governing body…I don’t know what the hell he’s doing, but I don’t think any of you will mind if I nap through this one, folks.” The fight’s announcer wasn’t even pretending to take that walrus-in-a-unitard seriously.

"Just you wait! Yeah! You’re cool, man, but I’m the best! That's right!"

Makoto stared awkwardly at the burly biker’s new prosthetics. Thumb-wrestling? Is he gonna try to squeeze my head like a tick?

Rufus was a doofus…(Huh; I should remember that one, she mentally noted), but he was also powerful. No time to drop her guard. She flexed her muscles in a vicious chop and readied a kokutsu dachi stance, tensed like a spring about to pop.

"Well whatever kinda new gimmicks you've picked up, my Rindo-kan karate is gonna tackle the challenge head-on!"

DING! The starting bell! The match was on!

Makoto immediately swung her leg out into a chest-high kick, but instead of guarding or leaping away (as she expected), Rufus grabbed her ankles and slammed her against the ground like she was a rag doll. It was too quick for her to retaliate…with an uncomfortable belching grunt, the bubble of muscly lard that was Rufus pounded Makoto into the dirt. His gut rolled over her thighs, trapping her face-down and immobile.

"Gahhhh, get off me! Fight fair!" Makoto yelped, clawing at the dirt.

"HA HA HA!" Rufus bellowed in triumph. "You are the first, and like, only, to fall victim to..." he whipped out his enormous rubber thumbs..."RUFUS' TWO-FINGER EXPLODING HEART MASSAGE PARLOR TECHNIQUE!"

The nodulose bulbs pressed down intensely into the backs of Makoto's sides, right around the firm, muscular lumbar tissue, and rubbed in tight semicircles. Her nerves buzzed to life, and even she couldn’t stop what happened next.

"Pp-HHAA, HAHA-HAHA HAHA!! AH-Ha Ha-Ha Ha-Ha Haaa!!!"

It tickled! It tickled like crazy! Makoto lost all carefully-meditated control of her body and just exploded into wild, hysterical laughter. Her gravelly voice scraped at the inside of her throat, blasting out desperate shrieks from deep in her lungs.

"You think I got no skills to bring up against Ken Masters, dude? Now all I gotta do is get you punks in my way to loosen up first!" Those giant thumbs kneaded hard into Makoto's lower back with brutal strength. They just kept rubbing and squeezing every inch of her quivery sides.

"NOOO; HAHA-Haha!! Stop it, that tickles!! HA-HA HA-HA HA!!! No more, no mohohore!" she screamed furiously. Jetstreams of angry tears sprayed from her tightly-clenched eyes. She kicked and slapped the earth and thrashed like a bronco, but the poor girl couldn't wrench herself free of Rufus' massive weight. Her face was red from laughing. She didn't even notice it when Rufus’ thighs lifted off of her and allowed her to roll around on the floor...nor did she notice when she tumbled outside of the chalk circle that marked the arena’s edge, curled into a helpless fetal ball.

DING!!

"Ring out! Rufus is the winner!"

There was no applause. (Well, apart from Rufus' girlfriend Candy, who whooped enthusiastically in her annoying dollar-store Harley Quinn accent.) Only gasps. Mostly, everyone was just confused.

"What?! No, th-that's not fair! What kind of cheap tactics are those?!" Makoto shouted, her voice wavering from embarrassment and fury as she stood back up on wobbly legs. Her sides and her lower back were tingling as if numb, still reeling from the intense "massage" they'd just received. Her cheeks were scarlet, her breathing raspy and hard. She'd never felt so humiliated in front of the other combatants.

"Sorry, Miss Makoto, but thumb-tickling isn't against the rules in this tournament. We unfortunately have to disqualify you." The announcer's voice was firm, but sympathetic over the loudspeaker. And everyone had heard it. There was a murmur snaking throughout the crowd, as well as her fellow Street Fighters.

Makoto's stomach sank. Her lip quivering and her brows furrowed, she turned on her heel and slowly walked off. The brim of her cap shielded her eyes.

An instant one-punch KO would have been better.

Tarzan/Luca

It all happened so fast. Hot, blinding light washed over Luca, drying him instantly. For the first time in his life, there was no liquid cooling him. His face fell against a bed of rough pebbles. He whipped around like...well...a fish out of water. But he wasn't just a fish anymore.

His scales were gone.

In their place was an eerie, pinkish-white smooth surface. His blue cranial scales had retracted, replaced by a messy mop of something brown and seaweed-like. He screamed. He covered his eyes. He didn't even have time to process what was happening, so consumed was he by paranoia. But the kid nearby, who had pulled him out, just sat on a nearby rock, smirking and completely placid.

“AHHHH!! Help meeeee!” Luca wailed.

“First time?”

“Of course it is!!! I’m a good kid!!” His parents were gonna kill him!

“Hey, relax. Breathe.”

But Luca wasn’t paying attention. In the throes of his panic attack, his strange new body lurched forward and fell onto the once-purple human boy.

"Yah!"

“And what are THESE?!” Luca squeaked in terror, his voice cracking.

“Uhh, yeah, yeah, I know; no scales. See, they’re…yep, that’s it.” Luca’s new friend (?) was clearly a bit weirded out.

The tan-skinned boy accidentally yanked his wrist away from Luca with too much force…with little warning, his momentum sent him flying backwards off the rock he was sitting on, and he landed on his back in the beach pebbles. Luca shuffled forward on his elbows, still in a blind frenzy, until he was halted in his tracks by the strange kid’s right foot pressing against his shoulder.

“Hey, hey, whoa, kid; calm down,” the other stammered.

“WE HAVE FIVE FINGERS AND TOES?! How do we control that many at once?! Where are our webs?!” Luca grabbed the other boy’s foot and began to pull on & inspect the digits, and suddenly, the kid fell backwards in a fit of crazy, high-pitched giggling.

“PFFF, Heehee-Heehee-Heehee! *gasp* DAHH! No no no, dohohon’t! That tick-hlhl-hlhl-hles! *gasp* Heheh-Haha-Hahuh! No g-het ohoff, get off my tohoes, gehet off my toes, G-HET OFF MY TOES!”

Out of nowhere, the boy threw his foot out and smacked Luca right in the chin. Luca sailed back through the air until he crashed flat on his back in the shallow incoming wave, and the wet sea formed a perfect halo of green scales around his newly-human face. He was dazed. But as he laid there, attempting to come out of his stunned state, the world slowed down, and Luca finally looked at the surface for the first time.

Moving air brushed through the plants, making them wave back at him. Some kind of strange fish squawked and flapped their fins miles above his head. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before.

“Well…isn’t it great?”

“No! I-I-it’s bad, and…I’m not supposed to be up here! Good day!" Not saying another word, Luca disappeared back beneath the waves.

It took him a few moments to realize that he left his staff behind.

James & The Giant Peach/The Bad Guys

The Bad Guys had a bit of a tradition going. On each member’s birthday, no matter what, that intrepid burglar was granted once-a-year permission to take over from Mr. Wolf and plan a heist herself. (A tradition NOT observed by a certain serpent.) And Miss Tarantula had not-very-subtly been dropping hints about the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s fortuitous reopening for about three weeks.

Wolf swallowed nervously as the whole group, dressed in black bandit jumpsuits, crawled through chilly steel ductwork beneath the building’s entrance. (All of them except Shark…he was driving the getaway van, and also disguised as a nun driving a bookmobile.)

Mr. Snake grumbled. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Webs, but she wasn’t very transparent about what exactly her plan was, and this was a brand new museum. They’d robbed the old one plenty of times, but the thing had been totally redesigned from the inside out. Just as he had the thought “We’re clueless,” he bonked into the end of the trail. Light streaked in from a grate above.

“Alright, sweetheart, I guess it’s all you,” Wolf said. Neither Snake or Tarantula was sure which one he was talking to, but they both proceeded regardless.

Quietly, Mr. Snake lifted the grate with his head, and it slid to the ground with a metal clunk. He was in the dead center of a blue moonlight patch shining down from a rose window. The polished, disinfected scent of marble and ancient vases enveloped him. They were in the cavernous white atrium. Just ahead was the grand staircase leading up into the various gallery wings. A quiet little security drone, about the size and shape of a black thumb drive, cast its blinking red light out onto the floor, humming to itself. There was nowhere that the reptilian safecracker could move without tripping an alarm.

“Ok, Webs, so what’s your brilliant plan now?” Mr. Snake hissed down in his signature sarcastic drawl.

“Glad you asked, big guy!” she told him through his earpiece. “Are ya ready? …you’re gonna be the bait!”

“WHHHHAAAT?!?” Snake’s furious outburst echoed all around the museum.

“Shhhh!!!” hissed Mr. Wolf.

“Who do you think you are?!”

“Snake, you have to trigger the motion alarms!” their master planner snapped.

"Why me?!"

"Hey; you guys said I was in charge! Me! Now trust me on this!!"

“Ohmygod I’m gonna fart,” Piranha muttered under his panicked breath.

“Are you nuts?! Absolutely not! I’m not doin that! And you can’t make me!”

“Oh yeah?!” Miss Tarantula laughed wickedly and jumped up onto Snake’s midsection. Chuckling to herself, she started tapping her extremely fuzzy legs at sonic speeds, the same way she used her “beast mode” keyboard to hack a vault, along the dead center of her companion's elongated body…and suddenly, Mr. Snake began to wiggle.

“Kkheh! Heh…Ha-Ha Ha-Ha! Heh…Hey! G-het off me!” he yelled down at her. He was trying to maintain his snarky demeanor and keep still, but Webs had found his ticklish spot. He was writhing angrily in all directions, involuntarily bashing his head into the museum floor. “HHHEHeh Ha-Ha! Hn-Hn Hn! St-hop it!”

Right on cue. The red lights snapped on and the blaring museum siren roared to life.

“Alright, guys, get ready; they’re coming!” Wolf commanded his team with a hint of nervousness. This wasn’t what he’d planned at all.

“Cootchiecootchiecoo……….ahcootchiecootchiecoo…” Tarantula teased Snake in her low, raspy voice, giggling as she danced and watched him squirm.

A dozen truncheon-brandishing security guards burst through he doors and thundered down the marble stairs with a terrible roar.

"Halt! Stay where you are!!"

Every second they grew closer to the helpless constrictor that lured them in a puddle of light.

“GKHNNN!! K-Heh, Ha-Ha Ha-Ha! You…you stupid jerks!! Hnuh…This isn’t fair; Ha-Ha Ha-Ha HA!!”

All of a sudden and with a violent, involuntary contortion, Mr. Snake twisted himself out of Tarantula's grip and leapt high into the air until he cast a shadow down on the charging cops, and they could only stare, bewildered, at the crooked and cackling-faced snakeskin he left behind.

The mob were barreling down far too fast to alter their course now. They all stumbled over one another as they rammed full-throttle through Mr. Snake’s abandoned skin….and straight into the almost-invisible web of patented tarantula-silk nanothread that stretched across the entire atrium behind it. They were already trapped in the net by the time Snake returned to the floor with a splat.

Bingo.

“Alright, guys, let’s get moving! We’ve only got a couple minutes!” Tarantula called triumphantly as she hopped out of the hole in the floor.

“Webs, you’re a genius.” Mr. Wolf climbed up too, followed by Piranha, and the group charged into the museum proper.

“Gah! I am going to EAT you!” Mr. Snake roared angrily at Tarantula.

“Ooo, yeah, scary; I’ll just make sure to tickle you from the inside on my way down!” she laughed at him.

Her plan had gone off without a hitch. By the time the local police were finally dispatched to the source of the alarm, every silkskreen print and multi-limbed Hindu statue in the museum was already gone. Millions in art, down the drain.

And in a bookmobile across town, there were four gleeful partygoers, popping corks and celebrating a night of revelry...

....along with one very sour snake.

55 notes · View notes