A Tempest of Laughs (TK)

Overworked and overwhelmed, a tired Rimuru desperately wishes he had some way to unwind. Little does he know that his wish is about to be granted, courtesy of Shion and Shuna's meddling leading their master to discover two particular idiosyncrasies he never knew he had.

Dear God Almighty, Lord Rimuru, I feel your pain regarding burnout. Yeesh. You're a lucky, lucky slime, I tell ya - if only I too had two loyal, sensitive friends to get into tickle fights with as a means of stress relief...

I've been researching That Time I Reincarnated As A Slime for a while now as part of my general study material for a massive crossover project I'm resuming work on, and I still feel bad that I only started watching the anime this month since I began reading the manga much earlier. It isn't perfect by any stretch and is in fact getting quite close to guilty pleasure material for me, but I'm still glad my interest in this series is picking back up! The cover illustration for this piece is (a low-res version of) the Patreon reward for this past April, and before I realized that my job was a lot more high-maintenance than I expected (though I still love it, don't get me wrong!), the plan was to write a story involving Rimuru as a ticklee at the same time as when I finished the corresponding illustration, post the pic and the story on Patreon, and publicly release them simultaneously six months later. Too bad life didn't work out that way, but it ultimately gave me more time to think of an idea that really stood out to me, since even though I'd drawn that particular illustration with a story in mind, there were a lot of other things keeping me too occupied during that period to really get a solid idea for it. I'm honestly surprised it took me as long as it did to finally come up with a suitable plot, but actually watching the series helped immensely, and as ludicrously overdue as this story was, I have no regrets about pacing myself here. Better late than never, as they say!

Notably, I'd also read a number of TenSura tickle stories even before I'd started working on the Patreon reward piece proper; all of those fics have very talented authors behind them in my opinion, but while I do like every single one of them, and while there's merits to each and every story with Rimuru himself as a ticklee, the only tickle fic for this series I truly loved ironically had him as a tickler instead (though in fairness, there's a lot of other characters in this series whom I feel also deserve getting wrecked - again, nearly guilty pleasure material!). So when the time came around for me to finally write the story to go with the reward pic, I decided to use the opportunity to write a Lee!Rimuru story that really appealed to me on a deeply personal level. Say it with me, everyone: If you want something done right, do it yourself!

All that being said, of course, reviewing my own critiques of all the Lee!Rimuru stories from other authors, I realized rather early in the outlining for this fic that it actually felt wrong of me to have him just sit there and take it. I thought about having him getting back at Shion and Shuna as the ending to the story but upon realizing that I'd started thirsting for them as well (well, Shion especially lol, though I still wish the anime had given her a hip width to match her bust like the manga does), I decided to dedicate the last full tickle scene to wrecking the two of them together - the price to be paid for underestimating the cutest Demon Lord ever! - and to end off the story with one big, happy tickle fight between all three at once. Looking back, I guess what was missing from the literature pool until now was a story where Rimuru is tickled not as a means of torture like in all the other such fics I've read, but as a way to help him heal, and since I have such a soft spot for that particular brand of kink literature, there was literally no other way to go about it here. The possibility of writing a sequel or two involving some of Rimuru's other friends cheering him up in the same way is a tempting one, but I can't promise being able to follow through with that idea given my current time constraints. Regardless, I couldn't be happier with this story in its own right, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I did writing it!

I have also updated the original Patreon reward post that went on to become the cover illustration for this story to finally include an alternate version with dialogue, as it always should've due to the the composition being styled like a manga page, along with adding the layers for the speech bubbles and text in the .PSD file itself. To see the high-definition versions of this pic, including the new dialogue alt, subscribe to my Patreon and then click or tap on the second link below!

Original illustration by SkaeaDaimonion (me!): April 2023 Reward: A Tempest of Laughs

PATREON REWARD FOR APRIL 2023

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (c) Fuse and Mitz Vah

DeviantArt link: https://www.deviantart.com/skaeadaimonion/art/A-Tempest-of-Laughs-F-M-M-FF-M-M-FF-MFF-978282752
ArchiveOfOurOwn link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51256114

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A Tempest of Laughs

by Skaea

Contains: FF/M tickling, focused on foot tickling but with some upper body tickling as well. SFW.

 

Word Count: 7,168

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It’s one thing to get yourself a bunch of honestly overpowered abilities, gain the friendship of almost every monster in the region where you first appeared in, and work your way up to become the most powerful creature in the entire nation. But actually managing said nation? A different matter entirely. Honestly, I’m surprised I was even halfway decent at that, but there you have it.

In a previous life, I was Satoru Mikami, a thirty-seven-year-old salaryman who was literally nothing special. I’d tried dating three times and none of those worked out, so I’d given up on that and honestly everything except being completely ordinary. But all that changed when I was stabbed to death while protecting a work friend from a mugger… and somehow, my dying thoughts were interpreted by a weird voice in my head that led to me becoming a cute little blue blob of goo. In other words, I was reincarnated as a slime… and that was just the start of it.

I’d been through a lot since then, but soon enough, under the new name of Rimuru Tempest, I’d found myself in a much more esteemed position than I could ever imagine, with an entire small country’s worth of friendly monsters at my beck and call… and I’d even snagged some pretty lovely ladies with a loyalty that could literally transcend death itself, while I was at it!

So why, oh why, didn’t I feel like I had it all?

The sun was just starting to descend from its highest point in the sky when I slipped into my office with bags under my eyes and a pretty big headache. It had been a few months since I’d ascended to become a full Demon Lord, in a sequence of events that had been pretty awful, all things considered. And messy. I’d been thinking a lot about how things had changed even more than normal since that ascension, and now that I’d gained such a massive increase in power, I was worried that things would only get even more difficult from here on out.

For now, though… I figured it’d be good to take a nap. Or the closest I could get to that, anyway. I mean, slimes don’t need sleep, but whatever.

Taking my boots off and setting them aside, I only barely made note of how damp their inner linings were as I made my way to my desk and collapsed into my chair. The feeling of moisture upon my skin was definitely more noticeable, though; the Mimic: Human skill, useful as it was, did come with a few downsides, such as having the same inconvenient bodily functions as a proper person. It was also why I had a habit of changing back into my slime form after every meal I had as a human, but the specifics definitely fall under the “too much information” category.

Still… I hadn’t noticed until now, but my feet were actually kinda sweaty.

Time to air ‘em out a little.

Pushing aside some of the papers on my desk, mainly a ton of minor petitions and requests for various little deeds and claims whose outcomes wouldn’t affect the Tempest Federation that much, I put my feet up on the desk, ankles crossed, and leaned back with my hands behind my head, closing one golden eye while training the other upon the ends of my legs. Come to think of it, I hadn’t given my feet a second look until now, partly because I didn’t ever get the chance to and partly because I was more concerned with certain other parts of my anatomy… or an absence thereof. There was nothing I had on me that could be of any use in lovemaking, and literally the only reason I called myself a guy was because I was one before I'd died.

But now that I’d given my feet a closer inspection, I had to admit: they actually looked kinda pretty.

To be fair, the reason I even had a human form at all was because I’d absorbed the body of my late friend, Shizu, all those ages ago. She’d given her life to protect my kingdom just before then, and it had been her dying wish, one I had made sure to honor. Admiring my human body wouldn’t not be at least a little awkward because of that. But I honestly couldn’t help it, not in this case, because my feet, and presumably hers too, were rather attractive, slender in shape but with nicely curved arches and cute, bubble-like toes. I guessed that they were a size nine, though I'd need to measure them with a ruler or something to be sure of that. Oh well, maybe later.

With nothing else to do for the time being — what with Rigurd and Ranga already handling most of the city affairs just fine — I let my eyelids slide shut, not noticing until far too late that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to lock the office door…

“Lord Rimuru?”

It was Shion. The kijin with the two biggest, dreamiest pillows I knew, and my loyal secretary besides. Apparently, she was here to ask me about something, but whatever she was about to say died in her throat as she took one look at me in my current state. My eyes may have been shut, but my magic sense was still active, and I could detect the absolute confusion she was expressing as clear as day.

“I was… uh… never mind. I… I’ll leave you to it…”

She was halfway out the door when she caught the scent of sweat, turning her horned head back around to finally see that I’d propped my feet on the table. The confusion only deepened as she stared at me and what I assumed to be the bottoms of my feet for ten solid, awkward seconds. I dared not to open my eyes lest I give the game away.

“…You know… maybe he isn’t paying attention, but…” Shion blushed a little, much to my surprise. “…I should probably dry them.”

Dry them? Dry what, exactly? The only thing that needed to be dried off was probably my feet—

…oh.

Zelda's Cooked Caboose (Hotbuns)

Ten months later... Ten. Excruciating. Months. Later... it is finally done. The fourth in this series of these hotbuns-filled "audition matches" for Smash Bros., this time starring Princess Zelda and her massive hitbox, is done! I'm ashamed to admit that I put this off for a lot longer than I promised the rest of you, but between my job's immense and exponentially increasing workload, the commissions and other stuff I owe people elsewhere online that I've been slowly but surely getting through, a ton of other IRL commitments, and a massive case of burnout that's been going on for several months straight, it seemed at one point or another like I'd never be able to come back to this even with the fact that I'd already had a clear idea of where to take the plot of this fic, but I'm happy to have been proven wrong in this respect. I actually have two fantastic hotbuns content creators to thank for that, TGWUO and LilacDragoon, whose own respective Smash Bros. stories (readable here and here, respectively) were what inspired me to resume work on my own SSBU hotbuns writing - especially the second one which was just posted this past weekend! A big round of applause from me goes to the both of them for helping me get my muse back (if only temporarily lol), and I look forward to their own respective future projects going forward!

For this story, I decided to expand my repertoire a little beyond my usual fare to keep things from getting repetitive, so aside from the obvious hotbuns and ENF, and for the sake of variety, there's a couple of other fetishes I snuck in as well - some I'm into, some I'm neutral towards (but which are still adjacent to those kinks I do enjoy). This is also the first entry in this collection with an all-female selection of characters featured - a rare distinction coming from my writing - but my choices just felt right this time around. Cooking Mama has been a rather popular request for a new fighter for SSB for a long time now and I'm admittedly one of those who wants her in, so plenty of fanmade movesets for her have cropped up over the years. I bet this may not be how Smash would implement her if she ever got in, but it's what I came up with and for the purposes of this story, I think it works just fine. More importantly, it also serves Zelda right for underestimating her opponent: as sweet and kind as she is, I figured having the Triforce of Wisdom would give her just a smidge of smugness over her sheer magical power... never mind that more than a few other characters in SSBU still outclass her competitively! As does Cooking Mama in this story, for that matter, as the unfortunate princess learns the hard way. XD

As I've just noted, this story was massively overdue, and I hope it was worth the wait! I'm not going to jinx myself and say that my next project will be coming quickly, knowing how hectic things have been on my end and how much burnout I've had to slog through, but I'm glad to have gotten this story out of the way so I can finally move on to my next written endeavor. In the meantime, I hope all of my fellow Americans had a happy Thanksgiving, assuming you celebrate it!

Cooking Mama (c) Majesco
The Legend of Zelda, Super Smash Bros. (c) Nintendo

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Zelda's Cooked Caboose

by Skaea

Contains: */F and F/F hotubuns, slapstick, and some dizzy girl fetish, foot pain, and sneeze fetish. NSFW.

 

Word Count: 11,117

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The Smash Mansion, despite its name, is not always about fighting and destruction. It is, for all intents and purposes, a home for those participating in the ultimate tournament across the multiverse, complete with all the requisite facilities to go with it. The most important of these, of course, is the cafeteria, staffed by an elite force of culinary talents from all across the wide world of gaming media, tailor-made for catering to every taste you can imagine. Different fighters have different favorites and this, different preferred chefs. And this story concerns one such pairing, albeit a rather odd one as such associations go.

To be fair to Princess Zelda, of course, Hyrule’s cuisine had been a constant all her life, and she’d decided long ago that her palate could do with some variety. The parallel realm of Lorule held promise at first, but after discovering that the Triforce pumpkin muffins served there were identical to those made in Hyrule, she figured she’d be stuck with the usual fare from her home world as long as she lived.

Of course, that was before she’d been inducted into the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Tournament and, on her first day at the Smash Mansion, took the time to sample a few delicacies fresh from the kitchen of the brown-haired, yellow-apron-clad woman whom she’d later come to call her “culinary soulmate”. Of course, most of the time she just called her “Mama”, since everyone else called her that - nobody knew the real name of this woman, but the nickname of “Cooking Mama” had been thrown around once or twice and stuck like glue. She didn’t mind, of course, but the grown-ups calling her that felt a little weird, even to this day.

“Good afternoon, Mama!” the blonde princess in her white and pink dress said cheerfully the second she’d come up to the counter where Mama was stationed. “Hopefully your day’s been going well. Got anything good for the lunch rush?”

Mama chuckled at this. “You had lunch an hour ago. What gives?”

“Heh, I meant the lunch tomorrow,” Zelda replied with a laugh of her own. “But dinner is fine, too! Just feeling a little curious, that’s all.”

Mama turned her back on the counter with the intent of scanning the kitchen where everyone else was still hard at work. “It’s been business as usual here, but not too bad, all things considered. The two-year anniversary of the Ultimate tournament Grand Finals of ‘21 is coming up soon, and we figured we’d practice for the banquet setup when that day comes.”

Zelda’s lovely face lit up with excitement. “Oh, sweet! So, does this mean you’re previewing some of the food for us this evening?”

“Well, you’ll have to wait until tonight to find out,” Mama chided gently as she turned back to her royal friend. “If you keep sneaking food from the kitchen outside of the meal periods, I’m pretty sure a certain hitbox of yours will soon become huge enough to be considered bannable.”

Zelda scoffed with a jokingly affronted look. “You’re not seriously framing the greatness of my fanny as a bad thing, are you?” She gave Mama a half-lidded smirk, before twisting her upper body around to give the seat of her dress a light smack, demonstrating the natural bounciness of what was beneath it. “I’m proud of it being as plump as it is, thank you very much! Or spank you, if you will.”

Mama rolled her dark eyes with an amused snort. “Okay, that hurt, and you knew it.”

“I’m just saying,” Zelda replied with a shrug, “the good stuff you’ve given me has had to go somewhere, and at least it’s ending up in the right place! The cuisine from my home world is nice and all, but suffice it to say I’m not giving up the more exotic fare like sushi and spaghetti and meatballs anytime soon.”

“Well, if it helps, I can certainly teach you to cook those on your own,” Mama replied with a chuckle as she resumed work on frying a salmon filet on her trademark skillet. “It’s what I do in my home games, after all.”

“Oh please. Do you want me to land somebody in the infirmary’s poison center?” the princess replied with a snicker. “I’m surprised you haven’t yet heard that my first and only attempt at cooking led to exactly that happening.”

“Wait, what?!”

Zelda suppressed a snort with difficulty. “Word of advice, Mama: Never leave any kind of meat dish, even one you plan to discard because you screwed it up enough to fumigate half the mansion, in the same room as Dedede.”

“Ouch.” Mama grimaced. “Well, that explains the awful smell I caught that day. I honestly thought something had died inside the mansion’s AC…”

“Not quite, but I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone drew that conclusion.” Zelda pushed the grisly memory back to the recesses of her mind. “On an unrelated note, though, there’s another thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, and it’s actually why I came here. See, Master Hand is looking for new playable characters for the next tournament, and he’s tasked pretty much all of us with asking around however and whenever we can. So, are you planning to sign up for the latest round of fighter auditions?”

Mama stopped so abruptly that the skillet jerked upward, sending the fish airborne and spinning in the air for much longer than she’d have liked. “Oh, it… Honestly, I never thought of that,” she replied hastily, catching the plummeting seafood with the skillet just in time. “But now that I think of it, I probably don’t think I should. I’m happy enough on kitchen duty, but compared to everyone I’ve seen who was made playable, I’m not sure how well I can stack up…”

Zelda gaped at her, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Since when were you, of all people, hesitant about anything? I thought one of your personal mottos was to never be afraid to try something new!”

Mama gave Zelda a rueful smile for a moment. “I know, but even that has its limits. I know my limits. And having served practically every playable character on the roster for the last tourney, I can tell you right now that I’m not going to put my life on the line taking on any of them just to entertain some folks. Not even Kirby — that adorable little puffball who, need I remind you, has taken on universe-ending abominations without breaking a sweat.”

Zelda sputtered for a few moments, her eyes still wide with shock. “But… But…”

“The point being,” Mama continued as she switched off the burner and transferred the fish to a cutting board for the next step of preparation, “whether or not it’s all in good fun, there’s no denying that the Smash Bros. tournament is dangerous. No matter how many failsafes the Hands might’ve put up, who knows what’ll happen if they don’t work? So that being said, I just don’t think getting involved in it is worth the risk.”