Heartless, But Not Hopeless (TK)

 

"soraSTOCKER" by DazidentEvil

Woo, first fanfiction on this blog! In light of all the hype for Kingdom Hearts III, I decided that a certain big-footed cutie-pie who gets targeted by pretty much everyone and their mom in the tickling community would be a perfect choice for a new tickle fic, especially because I needed a muse for such and I think the advent of KH3 is as good a time as any to work with it. Besides, I figured something sweet and fluffy would make a nice change of pace compared to the INCREDIBLE VIOLENCE of the last few stories I've posted. XD

The above picture is more or less the entire inspiration for this piece, and I whole-heartedly recommend checking out DazidentEvil's DeviantArt gallery for more wonderful tickle art (though there's a plethora of female and anthro tickles, he's done quality male as well for my taste). I also deliberately made the timing of this story ambiguous, ostensibly so you can insert it into virtually any stage of Sora's journey. It would certainly be nice to imagine this happening in a deleted scene in KH3 when it comes out sometime this year, though I suppose you could imagine it occurring at any time from KH2 onward. In reality, though, it's probably my lack of canon knowledge that led to that decision - I haven't played a single KH game due to lacking the proper consoles for any of them, and all I know about the franchise is from the strategy guides and part of a walkthrough of the first game. Still, I hope I did a good enough job capturing Sora's characterization, and that my inexperience with the lore hasn't prevented me from doing this scenario and the accompanying illustration the justice they deserve! :)

Kingdom Hearts (c) Disney and Square Enix

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Heartless, But Not Hopeless

by Skaea

Contains: */M tickling, concentrating on foot tickling. SFW.

Word Count: 2,435

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Sora was feeling lonely. Donald and Goofy were back at the Gummi ship, getting it repaired after a particularly nasty crash-landing, and who knew where in the multiverse Riku and Kairi were. It seemed as though everyone in his life was excessively busy, and had almost no time to spend with him at all.

Sitting in the shade of a large tree, he stared up into the sky, thinking about the life he’d been forced to leave behind so long ago. So many things had changed since that time, whether he’d liked it or not.

He didn’t want to show it, especially not on the Gummi ship, but Sora felt lonely. His traveling partners were wonderful company on his adventures, but even though he didn’t want to admit it to their faces, he still felt it just wasn’t the same as the two people he’d known since childhood. What he would do to have them back – no, what he would do to have the old Riku and Kairi back. The Riku and Kairi he’d known before the Heartless invasion of their island home had resulted in all three being separated from each other, and being changed so much that there was probably no returning to the blissful, halcyon days they’d used to enjoy together.

Perhaps Kairi might welcome him back. But he wasn’t sure if the same could be said for Riku now, now that he’d fallen out with him several times throughout their journey. Even if they’d settled their differences after that, it didn’t change how much it had hurt.

Maybe he shouldn’t be feeling this way. Maybe he should continue keeping up a brave front, wearing a smile on his face and letting his companions think he was okay. But how could he be okay when his world was not?

He closed his eyes, tears rolling down his cheeks. If Donald and Goofy were here, he’d have never wanted to show this side of him. They’d try to comfort him, and only remind him of how much he missed his old friends, and make things even worse by mistake…

No. He couldn’t think that way. He wouldn’t. He shouldn’t.

Always look at the bright side of life. That was what he had told himself throughout all these years, the adage that had given him hope in even the darkest of hours. But the bright side had never seemed so far away, not now that he had been adventuring for so long.

Hoping to distract himself from those depressing thoughts, the brown-haired boy started paying an unusual amount of attention to his toes. He’d taken his shoes off and set them aside, letting his feet air out in the cool breeze. Even though his proportions had started catching up with him in the recent years, there was no denying that his feet were massive – growing into his once oversized shoes had been quite helpful in that regard. He remembered showing off his sandal-clad feet to Kairi a lot as a kid, leaving footprints in the sand and letting her clean the grains off of his toes. It tickled a lot, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. So to did he remember talking about how he wanted to know how the ground of the worlds beyond felt under his naked soles. It was a shame that she wasn’t here to tell him that his question was now answered…

Dammit. There they were again, those thoughts about missing home. His friends. He sighed sadly, and covered his face with his hands, blinking back fresh tears.

He never thought he’d ever think this to himself, but he felt… miserable.

A shuddering sob ran up his spine and out his mouth at that point, as though the sheer weight of his pent-up distress had come crashing down upon him all at once. He was so glad Donald and Goofy weren’t there to see him break down crying, because if they were, he was quite sure they wouldn’t have any idea what to do.

Eventually, sleep overtook him, and he slumped down in the shade of the tree while the day stretched on, seemingly heedless of his strange, almost out-of-character melancholy. What he didn’t know, however, was that he hadn’t gone unnoticed, and as a matter of fact, a presence – no, several presences deemed the start of his slumber the perfect time to strike…

It started with one pair of eyes, then two. Floating just over the ground, the silent pair made its move, a single entity with two like minds contained within spherical, horned, dark heads. With more of its kind tailing it, the entity stole its way towards Sora’s feet, stopping for a moment to examine them with the four glowing yellow dots it had for eyes.

The rumors were true, it seemed – the boy’s feet really were massive. Quite a bit bigger than those of almost anyone else they had encountered, they had certainly grown into those immense shoes of his. They were also quite well-kept for those of an adventurer, lacking a strong odor, calluses, or blemishes. The long, pale soles and button-like toes looked very soft indeed, the magnificent curves of his arches nicely contrasting the plumpness of the balls and heels. For one brief moment, one of the minds of the two-headed creature wondered how he could walk without snapping his ankles, such was the size of his feet. The other head chided its twin, telling it to concentrate before they began maneuvering into position.

Sora twitched in his sleep, muttering wordlessly. He had no clue of what was happening, and even the feeling of his ankles being restrained by a shadowy essence wasn’t enough to stir him.

The twin-headed creature thus managed to restrain its captive with ease, and as soon as it had finished doing so, its peers emerged to greet the tantalizing sight. One little clawed humanoid in particular found the plush soles too much to resist. It wiggled its taloned fingers in anticipation, but the restraining creature gave it a warning – don’t be hasty. Wait. Let the victim feel secure.

But it was too late to stop the humanoid’s uncontrollable urge. It reached forward, claws twitching, and dragged a claw tip lightly down the boy’s right sole, tracing all the way down his arch.

Sora twitched again, but this time he started giggling. That was enough. His eyes flew open, and he sat bolt upright with a gasp of shock.

Two blue eyes met several pairs of yellow ones, and the brunette silently cursed his misfortune and stupidity. “H-Heartless…!”

He’d gotten used to dealing with his perpetual enemies before. He couldn’t even call them enemies anymore, not after he’d been one at least once. But they were nuisances nowadays, except when controlled by someone extremely powerful.

At least he thought that way, until he found his ankles locked down by what looked like a tiny version of the Thresholder from the Beast’s Castle, with several Heartless eyeing his feet as though they were a tasty meal.

Panicking, he tried to summon his Keyblade, but he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be fast enough to avoid losing at least one foot. He curled his toes in anticipatory dread, and waited…

The mini-Thresholder turned towards the Shadow Heartless, one head scolding, the other egging its peer on. Inhibition warred against indulgence in the Shadow’s mind, but Sora was awake now and one mistake could mean a swift retribution.

Indulgence won. The Shadow stepped up to the boy’s right sole, and swiftly dug all six of its claws into the tender flesh.

“AAAAAH! W-WHAT ARE YOU DOIEEEEEENG!!?!” Sora shrieked in surprise, feeling the claws wiggle teasingly into his sole. His foot curled instinctively, but the Shadow was undeterred, scribbling along the spot where the arch met the heel.

Sora burst into laughter in spite of himself, the maddening sensation quickly becoming too much for him to bear. He’d never outgrown how ticklish he was, a fact which he had been reminded of every time his friends from Mickey’s kingdom had used his soles as drawing space for travel planning during universe-hopping trips.

Those sessions lasted just a few minutes. But he had a feeling the Heartless before him right now were planning on tormenting him for a good while longer than that.

Panicked instinct warred with maddening sensation, the startled youth attempting to summon his Keyblade in a bit to beat off his tormentors, but they’d already planned for that as well. A second mini-Thresholder, attracted by the commotion, had crept up behind him, and now it clamped its clawed hands around his wrists, preventing him from struggling.

“NOOOOOHOHOHOHOHOOOO!” Sora shrieked and shook his head about, his spiky brown hair quivering wildly.

The little Shadow felt a nudge against its side, and turned its head to notice that it had been joined by a canine Heartless, a Bad Dog, looking wistfully at the enormous long sole in front of it. It patted the Bad Dog’s head affectionately, before skittering around Sora’s feet and climbing up on top of the mini-Thresholder restraining his ankles. Sora gulped, a mix of terror and excitement flashing through his mind, while the Shadow pulled back his second and third toes with its little right hand.

“N-nooo! I c-cahahahan’t!” he cried, finding himself unable to curl the toes of his right foot now that they too were restrained by the Shadow’s surprisingly strong grip.

The Shadow let out a hissing chuckle, and then reached down with its left hand to scratch at the ball of Sora’s sole, sending him into a new bout of hysterics. It nimbly scuttled its claws around the contours of the soft pad and, heedless of his wordless pleas, also included the hyper-sensitive bases of his toes in its ticklish tracing route.

“YEEEEEEEEEEHEHEHEEEK! N-NOT THE TOHOHOHOES! P-PLEEHEHEHEEEEASE MERCEEEEHEHEHEHEEEE!!!” Tears began forming in the corners of Sora’s eyes as he continued to howl and struggle – though much to his surprise, he didn’t actually mind at all. At least he wasn’t being violently torn apart.

And that was before the Bad Dog gave attention to his left foot. It pawed at the tender arch with its front feet, nuzzling its snout into the ball of the foot at the same time. Sora’s blue eyes almost bulged out of their sockets at this insanely tickly feeling, but that was nothing compared to what was coming. For next moment, the Bad Dog opened its large mouth, and proceeded to drag it ticklishly up the length of his sole!

“YAAAIEEEEEEEEHEHEEEE!!!!” Sora squeezed his eyes shut, tears soaking his cheeks, unable to stand the tickling but at the same time not wanting it to stop…

The two Heartless continued to torment his sensitive soles, the Shadow scratching at his immobilized right toes and the Bad Dog attacking his left arch, and their victim couldn’t determine which of them tickled more! This went on for several minutes before the two of them switched places, not only giving all ten of his toes equal treatment but also ensuring that both of his soles were lavishly covered in slick, watery Bad Dog saliva.

Several more Heartless joined in a few agonizing minutes later. A second Bad Dog decided to put its tongue to use on the foot that wasn’t being paid attention to by the first one, and two Creeper Plants also moved in to nibble upon his toes with their large, jagged mouths. Every so often, one of the Creeper Plants would even engulf several of Sora’s toes in its maw and use its tongue to tickle the spaces between them. Now four Heartless tongues were busy tormenting one ticklish victim, who was almost unable to see the torment through his teary eyes, but could feel every second of it!

It was another ten, maybe fifteen minutes before exhaustion finally overtook him. Maybe it was the overwhelming feeling of all that tickling at once, or maybe his shortness of breath from laughing so much, but whatever the case, the brunette simply passed out, slumping against the mini-Thresholders that had bound him.

How long it was before he came to, he didn’t know, but Sora soon found himself awake under the shade of the same tree he’d been relaxing beneath the entire time. There was nobody nearby… Maybe he’d just been dreaming?

But if he had, then how come his soles were covered in what felt like puppy slobber?

No, he wasn’t imagining it. He really had gotten attacked by those creatures he’d fought for so long – and they’d figured out one of his weaknesses. No, not a physical weakness, not something that would lead to his demise… Okay, maybe it could be. But he was astonished, and a little confused, to find that he’d actually enjoyed the sensation. Maybe the fact that whatever had tormented him had come in right after he’d had an episode of crushing depression had had something to do with that.

“Sooooraaaa!” Donald’s voice came echoing in from the distance. “Where aaaaaaare yooooou? This world isn’t gonna save itself, y’know!”

Sensing that it was time to go, the hero wiped his feet off on the grass, and suddenly burst into giggles. In the wake of that tickly torment, his feet still felt even more sensitive than they usually were. He took his time slipping on his enormous shoes, looking around to see whether Donald really was the only one who was listening out for him.

For one brief second, his gaze met a pair of round, yellow eyes peering out from a clump of bushes nearby. But then it was gone. At first, he wanted to take out his Keyblade and chase after their owner, but then he remembered something else.

They’d helped him.

Maybe they hadn’t forgotten the time when he was one of them. Maybe he was more like them than he thought. But all the same, they’d helped him out of a surprisingly blue period in his journey, even if it wasn’t on purpose. That very thought was enough to make him smile for the first time in days.

“Thank you,” he said in the direction of the bushes, not really addressing anyone in particular. But he didn’t really have to in any case.

Several presences followed him for some time while he made his way back to his friends, but eventually they vanished into the shadows, out of sight and out of mind. There was no hurry for any of them – for they all knew that their favorite tickle target was bound to once again cross paths with them someday…