Chapter 3 - The Joke, Day Two

"Wakey wakey, sweet-heart," murmured a soft voice in Mitsuru's ear. She yawned widely, one hand moving to wipe her reddened eyes, frowning as her arm failed to move. Great, I've slept on it all night, she thought with a groan in her mind as she moved her other arm. Both of my arms asleep? Finally the red-head opened her bleary eyes, the fuzzy confusion of wakefulness replaced with a coiled knot of panic as she took in the scene before her. Her bare legs were fastened into a metal bar with what looked like cuffs at each end, her socks hanging over the bar and shoes on the floor. She started as she recognised her bra lying on the ground, the subdued pink contrasting with the grime-covered floor, and realised her shirt had been torn open. A quick glance upward confirmed her fears; hands bound high above, and she realised the roughness on her tongue wasn't thirst as she felt the fabric pulling at the corners of her mouth.

Besides her Yukari stepped back from her side, hands braced on her hips as she smirked at the red-headed captive. "Welcome back to the land of the living." A wordless growl was her only reply as Mitsuru glared at her. Yukari just carried on looking at her until her captive broke away, red-faced in embarrassment over her predicament. "That's better," she said sweetly, hands reaching forth to remove the gag from Mitsuru's lips. Stooping to the ground for a moment, Yukari swept back up, one hand grasping her chin while the other held a water bottle. She tipped it onto Mitsuru's dry lips, dribbling drops down the imprisoned girl's mouth and face as the prisoner greedily licked at the water to relieve the dry and dusty taste left by the gag.

Yukari pulled away, waterbottle in hand as she poured its contents over Mitsuru's feet, the last few stubborn flakes of itching powder coated on the night before finally falling off under the torrent. "There, that's better," she whispered. "Nice and clean, ready for the day ahead of you."
Mitsuru looked at her, face wide with horror at the implication in her words, "Wha- what do you mean? Yukari, tell me you're joking."
Her brown-haired tormentor simply turned away, staring up at the security camera she'd had Aigis suborn as if she was an admirer in an art gallery. "Nope. Not in the slightest." Hands braced on her hips, she cocked her head to the side. "I forgot to ask Aigis if she left the cameras on after last night. Should probably check that."
"No Yukari, please. You can't. Not again," Mitsuru pleaded, arms tugging at the ropes holding them fast. They didn't break, or fall apart like she so desperately wished they would. She could only barely move her legs, but her feet shook the bar-cuffs as she tried to wrench them free. Her captor didn't even seem to pay attention until she looked back over her shoulder and spoke, "Oh don't worry about that Mitsuru...it's going to be very different today."

She could only watch as the door opened and Aigis entered in silence, Yukari directing her to stand behind Mitsuru while she unlocked the bar-cuffs, pausing long enough to yank the tightly-closed brass hoop that kept the captive's left foot held up. It didn't take long, the pair working far too efficiently for Mitsuru's liking. Within a few minutes of getting her standing upright, the cold, dusty floor shaking beneath unsteady and numb legs, they'd removed the rope only to tie her back up with it. Her arms rested either side of her head while her bound wrists crossed behind her neck, the free strands pulled down to dangle behind her backside, and she blushed as Yukari pulled them up between her legs and held them like a perverse leash. "Time to go. Come on," she chirped as the trio headed towards the door.

Mitsuru knew, theoretically, just how many rooms lay in the dormitory building, and that the basement consisted of abandoned storerooms and the built-in laundry room. She didn't recognise the door that Yukari led her to though. It looked like any of the others built into the basement, but whereas most of those used traditional locks and keys, this one had a small keypad next to it on the wall, Yukari blocking her view as she typed in the code. Mitsuru expected her to push open the door, but instead it simply hissed aside, sliding into the wall to reveal a corridor painted in matte-white. She looked up at the dimmed lights as they carried on, trying to look down the few corridors they passed before Yukari dragged her onwards. Eventually they stopped in front of one, the brown-haired girl pressing it open with her free hand.

There sat a wooden box on the floor, just a little larger than one of the desks she used at Gekkoukan. Yukari tugged the leash, pulling Mitsuru behind her before dropping it as Aigis grasped the prisoner's shoulder, in case Mitsuru thought she could run. 'Not likely,' she thought to herself. Can't even open any doors like this.  She couldn't help but glare at the back of Yukari's head as she did so, the other girl just crouching over the box and fiddling with a pair of latches on it. She dropped it open to the ground, revealing each half to have two holes carved into the varnished wooden surface, with each one slotted in a seam running along the holes. Burnished locks and hinges adorned each of the flaps in the two halves, and Yukari quickly raised them until they touched like the tip of a pyramid revealing the surface of one half to be covered in broad-blunted spikes. She walked back over to the tied-up girl, removing the rope roughly. "Stand in the box," she said, one thumb hooked back over her shoulder to point at it.

She balked, suddenly fixated on the box. It was easy to feel brave when she couldn't do anything, but now that she was free she realised she didn't fancy trying to escape half-naked and unarmed from her captors. She could feel her defiance ebbing away as she looked away from the menacing look Yukari bore, Mitsuru shuffled towards the box, arms folded over the tear in her shirt. Following the silent instruction in the other girl's pointing head and frowning face, she stepped into the box's lower half, biting her lip as she felt the blunted spikes running the length of the arch of her soles. At least Yukari hasn't placed any under my toes, she thought gratefully before tensing up with the knowledge that the silent Aigis was behind her. Yukari fussed with a flap of wood, slotting it back down to fit around the front of her ankles before inserting a key into the lock embedded in the surface. She surreptitiously tried to pull her feet out while the other girl turned away for a moment, but there was no give in it. She wasn't going to escape the pair, not unless she thought she could hop her way out. A pair of her felt irritated just at the thought of that. No matter what the other two were doing, she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of humiliating her.

None of what she thought seemed to matter, though as the pair of captors seized her arms. Her hands were grabbed and pulled down into the box, the tops of her hands pressed flat to the bottom while her wrist was braced against a block of wood just underneath the upper flap. With a flourish Yukari locked the longer flap around the bottom of her wrists, fixing them as securely as her ankles. "So...I bet I'm the first person to get you like this." Yukari said as she stood back. "Unless Miss Class President happens to be not quite as uptight as she is publicly?" her voice trailed off suggestively.
"As if," Mitsuru snarled back. "At least I'm not the one dancing around in a miniskirt hoping a boy will notice me." She pitched her voice higher, taking on a whiny tone, "Oh, I hope Mokoto-senpai notices me."
Yukari just narrowed her eyes back at her. "I see the cat's got claws."

Aigis disappeared out of sight for a moment, returning with a clutch of cables and a box in her artificial hands before placing them onto the white-washed concrete floor. Yukari picked up two of the rubber-coated wires, idly rolling them about in one of her dainty hands as she walked around the bent-over girl. As she vanished behind Mitsuru, she suddenly ducked down, her hands reaching up inside Mitsuru's skirt and crawling along her inner thighs. The bound woman couldn't help but shiver as she felt the cold touch on her skin, and she could only watch Yukari rummaging underneath her skirt as she felt something being attached to her thighs. As the other girl ducked back out, her work done, Mitsuru could see two wires trailing from underneath the folds of her skirt, brushing her skin as she shivered.

Now she could see what those slender hands were carrying as they reached up to the hole torn in her shirt.  A pair of wires, the same as the ones Aigis had carried in, with pads of polished mirror-like silver attached to the ends, dulled by a rubbery coating. The hands crept up into the tear, and then reached down, running along the taut muscle of her stomach and she tensed up, feeling Yukari put the pads on her abdomen. She couldn't stop herself when the other girl grabbed another pair, reaching back into her shirt and upwards to afix these two to the tops of her breasts. Her captor was groping around as she did so, and Mitsuru blushed furiously as she felt Yukari grab her breasts. "Keep your hands to yourself, pervert!" she spat indignantly. She bit her tongue in strained silence, as Yukari just pinched her nipples between her cold fingers in response. "I'll do what I please, Mitsuru. You're the guest in my little...'establishment'."

Yukari sidled around in front of her, smiling up as she did. "Just two more to go," she murmured softly. Rubbing her hands up and down her captive's arms, she delicately grabbed at each sleeve, ripping a slit in each of the lilac sleeves up to the elbow. She picked up the last pair of cables, crouching down and smiling impishly at the back of Mitsuru's head. Delicately she peeled the covers of the pads off, revealing the same mirrored silver finish and dull adhesive look the bound girl had spotted on the first pair. These she attached  to the inside of Mitsuru's arms, just below the elbow, and the older girl writhed in disgust at being touched and adorned like a toy, stopping only as the motions drove her feet down onto the spikes just a little more. A lazy grin like a cat's strolled onto her captor's face as she stood back and admired the view. "Aigis, is the camera on?" she asked as an afterthought, turning to face her unwilling accomplice.
"It is," intoned the android emotionlessly.
"Glad to hear it," she replied, her head turned back over her shoulder as she flicked her tongue over her lips in amusement.

The younger girl walked behind Mitsuru, Aigis trailing behind her blankly. All Mitsuru could see was their legs, one pair covered in soft pink skin to contrast the metallic sheen of Aigis' own legs. Yukari dropped to the floor, crossing her legs primly as Mitsuru tried to cope with the sight of the upside-down apparition. She leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees as her hands threaded together underneath her chin as she studied the contorted girl before her. "You've got a choice here, Mitsuru. Can you feel the buttons in front of your middle fingers?"
Mitsuru gently probed the space before her contorted fingers, fingertips brushing against a smooth plastic surface. "Yes, I can feel it," she spoke warily.
Behind her Yukari nodded in satisfaction. "Press it." Glancing between her own legs to where she could see Yukari's, Mitsuru decided against refusing the girl's command, and her fingers reached out to press the two buttons in front of them. She yelped as the pads on her arms jolted alive, and the electricity drove a sharp spike of pain up and down her arms.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she glared venomously at Yukari, about to spit some of the very unladylike words that she'd once overheard her stylist use once about one particularly pompous designer, but the grinning girl just raised a finger to her lips. "Just so you know, there's other three other pairs of buttons too. Now then, you've got a choice. You can press any buttons you want in any combination, provided you press twins like the middle finger buttons just then," she said happily, "but as a bonus, there's a diffuser. The more pairs you activate, the weaker the overall shock is, unlike just then."
She watched as Mitsuru looked away, imagining her captive's fingers wafting through the box in an attempt to reach the other buttons in front of her shorter fingers. "You know," she said with a distracted look, "you don't want to press any buttons, get no shocks, that's fine."
Mitsuru just looked at her in disbelief. "Yeah," Yukari sighed, "there is a catch."
With a quick motion Aigis gathered up the pleated folds of Mitsuru's skirt, flinging them up and over her back before bringing her metal hand downwards in a sharp arc. Mitsuru just screamed as the slap that the hand had landed on Mitsuru's pale left cheek resounded through her body with a wave of pain.

Red-faced, her eyes watering, she looked at Yukari pleadingly. "Don't do this to me, Yukari! Let me go and I promise there'll be no trouble."
Yukari looked away wistfully. "There's always trouble. So we may as well both get it, right?"
She rose up gracefully, pausing just to pull what looked like a rubber-coated wristwatch from her pocket. She wrapped it around Mitsuru's wrist so the bent-over girl could see it without much trouble and it whined to life, the screen glowing green. "There's a timer on this, set to five minutes." Her shoes clicked on the concrete as she walked off. "You girls have fun," she called back over her shoulder smugly. Mitsuru glared at the retreating legs before turning back to the timer as it beeped onwards.

As it clicked down to zero, Mitsuru made her choice. Pushing her hands further into the box, the smooth wood scraping along her knuckles, she could feel the buttons that lay in front of her ring fingers. She pushed them in along with the buttons in front of her middle fingers, wincing in anticipation over where the shocks would be. The shock was less potent than the first one, but this time it tore through her arms and her belly and she shuddered at the needles it sent coursing through her. The watch reset itself again, five minutes showing on the face and she watched it count down all over again. The next one was harder, pins and needles juddering through her arms and stomach, Mitsuru's hands beginning to tingle thanks to the demanding combination of the contorted posture her arms were in and the stinging electricity.

Over and over it had gone, the watch counting downwards like a guillotine in slow motion, and Mitsuru closed her eyes, unable to watch it any longer. She wasn't sure now how many times she'd forced her fingers against the buttons, hammering them like the electricity hammered through her body. Nine times? Ten times? Better that then let herself be beaten like an errant child. The one consolation was those long minutes of the countdown, time to compose herself before...before she had to press the buttons herself or feel her backside spanked under the unyielding firmness of the android's hand. Time to reflect on the fact that just like the day before she was at the mercy of a nearly-psychotic 'friend' and an android that acted like it had been brainwashed, and her only freedom was the choice of whether to hurt herself or have them do it for her.  Opening her eyes as she threw the depressing thought away, she stared in mute horror as the watch reached zero and Aigis' flung her hand down on the captive girl's exposed cheeks.

Biting her tongue in reflex she shuddered as she felt her legs give way a little under the impact and her toes twitched at the bite of the spikes. As her eyelids slipped open again she stared down in confusion. The watch had started, but it read as four and a half minutes. "Impossible," she breathed to herself, and she sagged in dismay, jolting back up as she felt Aigis' hand lash her again. "Wait! The timer's not over!" she cried.
"Yukari instructed me that it does not need to be," retorted the android with all the lack of emotion that was starting to repel Mitsuru.
"What does that even mean?" she asked desperately.
"If the subject deviates from original posture significantly, punishment is to be administered," came the reply as the hand lashed again and Mitsuru was forced to yelp from the pain.

It didn't take long for her to figure out what Yukari had done. Now she was forced to punish herself or be punished, and all the while stand firmer than Michaelangelo's 'David'. The conniving little bi- she thought, only to be interrupted by the sound of the buzzer and she hurriedly pushed her middle three fingers forwards this time. The pain of the shock was far less than what it had been earlier, but it still took her breath away as she felt the tingling zap dance through her arms, stomach and even her breasts. Mitsuru couldn't help but shudder in dismay as she saw the watch reset to four and a half minutes again, and braced herself. She would never give them the satisfaction of breaking her down. That was the plan, anyway.

She lasted until the watch's display began to read three minutes when it renewed itself. "Please, just stop this Aigis! Let me go!" she cried fervently.
"I'm sorry Mitsuru, I'm afraid I can't do that," the android replied.  The captive girl felt like crying; there was no way she could bring herself to push the buttons again. No, better to take a break from the electric haze. The only alternative was unthinkable to her; contort her hands until she could  and take what Aigis was standing ready to give her. Mitsuru's eyes closed hurriedly as the counter dropped to zero, and she jammed all her fingers forwards again.
Whimpering as the last needles of electricity danced away through her nerve endings, she sagged as what vestige remained of her will left her. She didn't care now
The watch went down to one minute; fifty seconds, forty seconds, thirty seconds. By the time it reached twenty seconds she'd long since given up even attempting to press the buttons, and instead swivelled her toes to the side and away from the rough spiky surface of the box. She didn't care if that meant Aigis spanking her. There was no point in trying to carry on the fight. Not anymore, and she drifted into unconsciousness even as the slap landed on her backside again...

She could hear a voice, sounding as if it was far away, but her eyes refused to open, clamped shut from tiredness. "It's over, Mitsuru." Hesitantly, she forced her eyelids open again, shying at the bright light she saw coming from the doorway behind Aigis.
"Really?" she asked, a smile breaking out on her rouge-stained lips.
"Yes. Rest period of thirty minutes will now commence, followed by period two of your training."
"W...what? No! Damn you, you stupid machine, let me out of here!"
Perched against the wall around the corner from the open doorway, Yukari listened to the pleading screams of Mitsuru. They muffled as Aigis shut the door and walked out, stopping besides the girl who'd managed to alter her. "I have done as you asked, Yukari."
"Cool..." she replied, chewing her lip in thought, "Yeah, listen. I'll be out for the next session, so once you're done, get her back into the resting room. You know what to do then, don't you?" she asked.