It was raining.

It always seemed to be overcast here, but the clouds hung even darker and more oppressive than usual.  Lindsay watched sullenly out at the collections of water that ran all over the road.  There was a nagging thought at the back of her mind, that even the weather was against her today.  It was supposed to be sunny today.  It was the middle of September,  and supposed to top out at 74 degrees.  The perfect day.  She was even dressed for it.  With a sigh, she kicked off her sandals and ditched the comfortable (if a bit scant) tank top she was wearing that morning.  Instead she opted for a pair of sturdy and dependable boots, along with heavy sweatshirt and jacket.

As she laced up her boots, Lindsay's katana lovingly caught her eye.  It was a weapon she had since she was 11.  It was the only thing given to her by her parents, before they were taken from her.  They had perished some years ago in a countryside raid led by a pack of marauders.  It was dangerous out in the hinterlands, and her family was trying to scrape together enough of a living to send their daughter off to get a proper education in the city.  The city...where the fiefdoms of the corporations rule with an iron fist.  And yet, also offer protection for their serfs that dwell within.  There are always those, like Lindsay's parents, that chose to live outside the kingdoms.  And without corporate protection, not many survived the constant warfare and politics that raged in those leaderless wildlands.

Lindsay's father never was a warrior.  The blade she now looked at was indeed a family heirloom, but it had been about 3 generations since any of them could actually wield it with any sort of proficiency.  Her father was a laborer, and spent his entire young adult life trying to get his family the sort of freedoms that many families enjoyed just 100 years prior...before the cataclysm.

A lot of good it did him, she thought bitterly.  She still remembered the foul beasts that ransacked her home, torched their belongings and destroyed her life.  She was only narrowly able to escape, and took only a few nearby possessions.  Ever since then she grew up on the Seattle streets, having to learn to live on her own.

To her surprise, Lindsay found she had amazing powers by the time she was 14.  She found she could cause tickling sensations in people, enough to distract them so she could escape some tight spots.  And more recently she discovered that her powers could do more than just tickle; her control over vibration could sometimes destroy things that could ordinarily never be destroyed.  It was her ability to escape that caught the interest of The Agency.  Although there were several agencies competing for local talent, there was only one in the greater Seattle metropolitan area that mattered.  And it most definitely took an interest in Lindsay.  The Agency had hired her to do some mercenary work when she was just 16.  It was here that Starlight coined the name "Mirth" for Lindsay, when Starlight found out first hand just what Mirth's tickling powers felt like.  And ever since, the name stuck with her.  

She had developed some skill with her katana, and her powers were growing stronger with each passing week.  The Agency soon realized her vast potential, and signed her up with one of the great sword masters in the modern age.

He was known only as "Sun" and Lindsay, aka Mirth, had an 11:00 AM appointment with him.  She had been training under his tutelage for over a year now, and today was the final test, to be certified as a true weapons master.  A title only held by 50 people in the known world, and none as young as Mirth.

Mirth stepped outside with hood drawn up.  Her katana lay on her back, underneath the baggy sweatshirt.  As she walked through the soaking streets, she noticed the fog got denser and more intrusive.  She hurried her pace.

Step after hurried step, Mirth soon realized she wasn't alone on these streets.

She quickened her pace.  As the fog grew heavier, so did the footsteps behind her.  One pair.

One pair became two pair.

Two pair became six pairs of footsteps.

Mirth broke into a dead sprint.  She was fairly confident she could handle any problems that may be approaching her from behind, but her powers weren't totally complete.

She gasped, and came to a stop as a lone figure stood directly in front of her.  He made no threatening gesture towards her, but simply stood, arms folded.  

Mirth looked around frantically, trying to gauge how many others were around.  She could see nothing in this blasted haze.

Her gaze came back, and the lone figure had suddenly become 4 figures, all standing around, arms folded.  Mirth took one look and sprinted past them.  As she did, the footsteps behind her quickened, and it seemed there must be an army behind her.

The icy air filled her lungs with freezing cold, and her breath hung heavy upon the autumn air.  Mirth sprinted through the murky fog to come across a monstrous chain link fence.  Knowing that there were about 40 people running after her, she stretched out her arm to call upon the energy forces that dwelled inside of her.

Her eyes fluttered as the forces of nature ceased their eternal operations to temporarily obey a new master.  Blue fire erupted from her arm, disintegrated a hold in the fence large enough for her to run through.

Mirth looked around, this place looked familiar...

Then she stopped, and drew her katana.

Around Mirth stood about 300 men.  The fog bank rolled back almost instantly.  The men were standing around in a huge circle, clapping and chanting.  In the middle of them stood a lone figure, kneeling on the ground, lost in thought.

Mirth recognized her new master immediately, and kneeled before him, with a wary eye on the throngs of people surrounding the two of them.

"It is time!" the crowd erupted in cheers as Sun stood up from his meditative position.  Mirth looked around wildly, wondering what all these guys were doing here.

Sun unsheathed his own blade, and Mirth looked on in awe at her master.  He stood only about 5'4" tall, but every fiber of the man's body was muscle and determination.  She had never seen him wield a weapon before.  Her lessons were all about her use of the sword, which he instructed meticulously.  She had never even sparred with him before.

"Your test starts now," Sun began.  "Your path will be a difficult one, child, this is but one of the trails you must overcome to become a great warrior"

"Understand, Mirth, that to be a great warrior, you must first learn humility" Sun stated slowly.  Mirth was unable to understand what he was talking about, when he made his first lunge.

Before Mirth could react, Sun had made a series of four slashing motions in her direction.  She felt no pain, and instinct had finally taken over enough for her to parry the last of the four swipes.  

Mirth let out a surprised gasp, as she realize her bra was suddenly exposed.  Had she been on the battlefield with an evenly matched foe, her foes would have taken her surprised reaction to cut her down.  Sun had, in the span of a couple seconds, totally destroyed her poor sweatshirt.  It lay in tatters on her body.  Looking around embarrassed and very exposed, Mirth hastily flung the shirt from her body onto the ground.  This excited the crowd, that cheered on this newest development with much enthusiasm.

Mirth cursed under her breath.  Not only had her top been shredded, Sun had apparently cut through her jeans as well.  Mirth never took her eye off her master, whom she knew could strike again without any warning.  She circled around him, but soon realized she could not fight the man with pants half hanging off her.  In even more frustration, she disintegrated what was left of her jeans, and let the remains float to the ground.

So there Mirth stood, in the drizzling rain.

She was a very shy girl, and didn't even like to go barefoot in public.  Only two other males had ever seen her underwear before.  And here she was, nearly naked, wearing only a matching black sports bra and panties, shivering in the rain, with a katana in hand, surrounded by hundreds of whooping men, facing off against a man who was not her equal in combat.  Mirth tried to stay focused on the task at hand, although she didn't know what that task was, exactly.

"You are on your way, pupil" Sun started "but the path to humility is a long one"  Mirth stared at him, almost angry since the first time she had ever met her master.  Sun dropped his blade to the ground, and took out two plastic objects that almost looked like toilet bowl cleaners.  Their shaft measured about one foot in length, and at the end of each weapon was just a big ball of bristles.  

Mirth didn't know if Sun planned on fighting her, or cleaning the Agency's latrine.  It did not matter, she stared coolly as her adversary, never taking her eyes off him.

Sun turned to her in a smile.  "This is your final test, my beloved pupil.  If you can force me to draw blood, your skill with a blade will be legendary"  That statement was enough for Mirth to hear.  She had enough of standing out here in the middle of a muddy field, near naked being gawked at by numerous bystanders, several of which were hooting and begging her to take off her remaining scarce clothing.  Her face flushed red, with the knowledge that so many were investigating her body, and mentally evaluating every curve.

Mirth saw her opening and leapt straight at Sun, hoping to feint high and slash low to land a score.  Sun, having taught her that opening, easily dodged both strikes, and sidestepped Mirth.  He grabbed his plastic weapons firmly, and drove them deep into Mirth's ribs.  Had they been daggers, poor Mirth would have been nothing more than a bloody student on the field.  However, these were not daggers.

As Mirth finished her missed opening, Sun temporarily disappeared from her line of sight.  She frantically started to whip around, she something like a lightning bolt assaulted her ribs.  She screamed with laughter, katana flying through the air.  She crumpled onto the ground, still giggling from the massive electric tickle attack that just stunned her

"You have 4 seconds to recover your weapon, Mirth.  And if you don't recover it, every single one of these men will have 1 minute each to use these Tickle-Prods on you"

Mirth scrambled to her feet to secure her katana.  She had never heard of Tickle-Prods, but apparently they were some damn weapon the Agency employed in strange situations.  Mirth attacked again, still faint from the prior shock.  She was quite certain that...

"Oh G---godddd!!"  Mirth screamed at the Tickle-Prods found their way on the small of her back.  Mirth lay panting on the ground.  She was a small woman by any measure, and these Tickle-Prods were adjusted to be able to take down a full grown man to hysterics in just seconds.  She couldn't concentrate.  Her thin body ached for air, and the chill breeze didn't help matters.  Her skin got goose bumps all up and down, and she was a giggling mess.  A lot of the surrounding men were amused at her predicament, and were laughing as she laughed.  She bent over, trying to get air back into her body.  She stared down at her own toes for a minute.  She watched the way the mud squished between them, how it dulled her nail polish that she painstakingly applied the night before.  This centered her, and she rose back up to face Sun.

Sun smiled broadly, knowing he had his pupil at his mercy.  She was a beautiful young woman, full of promise and vigor.  She had learned how to do everything right from the very beginning, and he feared that since it had all come so easy for her,  she would never learn discipline or focus, two critical elements of becoming a successful agent.  She had to learn how to improvise, and how to handle herself in times of duress.

Mirth plunged her sword into the ground, and turned to her master.  She was also somewhat skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and advanced toward Sun making that intention clear.  Sun deftly turned aside as his star pupil applied to much force to try and take him down.  He easily tripped her up, and she landed face first in the mud beside him.  Sun immediately drew forth two metal U-shaped wickets, and drove them forcefully into the ground, over Mirth's ankles.  Mirth let out a groan, not expecting that move.

She tried to raise up off the ground, but found she was totally helpless.  She had abandoned her sword, she was wearing just a bra and panties, face down in the mud, and her ankles were bound somehow to the ground itself.  The ground was cold to the touch, and the trickling rain pouring down her face and all over her body did not help matters.  She tried to pull herself out of the bonds, but it hurt her ankles to twist.

Sun's voice broke her struggle against the bonds. "Never abandon your best weapon in the middle of battle.  Even if you think you win some honor points by taking down a foe face to face, don't ever forget to use the skills you have been trained to use"

Mirth twisted around in vain to attempt to meet her masters' eyes, but could not.  She could not move from her position, and was locked firmly into place.

Sun glanced down at Mirth twisting in the mud.  He wanted to see her escape, to see her succeed.  He called forth several students from the Academy to witness this test, and hoped it would instill a sense of urgency into his pupil, and so far, it had not.

He had to instill more urgency into her.

Sun's gaze went from her slender shoulders down to her thin, athletic legs, and rested on his pupil's soles.  They were beautiful soles, by any standards.  Without a blemish to them, Sun couldn't recall a time when Mirth ever showed her feet.  The soles were smooth and silky, and clenched from time to time in an attempt to escape their predicament.  Sun's sadistic side overtook him, he had to see what happened when those soles....

Mirth let out a scream unlike anyone had heard before.  The crowd grew silent as this sexy freshman, beaten down metaphorically as much as any student could be, was suddenly tortured without mercy before their eyes.  Sun had plunged each of the Tickle-Prods onto the upturned soles of Mirth's feet.  

And the effect was absolutely devastating.  Mirth screamed for mercy for several seconds.  She writhed around in agony in the mud, fists beating the ground in vain desperation.  Those sensitive, creamy soles, that never saw the light of day, were being tickle shocked by the latest in Agency technology.  The sensation was absolutely unbearable, as Mirth couldn't even walk around her own apartment barefoot, because her feet were so amazingly sensitive.  Mirth babbled in tongues that could not be recognized by human scholars.

Tears streamed down her face, as Mirth realized that Sun was not going to let up on her until she escaped.  Panic began to overtake her and she wondered if people could really be tickled to death.

That theory was currently being tested on the Agency's field.

Mirth couldn't think straight, all she could do was laugh helplessly as scores of her future classmates looked on in interest and horror as their new colleague was being tormented unlike anything they'd ever seen before.  They'd never seen a girl react quite like that to being tickled.  But none of them had ever been on the receiving end of the Tickle-Prods either.

Her vision started to fade, she was losing consciousness.  All she could feel was unbearable tickling sensations on her feet as she writhed and twisted in the mud.  She could not get the leverage to escape, and no matter how she kicked, could not free herself from the ankle bonds.  The pain of struggling against the bonds no longer existed, as all she could do some scream and laugh.  There was no other sensation.

She stopped begging for mercy in part because she knew there would be none, and second because she lacked sufficient air to make sounds.  Mirth began to formulate a plan, and it started to make sense to her.

Then the sensations started all over again, and Mirth's conscious thoughts ceased.  She could not stand the tickling sensations on her soles and lost her focus on her plan.  All embarrassment went right out the window.  She could be naked at this point in time, and she wouldn't even have noticed.  No one else in the world existed right now, only the tickling.  Only that unbearable sensation.

The students began to murmur amongst themselves.  Perhaps this had gone too far.  In the beginning this test was hot.  The frosh had been stripped of her clothes, and she was fighting in the mud.  But now it had almost slipped into the depths of the macabre as two Tickle-Prods had reduced this girl into something that didn't seem human anymore after 3 straight minutes of tickling.  There were three separate occasions that the frosh seemed like she would pass out, but then Sun would reset the controls, and she be wide awake, screaming with laugher again, just like she did when he first turned the Tickle-Prods on her.

After a time, Mirth began to panic again.  There was something else welling up inside of her.  The sexual energy from her predicament had began to build up, and she sensed it would send crashing waves of sensation all over her if she didn't do something soon.  The waves started to build, as she shook her head and laughed with all her might.

Her laughter suddenly ceased, and Mirth, sensing a coming total loss of self control, began to detach.  A dull blue aura around her body swelled up and sent out a million beams of penetrating light through the field on which she was being tickle tortured.  A wave of pure energy exploded from Mirth, knocking Sun back 10 feet and destroying the metal wickets holding her down.  Acting as though nothing had happened, Mirth casually stood up, walked over to grab her sword, and approached Sun.  With no passion left in her eyes, she raised her sword up, as though she were ready to strike the death blow on her master.

The crowd did not utter a word.

Sun raised his hand, smiled warmly at Mirth.

"My dear...you have passed."

Mirth's eyes were vacant, she appeared as a soulless puppet on the field.  It appeared to many that she would slay him right then and there.  Even though there were several men nearby, none believed they could have taken her out at that point. 

This phrase from her master seemed to suddenly jerk her back into reality.

With a look of shock she collapsed onto the ground into a fit of giggles.

"The grass...it tickles!"  she said simply.  Sun looked down at his pupil, who was now a grand master before the world.  He shook his head, smiled, and picked her up into his arms, and showed her off to the crowd, who broke into applause at the announcement of her certification.

And so began the legend of the youngest grand master ever;  whose feet became so ticklish after the trials that she couldn't even stand on grass for the rest of the week.