To understand the Gai Shift & to review the characters in this story, check out this useful guide: Gai-Shift Encyclopedia of Knowledge
Chapter 1: Kiyoko
She drifted silently down the polished hall of the Imperial Palace, white and pure and silent. Her compact body was carefully swathed like a silk-wrapped vase within her snow-white kimono. In contrast was her jet black hair, parted across her forehead like raven wings, sweeping back neatly into a rounded pin-held bun, the black a contrast to the white.
Her face as placid and clear as a lake yet her narrowed eyes were constantly in motion, scanning every corner and every shadow, ever watchful. The lips of her tiny mouth remained pursed and silent.
She was known to staff of servants of the Imperial Palace as Kiyoko, only through reputation, not introduction. She was a white orchid. She was feared and respected.
And troubled.
Her mistress whom she protected, the Empress, was playing a very dangerous game with the foreigners. This 'Japanese Crisis', as the westerners called it, was a risk the island nation could ill-afford. Of all the women to become infatuated with, why that one? Why the English Ambassador?
Our way is not to question. Our way is to serve, spoke the image of her sensei, with her always. The elderly woman had been a child in the days before the shift. Even now, in advanced years, she was as nimble as a deer, as clear-witted as a scribe. She'd trained Kiyoko, teaching her the ways of silk and rope and knot. And now, even with hair as white as Kiyoko's clothing, the woman still enjoyed hunting through the darkened countryside, occasionally carrying away farm-mannis for lengthy interludes of robust pleasure. It was rumored these peasants hoped for kidnap and use by the woman they called 'the velvet ghost'.
Service was the white orchid way. But the mistress she guarded made it so difficult.
As if to confirm this, she slid open a panel and looked inside. A Zen-empty room containing only a futon. And upon it lay the English Ambassador, now plaything to Empress Nabuki of Greater Japan.
The woman had soft brown hair, usually bunned but frayed by duress. Her face was a pale oval, her eyes like samurai steel, a distant gray, her nose and chin clipped square, her teeth like tiny pearls. She'd been stripped of all clothing and left to languish on her side, her limbs collected and bound fast behind her. Yet the Empress had added a playfully sexual touch - a single rope looped around the woman's tidy waist, diving down through her woman-place, parting its lips with a single dampening knot. This same rope, Kiyoko knew, continued its insidious tour of her body, crossing between her warm buttocks to loop around her wrists. Any motion at all would cause the knot to rub against her pearl, a playfully sadistic torment. Even though the captive had been lovingly gagged with a thick silk band, her eyes cried out in distressed excitement.
The Empress had been smitten by this pale westerner since the moment she'd clapped eyes on her. Ignoring the advice of both her council and Kiyoko, she'd taken to placing the poor woman into ropes each night, attempting to wear down her resistance, to turn the woman into her willing pillow-slave. Yet the Englishwoman showed spirit and would not bend. So the nights ran into weeks, the weeks into months, and now nearly a year had gone by.
Every night it was the same. Servant girls would come for her, gently taking away her clothing, leading her to this chamber. Here would wait the Empress, her hands filled with ropes, her heart with lust, her mind with cruel and degrading arrangements. And so would pass another long night for the poor woman, bound and helpless.
Kiyoko didn't think she could last much longer. No woman could. So her sensei had shown her.
Turning away from the desperate gaze, she closed the panel and resumed her patrol, making sure all was safe and secure.
Roughly an hour later she stopped into a small servant's area. Often she took a cup of tea there, silently sipping it while the maids trembled. She made sure to vary the times she came so as not to pattern her movements...
The three nubile girls were inside. Yet they lay nestled together against the far wall, every stitch of clothing replaced with cruel hemp ropes which pinioned arm and leg and breast and sex with tight coils. On the girls' nipples, the cause for their greatest suffering, were tiny jeweled clips. Frowning, Kiyoko stepped forward, unclipping one and looking closely at it, ignoring the girl's pained gasp. On the clip's face, carved intricately from black onyx, an orchid.
The black orchids!
They were here!
She shot the room as if she'd never been there, leaving the servants to their continued sufferings. The black orchids had come, likely using these girl's servant costumes to slip deeper into the palace!
They were the order opposite hers. White orchids served for duty. Black orchids served for money. It was a choice she'd made at the end of her training. She couldn't imagine deciding otherwise.
There was only one target the intruders could be after. Not the Empress; her residential wing was too well patrolled. But in this wing, there was only herself. Herself and...
She slammed open the panel to the chamber containing the Ambassador. A rope hung in the center of the room, wiggling as if to mock. Poised in the skylight, two black orchids, garbed in tight black kimonos, their faces obscured with leering theatrical masks, were just shifting the still-bound westerner through. One of them saw her, snapped her fingers, pointed at her.
From across the room, the third member of their team dashed forward like a shadow, to delay her pursuit.
Kiyoko tried to get to the rope first but the other girl was quicker, placing her back protectively to it. A slash of color as Kiyoko's opponent drew a long colored scarf from her sleeve, whirling back and forth in tight arcs. The white warrior knew if the other landed a blow with it, it could easily wrap around a wrist or ankle, the first grasp of an eventual capture. Nodding to herself, she snapped shorter scarves from both sleeves, whirling them around her like multicolored shields.
She darted in, snapping, aiming for any unguarded limb. The scarves crackled against each other. She darted left, then right, seeking an opening. The dark girl pivoted to track her, her mask emotionless, lashing out again and again with her ribbon of capture. One touch could doom her to captivity, or even worse.
Nobody wished to fall into the hands of the black orchids. Nipple clips were just one of their trademarks.
The woman was now snapping her wrist over her head, sending her pendant crashing into Kiyoko's defenses, driving her back, opening the distance. When she gained the separation she sought, she plucked her hand into the open bosom of her kimono, a flicking blur. Kiyoko barely saw the crystals in air, snapping her twin scarves at them by instinct. The pearl-weighted tips caught them individually in turn, breaking them, spraying their contents. She backed carefully from the hanging cloud. Had she been hit, had she inhaled the dangerous whiffs of the potent aphrodisiacs, she might have been undone. When one's sexual energies flared uncontrollably, it was almost impossible not to drop to a kneel, to offer one's wrists, to permit the bondage and molestation sure to follow.
She discarded her corrupted scarves, in the same motion snapping out a tiny jeweled bolo, letting fly. The other ducked, her mask flying away; a pretty face revealed. Yet the bolo caught her opponent's long scarf, carrying the silk away. The black warrior cursed, pulling forth a gossamer net tucked around her tiny waist. But it was a slow weapon, too slow for Kiyoko to wait for. A longer scarf flared from her sleeve, a single-handed throw. It caught the shadow-lass just under her breasts, whirling around her, pinning her arms. Kiyoko was quick to follow, leaping on her, pushing her facedown to the floor. Maintaining her pin, she pulled out the cords orchids of both fraction kept hidden about their bodies, capturing the failing hands and wrenching them behind the vanquished woman's back. With quick motions, she X-patterned the wrists, tucking an expedient knot just out of desperate reach. Then, pinning the other's legs between her strong thighs, she roped tight the ankles, winching the bare feet up and back into a tight hogtie. A smaller spool captured tiny pink toes. Only then did she turn and look with meaningful emptiness at the other.
"I won't talk," the black orchid declared, glaring back over her shoulder.
Kiyoko shrugged. Everyone talked. It was only a matter of time.
Without a word, she moved about behind the trim upraised legs, tucking them against her left shoulder like a pleasure-girl would a musical biwa. Wrapping her left hand with something like tenderness around the other's warm calves, she leaned her cheek down to cradle the edge of the other's soles. And then, with her long fingers, she began to play her fingertips across the other's flesh, a melody of nerve-tingling agony, the music of erotic torture.
The other squealed and twisted but Kiyoko held tight, feeling the warm feet tucked again her chin worm in desperation. Toes rippled in anguish across her shoulder blade. She just tightened her grip, strumming the tormented women-flesh, her eyes unfocused, her every sense reading the discomforts of her victim. It was so easy to mentally grid out the other's upraised feet, to sweep back and forth, to sense the betraying trembles, to find the tiny pores where the nerve endings lay shallow. The girl on the floor tried to falsify her laughter, to misdirect, but Kiyoko had suffered long days beneath her sensei's touch and was not so easily fooled.
To be tormented is to learn the ways of torment, her white-haired teacher had told Kiyoko, helpless within the tight grip of unforgiving ropes. How horrible the feather, the comb, the knowing, knowing fingertips...
She closed her eyes, wrapping herself in the shuddering helplessness tucked under her arm, the burning flesh locked against her rib. The feet took on a musky scent as tension forced perspiration from the skin. But still she swirled and tracked, feeling the girl below tremble with over-sensation, listening to her howls of laughter.
Perhaps she might have lasted longer, this black-clad intruder, had Kiyoko focused on simple tickling. A single assault can be turned, whereas a multi-front war can be lost on either theater. Thus she extended her shapely strong leg, her bare foot sliding along the helpless girl's inner thigh, riding up under the rumpled black kimono, slipping into the darkness. Kiyoko focused, edging it forward until she felt a brush of wetness on her toe. Nodding to herself, she tipped her foot on its side and eased it forward, big toe extended. The girl bucked in her bonds, her hips rising in shocked surprise, permitting Kiyoko the entry she sought. A warm wet tightness cupped her toe, the others brushing through the silky pubic hair. The girl wormed forward as if she could snake out of the room but she wasn't going anywhere. Kiyoko focused on the job at hand (or, rather, at foot), leaning her head on the girl's tingling feet, her own foot going where toys, the fingers of her black orchid cohorts, and the occasional manni slave might venture.
She moaned into the floorboards, this intruder, huffing and gasping and blushing as Kiyoko worked her this way and that. Her foot grew slick with natural lubricants as the girl built towards her climax. With hawk-like attention, Kiyoko monitored her, feeling her build towards frenzy. Then, at the absolutely cruelest moment, she let her foot go slack while bringing her fingers back into position. The poor girl below her felt the cessation and the first gentle brush. She screamed denial, a scream which changed to gusting, weeping laughter as the fingers worked across her helpless feet.
Twice more she changed over, from tickling to molestation and back. The trussed warrior could hardly cope with one before she switched. After ten endless minutes, tears slicked her cheeks, her fingers purpled with the strain, her voice rasped from her raw windpipe.
"Enough," she croaked. "East! They are leaving Tokyo to the east! That's all they told me! Please, you must believe me!"
Kiyoko leapt up, wiping her foot dry on the prone girl's back. Then she dashed from the room in pursuit of the kidnappers. She blew past a trio of naked, shaken servant girls, recently released from their bondage, flesh still branded by the ropes of their captivity, their nipples blushed from the abuse. Through the open panel they spotted the aggressor Kiyoko had abandoned, still trussed, still dazed. She looked up and saw broad smiles spread across three faces.
"Oh no. Please! Mercy!"
One of the girls picked up a discarded scarf and roughly gagged their new toy. The black orchid warrior, her feet still tingling, her pussy throbbing, her senses reeling, wondered how it could get any worse. Then she realized that the scarf she'd been gagged with was Kiyoko's, soaked with the pheromones it had deflected. And now their heady scent swept over her. She groaned a final time as she sank into willing submissiveness. Prepped and drugged, she would do anything to appease her three dominators.
As she would find out, she would do anything. And everything.
Meanwhile, Kiyoko bolted from the palace into the night.
27.09.09
story continues in Gai Shift - Orchid 2: The Black Orchids
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