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Even a Tiger's Heart... — Description
Hours had passed, and all of TK's near-constant struggles had earned her nothing except a body full of sore muscles, chafed fur, and crushing fatigue. She'd worked up a fairly crushing case of despair as well, all her earlier self-assertions of unending defiance seeming more like childish arrogance now. Whoever this vile predatress was, she had a real knack for restraining people, that was clear. The pattern of the chains was almost darkly artistic, and they pinioned every fulcrum point of TK's body, exactly offsetting every possible movement she could make. She could wiggle her feet, twist her hands, turn her head a little...but that was about all. And if there had been any other motion TK could have made, she had no doubt she would have discovered it at some point during her grueling, eternal-seeming battle; she'd struggled every way she knew how. And in the end, she wasn't one inch closer to freedom than she had been when she started. It was almost enough to make even her want to cry...but she wouldn't give in to that kind of hopelessness, even now.

She sagged back after this latest abortive bid for freedom, an exhausted sigh huffing out around the bright red ball which sealed away her voice and breath, and by now left her jaw throbbing slightly. She was toying faintly with the notion of trying to take an actual nap, to try to recover some reserve of strength in case an opportunity presented itself later, when she heard the click of the door unlatching. Exercising one of her tiny ranges of movement, she turned her head to face toward the inevitable appearance of her sadistic tormentor. She didn't have to wait long, the vile white tigress creeping up and peeking around the door's edge in an exaggerated "stealthy" posture, as if looking in on a sleeping person one is afraid of waking.

"Still here, huh?" she asked with a tauntingly conspiratorial wink. "Can't say I'm surprised. Looks like you've been busy, though..." She snorted then, face crinkling up into a look of utterly mocking derision, "You didn't think ya actually had a chance, did ya?"

TK turned her head away, crushing despair creasing her face from brow to chin. She let out a hopeless sigh from behind the bright red ball, a sigh which was almost a whimper. This did nothing to slow the advance of the sadistic huntress who held TK in her merciless clutches. In fact, it may have encouraged her to pick up the pace a bit...not that TK really cared.

"Oh-oh... Looks like somebody's gettin' cwaaannkyy... You haven't been gettin' your rest..." her captor sneered in something close to a smile, and then brought up a black rubbery thing which looked suspiciously like the cup to an old-style dentist's gas mask. "Here... Lemme help ya with that..." The Grinch himself couldn't possibly have looked any more malevolent than the villainous she-tiger did as she stalked toward the hapless TK, brandishing her latest "weapon"...

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On to "Going Under for the Third Time"