Eberron - Bronze: When bugbears attack! [Episode 139625]

“There he is!” announced a brutish voice, and when Ranma looked up he saw that it belonged to a suitably brutish lout.   It was one with a black button of a nose dominating a heavily jowled face framed by thick spiky brownish hair, and bearing a broad, toothy mouth that said, “we’ll teach this scum to go messing with our minotaur brethren.”

“But Grunthaar,” whined one of the three flunkies gathered behind the leader of the pack, “isn’t we fighting whiff them Bloody Horns?”

For an answer the leader swatted the questioner’s leather cap with his morningstar, a wicked looking ‘spiked ball on a stick’ which Ranma automatically cataloged as being rather unwieldy but somewhat dangerous in the wrong hands, and the wickedly clawed mitts holding it were definitely the wrong hands.

“Now, that is a good question actually,” philosophically added the one known as Grunthaar.   “It is true that we is arguing over terry-tortilla rights with the Bloody Horns right now, but still, you knows what they say about our enemy’s enemy?”

“Yes, Boss, ‘they is our enemy’s enemy, no more, no less,’ right?” quoted another of the flunkies.

“Exec-try!” Grunthaar agreed.   “We can’t have a forged-lover thinking he can move in on our turf, can we now?   So what do you say boys, shall we teach them some mannerisms?”

“One, two, three, more, lots,” counted the third flunky.   “Er… I dun know boss.   I think they is out numbering us.”

“Boys, boys, boys, they is only some tin soldiers, a puny human, and a cowardly changer,” Grunthaar pointed out and flexed his massive biceps   “So, are you gobs or bugbears?”

“You know, you shouldn’t have wasted the element of surprise by standing around talking,” Karma advised as he slogged up and slammed his fist into the brutish leader’s jaw, causing the monster to wince slightly.

“Enlightenment comes through action,” agreed Tao as he dashed up to the nearest flunky to demonstrate, but the bugbear raised his shield just in time to ward off the blow, somewhat negating the point of the lesson.

Shrugging off the blow to his jaw like it was nothing at all, Grunthaar smirked and returned Karma’s blow with interest.   “You tin pots will have to do better than that,”   The warforged tank reeled back from the morningstar’s blows, sparks flying from the dents impacted in his composite plating.   “At ’em, Grunthaar’s Grunts!”

“Yar!   Take that you tool!” snarled the flunky Tao had attacked, striking him with slightly less force than his leader had mustered, but then Tao was not the party tank and he certainly felt the impact more.

“And you take this human!” growled another flunky as he launched a javelin and gaped as Ranma casually swatted the missile out of the air.

“Try catching this one,” snarled the third flunky.

“Why bother?” Ranma yawned, and leaned gently to the left so that the javelin flew passed to embed in the wall behind him.   “Feh, missed me by that much,” Ranma bragged and held his hands in a classic one-that-got-away gesture.   “Cheese.   I was hoping one of you would at have the guts to charge me or something.”

“There’s nothing wrong with softening up opponents with a ranged attack,” Arrow remarked and punctuated her point by punctuating a bugbear with her namesake.

“Indeed,” agreed Issandra, who followed suit with her own short bow but with less damaging accuracy.   In point of fact, it went wide.   Grimacing at her poor aim, she added, “it’s perfectly sound tactics.”   She left the fact that she didn’t see him doing anything floating in the air unsaid.

Zen quietly pulled out some flasks of oils, and busied himself doing the artificer equivalent of reaching for duct-tape.   “It looked like I’m going to be doing a lot of repair work today.   That is, if the city watch arrives before the 304^th is totally reduced to scrap metal by these bruisers.”   A rush of air startled him into looking up to an amazing sight.

“Nah, this is how you soften up the opposition,” Ranma grinned as he zipped across the distance so as to unleash a flurry of blows from in the midst of the pack.   Lazily slipping passed the two melee opponents at high speed, he knocked out the two javeliniers then concussing Tao’s opponent with a backhanded swipe.   “Ya see,” he drawled, “there’s nothing to it.”

Grunthaar grimaced to see half his brutish force clobbered so casually and Karma struck another minor blow for victory again in that moment of distraction.   Grunthaar continued to ignore him and focused his attention solely on the real threat.

Tao unleashed his own flurry against his opponent, an easily followed one-two light punch when compared to Ranma’s heavy-hitting blurred limbs, but it was just enough to finish the job his sensei had started and send the flunky off to the land of Dal Quor.

“What in Dolurrh…?” Grunthaar bellowed as he realised his goons had just been taken down practically single-handedly by the ‘puny human’, leaving him alone to face two minor annoyances, a pair of archers, and a mere human who had apparently been turned into a frightening bugbear-killing machine by the wizard-looking guy.     “Well, I guess there’s only one thing for me to do now.”