"Warchief?" asked the Kor'kron Elite guard, nodding toward Chieftain Drek'Thar dozing against the wall of Grommash Hold. "Should we wake him?"
"That won't be necessary," responded Thrall, half-smiling over at Vol'Jin. "The journey from Garadar has taken a lot out of my old friend. I see no harm in letting him rest."
"Yeah, woman," said Shadow Hunter Vol'Jin with more than a touch of irony. "Let da old man have his nap. We not doin' anyt'ing important wit'out him." He yawned and stretched, his troll form towering over everyone else in the room for the few moments he was actually standing straight up. "Jus' anotha lazy day in da Horde, right? Nothin' ta do..."
It was at that point that a purple-haired human female appeared in the center of the chamber, holding a paper carton up to her lips. For a moment, everyone froze. Her eyes went wide as she scanned the guards around her and their very large, very dangerous-looking axes, and the room as so quiet she thought she could hear her pupils dilate. Her fingers slackened ever so slightly and the milk carton fell to the floor, spilling white liquid onto the dirt floor.
"Human!" shouted the guard. "Assassin! DEFEND THE WARCHIEF!" There was a sound of metal sliding against leather as their axes were brought to the ready, and a sound of bare feet against dirt as the purple-haired girl sprinted for the doorway.
"Huh? Mm? What? What's going on?" asked the elder shaman, roused to wakefulness by the shouting about two seconds too late.
Shampoo ran. She ran like Hell.
Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap oh CRAP. It had to be now, didn't it? It had to be today. She had just about resigned herself to the fact that she wasn't going to have another trip to the faraway land of Azeroth, that she would never sit next to Drek'Thar by a campfire and listen to him relay the voice of the elements, that she'd never describe what a sunset looked like to him again. And then she was taken back! Only she wasn't alone with her mentor this time, she was with a bunch of armed, angry green-skinned Orcs, the ones that he cautioned her did not like humans. And she was yanked from her reality right as she was drinking milk out of the carton, like Cologne had told her not to do a thousand times.
And now she was running through a weird, alien city of creatures that hated humans, a bunch of warriors on her tail, with no idea how to get out and no idea when she'd snap back to Earth. There was a massive suit of armor and equally huge, inhuman skull hanging on a tree, some trophy of what the orcs had killed; it looked like it came from something a hell of a lot harder to kill than her. She spotted a ramp on the wall of a canyon that several buildings had been built into and sprang up it; wherever you are, having the high ground is a good idea. Maybe she could find an unoccupied residence, or at least someone alone she could get the drop on.
Yeah. Today was gonna be a greeeeeat day.
"People of the Horde!" shouted Warcaller Gorlach to the crowd milling about between the auction house and the bank. "Be alert! We have recieved reports that a human has infiltrated the city of Orgrimmar and is currently at large!"
A scrawny undead woman in priest's robes raised her bony arm. "I'm a human!" she added cheerily.
The massive Orc warrior standing next to her rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. "No, Susannah. You're an undead human. They're different. We've been through this."
"Oh." She raised her hand again. "Never mind!"
"Riiiiight..." Gorlach blinked. "The human is believed to be an assassin sent to slay our Warchief and must not be allowed to remain and regroup! She has long, purple hair covering her ears, ornamented with two metal spheres, and may attempt to disguise herself as a Blood Elf. She was last seen running toward the Drag, wearing a silken red shirt and leggings, and any warrior who captures her will be handsomely rewarded!"
"It's a shame," said the undead priestess as she walked away, "why would humans want to assassinate the Warchief? Don't they know we're allies?"
The warrior beside her slapped his forehead and groaned.
Shampoo ducked into the second floor of an empty wooden hutch and caught her breath and collected her thoughts. She was brave, but she wasn't an idiot; she had no choice but to run from those warriors. But she also had to have been running from Drek'thar as well; she'd appeared next to him every other time.
And every other time it'd had been one year apart, not three. Maybe the rules were different. Or maybe Drek'thar was standing right behind her, but she doubted she had time for him to explain before she was hacked to pieces. None of that mattered. She needed to keep her head and keep herself alive. If she could find Drek'thar and he could vouch for her, great. First concern, don't get cut in half. If she had a bucket of water, she could quietly slink out as a cat...
She heard footsteps and, realizing there was nothing in the hut to hide behind, pressed herself against the wall hoping not to be seen -- but readying her bonbori in case she was.
The footsteps came closer, closer, and Shampoo's entire body tensed. The footfalls came to the doorway and stopped, Shampoo held her breath... and then dived forward to the floor, narrowly avoiding the swing of a serrated axe that cleaves through the doorway and would have taken off her head.
Shampoo rolled to her feet in the center of the room, adopting a combat stance. A powerfully-built Orcish woman wearing armor adorned in wolf's pelts and bearing the axe that had nearly decapitated the displaced Chinese girl. Three long purple hairs slowly drifted to the floor.
"Cowardly assassin," sneered Frostwolf Ambassador Rokhstrom. "You should have known you could not hide from the might of the Horde, not within our own capital." She readied her weapon for another swing.
"Aiyah!" Shampoo protested. "Shampoo not assassin! Shampoo not know why came here either -- let Shampoo talk to shaman Drek'thar, knows Shampoo mean no hurt!"
"Sent to slay Drek'thar, is it? Either way, you won't get another chance." The Orc smiled menacingly. "Either you will submit to the justice of the Horde, or you will resist too hard, and you will die here." She chuckled. "And your Orcish is terrible."
Orcish? Shampoo had been speaking Japanese... though it was pretty weird that Orcs from some other world would be speaking it too, but Shampoo had no time to ponder it. The Orc lunged forward with another horizontal slice, and now Shampoo was purely fighting, on a complete adrenaline rush. She backflipped out of the way of the attack and as Rokhstrom recovered from her swing, Shampoo closed in and rained blows upon her with her twin bonbori -- not hoping to really harm her, but just stun her long enough to get away. With a growl, Rokhstrom pushed the girl away with her free hand to get some room between them. Then, she spoke a word in a language that wasn't Japanese or Orcish -- it was what Drek'thar called Kalimag, language of the elements. And around her, she could hear the elements wakening, responding to her call!
Shampoo felt a horrid chill wrack her body, piercing to her very bones, as the spirits of ice struck at her at Rokhstrom's command. She could see the skin under her fingernails turn blue. The shaman smiled and began a longer invocation, this one to the spirits of the storms. The air charged around her, the room smelled of ozone. Shampoo's ice-chilled arms could barely lift her heavy maces, but she had to stop the shaman's spell before she was electrocuted... so she winced her eyes shut and kicked Rokhstrom in the stomach, knocking the breath out of her.
"You're more skilled than I thought..." gasped the shaman, right before Shampoo used the opportunity to knock her over.
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(Posted Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:07)
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