It had been decided early on that the group should be small, leaving less trace of themselves as they penetrated enemy territory. Two Warlocks, experienced and powerful in their fell arts, who could put up the Ritual of Summoning to gather the rest of them. One Death Knight, a war-scarred hulk of an orc who used a double-headed axe surrounded by a crimson glow. One Warrior, a soldier with a decade of experience in conflicts and a pair of weapons that he kept well-fed. A Shaman, able to heal or command elements as needed. A single Hunter, a troll who generally preferred raptors but had acquired one of the local spiders to use.
Once in the designated target area, the Death Knight and Warrior would clear a perimeter while the Shaman kept an eye out and the Warlocks began their ritual. Inside enemy lines, they would then boil forth and take the objective. The Hunter was naturally on scout duty.
"Goldshire. Why the bluidy hell are we attacking Goldshire? Again?!"
"It's not even like we're blocking 'em from the Darkmoon Faire - that's next week."
"Now now," said the Shaman. "Look at it this way. It's good practice."
The Death Knight grunted at that. "Says the one person in this group that can self-resurrect."
"When have I ever let you down?" asked the Shaman.
"When we haven't got enough gold to pay you, goblin," answered the Death Knight.
"Someone else is footing the bill on this one," replied the Shaman. "Besides, you can't blame me for being mercenary or liking the clinking sound of gold coins gathered in my purse. It's a racial thing."
"Not this argument again," rumbled the tauren in their group. The Warrior shook his head at their antics. "Look, can we drop the whole 'my genetic make-up makes me this way' argument?"
"It still strikes me as odd that a big hulking tauren Warrior, who has seen battle in hundreds of conflicts, even knows what 'genetics' are," admitted the Shaman.
"Don't fight ALL the time," responded the tauren. "I started out just wanting to put myself through Druid studies. Never intended to make a career out of it."
"You lot are being too loud," hissed one of the two Forsaken Warlocks.
"Which one are you?" asked the goblin.
"Does it matter?" asked the undead.
"The living can't tell us apart, depressing that is," said the other Forsaken.
"It still kind of weirds me out that you can talk like that with your jaw hanging loose and dangling beneath your skull," said the goblin.
"So we've been told," said one of the two Forsaken.
"You think that's bad," rumbled the tauren. "The Cooking Trainer in Undercity has the same problem. Who the heck wants to learn Cooking from someone with a dried-out tongue and a nose that fell off into the soup pot and was never recovered?"
There was a brief silence from the group.
"Point taken," admitted the Death Knight. "I prefer the set up at Thunder Bluff anyway."
"Yeah, well at Thunder Bluff you start running across one of those rope bridges during a high wind day," complained one of the Warlocks. "Bridge starts swaying and you end up taking a dive off the mesa."
"No argument," said the tauren, surprising a few of them there.
"But... it's your capitol," noted the goblin.
"So? Stupid design," said the tauren. "Not that we're alone in that. Try to get anywhere in ANY of the capitol cities. Part of that is to be confusing to invading groups and providing choke points to gather guards at. Understand that. Rest of it's just poor design. Undercity you fall into glowing green goo regularly. One time I fell in and was hocking up green phlegm for two hours. Ogrimmar is set up so you've got to go miles out of your way to get to a place fifty feet past the back wall of your house."
"Amen, brudder," grumped the orc Death Knight. "If I go do my laundry in Ogrimmar it almost takes longer than if I Death Gate to Ebon Hold and then take flights to Undercity. Had to get a flight mount first chance I did. Then there's the flying problem. Have to clean hippogriff crap off yer roof."
"I wonder if the Alliance has the same problems," muttered the goblin.
The tauren nodded. "Yeah. Did a raid in Stormwind once, think the same architect designed Ogrimmar. Found a nice bookstore there though. May have to do a raid again for fresh reading material."
"You can read?" asked the Shaman.
"Got a special pair of glasses that translates written languages," admitted the tauren. "Damn handy."
"Also on the list of proscribed items from the Warchief," noted the Death Knight.
"You don't tell anyone about my glasses," said the Warrior, "and I won't tell anyone about that night elf porn in your backpack."
The Death Knight gasped.
"Oh come on, everyone's got something like that," said the goblin. "If they arrested everyone who had one or two little contraband items - there wouldn't be anyone left outside the jails."
"I..." The Warlock stopped. "Oh hell. Group of Alliance ahead."
"So? We just kill 'em and hide the bodies," said the Death Knight, unlimbering his axe.
"I'm using my Eye of Kilrogg," said the Warlock. "Two of them are coming up with 'Unidentified' on the scan."
"Must be some sort of spell-glitch or maybe a veil-type spell on them to confuse things," offered the other Warlock. "When in doubt - attack."
"So, anyway, this is Duskwood," said Dekthena, indicating the gloomy forest stretching out to either side of the road. "There are several places where there are 'weak points' attuned to the realm of the dead. Ghosts, darkspawn, skeletal warriors, feral worgen, and various forms of undead tend to pop up all over the place here."
"S-s-seriously?" asked a suddenly nervous Naruto.
"Hmmm, yes," said Dekthena. "I'm curious to see an old elven portal here. Been shut down for ages but I've never quite learned what it was for."
"You mean Twilight Grove?" asked the night elven Huntress. "Corrupted portal to the Emerald Dream."
"I have to admit that I don't really understand the Emerald Dream," admitted Dekthena.
"Oh," said the Huntress. "Well that's complicated. It involves the Titan race and-"
At which point she was interrupted by lightning slamming into her.
"Ambush!" realized Dekthena aloud as she cast a Frost Armor spell on herself.
"What the Nether? Scan that kid!"
"He's got a demon sealed inside him? Strong one too."
"Change of plans. We can raid Goldshire some other time. We gotta capture that kid and experiment on him!"
The lesser of the two Warlocks nodded and tapped a sigil on his arm, setting up a party communication. "Change of plans guys. Target is the yellow-haired kid. Snatch and run. Details when we're on the move."
"This better be good," grumbled the orc Death Knight as he activated one of his favorite abilities. Didn't matter how much someone leapt around, if he still had a line-of-sight he could grab them with a rope of energy and pull them in.
The kid made an odd spellcasting gesture, then there were dozens of him suddenly charging across the battlefield.
Which really didn't do him a lot of good as the Hunter had already tagged him with that mark.
Hmmm. Looks like the old guy was actually fairly formidable. Good, this was going to be too easy otherwise.
He hadn't been too sure what was going on with the ambush to begin with. His first thought had been that this had been set up by one of those with him, perhaps that priestess, intent on betraying the others. He'd worked with ninja primarily after all.
The theory that this was a betrayal lasted a few seconds at most. Their "Hunter" was still trying to get up after being thrown about by that Lightning Release technique when a bull-man charged in and pinned her to the ground with a two-handed sword of unfamiliar design. The bull-man then charged after the next target, which was the mage he'd met earlier.
Dekthena had used two jutsu in rapid order. The first had been some sort of cold technique centered on herself, then some other jutsu which had sent a pair of intertwining missiles of white energy corkscrewing at the charging bull-man. Who had shrugged it off and backhanded the mage with enough force that Jiraiya would be surprised if the horned girl would be able to fight any time soon.
The two heavily armored figures were the obvious targets, in fact they seemed to draw attention their way. Naturally, as he WAS an experienced ninja, Jiraiya did his best to disengage and then go after the other potential enemies.
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(Posted Thu, 16 May 2013 15:18)
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