First, he had woken up and found out that he couldn't move much at all. He'd managed to get his eyes open, but he couldn't move so much as a single finger or toe. He couldn't even look in a different direction or blink. He wasn't rigid though, more like loose and flopping all over the place.
It felt as if he had been tied up with wire as a further precaution.
When he'd been thrown across the back of the odd mechanical mount of the green guy, he'd taken an involuntary whizz because he couldn't even hold those muscles in place.
The green short guy had apparently thought that was funny from the grin.
That the green guy had managed to hit every bump and pothole, Naruto was pretty sure that had been deliberate.
Worse, he'd begun to drool with his mouth hanging slack open. So now he was dehydrated as well.
He was going to die here in a world without ramen.
Finally he'd been stuffed into some kind of bag. He couldn't see anything but the inside of the bag, smelling his own bowels having cut loose at some point, and his sense of hearing was the only thing telling him a darn thing at this point.
Except now there was a lot of heat coming from somewhere outside the bag. How lovely.
If he'd been able to speak, he would have asked how this day could get any worse.
"Jump for it!" yelled Nerten, goblin Shaman. Frankly his experiences in Pandaria had bored the crap out of him. He had hoped for more excitement out of this raid. That this wasn't working out was pretty much beside the point.
One of the two Warlocks made it as the zeppelin "Iron Eagle" swung past the tower at Grom'gol. The other missed and ended up in the water.
The one that had made it watched as several Alliance mounts angled towards the fallen one. "Damnit. I'll get even with them."
"We lost the Warrior and Death Knight in the assault, I haven't seen the Hunter since then either," said Nerten. "How's the prisoner?"
The bag was slung around and peered into. "Still alive. Use the Ritual of Summoning when we get to Ogrimmar, we'll need more to transport our prisoner then."
Jiraiya watched the blimp sailing away before he scribed out a quick Fire-Seal and put out the flames surrounding him. He had been THAT close to grabbing Naruto and getting away when something had tipped off his presence to one of these 'Warlocks' and he'd started laying out Fire Release techniques.
He'd managed to trip one of the two Warlocks as they'd tried to flee, but without a flight technique he was stuck watching as the ship with Naruto dwindled into the distance.
"Get on!" said the Priestess, landing nearby. "We're going after him."
"Is there room?" asked Jiraiya.
"Hang on," said the Priestess, making a gesture. Her eagle-lion thing vanished and an odd mechanical contrivance appeared. This, however, had a second seat. "Get in. We're going to link up with a raid group. Otherwise we can't get anywhere near Ogrimmar."
"Just bring me close, I'll handle the rest," said Jiraiya.
"You sure? All the major cities have people with stealth-breaking abilities." The Priestess quickly gained altitude, putting her alongside a staff-wielder on a flying carpet and a plate armor wearing man with facial tendrils and an enormous hammer riding a flying cat.
"I'm sure, I have a few tricks up my sleeve," said Jiraiya.
"Ogrimmar. I knew coming here would be trouble," complained Nerten, the goblin Shaman nonetheless managing to keep far off to the side and not say that particularly loudly.
"Man, this guy reeks!" said one of the orcs, taking the hume child out of the bag and then holding him at arm's length.
"Yeah," said another orc as she examined the kid. "Huh. Paralysis seals. Not bad work but you should have left bladder and bowel control. At least you allowed for the breathing muscles. Hold him there while I make a few cuts."
"He ain't gonna bleed out, is he?" asked a third orc who was drawing sigils on the floor.
"Nah, hand me that torch," said the female. "I can fix that. Don't need to keep those arms and legs though. Or his tongue."
"Well, don't make a mess," said the sigil writer. "I'm coding additional containment lines and a hexalobed protective matrix."
Another orc entered the room, who growled when everyone stopped and bowed. "STOP THAT NONSENSE. Just tell me what you've got and how this is worth even one minute of my time."
"Mighty Hellscream," said the woman, giving a fist-salute as she spoke, "this child has sealed within him one of the most powerful demons we've ever seen."
"More powerful than an annihilan?" asked Garroth Hellscream.
"Much," said the orc woman. "Many times more powerful even than Mannoroth the Destructor."
"Interesting," said Garroth. "You said 'sealed within him'? Sealed how?"
"We're working on that, sir," said the orc woman. "The seal itself appears to be a space/time warping that imprisons the demon there. When we pull the demon free, we've taken care to leave the prison itself intact so that we can study it later. In the meantime, we can use this powerful demon to devastate the Alliance."
"Don't promise me results you can't keep," growled Hellscream. "How are you planning on keeping it prisoned?"
"We have everything ready," said the sigil writer, putting a final flourish into place and then examining his work for any signs of imperfection. "The beast will be cut off from the Nether entirely. There is not a beast in the Twisting Nether that could break even the first circle of the prepared cage. I've added another layer just as a precaution as well as control spells capable of conquering even the strongest minds."
"That is why we brought the child here, to where your strongest Warlocks have been preparing this lab for over a decade," said the orc woman.
"Very well, I shall be at my throne. Inform me of your success as soon as you are certain the beast is properly caged," announced Garrosh Hellscream.
Jiraiya tried using pure stealth first, then his transparency technique, then a toad for transport.
The last got him through the gates but then the toad, a small one who hadn't even gotten a name yet, was killed. He'd had to wait a good five minutes before chancing his exit from the unfortunate in order to escape the corpse.
That said, he found himself pretty much trapped in the outskirts of the city. Armed patrols everywhere.
[Dekthena whispers 'Are you in?']
Jiraiya blinked. "Wha?"
[Dekthena whispers 'Use reply.']
"How exactly," muttered Jiraiya, "am I supposed to Reply?"
[Dekthena whispers 'So, are you in?']
"I'm going to have to figure out this communication method," grumbled Jiraiya under his breath.
[Dekthena whispers 'I thought so. Well, at least I know this is working.']
Jiraiya paused and then very calmly and quietly responded. "You can hear me?"
[Dekthena whispers 'Yes. I realized that neither you nor your student have surviving spellbooks. I requested a couple of starting ones. That was the book I had you sign just before you snuck in.']
"Ok," muttered Jiraiya. "Something else I have to research. In the meantime, I'm going to need a diversion."
[Thordra whispers 'Try using 1 - Local Area']
"I'll look into all this later," whispered back Jiraiya. "In the meantime, there are a lot of guards around here. I'll need some sort of diversion to get past them. What have you got?"
At which point the ground quaked, a feeling of nausea and wrongness shot past him, and what sounded like a massive explosion occured.
Jiraiya peeked over the top of a wall, and saw the Kyubi rampaging its way through the city. "Okay. Too much diversion."
It felt the attempts to contain it, to command it, and to suppress it. However, it was like trying to use a heat transfer system on a high voltage powerline. It took less than a moment to find a weak point and break free.
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(Posted Thu, 23 May 2013 16:50)
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