"In that case," said the stout fellow, hefting his two-handed blade. "I'll be smashing the restraint ward. Keep an eye out though - I've heard of Gul'dan before - and he be pissier than three cats with their tails tied together. Ye also can't trust him further than ye could toss him."
The large orc in the restraining field made a face, opened his mouth to refute the charges, then shrugged. Actually there was a lot of truth to that.
"So why let him go?" asked Naruto.
"Because the drain on his life is powering that gate overhead," said the stout fellow.
"You," said Gul'dan, peering through the shimmer. "I know you. Thoram Stormhammer."
"You've heard of me prowess on the battlefield?" asked the stout guy.
"More like your misadventures in the bedroom?" chuckled Gul'dan. "Really? I have to wonder how much of that is true."
"Uhm, well, probably more than I would prefer," admitted Thoram. "Naruto?"
"Done!" said Naruto as all three of the stones broke.
Thoram broke the ward. Transparent walls shattered like glass.
Gul'dan was already making a gesture and green fire threw the dwarf into a wall.
"We just saved your sorry ass!" said Naruto, charging en masse.
"Idiot," said Gul'dan, blasting everything in the room with waves of green fire. When he was done he started walking towards a portal, only pausing once to look at Naruto. "Something... Bah. It doesn't matter."
"So," said Naruto as they waited. "You did something pervy?"
Thoram sighed deeply. "There was a war."
"You did something pervy during a war?" asked Naruto.
"I was one of several in a long-standing set of raids between the Horde and the Alliance," said Thoram. "Skirmishes turned into full-scale battles. After awhile, you begin to lose your edge. So I was rotated back to working at an important dock and flight hub."
Naruto waited for the guy to finish, but after about a minute decided to prompt. "And then?"
"A major ceasefire was arranged, Thrall may be an enemy but he has honor. We can work with that," said Thoram. "Exchange of prisoners, dead from both sides recovered so their remains can be honored by the standards of their society - that sort of things. A three-day affair."
"Oh?" prompted Naruto, settling back.
"Menethil Harbor," said the dwarf, glancing at Naruto. "I suppose you wouldn't understand the phrase 'one-rooster town' would ye?"
"No," agreed Naruto.
"Small town," said the dwarf. "Not much to do. So a bunch of us stationed there went to the one inn and got ourselves right royally plastered."
"Eh?" asked Naruto.
"Drunk," said the dwarf. "Drinking contest. Everyone trying to 'uphold the honor' of their unit or race or whatever. The gnome proved to be a tough challenger. Anywho - don't know how it ended. People say that the gnome won, but I suspect he might not have been playing entirely fair. Anyway, I woke up around noon the next day. It was cold and wet and rainy with a window open."
"I have a feeling I know where this goes," said Naruto.
"Aye," said the dwarf. "It turned out I was in bed with three bonnie night elves. SISTERS in fact. Oi. I thought I was gonna die - and the Horde nowhere in sight!"
"I could see that," said Naruto, despite his tender of age of twelve there were certain things that HAD been pounded into his skull. Such as the fact that girls could hit HARD.
"Well, it turned out that we'd gotten married," said the dwarf. "So I tried to do the right thing. Except me sister went absolutely positively ape-crap. She's a priest and engineer, ye know. Had bombs being thrown at me when'eer I tried doing anything near Ironforge. That be the dwarf city by the way."
Naruto nodded sagely.
"So, I just got a cease-fire on THAT front for the duration of this little war against the Iron Horde," explained Thoram. "One of the sisters hangs around me a lot. One can barely stand being anywhere near me but at least is a little less hostile than me sister. The third. Well. She's weird."
"No details?" asked Naruto.
"Ye aren't old enow for that," said the dwarf, shaking his head. "Then there are the rumors, the mother-in-law, and a crazy ex-boyfriend that keeps trying to 'avenge his sweet pea's honor' or some fool thing."
"Huh," said Naruto. "Here they come."
"Good, we need to keep moving," said the dwarf, arching his back until he heard a pop. "Ah. Khadgar. What's up?"
"You dealt with the warlock eye, and rescued the prisoners, but now we have to fight our way through that arena over there," said Khadgar.
"YOU HAVE ENTERED MY ARENA, STRANGERS! YOU WILL EITHER LEAVE IT AS VICTORS, OR AS CORPSES!"
"Hmph," said Sasuke, flinging a kunai at the source-of-loud.
The large orc grabbed it out of the air, engulfing the entire thing in one fist. "What was that supposed to do?"
KA-BOOM!
"That," said Naruto. "Sasuke. Even I admit. You have your moments."
"KILL THEM ALL!" roared the large orc.
"AHHHHH! Now they're mad! This is all your fault Naruto!"
"How?" asked Thoram, not seeing that.
"Is this a human mating ritual?" asked the blue woman.
"NO!" shouted Sakura.
Sasuke merely waited for the first of the crowd of orcs to reach him and then began slashing with a kunai.
"TEME! CATCH!" said Naruto, tossing something his way.
Sasuke casually caught it, before realizing it was one of the large swords that some of the attackers were trying to kill him with. Except this one looked a little better maintained.
Glancing over, he saw Naruto was using a spear he'd gotten in a similar manner.
"Pfeh," said Sasuke to himself. Not useless after all. For the moment. The extra reach and weight would be handy in this sort of melee - just to hold off some of these opponents.
"Sakura-chan! Catch!"
"YAAAAAAAA! What are you trying to do, kill me?!"
"You are in range of my divination! Ten palms!"
"Hinata! Catch!"
"Oh. Um. Ten stabs?"
"AAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Oh. Uhm. I'm sorry! I didn't mean to stab you THERE. I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
Sasuke noticed that the crowd of bodies surrounding Hinata was suddenly a lot less. Interesting tactic. "Great Fireball!" Not that HE would stoop to such things.
Odd that after a few minutes of the battle, it suddenly had become a lot easier to predict where the attacks were going.
"Finish that up quickly," said the orc, looking at the remains of his hand as bandages were wrapped around it.
"It needs time to heal," said the female orc.
"I will hunt that red-eyed whelp down and I will rip his head off with this very hand," growled the orc. "I will take the name Blackhand now - to mark that my days of spending hours at the arena are over. Now I shall kill by my own hand."
Blackhand looked at the remains of that hand. Maybe get a black metal hand to replace it. With claws. And a small white cat to stroke while having prisoners tortured. That had a strange appeal to it somehow.
"Okay, what have we got?" asked Thoram. "These kids need some better equipment than what they got."
"Well, we need equipment for all the escapees too," noted Thrall.
"I don't mean the equipment we're scavenging here," said Thoram. "These weapons here are kinda crude but serviceable. Armor is a right mess. Need a few days to fit things better. No - what have we got that we can bring in from private storage?"
"Nothing," said Khadgar. "It's taking everything I have just to do local mass teleports through their shielding."
"Could ye send two of them kiddies back to Stormwind?" Thoram made a gesture. "The pink one has been complaining about being in battle, and that dark girl not that confident."
"I've not been paying that much attention to the children, since there are enough other things demanding my attention," said Khadgar.
"Understand that," said the dwarf with a huff. "Tha's why I'm bringing it up to ye."
"Why just two, not all four? Not that it wouldn't be more draining on my part." Khadgar glanced over at where three of the kids were all together.
"The two boys have been a bit more at home with it all," said Thoram. "The yeller-haired one, Naruto, wants to be a great hero of his people. Whate'er a ninja is. The black-haired one I still haven't heard his name but he seemed to take to combat like a dwarf to mining."
"Not all dwarves learn mining," said Khadgar.
Thoram shrugged. "Those of us who do - we do real well at it. Same with that boy. Natural talent or I'll eat me beard."
"I could send the two of them, but we'll need more of a break than I'm getting here," said Khadgar. "You're a jewelcrafter, right?"
"Aye," admitted Thoram. "Ye need something along those lines?"
"No, but if you've got an alchemist, I am running low on mana potions," admitted Khadgar.
Naruto rejoined his three fellow shinobi with a happy grin. "What's up, guys?"
"Sasuke unlocked his Sharingan during the fight," said Sakura, her tone indicating this was going into her 'why Sasuke is so awesome' file.
"Hn," indicated Sasuke proudly.
"That's good, I guess?" tried Naruto.
"Sakura found a headband?" pointed out Hinata.
"Oh just some guy sneaking around and heading for the mages, I stopped him," said Sakura. She'd think about all that later and quietly freak out. All she'd done was hit him with a few shuriken and he'd been finished off by one of those blue goat-women. And she'd picked up something weird.
| Nekomimi Hairband Item Level: ??? Soulbound Head 23 Armor +15 Intellect +15 Agility +15 Haste +25 Perception Double auditory range +10% Experience Speak With Felines "A holy item of an ancient cult of catgirl worshippers."
|
"So, do we know anything more about this situation?" asked Sakura. "Why are we even here?"
"We're here because you messed up Naruto's fuuinjutsu," said Sasuke. Also deciding not to comment on the cat ears on Sakura's head, or how they flicked and moved like real ears. Or the impulse to scratch them. The path of an avenger was not one that dealt with such things.
"Ack!" Sakura had really been hoping Sasuke had forgotten that particular opinion.
"Uhm, yeah, actually," said Naruto. "I'm still sorting it out, but I've had shadow clones listening in all over the place. Apparently there are these two groups of people. One's called 'Horde' and the other's called 'Alliance' - they're frequently at war. The Alliance is the one with humans, but right now there's a group drawn from both cooperating against this group which split off from the Horde - called the Iron Horde."
"A splinter faction?" asked Sakura.
"Yeah! That's what that 'Thrall' guy called it," said Naruto with a nod. "Anyway, at one point this 'Horde' was headed by a guy named 'Garrosh Hellscream' and apparently he screwed over his own guys and there was an uprising. He did some time-travel thingie and went back to make his vision for his group the only vision and got this Iron Horde thing started. And now that group is trying to invade the future."
"How can you travel to the past and invade your present?" asked Sakura. "Are you sure you have that right?"
"I asked Thoram and he said 'anything involving time travel is gonna be really damn confusing'," said Naruto.
"Whatever, I just think you must not have heard right," said Sakura.
"Anyway, we're going into this past to keep them from attacking us," said Naruto. "Oh, and Thrall wants to cave in that Hellscream dude's head because he feels that he was betrayed by Hellscream and its personal. Kinda. I get the feeling there's lots of issues involved."
Hinata pointed. "They're ready. I think they're going to try and take that big tank over there."
"Cool! I wanted to try and fire those big guns!" said Naruto.
"Hm," hmmmed Sasuke, thinking that didn't sound like a bad idea at all.
"Hmph. So immature, isn't he, Sasuke-kun?" said Sakura, not even looking in that direction.
"Naruto-kun!" said Hinata, glancing at Sakura and then at the two boys running off to go talk to a dwarf engineer and then go racing in the direction of the big device.
"Oh, you must be the two who wanted to go to Stormwind," said someone they hadn't met before. She gathered a glow between her hands. "Here goes."
"Yes!" said Sakura.
"Wa-"
Zorp!
"-it," finished Hinata. They were in a stone room?
"So, this is that 'Stormwind' place?" asked Sakura. "Wait. Where's Sasuke?"
Sasuke decided he loved cannon.
"Tanks coming up over the ridge!" shouted out Yrel from way down there where the goat-girl was blocking an orc's axe with her shield.
"Already on it," said Sasuke, spinning the two controls that changed the direction and angle of the large tube in front of him. He then pulled the trigger, sending spheres of rumbling death at the much smaller vehicles.
Yes, decided Sasuke to himself, he rather liked this. Not so much the shots coming at him from those vehicles below him. The whole height advantage and raining destruction down upon his enemies was nice.
"Hah hah!" called out Naruto. "Hit one of those places they store the bombs in a few times and it goes up real nice!"
Glancing at the series of explosions that Naruto's turret had just caused, Sasuke nodded. Not bad. Pointed out a weakness of this particular type of weapon though. If he ever faced enemies with such things, he'd have to get an explosive tag or two into their supply of this "powder" they used.
"WHAT'S THIS?!" yelled someone on a ridge. "Get those bombs up against the -"
That was all the time he had to get out before Naruto and Sasuke both directed repeated fire upon that position. Obvious target being obvious and all.
"Oh damn," said Naruto a moment later. "I lost count!"
"Oh?" indicated Sasuke, spotting a particularly well-armored orc charging their defensive line. His Sharingan spun for a few moments as he calculated angles and directions. Then he fired. The explosion threw the armored orc to the nearest group of bombs which exploded and threw him further along to another set of bombs which exploded and threw the armored figure (now trailing smoke) into the waters near the docks.
"Show off," grumped Naruto.
"I got it set up," said their dwarven engineer, Theiren if Sasuke remembered correctly. "One of you two, hit that red switch!"
Sasuke grinned as he easily beat Naruto to the device.
A moment later, the gate came down.
Then came the whole "escape from hordes of outraged barbarian orcs" thing.
Rather predictable really.
"Right, now that the garrison's set up, we've got a few odds and ends to do," said Thoram. "Now comes training and missions and such."
"Learning awesome jutsu?! Sign me up!" said Naruto enthusiastically.
"Hmm," indicated Sasuke.
"We just need to find out what kind of specialized training you're going to learn here," said Thoram.
"Oh, like those glowing hammers and stuff?" asked Naruto.
"Yeah, judging from the way ye be going into fights - I be thinking Protection Paladin. Well, we'll see." Thoram sighed. More work actually.
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(Posted Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:48)
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