Shh, I'm Trying to Think Here [Warcraft][Others][SI]

[d.fish]

Chapter 11


… But it wasn't to be. Even though a human was almost fifty percent larger than a murloc, this one was perhaps a mutant murloc and it was twice the size of Daelin Proudmoore. That was to say, only half of its body was still stuck to the ship—the rest of it, including its limbs, were somewhere in the watery depths (or inside a different murloc's stomach, Jaina thought they ate each other, which might not be too off mark). The upper section of its skull was large enough to cover my head and then some, making it a rather leathery hood instead.

To be honest, I thought we looked rather cool, like a Sith in those flashy, shooty, swordy dramatic reenactments of wars in space that us Americans love so much. But Jaina just never stopped whining, "Ew. Ew, ew, ew. It smells like fish guts in here!"

"It is fish guts in here," I rolled our eyes and pushed away a bit of murloc lips out of our eyes.

"These sleeves are too big."

"They are not sleeves, they're supposed to be the mantelet," I grumbled.

"We already have a cape," Jaina pointed out.

I sighed again, "Damn it, it's fashion, it doesn't have to make sense!"

"Oh."

And 'Oh' was right, because I thought it looked awesome, so that was the way we were going. It was sort of like the cape-cloak that Medivh had in all those cut-scene cinematics, except with dragonhide and a murloc skin hood. Sure, the colors didn't quite match; the cloak itself was more of a pea green because of the prolonged soak the leathers had. The hood itself was was puke orange, with mustard yellow tentacle-spikes sticking out of it.

Jaina poked one of those tentacle-spikes and wondered, "What purpose do these fulfill, I wonder? Do you suppose it's for sensory purposes?"

"Eh." I shrugged. "Don't touch that. I've seen enough Japanese animation to know where that's going."

"Wha...?"

"I understand this is a new experience for you, but we're less than five minutes away from a possible life or death struggle. Do you really want to ponder on the mysteries of life now?" Because the moment she started focusing on it, I had the most uncontrollable urge to tug on one of those hardened tendrils.

They were thin as fingers and spiked on the end, no doubt with mild poisons like a jelly fish's tentacles. I knew the look of them; their brightly colored, almost translucent, pigmentation were definitely a way to ward off larger predators. After all, why have murlocs, who had bred so much that they were considered the possums and rats of Kul Tiras, not been farmed for food, if they were not poisonous?

Perhaps the answer lied in that they were mostly bone and sinew, hard to chew and harder to cut cleanly. It was only with Finn's rather sharp and heavily enchanted long blade that we were able to make short work of things and stitch it all together, with judicious application of tar and arcane magic and...

"Hey," Jaina poked me in the belly like one might do to the Pillsbury Doughboy mentally. "Are you pondering the mysteries of life... without me?"

She sounded vaguely upset.

"... No."

"There was a pause there. Why did you pause?" She pouted.

I really didn't want to get into this right now. After all, answering that I was just that socially awkward would only bring out more questions and cause her to question herself and thus cause us further delays in our development and... "Now is not the time, Jaina. Stop thinking so much!"

"Hmph."

There really wasn't any time to deal with her childish tantrum right now. I turned to our friends and commanded, "Look, murlocs are idiots when things don't go by script. So... Finn, get in that crate. Tinky, use that one. And Lorena, get the third one, I want you guys to form a semi-circle around me and turn any hostiles who charge at me into idiots who charged into a kill zone. Also, give me two harpoons."

"What's a kill zone?" Finn asked as she climbed into a box and handed me the sharp weapons that children definitely should run around with if they were being chased by murlocs.

Lorena added, "And, uh, you got some murloc eyes on your cheek over... ah, you got it. Okay, let me just grab a sword, two ticks... right, go ahead?" She didn't have a sword.

I handed her a wooden pole. A staff weapon was useful on any battlefield anyway. Tinky had smeared murloc guts all over her body and then added a layer of murloc guts. We decided to ignore her entirely for the moment. "... Right, just... just hide, alright?"

"... And wot're you gonna do?" Finn asked.

It seemed like a decent time to smirk. After all, there were many ways to game the system, only an idiot gamed the system through Final Fantasy styled grinding of attribute points... but seeing the fish raised in a threatening manner, I just backed off on the smirking 'heroically'.

Sometimes, it was better not to get punched in the arm too many times. My murlocloak wasn't very sturdy after all. Yeah. That's exactly why I didn't gloat. Because I was concerned about my new accessory.

Yup.

"You know something?" I muttered under my breath loudly. "I bet not a single person knows how to use their goddamn racial skills. It's almost like... you know what? Never mind. I'll just tell you. It's called diplomacy. Humans have this skill called diplomacy."

Finn frowned at me, before tilting her head and raising one eyebrow. She parted her lips for a moment, paused, and then closed her mouth. She watched me incredulously, as if thinking I was some kind of mythical animal, like a unicorn or a tooth fairy or a Stephen Hawking. Then she grumbled, "There's so many things wrong with... wait, did you drink some of the sailor's whiskey last night?"

"What."

"Are you drunk?"

"... No?"

"Are you sure?" She deadpanned. "Because you aren't."

"No! Yes! Wait. Argh! You know what? Laugh at all you want," I harrumphed and then turned around towards the murlocs that were almost within hearing distance of us. I could hear the ancient song of their people being chanted in the background. Obviously, this was a good time to turn around badassly and state my purpose.

Except Finn couldn't keep it in anymore and snorted. Then she started laughing so hard her crate tilted over and she nearly fell out. Her head peeked out as I turned around towards her again, and she said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry. Go on, do your thing. I could use a laugh before we're royally fucked. 'Ey, and you know what? I can say that we're actually royally fucked since we got into this mess 'cuza you."

"Argh!" I growled at her again.

She squeaked and hid, but her crate vibrated still.

"Hey!" Even Jaina was giggling, albeit shakily and making us tremble at the same time. I grabbed a harpoon in each hand and roared into the sky in frustration and pulled the hood down on our face in retaliation, "Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!"

Autosave – 1

… Wait, why was there an autosave?

There were a lot of gear in those crates just now... an awfully convenient collection of ammunition and battle items.

Now that I thought about it, there was a lot of room on this beach...

As I peered through the gouged out, leaking eye sockets of my fallen foe. For a moment, the world was silent, like in a game when the background music just stopped. Then, it was back, louder and pounding in our ears. The rhythm quickened like the pounding of our heart, like the roar of a thousand bands. You'd have thought a video game player would have known by now the signs, but I only just realized what was about to go down.

"That's a lot of bass."

"What?"

"Don't worry your silly, little head, Finn. I'm just... getting in the mood." Idly, I noted how the murloc blood that dripped down onto my lips tasted awfully like gravy. Well. "Nothing like a boss battle to start the morning. I'm going to diplomacy this bitch so hard."

 

[a2znut]

Diplomacy, American style? (Invade and set up own tin-pot dictatorship)

 

[d.fish]

Chapter 12



Dread rose up from within my heart, Jaina's fear bearing down on us from all sides like a tidal wave. Though it seemed I was immune to what childish fear she had—perhaps due to my past experience as a mass murloc murderer in a video game—it was still present. I had to acknowledge the discomfort rumbling on the precipice of my bodily vessel.

If using inherent traits were natural, then feeling the urges and feelings were too. As the red names of the many fish-like creatures bobbled in the horizon, I could not help but shiver in anticipation. Their voices spread across the distance like a thousand bubbling kettles, the sort of sound made by people trying to speak underwater in concert. I knew the task ahead of me was daunting. I wished I could just fake a win; skimming over it like many did via watching others play their games for them.

The robe stuck to our skin, leaving excited goosebumps trailing all over our body. A layer of half-dried sweat and ocean water mingled there, not quite crusting. That same mixture dripped over our brow, just far enough to roll into the edge of our eye. The sting from the salt was a welcome distraction, but we wiped it away... unnecessary.

The cloak weighed down on our tired arms, from all the clinging and swimming and fighting for our lives that felt like a nightmare of yesternight. It was unbalanced and improperly cut, leaving small gaps between edges and the wind to howl just beneath our notice.

Our hair stuck to the gooey mass that was the emptied skull of a murloc king. Every so often, an irritation arose that we could not amend, leaving us more agitated and fixing our grip on our weapons. No matter how I moved my hands, it felt like the harpoons were too large and too cumbersome for our thin, girly fingers. The blunt end of the spear-like weapons felt glued to the wet sand beneath. We had let slid our hands up and down the shaft in our discomfort more than once, tightening and loosening our grip. A small hole formed where the harpoons stood on the sands.

For a moment, we closed our eyes in preparation, just to take in our surroundings. Too often did players forget the vast, vibrant world we built for them, focused on shiny trinkets barely worth our time. Too often did we spend long, toiling hours making the textures and physics and each and every grain of the world, only to be ignored for blue, purple, and golden words of simple nothings.

The salty air assailed our nostrils not for the first time, but for the first time we noticed. The smell of the sea was augmented by the addition of corpses and of opened jars of coal tar and of the naked fear that we few girls had for the coming moments. It smelled of stale fish yet it also was air so fresh, I had not realized how unindustrialized this world was until this very moment. There was an ephemeral quality to the texture of the feeling of the cold morning air as it filled our lungs. We shivered from the cold, but I welcomed it in reverence to how rare such a breath was on my native plane.

As our eyes opened again and welcomed in the dawn's early light, I felt myself smiling just as the heat of the waking sun washed over our face. The sky was bright orange with tinges of blue and purple the further up my eyes saw. There were few clouds in the sky, a complete change from the previous night where the weather blocked all visibility. It felt like too good a day to die...

… But was death permanent or just something to walk off?

I didn't want to find out, too fearful of death was I even without Jaina's influence. There was too much to see, too much I wanted to experience, and too much left for me. Life was never fair about such things and I knew such complaints were worthless before the end. But even the end must end, no? There was no ending without a beginning, no death without more life. Were we to be trapped in the cycle if I could not break out?

The wheels of fate turned with the slow creaking of time and I sighed. We had no time left for reminiscing the past or pondering the future. There was only the here and now and we could only do as best we could for all that we had and leave everything that we could not control and could not comprehend to other powers of the world.

Many were the murlocs that gathered towards us, though we had not warrant such a welcome. Such a warband was perhaps all the warriors of a single tribe, and that was no trifling thing.

At their front was their chief and master, the angry, purple-scaled beast head and shoulders above the rest. He gurgled his challenge and brought his best fin forth.

Gobbler Sr.
Bluegill Chieftain
Level 22 Shaman

There were others, of course, who stood out with names and titles. Many of those that were not so were only less than half their power in levels, but a spear in the eye was still a spear in the eye, no matter what your level. This was not a video game, after all.

Nibbler Sr.
Brother and Champion
Level 25 Warrior

Whitefin
Bluegill Matron
Level 14

As much as I wished I could communicate my intentions to them, I knew I could not. I was not some omni-lingual monster and... to be quite frank, the moment they were but twenty meters from us, all thoughts of plans left my mind. I could not think.

I could not just challenge Gobbler, and I could not just intimidate my way through. I had intended to speak, to talk, but how? Even if I could speak to them with all the murloc guts on my hands, what could I say?

Murlocs, as it was universally known, were idiots. They could only comprehend as many a word as kittens.

But if logic was not an option, there were not many options left. I blinked away the sweat, tears and blood, and felt my throat dry. Swallowing did not help. No words came to mind, but I nevertheless urged myself to come up with something, anything, since it seemed this eldritch calm of mind could not be broken. Not so many a syllables came to me, but I raised my hand to the coming onslaught and felt the vast sea of mana within the ocean that is my soul churn. Through these cracked, dry lips, I uttered," … Wololo..."

 

[a2znut]

Converting the murlocs to Fishism, one murloc at a time.

 

[d.fish]

Chapter 13



It didn't work.

It did not work.

Did you really believe something I have never done before would work the first time I tried it without ever verifying it could do what I thought it did?

The first murloc to get in my face about things was the first one to go. His scales changed colors until they were similar to that of the colors of my robes, a deep, navy blue over white. But he had already leaped out of water and his bony face smashed against my forehead. Of course, I clenched my jaw and I did not falter, but it was a blow powerful enough to knock Jaina unconscious.

And then it was all down hill from there. With us stunned, the first wave of the onslaught broke against our defenses. Lorena and Tinky were both able enough and experienced in war to stay their ground. They yelled for Finn to drag us back, but Finn just stared at us, eyes wide and lower lip quivering.

I did not remember much of what happened afterwards, but I did not think they killed a hundred before they were overwhelmed.

Reload?

There was no option for 'no'. I could not refuse. The timer counted down, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one...

And we were back. The song of their nerglish people were over a hundred meters away and far enough. The skies were still the same, beautiful hue. The air still smelled as fresh. The rhythm of the pounding of my blood was still as catchy and addictive. But I stood there, feeling a sort of betrayed sarcasm dripping like toxins in my heart.

You could take the best of a feature from an individual unit and utilize it to its full potential to play the game against simple artificial intelligence. Playing the campaign on easy mode taught you enough that you could beat the basic AI at the game in the real time strategies. But the difference between the amateur and the professional is the thin line of utilizing the worst features as well.

I brought forth a power unknown, but it was easy to forget that a priest's armor was paper thin and health as fragile as tissue.

And I was not playing against computers; these were living, breathing creatures.

And I had not taken everything into account, such as the side-effects of invoking such powers.

And...

… and I forgot one rather important aspect of these powers. The conduit of my might was not as sturdy as I wished, and without the skills and redundancies to enforce it, there were a lot of bugs popping up. Bugs were such pesky problems, starting as annoyances and developing into crippling deficiencies. This particular bug was not something I could just squash or fix or wave my hand and wish away, however. It came as part of the package, after all. "What just happened?"

"Wait... you came back with me?" I blinked.

"Did we just die?" Jaina asked, ignoring my previous question.

There was no way to bullshit my way out of this, even though I could bullshit the universe into thinking I was a priest from Age of Empires. Just as I was Jaina, Jaina was me. "... You came back with me," I realized.

"That really happened, didn't it? We... did something to that first murloc, and then... and then it hit us. We were overwhelmed," She observed.

"Well, you're awfully calm about this," I said.

"... I'm going to count to ten." She counted. "I'm going to stay calm... I'm calm and I'm not going to scream at you."

"Oh, well, that's good," I smiled.

"Mrgl."

I blinked again—for some reason, I felt like I was having an aneurysm, "Are you alright? Are you trying to do the same thing and learn nerglish? That's actually a pretty good idea..."

And then, somehow, Jaina learned psionic combat and choked ourself in our mind. I guess she didn't know what she was doing; it was a good first try.

I congratulated her so, "That's pretty good, but you shouldn't be so stressed. It can cause distractions."

For some reason, a tick developed above our left eye. It was the sort of tick that only developed on the sort of individual that the universe might designate as "the only sane individual", but I knew that was me already, so I didn't question it. Still, Jaina sounded only more stressed and our vision reddened to a point where I could barely see anything. Maybe this was a special event?

Jaina did not care. "Distractions? Distractions! I'll show you distractions! I only... only wanted to study! I didn't ask for this!"

Then our own hands came up and began choking our throat...

… I wonder why? Perhaps this was some kind of murloc magic?

Reload?

The timer counted down and I could not refuse, but the maddening loss of having somehow been defeated by random critters taunted me from the edge of my mind. My vision was tainted and at the corners of my eyes, I only saw red.

Just outside of our vision, from the three hundred sixty-first degree of nonexistence, I saw nothing but a sort of blinding anger that threatened to consume me.

The eldritch calling from beyond the realms urged me forth. My lips parted in cruel savagery that was a twisted perversion of Jaina's visage. For the moment, she too was screaming in our mind, without our lips, with no mouth and no sound. For that single moment, everything was blank. Our mind, cleared and calm, filled with nothing but fiery blood, burning to the ash and rising up to be boiled once more. Like the sound of uncounted children screaming in the far off realm unknown to man, blocked by the shadowy veil of nothing—as though a sound both far off in the distance and right within the skull, that song of incineration filled our ears like a warped set of drums of war.

I could have simply said we began screaming internally.

Ha.

Ha. Ha... ha.

But I did not.

Do you know what death does to the human mind? Do you know what it means to be reset? What does it even mean to the mind, if the mind were but cells and a cocktail of chemicals, to be tugged between the line of life and death, to be set in a state that should be death, to experience death, when it is supposed to be alive?

Unfortunate as our minds were, it was Jaina who might have worried me more, had I not been so enraged with the fact that I had to go through the whole cut-scene before the boss fight multiple times. She was the one who had her soul so delicately attached and aligned with this flesh puppet... a soul, it seemed, that was now being repeatedly knocked back and forth like Red Asphalt being put on fast forward and stuck on a loop.

Reload?

Sometimes... even induced calm could not finish the job.

Like... pouring a glass of water on the surface of the sun, this temper merely sizzled.

Perhaps... Jaina's everything pouring into and tainting my conscious fragment of soul was more worrisome.

Reload?

Reload?

Reload?

...

Somewhere between the sarcastic death menu asking me to reload and Jaina's... whatever her thing was... the thermometer burst and its shards flicked into my eye.

I had gone so far off the scale, I had gone into a loop.

That red mist propelled us from calm into the blind rage and somehow, we had circled around back into calm. But this sort of strange calm was weird. For one, Jaina wasn't complaining like she usually was, the little brat.

Ding!

Through great rage, you (Jaina Proudmoore (True)) have learned a new skill!

Berserker Rage
Level 1 (0%)
You go into a berserker's rage, removing and temporarily granting immunity to all mind-altering and physically incapacitating effects for a short duration and putting all damage taken until after the duration ends.
Duration: 6 Seconds.

"What." Jaina finally said something.

"Don't just stare, Jaina," I sighed at her inexperience. It was a new skill, and as a respected individual of the community of upstanding moral fiber, it was up to us to exploit every opportunity for every speck of gain, no matter the consequences. Perhaps we could finally get passed the tutorial boss and get out of these impossibly mocking and boring cut-scenes?

"Oh, you're still here." She frowned in disappointment. "That wasn't a dream."

"No." And what could possibly go wrong? We had finally opened a new door of opportunity to us now and this told me that our little princess was growing up into a fine render of limbs. It was the best outcome, since she had forced me in the other direction. "Just cast Fist."

 

[Xicree]

Truly the best part of any Fishie endeavor... when things begin to Break! ~Maniacal grin~

 

[d.fish]

Truly the best part of any Fishie endeavor... when things begin to Break! ~Maniacal grin~

Click to shrink...

"Hey, why is this lock of my hair white?"

 

[a2znut]

"Hey, why is this lock of my hair white?"

Click to shrink...

Old age obviously, better get that checked out by a doctor.

 

[FreshwaterPlimpie]

Now she just needs uncanny dodge and damage reductions in order to survive the damage she takes during her rage.

 

[d.fish]

Now she just needs uncanny dodge and damage reductions in order to survive the damage she takes during her rage.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, but how does one train up such things so quickly?

 

[a2znut]

Get punched.

Spoiler

 

[d.fish]

Chapter 14



It was testament to Jaina's maturation that rather than stop and ask for an explanation, she replied immediately, "How?" She was not quite at the point of simply doing, but thinking and then complying was far better than questioning my authority. Perhaps it was the haze of festering anger that beset us both that allowed us to synchronize better than we could have when we were both clear minded.

Well, we still were.

We were just singularly clear minded in rage. This was the calculated madness that had reached around insanity and back into functional insanity. This was madness, yes, but...

This was madness with purpose.

Our purpose was one.

Just as I had tapped into her abilities, so too I freely gave access to mine. There was a time when petty disagreements between the two of us had to come to an end, though I had not thought it would be so soon. Tapping into my powers, her own abilities mutated and grew. It was the natural process of things, that when two minds and two souls were so fused and focused as one, their combined prowess would be greater than the sum of two exponentially.

But she was not a warrior. She never was, no matter what abilities she gained. Her class was determined already, even if this were no game like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy to restricted her so completely to one path of growth. Jaina... Jaina was not a Wizard, not a Sorceress as she might be in the future, and she was not a Warrior.

Jaina was a Princess.

Remember?

We tell our daughters they are princesses. We tell them they could be anything they set their minds to. They are the princesses of our hearts, the recipient of the sum of our adoration. "You could be anything, Princess."

So she became a Princess, because she was a Princess. As a Princess gaming the universe, she could be any class. And so, there were no class restrictions on us, through the Princess that was her.

Ding!

Through stupidly insane bullshittery and repeatedly smashing your mind against the universe, you have learned a new skill – Jab!

Through stupidly insane bullshittery and repeatedly smashing your mind against the universe, you have learned a new skill – Fighting Style of the Fierce Tiger!

Through stupidly insane bullshittery and repeatedly smashing your mind against the universe, you have learned a new skill – Parry!

"... What just happened?" Jaina blinked, momentarily dazed, and fell back on previous, bad habits of questioning me.

I deduced she knew and saw, since I was not holding anything back anymore and we were more at one with ourself than we ever were. So I answered her nonchalantly since we were cool with each other (probably), "That's just my ability and your ability fusing into some kind of mutated monstrosity of a hybrid ability never before seen on the face of this world. It's no biggie."

"Cool."

We looked down at our hands. "Hrm."

"I don't feel any different. Why do I feel so much stronger when I can't see any change in my muscle mass? I need to... STUDY... this." Jaina smiled happily.

"And I need to study the faces of these murlocs with my fist," I noted they were almost within range.

"Oh! There is science to be done!" Jaina giggled in our head, sounding somewhat like an insane, adolescent, and female Mark Hamill. It was nice to see that she was channeling her insanity and my rage into somewhere productive, but...

… I stared at her funnily.

…

Nevermind. I peered from the corner of our eyes to make sure that our friends were safe. Our friend—possibly bestie—Finn was staring at the residual energy from our constant resets with a look of aghast horror. Tinky did not seem to be faring any better, but she had steadied herself for the coming fight, being the tiny gnome that she was.

Strangely, Lorena just had a sort of strained smile that was so unlike the looks of shock and mortification, like she was thinking, "But the party has only just started motherfuckers!"

I thought to myself that I liked Lorena.

She's nice.

Then we cleared our throat to give our opening statement—after all, without the flourish and dazzle, we were only murderhobos, but with it we were a fabulous, pretty Princess with the iron fist—and gurgled out in nerglish, "Alright, you little critters! I'm going to beat each and every one of you black and... bluer. And after that, I'm going to be your princess!"

"Mrrgkra mrrlglgrl m'kurngluglee!" The Bluegill Chieftain, Gobbler Senor, called out in response, obviously meaning something like, 'These are my waters, humans die'.

What a majestic language, I thought, before replying in the same South Shore dialect of nerglish he had just spoken in, "You will find that not all prey are small fish, Gobbler! Come at me, at your own peril!"

"M'grel'lolerg grlrlli!" He replied, meaning, 'You speak too much big words, stupid'.

It seemed like even the most beautiful languages would be twisted terribly by the right being. In this case, it seemed like we had no choice but to fight without banter. This was such a terrible existence to be had, after all, what was fighting without bantering if not more pointless violence. It was banter that gave violence purpose! "It seems like you need a swift kick in the balls, Gobbler."

"Pftmgrl b'lglrlmmka balls m'krua!" He retorted, meaning, 'ha, you said balls'. And with that, there was no need for more words, for the murloc were indeed a simple creature with simple minds of cats and dogs. They charged not as one, but as individuals, like reenactments of ancient tribal battles, where individual honor trumped unit cohesion.

This was good for us, of course, because it meant we did not need to deal with the murlocs as a wave, but as individuals like a Kung Fu movie—you know the kind, with a single person being surrounded by, like, a hundred ninjas, but instead of all of them throwing shuriken, they would charge the person in the middle one or three at a time, like those old Bruce Lee movies. Of course, I was more of a Jackie Chan girl, but Bruce Lee was cool too, I suppose.

The first murloc that reached within our range was a nameless goon on our user interface. Of course, just by being first, it was special. It was special also in being the first for us to plant our fist in its face. Jab.

Jab.

Jab.

There were no cooldowns to this skill; it was only limited by how quickly we could swing our fists. Three, tiny indents in the murloc's skull appeared before it hit the sandy beach. Because of how low our combined strength attribute was, even with these hits, it health points did not go down to zero...

Still, unlike a game with mindless artificial intelligence charging at you without end, the puffy eyes and obvious cracks in its bone structure were enough to keep it down.

"Don't get back up," We whispered as if we were doing something awesome, only to be interrupted by another murloc tackling us.

"Oh Light, it's so slimy." Jaina whimpered.

"Jaina—" I urged.

"So sticky!"

"Get your shit together and grapple like your life depends on it!" I roared at her. Funny how quickly six seconds ended. A berserker's rage ought to last a fight, shouldn't it? Adrenaline should not stop pumping, not when we needed it so much.

But Jaina heard me and we resynchronized and planted our elbow in the murloc's face. We kicked it off of our body, though it was too heavy for us, until I repeated jabbed its stomach three times in a row with little, two-inch jabs.

It flew off us faster than we could blink.

But we had no respite, because they kept coming at us. Bruce Lee—hell, even Jackie Chan—made it look so easy on the big screen, but it wasn't that goddamn easy! There was no flow to the fighting, the murlocs did not bother wait and see who was ahead of them. Instead, they tried to pile on us like they did... with the ship. Oh...

Realization hit us as I knocked a pair of murlocs back; this was a strategy that worked for them, because they had the numbers for it. "Why is it that 'balls' is still 'balls' no matter what language we are speaking anyway? Even demonic and elvish..."

"Now's not the time for that, Jaina," I groaned mentally.

"Hey, I just had a great idea!" She perked up suddenly.

"Now's not the time for that!" I repeated. We had only gone through a dozen murlocs, and we were already tired and panting. Our lungs burned as we gasped for air. Even with Chi and Rage and Mana as separate pools of resources to pull on, our body was not keeping up with the erratic flow of the battle.

Then Jaina threw a punch on her own, combining the three resources at our disposal. It was arcane missiles without really being arcane missiles. It was jabs without really jabbing. It was a heroic strike without really being a heroic strike. An explosion of arcane energy propelled and wrapped around the Chi-powered projections of our fists into shells of flaming rage.

"I HAVE AN IDEA!" She yelled at me as nine fists few and popped nine murlocs like blood balloons.

Ding!

By combining knowledge of different abilities, you have created a new skill! Would you like to name this skill?

"Oh."

 

[a2znut]

Fist, obviously.

 

[Xicree]

Fist, obviously.

Click to shrink...

Shame on you. Such a fine move can only be called 'Fisticuffs'!