Chapter Three

That night we camped out under the stars. We spent a good portion of our evening trying to elicit some sign of magical power from our new blowfish. After at least an hour of nothing but annoyed hoots, we became a little impatient. I was nearly ready to punt it off into the forest when I heard a rustling sound from the tall grass near our camp site. "Kara," I whispered, "I think we've got company."

*I held up the blowfish to see into the bushes, but it didn't seem to give off enough light. Motioning to (temporarily forgot your name, wanted to say Elle) Jen, I shifted into a cat and crept forward, ready to go bear at any moment. I stalked carefully after Kara, only slightly noisily due to the hooves and lack of night vision. Suddenly, a pack of small shapes burst from the grass, shouting in high pitched voices.

It was...I can only refer to it as a hurricane of naked little gnomes, led by two dwarfs who somehow seemed even more naked. I was so surprised I turned back into an elf sub-consciously. After a moment of shock I realized each and every one of them was holding a dildo. I looked at Jen, whose mouth was gaping open. Quick as a flash, I shoved the blowfish into her maw* and pushed her to the ground in front of me. I shifted into travel form and got the hell out. As I ran, my keen ears picked up moans and delighted shrieks from the gnomes and blowfish-muffled cries from my companion.

The blowfish was hooting and wriggling making it nearly impossible to dislodge its spines from my mouth in a rush, so I turned my attention to getting the fuck out of there first. they attempted to swarm over me, using my fur as hand holds, but I began to kick them like little footballs. I was lucky to get up before the entire pack of them got to me. Even a Tauren would be unlikely to escape that many of them.

When I caught up with Kara, she was lounging on a tree branch in cat form. I stomped my foot and pointed up at her saying, "Mf mmm fmfm mff fmmf mmmm, M'm mm-mm mmff mffm mff!" Of course I meant to say, "If you don't get down here, I'm gonna kick your ass!" but I still had the blowfish in my mouth. Tauren fingers aren't the most dexterous, and I couldn't seem to get it out.

*Pretending not to understand what she'd mumbled, I stretched and mewed innocently, my head cocked to one side. Jen glared at me and shouted something along the lines of "Mmf fmmf FMMMFFMMM fmm mmf mf mmm FMMMFFMMM mmmmf! MMM!" (Get this FUCKING fish out of my FUCKING mouth! NOW!) I performed the kitty equivalent of a shrug, and jumped down, resuming my usual form as I landed.

Getting the blowfish out of her mouth took at least fifteen minutes, and by that time it was hooting more feebly than ever. We began to worry that it would give out on us before divulging its secrets.* Getting irritated, I reached into my bag and pulled out* a dried fish. "Do you see this!" Kara shouted. "If you don't fucking show us what the hell you do, you're gonna end up just like this!"

The fish began to inflate in terror. At first I got even angrier until I realized it was now roughly the size of a basketball and still growing. The strange purple glow it was emitting was getting brighter, too.

"I think this is its power!" I whispered excitedly to Jen as we both watched in awe. As it grew, its hooting turned into a high-pitched whine which soon became painful to hear. We plugged our fingers in our ears but the longer it continued the louder it got, and nothing seemed to help. It was now so inflated that its spikes were mere bumps along its scales.* The purple light was blindingly strong and the hooting whine was vibrating inside my skull. I had my long ears flat against the sides of my neck and I was still worried they were about to bleed. Not being able to take it any more, I risked the added sensitivity of bear hearing and shifted for a huge burst of strength to throw the blowfish as far as possible. But instead of soaring off into the distance, it exploded in a shower of glowing purple dust* and one last agonized hoot.

I had my eyes closed when Kara destroyed it, as though shutting my eyes would cut out some of the sound. When it stopped suddenly, I opened them and looked around dazedly. "Pretty..."

*The purple powder rained softly down, and our bodies began to tingle with the feeling of magic power. I wasn't precisely sure what exactly it was doing to us, but there was no doubt that we had discovered the late blowfish's power at last.* I hurriedly pulled out a pouch and began to gather as much of the dust as possible. I wasn't sure yet what the effects on us were, but I didn't* want to waste perfectly good glowing magical purple dust when it was there for the taking. By the time I'd filled the bag, the vegetation around us seemed to have absorbed some of the fallen powder.

One of the shrubberies began* to wave back and forth despite there not being any wind. I could swear I heard it singing. Leaning closer, we could make out words. It seemed to in fact be yelling obscenities at us for standing on its friend.* *Where most people would hurriedly step off said friend, Jen ground her hooves in harder and I asked it "That's its fucking fault for being planted where we wanted to stand, now isn't it jack ass?"*

As the shrub shrank back from us, cowering in fear, we realized that it was becoming light outside. With no chance of getting to sleep before the heat of day hit us, we decided to continue on our way into the barrens.*

Our journey to The Crossroads was rather uneventful, except for an interesting encounter with one of those giant lighting dinosaur things I don't care the name of. After we managed to put the fire out and the hyena stopped frothing, we had a nice little breakfast out of its flesh.

When we reached the town at sundown, we were both so exhausted we could hardly take another step. Even Jen felt finding a suitable rogue teacher could wait until morning. So we turned our attention to finding an inn. I was forced to pretend to be Jen's pet cat, for this was aggressive horde territory, and the guards wouldn't take kindly to a night elf in their midst.*

I held my bow awkwardly* as I actually had no idea how to use it. I approached the guards of the small town to ask, "Where might I find an inn to rest myself and my fine...Buttons. Yes, Buttons the Cat. Where might Buttons and I rest for the night, please?" He looked me up and down with suspicion in his eyes.

"What kind of cat is that. Haven't seen one of those before...You sure that's your pet?"

I held out my bow for him to see, the string sagged limply. "Yep, see got the bow and everything." I leaned in close to his ear, "Now tell me where the God be damned inn is now, unless you want to see how difficult it is to breath with my dagger through your trachea."

Maybe he felt threatened by me, or maybe it was the "I'm about to pounce you and tear your face off" look that Kara managed all while grooming a paw but he seemed ready to cooperate. He lifted a shaking hand and pointed right behind us. Turns out we were right in front of it the whole time. "The Crossroads sure is small, isn't it?" I commented to Kara as we made our way inside.*

The guard gave Jen a curious look for talking to her cat that she completely failed to notice. As she walked inside, I paused to turn to him. I stretched lazily, my claws extending to their full length, and my sharp teeth plainly visible as I yawned. He gulped. Still just looking at him, I thrashed my tail once and turned to follow Jen.

When I got inside Jen seemed to be having an argument with the innkeeper over the price. It appeared we had no money. Having lived in a small tribe we really hadn't had any need for it. I dashed outside and hid among a pile of crates to turn back into myself. I searched my pockets desperately but all along I knew it was no good. I'd been with the Tauren too long. I shifted back into a cat and returned to Jen's side. She gave me an inquisitive glance, and I mewed back sadly, so she couldn't mistake my answer. We would just have to find an alternative way of getting a room.*

We wandered outside to consider our options briefly, when an Orc suddenly ran up to me. "Hey! You're a Tauren, if you take this box of meat to ThunderBluff for me I'll pay you!"

I stared at him in amazement. "Why the hell would I want to walk all the way back there again? Are you stupid?"

He blinked at us, "Well...I mean...you don't have to walk you know." He pointed a finger to an orc standing guard over* by the chimeras. He seemed to be laboring under the delusion that it was a manticore, but seriously, I know a chimera when I see one. Part lion, part dragon. I'm not illiterate, thanks.

Jen looked at me in excitement and I stared bemusedly back. She obviously thought this was a great way to make an easy bit of cash for a room at the inn. I, however, did not see how I would be able to ride on a chimera-pretending-its-a-manticore without turning back into an elf, and if I did I was dead meat. In the end, Jen mounted the beast and flew off back to Thunderbluff, and I turned my attention to sneaking around the rapidly darkening pathways of the town, pickpocketing. It was very difficult for a cat to pickpocket, by the way, because anything perceived as unusual cat behavior was a dead giveaway I was alliance scum in disguise. So it was a lot of effort, yielding almost no results. After a while I gave up and took a nap on a pile of zehvra fur.

*The flight there and back was incredibly boring and hot, but it gave me time to wonder just why in the world we hadn't just flown to the Crossroads in the first place. It took me quite some time to relocate "Buttons" after I got back. Being not particularly good at the art of blending in, I said, a bit too loudly, "Come, Buttons. We shall make our way to the inn for dining and resting now."

With a sigh, I made a valiant attempt to be extra cat-like as we returned to the inn. We sat down at a table, or at least Jen did. I sat by her feet. The innkeeper brought Jen a plate heaped with roast pork, potatos, some strange stringy meat that she ended up liking a lot, and big buttery rolls. I, on the other hand, was presented with a small plate of dead mice.

"There you are, Buttons," he said proudly, laying it before me. "What a nice kitty you are." Here he turned to Jen. "My old cat Fuzzball was never any good at catching mice so I would just trap them and feed them to him. My word they've been building up in the few weeks since he died. Poor ol' Fuzzball, he was a good kitty....and he loved his dead mice...."

The innkeeper began to sob quietly. Jen stared at him. Wiping a tear from his eye, he bent down to pat me on the head murmuring about "Poor Fuzzball" so I bit his hand hard. I'd be damned if I was going to eat decaying mice.*

Attempting to pretend that I was choking on my food and not laughing at him, I apologized and told him that Buttons was a bit bigger than a house cat and would much prefer the same dinner as me. Yes, and the roll too.

The innkeeper seemed much less cheerful to have us staying by the end of dinner. His hand bound and a bit bloody, but we hadn't been quite bad enough to warrant kicking out. Before he could protest, Kara claimed a bed for herself. Luckily, they had a few Tauren sized beds there because of the large amount of traffic from all over that goes through the area. And so, we got our first good night's sleep since leaving my home.