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."