Adventures in a People-Suit

Originally posted on the Blizzard Earthen Ring Forum 6/14/06
((Yes, I have a human rogue named Kopfjager that I RP with and try to level. In a panic, he had to think up a name on the fly. So, just call him Kopfbob... or Bob for short.))
==Introduction==
The suit itched. The Forsaken despised being inside the Human Male Multipurpose Suit (HuMMS) but it was a necessary evil. Unknowingly, he scratched at the suit. The thing itched something fierce. 
The translator box worked entirely too well, he thought to himself. Every word that he spoke was twisted into that droning human voice and every word spoken to him came to his ears in that same droning voice. It seemed that every human sounded the same. At least the women sounded interested. The human female voice was much more inviting than the sound of brass bolts being tossed onto gravel that the Forsaken women usually sounded like. 
Why do humans insist on talking to him so much? And the elves! He could not fathom how many elves there were in Azeroth but it felt like he met all of them at least three or four times over. Endless streams of the mutant eared freaks paraded all around the land. It was overwhelming at times. 
He found himself led into a great Keep near Goldshire. Apparently, it was a clan headquarters for one of the many associations of the Alliance. It was hard to keep from gasping. His own clan had a feeble meeting place in Durotaur. The small, dusty and abandoned pig farm outside of Ogrimmar seemed a travesty compared to the huge masonry structure he was walking into. Stormwind Guards protected the interior, there was a Morale Officer that provided libations it was too much. 
Conversation was difficult for the Head Hunter. It was not because he could not understand the language. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He had long been free of tongue. If he thought it, he spoke it. Blunt, painful, honest or malicious, he was never one to keep silent. Just twenty four hours earlier, he was slaying the guards and Morale Officer in this hold of the enemy. Now he was, at least in their eyes, one of them. 
The reasons to wear the suit were many, but now, he was wondering about all of them. A sick human wandered near the Keep and began to cough up blood. It is the first sign of Scourge. All that the Forsaken wearing the people-suit could think was Not here. Not again. Anything but that. He found himself ready to defend his enemies from something much worse than war. 
It was a strange world that he was wandering in now. Lines began to blur. Comfortable lines that he had found himself happily inscribed now seemed to be fading. 
It is a strange, yet wonderful world the Head Hunter now finds himself in.
==Not Here==
The small cluster of humans and dozens of elves stood around the opening of the great Keep. Banter was replaced with concern as one of the nameless humans began to cough up blood. Off to one side stood an anxious looking human who nervously fingered his two new, rather feeble looking swords. Conversation ended when the nervous human spoke. 
"We have to kill him now." 
"What?" One of the companions of the ill human blurted his protest loudly. "You dont have to kill him! Hell be fine!" 
"Lies," replied the nervous one with the swords. "Hes Scourged. Look at the blood pouring out his mouth." The rogue pointed with one of his swords towards the head of the kneeling, coughing human. "That's how it starts." 
A tall Night Elf, blindfolded but confident and graceful in movement leaned in to speak quietly to the nervous one. "You seem to know much of the Scourge." 
"More than most, mut... uh nelf," replied the nervous one. 
"How did you come about this knowledge? You do not seem to be a scholar." 
Looking around nervously, Kopfjagger itched absently at his people suit. It always seemed to itch more when he was nervous or sweating. Right now, he was both. "It begins with a blood soaked cough. Soon, he will barely be able to stand, much less walk." 
As if on queue, the sick human stood and wobbled a few steps before collapsing in a new spasm of coughing. Nodding and pointing with his sword at the human piled in front of the small crowd, Kopfjagger knew that the time was now. 
"Head or heart, friend?" The question was plain as two swords were raised high. 
"You cant kill him! Hell be fine!" 
There was a long pause. All eyes were on the human holding two swords over the head of the fallen one. 
"No, it wont," was the simple reply. The silence dragged out as Kopfjagger waited for an answer. Turning to face the crowd, the Forsaken knew he had to explain at... least a little. "He will try to make it home. He will lie down next to his family. He will be cared for by them. They will kiss him on the forehead and bring him broth." Here, the Forsaken in the people-suit paused as everyone formed that image in their heads. 
"He will, in effect, be damning them all. Their love for him will be their own undoing. That is how the Scourge spreads. It kills first those that love." 
Gasps and guffaws followed for several seconds. 
"Let me kill him." The Forsaken paused. "Please." This was more than war. This was hell on earth. War was inevitable and could not be stopped. This this at least, he had to try and stop. 
He found himself arguing with a human female. Others jumped to the defense of the human coughing up thick gobs of blood. Somehow, while the debate raged, the human was gone. When Kopfjagger saw that the ill one had been smuggled out of his presence by his friends, he knew that he had lost. They had lost. 
It first kills those that love. 
Turning to leave everyone and everything behind him, Kopfjagger cursed. He thought he was through with shedding tears.
==Kopfbob==
"How are you called, friend?" Asked a curvy night elf. She stood tall and straight. Her hips seemed to beckon to him. Her chest heaved and bounced with every breath. It was difficult to maintain anything resembling eye contact. 
"Uh... sorry?" He stumbled over his words. 
With a smile, the night elf asked again. "What is your name?" 
Why does everyone always want to know his name, the Forsaken in the people-suit wondered. Everywhere he went, everyone wanted to know his name. It was most uncomfortable. Before he could even really formulate an answer, his nature took over and began speaking before his thoughts were complete. "Kopf- " He caught himself. "Bob. Um... yeah. Bob." 
She giggled. Her body responded amazingly to the giggle. He really liked it when she giggled. "What a strange name. Kopfbob." She giggled again. 
He knew that she was saying something. Yes, he thought to himself, there were definitely sounds coming from her mouth that resembled speech. He had no idea what she was saying though. It so didnt matter. He also didnt notice the long pause where there was no sound. 
"Err... What brings you to the dwarven district of Stormwind, Kopfbob?" 
"Hmm? Oh! Um... The Dun- " Again he caught himself a little too late. He was about to confess that he was at the risqué club The Dungeon trying his best to get his debauch on. Although he was light on coin that anyone in Stormwind would accept, the Forsaken rogue had a little of his money laundered through the greedy goblin bastards in Booty Bay. It was not nearly enough though. 
"Um," he struggled to continue the conversation. "I figured it would be best to- " Just then a herd of small children ran past. Young. Plump. Very tender looking. And they ran right past him. They were so close he could smell them. 
"Wow!" 
"What causes your alarm, Kopfbob?" 
"Your food comes right to- " He cursed under his breath. If a conversation could be won or lost, he was loosing this one horribly. The look of confusion on the curvy mutants face was beginning to slide into concern and pity. "There are many places to get food in Stormwind, he back-peddled. It is so bountiful!" 
She nodded, confusion winning out over concern. 
"From whence do you come that a city is so foreign to you?" 
"Oh, cities are not so new to me. I've been in the Under-" Damnit, he swore silently. Forcing his eyes back to hers, he searched for any sign that he was betraying the suit wrapped around him. 
Nope, he was happy to see. No alarm, just pity showed. He breathed a sigh of relief. Mistakenly, she thought it was a sad sigh. 
"Loraedon." She tried to say the human name of the city newly claimed by the Forsaken. 
Kopfjagger just nodded. "Yeah, great place." She blinked at him. "Uh! Um. It was a great place," he lied. "Back in the day... ya know." He didnt notice that he was scratching at his suit. For all of its engineering and magical glory, the blasted thing itched like it was made of straw. 
A long slow nod, sad at first but betrayed by a suspicious glare, came from the night elf breathing in front of him. "Tis a sad thing that happened there," she commiserated. 
Well that just set the Forsaken off. He wanted to rant about her having no idea. He wanted to scream about how the infamous Alliance, full of its Holy warriors and healers and leaders and knowledge just let the Scourge rip apart his homeland. He wanted to bash her head in for her ignorance and flippant, repugnant pity. There was a great deal he wanted to scream at her. 
"Yeah." 
The kids ran by again. His stomach growled. Sure, they were innocents, he thought to himself. But they were orphans, he was sure. No one really loved them. No one would miss them. He had been too long in this suit. 
"Um, I should be going," he offered up as an excuse to leave. 
"Why is that, Kopfbob? Where do your feet take you?" 
It was his turn to blink. Why should she care? Another question he had to think up an answer for. "Um. I dont like outside. Its too open." A guard of Stormwind making his rounds started down the wide street towards them. Unthinking, the Forsaken stealthed. 
The elf raised her eyebrows at him. Her long years of warfare had taught her how to see through most stealthing tricks. The fact that the Forsaken had yet to master how to properly wrap the light around him while in this suit just made things worse. He may have been invisible to the squirrel chittering away on the tree near him, but that was about it. 
"You are a strange one, Kopfbob." 
He cursed silently again. This was getting ridiculous, he thought to himself. He let his thinly veiled disguise fall from him as the guard walked past. For once, he kept his hands to himself. For a while at least. The moment the guard passed, he had to scratch behind the back of his leg. 
"So... um... bye." He turned to head away. He beat down the desire to go buy some cheese to snack upon. 
((I'm having punctuation issues copying and pasting from Word. I apologize if I miss some of them. Stuff like quotes, commas and all that seem to just piss off when I paste. Sorry.)) 
==Story Time==
The Forsaken in the people-suit was running around some stupid lake trying to find lost items for the incompetent humans littering its shores. Some kid lost a necklace, an idiot posing as an industrious human lost his tools and so on, ad infinitum. It was enough to make him sick, but, it paid well and his coins all had the stamp of the Forsaken or Thrall on them. Not easily distributed here in happy-land. 
Taking a well earned break from the mindless fetching for the idiots, Kopfjagger wandered over to the nearby graveyard for a respite. The squishing sound of water in the feet of his people-suit was disturbing to say the least. As he came around a shack near the cool grave markers, he was slightly alarmed to see a group of the pink and blue skins sitting around a small fire. 
Hmm, he thought to himself. At least he could sit by a warm fire to help get the water out of his suit. He plopped down next to a curvy woman and did his best to peek without it being obvious. 
Some dorf was yabbering on about some awesome weapon he found. Yabber, jabber and meander; droning on about this stupid knife. 
"Da blade of da weapon could cut right through all of Azeroth if it werent kept in its sheath!" 
The idiots actually expressed awe. He tried hard not to laugh. The statement was stupid enough to draw his attention off of the warm bodied curves next to him. 
"How then, half-man, does one sheath such a weapon if it can, as you suppose, cut through the world?" The translator smoked a little due to the water but the Forsaken just waved the smoke away. This was going to be interesting. 
The dwarf turned to look at his questioner. "Tis a special sheath, Twas designed specially fer da knife, friend." 
Kopfjagger nodded exaggeratedly. 
"Anywho, the midget continued, I comes across this blade and knowd I must have it." The dwarf droned on while the Forsaken looked around at the crowd. There were plenty of very attractive human and elfin women around. He happily wiggled his feet closer to the fire. 
"Do you have this knife with you now, Dorf?" Kopfjagger couldnt help but ask. 
Again the dwarf turned to his questioner. 
"Um, neh, I dunnot, friend. But Im gonna go back..." 
Kopfjagger nodded exaggeratedly again. 
The human woman next to him was squirming rather enticingly. Women were wonderful creatures and now that he unleashed himself from his baser emotions such as love and caring, he found them most wonderful. He didnt realize that her squirming was due to the smell of the steam coming from the feet of his people-suit. He had lost smell ages ago. 
Finally the Dwarf sat down, his tongue exhausted. His dissertation on the non-existent, fictional knife was now over. Next stood a purple elfin woman, long in leg, curvy and delicious looking. 
She let loose with a bawdy song that made the steam coming from the Forsakens feet seem like ice-fog. It was wonderful. If she would sing a song like that, what else would she do? If could have licked his eyebrows, he would have. 
There was laughter and applause at the purple treats song. Kopfjagger chimed right in and clapped along with the rest. He tried to do a cat call, but his fingers, overly thick from the suit, denied him. With a shrug he looked back around the circle. 
Happy, ignorant, borderline retarded members of the enemy sat around the fire. No more than fifteen feet away were the graves of their ancestors; cold and ignored. 
"Does anyone else have a story they would like to share?" 
Kopfjagger stood up. He was never one to be shy. 
"And who might you be, stranger?" Some random voice from one of the nameless asked him. 
"Just call me Bob." He turned away from his questioner. 
"I have a story that I will try to keep brief," he started. Let them know what their ignorance and docile nature resulted in. He wiped the sneer off of his face the best he could. 
"Not too long ago, there was a human man that awoke to find himself no longer a man. His flesh was rotted, his body was broken, yet he lived. Well, not really lived for he no longer had the need to breathe or eat or sleep or drink, but he walked, he thought and he had control over his own actions. He was less than a man now, but he had the memories of being human and all that entailed." 
There were a few gasps and one of the woman folk held a hanky up to her face. Grunting, the Forsaken in the people suit continued. "Lost and abandoned by his people, he found that their betrayal led him to an immortal life of un-living. It took this man many days to adjust to his new existence, but soon he found himself driven by a new calling. He was to reap the world and make it pay." 
"His first task was to exterminate the Scourge from his new homeland." Looking around the crowd he was pleased to see that he had their attention. Spitting on the ground at the mention of Scourge, the Forsaken continued. 
"He took to the task with a vengeance. Killing and laying waste to the Scourge, he became better at moving his stiff, dead muscles. It was during this that he noticed something familiar up on a hill by one of many abandoned buildings. The undead ran up the hill and spun the being around, expecting to find his long-lost wife that he buried a week before his own death." 
More gasps came from the pink and purple creatures around the fire. Kopfjagger adjusted his translator and continued on. "It was, indeed, his wife. But she was no longer aware of anything other than the desire to kill and consume. She was not aware of any other thing. Not even her husband come back from death to love her forever." 
He turned and lowered his head. He hated telling this part. 
"When she reached for him at first, he thought it was out of love. And then she bit at his hands. She groaned mindlessly at his neck as her teeth sank in." 
His feet made uncomfortable circles in the worn earth. "So this man killed her; his wife; mother of his children." 
Shock spread throughout the circle. They were used to happy, fruity tales of skipping and frolicking in woody places. Welcome to the rest of the world, he thought bitterly to himself. 
"The end," he stated flatly. 
He squished his way back to his spot next to the curvy woman and plopped back onto the ground. Spotty applause started up and faded quickly. Unthinking, Kopfjagger pulled out a tarnished golden ring and spun it around on his finger.
Category:Stories
Category:Kopfjagger