Kenda couldn't even remember how many times Neruda hit her.

She did have to give the nutjob credit. Few people could punch anything that many times, bare-knuckled, without wincing or resting their wrists. Neruda wailed on her like a child who'd gotten their first punching bag for their birthday, possibly working out more psychological issues during the ten-minute beating than during all the hour-long anger management sessions at the counselor's office in Dalaran. If it weren't for the fact that Kenda didn't particularly enjoy being beaten to a pulp, she'd almost have to respect the mad elf for her devotion.

Since Neruda wasn't in her metamorphosis form, she couldn't hit nearly as hard as before, but she certainly didn't seem to be discouraged by that fact. She even punched Kenda's legs a bunch of times...Kenda didn't even know anybody would bother punching another person in the legs. Neruda had simply turned into a ball of fury when throttling the downed victim. Eventually, the purple-haired perpetrator had worn herself out, and had rolled Kenda up in the throw rug on the floor of the looted house.

Recovering from a world of hurt, Kenda merely laid inside the rug like a hot dog waiting to be eaten by a fat kid seeking comfort food. In full view of her, Neruda sat on a couch in the den of the house and sharpened her war glaives. The act was an obvious threat, but after having just lost round three, Kenda was in no shape to unroll herself from the rug and initiate a round four. Now she knew how Neruda must have felt after their first two fights.

There were a lot of things Kenda could have said. Once she wasn't being pummeled like it was going out of style, her mind was clear enough to remember that, you know, there was kind of a war going on. Against the Burning Legion. In the biggest invasion their planet had ever seen. And there they were, abandoning the battlefield so Neruda could make some sort of a point.

But the appeal to the greater good couldn't start like that. The crazed demon hunter obviously wasn't listening to reason; she'd need to be informed of the error of her ways via a more emotional appeal. Unfortunately, crazy was a language Kenda didn't speak.

She didn't have to initiate anything, though. Obviously having harbored quite a bit of anger after Kenda beat her ass so easily in the past, Neruda was finally ready to gloat.

"I didn't realize that your race regenerates so fast," Neruda said while continuing to sharpen her war glaive. "The bruises on your face disappeared so quickly that it almost felt like a waste not to put more there all over again. Sort of like those ghost pens, where the ink disappears...you want to just keep on writing and writing." She stopped sharpening for a second and finally looked up at her catch. "Right?" she asked with a smug grin.

Observing and planning, Kenda tried to think of a way to escape. To force Neruda's guard down, to trick the horned woman into letting her get back up, to cast a curse so quietly that it would go unnoticed. She'd have to play the game if she wanted to survive.

"Yeah...that make sense," she replied flatly, trying to conceal any sort of a reaction.

Neruda stared at her intensely, but the nutjob failed to wipe off her grin completely. "You know what happens next," she said. It wasn't a question.

When the night elf didn't move, Kenda realized that 'crazy' and 'focused' weren't mutually exclusive. Tricking her way out of the situation would be more difficult than she might have expected. Had she ever expected to be in such a situation in the first place, of course. Looking for a way to stall, she tried to force her captor to talk more.

"What be happening next?" she asked while pretending to hesitate.

Unable to hide her sick joy any longer, Neruda flashed her fangs this time. Her nostrils started to flare like a nerd who was about to prove somebody wrong, and Kenda could tell that whatever came next was meant to elicit a strong reaction. "I'm going to kill you," she replied in a bizarrely innocent voice like a child revealing who stole the cookie jar.

Resigned dread was an odd emotion. It was unfamiliar, for sure, since Kenda had never been in such a situation before. She didn't bother looking at the door and wondering at which split second her brother or one of her friends would barge in to save her. She didn't bother listening for a second warhorn or a Legion victory bell to signal the end of the rebellion. She didn't even wallow in self-pity as she faced down a psycho with a sharp object who'd wrapped her up like a fly in a spider's web. She mainly just thought about the afterlife and wondered if it would be as awesome as it was in all the stories.

Nobody was busting the door down to but a stop to this. Nobody even knew they were there. Hell, Kenda didn't even know where exactly they were in the city. Alone, away from her family, and in a random abandoned villa, she was going to die. Not valiantly against the Burning Legion, but against a psychopath who had no comprehension of priorities.

Perhaps it was Kenda's ego, or her healthy self-esteem depending on one's view, but she found herself surprisingly indifferent. If Neruda wanted to kill her, then begging would only encourage the mad elf and prolong the suffering. The balanced troll refused to grant her enemy that satisfaction.

"Yeah, okay. Like, whatever."

Like an open book whose cover was a heart on a sleeve, Neruda's mouth shot open in surprise. Like a mental patient with a brand new personality every few minutes, her mouth quickly snapped shut as she neared her teeth. Then she forced a fake evil grin again.

"I'm going to kill you," she repeated.

Letting her head rest on the floor, Kenda had a new purpose in however many seconds she had left to live: to rob her captor of any sort of joy that might be derived from her murder. With quite literally nothing else to live for, Kenda forced herself to be as passive aggressive as possible.

"Sounds good."

Calcium grit with a dangerous force as Neruda's fake grin contorted into a real sneer. Long eyebrows arched down furiously, her shoulders tensed up and she stopped sharpening her war glaive. She was like an infant, totally lacking any sort of pretense.

"I...I said I'm going to-"

"I don't got all day, hun."

"Rrrrr! You! Rrraaa!" Neruda growled, positively indignant that she'd been interrupted, and then beyond angry once her eyeless brow shot up in realization at what her captive had said. "I-I'm going to kill you! See this?"

Neruda stood up and lifted one of her war glaives, slowly waving the weapon as if putting it up for display at an auction house.

"This is my war glaive. There are many like it, but this one is mind. And I'm going to use it..." She paused for dramatic effect. "To kill you," she added, lowering the tone of her voice as if trying to emphasize that she meant serious business.

Pulling up every memory of being bullied as a child, Kenda started to channel all the qualities she hated most in people. Every jerk she'd every met lived in through her mocking, condescending expression, which was accentuated by the fact that her whole body below the neck was wrapped up in a rug and thus not visible.

"Nope. You can't be killing me."

Trying a dismissive act of her own, Neruda pretended to inspect her weapon as she mock-executed an imaginary opponent. "Oh really? And why is that, miss...miss...rug face?"

Laughing in a way that would have made Kenda want to slap herself had she seen herself in a mirror, she taunted her captor despite being at such a disadvantage. "Cause you don't have the guts," she snickered.

There. Right there. Not so much the way that Kenda snickered like a schoolyard tormenter, no. It was the word. The moment that she implied Neruda didn't have the stomach to execute her, the elf's entire countenance changed. Her grip on her war glaive loosened, and her spine shivered like a cold draft had blown over the room.

"We'll see how smart you are when I slice your head off, miss rug face. You're wrapped up in a rug, and I won-"

"Quit stalling."

"Shut up! Shut! Up!" Neruda screeched at being interrupted again. Snatching the corner of the rug, Neruda dragged her to the other side of the room and then pulled her in a weird half circle as if trying to rough her up some more. "Don't prolong the inevitable-"

"Wimp."

"Rrrraaa!" Neruda grabbed the edge of the rug and tried to swing it around. Without her metamorphosis form, she wasn't quite strong enough to throw the troll, and ended up spinning Kenda around instead. "No! Shut your mouth, I will not allow you to speak!"

"You just mad cause you can't kill me."

"I'll show you, Horde scum!"

Grabbing a fistful of forest green braids, Neruda dragged her captive by the hair back over to the couch. Enraged but also visibly upset, she grabbed her other war glaive and swung it in the air as if performing a practice strike.

"You just a wimpy freak."

This time, Neruda kicked her. Although it was a clean shot, Kenda was wrapped up in the thick rug, and it didn't really hurt. Laughing in the most disrespectfully asinine voice she could muster, she tried to torment her captor as much as she could, no longer even thinking about life or death.

"That's all you got, freak?" she taunted.

"I AM NOT A FREAK!"

A swift kick met the side of Kenda's head, legitimately pissing her off and causing her to forget the fact that she was technically at the nutjob's mercy. Determined to get inside of Neruda's head, she verbally unleashed.

"You a crazy ass freak with no eyes, and that be why none of the other night elves like you!"

"Liieeesss!" Neruda screamed while reaching for her weapon again. Sitting on the rug to pin her victim down, she grabbed Kenda by the throat and lifted her blade as if she were about to strike. It was now or never.

"And you not be strong enough to kill me cause you don't even like yourself!"

A swift gust of air was heard, whistling so sharply that it almost hurt Kenda's ears. It took her a few seconds to realize that the sound was coming from Neruda's mouth, and the madwoman coughed roughly on her own spittle. The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds, neither of them moving. Despite the position they were in, it was Neruda who looked absolutely devastated. She couldn't have appeared more vulnerable if she'd been stripped naked, or simply beaten up and rolled in a throw rug, and her wrist actually gave way as if the glaive was suddenly too heavy for her to hold. The metal clattered on the tile floor, breaking both of them out on their stupor.

In spite of Kenda's anger at the terrible trashing she'd endured, the expression on Neruda's face was painful to look at. Trembling and shaking her head, the psycho elf kept moving her lips even when no sound came out. Giving up, she crawled away from the rug as if Kenda were a ticking time bomb, lashing out with an imprisonment spell as if the confused troll were going to chase her down with more stinging taunts.

Held in place by the demonic snare, Kenda watched Neruda stumble out of the den of the looted household and practically fall through the bathroom door, even locking it behind her as if she'd be followed. Crying to herself alone, she finally left Kenda with enough space to breathe and wonder just how the hell she was going to escape.