Day 31: Hunting for Dummies

HELL ON AZEROTH: DAY 3

You know what always happens when you skip class for a couple of days. Yeah. As soon as you get back, there's a fucking quiz.

So my boast of out-huntarding these trolls will likely not be realized anytime soon. Apparently, while my fellow hunters-in-training were beating the daylights out of the Northwatch asshats, they were learning two very important lessons: how to sic, and how to un-sic. Because I'm utterly squeamish about killing, which I don't think is a particularly bad personality trait, I missed the whole thing.

But you know me, I'll fake my way through almost anything.

We worked with training dummies this morning, and I had a lot to make up. Ortezza stood there with her arms crossed, trying not to laugh. Up to this point, Zugzug has been really good at tearing anything to pieces I've sent her after, but I had to shoot it first so she knew it was fair game. Now I had to send her without firing a shot.

Not as easy as you might think.

I started out simple, just relaying the image of her giving the dummy what-for. She looked at the target, looked at me, cocked her head, and panted. Never lifted her furry butt off the ground. Okay, that's not working, how about if I imagine the training dummy attacking me? Again, she looked at me like I was retarded (rather like the way most Blackrock orcs look at me, now that I think about it) and didn't move a muscle. I tried a few other things and got the same results.

Finally losing my patience, I walked over to the dummy and mimed myself clawing and biting it, then gestured at the target. See? That's how you do it. Get'im!

I almost thought I'd gotten through with that one, because she stopped panting and pricked her ears, but apparently that's 'wolf' for what the fuck?

At that point, I just threw my hands up in the air, kicked the training dummy in the crotch zone, and stomped off. Apparently, that was a sufficient clue, and Zugzug leaped at the dummy with wild abandon.

Needless to say, Ortezza was less than impressed.

Round two of 'Karie's Humiliating Hunting Lesson' involved calling her off the target after she's gotten a fair number of bites in already. Happily, I got to shoot it first this time. However, it's even harder to get a wolf to stop ripping something's ass to pieces than it is to get her started. I tried imagining her falling asleep, assuming various submissive postures like exposing her belly. Hell, I even tried to show her making friends with the god damned thing! Absolutely nothing worked. And Ortezza wasn't inclined to help because I was behind the rest of the class, so she told me to get my translator to tell me.

Fine. At least he's ahead of me a bit, so this'll be a no-brainer for him. I hope. Roznik's been really nice since the whole deal with his family, so he's agreed to help me after dinner.

Speaking of his family's traumas, Zuti wasn't here when we got back last night. Probably afraid of me. I'm not giving up, though. With him absent, it might make it easier to do a little recon work, interview some folks, find out if anyone else has been 'touched by the Zuti.' See if I can't get a mob of them after him, because there's nothing funnier than that.

While I don't consider myself particularly bloodthirsty, and I shuddered a bit during that scene in "The Handmaid's Tale" where the ladies tore the supposed rapist to pieces, that was a book and this is real. I won't be ripping his limbs off, but I'll cater the affair. Sell the tickets, maybe. Design the t-shirts. Maybe if the message is harsh enough, his little 'friends' will think twice about the part they played.