Title: Fluffy Friday (or, The Obligatory Black Friday Episode, 2016 Edition)
Description: "Sylvanas is called upon by the Board to work on the busiest day of the year at Hub-Mart."
Notes1: Partly based on my own experience of working Thanksgiving Day at Walmart and inspired by Consort's PM which gave the prompt more fuel for the fire. Although this account is a lot more highly exaggerated than what I went through that evening, given that half the stuff Sylvanas pulls would be grounds for managerial reprimanding and probably a violation for being verbally abusive to a paid customer. In this chapter, the character closest to being a self-insert would be Li Li with a mix of the dry wit and sarcasm by Sylvanas.
Notes2: I had considered doing a "Twelve Days of Christmas" sort of mini-arc, but when I saw the Feast of Winter Veil trailer I figured it'd probably be better off as another drabble. I mean, come on, you know how Impressions!verse!Nexus works: stuff will blow up, the citizenry would revolt and probably turn on each other in all the chaos and confusion, and everyone participating in Lunara and Gingerdread Nazeebo's fight would get slapped with a hefty bill, debts be damned. Aren't we glad we have Powers-sponsored charities?
Notes3: So I guess the blog question from How Does That Even Work? kind of went off the grid and died a quiet death, so...I don't know. I'm still entertaining the idea, though.
Notes4: For better or worse, Brightwing returns and sees the positive side of the debacle...but be grateful this is a comedy and not a dark story full of suffering fit to make Urobuchi Gen proud. She'd be the first to get axed and endure a fate worse than death if I had my way (and my temper run afoul). But that's not to say I don't like her; I'd still take Malfurion over her as my go-to healer any day of the week. (Just remember what I said.)
Notes5: I kept count of the items in particular while on my shift, which my coworker and I made a game out of. I got up to nine before I was called to help the rest of my cashiers at the self-checkout (that is also the same setting that Sylvanas and Li Li are in for this installment).
Notes6: The Haunted Mines map is back! Sadly, the cheesing strats are still there (i.e. have Hammer or a specialist push a lane while everyone else is collecting skulls) and matches retain the tendency to last up to an hour. You can bet there'll be a chapter on the Grand Opening in the near future.

"You know something, Sylvanas?" Li Li asked, as the tall nobleman—a lesser Houseborn, judging by the glimpse of the one-horned shield outlining the sigil he moved too fast for her to see—brushed by her without a word. Oh, and had his nose all but up against his cell, too; it'd sucked to be him if he crashed into somebody.

"Hrm?" was all Sylvanas enunciated, her head turning and following the customer down the spacious aisle, past the walk-in cosmetic and candle shops, salons and floral boutiques. Li Li saw her ears were sweeping low and back. Oh dear.

"I think Hub-Mart picked the worst two people for this job."

"What do you mean 'the two worst'?" Sylvanas spun on her heel, to keep both an eye on Li Li and the constant stream of customers flowing in and out of the automatic doors. "The Board knows damn well what I am. You're just a kid."

"A very cute kid, I'll say!"

"Who has no experience in retail whatsoever; you can't even speak the languages of the more foreign Nexians without making an ass of yourself. And don't get me started on those Riftwalkers."

"Well, the Hubland does happen to have the most diverse population in the Hub realm."

"That's beside the point. You're not like Chen. You're too quiet! Too demure! And certainly nowhere near drunk enough."

"You know I only taste-test his brews, right? I mean, hello, look at me—I'm a Hero but that still doesn't grant me exemption from certain age-restricted laws!"

"Not even your outward appeal can stop these people from doing something they shouldn't," said Sylvanas, and as soon as the words left her mouth an older woman swathed in robes—another lesser Houseborn, but with a different family crest—went by on a hovering motorized scooter. Its nanorite engine was quietly humming. She clapped a none too gentle hand on the madam's shoulder. "You there, lady. You can't go that way."

The woman turned her head around, glaring, and for a moment her face whitened at the Hero whose presence she had the pleasure to be in. Then her brows doubled down and she stuck her chin out. "Well why in the Anchors can't I? Do you know who you are speaking to?"

Sylvanas nodded, lips pressed together. "Right. The Queen of England. Gotcha."

"And I see you haven't stopped being the Bitch Queen," she scoffed.

"No, that's Kerrigan, but nice try. Look, you can't go out that way. You have to go around the area." Sylvanas pointed out the self checkout, a big space squared off with cardboard racks holding sunglasses and visors, plastic shelves full of snacks, and coolers stocked with an assortment of energy drinks, organic fruit juice, and bottled water. It was currently jam-packed with customers of various walks of life and android manservants being attended to by minions and Heroes; the Archangel Diablo towered over the likes of Jaina (and who else would jump at the chance to help people and spread that holiday, Disney-esque cheer than freaking Jaina), Auriel, the Vikings, and even completely dwarfed Chromie to the point where he could close his hand around her body and use her for football practice. Everyone wore the blue and purple vest that were the colors of the Nexus, although Chromie's was three sizes too big and dragged across the floor, and Diablo's was much too small even for XXXL and was all but hanging in shredded rags over his massive frame. "Go around and to the left. The managers don't want people coming and going past the checkout aisles."

"But I'm parked all the way on the other side of the store!"

"You can leave through the grocery side, ma'am; you just have to go around," Li Li tried to explain, and the woman peered down her bifocals at the smaller girl. Sylvanas rolled her eyes—Yes, let's see if your 'cute appeal' spares us another pissed off customer. "It's to prevent stealing—"

"This is bloody stupid!" the woman exclaimed, slamming a hand on the fuel gauge. "You're going to make an old woman like me go all the way around the parking lot!"

Li Li shook her head. "No, ma'am, you misunderstand! The store just wants everyone to keep going to the right. You can still leave through the pharmacy doors—"

"Pathetic lot. I'm glad you're not viable for the League. No one wants your endangered ass! And you!" She jabbed a finger at Sylvanas. "I'm reporting you to corporate for this! Your attitude is balls and your outfit triggers me!"

"I don't work here—"

"I don't care! You're an inconvenience to this store! I'm not coming back here ever again!" The Houseborn grasped the wheel with one hand and pulled the shift-stick in reverse. "Out of the way, gods-dammit!" With a gratingly loud beep the shopping cart bucked, adjusting to its passenger's weight and the distribution of the bagged goods and utilities in the basket. Then it backed up, sharp and fast, the woman heedless of the indignant (Sylvanas) and startled (Li Li) cries of the Heroes jumping out of the way, and in a U-turn that almost bowled over several customers once again going the wrong way she made her retreat, making curses and oaths and pagan rebukes under her breath ("The Raven Lord peck your eyes, tits, and belly button out!").

"Hey, wait!" Li Li called out. "Come back!" She ran after the speeding cart, vest flapping behind her. With the hubbub of conversation and items being scanned all around her, she didn't hear Sylvanas emit a single snort of laughter.

"Oh, you are so funny, Li Li," she mumbled. Like hoity-toity customers were going to listen to her; some people just had the gall to come to their own misguided conclusions and deem them correct, regardless of store policy and (she admitted with a smudge of reluctance and commiseration) employee courtesy. She shook her head and turned away just as Li Li rounded the corner, still unsuccessfully hailing the woman to stop but succeeding in causing a good dozen or so customers to stare dumbly at her (she was surprised to see Gul'dan acting as door greeter for the evening shift; he glowered at the panda girl from beneath his bushy brows and said something Sylvanas didn't deign and couldn't bother to hear).

When she turned around, it was to the sight of something furry and silky soft being pushed into her face. "Bwuh—!" She sputtered with the garbled, reptilian yelp accompanying the sudden jarring of the motor cart coming to a halt and pushed herself away. "Watch where you're—What the?"

A life-sized teddy bear smiled down at her, its head resting on its nonexistent collarbone. Scowling, Sylvanas shoved the thing to the side and pulled a face at the hunchbacked demon glaring at her. "What are you looking at me for?" she sniped. "You're the one that almost ran me over—"

The demon lay on the horn. Sylvanas backpedalled and clutched her ringing ears. No one could hear the string of obscenities flying from her mouth. When the sound ended, she looked up and saw the demon with one hand on its bicep and the other flashing her the middle finger…claw…whatever constituted as a middle finger; this one seemed to be missing two of them. "Well, piss on you, too, buddy!"

"That's enough!" a low, sonorous voice rumbled behind the demon. It looked behind it and followed the very wide, many-legged, bling-adorned body that belonged to Azmodan, the Lord of Sin. He grasped the crown of its head in one large, meaty hand bedecked in rings and forcefully turned it up so that their eyes met. "You be nice now! Do you want to be escorted off the premises? Get this thing moving at once; you're holding up the line!" He made a throwing motion with his arm that tossed the lieutenant (so Sylvanas saw, judging by the arrows seared into the plate of a pauldron) forward in its seat.

"There are more of these?" She asked, gesturing lamely at the teddy bear.

Azmodan grinned, causing his cheeks to dimple. "Why, yes. About eight others and…hm," he tallied the number on his fingers, "twelve pallets full of child-sized plushies."

"Twelve? Why on earth do you need twelve pallets? And ones with…that?" This time she jabbed her arm at the carts behind the demon. Some were rattling the bars back and forth and shaking their fists above opened boxes where teddy bear heads and arms and legs piled on top of one another. Others punched the horn and yelled at their compatriot in their black, gibberish tongue for it to move. The demon twisted around and shouted back, making a waving motion with its arm: Settle down and get off my back!

Azmodan took his sweet time rotating to face the direction she was pointing at. Damn, and she thought Muradin was fat; this bastard could be a battleground core if he wanted to. "You should know my training regimen is…very, very hard. Get it?" He giggled at his joke, which withered at the cold, flat gaze Sylvanas gave him. "Sorry, sorry. C-Couldn't help myself. But, um, ahem," he cleared his throat, "yes, the regimen is…taxing, so to say. Sometimes I just have to muster all my willpower and summon them through the fabric of space-time to help me push a lane or dogpile the poor sods all clustered together at a chokepoint. They need to unwind, see, release the stress of being molecularly discombobulated and called from across the Anchors to scout a smoke vent or an overgrown bush for an enemy and wondering if your girlfriend or that half-naked ninja wannabe is stalking them from behind."

"I don't know how many times I have to tell everyone this, but let's get one thing straight," said Sylvanas, simultaneously craning her neck to get most of him in her vision and looking down upon him. "Nova's a girl, and calling her my 'friend' is really pushing it. Thus, she is my friend. Who is a girl, woman, whatever she identifies as, I don't give a damn. You have to switch those words around and put the space in between them. The other way around—it doesn't work that way."

Azmodan dismissed her claims with a dainty wave. "Why do you even bother? I ship anyone and anything; you just happen to be one of the more profiled. Anyway, let us get back on topic, lest we deviate into further normalcy."

"You mean 'degeneracy'."

"That's what I meant. Anyway, lieutenants and generals and minions alike need to relax. I do not want them to break under pressure anymore than I am already subjecting them. Alas, since we are bound by those insidious laws, I and my armies cannot exactly…hmm, how do those Vikings put it…pillage, plunder, and setting things on fire. Among other more…extreme measures we can't perform, unless we wish to be expelled from the League and incarcerated for eternity in the Starless Depths. So we go to the springs way out in the Drops west of the Wend, the onsen in Jade Town and Little Pandaria, the open gyms and basketball courts in Goba Goba, the gondola rides and the bird watching and the fly fishing in Anteria along the Delta. It's very…hmm, what's the word I'm looking for? You know, that word where you deflate like a balloon and feel very good inside even when you are experiencing conflicting emotions on the outset."

"Cathartic?"

"Yes, that's the one."

"And you don't go to those private universities to get in on their safe spaces, curl up in a ball, and wait for the world to pass you by?"

Azmodan sneered, which made his eyes almost crinkle shut. "I don't believe in that nonsense…although I can't really bring it upon myself to take the coloring books away. Between you and me, I've noticed their shading is getting better; makes the picture look more pronounced. I like to get them laminated at the currency exchange and hang them up on the walls and refrigerator—with their permission, that is."

"Good for you," said Sylvanas.

Going by the smile on his face, the sarcasm was either ignored or lost upon him. "Oh, I know. That is also why I bought as many teddy bears I could get my hands on. The boys and girls can't get enough of them. You should see how creative they can get. One teddy bear can play the role of a psychiatrist on those long, low-backed couches for the patients to sit on; another a wounded war veteran having finished physical therapy and coming home to his sweetie; this one being bait for hunters so the bigger teddy bear can demolish them. Sometimes we knit sweaters and smaller plushies when we tear the stuffing out of them, and those we donate to charity and NPOs; one of the few times I practice recycling, you know."

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute!" Sylvanas held up a hand. "You said 'boys and girls'."

"Yes, I did."

"How can you tell? Look at them! They're all the same!" She scowled darkly at the demon shaking its fist at her, saying something that was too garbled and cavernous to understand. "Yes, I'm talking about you, too!"

Azmodan sniffed. "You're not a demon; I don't expect you to know nor understand the physiological differences, height and weight be damned. Isn't that right, Marta?" He stroked the demon's armored head—her head—with what Sylvanas incredulously assumed to be sentimental, fatherly affection. Marta smiled, twisting the skin around her snout so that it looked old and crinkled and ready to be peeled off with a curious, prodding hand.

"Hey, I'm back," said Li Li glumly. Her feet dragged across the floor.

Sylvanas nodded. "No luck?"

The girl huffed and drew her brow together. "Nah, she straight up ignored me."

"And what did Gul'dan say?"

"That if she ever gets off the cart, she might gain to get some exercise and lose a few pounds and some hundred calories. She wasn't even disabled."

Sylvanas snorted. "Typical customers. This place needs to incorporate anti-tampering protocols into their vehicles that not even their manservants can bypass."

"Why need a shopping cart when you have six legs?" Azmodan said, rearing himself up to his full height. "I can go hither and thither much more quickly than those cheap, degradable engines!"

"Watching you run is like watching a spider run around the walls of a closed-up bedroom," said Sylvanas, pulling her lips back in a disgusted frown. "No one wants to see it."

Azmodan harrumphed and relaxed his legs. Marta flashed her fangs at Sylvanas, then spun around again in her seat and yelled at the other demons when they raised a second wave of honking and swearing. "Go on, get moving," the Lord of Sin told her, "before the managers get involved. I'll be with you shortly." Marta jabbered a response, pushed the gearstick forward and pressed down on the gas pedal. Her companions (and the rest of the customers behind them that had given up their attempts to push through them) threw up a cry of elation and followed after her in a slow line that snaked around the self-checkout area.

"So," Li Li began, watching them go out the door (and nearly mowed down Gul'dan in the process), "what's with all the teddy bears?"

"They're the remains of all the bad panda boys and girls who misbehave and run away only to get lost in the Nexus," said Sylvanas, matter-of-factly. "Animal preservation societies and statistical analyses across the multiverse say they're endangered, but we know better than that—it's their souls, Li Li. Instead of going on Greatfather Winter's Naughty List, they get stuffed into these croqueted, wool-stuffed bodies and watch your every waking moment with those beady little eyes, unable to move yet silently raging at their inabilities and cosmic machinations beyond their control. They're on sale for four-ninety-eight. Want one?"

Li Li sputtered laughter and rolled her eyes. "No thanks. I can just look myself in the mirror and know—for a fact—that I'm cuter than any bargain brand name teddy bear."

"You don't want to come across my domain, then," said Azmodan. "The fellows like to handle them, er, quite a bit roughly."

"How roughly are we talking?"

"Have you really stopped and watched the replays of our fights, or the live HoloVision broadcasts in and around the taverns? I had never realized until a while back how many gallons of blood a body can hold."

"That's, uh, great. G-Good to know." Li Li forced a grin and gave him a thumbs-up.

The demon in the last shopping cart grounded suddenly to a halt with a yelped as a furry white head emerged from the pile of stuffed animals. Triangular ears, black noses and eyes, a lolling pink tongue—"Woof woof!"

"Doodle!" Li Li cried. "What are you doing here?"

"Huh, so that's where he's been this whole time," said Sylvanas. "I thought I let him inside before I left the house."

"And how long ago was that?"

"About," Sylvanas checked her watch, "almost two hours."

"Holy religious and metaphysical denominations, Sylvanas! It's going to drop down tonight! His fur's not that thick!"

"And yet you overlook the space-time manipulations he's capable of. I'm more than certain he can just warp himself inside where it's warm. Isn't that right, Doodle?" She leveled a knowing stare at him.

"Woof!" said Doodle, and smiled at Sylvanas. His tail poked from the mounds of fluffiness and wagged like a hummingbird in flight.

Azmodan cocked his head. "…What is this thing?" he asked. Slowly, gingerly, he moved a finger toward the puppy and stopped it just shy of his face. Doodle turned his head, sniffed it, and began to lick it.

"That's Doodle," said Li Li. "He's Sylvanas' dog. He's from another universe."

"This is a dog? He looks so…simple and…colorless…compared to the…others I have seen." His eyes were transfixed on the tiny rows of pointed teeth that were on display as Doodle curled his lips back and nibbled on the finger. "Ooh, he has quite the bite for such a little one."

"Well, he's a puppy. A—what did you call it, Sylvanas, a Samoyed? Yeah, a Samoyed, but Doctor Morales thinks he might have strains of Siberian Husky in him." Li Li shrugged. "Maybe he'll grow a silver mask when he's older. Oh, and that's his natural fur color. Kinda late for him to be anything else when he's a few months old."

Azmodan hummed thoughtfully. "Interesting," he said, and turned his hand over so that Doodle could slather the underside. Then, "A shame he's been accounted for. Perhaps he could teach the minions how to reach through the aether without coming through the receiving end of summoning teleportation as a sack of meat and bones."

"He's a reality warper, not a telepath," Sylvanas said, scoffing. "If he could talk, it'd just be about food, marking trees, and belly rubs. No different than what a normal dog thinks."

"Woof!" said Doodle, wriggling around in the pile at the sound of his master's voice.

The spot next to him shifted and all heads turned as one when another head emerged—flatter, more oval in shape, wide eyes set among smooth blue and green scales. A pair of glittering red and wings swept the teddy bears aside like an earthquake splitting the ground in two. "Brightwing can breathe again!" said the faerie dragon. "Air is very good…and very sweaty!"

"Brightwing! We haven't seen you in a while," said Li Li. "What've you been up to?"

"Brightwing got caught in Nexus portal and went on adventure across time and space! One universe was full of…'pokey men'…but they were not very nice. They tried to catch me and make me part of their collections! Brightwing ran away, but not before giving them a goodbye hug and kiss."

"So you killed them," said Sylvanas, unsurprised. "I shouldn't have expected any different from you."

"Pokey men taste like apples and licorice!"

"That sounds nasty as all get out," said Li Li, and held up the sign of the letter X with both forefingers.

Azmodan harrumphed and folded his arms across his barrel-shaped chest. "Hmph! And it was so nice and quiet here, too. I suppose you'll be here in the Nexus for the time being?"

"Forever and ever! Until the next Greater Rift pops up." Brightwing licked her lips with the bulbous end of her tongue. It wound up slapping her between the eyes, and she yelped and shook it off with a furious motion of her head. When she stopped, it was to look at Doodle, who smiled benevolently at her. "Wow! A puppy!"

"Woof!" said Doodle, and licked her upside the face.

She broke out giggling. "It's so cute! I want to keep it."

"Did you sign the adoption papers?" Sylvanas asked, eyes narrowing.

"No."

"Then you can't have him." Oh, and welcome back, I guess, came the thought, and for a second she wondered if she should say it. Instead, she leaned forward, put her hand on top of Brightwing's head, and dunked the faerie dragon into the sea of teddy bears.