Title: The War No One Wanted
Description: "Sylvanas gets caught up in the latest hero brawl."
Notes1: Inspired by the "Mage Wars" Hero Brawl that just (or is going to, at the midnight hour that I'm typing this out) ended today. I want to do more chapters for the previous brawls, such as "Hammer Time" and "Ghost Protocol". Brawls like "Punisher Arena" and "Silver City" would only be the same thing (mindless mayhem) and would be pretty boring.
Notes2: I was working on How Does That Even Work? Chapter 3, but this kind of overtook it for the past two days when the idea germinated and hung on like a leech until I had it finished. Oh well. Focus deviates sometimes.
Notes3: I mean no disrespect to my fellow authors that ship particular pairings, but I will never, ever take Sylvanas/Kael'thas seriously. It makes me laugh instead of scoff as I'm usually wont to do at crack pairings that don't make sense and don't try to make it realistically work. Then again, every female pairing with Sylvanas wouldn't work in canon but that doesn't stop people from shipping her with others or with female OCs because, well, minus the undead condition writers and readers find her hot. Her relationship with Nathanos Blightcaller is ambiguous at best regardless of the new model he's got and the teasing that one Dark Ranger gives the PC in WoW, so unless there's confirmation straight from Blizzard's mouth, yeah, I'm going straight harem/not-harem route with Sylvanas. I was even going to throw Tracer in, too, but the Reflections comic threw a wrench in it and I'm not keen on NTR just for the sake of it or for padding the numbers (looking at you, Naruto). Man, am I glad I didn't go through with it. You could burn a lot of food with all those flames.
Sylvanas was just about to go onto the next page when the flash of light occurred, tossing everyone's shadows into stark relief and lighting up the café in a brilliant, festive flare. At that point, all conversation ceased and all heads turned to look out the windows of the entrance. Sylvanas paused and looked with them, and sighed.
A mushroom cloud loomed over the horizon, and above that, higher in the skies, a swirling vortex of sickly green crackling with lightning. A Felstorm. She saw the clouds underneath it come tumbling down like watercolor point and was reminded of how a storm looked when it was passing through an area far, far away.
The storm was the color of sand, and Sylvanas wondered how many Chromies were running around this time.
The drinking glass beside the book began to shake. So did the book. So did the hanging framed pictures of Luxoria's various ruins and oases and still life paintings and the silverware on the tables and counters and the overhead lights and chandeliers.
There was a low, quaking boom, and then the second mushroom cloud rose up to join its companion. And then another. Sylvanas blinked and squinted. She ground her teeth and slammed her fist on the table. Those two weren't mushroom clouds; those were phoenixes.
The window cracked once, twice. The framing groaned.
By now, everyone was rifling through their rune bags and backpacks and utility belts and pulling out Hammer-Space bottles and DynoCap boxes to unscrew and unlatch. Sylvanas detached one from its scroll on her thigh, suppressed the trigger, and caught the Reverse Grav-O-Matic badge before it hit the floor. She slapped it to her breastplate and touched a finger to the red button in the center, activating the magnetic rebounding shield. She still felt naked as she did without it.
Then the air raid sirens went off, short, loud whoops, and the windows and the walls to the bistro blew out in a fantastic, earsplitting blast. Debris bounced off the invisible shields around her and the other patrons even as they struggled to get up off the floor and push away fallen beams and detritus pinning them down. Some of them were helped to their feet and limped as they hustled outside, some had blood dribbling from cuts on their faces and limbs, but they were none the worse for wear.
Not for the first time, as she reformed from the banshee wave, Sylvanas thought they were too calm, too desensitized, to the situation that was about to unfold. Even the voice speaking through the city-wide speakers, the ones whose power was knocked out by the influx of arcane energies, was unfazed. "OKAY, EVERYONE, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. SCREAM YOUR HEADS OFF. RUN AROUND LIKE CHILDREN. IT'LL BE OVER IN A FEW MINUTES. IT'S JUST A HERO BRAWL." Then, mumbling under his breath (and probably not realizing, or caring, the mike was still on): "…I don't get paid enough for this…."
That was exactly what the denizens of New Scuttle Town did. They threw their hands up in the air and ran willy-nilly, shouting from the depths of their lungs with what Sylvanas concluded was a mixture of very bad acting and reluctant conviction to put at least some heart into it. She brushed plaster from an arm, adjusted her cloak, and walked out of the bistro's skeleton just in time to see some guy look both ways before hurling himself over an upturned wagon with a bunch of cabbages on the ground. Some other man ran past a row of wicker baskets and stare wide-eyed at the guy groaning and clutching a wounded leg to his chest. "Uh…! Uh…! What was it again? Oh…right! MY CABBAGES!" he shrieked, and then he was off and running, yelling abhorrently. Sylvanas shook her head.
She walked to the middle of the bazaar, where most of the adobe buildings were mere, toothy stubs and the tents tossed aside like sullied garbage bags. She grimaced as she noticed she almost stepped on a squashed tomato and crept hither and thither through the spilled produce and pieces of shattered ceramic and earthenware that once were pots and plates. They could've been anything, now that she thought about it.
The earth trembled, and Sylvanas hopped and skipped away just as it split in twain and yawned through the market and away from her. Toward the site of the brawl, as her gaze followed the jagged line.
Crystalline spiders of cerulean and ruby quartz crawled out of the fissure in swarms, clicking their mandibles. They were followed by their larger, fleshier brethren in ornate yet tattered robes, skin hanging from their bones, moaning and chittering in an insectile language she couldn't comprehend. They shuffled past her and continued mindlessly on the pathway or crawled up the remnants of still standing walls.
A pair of hands emerged from the crack: one pale and tacked on with long, black, sharpened nails that would make a wild cat jealous, and another large, green, and mottled with sores. Both Kael'thas and Gul'dan pulled themselves up, heads together and shoving each other with the unseen hands. Sylvanas noted they were clones by the three interlapping hexagons—the symbol of the Nexus—on their foreheads and the blue-purple nanorite coursing through their veins. It gave them an uncanny, alien appearance.
Finally they acquiesced and climb over the lip of the sheer and arose. Clone-Gul'dan doubled over with his hands on his knees, wheezing long and hard. "This…isn't…over! Over my…immortally reincarnating…body…will you have…my…gems!" He coughed and hacked on the final word and spat out a wad of phlegm. He wiped a hand across his mouth, grimacing at the uncouth display.
Clone-Kael'thas sniffed and coughed dust and sand. His chest heaved with exertion. "Maybe not…but A'lar can."
"What?" Clone-Gul'dan straightened up, and then the phoenix's talons clamped down on his shoulders. He had a second to see his shadow fly away from him before he was raised up, up and away into Luxoria's skies. "GODDAMMIT!" he roared. Clone-A'lar cawed triumph and beat his wings harder, whirled around and flew back toward the ensuing Felstorm. Sylvanas watched it grow smaller—the size of a frigate, the harvest moon, the sun at twilight—and then, as though a fist clenched itself closed, it snuffed out.
Clone-Kael'thas tipped his head back, barking laughter. "You hunchbacked, liver-spotted senior citizen! Your time is long past! There is no greater mage in the world than I! Get too close to the sun and you burn! But not this fellow, oh no! Here in the realm of near-eternal sunshine and oceans galore, I…Am…GOD!" He emphasized this with a grand upsweep of his arms.
"No, you're an idiot," said Sylvanas. "Just like your default and the rest of the Three Stooges."
Clone-Kael'thas turned around and gave her a disapproving look, as though he were regarding a child. "I see, it is you," he said, sounding bored. "Don't you ever get tired of being…how do I put this…a bitch?"
"No."
"Not even a little?"
"I will never get tired of calling you out for the clown you are, clone or no clone."
He frowned, and she resisted the reflex to punch it clean off his face. Or maybe his head off his shoulders. "A pity. One of you is simply enough for the Board to handle. But an army of you? Especially when the machines are randomly generated? That is a not-so cozy catastrophe waiting to happen."
Neither could she imagine the utter mayhem that would come about having an army of Kael'thases around. Ragnaros would surely conquer the Nexus in no time. She wondered how much good Nazeebos would do with the populace, weighed the consequences of having a pocket universe finally coming to grips with this thing called sanity that could be considered almost laughably revolutionary or a deeper, downward spiral into madness that would make Nicolas Cage's chewing the scenery amateur acting, and came to the conclusion that she'd rather not venture further. A bunch of Jainas would become a diabetic nightmare Walt Disney would be proud of and the Li-Mings would plunge the Nexus into an economic, ecological apocalypse.
The Chromies would probably cause the universe to undergo a Big Crunch, depending on how much and how badly they tampered with the rifts. Or maybe they'd lead everyone into a new golden age where people could actually die for once and stay dead.
"So how would you prefer to die, then?" she asked. "Hypothetically. Say the no point of return existed."
Clone-Kael'thas lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "With a smile on my face, the wind through this glorious lion's mane, and the sun on my face. Mayhap a nice hearth shall keep me warm, with a blanket on my lap, a glass of red wine on the table, and a book of classic literature in my hands, turned to the final page. There will be skylarks twittering outside the bedroom window with a warm summer breeze upon the air, tinged with sweet scent of bloodthistle, apple, and women's perfume, as they dance gaily upon the cobblestones to the strumming of Dandelion's lute." He smiled sadly. "I should wonder if that will be the way my default shall go. Quiet, and in peace."
Sylvanas snorted, trying not to laugh. "Okay. And, just out of curiosity, what do you suppose the last sentence of the last page reads? Remember that these are the final words you will ever look upon before your eyes close forevermore."
"Hmm…a good question. I had never put much though into that. Maybe…Elu'meniel mal alann? A fitting phrase for a noble creature."
"I don't see it that way."
"Oh? What do you think it would be?"
"Bye, Felicia," and Sylvanas planted her boot squarely on his chest and kicked him backward, into the pit. She got a glimpse of his arms pinwheeling, his hair defying gravity, and then he was gone.
"YOU TRAITOR!" he howled. A cavernous, yawning sound cut the final syllable short, as though closing down him as a set of jaws. Sylvanas pat herself on the back and considered it a job well done, wondering and then immediately discarding the possibility that she thought she heard crunching noises being made in the darkness.
The earth bucked again and violently exploded. A Clone-Jaina in a Winter Veil robe and a Clone-Nazeebo in his harlequin attire emerged—the former caught in a viselike grip in the gargantuan, undead jester, the latter getting the breath crushed from him in the snowman's bear hug.
"You go now…to the judgment of Countess von Kerrigan!" Clone-Nazeebo gasped, and the jester stomped at something unseen beneath it. Sylvanas peeked at the fissure and saw a long, spindly spider's leg trying to gain a foothold on the ledge.
"Those gems are not yours!" said Clone-Jaina. "What Neithis wants, Neithis gets!"
"You shall not pry them from me!" he declared, and swung the bejeweled skull dangling from its chain at her.
Clone-Jaina ducked and it whistled overhead. "Then pay your dues to Charon at the River Styx!" She raised her staff and smashed it across his face. The grinning mask shattered and teeth flew in white, stubby flecks.
The Webweaver lurched up, bare-chested and proud yet stone-faced in her gilded crown and jewelry. She plunged one hand into the back of the snowman's head, another snagged onto the back of the gargantuan's puffy collar, and with a strength that belied the two clones combines yanked down. Clone-Jaina was in mid-swing, the force of the momentum causing her to let it fly from her grasp. Clone-Nazeebo's crystal skull smacked against her chin, and then they were both yelling, cursing, as the Webweaver fled back into the tombs.
Sylvanas stared as the earth pushed itself back into place and sealed the crack shut. She thumbed her nose and turned back to the Felstorm. The sheet of sand and fire was gone, but now when thunder was beating upon the site as literal solid spikes bearing down on the battlefield. The clouds were darker, larger, more green and ominous. It seemed to be moving faster.
She looked to her right and saw as another Clone-Jaina, wearing the Bronze Dragonflight's Tempest Regalia and sporting that bizarre blue skin—and a Clone-Chromie in the form of her Fel Queen variant leapt from rooftop to rooftop, lobbing spells (and hourglasses) at each other. A mass of sand in the shape of a bronze drake slammed at the spot where Tempest-Jaina had just stood crashed through the bathhouse's domed roof.
She looked to her left and saw a Clone-Kael'thas in his Cyberhawk get-up ('the clown suit' or 'the Gatchaman cosplay', Sylvanas sometimes called it) try to form a Pyroblast while a Clone-Gul'dan in spider-themed Firelands attire rained fel-tinged fireballs from the heavens. Cyberhawk-Kael'thas unleashed his Pyroblast just as a Clone-Li-Ming in her Star Princess uniform used her Wave of Force spell to send him and his torn limbs tumbling ass over kettle into the gift shop. Balespider-Gul'dan unfurled a gout of fel flame and Star Princess-Li-Ming cast a growing arcane orb at the same time, yet both sailed past the other by a hair's-breadth and incinerated the opposition into ashes and nanorite dust.
She looked in front of her and caught Nova of the Skovos Isle as she ran full tilt into her. The force almost knocked them to the ground. "What the hell's wrong with you?!" Sylvanas asked her, shaking her roughly and shouting to be heard over the peeling thunder. "Don't you see what's going on?"
"Where's Shantae?"
"Who?"
"SHANTAE! YOU KNOW, THE HALF-GENIE! THE ONE WITH THAT WEIRD MARK ON HER CHEST!"
"Oh, that one. She went to another realm. Something about negotiating with Gucchaga's sultan at a pro-zombie rights rally."
"Just our luck for her to go help others at a time like this!"
"Idiot, this is a sanctioned brawl! You know people like her can't get involved in the League period!"
"Then what do we do, wait it out?"
"It's the only thing we can do!"
"LET SYLVANAS GO!" cried a female voice, and bracing each other against the wind Sylvanas and Nova of Skovos looked up to see Li-Ming, the default, pointing her source-empowered wand at the Amazon.
Nova sneered. "It's long since been settled, Li-Ming! Why can't you accept it as I and my other selves have?"
"Oh bologna, you know you're not satisfied with the results, either!"
Sylvanas blinked. "Wait, what are we talking about—Oh. Oh, come on, really? You two are still going on about the whole harem thing?" She expelled air from her nostrils. "For the last time, and don't you dare make me repeat myself or Isendra help me strike your proud ass into glass, I have not and never will call any of you crazy bitches my harem—"
"It's a harem whether you like it or not!" said Li-Ming. "Ask around, and ten out of ten peasants and a hundred out of one hundred nobles will tell you that you, and all your variants that will come after you, have a harem! You have a mind-bogglingly unexplainable yet undeniable attraction that draws the best and the worst out of us, the expected and the unexpected of all womenfolk the realms over! It's crack that makes you whack!"
"You were past whack the day we first met!"
"And I wouldn't have it any other way! Screw the rules, I'm a bloody wizard and proud of it!" she declared for all of New Scuttle Town to hear. The only participant to give response were the wind, the thunder, the arcane explosions and chattering undead and the still unconvincingly horrified citizenry. The sirens had long since gone silent, having been destroyed by the fighting. "But second-best? Oh no, Li-Ming of Caldeum doesn't settle for second-best. Li-Ming of Caldeum settles for NUMBER ONE! Li-Ming settles for BEST GIRL and ONLY BEST GIRL!"
"Dark-haired girls win all the time!" said Nova of Skovos. "Look at your anime and manga and tell me when was the last time a significant blonde heroine considered won and best? That's right, you can't!"
"There was Nisekoi—" Sylvanas tried to add in.
"You lot've have had your fun!" Nova pushed on. "It's time for us blondes to rise to the occasion and claim what's ours! Mine's! Theirs! Whoever's!" She sputtered. "D-Doesn't matter, my default was here first, anyway! Get in line like the rest of us!"
"Not a chance!" said Li-Ming, and she teleported off the building and onto ground level, stomping toward Sylvanas and the variant with a storm in her eyes and fury in her hands. She stuck her wand right in front of Nova's face.
The Amazon shoved it aside. "You're in a brawl! You lay a hand on me and that's a mark on your record, missy!"
Li-Ming threw her arms up in the air. "Ugh, big deal! Whoever said cleanliness is next to godliness needs to get their head checked! Not like the Houses are paying much attention to this when there's a giant Felstorm getting ready to blow any second!" As if waiting for its cue, a refurbished House Nerod eyebot (with the sword and bifurcated cog symbol of the Brotherhood Outcasts painted over in green and black) hovered into view, stopped, and spun around so that its wide, blank screen showed their reflections. Something small and round seemed to zoom in on them from within its chassis. It clicked once.
Nova's mouth twitched. Sylvanas stared blankly. Li-Ming scowled. The wand lashed out and smashed into the screen. The eyebot dropped to the ground.
"As I was saying," she reiterated, "we're settling this. Right here, right now!"
Nova grinned and clenched her fist, unsheathing the blade from her gauntlet. She placed the tip underneath Li-Ming's chin. "If that's what you want, then by all means—!"
"LOOK OUT! IT'S GONNA BLOW!" said a pedestrian tearing ass passed them. Sylvanas looked up and sensed her ears, heart, stomach, and the rest of her that didn't function metaphorically fall.
The eye of the Felstorm flashed white and green and blue at a seizure-inducing pace. The clouds were gathered in a bunch so tight all the light was extinguished from the sky, save for the paper-thin silhouette of a beam connecting storm to earth where presumably one of the Clone-Gul'dan's had mustered the mana and dark powers to summon it. Sylvanas wondered if it was possible for the Realm of Darkness to breach the aether and claim the tombs of the Spider Queen as an extension of the Shadowskirts, only to remember that the Realm Knights always warded the brawl sites' regions for these exact moments.
She wished they were here right now so they could put an end to this miserable take of their lives. And to get away from these insane, obsessive—
The Felstorm erupted. The light expanded and swallowed their shadows whole.
Thunder rained. Big, solid pieces.
One of them rocketed right toward them.
Sylvanas sighed in defeat and held out hands. Nova of Skovos took one and Li-Ming took the other.
The thunderbolt hit home.
Something beeped methodically.
Everything was blurry, slowly filling with color and regaining shape.
"Well, look who's back! Again!" That voice…so chipper and feminine…and bereft of the tinny echo that accompanied a working communications speaker. Not Nova…she'd on her in an instant. Not that Spectre variant, either…she was the textbook definition of tsundere.
Hammer? No…why in Darkness would she think that? She wasn't part of the harem. None of them were. Which left….
Sylvanas stirred to wakefulness and was blinded by the light. She groaned and turned her head away, clenching her teeth. "Swear to Darkness, Morales, if you don't move that in the next two seconds, I'll…." she began, but it came forth in a drunken slur and she was too distracted blinking sunspots from her eyes to venture further.
"Oh, sorry!" There was a click, and the damned light went off. Morales, dressed not in her suit but a white coat and jeans, grinned at her bleary face. "Morning, sunshine!"
"Piss up a creek, Rosie."
Morales laughed. "Good to know you're okay! You see, Shantae? She's alright. The Hall of Storms always brings 'em back to one hundred percent."
Shantae? Ah, yes, her. The foreigner. With a bit of effort, Sylvanas sat up in bed and regarded the other occupant in the room. A little older than Li Li but tall and leanly built with pointed ears not unlike an elf's but most certainly human, the half-genie looked out of place with her purple tank top and red vest and yoga pants. A mauve bandana with a cartoonish skull and crossbones adorned her head where a curtain of equally mauve hair fell down her back in a messy ponytail. The two black, segmented circles stamped above the swell of her breasts reminded Sylvanas of her place among the Nexus social hierarchy: more influential than a citizen but less important but no more powerful than a Hero.
Shantae crossed her arms, covering the sigil. "Then why confine them here if they're fully recovered? Could it be...?"
Morales nodded. "Right. The Nexus is host to a lot of abnormalities that isn't documented as originating from the Administered Universes selected by the Powers. Aether fever, transition overload and exhaustion, shadowtaint intoxication, memory loss, missing limbs upon resurrection, parasitism—we keep them here for however long the Hero's out just to make sure they're physically and mentally competent to be released and back onto the field."
"And this…heart monitor thingamajig…how is it working if her heart isn't, you know…."
"Oh, that's not a heart monitor. It's a neural resonator. It picks up arcane, fel, and necromantic signal patterns from the brain, where the soul of a person is usually…most of the time…attached to. You look a bit lost, so I'll sum it up like this: it picks up magic in the brain instead of the heartbeat, and that's how we tell the undead person is, well, alive. Sounds no different from a heart monitor, so, uh, yeah, I can understand the confusion."
"That makes more sense. Thanks, Doc. I'm glad you're okay," Shantae told Sylvanas. "I heard about what happened."
"People like to stretch the truth," Sylvanas shrugged, and winced. Phantom pain; that would fade in time. "Which one did you hear?"
"All of them. Everyone's so…eloquent?"
"Hyperbolic, more like."
"Yeah, that."
"How are Li-Ming and Nova of Skovos Isle doing?"
"They're recovering in the next room over," said Lieutenant Morales. "They've been dozing on and off since they first woke, so they should up shortly for a prognosis…and probably a visitation from New Scuttle Town's state police services. A brawl participant picking a fight against a non-participant is against the rules and liable for a breach of contract citation."
"Don't get me started on that," Sylvanas grumbled, lightly tapping the back of her bandaged head against the headrest.
Morales smirked. "No need. I got the gist of it."
"You sure know how to cause trouble even when you don't want to," said Shantae, unfolding her arms. The sigil stood out on her skin like a misplaced third eye. Sylvanas had the maturity and the wherewithal to not stare at it.
"I just wanted to get out. Enjoy a bit of peace and quiet regardless of the…interesting dialogue and diversity I come across while traversing realms. Everyone's getting ready for the Global Championships next week, but I can't immerse myself in good fiction when they're making such a racket. I knew this past week's brawl has strictly revolved around mages, but I didn't think it was going on right beneath us. I didn't think I was going to get that chaotic and cause that much destruction, so pardon me bedside manners if I feel like tearing through your home turf a second time for some much-needed de-stressing." Sylvanas sulked and tried not to stare at her hand, which was picking and toying with a part of the bed grimaced. "Yeah, uh, about that."
"About what?"
"The destruction thing. The sultan wanted me to pass on a message to you."
She quailed at the fury morphing the Banshee Queen's features like metal slowly being melted. "I am not helping pay restitution for something I had no part in! What do these people take me for, a carpenter?"
"With how much you've repaired, you might as well be given a degree!" Morales cackled good-naturedly.
"And yet they can't ask the competing Houses to fork over some of their 'hard-earned' cash? Get Li-Ming to do it; her bank account's fatter than Cho'Gall and Azmodan combined! She disobeyed brawl conduct! Hell, have Nova help her! Get her off her feet for once instead of always looking to spend quality senpai-kouhai time with me!"
Shantae clapped her hands together and bowed low. "Please, Lady Sylvanas, just this once and I won't ask again! Besides, I could use a Hero to help me clear out the local bounty boards. I thought the Cacklebats back home were strong but this universe has creepy beasts and dastardly villains unlike anything I've ever seen! This might be my toughest challenge yet! I don't think my powers are going to be enough!"
"Can't you just get them to dance? Isn't dance not called the language of life?"
"I've tried. They don't understand and chase me away!"
"Then the only dance you should give your malcontents is the dance of death! And if you feel squeamish about murder, then dance on them until they're beat into submission! A coma! A vegetative state!"
"That's even worse!"
"Then I'm going to teach you a thing or two about taking names and their pocket change." Sylvanas threw the sheet off and got out of bed. She sneered at the open hospital gown covering her chainmail armor, ripped it off and tossed it behind her. She noticed her bow leaning against the nearby windowsill but not her quiver or her utility belts. "Where are my belongings, Morales?" she asked.
"In the lockbox," she said. "Don't worry, I deactivated the safeguards when your neural activity stabilized. When are you heading out?"
"As soon as the youngling tells me where and who we're hitting up," she said, watching the container's lid split apart and unfold to reveal her things on spring-loaded metal plates. She snatched the quiver and cinched it across her breastplate and one by one hooked the belts on her person."You mean you'll help?!" Shantae all but squealed.
Sylvanas cringed at the barely contained excitement in her voice. Good grief, another Nova. Just how many people like her were there wandering the realms? "Don't push your luck. I'm only doing this so your sultan gets off my back and you don't become a sniveling mess." Finished, she stalked up to the half-genie, clapped a hand on her shoulder and forced her to face the door. "Morales, I'll send the coordinates to our current location. When Nova and Li-Ming wake up, send them to the nearest transponder. I want them with me where I can see them. We don't need those baseborn sloths for help."
Morales smiled. "As you say."
Shantae looked fit to burst and made to reach around and embrace Sylvanas. "Thank yooooouuu!"
Sylvanas put her hand on the girl's face and gently pushed her off. "Please don't. I don't do hugs."
Shantae gasped. "You did the running gag! Did you hear that, Doc? She did the—"
"Yeah, I heard," Morales laughed. "You'll get that a lot. It means she likes you."
"As if," Sylvanas muttered.
"Oh, you're nothing like the people say!" Shantae was saying as they were going out the door. "I thought you were going to be another Risky, and maybe you are since you're hard as a jawbreaker, but deep down I'll bet you're as soft as warm butter!"
"Ugh."