Title: Here and Back Again: Road Trip
Description: "Sylvanas meets the Elite Tauren Chieftains."
Notes1: So I do apologize for not getting this out sooner. A lot's happened in the past month since I last updated; plus, I've gotten into raiding with my guild on WoW during the weekdays for a trial period to see if I'm eligible to join the main group, so there hasn't been too much time to work on this chapter. On top of that, too, this particular chapter became a part of the longer short story arc of Sylvanas coming into the Nexus and, unsuccessfully, trying to find a way out. I'll be going back in the future and update the chapter titles when they're uploaded.
Notes2: I'll admit I haven't gotten around to also updating the prompt dump and the timeline to comply with the new skins released on the heels of HotS 2.0. I've always wanted a Magical Girl!Sylvanas skin, so I was disappointed to see her Warchief incarnation instead. Then again, I was hoping to see MoP!Jaina so we could finally have a chapter where HotS!Jaina gets a dose of reality and Sylvanas goes "I TOLD YOU SO". So in compliance with the skins, I have to also update the documents to accommodate Probius, Cassia, Genji, and D. Va.
Notes3: I think this chapter has been the most fun I've had in a while because, you know, it's E.T.C. And when you throw in two more variants, well, you get this. I may or may not have been unconsciously inspired by some of my more...bizarre encounters with customers.

Route 80 was a long, miserable stretch of worn blacktop and tall, wild grass that could have passed on into eternity and no one would be none the wiser. Perhaps that was why, for the past hour, Sylvanas was of the belief that people could keep walking down this road and fall off an edge into oblivion that didn't exist.

Yes, but for all I know, these people are retarded enough to believe that and think the Hubworld is flat.

She stared at the road map she had pilfered from the disintegrating body of a hitchhiker who got much too chummy with her, tracing the red line indicating the realm's highways from one corner of the map to the other…and then on the back side where it looped around…and around…and back again to the very beginning. There were even several wide, curling loop-de-loops at the very bottom of the page.

Someone ought to get dragged from their seat and shot for this! Hell, drag them all out and do away with them execution-style: the company that came up with this bright idea of making maps of King's Crest, the cartographers that make them, the suppliers that deliver these throughout the realm, the idiots that buy them, the garbage disposal folks in their fancy trucks that pick up trash during the week.

It was a pleasant thought. Then she remembered that no one, not even children and pets and wild animals, could die and stay dead, each and every one of them—including Sylvanas herself, as Uther had wearily tried to explain to her—was afflicted and bound to some virus or supernatural phenomenon or whatever it was called the transition not even mere seconds they were born or dragged into the Nexus. One wouldn't even need a Hall of Storms to bring them back; reality itself would reform them and it would constitute as a 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' moment.

Thinking of reality, and the foolish means she used to try to find a loophole in the transition, caused her to crumple the map into a ball and hurl it away, as hard as she could, into the grass. I want nothing to do with this world, she thought. I want nothing to do with anyone or anything or this stupid Way of the Nexus horsecrap. I want out!

And it would have to be done as soon as possible, because not even a week had passed and she still refused to put her signature to all the paperwork the League was insisting for her to finish so she could participate in some defunct gladiatorial sport the Powers thought it was a brilliant idea for the mindless masses to slobber over and fork over their precious gald to fill the coffers the government was blowing on to continually repair the messes other people were making before she was yanked from her cozy seat of bones in Undercity. Someone—she thought it was that one girl, Nova—warned her that if she didn't sign soon, the League was going to send their muscle after her. Not the minions, where a majority was created through the clockwork machinations of the forts and keeps dotting King's Crest and Luxoria, remnants from ages past when the Erewhon Gates were still active. Not the local police or the Nexus Investigation Bureau. There were others, she said. The Realm Knights of the Spaces In-Between, they who had the ability to jump between dimensions and manipulate them at their beck and call and answered not only to the Powers That Be but the Nexus as a whole. They would wait, give her time to change her mind or become resigned and drag herself back to the Shire-by-the-Rocks. If she came back, then life went on and she would bruise a sore ego.

If she didn't, then they would hunt her down, kick her ass several hundred ways, and make her sign up—in ink, digital fingerprints, or blood.

Blood is very messy, Nova said. Did you know it's really hard to wash out?

Sylvanas sneered. Let them come. No matter how many times they get back up, I'll take as many as I can with me. And even when they should take me back and force me to play their game…well, I'm as just a criminal here as I am on Azeroth. What difference is a change in environments going to make?

She tilted her head to the sky, judged the position of the sun, and sighed. Nightfall would arrive very soon, and given how much time spent on the road and not seeing so much as a decent motel or wayward footpath striking off into the wilderness she was left with two options.

The first was to press on into the night until she managed to find a place to either break into or hunker down until sunrise and continue onward. A logical idea, but that would risk drawing attention and cause the authorities to suddenly gain mach speed and nail her ass.

The second was to give in to her inner vagrant, find a nice spot in the grass, and wait for the night to pass. Or maybe force herself to sleep. Sleep was for the mortal and the weak, but if she slept that gave someone—something—ample opportunity to take advantage of that vulnerability. Nothing sucked more than having a random beast minding its own business…only to stumble upon some equally random person who was trespassing on its territory and proceed to chase her out as far as it felt like it before getting bored and returning to where it was and what it was doing.

She scoffed. That sounded too much like the troubles she had heard of adventurers having back home. She would not stoop to their level.

Walking it is, then.

And so she walked. The sun was a low disc on the horizon, spilling light like liquid across the street and sending her shadow far and away from her. Creatures stirred in the grasses or, perhaps in an epileptic fit thinking they were about to be run over by a sudden vehicle (when she hadn't so much as seen one, let alone one drawn by an animal), darted out and reached the safety of the other side (hopefully to be eaten by an even bigger, carnivorously-minded animal, she thought). Her footsteps echoed off the pavement in leathery rebounds—slap, slap, slap, slap. Sylvanas imagined the sound as her backhanding everyone in the realm, all of them waiting in line.

Insects droned—dragonflies buzzing right by her, mosquitoes seeking (and failing) to suck from her an ounce of blood, fireflies winking in and out in the greenery.

Minutes passed, and the sun continued its descent. A flock of birds—they looked like geese—crossed the sky in a V formation.

A bird cawed. Quite loudly, she surmised, as she looked to the heavens for where it could be. The first stars of the night were showing, alien constellations obscured in the dark she could not decipher.

Her ears flicked and swiveled, catching the sound of something very soft and very faint coming from behind her. She slowed her pace and focused on the source, wondering if she should draw her bow from its sling. The sound increased as it grew closer, a low, heavy duh-duh-dump, duh-duh-dump tempo that made the blacktop quake beneath her feet. Something else followed in irregular accompaniment—of metal and rubber bouncing. Hydraulics, and she sneered at the memory rising unbidden to her forethought: Horde adventurers coming to and from Undercity in goblin go-karts and orcish motorcycles, tearing up clods of grass, tearing up those ridiculous treads as they floored the gas pedal and left behind the stink of burnt rubber and dark plumes of exhaust. Some were even stupid enough to try driving over the ravine where the plague bubbled and oozed below. A shame it was so…diluted. And shallow.

The horn honked, rapid successions from a hand tapping on it. Slowly, Sylvanas turned around, ignoring the voice in her head that sounded an awful like her living counterpart to KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD, SLINGBLADE, SOMEONE COULD BE LINING UP A SHOT AND IT'LL BE ALL YOUR FAULT, but she hadn't seen another person since that poor, blissful bastard. Who would even think to attack her out of the blue?

The tauren pulled up beside her and rocked the car up and down. She took a whiff of the air and glared at the passenger, another tauren, let the pipe drop from his mouth and blow what she thought was a very bad attempt at a smoke ring. The third cow-man turned away from observing the countryside and popped the collar of his wife beater at her, nodding knowingly. She didn't know what she was supposed to know about.

"Hey, baby, what's shaking!" said the driver, waving to her with his three-fingered hand. He had rubber treads strapped across a broad, bare chest dusted by a drooping, pink goatee. "Why ya walkin' down the street wit' such a long face?"

She scowled. "Because I'm stuck here with you, that's why."

"Bah! Why you gotta be that way? C'mon, girl, turn that frown upside down and smile! That face looks better on a horse, and you certainly ain't a horse!" He flexed his arms across his chest and above his chest for emphasis.

"I don't do smiles."

"Honey's got some sass, though," said the backseat tauren. His voice was a low, rumbling Southern drawl. At the heated look she drew at him, he shrugged and added, "Can't go through life without doin' somethin'."

Sylvanas said nothing. Her ears flattened against the sides of her skull.

The driver chuffed. "Man! Cat got your tongue! Anybody have a spray bottle?"

The passenger threw his head back and laughed. His blonde hair was a wild mess, as though a Fourth of July firework was frozen in mid-explosion, and the corners of his eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. "You look like a cat! A…A really blue, really…funny-looking cat!" He regarded his variants. "Can cats be blue?"

The driver shrugged. "Hell if I know. Hey!" He called, and let up off the brake pedal. Sylvanas was walking away from them and didn't bother to give them a second glance as he slowed the low-rider to a crawl. "Baby, where ya goin'?"

"Away," she growled.

"Away? Away from what?"

"Why do you care? You're as stupid as the rest."

"Hey! Hey hey hey hey! Stupid is as stupid does! And stupid isn't stupid if stupid tries to help and suc-ceeds!"

"And what could you possibly offer me?"

The backseat tauren shrugged, the muscles in his arms shifting underneath. "Can't help a gal if she don't tell. No prosper without nurture."

"Girl's gotta toke! That's the way to prosperity!" the rock star blared, lifting the pipe to his lips. After a moment, he let go and exhaled. His eyes rolled to the back of their sockets, lashes fluttering. "Oooo-weee! Damn, son!"

Sylvanas made a disgusted sound. "No thanks." She quickened her pace, moving ahead of the car.

Yet she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the car jump to life and suddenly pushed forward before abruptly settling down to a comfortable speed that could match her. "Ya don't know unless ya try, girl!" said the driver.

She scoffed. "Maybe I don't want to."

"Is it because you think it's not gonna work? Is it because you're scared?"

"Who said I was scared?" She shot him a venomous look.

"Maybe not on the outside you aren't, but on the inside you're a whole bundle of stage fright. And baby, look at yourself and look back at me—"

"I don't want to look at you—"

"—because I'm a legit, one-hundred-percent grade-A, clap-if-you-believe rock god! The Elite Tauren Chieftain! Even I get the heeby-jeebies—"

"And the pot shakes," said the cowboy.

"And the pot shakes when I step into the light and SHRED!" The passenger capped it off with a high-pitched, yodeling scream. He tossed his head back and banged, hair flying, flashing the sign of the hook 'em horns. Sylvanas flinched, ears lowering even more; she thought they would snap and fall from her head and chided herself for having such a childish thought.

"Wait. You said you're the Elite Tauren Chieftain?" she asked.

The driver gave her a smart, sharp nod. "Damn straight, doll-face! E.T.C.! Easy to remember as your A-B-C's and one-two-threes! Well, I'm the Chief—Head Honcho, Big Kahuna, the likes. Guy in the back is Elite Tauren Cowboy, but ev'rybody calls him Clint."

"I liked Roland better, but somebody else took it," said Clint, and he tut-tutted. "Prob'ly some human desperado who come passin' by like nobody's business. It's always gotta be the humans."

"Yeah yeah yeah, that's great, hombre. Oh, and this fella here's Glam Metal. He's kinda goin' through a David Bowie period right now. Say hi, Glam."

"Gimme five!" he cried, and held out his hand, palm up. Sylvanas glared at it and considered stabbing it through with the dagger at her hip. "Don't be shy, gimme five!" He shook his hand, and her glare intensified.

"I don't do secret handshakes," she said.

He chuffed. "Baby, I ain't asking for a handshake. I'm running low on reefer. C'mon, gimme five and I'll pay ya back."

"She gonna give you five in the nose if you keep it up, man!" said the Chief, and reached over to shove Glam's arm down. "Lay off the pipe, you actin' ratchet!" He clicked his tongue. "Damn!" he grumbled, shaking his massive head.

Sylvanas wanted to do the same thing. Instead, she said, "So, wait. Let me get this straight. You're telling me…you named yourself after The Tauren Chieftains? That rock and roll band that plays at the Darkmoon Faire?" The only known rock 'n' roll band to have come out of the Horde after the Third War and become an overnight sensation on Azeroth and Outland? She gave the Chief, Clint, and Glam an appraising look that quickly soured. "So you're a poser."

"A poser?!" he bellowed incredulously. "A poser? Baby girl, if anything, they are posing me! I gave the Chieftains the means to break free from the chains of wholesome family values and dinosaur-aged cultural traditions! I gave the Chieftains the inspiration to hit the pipes and get in touch with their inner poets! I gave the Chieftains the providential luck, NOT THE SHEER COINCIDENCE, of getting' off their keesters, find a sweet ride, and HIT THE ROAD, JACK, AND DON'TCHA COME BACK NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE—"

"And they never came back no more~" Clint said in a rumbling, singsong drawl.

"Which means they did come back," said Sylvanas.

A single yellow eye peered up at her through a slash on the brim of his hat. "Hon, just roll with it."

"So, you mind letting us in?" asked the Chief. "We ain't too proud ta beg." He fluttered his eyelashes.

"Only if you let me cut open your stomachs open and use your blood and intestines as a ritual to communicate with forces greater than the Powers."

"…Okay, so we ain't that proud, but whaddah we gotta do to make it worth your while? Like, uh, I'd give ya money but I ain't exactly rollin' right now; we all three been here about a few years."

"I don't want money."

The Chief slung an arm over the side of the car, put a hand to his chin in thought, snapped his fingers. "You like pets, right? Birds? Cats? How 'bouta dog? Chicks love dogs, and lemme tell ya, you're a fine-looking chickadee."

"I'm undead."

"And that ain't gonna stop me from praisin' you where it counts! Can I get an 'amen', boys?!"

"Amen, brother," said Clint. He cocked his fingers in the shape of a gun and pointed it at Sylvanas, clicking his tongue around teeth bared in a grin.

"AW MAN, I'M ALL OUT!" Glam shouted, and put his head to his breastbone to better gaze into the empty pipe. "Shit!" he hissed under his breath. He undid his seatbelt, popped open the glove compartment, and started rooting around inside. "Dude! Where'd you put the greens at?"

"Man, who cares about the greens right now! Gimme an amen!" said the Chief.

"Why? We haven't eaten yet!"

"You don't think she's hot? Come on, man, take a look—a damn long look—and tell me she'd be hotter with a dog." The Chief grabbed the back of Glam's collar and hauled him upright.

His mop of blonde hair turned toward her, looking more like a swamp monster than a bull. He tossed it back and managed to study her through the overgrown strands. She scowled at him. He shrugged. "Yeah yeah, man, she cool. She cool. She just needs a…a…" He snapped his fingers a few times. "Whuzzit called again? It, uh, it has lots of hair—"

"Lots of dogs have a lot of hair," said the Chief.

"I know that, dingus! 'S not small but it ain't big, either. Kinda looks like someone blasted it wit' a blow dryer and made its hair all poofy."

"A Chow Chow?" said Clint.

Glam clapped his hands. "That's the one!"

The Chief narrowed his eyes at her. "Nah, man. She don't have enough hair and it ain't that bushy. Think a Rottweiler would do her some good."

"A Rottweiler?! Because she a corpse?"

He nodded. "Maybe so. She might act bitchy on the outside, but I bet somewhere in that smokin' hot bod full of rage and general misanthropy, there's a woman that yearns for love. A woman who gives…like a tree that bears fruit. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside."

Sylvanas made a disgruntled sound and frowned. Her ears flapped in part due to a breeze. She tried not to shuffle from one foot to the other.

Clint coughed into his hand, cleared his throat. "Uh, bro," he began, "tree's only soft on the inside when it's dead. And if it's dead—"

"That's like saying squid ink noodles are atrocious!"

"Man, that sounds disgusting!" said Glam, grimacing. "Damn!"

"I know, right?! A fruit might look rotten but it still tastes great! Don't discriminate!"

"I ain't," Clint growled.

"You got an answer for everything! Mister smarty-pants!"

Clint puffed air from his cheeks. "Bah! Just forget about it! You wanna know what kind o' dog would compliment her well?"

The Chief shrugged dramatically. "Not anymore! Not after what you just said!"

"Well, brother, I'm-a give it to you, anyway. I think she needs a puppy."

"A puppy?" Glam and the Chief echoed together and stared at Clint, disbelieving.

"Say what, brother?" said the Chief. "A puppy? You mean a little rat for her to put on 'er lap so it can yap at ev'ryone every time they walk by? She deserves better'n that!"

"Of course," he agreed, "but dogs are only like that if the person doesn't raise 'em right. I see this young miss here and think she could use it to…to," he searched for the right word, "to bounce off her. Make her grounded. A bit of sweetness goes well with a bit of sourness, know what I'm sayin'?. No offense, milady." He tipped his hat to Sylvanas, smiling.

She folded her arms over her bosom. "I don't do dogs." No, not since Mishka and Armi visited her and requested—for the umpteenth time (she lost count)—to make the Undercity a breeding ground for those ridiculous stone lion-dog-things after the Pandaria campaign had ended. "I don't do cats and I don't do birds. I don't do any animal." Very few Windrunners in the past had an animal companion; they were best reserved for those tree-hugging hippie night elves. "As a matter of fact, I don't want to do anything with everything," she said, her tone becoming increasingly hostile.

"Baby girl, you have to want somethin' in life!" said the Chief, shrugging with palms up. "Can't do nothin' for nothin'!"

Sylvanas cackled. "You know what I want? You really know what I want? It's real simple: I want out! I want to leave the Nexus! Everyone and their grandmother has the IQ of a hyperactive child whose parents didn't have the money or the insurance to pay for a lobotomy; I can't get a job, open a bank account, or even get free housing unless I participate in an interdimensional tournament run by a bunch of old, lazy-ass corporate suits and highborn, inbred sociopaths with one hand in the money jar and the other on the open window sill; the gods are powerless, lazy NEETs that can't sprinkle a little of that magic fairy dust you call a miracle and solve the economical, geographical crises that seem to plague this land; and even better yet, they decide every four weeks—maybe three, if they feel astronomically efficient—to drag some big-name villain or no-name loser hero no one's ever heard of or cared about from their place in time and drop them into the middle of nowhere in the hopes that, hey, maybe, just maybe, they'll find their way to civilization and not get lost! And the best part of all this is? WE. CAN'T. DIE!" She shouted this last sentence, and it echoed back at her on the wide, empty road. She wanted to force the air from her body to make her pant heavily, emphasize the impression she was giving them; she forewent it, preferring to give them her best, murderous glare.

The Chief, Clint, and Glam blinked at her.

"So?" asked the Chief.

Sylvanas squawked. "So?! What do you mean, 'so'? You want to be immortal?"

"Ain't that a good thing?" asked Glam.

"No!" she cried. Then, in a tight voice, "No, it isn't. There are people here I want dead, people I can't stand, and can't stay dead! And for what? To bring in the stupid tourists and their stupid, bloody money! They are so ignorant of the severity of their crimes and yet they'll cheer them on in the stands and give them titles and lands and money and whatever the hell comes with the Board's welcoming package!" She sighed and slouched over. "I just…I just want to go home…and kill somebody." She would have liked the first person to be the idiot deathguard who thought it was a good idea to let those two mercs into Undercity in the first place with Operation: Quilen Restoration. After that…well, after that, she could not care less if she waged war on all of Azeroth if it meant she could wipe any association of this place from her mind.

The tauren hummed and grumbled, stroking their goatees and tugging their hat and hair and exchanging precursory glances at one another for answers. One of them, they sounded the same regardless of regional accents, said "Group huddle!" and the men leaned in close and whispered and gestured. More than one time did Glam tossed laughably discreet looks over his shoulder at Sylvanas, and more than one time did Clint stare past his variant and more than one time did the Chief cock an eyebrow and purse and smack his meaty lips together. In that moment, Sylvanas truly believed he was more cow than cow-man, and could not bring herself to look away.

The Chief clapping his big hands together did. "O' course! Why didn't I think o' that?"

"Now hold on, man," said Glam. "She ain't been here long enough! What if it does—"

"Nah, it won't! You gotta believe!"

"That only works if it's done toward you!"

"Brother, get outta here wit' that nonsense! You, too, are a rock god!"

"Heavy metal."

"Yeah yeah yeah, one's stronger than the other. You a god of metal, homie, and Clint there's one-hunner-percent country."

"Bah! Ain't nobody ever listens to country anymore."

"Then why the hell do all these universes hold the Country Music Awards? He still make all the women swoon and the men get inta bar fights 'n' drink 'emselves into stupors because their honey don't smile back or their dog died."

"I miss Roger," Clint said suddenly, and bowed his head in solemn reminiscence. "Roger would've been a god, too."

"Man, Roger ain't dead!" said Glam. "All you did was throw the bone. You couldn't have known a lesser rift was gon' open up."

"And you know I could not care less about your dog and where he or his body parts wound up at," said Sylvanas, "so how about telling me what you three are planning to do to get me out of the Nexus." And a way to avoid the authorities, but she wasn't expecting these guys to do jack about that. What could the power of rock, metal, and sleepy old peoples' country do against the might of an intergalactic federal law enforcement agency?

The Chief cracked his knuckles. They were like bombs going off. "Baby, all ya need to do is to get in the car and let us take care o' the rest."

"Not happening," she said.

"Why not?" He sounded almost hurt.

"Because I don't ride with strangers."

The Chief put his hand akimbo and gave her a pointed look. "Baby girl, whaddaya think we've been doing all this time? You already know us!"

"Really?" Sylvanas flipped the hair from her eyes with a hand. "My mother taught me that a man must always ask a woman's name when he's introducing himself…and you've never asked."

The tauren froze, their eyes bulging. Even Clint seemed to have gone stiff. The Chief rubbed the back of his head. "Oh, uh, good point there. What the peeps call ya back home?"

"Sylvanas Windrunner," she said.

"And ya show name?"

"I am the Banshee Queen of the Forsaken, boy. I am more than just show."

He tossed his head back, roaring laughter. "I believe it! Well, puddin' pop, why don'tcha come on over? Boys and I are gonna be late to a gig at some hokey restaurant but since you're here now we can get there before they charge us double!"

Sylvanas shrugged. "Not that I care for your mundane proclivity, but…when are you supposed to start?"

"In an hour," said Glam.

"And how far are you from this 'hokey restaurant'?"

"'S bit of a short drive," said Clint. "'Bout fifteen if the traffic's light and you know where you're going. Up ahead's the turn-off that leads to a couple other highways—north, south, west. We're goan east, Miz Sylvanas, onto the Interstate 319 and take it all the way into the Quadrants."

"So how the hell do you expect to get there? What, do you have some of that goblin ingenuity you call nitro built into that thing?" Sylvanas gestured at the lowrider's underbelly.

The Chief grinned. "Damn straight! You drive, too?"

"And die a fourth time? I have not and I never will."

"Damn, girl! You hardcore! But, nah, baby, ain't just nitro we gonna use."

"Even better'n that!" said Glam. "We gonna blow your soul outta ya!"

"I am not toking up," she said as she opened the door and seated herself next to Clint. He towered her as an ancient redwood does to a puny mortal. Clint looked down at her and again tipped his hat, winked and clicked his teeth suggestively. Sylvanas grimaced.

"Don't gotta toke to free ya soul, girl! We rip through the fabric of SPACE-TIME just to get around the Nexus! So what if it's illegal? It helps to be PUNK-CHOO-ALL! 'S not like we're dis…discombob…discombobu…mucking up the Lifestream!"

"Time stream," Clint corrected.

"Whatever it's called! If some o' ya peeps can wield the power of aether storms, then I don't see why we can't take shortcuts through time. Like—and bear with me on this," he gave them each a pointed look, "what're they gonna do if the Powers bring in somebody who can jump through time or, or, someone who can be everywhere and nowhere at once? Huh? What they gonna do, put a magnet on 'em so ev'ry time they make a jump the thing goes BWING! and pulls 'em right back? Put tinfoil on their heads so they can't tell the future and cause the eek-conomy to crash harder than the times we've stage dived the arenas, the football stadiums, the wedding ceremonies and the funeral parlor parties and missed 'cause we scared the sin out o' 'em? Tell me, brothers!"

"Okay, bro, I'll tell ya," said the Chief. He opened up a compartment underneath the steering wheel. "Take this here reefer." He shoved the baggy into Glam's hand and closed his fingers over it. "Snort it, snuff it, huff it, I don't care, just do it. You're gettin' inta one o' your moods again."

His brows furrowed. "…What mood?"

"The kind o' mood where you start talkin' more sense than 's humanly possible."

Glam looked between the plastic baggy and the bong. "What about the Snickers?"

"We don't have Snickers."

"Aw dammit!" he proclaimed, and Glam stuffed the greens in the pipe, grabbed his lighter and lit up. The greens smoldered, broke down and went from a crumbling ball of tumbleweed to dust.

Sylvanas sniffed the air and tried not to make herself cough. Nerve endings be damned, she could still smell, but, "Do you have to do it right here, right now?"

"It's an acquired taste, skinny-minny," said the Chief.

"By the gods!" she said tightly, and wrinkled her nose as a waft of pot-smoke flew in her face.

"Besides, it helps deal with the, er, turbulence."

"We're in a car."

The Chief stared at her from over his shoulder through hooded eyes. "Honey, where we're going, it don't matter…and it ain't gonna stop us." The car was still shaking, the upholstery still jumping beneath their fingertips and making their ears numb at the edges. The song about the guy trying to do things before he ended up screwing his entire life over because he got high had long since ended, so now the current song playing was about some chick reminding the listeners that it didn't matter where she came from, she was still Jenny from the block-

The Chief turned off the stereo.

"Hey, man, what the hell!" Glam cried, reaching over the stick shift to turn it back on.

The Chief snatched his wrist and shook his head sadly. "She not hardcore enough, man."

"But I love 'Jenny from the Block!'"

"And it don't give enough power to cross space-time. I'm sorry, brah." He watched Glam tear his arm away and sulk, double over and hit the pipe again. He sighed loudly, blowing smoke from his nostrils. He grabbed the handle at the bottom left side of the seat and cranked it back so that he was almost staring up at the darkening sky.

Clint tapped Sylvanas on the shoulder. "Ya might wanna do the same, sugah. Rides are always a little rough."

"Can't be any worse than being caught off guard and pulled from your own timeline," she said, but she tightened the seat belt around her chest and leaned the seat back several notches. The air was hazy, thick and teasing. It pressed its fingers on her head as if to take it and lift it from her shoulders, into the night past the stratosphere where the storms and the Spaces reigned supreme. She glanced at Glam, at the pipe in his hands, and then at the sky, trying not to worry.

The Chief pressed some unseen buttons, and, after bearing witness to feeling the vehicle jack itself several inches off the ground, the car began to move on its own. He undid his seat belt and stood on the seat, one dirt-scuffed, spiked boot on top of the door. He unhooked a tube from his belt, suppressed the button, and—

Sylvanas blinked. Then she blinked some more.

Yes. Yes, that was indeed a guitar he was holding.

A massive double-bladed axe carved and shaped into the guitar. The symbol of the Horde stood out in stark red contrast on the body, the paint scuffed here and nicked and scratched there.

She sniffed. Underneath the pot and a musky, leathery scent that had to be cologne coming from Clint, was the sharp, unmistakable tang of gasoline and, rising to the surface like a volcanic eruption raring to go, nitromethane. "So…how does the guitar play into all of this?"

The Chief grinned. He tapped the pick between his fingers once, twice, three times.

Sylvanas huffed. "No, really, how does it—"

The world became sound and lights and warp speed. The colors blurred and lost shape and focused to multiple parallel lines of energy. The drugs and the nitro and the cologne and the power of pure, unadulterated rock slammed into her as one colossal tidal wave, locking her into her seat and pushing her deep, deep into its cushioned upholstery. The Chief tipped his head back and yowled, a whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-WHOOA! tearing from the lowest pits of his stomach, up his barrel chest and out the bovine, throaty caverns. Sylvanas clenched her teeth, felt them click and gnash and grind even as the winds pulled the skin from her lips, her eyes, her cheeks back and made them billow and flap like the paper flappers on bicycle wheels. Her ears, she was sure, were flattened against her skull; she was also sure they might as well have been ripped off, how numb and empty her head felt, filled only with the sounds of the engine roaring, the music blasting, the Chief off his goddamned rocker. She managed to force her eyeballs to move beyond their periphery and catch a glimpse at Clint, who was now wearing aviators, had his arms neatly folded over his chest, and good gods, how in the nine hells was his hat still on? She looked at Glam in the passenger, laughing with wild abandon, arm thrown up in the air with his hand flashing the devil horns, and his head, his stupid, messy head, it was banging back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. She wanted to reach out against the wind, against gravity, against this batshit insane force of will the Chief was projecting, grab Glam's head and keep it still. She wanted to see it come off his neck like a cork being popped from a shaken wine bottle and watch it soar into the unknown and hope it didn't wind up turning into a constellation that would eternally stare back at her whenever she deigned to chance upon a clear, midnight sky.

She saw her arm, her right arm, claw from the folds of the seat, shaking from adrenaline and propulsion. Fingernails dug into the cushions, made rips and tears in it and left deep-seated imprints. In a moment she would later describe as sheer stupidity, she wondered how it was possible for her to able to move it, but inch by inch it climbed into the air, straightened as though she were about to salute the insanity of it all.

Her middle and ring fingers closed. Her thumb, forefinger, and pinky stood forth to attention.

If Sylvanas could widen her eyes, she would.

GOD! DAMMIT!

"GIVE IN~ TO THE BEAST INSIDE YA!" the Chief cried in a priestly tone. "COME ON, BANSHEE QUEEN, RAISE YOUR HEAD HIGH AND ROCK OUT! YEAH-AHHHH-AHHHH-AHHHHHH!"

Then he shredded again—faster, harder, louder, more powerful than before. Glam laughed just as loud and headbanged just as hard, just as fast.

And the last thing Sylvanas remembered, before the lowrider peaked and crossed the threshold of the storm, was headbanging with him.

The first thing she saw when she woke was…well, it was very hard to see what it was when there was very bright, very blinding light shining down on your face. She gasped and turned her head aside…only to see more of the light. It was a warm light, the kind you would feel on a summer's day when the sun was not so blisteringly hot to breathe in.

Sylvanas did not like the light. Is this it? Is this how I die? Headbanging against my will to the beat of some madman with a pink goatee? Something soft and fluffy flittered across her legs, on her chest, brushed by her head. She wondered if these were clouds from Heaven. Yes, this is it. I'm dead. I'm not in hell as I ought to be. Why is that? Why here? Somewhere far, far away, people chortled. Ah, those must be the souls of the pure having the time of their lives. Perhaps they're finally reuniting with their loved ones after so long.

A warm hand, a heavy hand, caressed at her heat. It was the faintest of touch, and yet it made her seize. I wonder if Alleria is here. She paused, blinked. What would she think of me? Her vision cleared to show she was in a small round room with bright orange, polished wood. The floor was cool and grainy beneath her hands, covered in a sea of white that shifted and roiled like an early morning fog. Maybe she's in here…although I can't say I pictured heaven to look like a…a barrel? Bah, who cares? I…suppose I shouldn't keep her waiting. So Sylvanas turned her head to look upon her sister's face.

A chicken stared back, its tiny, beady eyes unblinking.

Sylvanas blinked. Hah?

"BA-KAW!" said the chicken, and pecked her between the eyes. Sylvanas grunted and swatted at it; she missed, her arm going wide. The chicken ruffled its feathers, cawed again, and hopped off her stomach onto the floor.

The sea of white was actually a floor crammed full of chickens, clucking and fluttering and strutting about. Some jumped and glided across the room, trailing down and molt like freshly fallen snow.

Sylvanas sat up. The lights overhead were not the light of the sun in a cloudless heaven but shaded heat lamps hanging from the ceiling, and these shone down on rows of nest boxes and chicken coops occupying both sides of the wall to and away from her. She sniffed and was surprised to find it didn't smell of rotten egg and…other surprises.

A girl sat across from her. She was blond, young, pretty, wearing a white and blue skinsuit.

She was human.

Sylvanas glared. Nova started. "…This isn't what it looks like, I swear."

"And what do you think it looks like?" Sylvanas drawled, low and dangerous. A chicken climbed onto her lap and tapped its beak against her shins.

A blush bloomed on the girl's cheeks. Her eyes flitted nervously left to right, right to left. "I-I dunno. You didn't get teleported here like I did about…umm…" She thought. "Oh shoot, how long have I been here? Feels like I just knocked back that sample that magician offered me. What was his name again…? A-Anyway! I suppose we should, er, get ourselves cleaned up. Doesn't seem like the place's closed for the day…night…err…Do you have the time? No? Al-Alright then, guess we'll find out soon enough." She started plucking feathers from her hair.

"Nova," said Sylvanas, "where are we?"

"We're in the chicken coop—Oh. Oh. You meant where in general. Uh…I think we're at the Home'ard Road Bar and Grill. Real nice place they've got here! Hey, do you, uh, wanna get somethin' to eat? I could go for a full slab of ribs right now. Maybe they have something for undead elves, too. You know, other than, um, brains and blood and, um, such. Maybe magic?"

Sylvanas scowled. This girl still had so much to learn about breaking stereotypes. She didn't have a taste for brains, and she hadn't felt the desire to taste magic since that the day the Powers came to her.

But the blood of the Chieftains? Yes. Yes, she could make an arrangement for that.

"What do you say?" Nova asked. "I…I think I have some gold on me to cover us both—oof!"

Sylvanas lobbed the chicken at her, ignoring the way it squawked indignantly and Nova blindly throwing it into the flock beside her. She stood up, brought her cloak around her to wipe the feathers off, and scowled at the unmistakable yolk-shaped stains and egg shell fragments sticking to it.

Ire surging to her throat like bile, she turned toward the door.

"I-I guess that's a yes, then," said Nova, scrambling to her feet.

Sylvanas hummed agreement, palming her hand on the dagger's handle, and all but stormed out.