A/N: Thank you for reading and reviewing! And for your patience :3

…-…

I looked over Nicolas and frowned. Reaching up on my toes, I tried to mess up his newly bleached hair—it'd turned out a bit whiter than I meant it to and I could tell he wasn't pleased with the difference, but was willing to go along with my plan, if it meant saving Clara. They are so a thing.

I have to say, it was a real pain to find any type of water so that I could dye his hair to begin with. In the end, we went back to Neesera and she used like almost all of her energy just to summon a tub of water. That's right, a tub. Because if you're gonna dye hair, it needs to be clean, darn it, and I'm not going to do a botchy job just because the world ended.

After bleaching his hair, I totally sprinkled some dust and dirt on him to make it look more like he hadn't just done it. I mean, really, it might not matter, but I don't know. I'm nervous and wanted us to be authentically from my world.

And since all those guard guys looked like they hadn't had the opportunity to bathe recently, that means shiny new hair is out.

Nicolas is kind of pissed off, and honestly so am I. You know how I got him to trust me to do that to his hair? I dyed mine red. Like, brilliant, dark, unnatural red. Why not, right? I mean, Brath already butchered it beyond recognition. And I want to look like someone other than me and I would never go for so bold a color, so…yeah.

So I now have crazy red hair and Nicolas is a blondie. And we're both sporting sunglasses. That, with a sort of Men in Black suit on Nicolas makes him utterly unrecognizable. And trust me, it took forever to first find a clothing store that hadn't been looted and then find clothes that weren't completely destroyed by the…destruction.

My descriptives are lacking, I know. But my point is, even though he's a little dusty, Nicolas has some class. Who knew he could pull it off so well?

Unfortunately, all the gun shops were looted—probably by the guys we're going up against—and so we have to rely on daggers. Luckily those weren't considered as valuable and I was able to upgrade my own pair. Nicolas won't get rid of his, since they're so super special. Legendary he muttered, when I tried to reason with him.

Oh, one thing I should mention. Fun fact really, but when Michel saw Nicolas' daggers, he did recognize them, but at the same time…he was surprised. I guess in the game they're bulgier? The way these bad boys look in real life is more sleek, a bit thinner.

Nicolas is super resourceful. I mean, I was telling him he couldn't carry those daggers around on his hips since people would recognize them, and he responded by storming back to the store. I followed him just to make sure he hadn't gone crazy or anything, with one of Neesera's mechanical squirrels in tow. When I found him, he was in the shop we'd gotten our clothes from and he was looking at a bunch of boxes along the wall. Even as I asked what he was doing, he took a pair of suspenders from this really expensive looking box, cut them to pieces, and somehow made them into these dagger holder things one his arms.

So he can like hide them up his sleeves. He made sure to wipe the poisons off, by the way. Resentfully. I guess he didn't like the thought of poison resting against his skin.

Now we're both in sort of Men in Black gear—it was harder to find me a suit and while I did find a nice blouse, I'm totally wearing a guy's jacket and slacks—mainly because all the military looking stuff that those guards at the human-demon base were wearing were probably stolen from these shops.

Anyway. So I figure if we're dressed like this, it'll at least make people stop before immediately shooting. I'm hoping.

Well, I'd just reached up again to try to get rid of that darn part of his—if Michel saw us and took a close enough look, he'd recognize us, so I was trying to make us unrecognizable enough that he at least wouldn't be able to call our bluff from across a room and I was really just praying that Greg wouldn't see us at all—when Nicolas' eyes suddenly snapped toward the front of the shop and he stealthed.

At first I thought he was just being a jerk because he didn't like all the attention, but then I heard a soft footfall and freaked out. I crouched down and shifted into the clothing racks—I used to hide in them when my mom would take me shopping when I was little and I really have to say I never thought that would be a useful skill. I went as low as I could and stayed perfectly still for a minute, but I felt like such a sitting duck, so I peaked under the clothes. It was one of those circular racks, near a wall, and I could see most of the floor of the store.

For a second, I thought I saw a really weird foot, right outside of my clothing wall, but then it was gone. I hunched closer trying to see better and then realized I had this horrible feeling that I was being watched.

You know how heroes never look up in the movies? Well, it was either look up or turn around and see a face looking at me through the clothes, so I did the former first, since that seemed less freaky.

"Gotcha, mon."

I about had a heart attack before I recognized that troll hunter. I don't know how he did it, but he'd managed to—silently—grab a hold of a higher clothing bar thing on the wall and was hanging off it, peering down at me. Just as I thought to be mildly, pleasantly surprised that those things could hold his weight, it gave out.

Good thing, too, because that was when Nicolas attacked.

Luckily he missed and the hunter did some roguish evasion stuff—don't know hunter abilities, so…yeah—and before he could gut him a troll, I managed to grab his arm and slow his swing enough that he just swung me into a clothing rack.

The troll caught me before I could hit the ground with a tusk-y grin in place. I think he was amused to have snuck up on rogues, but maybe I'm wrong. And in Nicolas' defense, I was distracting him…look at me. Standing up for the moron.

Anyway.

So, after setting me back on my feet, the hunter held his hands up all surrender-ish like, still grinning like an idiot. It took a minute or two before Nicolas finally put his daggers away. With the sort of speed that I didn't really see it happen and I'd bet my own weapons that that hunter doesn't know where he hides them.

Nicolas jerked at the tie I'd put on him like he felt collared—I couldn't help but wonder what Brath would look like in a suit—and glared at the troll. "You finally decided to stop dragging your feet, I take it?"

Trolls don't have hair on their eyebrows. It's like weird. The reason I mention this is because he raised his…brow? Is that what you call it when there's no hair? Or does it matter? Well he arched it and then looked at me, his humor sort of slipping.

"Realleh? Dat been watchya told dem?"

So…I kind of wish he'd never started talking and just kept up the silent treatment he and the rest of them gave me on the way to the portal. You see, I may be able to understand all languages, but it was at that moment that I learned that that doesn't mean I understand all accents. So I was trying to figure out exactly what he'd said—he spoke so fast and with such a heavy accent—but he just kept going.

"Wat pa't a waitin' fa back up so dat we can have ah escape route secured been draggin' ah feet, yeh?" He crossed his arms, drumming his large fingers against one of his elbows. "Miksa went wit' ya dragon, yeh? We was gonna wait fa dem ta get back befoa we do 'nehtin, but den Blackhea't be like ya run off 'n we gotta go find ya."

So. I have a bit of a confession. When I said that the Horde weren't doing anything and that I just ran through the portal… Like the troll said—I think he said—Brath had taken the female orc to some nearby post to send her off for help. Brath was coming back as soon as he could, with or without the rogue, depending on what she needed to do to get help.

Everyone else was setting up camp a bit away from the portal so that we wouldn't get ambushed the same as the Alliance when I edged away from them and made a run for the portal.

At the time I figured that we were wasting precious time, you know? And we are. Though I guess if he found us, it wouldn't have been that much time wasted…but who's to say I would have found Nicolas and Neesera as quickly if they were here too?

I still think I made the right call.

The troll paused in his rambling to inspect one of the shirts on the rack and then, in mild bewilderment, pull out another shirt that was the same size/make. It looked like it was totally blowing his mind to see two completely identical shirts. He hung them over his arm and started looking through the rest of the shirts, his awe growing as that batch was all the same kind.

Azerothians are amazed by mass production, I guess.

Well, Nicolas wasn't interested in giving the troll time to explore the new world—even though I'd had to pry him away from a few stores with a bunch of fake gold earrings that all looked exactly alike. I think he swiped some, by the way.

Whatever. It's not like money means anything in this world anymore.

"Are you the only one who came through the portal?"

The troll paused, lifting an extra large of that same shirt he'd been inspecting up and comparing it to the earlier ones, still fascinated by the likenesses. "Nah, mon. We gotta camp set up a bit from hea. Ah been trackin' dat one fa a while now," He paused and jutted his chin toward me. He frowned as he started slinging the shirts back over the top bar of the rack. "Ah woulda found ha fasta, but dis world…it got different smells 'n sounds 'n such, yeh? Not used ta it. T'rew meh a bit."

He motioned over his shoulder toward the main hall of the mall. "So den, watchya wanna do?" He suggested we go back to the Horde camp, saw Nicolas' grimace, and then suggested that we take him to our camp and he could lead the others there later.

That was when I blurted out that we only had Neesera with us. And we filled him in on the whole debacle and how we needed to save our friends. For a minute, I was really scared that he was going to tell us that the Horde wasn't interested in helping—which was fine, I guess, since my plan didn't originally involve them anyway—but instead, he just grinned and suddenly started looking through the shirts again, holding a few up toward Nicolas like he was using him as a comparison and narrowing his eyes before slinging them over his shoulder.

"Dis gonna be great, mon. Ya come wit' meh, yeh? We get Blackheart in on ya scheme, dea be no way dey can doubt ya be workin' fa de demons." He paused and winked at me. "'n ya dragon be missin' ya."