[Diamond18]

Pimpi watched the Orcs hit the fan-blade with a sweet and innocent expression of delight. Never did revenge seem so sweet, as splashing hot water with my feet, she mused, thinking contentedly how nice and tidy this passive, once-removed method of revenging her parents was. All the elven and half-elven and not-elven heroes of her company had made for quite a good show, and she was mightily impressed by them all. Even Etceteron’s manfully accidental dispatching of Halfullion had secretly thrilled her.

As she was digging through her pack for an apple or some other delicious oddment, she was startled by an irate voice in her ear. She looked up and saw a little Orc standing before her, its face livid with outrage. Nervously she glanced toward her companions, and saw that Orogarn Two was still quite busy, and all the rest were watching him in awe. That is, save for Etceteron, who was passed out on the ground, clutching the hilt of Wylkynsion, whose blade was pointed in the direction of her and her dagger with a cretinous leer gleaming along its bloody edge. She turned her attention back to the Orc.

“Traitor!” it cried, “foul, stupid, greedy lout! You have taken what could have been a grand and glorious epic, and instead you have churned out a vile, ugly, stupid, monstrous thing! How dare you!”

She blinked.

It continued; “The depth, the beauty, the subtlety, all gone! How long since greed and delusions of self-aggrandizement bought you and your so-called Itship? What was the promised price? Money? Accolades? Fame? Thieves, dirty nasty little thieves! You have taken what was not yours, and butchered it! We hates you, we hates you forever!”

Pimpi wanted to call out to her friends for help, but unfortunately she had been munching on her apple and her mouth was full. All she got out was a muffled, “Vooowy, Owwaaano, Meeewuuuu!” But still the little Orc continued, its eyes flashing with uncontrollable rage.

“You are a filthy, low-brow excuse for a half-hobbit, and I spit on you! Ptttoie! You have ruined, utterly and irreversibly ruined, a perfectly good Quest! Arrogant, stupid, pitiless fools! The only thing that you have done on this Quest which showed any magic or wonder, was when you were shamelessly plagiarizing heroic Questers and talented writers that have gone before!”

“I…it…it was just an interpretation,” Pimpi stammered.

The Orc snorted. “What’s written in your copy of Questing for Idiots? You have a seriously flawed brain, young half-halfing. For instance, why isn’t your pendant whinnying right now? Hmm? Whatever happened to consistency? There are Orcs all around, this RPG is just crawling with ‘em, and you with your magical shrunken horsehead pendant that was supposed to be soooo wonderful for detecting Orcs, hasn’t done a bloody thing!”

“You’re really quite rude,” Pimpi observed.

“And proud of it,” the non-gender-specific Orc declared. “Anyway, I have with me here a petition signed by the Most Noble and Self-Righteous Order of the Nightly Reflector, which gives me leave to kill each and every member of this Bow-brained Itship. And, being that I am noble and courageous, unlike some people I’ve heard of, I am going to kill you first.”

“How is that noble and courageous?” Pimpi wondered. “I’m the smallest and most appealingly helpless member of this group. In fact, sometimes I think I’m just along to be cute and hungry and utterly appealing to wood-elves, for of course my binges do no detriment to my trim and girlish figure.”

“Silence, fool, and meet thy death,” the Orc quoth clumsily. “You are an attrocious character and a despicable insult to a wonderful species. Now, DIE DIE DIE!”

It rushed at her with its claws clenching and unclenching like a lobster, presumably aiming to tear out her throat. Pimpi’s lustrous blue eyes widened, and the camera zoomed in on them as an orchestral swell came from nowhere and swelled to an immense size. In fact, it overtook the sentence and set its sites on devouring the paragraph and the post, but luckily Pimpi leapt to action, unlike some other big blue-eyed short persons I’ve heard of… Before the outraged Orc knew what had hit it, she tentatively drew her jewel-encrusted dagger with the lovely curving blade, and jabbed delicately in the direction of her annoying foe.

By pure luck (good for Pimpi and bad for the Orc) the dagger aimed well and true, though Pimpi wasn’t really aiming anywhere in particular. The blade with it’s sensual curves plunged deep into the mouth of the Orc, doing seriously detrimental damage to its throat, vocal chords, and artery. It gurgled unappealingly, and sank to the ground. Pimpi pulled the dagger out as black blood spurted in many different directions, none of which inclined them to besmirch her or her frock. She watched the dead Orc quiver at her feet for a few moments. She became vaguely aware of some metallic noises in her subconscious, as if she only needed to tune her mind to the right magical wavelength to form them into words. But this interested her little, so she cleaned her blade on the grass and settled back down to finish her apple.

Just before sheathing her dagger, an idea occurred to her, and she declared to no one in particular that she could see, “I will give you a name, and I shall call you Thing.” But then, she thought better of it, and amended, “No, I know; I shall call you Hush.”