The Burn [Bazzil Brasspair]

[Brass]

There was ice in his rum.

Bazzil Brasspair just sat there looking at the goblet, incredulously, staring daggers at it with bloodshot eyes as though it were some profound crime against nature.

This was Booty Bay, dammit, and this was a man's drink. The top shelf Rum, not that watered down swill shilled off on the lilies. Brass'd been getting drinks from this dive since he was old enough to squeak RUM, but never once - EVER - had there been a been a watery nugget of cold in it. Never.

It bothered him. On its own it might've not grated so much - profoundly wrong though it was - but all the same...

No - not the same. That was it, he reasoned. That was the dealbreaker. Nothing was the same, or would be the same. Again his brain cascaded down those rocky rapids going boldly no-where nice. The seething rumbled beneath his skin like the precursor of a volcanic eruption. It burned.

He exhaled long and laconically, the volatile steam and smoke of his metaphorical inner fire bubbling over. Slowly, he stirred the offending hunk of ice around with his gauntleted finger while muttering. And thinking. Sometimes even out loud, despite the stares he'd get. There'd been days, weeks of that lately. Months even. Lots of sleepless nights and irritable days of nothing but thinking, muttering, breaking things, and drinking, and drinking. There had been a lot of that.

But drink as he did, and he definitely did - no doubt about that - nothing could quench that burning.

Through his armor, his calloused finger didn't even register the numbness. It, much like the rest of him, was covered in mostly healed burns - only through the masterful healing techniques of his comrades was he even able to keep regrow the hair on his head. Most of it, anyway... he blinked with bare-skinned eyebrows at a persistant fly that kept landing.

Before he punched the little sombitch in frustration.

The move was quick and critical, even through his intoxication and sleeplessness - the metal-clad fist of his shield arm slammed a hole in the back wall about as wide as a tauren's chest. It sounded quieter to him than it had any right to - even as the booming explosion echoed throughout the entire establishment to eventually echo off of the seaside cliffs. The boom and rumble were familiar; comforting, after a fashion... if only for their distraction from the jibbering clatter of the bar and mingling with the gravelly rumble within himself.

This was what he was good for, he recriminated within. THIS was what he was meant to do. Break things. Shatter and rumble. To crush. To silence the jibbering and leave the dust settling. This was just natural.

But that was wrong, he knew. That was not true. Not ONLY true, that is. It was just the Burn, which had in months become his constant companion. His inner rage, the warrior's bread and butter, had somewhere along the way ignited. It went from roiling blood to rocket fuel somewhere along the way.

Somewhere in that thought, he knew what would happen next.

Bruisers would show up, the barkeep would bitch... the Baron would pop out of his balcony to assure the locals everything was fine - that the world was not blowing up again. Brass would get bitched at later by him through his many proxies. The Blues and the Reds would continue trying to backstab each other, while the Gobs kept their pockets full. Or died.

The Burn began to rumble. And with that rumble, bubbled the volatile rage within, spoiling for a fight.

Or -died-.

Brass had seen his share of that. More than his share, really, in Garrosh's War Machine.

In the beginning, things weren't that bad. Gobs die every day for stupider things, after all. Gold's the big motivator and to grinder they'll throw themselves for just a handful. Fel, when he was younger - he'd been right there with them, probably brain some unlucky bastard to get there first. In a right thinking bunch, someone does come away with the prize eventually - even if it means crawling down the pile of mutilated bodies with it. Just the way things are.

But not here. No. Gold, Glory, Honor... Valor... Conquest? He'd earned them all at one point or another, decked himself out in every shiny he'd never had working the beat. But for what? To be an expendable stooge in the bastard battalion? The jackboot in the ass of starving Gobs and Trolls, having to steal for a living in Orgrimmar? Meanwhile, the Blues regroup, riding a patriotic crest, marching en masse on the bodies of those not at the top of the Orcish Totem pole - those paving stones the skulls of Gobs, mortared and set by their tears and sweat. It burned.

Bodies. Repulsion. Blame. Before he'd gone to the Horde - he'd never believed such thing as an innocent Gob was possible. Now, he was seeing these miraculous things die by the wagonload. Kicked while they were down. Used up, crushed, and thrown aside like Kaja cola cans.

Though he wouldn't turn back now, Brass began regretting joining up with Garrosh's Horde somewhere along the way. Maybe things would've been different if Thrall's promises had been kept - he'd heard all about that from his pah, Zeeky One-Piece. His pah worked himself to death to get Gobs more rights within the Horde, what equality and fairness promised. A futile cause, both due to Garrosh's regime and the fundamental chaos of the Goblin people - a lost cause, something like herding cats. Cats... on fire.

Fire. The thought wrenched at him, jerking to mind recent memories. He glared at his drink, only to realize that the heat that radiated from him had completely liquidated the ice chunks, watering it down entirely. He got angrier. He thought of the fire more - felt the rumble of the burn, inside. Remembered the gravelly cries of Molten Giants. The howls of flaming hounds and crackling hate of the Firelord himself - the shrill metallic grinding of elementium plates, the bellowing roars of tormented, twisted dragons. The earthshaking rumble of Deathwing's final wrath.

Bruisers were arriving, now, eying him and assessing the damage. Sizing him up. Figuring out the best way to get him out of the bar without causing any additional property damage. Within moments, they had recognized him. Not a one among them stepped forward, as Brass caught himself staring at them.

He imagined what that must've looked like in their eyes - even as the visions of flaming past nightmares blazed throughout his mind. It'd been weeks since he bathed, he'd been drinking off and on all day. His armor, though mostly in top shape, was still caked with dried blood - singed, dented, even slagged in places. With the rumbling rage burning within him, his eyes had to all but glow white hot. Rage at the world. Rage at the lies and causes, the needless deaths - and in general, the rage at raging. Rage at the Blues, Rage at the Reds. A self feeding font, begging to be unleashed like a overshaken can of whoop-ass on the next gnat that pestered. In his stare had to be the rumbling fury of the cataclysm itself. They stopped cold.

These Bruisers were young, but bulky - new. Fresh. Most of the old Bruisers got lost over a year ago when the big wave smashed the Bay, and still more have been lost since as Blues and Reds get uppity. To most of them, gobs are comic relief... not taken seriously, and there to abuse. That was definitely the mentality of Garrosh's Horde, and so much as he'd known them, the Alliance wasn't any different. Just seeing the fresh young faces was enough to summon the images of gobs in Stonetalon, in Azshara, in Twilight Highlands... dying in droves.

One of the Bruisers did eventually step forward, and he had to admire the gob's moxy. It was a girl bruiser. Punky, with sweaty jags of violet-black hair mohawked like some Troll.

"Out."

It was the only word she could squeak - even so, half-behind a shield as thick as the front door.

But he didn't want to leave and he didn't even have to say that. Instead, he just stared at the girl. Through her. She melted away like a face in magma, backing up behind her comrades to put herself back together.

The silence was oppressive, yet still they didn't budge. They lurked, but did not dare push. Though he muttered, Brass was barely comprehensible - he started to slowly pour his drink out on the floor.

"Ice. They put ICE in it.", He drawled, deeply - not even yelling, "Ice. In it."

He cast his eyes to the floor, as though to burn a hole in it.

The gob girl tittered from behind her comrades, "Mebbeh... <gulp> mebbeh they was just tryin' to be nice?"

It sounded like a plate breaking, like a hiss of steam escaping a shattered engine block, those words hitting his molten brain as they did... the rumbling gave way to cracking. That cracking gave way, more literally, into half-mad giggles that cooled. Soothed.

Brass raised to his feet, stared at the girl bruiser hard - giggling a completely deranged giggle, "Mebbeh."

Slowly, like a shambling, clanking boulder - he siddled around the Bruisers and left the bar. Nobody moved for minutes afterward.

Emerging from behind the bar, holding a bag of slowly melting ice chips, the Bug Eating Bastard of Brill just gave a shrug at the near petrified rabble, "...Wellll.... Somebody needs a hug."