Small Mercies — five windows into warband life. Nothing heroic. Just home.
Brasskeese had handled many difficult conversations in her fifty-eight years.
She had negotiated contracts with Bilgewater cartel enforcers. She had explained goblin interest rates to people who very much did not want to understand them. She had once talked her way out of a Gadgetzan prison using only a stolen sock and an extremely convincing accent.
She sat Lulureese and Vyrneese down at the kitchen table and told herself this would be fine.
“We need to talk,” she said, “about support.”
Vyrneese straightened immediately. “Tactical support? I have assessed three structural vulnerabilities in our current—”
“No.”
“Emotional support? I have been compiling notes on—”
“Not that either.”
Lulu raised her hand. “Is it about Ribbert? Because he was already in the house when I found him, technically—”
“It’s about,” Brass said, with the patience of someone approaching the end of their patience, “undergarments.”
Silence.
“Specifically,” she continued, “correctly fitted ones. This is not a discussion I wanted to have. I want that on record. But I have watched both of you operate without adequate infrastructure for three months and I am a responsible—”
“Infrastructure,” Vyrneese repeated, filing this immediately. “Load-bearing. Distribution of—”
“Please don’t,” Brass said.
What followed was the most chaotic shopping trip in Orgrimmar’s Lower Market history.
Lulureese tried on seventeen different options with the cheerful energy of someone who had never experienced a problem in their life, offering commentary on each with zero volume control. The merchant developed a persistent eye twitch by item four.
Vyrneese approached the exercise with complete tactical seriousness, requesting precise measurements, inquiring about weight distribution ratios, asking the merchant whether there was a chart cross-referencing structural integrity against mobility constraints. The merchant had no chart. Vyrneese suggested they make one. The merchant politely declined. Vyrneese began making one anyway on a piece of parchment she produced from somewhere.
Lulu purchased one. Held up a second, smaller one, looked at it, looked at Ribbert waiting patiently in her bag.
“Lulureese,” Brass said.
“It’s just in case—”
“Frogs don’t—”
“You don’t KNOW that—”
Brasskeese looked at the ceiling. She had negotiated with cartel enforcers. She had survived a Gadgetzan prison. She was fifty-eight years old and she had chosen this family deliberately and with full information.
Behind her, Vyrneese held up her completed structural analysis chart with quiet pride.
Essential Humanity Protocol #47: Undergarment Infrastructure. Status: RESOLVED.
Brass removed her earrings.
Not for a fight.
Just to rub her temples in peace.
“I need,” she said to nobody in particular, “a raise.”
Next time: the warband discovers Reyneese’s basement invoice.