Wildfire Riders

"Lovely! Oh my goodness, so lovely!"

Genise giggled with glee as she turned and twirled about the dressing area of the Silver Feather. She smoothed her hands along the hips of her snow white, silken dress, looking her best (as always) in some sort of V-necked, skin tight number.

She was in heaven.

Everywhere she looked, there were men. Powerful, oiled up, muscled from head-to-toe men!

And they were there to fight, all for her!

Yes, it had been announced that the winner of the Ladies' Night Wrestlefest Extravaganza! (The ! is not silent) would be privilaged with dinner at the estate of the hostess. Carry home what rumors you will with that one, folks.

Truth be told, probably none of these men had any fighting experience under their belt. Madame Crownsilver simply picked from the best of the best in eye candy for applications, and told them to show up for a fight.

All around her they stood, smiles wide and chests puffed, each one more than confident that their looks alone would win them this right. Genise slowly walked amongst them, chewing on the back of her lip.

"So perfect... This is my favorite!" She exclaimed, resting her hand on the shoulder of the fifth guy with golden locks and blue eyes.

"My goodness, this is my favorite!" She once more exclaimed as she turned and physically examined the abs of the third black-haired man with her fingertips.

She turned and went wide-eyed, hands groping at the massive arm of a brown-haired man with light-green eyes. "Ahh... My favorite!"

On and on and on she turned, as if in some dream. They kept closing in closer and closer, until it seemed she only needed to reach out to put her hads upon lovely, desired muscles!

"So wonderful! So perfect! So....Like a big brother to me?"

She blinked, hands resting full grop on the chest of one Tarquin ap Danwyrith! He perked his brow and grinned, and Genise's dream came crashing down around her.

He has a plan...

"Noooo, go away this time, darn it!"

He always has a plan...

"Why do you always have to have a plan?!"

((BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!! I love it already.))

((But how long can this go on before L'ree Lovelace is finally forced to make a public appearance?))

The rumor had originated somewhere in Cutthroat Alley, likely at the greasy tables of the Cocked Leg or the smoky depths of Sharma's Cardroom, that the most accurate predictor of the probability of a business venture's success was not to be found in the pages of the Stormwind Tribune. Nor, in fact, in the counting-houses of the Dwarven District, with their charts and formulas and neat stacks of coin; nor the cobbleside tables scattered about the auctions on Market Square, where the merchants' sons and well-dressed sharps hoping to tint their blood with blue groused about their earnings. It was, some luminary of half-penny philosophy had famously claimed, on Tarquin ap Danwyrith's face.

The wider he smiled, the more money you were going to lose.

He was smiling now, hastily ushered into the exceptionally pink back offices of the Silver Feather, his lanky frame sunk into the padded depths of an office chair's plump great-aunt. The grin was modulated a bit, in deference to the squeaky-voiced but nonetheless intimidating wrath of Stormwind's possibly most respectable, probably richest, and certainly tallest archmage. "Why are you even here?!" Genise Crownsilver cried in exasperation. "Lady Balchester saw you going into the back!"

"She the yin wi'her tits fallin' outay her dress an' hair like a lad ay twelve?" Tarquin inquired, swinging his booted feet up onto Genise's desk with the careful craft of a born malingerer. Genise slapped her hand down on his ankle and he withdrew, looking injured - but still smiling.

"It's very fashionable this spring!" she snapped. "And that woman's a horrid gossip, it'll be halfway up Lords' Hill by sunset!"

Undeterred, the northman snaked one bony hand into a bowl of candied apples on his friend's desk. "Ah, well, it'll be guid fir business an' all. A wee taste ay danger fir the trophy wives an' bedwarmers, innit?" He crooked his fingers into quotation marks with his free hand and adopted a low, booming basso of a voice. "Come to the Silver Feather, and catch a glimpse of the dangerous, murderous, but sexy criminal who runs the underbelly of Stormwind!"

"You mean the man who inspired Arrick McGillicutty, the Highland Buccaneer?" Genise arched one delicate eyebrow, a smile sneaking out from behind her frustrated glare.

Tarquin just stared at her for a level moment, then popped the candied apple into his mouth. "I still aim ta kill thit fuckin' woman," he groused around a mouthful of crystallized sugar. "Yeh watch me, Gen. See if I dinna."

"Oh, I'll keep a very close eye out," she said with a wink that would probably have been flirtatious under any other circumstances. Her equilibrium restored, she folded her yard-and-some of leg into the chair across the desk from Tarquin. "Alright, Tarq, what are you planning? And don't tell me you don't have a plan, because-" She lifted the fingers of one hand towards him and smiled. The implication was obvious.

The smile returned, a slight line of white teeth in the straw-moss of his beard. "Tis a bit ay compromise ta the ideals ay yir wee tourney here an' all, Gen, but it's a fuckin' topper. Trust me."

Genise leaned forward and placed her chin in her palm, another one of those gestures that might've been distractingly seductive with any other man in the office, but with Tarquin, was just simple curiosity. "I put a lot of work into the Extravaganza, Tarq. You know that."

"Och, I kin tell." The smile didn't twitch.

"And I am pretty damn certain that your plan doesn't involve getting me sixteen even finer specimens of well-oiled manhood."

"Fraid no'." If anything, he was smiling wider now.

"And it's possibly a danger to the reputation of the Silver Feather."

"Well, ayeh, if we fuck it up." Tarquin seemed to have far too many teeth in his mouth. There was a period of silence, during which the man smiled and the woman watched, until she finally asked the most important question of all.

"How much money is this going to make us?"

Tarquin just learned back in his seat and smiled wider, an expression which now threatened to put several counting-houses out of business. And soon enough, Genise was smiling too, her soft paint-reddened lips enclosing what had to be miles of pearl-white teeth, and they got down to talking business.

There was no corollary in Cutthroat Alley to the Smiling Northman-Profit of Venture matrix, regarding the accompanying expression of Genise Crownsilver, archmage, entertainer, and businesswoman. But there really should have been.