. 01

[Pre-Story]Hey there, Squish here, with the long-awaited continuation of By The Horns! This chapter is, frankly, massive. It grew WAY bigger than I expected, 25k words, altogether, so I figured it would be wise to break it up into a couple parts. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: All characters are 18+

Content Warnings: Impossible anatomy, huge cock, excessive cum, size difference.[/pre-story]

*****

Unlikely Adversaries, Part 1

"BITCH!"

"WHORE!"

The sounds of shrill, angry shouts echoing from the laboratory were nothing new, and the people of Gadgetzan were content to ignore them as they went about their business beneath the burning desert sun. The ensuing crash of breaking glass, and the dull boom that that followed, were new, but not not so new as to warrant more than a curious glance from passerbys. But when Glitz came flying out of the building, thrown with enough force to break one of the hinges on the double doors as she passed through them, hitting the cracked, baking earth and sliding a couple feet, well, that was certainly new enough to draw some stares.

The goblin girl quickly pushed herself up off the sands and twisted around to narrow her pink eyes in glare at the now-half-open doorway, one leather-gloved hand coming up to wipe away a trickle of blood from the corner of her full, turquoise-painted lips. From the neck down, she was clad in leather armor, the surface bleached in some places and charred black in others, with a pair of many-pocketed bandoliers criss-crossing her chest and another hanging off her hips, gleaming bottles dangling off the belt in easy-to-reach places, alongside a pair of wicked-looking daggers. Her head was mostly uncovered, leaving her long, pointed ears exposed, glittering with a half-dozen gold rings each and a pair of gleaming gemstones set into her gauged earlobes, as well as her short, bright turquoise hair, a single forelock curled up and back, keeping her forehead clear for a pair of rather advanced-looking goggles.

Ginny stepped into the space left by the now-hanging-useless door, leaning against the doorframe with one hand, the rage in the fair-skinned gnome's expression clearly visible through the semi-transparent pink visor covering her face, lines and numbers forming on the glass as she stared down at Glitz. The cold-blooded fury on her face seemed at odds with the diminutive girl's poofy pink pigtails, big, bright blue eyes, and cute button nose. While the visor and its broad, metallic headband were the only things protecting her head, from the neck down she was covered in sturdy plate armor, every piece of her equipment clearly well-maintained, beneath a layer of clinging soot, and bristling with add-ons, augmentations, and customizations. Everything from weapon tubes attached to one forearm, to a half-dozen sensors and readouts on the other, to an automatic heart-rate monitor and potion-dispenser on the breastplate. In her free hand, she gripped the shaft of a weapon that looked about as tall as her, a steel staff capped at both ends with rust-red metal, one end extending out into two prongs, upon which an enormous, slowly-rotating gear was mounted.

Glitz pushed herself up to her feet, taking a combat stance as she slowly drew one dagger, the other hand going for one of the colorful vials hanging off her belt. "If that's how you want it, then bring it the fuck on, bit-" Glitz snarled, only to be suddenly cut off as Ginny hurled herself forward with startling speed, hitting the goblin like a cannonball, her armor-plated shoulder impacting Glitz' chest mid-curse, briefly silencing her and sending her sprawling once more. Without a moment's hesitation, she raised the gear-tipped weapon up high overhead, lips twisted in a snarl as she brought it down hard toward the prone goblin.

Unfortunately, Glitz was too quick to recover, and managed to roll out of the way, the gear's blunt teeth finding only cracked, dry earth where she had been just moments ago. Ginny snarled angrily, sweeping the weapon low across the sand after her prey, but the elusive goblin was a half-step ahead of her furious foe, springing to her feet and in, bringing herself in close at Ginny's side. With a quick pivot and spin, she was behind her opponent, body pressed against her back, blade hooked around backhand and raised high, ready to plunge down into the gnome's vulnerable neck. Something in the gnome's armor beeped, and suddenly Glitz screamed, arcs of blue lightning dancing across her armor as all her muscles seized up tight in the grip of the electric charge. It only lasted a moment, but that moment's hesitation was all ginny needed to twist and slam an armored elbow into Glitz' side, knocking her back. That gave Ginny the distance she needed to pivot around and follow up with a brutal waist-level sweep that would have shattered the knee of a taller opponent, but merely cracked one of the greenskin's ribs and sent her sprawling once again.

Glitz pushed herself up, spitting out a mouthful of blood, a wicked grin spreading across her lips as she held up a now-empty vial illustratively. Ginny's eyes widened, realization striking over her just a moment before the burning, sizzling sensation began to spread down her back growing from painful to agonizing in the space of a few heartbeats. She cried out, twisting around, trying futilely to grab or pat out the burning inside her armor for a few moments. Just long enough for Glitz to rush forward, dagger held sideways as she slammed her knuckles into the side of the gnome's head for a stunning punch, then twist her wrist around and plunge the blade down, sinking it into Ginny's shoulder. Ginny screamed again, wrenching her body away from her attacker, the dagger ripped from Glitz' grip as the blade caught on her armored collar. She staggered back a step, her armor suddenly beeping as it pumped its healing potion reserves directly into her bloodstream, stabilizing the faltering warrior. Ginny glared at Glitz as she reached up, ripping the dagger out, the wound already closing thanks to the alchemical healing agent, and tossed it to the sandy ground. Glitz drew the other dagger, returning the glare as they squared off once more.

A crowd had already gathered around the battle, a half-dozen hobgoblin guards holding back the onlookers as they watched in fascination, one particularly enterprising bat-eared goblin shouted improvised odds over the rabble and taking bets. Neither woman seemed to care. Ginny aimed her forearm at ginny, the tubes attached to it suddenly belching smoke and sparks, a quartet of miniature rockets streaking across the space between them. Glitz rolled forward, the missiles detonating just behind her as she rushed forward. Ginny swept her weapon up in a wide arc, warding the space in front of her where the goblin would have been, if she hadn't stopped herself short, throwing her hips back to narrowly avoid the blunt-toothed weapon. As it passed, Glitz darted forward again, bringing the second dagger up for a stab toward the gnome's unarmored underarm, only to be abruptly stopped as the gnome raised a foot and brought down all her not-insignificant weight in a stomp to Glitz' foot. Glitz faltered, her now-crushed toe objecting to the weight upon it, giving ginny just enough time to let go of the weapon with one hand and bring her elbow back to catch the green-skinned girl across the jaw.

Glitz gritted her teeth as she caught herself after the impact, forcefully driving her blade up, finishing the earlier strike regardless of the pain. The blade bit into Ginny's lightly-armored underarm, her chain under armour keeping the blade from going deep, but the tip drawing blood and striking a nerve, forcing the gnome to drop her weapon. Glitz grinned with triumph, trying to push through the chain, but Ginny dropped her arm down, pinning the blade and her attacker's wrist between her elbow and side, her free hand balled into a fist and brought up in an armored uppercut to Glitz' chin. Glitz stumbled back, trying in vain to free herself, leaving herself open to a gut-punch from Ginny. In desperation, Glitz grabbed at her opponent, seizing one puffy pink pigtail and pulling, hard. Ginny yelped, her grip loosening enough for Glitz to free her hand, but not her blade.

Not willing to let the goblin go so easily, Ginny groped for any hold she could find with her free hand, taking hold of the crossed bandoliers on Glitz' chest. She grinned, triumphantly, raising her fist to pummel her foe, but Glitz wasn't out of tricks yet, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she popped the lid on a bottle from her belt, brandishing it blindly in Ginny's direction as a cloud of acrid smoke billowed out, burning and stinging the gnome girl's eyes painfully. She cried out, trying to cover her face with her free, hand, but refused to release her grip on the goblin girl's bandoliers. Glitz reached up, finding the goggles on her forehead and pulling them down over her eyes, the lenses glowing as her vision returned. In desperation, she reached down, fishing an emergency blade from her boot and, with a moment's sawing, cut the bandoliers loose, stumbling away from the stronger gnome, leaving her clutching her eyes and the now-useless belts.

As the smoke cleared and the gnome's vision returned, the two squared off again. Their weapons gone, their tricks exhausted, neither able to make a move for their weapon without leaving themselves vulnerable to their opponent. A gnome in mostly plate armor, a goblin in ragged leathers with only a pocketknife... The two rushed at each other with nothing but their fists and unbridled hatred, crying out in rage. Their bodies collided and they fell to the dry, dusty ground in a tangle of limbs and rage, trading armor-plated punches for shallow nicks and bleeding gashes, neither willing to back up so much as an inch while the other still lived. The crowd drew in close, staring with rapt attention as the two tangled, the shouted bets growing larger, the odds shifting with each blow, each change of dominance...

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?" A deep, thundering voice boomed as a massive, armored figure barreling through the crowd, shoulder-checking a hobgoblin out of the way to push into the circle. Massive, three-fingered gauntlets reached down, each roughly grabbing one of the fighters, one wrapping entirely around the goblin's slender waist, the other grabbing the gnome by the scruff of her armor. The hulking tauren hauled them both into the air and yanked them apart, holding them as far apart as his arms could reach, seemingly unphased by their weight.

"LET! ME! GO!" Ginny snarled, kicking wildly, striking at the limb holding her up in vain, still mindlessly reaching for her opponent as though she could finish her off if she was just a little closer.

"Fuck off, cow! Bitch is MINE!" Glitz added, kicking much like her counterpart as she shoved and struggled against the bull's iron grip. She spun her boot-knife around and slammed it down into one of the seams of the tauren's armor, hoping to earn her freedom, but in truth only earning herself a painful squeeze that drove the air from her lungs and a glare from her captor.

The tauren turned on the gathered crowd. "You were all just going to let them KILL each other?! And BET on it!?" He demanded, half-incredulous and half-furious. The bat-eared goblin waved sack of coins he'd already collected as he gestured up at the tauren, ready to object to the interruption, but found himself at a loss for words as the dark-furred bull fixed him with a withering glare. The crowd quickly began to disintegrate, between the interrupted entertainment and the guilt inflicted by the interruptor, there was nothing really keeping them there anymore. Even the guards lumbered off back to their posts soon enough, leaving the tauren holding the two diminutive combatants aloft in the middle of the city, suddenly feeling very silly and out-of-place.

Suddenly, there was a voice behind him. "Yo, big guy, over here." it called. He turned around, but found nobody. "Down." The voice added with an audible sigh. He looked down to find a bald goblin with sharp features standing there, his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. He looked over to the goblin in the tauren's right hand, narrowing his eyes. "Glittergleam 'Glitz' Haggleracket..." He muttered, before turning to the gnome with the same expression. "And Ginnfizzle 'Ginny' Greasefinger. Why am I not surprised." He muttered, shaking his head and tapping his foot. "What the fuck was it about THIS time?" He demanded.

The two girls opened their mouths, each pointing at the other, only to be abruptly cut off when the bald goblin suddenly shouted. "OH, WAIT! I DON'T FUCKING CARE." He snarled, then paused, raising one hand to massage the bridge of his long, hooked nose. "You two are the biggest fuckin' headache I gotta deal with around here, INCLUDING the fuckin' ocean that's tryin' to swallow up my city!" He snapped. "For a couple a' eggheads, you sure act fuckin' STUPID!" He added, glaring at each of them in turn again, the two girls averting their eyes and shrinking visibly before the little man. He was quiet for a moment, letting his words sink in, before looking up at the tauren holding the two girls. "Hey, big guy. What's your name?"

The tauren blinked. "Uh, Rhuno. Rhuno Sunheart... Sir." He replied, momentarily surprised by the directness.

The bald goblin grinned a salesman smile. "Good ta meetcha Rhino. Baron Marin Noggenfogger. Listen, I got me a little problem here, and I figure you might be able to help me out." He began, turning to gesture out toward the water. "You saw the water out there as ya came in, right? Good. Well, here's da deal. The ocean out there used to be a lot further out. Had a little port out there by the shore. Then, big freakin' dragon comes by and fucks up my coastline. Not so bad, no port no more, but now da whole city's beachfront property, and since it's such a big deal now, I get made Baron. Sweet, right? I figure, we can make a new port, get shipments right up to the doorstep, right? Problem is, the water ain't satisfied with what it got. This ground ya standin' on? It's all mud. Dry mud. And when it gets wet again, it ain't so stable no more. Washes right out from under ya. I get put in charge of da city, only to find out da ocean keeps gettin' closer and I might not have a city for much longer. Tough break, huh?" He asked, letting the question linger in the air.

The question lingered until Rhuno felt it would be rude not to say something, only to be suddenly cut off when the baron continues speaking. "So, what do I do? I put my best minds to work on da problem. A well-known alchemist..." He explained, gesturing to Glitz. "An' a brilliant engineer." He added, nodding toward Ginny. "Problem solved, right? WHAT COULD GO WRONG?" He half-shouted, glaring at the two again, then sighing. "I figure you can guess how well these two get along. Thing is, I need them workin' together, figurin' out how to keep my city dry before we all start sinkin' into the mud." He explained, then looked pointedly at him again. "An' I figure, first step to gettin' 'em to work together is to keep 'em from killin' each other. An' since my APPARENTLY OVERPAID GUARDS-" He added, offhandedly half-shouting over his shoulder at a couple of nearby hobgoblins, "-can't break up a fuckin' catfight, I figure, maybe I could use a little outside muscle. So, how 'bout it big guy? You stay here for a few days, keep these little firecrackers from blowin' up in each other's faces, get paid. Easy money, right, Rono?" He proposed, flashing that greasy smile again.

---

This was a bad deal, Rhuno thought to himself. These two were oil and water... or maybe more like gunpowder and matches, each one already volatile, and explosive when you put them together and add friction. There were so many easier ways to make money. Didn't somebody want a bunch of sea giant killed? That sounded easier AND safer... So why the fuck had he agreed to watch these two?

It had started out simple enough. Rhuno took them back to their shared lab, confiscated their weapons and armor, healed up the damage they'd inflicted on one-another (can't work at maximum efficiency if it hurts to breathe, after all), then made them work together to fix the door and clean up the damage their spat had caused before it spilled out into the streets. Then he sat them down and talked to them, trying to sort out what drove the two of them to try and kill each other. That was where it started to get complicated. From what he could pick out before the discussion descended to screaming bickering, Glitz was a slob, Ginny was neurotic, Glitz was a slut, Ginny was a prude, and both accused the other of getting special treatment from the Baron when it came to resources for research. He'd pried the two apart and sent them off to their respective workstations, thinking that if they couldn't work together, them maybe they could work separately.

Unfortunately, Rhuno had underestimated the girl's creativity. Taking the weapons and armor had simply removed the most direct tool in their toolboxes of conflict, and while he was more than competent when it came to physical matters, both of the girls could think circles around him. How could he have known that what Glitz claimed was the beginning of an erosion-resistant resin was actually the catalyst for a cloud of acrid, stinking smoke that left both him and Ginny coughing and gagging as she grinned smugly from behind a protective mask? How could he predict Ginny's solar lens array could be rearranged to focus a beam and set Glitz' notes on fire? Each new shot in the ongoing war came from a new angle, novel and unpredictable, and by the time he figured out what to look for to prevent the last one, somebody else was already launching the next attack from a completely different direction. By the end of the first day, the lab was in worse shape than it had been when he arrived, and he had to physically intervene to stop another brawl more times than he cared to count.

It took locking the two in their respective rooms and pinning the doors shut with chairs for Rhuno to get a few hours of peace. Despite his exhaustion, sleep remained elusive, beyond the discomfort of the too-small bed and the stress, his mind was busily trying to solve the seemingly-unsolvable riddle of these two. Two brilliant minds, each more than capable of solving the problem presented to them if they weren't completely consumed by their rivalry. What had started as something small and petty, something that could have been resolved with a little understanding, had escalated into something that could spell doom for an entire city. At the core of it, there was a question that minds wiser than his had been struggling to answer for generations: How do you get people to listen to sense instead of emotion, to work together instead of tearing each other apart? Eventually he drifted off into a restless sleep, the question buzzing in his mind all through the night.

The sound of a crash from downstairs woke Rhuno, the massive bull jolting upright in the undersized bed, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion and wide with panic. He hurriedly pushed himself to his hooves, stumbling briefly as his ankles got tangled in the sheets, then rushed for the door, only to slam his forehead into the frame in his haste. He growled with frustration, head whipping around to search the upstairs, only to find both the girls' doors open, one's chair pushed aside and its doorknob hanging loosely, the lock almost completely disassembled, the other simply bearing a large hole with a greenish tint at the edges where the doorknob and lock once were. Rhuno turned and stomped toward the stairs, a fire in his eyes, his patience worn out.

The lab was a battlefield. Literally. Glitz stood on one side, a shapeless, semi-transparent green blob-thing looming in front of her, it's form roiling and shifting impatiently. On the other side, Ginny stood behind a squadron of a half-dozen miniature mechanoids, flanked by a pair of tiny gyrocopters.