The Adventures of Liliri and Nairana Chapter 16 - Unpleasant Surprise

When the illustrious pair finally entered Gadgetzan, the first thing that caught their attention was a throng of children, ringed around a human.
Intrigued, the two women walked over to him, to see what all the fuzz was about.
He looked like a mage, Liliri thought, dressed in a long red robe with a pointy red hat. However, his trade seemed pretty different from the usual battle mage. He rather seemed to be an entertainer of sorts.
Before him, he had several buckets that were filled with a differently colored, slimy, watery substance each.
When the two girls approached, he just had two hands in a bucket with milky white liquid in it. He was stirring and murmuring some phrases, that seemed more like babbling in a self-invented language to impress the onlookers than actual magic to the young elven priestess.
However, at least some of his words seemed to have an actual effect, for there were visible and audible effects in the form of swirls and sparks visible in the substance near his hands.
After a few minutes of this show, his incantations and hand motions reaching a crescendo, he finally pulled his hands out of the substance, holding some white object between them.
When he had shaken excess fluid off of it and presented it to his audience, the children erupted in cheer, and Liliri could see that the white object he was holding resembled a little kitten. It still looked somewhat like the liquid, milky white and partly translucent, but seemed solid enough.
He gave the little statuette to a small orcish boy, who quickly earned some envious looks from the other children, but before a conflict could rise, the mage put his hands again into one of his buckets and began stirring and chanting, the eyes of the children surrounding him soon watching him intently.
The liquid in this bucket was almost completely translucent, with a tint of blue, and Liliri could clearly see that he hadn't hidden a figurine inside the bucket.
But as before, after a while of stirring and murmuring, he pulled an animal figurine out of the liquid, this one resembling some kind of snake with fins. Liliri was honestly impressed how he could form the liquid like this with his magic and produce so elaborate shapes.

Still admiring the strange magic, a whistle from somewhere behind her suddenly startled the young nightelf.
She turned around, just in time to see a blue skinned troll give her a weird grin.
"What was that about?", she asked, turning toward Nairana, but the draenei just shrugged.

They decided to start their business in Gadgetzan by looking for the goblin who had told Nairana he would pay for pirate ears.
But Gadgetzan seemed strange on this day to the young priestess, because they barely had started walking, when a weird looking pink-haired and bearded gnome gave her a whistle too, and a lewd look to boot.
Nairana giggled. "I guess they just think you're hot".
But Liliri wasn't so sure. Her robe was dirty from the desert sand, her hair probably looked terrible, and she was sweaty all over. And besides, never before had someone whistled at her like this. And now two people in such a short while? 'What is going on?', the priestess wondered.

While they walked the streets of Gadgetzan, Liliri watched the people around her. Something was definitely amiss. Many people gave her weird looks. Mainly the men, but some women as well. One, a brutish orc woman that looked like a warrior, looked at her and visibly licked her lips. Liliri shuddered. She wanted to leave the town as soon as possible, but first they had to finish their business.

Finally they reached the hut of the goblin who was paying adventurers to take care of the pirate problem.
The goblin, a three foot tall dark green skinned older looking male with a patch over one eye, looked them over.
His gaze on Liliri, he looked like he was recognizing her, but not knowing from where. Obviously giving up, he shook his head and turned his one good eye at Nairana.
"Ah! I remember you! Any luck pirate hunting?"
Nairana produced a little cloth bag, in which she had collected the ears of the pirates they had killed before they had found the treasure map on one of them, and let it fall down in front of the goblin.
He eagerly opened it and started to count the ears.
"48 ears, that means... let me think.. ah.. right.. 24! 24 pirates dead! Very good. That's 24 gold pieces for you then! One moment."
He briefly ran to the back of his hut, coming back with a purse, from which he then counted 24 gold pieces and gave them to Nairana.
"Very good. And remember, there's always more gold for more pirate ears!"
Nairana thanked the goblin, and they started to walk out. Just before they reached the door, a stout nightelf entered the hut. He gave Liliri a nod, from elf to elf. She gave him a courteous smile, then proceeded to walk out the door. But feeling the man staring at her, she looked back, just a moment before stepping outside, and saw the elf's eyes widen in recognition.
Obviously addressing the goblin, Liliri heard him say "Say, wasn't that the girl from", but the rest of his words were drowned in the noise from what looked like a brawl between an orc and a troll further down the street.

Liliri was almost angry, not knowing why everyone in the city behaved so weirdly towards her. She was sure she'd never seen the male elf before, so where did he know her from? And why were so many people shooting her lewd looks and grins, or even whistling at her? Something was definitely wrong, and she needed to know what.

Nairana suggested to go to the tavern next. Perhaps they could ask someone there what was going on. And they'd need to go there anyway, since it would probably the best place to make their 'treasure', the bottle of rum they dug up, to money.

Liliri was a bit apprehensive to enter the tavern, since when people in the streets were already whistling and grinning at her for some reason, what would the drunkards inside do?
But she let Nairana lead her inside. It was filled with people, mostly men, of all races. But the tables were only sparsely filled, with the majority of the patrons all crowded around one table in the back, not paying any attention to their surroundings.

But one dwarf, sitting alone on a table, his head in the direction of the door, was looking at her now, she noticed. Then he suddenly sprang up. "It's her!", he almost yelled.
At least three dozen heads inside the tavern turned at once, all looking at her now. Silence fell over them. Liliri gulped and unconsciously grabbed Nairana's hand.
Then the people started whispering. "It's her?". "Is it really her?". "Ya it's dat elf!". And some whispers in orcish or some language she didn't understand.
Then they started cheering at her, and yelling, "It's her!". "Woohoo it's the elf!". "Aye, dat's the girl!"

Liliri was flabbergasted. She had no idea what was happening.
But then, her eyes now adjusted to the gloom of the tavern, and for the first time not looking at the people, her gaze wandered to the wall above the table they had all been crowded around.
And her knees went soft, and her throat became dry.
For on that wall above the table, there hang a picture, at least two feet in height and one in width. Big enough to clearly make out the elven figure on it. An elven figure next to a fire. A nude elven figure next to a fire. Her. It was her. It was the picture the goblin with the weird machine had made of her three nights earlier. But how was that possible? He had given them the picture. It was somewhere secure in Nairana's bag. And it was so small. How did the picture get here? And how did it get so big?
'Well, at least that explains the weird behavior from everyone', the elf thought, resigned.

But her draenei friend wasn't so quick to accept fate.
Bow drawn, she stormed forward towards the crowd, which quickly parted to make way for her, revealing a certain goblin she remembered all to well, cowering behind the table, which was filled with a whole stack of the big paper sheets with the naked Liliri on it, and a mass of coins.
"You! How..", she started yelling at the goblin who had snatched the image of Liliri a few nights before, but the green skinned creature, terror in his eyes, not hidden behind the throng of people eagerly buying his pictures anymore, quickly dashed out from his hiding spot, ran behind a towering orc and quickly out some small backdoor of the tavern, his gold and pictures quickly forgotten in the face of Nairana's bow and arrow.

With a snarl, Nairana shouldered her bow and grabbed the stack of images on the table, studying them.
Liliri was still terrified. "How is that possible? He gave you the picture!"
"It seems the lying rat had another one. And some machine to copy and enlarge it. Darn engineers!"
"What do we do now? With the pictures I mean."
Nairana thought for a moment, before shocking Liliri by answering, "We sell them!"
"What?", Liliri was exasperated. Selling nude images of her? Was Nairana serious?

The bystanders, intently listening to their conversation, were quick to support Nairana's decision.
"We paid the goblin ten gold pieces per picture. We're more than willing to pay you the same!", a rogueish looking gnome offered.
"You hear that Lili? We spent hours killing pirates for just twenty pieces. With this..", she quickly thumbed through the stack of paper, "we'll make at least two hundred! Think about the nice things we could buy!"
"I don't know", Liliri answered, not exactly thrilled by the idea of selling the images, although the money would be nice, she had to admit to herself.
"Come on Lili, what do you think how many of those pictures the greenskin sold already, with everyone in the streets obviously knowing you. These few more now don't make a change. Besides, these pictures are far too good to throw them away!". She lasciviously let her fingers brush over Liliri's nude form on the top picture.

But the draenei was right, she thought. Half of Gadgetzan seemed to have seen the picture already, so a few more didn't matter much, but they would bring in some nice money. And it served the goblin right that they would at least profit a little bit from his thievery.
She sighed.
"Well then, let's do it."
Nairana gave her a wide grin, and those surrounding the women and hearing the elf speak, started to cheer, and hold their coins at the girls.
It took mere minutes, until the stack had been reduced to a single picture, which Nairana quickly rolled up and put in her own bag, giving Liliri a lewd grin while doing so.
But the crowd was not so happy. Many faces were grinning, having gotten one of the prized pieces of paper with the beautiful naked elf on it, but there were still some who hadn't gotten one.
And those quickly came up with a new idea.
A troll was the first one to chant, in broken common, "Strip! Strip! Strip!"