A/N

So, earlier this month, Blizzard did its usual April Fools series of jokes, my favourite among them being Blizzard Outcasts. I can't help but wonder if it's a reference to Heroes of the Storm, hinting at heroes that may or may not be in the game. Anyway, as per the properties of one of those 'outcasts,' gave me the idea for this.

A Bone in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush

The Butcher was dying.

Not that that meant anything in the world of Nexus. Things died all the time. Heroes such as itself (if "hero" really was the right word) were reborn almost immediately, give or take a few seconds based on level and lag. But still, lying here on the ground, waiting for nature to take its course, it was irritated.

"Meat," he said.

Meat. So much meat around him. The meat had fought. The meat had killed him.

"Meat."

But he couldn't move. The meat was in range, but he couldn't get to it. Not now. Not since Stitches had taken his hook for himself.

Stitches meat, the Butcher thought in his mind, making a mental note for when he re-spawned. Get meat. Get hook. Hook meat. Eat meat.

But he had to die first. And that was taking longer than he cared for.

"Oh. It's you."

"Meat?"

The meat was walking over to him. The meat was human-type meat. Not nephalem meat, just human meat. Tasty. But not as nourishing.

"Remember me?" the meat asked, as it walked over to the Butcher. "Remember?!"

The meat was angry, the Butcher noticed, as most meat was. But it was incomplete meat. Its right leg was wooden.

Wood not meat.

"You don't, do you?" the meat asked. "Light dammit, you don't remember me?!"

"Meat?"

"Shut up!" the meat yelled, hobbling over to the Butcher and whacking him over the head. "I'm Wirt! You took my leg! You're the reason I died!"

Wirt?

The name didn't sound familiar. Maybe one of the meat things in the depths of the cathedral had exclaimed it but-

Wirt not meat. Or is meat. Meat named Wirt?

The Butcher growled at the meat. Still standing there, balancing himself on his non-meat leg, along with his meaty meat one.

"My name is Wirt," the traveller whispered. "And I've been waiting a long time for this."

The Butcher had been waiting a long time to die too. Once it re-spawned, it would see what this Wirt-meat tasted like.

"You took my leg," Wirt whispered, hobbling around. "At Tristram. Wirt the Peg-legged Boy they called me."

The Butcher nodded. Now it remembered. Wirt-meat's leg had tasted meaty.

"The heroes never came to me," he continued. "Ogden, Adria…they sold all the good stuff. No-one cared about my gambling services. When it was all over, I didn't have enough money to leave town."

Is town meat?

"And then the demons came," he spat. "Hell bovines. You have any idea what it's like to be trampled by a horde of mad cows? To try running and losing your leg in the process? To have that leg be reduced to a gimmick to enter a secret cow level?"

The Butcher pondered the question – what did cow-meat taste like?

"So I died. But I was reborn here, in the Nexus."

Pig-meat was good, it knew that much. Bacon, ham, pork…so many names for so much meat.

"And now we meet again," Wirt said.

"Meat?"

"No, not meat, meet," the Wirt-meat said. He reached into his pocket, drawing out something. A skeletal, meatless, leg. "Remember this?"

"Meat?"

"Yeah, it is. My leg. The one you ate!" Wirt yelled. "Even here in this bloody realm, the gods saw fit to give me my wooden leg again!" He sighed. "You have any idea how many times my leg showed up on Azeorth? On Earth, after the demons invaded in that other game no-one remembers? Would it kill them to just rejuvenate me completely?"

Gods…the Butcher remembered gods. In an earlier build of the Nexus. But they were gone. He didn't care though. They had no meat to them.

"So now…here we are," Wirt-meat whispered. "To finish what you started." He grinned. "Death is only a temporary setback in the Nexus. But don't worry. I'll make this slow. And painful. And by the time I'm done…you'll never want meat again."

The Butcher's eyes widened? No meat? Impossible! Inconceivable! In…in…

In nothing.

Because then the Wirt-meat began…doing stuff.

"Is Wirt beating the Butcher to death with his bone leg?" a footman asked, watching the spectacle from far away.

"Beats me," an archer replied.