Disclaimer: I don't own Fellowship characters, references to the Tolkein universe, the Elvish language, or the lyrics to any of the songs mentioned in this fan fiction story.

A/N: Ok, this takes place in the future… like… our time, ok?

Storm Clouds

By

Brin

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Chapter 1: Shrouded

I amar prestar aen.

The world has changed.

Han mathon ne nen.

I can feel it in the water.

Han mathon ne chae.

I feel it in the earth.

Han noston ne 'wilith.

I smell it in the air.

Much that once was…is lost…for none now live who remember it.

It began with the forging of the Rings of Power. Three were given to the Elves; immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings. Seven were given to the Dwarf Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all… desire power. For within these rings was bound the power and the will to rule each race.

But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made.

Deep in the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged in secret another ring, a master ring, and into this ring he poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life. One ring to rule them all.

One by one, the free peoples of Middle-Earth fell to the power of the Ring, but there were some who resisted…

A Last Alliance of men and Elves marched against the armies of Mordor, and on the  slopes of Mount Doom, they fought for the freedom of Middle-Earth. Victory seemed near… but the power of the ring could not be undone.

It was in this moment, when all hope had faded, that Isildur, son of the king, took up his father's sword… and Sauron, the enemy of the free peoples of Middle-Earth, was defeated. The Ring passed to Isildur, who had this once chance to destroy evil forever… but the hearts of men are easily corrupted… and the Ring of Power has a will of its own. It betrayed Isildur, to his death. And some things that should not have been forgotten… were lost.

History became legend. Legend became myth. For two and a half thousand years, the Ring passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, the Ring ensnared a new bearer.

The Ring came to the creature Gollum, who took it deep into the tunnels under the Misty Mountains and there… it consumed him. The Ring gave Gollum unnatural long life. For five hundred years it poisoned his mind and in the gloom of Gollum's cave, it waited. Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in the East; whispers of a nameless fear, and the Ring of Power perceived.

It abandoned Gollum… but then something happened the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable. A hobbit: Bilbo Baggins of the Shire.

For the time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all.

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He walked through the streets silently, booted feet carelessly splashing through the puddles of tainted rainwater pooling along the cracked sidewalk. There was a time when he had had to carefully muffle his footsteps to hide his approach from enemy ears, a time when stealth was the thin line between life and death… But that time had long past.

He wore a winter hat that covered his ears but didn't call too much attention with its dull gray color. He had a mustache and a small beard on the tip of his chin, the rest of his face cleanly shaven. The combination gave him a look of youthful intelligence and yet ageless wisdom. A black trench coat hung loosely on his muscular shoulders, reaching down to his knees and covering a white shirt tucked into blue jeans.

At first glance, you would think he was just a college graduate out for a morning stroll. If you looked twice… maybe you would catch a glimpse of the tortured soul hidden beneath a handsome, seemingly sturdy exterior. A light, nearly invisible scar ran down the right side of his face, over his eye and stopping at his jaw line. He carried himself with an air of despair and sorrow, not entirely hidden by his controlled, muscular movements. His eyes, so blue that they tinted the air in front of them, were filled with an unshed tear and remorse that could send shivers down your spine…

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Chris Bowman entered The Wood, a locally owned pub and took off his drenched coat. It was raining in Seattle… again. He shook the rain from his head and sat at the bar, removing his wet hat to reveal a head full of blonde hair (after checking to see that no one was watching of course). Immediately, he put on another hat, this time white but still covering his ears.

"The usual?" asked the bartender, an elderly man by the name of Roscoe O'Reilly.

"Yes, please," replied Chris, rubbing his clammy hands together. "And a cup of coffee with that if you don't mind."

"Coming right up," said Roscoe as he lumbered off.

Chris looked around the place. It was small, with no dance floor, but a grand piano in the middle of the room. The tables and chairs were made of dark oak; the chairs he himself had painted with gloss gleamed in the dim light. The bar was also made of oak, though a tad bit lighter from the years of abuse, and was kept sparkling clean by Roscoe. The place was all-too familiar to him; he had been coming here for over twenty years. In that time there had been four different bartenders, and he had successfully avoided exposing himself to them all; they had each worked for five years so he hadn't had to hide the fact that he didn't age at all through each and every one of them. But he was still cautious.

The room was its usual calm, with only a few customers sitting at the round tables reading books and magazines while sipping their coffee. He recognized most of them as the faithful regulars that kept the place running, but there were two new faces. One was a young girl of about nineteen or twenty and the other, sitting next to her, was a boy in his mid to late-twenties. He guessed they were brother and sister since they were the same in stature and appearance: brown hair, brown eyes, and both about five-foot-ten.

"Here's your coffee and your scotch," said the bartender, putting the selected items down in front of Chris and then moving to another customer.

Chris picked up his scotch and took a drink. He often times got stares for drinking in the morning, but he didn't mind. It was part of his daily routine, which had been carved and crafted to his liking over the past thousands of years.

"…that's wrong, I'm telling you," insisted a voice, catching Chris's attention.

He turned to the two strangers sitting in the middle of the room. There was a laptop sitting on their table and they were obviously arguing about something on it.

"No, there was an eyewitness account of it," countered the young man. "And this picture, which gives the police more than enough proof."

The girl rolled her eyes and pointed at the screen. "Look at the picture. If you zoom in and work on the resolution with that program of yours—" She paused, presumably as the laptop performed the work she was voicing "—then you can see that there was more than one person in that ally. Look at all those faces."

The young man looked appalled. "Ugly faces that they are."

"Yeah, that doesn't look quite right," joked the girl. "Looks more like dog-faced trolls or one of those Orc-things you hear about in fairy tales."

Chris's ears perked up and he placed his drink on the bar to listen more carefully.

"It's that gang, The Goblins," said the young man, typing furiously. "They were in the paper because they were involved in a drug war some years back. I remember doing an article in the school paper about them."

"I think we should go check it out," suggested the girl, eyes twinkling mischievously. "I mean, we have enough information."

Chris didn't hear past the first sentence. He stood up, moved over to the table, and quietly but firmly said, "You draw far too much attention to yourselves. Keep your voices down when speaking of entities that can kill you with the wave of a hand."

They looked up at him. "Who're you?" demanded the young man.

"I was about to ask you the same thing," retorted Chris, looking around. "Come with me, you are in enough trouble as it is."

"Trouble?" asked the girl incredulously. "I don't know who you think you are, Mister, but there's a little saying Mama taught us that goes 'Never talk or leave with strangers, especially if they're total lunatics.'" She glared at him.

"Touché," said Chris, his eyes darting towards the window. "Now here's something your Mama apparently never told you: it is unwise to oppose those who have the knowledge to save your life, no matter how worthless it may be."

"Never heard that one," she sneered.

Suddenly, Chris's head whipped around. "Get down! Everyone, get down!" he shouted just as a blizzard of bullets shattered the glass window at the front of the bar. The customers all hit the ground, except Chris, who ran to the door and poked his head out even as bullets whizzed by his ears. He saw the black van door slide shut and watched as it drove away, leaving behind a cloud of dust and the broken remains of The Wood.

"What the hell was that?" shouted Roscoe as he bolted to his feet. "Chris, what happened?"

"The Goblins," said Chris quickly before taking off at a run for his car.

The young man and woman looked at each other before jumping to their feet and hurrying after him.

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Chris had just sat down behind the wheel when a banging on his windows made him start in surprise. In one swift movement, he pulled the Glock out of his glove compartment and pointed it at the window. Two dark-headed figures jumped ten feet backward in unison, shouting the same string of unmentionable curses.

"Damn it, do you two have a death wish?!" shouted Chris, opening the door.

"You're the one with a gun in your car!" replied the girl from the bar as she tried to regain some of her dignity. "And what the hell are you doing pointing it at people?"

"That's generally what you do with a gun!" he snorted. "Get in!"

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"Tell me your name before I officially label you 'the naïve little girl with an attitude,'" said Chris as he sped down the highway at staggering speeds.

"My name is Eve Williams and this is my brother, Trent," said the girl, who was clutching the armrests of Chris's sleek black Benz so tightly that her knuckles were turning white against the dark leather.

"Don't dent the leather," mumbled Chris, noticing this. He swerved to the shoulder and passed a semi-truck, then went on an off-ramp, nearly hitting the car in front of them.

"Are you crazy?!" shouted Trent, who was sitting in the back, as Chris almost fishtailed off the road. "Where are you taking us?"

"I've been chasing The Goblins for years," replied the blonde man as he took a hard right. "They know they're not supposed to mess with me. I'm going to teach them a lesson. You can watch if you want."

"What?!" screamed Eve. "You're going to fight The Goblins by yourself?"

"My partner is going to rendezvous with us," said Chris calmly.

"Your partner?" asked Trent, brown eyes wide with fear.

Chris pulled a wallet from his trench coat and shoved it in Eve's face. "Chris Bowman, detective." He tapped the shiny gold badge and I.D.

Eve's jaw dropped as she realized she had been harassing a real police officer for the last thirty minutes. To hide her surprise, she joked, "You aren't going to have to kill us now since we know who you are, are you?"

"If you only knew," mumbled Chris. He slammed on the breaks, throwing his two passengers forward, and pointed at a bleak looking building on the waterfront. "There it is." He unbuckled his seatbelt, grabbed a holster full of guns and bullets, and got out of the car, not seeming to care about the pouring rain. "You can stay here or come with me."

Trent and Eve exchanged glances. "We're going." They said in unison.

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Chris led the group as they picked their way through broken glass and sharp shards of metal. As he neared the entrance, he gestured with his hand. Eve and Trent got behind him. The detective pressed himself up against the wall, gun raised, and then jumped out from behind the corner.

"Freeze!" he shouted. A bullet whizzed by his ear and hit the brick wall behind him. Eve screamed and Trent looked to see what had happened.

"One of these days, you're gonna get killed!" a strange man was saying as he hit Chris upside the head in a brotherly manner. Trent assumed that he was Chris's partner. He relaxed and Eve also poked her head around the corner to see what was going on.

"And you're gonna be the one to finally kill me," said Chris with a crooked smile. "I would work on that itchy trigger finger you have there, Jack."

Eve's heart did a somersault as she saw Chris smile for the first time. He sure was a handsome one. She timidly walked up behind the two cops and cleared her throat unnaturally loud to make a point.

Chris turned around, the smile on his face still lingering. "Jack, I have two apparent journalists tailing me this time."

Jack's grin faded and he gave Chris a look of disapproval. "You need to stop telling civilians your secrets and stop bringing them everywhere. One of them is going to get killed one of these days."

"Excuse me?" interrupted Trent. "I am a journalist and would like being referred to as such, not a simple civilian. This is a big story! The two cops who take on The Goblins!"

Jack shook his head. He was a tall, thin man, at least 6' 2", with chestnut-colored hair and greenish blue eyes. In contrast to Chris, he was wearing a light brown trench coat, khaki pants, and a white shirt. They both wore the same white sock hat pulled over their ears.

"Look, son," he said to Trent. "This is dangerous stuff. We've 'taken on' The Goblins many times, but we haven't yet discovered their main hideout, which is somewhere underground. If you're gonna come with us, you'll need to do everything we say when we say it, understood?"

Eve and Trent nodded.

Chris, who had a small waterfall coming off the end of his nose by this time, looked up at the rainy, gray skies and then at Jack. "Let's do this."

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Jack wired the door to get it open and they slunk inside. Trent was scribbling the entire ordeal down on his journalist's notepad, glad that he had recently gotten a new one so he wouldn't run out of paper.

"What is this place?" whispered Eve cautiously.

"This is where The Goblins have set up camp for the night," replied Jack as he led the way down the dark hall. They came to a steel door.

Eve swore she heard Chris mumble something under his breath. "Did you say something?" she asked.

A momentary look of alarm passed over Chris's eyes, but he glanced away and when he looked back at her his eyes were once again blank. "Nothing, nothing." He moved forward to Jack's side, leaving her behind.

"Men," growled Eve as she fell into step with her brother.

Jack put a finger to his lips and then turned to consider the door. "Once we go in here, I don't want a word out of either of you,"  he whispered so quietly that both Eve and Trent had to lean forward to hear him. "This is where there's no turning back."

Chris pulled out a crowbar and put it between the door and the doorframe. With one strong push, the metal doorknob popped out and he was slowly able to yank the huge steel door open.

The hall was almost pitch black, the only light coming from the holes in the ceiling where rain was leaking through. The ground was covered in a slimy film that stuck to their shoes briefly and made a squelching sound when they stepped in a puddle of it. On either side there were dark, ominous doors that seemed to shriek their own sad songs of the times they had seen.

Eve opened her mouth to scream as something slithered over her foot, but before any sound could come out Chris clamped a hand on her face. "It is unwise to do such things in a place like this," he whispered so silently that she could barely hear him.

The young woman shook her head furiously and almost sighed in relief when Chris moved on. Trent nudged her forward and she glared at him as she continued. Then, without warning, she collided with something HARD. At first guess she would've thought it was a wall, but when she looked up from her position on the ground she saw Chris standing there his back to her. He hadn't even budged. Trent helped her up and they exchanged curious glances, trying to peek over Chris and Jack's broad shoulders.

"What's wrong?" asked Eve, a sudden wave of panic washing over her.

"We're being watched," replied Jack. "We've been watched since the moment we set foot in here. We never should've come. Get out!"

"But I can't see anyone!" protest the young woman, looking around the darkness. Her eyes had adjusted a bit, and she could now see three feet ahead of her. But that was it.

Suddenly, Chris yelled "DUCK!" and they all hit the ground just before a rainstorm of thin missiles flew over their heads and blew up as they hit the ground. Trent and Eve were thrown forward from the force of the explosions, both of them landing on top of Chris.

To their surprise, however, Chris stood his ground without so much as a struggle, letting them both fall to the ground in a painful heap. He drew something from his pocket and loaded it with another strange item in his hand then shot into the darkness. Screams of pain were heard from far off, followed by feral cries of outrage.

"What's happening?" yelled Eve over the roar of the fire behind them and the deranged, animalistic shouting coming from all sides. She screamed when Chris fell backward next to her, a long metal rod protruding from his shoulder.

"Legolas!" shouted Jack, running back towards the fallen officer. There were metal missiles flying all around him, but he seemed to be able to dodge them even as they came at him from behind. He knelt next to Chris and looked up at Eve and Trent, turquoise eyes shrouded with fury. "Help me get him out of here. Now!"

The flying missiles began to cease as the three dragged a moaning Chris out of the building, but the horrid screams got louder and louder until they burst from the dark, stank place. The door slammed behind them as if by magic and they were left there… left standing in the Seattle rain.