Author's note: Apologies to those of you who think this story is too much like Lord of the Rings. You're right. Chapter Four is enormous, I promise you, and deviates wildly from the original storyline. Nothing after Chapter Three much resembles anything in either series.

This fanfiction only really gets going after Chapter Four, so I promise you it gets better as you struggle through Chapters 1-3. (Or you could edit it and I could make it better! Best scenario!) If you still don't like it after Chapter Four, give up.

None of the characters or locations in the story are mine, and I hold both Philip Reeve and J.R.R. Tolkien in awe for publishing original stories like I didn't.

This is my first story and I guarantee there are enormous flaws. I've probably missed them, so reviews are very appreciated. (I know, every story tells you to review it. Sowwy.)

This story is dedicated to Alana, who gave me the idea in the first place. I'm sure she never meant for me to go ahead and write the story. Any thanks should go to her.

Chapter One: An Unexpected Stalker

It was a muggy, blustery day in the second week of September when the Stalker Gandalf came to town.
The children saw him first – they always did – and the old wizard listened to their yells with the nearest thing a Stalker can get to a smile on his lips. Though it didn't last long. Dark things were stirring as of late, Old-Tech that should have been long since buried was rising, and the Elves of Mirkwood had reported an evil presence in the tower of Dol Gudur.

So they had taken a couple of blimps and bombed it.

That took care of that, at least.

The weather was lazily clinging to summer, no bite yet in the air and the leaves still green. Hobbiton-in-Vineland lay before Gandalf and his bug like a god's building blocks. It had once been a quaint little town, but the storm of Progress reaches everywhere, and while the hobbits hadn't quite up and Tractionized, the Shire wasn't what it used to be.
Gandalf's tattered little bug passed a mess of scaffolding and hammers, where Ted Sandyman's old mill was being converted into a sweatshop. Over a little covered bridge and past the Hobbiterium, where the leaders of Hobbiton did who-knows-what, then past a steam-powered forge and Gandalf was coming up to Bag-End.

All of Hobbiton was concerned with Bilbo's party and not much else, but Gandalf's mind was pondering further, darker things as he swung open the gate marked No Admittance (except on Party Business) and as he rapped on the door with his staff. The presence in Mordor would soon be revealed as some minor rogue Ancient AI, and the One Book had been lost for centuries and couldn't possibly have anything to do with the Baggins.
Right?

Bilbo Baggins heard the pounding at the door and screamed in the general direction of the sound, "No, thank you! We don't want any visitors, well-wishers, or distant relations!"
From outside the door, a familiar voice boomed, "And what about very old friends?"
Bilbo hastily bundled up his typewriter, rushing down the rounded halls of Bag-End and throwing open the door to find himself staring into a pair of twinkling green orbs beneath a wide-brimmed gray hat.

"Gandalf?" Bilbo whispered in a choked voice.
"I'm sorry?" the Stalker said in a kindly voice. "Hello, I'm here to ask you about your religion."
"Gandalf!"
"Bilbo Baggins," said the old wizard, sweeping Bilbo up into an iron embrace, and then in an undertone, "You haven't aged a day."
But Bilbo laughed, too delighted to see Gandalf again than let little matters like seeming immortality come between them. "Come in, come in! Welcome, welcome!"
And the Stalker followed Bilbo into Bag-End and relative peace as, outside the Shire and past the Great Hunting Ground, over the Mountains of Shadow and in the land of Mordor, something evil was stirring.