And here comes Chapter Eleven. The Plot is spawning subplots and taking control of itself, so blame everything on The Plot. I am no longer in control of this story and it keeps getting odder and odder. Be prepared for this chapter contains feels of the most parody-eque and weird kind. And a tragic back story that is an exercise in bad parody. Or good parody. I'll let the readers decide.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters I am using in this fic, so if said characters are feeling murderous they should go trample Peter Jackson. And Spalko should trample the fan-ficcers who butcher her character. Seriously, she should. That's the reason this chapter exists. To parody some of Spalko's outlandish back stories so I can console myself that she is NOT a ruined character.
"Should we open it?"
"How scarring do you think this will be for us, on a scale of one to ten?"
"Eleven."
"I'm betting twenty."
The Elf and the Rohir shared a frightened look.
"On three?"
Eowyn nodded.
"One. Two. Three!"
They heaved open the doors to the storage house, expecting no less than Aragorn and Legolas asleep with hangovers (or whatever the Elvish equivalent of a hangover was) in one corner of the room and a heap of dirty clothing in the other.
"I'll never look at them the same again."
"The Plot must be high on caffeine again," growled Tauriel, shoving Aragorn awake with her foot. His eyes opened wide, and he leapt to his feet, clad in a hula skirt and a coconut bra.
"What happened?" he muttered, looking around for Legolas, who had passed out next to him. Elves might not be able to sleep, but they could certainly be knocked out. That much Tauriel had learned from old Thranduil's drinking parties.
"I was hoping you could tell us," said Tauriel sternly, doing her best to keep a straight face. She didn't know whether to gag or burst out laughing at their outlandish attire. The Plot at least had the graces to give them some form of undergarment beneath their skirts that looked suspiciously like a speedo, but the entire getup was screaming 'Vegas strip club.' Not that Tauriel had ever used fanfiction to get to one of those…
She could blame the modern-Earth AUs for her knowledge of Vegas.
Even better, she could blame The Plot.
After all, the one bit of information she had gained over hacking into her own laptop was that it was The Plot itself which had been 'pregnant,' thankfully not one of the lead characters or else the entire adventure could have gone awry. However Tauriel was pretty sure fanfic plotlines reproduced asexually, through some form of creepy cloning, because The Plot was both high on caffeine and spawning little sub-plots all over the story as if Isengard was a sub-plot incubator. Of course, given its strategic placement in the story, it probably was.
Eowyn was next to her, hauling poor Legolas to his feet and escorting the two men out the door. Tauriel grabbed their traveling clothes, holding them out in front of her as if they were a skunk carcass. In truth, they smelled like skunk carcasses. Or at least Aragorn's did, because by demand of fanfiction tropes, Aragorn never bathed and Legolas (and his clothing, apparently) always smelled like fresh flowers.
"Are we going back to Meduseld?" asked Aragorn. "Or shall we continue straight to the Paths of the Dead?"
"You will need provisions and proper clothes," said Gibbs, who they had quite nearly forgotten about, given his and Jenny's quick disappearance the day before and sudden reappearance that morning. Tauriel decided not to question this, as it would undoubtedly lead to a topic of conversation akin to whatever happend to Aragorn and Legolas in the storage shed and Vegas strip clubs.
"I will be returning to Meduseld," said Spalko, her gaze flickering over every member of the comapny as if daring them to disagree with her. "Fan fiction is not agreeing with me, and until the authors meddling with my emotions are caught I will be unable to participate in battle. It would be risky for anyone fighting beside me."
"Prone to murder, Colonel?" Eowyn teased, and Spalko shot her a furious glare. Eowyn knew she could get away with it, given her own battle skills. "You're not snog-pregnant are you?"
"I thought we already established that that was The Plot all along, going off and spawning little sub-plots in its wake."
"Excuse me, but I'm terribly confused." Tauriel broke into the conversation. "What are we talking about?"
Spalko's eyes narrowed, and Tauriel could see that this was a touchy subject for her. "The product of teenage hormones," she growled.
"Also biologically impossible," chimed in Eowyn, who was quickly silenced with a glare.
Spalko rolled her eyes. "Anything is possible in fanfiction; I thought we had established that. But yes, you're right. It's not technically a real pregnancy since those fics never get readers. Basically snog-pregnant is when you have a fic with a teenage author who wants to write a fluffy little pregnancy fic but is too embarrassed to write 'sex' on a virtual piece of paper. And thus, the characters snog and then next chapter one of them is magically with child."
"And I'm assuming you've dealt with a fic of this kind?"
She snorted. "The authors usually stop writing within a couple of days, so think about it like this: your classic college health class baby doll experiment with a side bonus of morning sickness and any other symptom of a regular pregnancy that the author can slip into the story without turning beet red and having a fit of embarrassed giggles on the spot."
Haldir chimed in. "Discussing this with me later, it was referred to as the 48-hour Hell."
Spalko shot him another withering look then finished the story. "Technically it's not a real pregnancy if all you ever do is snog. Two days of all the pains without the payoff of a baby."
Tauriel smirked at that. "I never thought you'd consider a baby to be the 'payoff.'"
"You sit through forty-eight hours of having your emotions and your body toyed with by a thirteen year old, and let's see how you feel finding out that the whole 'baby' thing was basically a health class joke. Never real. Like you said, biologically impossible, and you don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. It's like the placebo effect; it's all pyschological."
She stalked off without another word.
"Sorry about that," said Haldir amicably. "This is a… sensitive topic. She really is the most butchered character in fanfiction, if you're wondering. She can fight the everyday turn-you-into-a-lovesick-teenager fic without it getting to her head too badly, but other fics can leave side effects for days, and the most recent fic as given her a terrible migraine."
"This I know." Tauriel herself had been fed up with the fan-ficcers for the time between the cursed trailer for The Desolation of Smaug and the day she left for the War of the Ring. One day she was swooning over Legolas and the next she was kicking ass to show off for a Dwarf prince's nephew and his bad pick-up lines depending on which author took over the fics. She admired Spalko's ability to control the fan-ficcers' effects on her mind. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to have people messing with your head constantly for however many years it was since she came to being as a character.
"Haldir!" Tauriel called out. "Do the fics- don't they leave her alone when she's in this universe? I haven't dealt with a single ficcer taking over my brain since I came here."
Haldir sighed. "Well with you it's different. You're turning the genre away from het romance and towards slash. You're impacting ficcers so that they write more slash, and no one has thought to slash you with anyone yet, so you must be in a pretty good position.
The next thought that came into her head was not relief. She found she didn't quite mind the idea of being slashed with, per say, Eowyn.
But that thought would have to wait. Because the decision had to be made whether to stop in Meduseld or continue straight to the Paths of the Dead, the opinion of Theoden being kindly ignored because he was going to Meduseld anyway with Merry. Gandalf, in fact, had already left for Gondor.
"We're going back to Lothlorien to round up the armies for the Pelennor," said Gibbs with a hand around Jenny's shoulder. "Haldir?"
"I will accompany Colonel Spalko to Meduseld. After all, we've been in the most fics together hunting Sues, so we should be able to round up a few more butchered characters."
"Would you like a word of caution?" Gibbs had a mischievous glint in his eye.
"Yes?"
"The broom closets in Meduseld don't lock. We learned that the hard way."
For that comment, he earned a disapproving head slap from Jenny, before the two turned away and mounted a couple of spare horses, leaving Haldir's ears to turn a brilliant shade of pink.
"I will be… off," Haldir concluded, leaving only Eowyn and Tauriel left with Aragorn and Legolas, who soon departed to dispose of the hula skirts that were hung over their shoulders because they didn't know what else to do with them now that they had their clothing back.
Tauriel looked at Eowyn. "I didn't know Spalko had emotions."
"She does. Not a great deal, though. They say that she's a high-functioning sociopath but I think that was just an in-joke for a while."
The Elf smirked. "No kidding. But the way she reacted to the whole placebo effect thing?"
Eowyn sighed. "It's a long story. And a weird one. The thing about fanfiction is that you don't now whether it's real or not, depending on the universe. If you have two fics going on at the same time- Spalko is in this one, for example- then the dominant one with more readers and reviewers is the one that's more real but then the other one becomes a sort of background fic that messes with the characters' heads a little.
"Basically the snog-pregnancy fics always wind up a background fics from the placebo effect because let's face it. A good deal of fan-ficcers- readers, writers and otherwise- are pretty horny. They don't always do innocent snogging fluff. I was in the fic when this whole thing went down, by the way.
"We were on a Sue-slaying mission. Spalko and Haldir were what Gibbs likes to call 'friends with benefits.' For two days we all thought she was pregnant, in the middle of this Valardamn battle mission. It was pandemonium, before we figured out it was the innocent snog-ficcers writing a background fic that was affecting her head. I don't think she knew at all whether it was a relief or a disappointment, but the whole deal left her mind vulnerable for other fics until she was entirely schizophrenic. Temporarily, of course."
"So she's like Gollum?"
"Was. It was more the schizophrenia that gets to her today. She feeds off of strength and order, and such chaos made an impact. She's a little OCD, to tell the truth. Take away the order and take away her strength and she's left pretty damn vulnerable. It's unnerving."
Tauriel shivered. "I hate tragic back stories."
"It's not tragic," Eowyn assured. "She just doesn't like to relive the feeling of not being in control of her own mind. She legitimately thought that she and Haldir were having a baby. Having your mind meddled with like that and later finding out it was fake. I think when the scam became known she was finally beginning to accept it. Her chaos was becoming organized again and then it all came crashing down. She had gone from rather indignant to resigned to a little bit happy. More happy than she consciously admitted."
Tauriel pursed her lips. "That's quite a story."
"Better than Jadis's traumatic stories about being shipped with a lion and Elladan and Elrohir's autobiography 'Tales of Incestuous mPreg.'"
"What is it with fanfiction and this obsession?"
"You mean its obsession with pregnancy fics that The Plot has so kindly complied with in this chapter to get its point across?"
"Yeah," said Tauriel sitting down beside the shieldmaiden and carefully intertwining their fingers. "That one."
Sorry about the feels... I think some came from my other fic in progress. Which is *gasp* actually a serious story and not a parody and doesn't even have cop show interludes every few chapters. They're feels of the weirdest kind, however, but I promise you that this whole chapter of silly back story will have a purpose later. That may or may not involve college health classes: everyone's worst nightmare besides the DMV. *insert evil cackle*