Not my best chapter guys but I hope it's okay. Thanks to all my readers, reviewers and followers! You guys are awesome!
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hobbit.
Hacking the city cams was not only get them in trouble, it was going to send them to jail.
"I'm going to be the voice of reason here," said Kili, in between bites of pie, "and point out that we just narrowly evaded a court case."
"And I'm going to point out that we'll lose everything if we don't stop the ORCS." Nori said cheerfully.
"From one rulebreaker to another," said Kili, "we should probably choose the rules we break. Also have backup if we going to break more than we can handle."
"From one more experienced rule breaker to another," Nori retorted, "sometimes you have to do anything. Sometimes," he added quietly, "it's worth it."
Kili fell silent and then sighed. "I know. I understand." And he did. His search for Fili fell much in the same bracket or would have if the company didn't have his back. "If we go to jail I'm blaming you though," he said to lighten the mood.
"If we go to jail," said Nori, "I'm throwing Thorin under the bus."
"That'll send you to jail for murder," Kili deadpanned.
Nori thumped him on the shoulder.
"Okay so why did we just hack the city cams?" Kili asked, finishing off the pie and dusting off his fingers.
"We need to figure out where the ORCS are coming from," Nori said. "If we know where they are hiding out we could take the fight to them. We can't allow any more of our customers begin attacked."
"They could avoid the cameras," Kili pointed out, "I do it myself."
"Not all of them," Nori said, "There's far too many of them."
"And," said Kili, "Provided that you find out where they are hiding how are you going to tell Thorin without admitting that you hacked the cams? How are we going to inform the police without admitting we hacked the cams?"
"There is this lovely thing called anonymous tips," Nori told him, even as his fingers continued to fly across the keys.
Kili sighed. "That's not going to fool anyone."
"It doesn't have too," Nori replied.
"Fair enough," Kili replied and then jerked startled as the door to Nori's domain was ripped open and someone dived inside. The door was slammed shut and a disheveled Ori put his finger warningly on his lips.
Both Kili and Nori blinked at him but didn't say a word. Ori pressed his ear to the door, listening and after a moment slumped in relief. He back away from the door, and sat in the last empty chair, breathing hard. He reached into his jacket and then pulled out a squished bag and offered it to them.
Kili reached for the bag, opened it, stared inside and said, "I love you."
Nori snatched the bag from Kili stared at the pies inside and said to Ori, "I knew there was a reason you were my favorite brother."
Ori snorted at both of them and said, "Bomber's on the warpath. Do not appear with crumbs on your person. He accosted Thorin five minutes ago. Turns out it was crumbs from a late breakfast of toast."
"What?" said Kili, trying and failing not to laugh as he imagined Thorin being manhandled for pies he hadn't stolen.
Nori did him one better and found the footage. They were re-watching it for a second time and dying with laughter, when the door was ripped open once more.
Thorin stalked in, stared at the screens, stared at Ori, who cringed and then closed to door. He walked up to where Kili and Nori were frozen, the laughter having died a quick dead somewhere in the region of their throats, and leaned over and plucked up the bag of pies.
"The next time someone decides to steal from Bomber, at least have the good grace to give me one of these so I'd actually be accosted for a reason," he said, fishing a cheese pie out.
Ori gaped at him and Kili let out started laugh. Nori just grinned and tossed him another pie from his stash. Thorin caught it and said to Nori, "I came to inform you that the new cameras have arrived at Dale's Everlast. As I'm heading there myself I thought you would want a ride."
"Sure," said Nori, "Let me just type in these last two lines of code. I'll meet you at the car."
"Fine," said Thorin, then he paused, "Lines of code for what?"
"You don't want to know," Kili said, "Or Nori will throw you under the bus."
Thorin blinked, frowned, then decided that he really didn't want to know. "I'll be at the car," he said and walked out with his pies.
Three seconds later, they heard Bomber's voice yelling, "Thorin!"
The three of them looked at each other. "Oops?" said Ori. Kili burst into laughter.
Kili wasn't allowed to go with the company for their next rotation. Oin refused to clear him for active duty so he spent his shift at the communications switchboard, monitoring the teams that were out in the field. Luckily, the last few days had been quiet and people were speculating that the last encounter with the ORCS had damaged them badly.
Kili was hoping that they'd realize that it was too much trouble to keep coming after them and would just up and quit. It was a pipe dream though. If the ORCS had held a grudge from since before Kili was born, they wouldn't give up now.
The next night he had free, happily coincided with the next fight night. He headed off to the next location, waving to Nori through the cameras in the building as well as the city cams before he started to actively avoid them.
The last two fights were happening tonight and Kili was, needless to say, very interested in the outcome.
When he entered the Night Den, he almost went deaf from the noise. The place was packed out. Kili stared blankly at the size of the crowd, wondering what had drawn so many of them before he realized the very obvious answer: the Lion Prince was fighting tonight.
Kili made his way through the crowd, wincing every time someone bumped into him and finally made it over to the section with the other fighters. He was actually early today and there was only Whiplash and Sting there.
Sting grinned at Kili, his face marred by fading bruises. Kili grinned good-naturedly back at him and dropped into a chair next to him.
"Where's everyone else?" he asked.
"We're the only ones from our side here," Sting shouted back over the crowd. "The Den is here but they're in the prep rooms still."
Whiplash moved over to sit on Sting's other side and gave Kili a challenging grin. "It'll be our turn soon," he said.
"Nah," said Kili, "Just mine." His future opponent tossed back his head and laughed.
"You wish," he retorted good-naturedly.
"I don't," said Kili, in equal good humor, "I calculate."
Sting snorted at them and said, "Save it for the ring you two." They grinned cheerfully and challengingly at each other over his head and subsided.
Movement in their direction brought Kili's gaze to Graylin who was making his way through to the crowd to them. To Kili's surprise he was joined by Killer. The two of them slipped under the ropes and into their section. They both dropped into the last empty seats next to Kili.
"Early today!" Graylin said.
"Yeah," Kili shouted back. He leaned backward to get a good look of Killer's face and raised an eyebrow.
Killer smirked and said, "I wanted to see all the fights. We've got a few debut fights tonight."
"Really?" asked Kili, interested. Debut fights usually were a toss-up between interesting or boring-the-audience-out-of-their-mind. Still Kili liked to see them because it was good indicator of what the latest generation of fighters were like and every now and then, you saw something you didn't before.
"Four I think," Killer said.
"Cool," Kili replied and settled back in his chair.
Around the third fight of the night, a handful of Den fighters joined them. Foehammer poked playfully at Kili's shoulder when he passed him and Kili tugged at his long hair in revenge. DINAO settled in the seat directly behind Kili though and he instantly tensed.
He didn't know why DINAO made him uneasy because there was a good chance that he could be Fili. But Kili did not trust him at his back. He did not like him at his back when he could not predict what he would do.
Graylin sensed Kili's unease and gave him a sidelong look. Kili forcibly relaxed. Graylin gave him another, unreadable look and then focused on the current fight. Kili decided to emulate him and focused on the fight instead of the subtle but swirling tension that curled between the Den fighters.
The next four début fights happily fell on the interesting side. Both winners and losers put up a great showing and Kili looked forward to seeing them in future fights. The tournament section was filled with loud cheers, and exasperated critiques of the fledgling ring fighters and for that space of time, the tension seemed to have disappeared. But when the first tournament fight was announced everyone quieted and the tension flowed back, subtler than ever.
Kili ignored it all and leaned back to observe whilst Graylin leaned forward. DINAO propped up his elbows on the back of Kili's chair and rested his chin on his arms. RingMaster came out first from one of the prep rooms and Kili and the rest of the outside fighters yelled support for him.
Music blared a minute later and then Diamondbone came walking out. He yelled back to the crowd, charismatic and cocky, and then slipped between the ropes, into the ring. The Den fighters yelled for their denmate but Kili caught DINAO's quiet huff of amusement.
He was careful not to react. Instead he clapped politely for Diamondbone and then covered his ears as the announcer screamed into the mike, drawing the crowd into a greater frenzy. When they were worked up to the point that they were practically frothing at the mouth, the announcer relinquished the ring to the referee who pulled the tow fighters together. The referee explained the rules and then sent them back into their corners. The bell rung, the fighters advanced and the fight began.
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