Ferri and Luin left the clearing to go get their weapons. They came back positively armed to the teeth. Before starting the battle, however, Luin carefully hung both interdimensional backpacks from a tree branch so Legolas would not become a casualty.

The two elfy-people revealed their weapons. "Haha! Paintball guns!" crowed Ferri, waving around her guns plus 2 000 000 paintballs.

"Haha!" Luin snickered. Then her face went pale. "Uh, I mean -" Sheepishly she held up her water pistols, two giant supersoakers, and a garden hose, trailed all the way from the tap at Ferri's mansion.

Ferri began to laugh at Luin, and Luin hosed her.

"ARRRGGGHHH! You made me wet! You are a big meany Luin! Now it's payback time!! Mahahahahaaa!" Ferri whipped out a paintball machine gun and covered Luin in prettiful, shiny purple and blue paint.

"OOO, SHINY!!" Luin cried out, happy. She sprayed herself off with the hose, and splashed happily in the sparkly, prettifully shiny puddle that formed at her feet.

Ferri stared at her, totally confused, and Luin finally noticed it.

"For chocolate, popcorn, all things sugary good and Legolas!" she screeched, spraying Ferri with all her water guns, which actually contained chocolate syrup, not water.

"Yummy! Chocolatey!" Ferri said as it hit her face. Ferri opened her mouth and ate all the chocolate syrup.

"Hey! You were NOT supposed to eat all my ammunition!"

Ferri was making a glass of chocolate milk. "Oops! Sorry!"

"Oh, well," Luin shrugged, and started eating her own ammunition. "It tastes better than paint anyhow."

She made chocolate milkshakes and gave one to Ferri, then on second thought, opened the interdimensional backpack (the right one) and gave another milkshake to Legolas.

Ferri looked at the milkshake. "What did you do to it, Luin?"

"Nothing! I swear!"

"Right...." Oh well, if she did do something to it, it might be fun and entertaining. I'm gonna drink it, Ferri thought.

Ferri shrugged and drank the milkshake.

Luin watched, then drank her own milkshake. "See? I didn't do a thing."

Ferri hiccuped, and started to shrink.

"Like hell you didn't!" she squeaked as she turned, permanently - well, maybe - back into a ferret.

"Muahahahaaaa!"

Ferri glared evilly at Luin, just in case she could only talk like a ferret, or sounded really weired. Hey, maybe if I swear at her in Ferret, she'll have no idea what the hell I'm saying! Ferri thought.

So Ferri swore at her in Ferret for the next ten hours. It was great fun for Ferri, but for Luin it was confusing, as she didn't know what the hell Ferri was saying.

Then Luin performed a spell so that Ferri could speak human again, without the ferret noticing. Right in the middle of a word it would NOT be polite to quote here, Ferri's human (or is that elfy?) voice came back.

Legolas stared in shock at the torrent of swears coming from this little fuzzy, innocent-looking, friendly (?) forest creature. He decided to hightail it out of there, and the chase was on yet again, though neither elf nor ferret knew it.

Ferri was still swearing. "*%^&$%^#!@#(*)&%%$#@$#*(^$#$#!@%$^#$&$&*)... Yay! I can talk again!" Ferri did some really funny cartwheels. She looked around, and saw one of the backpacks was missing, so she told Luin, who was chanting another spell.

"Luin...Legolas' backpack is gone," said the little ferrety-elf (well, mostly ferrety now) person, tugging on her robes.

At that point Luin just realized she was actually wearing robes! Wow...sparkly blue-green!

Anyways, Luin just laughed and said, "Oh, I let him out. He's kinda claustrophobic."

"But where's the actual backpack then?"

Luin thought for a second, then started swearing worse than Ferri. "!@^*#$%#*!! That $*#$@)&@#$((@#$ ran off! (%%$$@@%&*)%^*!!"

"Uh-huh," Ferri said, bemused. "Then why aren't we going after him?"

"DUH!" Luin pounded herself on the head. "All right, race ya - last one to find Legolas doesn't get him!"

"Like hell I, me, the little ferret person, stands a chance of finding him. Only if I get a head start."

"Oh, what the hell, you're probably hiding a supersonic jet in the bushes. Tell ya what, you give me some more of that cool serum stuff and inject yourself too, and then we can BOTH hallucinate about flying things. Fair enough?"

Ferri pulled out her secret supply of serum. "Do we still have to race while we're hallucinating? I mean, isn't it more fun if we sit here, 'cause come on! We're both elves...err..relatively -" Ferri looked at her furry ferrety self, frowned and carried on. "Legolas needs to be free for..." Ferri check the time, "At least an hour. Ok? It's enough time to have a good hallucination or two."

"You're right," Luin admitted. "Legolas is not going to be happy if he has two high, hallucinating elves - err, an elf and and ferrety elf - after him."

She opened the other interdimensional backpack and dropped all their weapons into it, with the exception of the garden hose.

"What ya gonna do with that, Luin?" Ferri said as she prepared lots of needles filled with serum.

"Tie up Legolas when we catch him," Luin replied with an evil grin.

"He, he, he," Ferri chuckled. "Ummm... Luin, are you SURE the stuff you gave me in the milkshake won't do something funky with the serum?"

"No, it won't," Luin said reassuringly as they injected themselves. "At least, I'm pretty SURE it won't..."

"OK, but it can't be any worse than being stuck as a ferret. But YOU wouldn't know, 'cause you aren't a ferret." Ferri grinned. She had made her point. She felt much better.