Disclaimer: Neither I nor any of my similarly obsessed friends own The Lord of the Rings.
A/N: This, in case you haven't noticed, is about my friends and I in the Lord of the Rings universe. Yes, our names have been changed slightly. The title comes from "Five Characters In Search of an Exit." I promise it isn't a Mary Sue. I mean, can you really visualize Aragorn or Legolas falling in love with teenagers? If for some reason any of them do fall in love, I can guarantee it won't be with the person who likes them. This started out being just for my friends, but at least one wanted me to publish it so I'd have to update. If you like it, tell me and I'll continue, otherwise I'll keep it within our circle in the future.
Join the idiotic and occasionally fun-filled adventures of eight friends: Liza, Trina, Bethany, Morgan, Ashlin, Mindy, Mona, and Karolyn, who really doesn't want to be there! Now for the story:
On a fine spring day, five somewhat normal teenage girls were walking around after school talking about—what else?—Lord of the Rings. Everything was absolutely hunky-dory except according to Karolyn, who was contributing to the conversation with occasional insults about the others' favorite characters.
"People who like Lord of the Rings lack common sense," she maintained firmly, despite all evidence to the contrary, presented in convincing terms such as "But Legolas is hot!" from Liza and "Is this picture of Elijah Wood not gorgeous?" from Mindy. Trina and Mona had wisely given up trying to convince her about ten minutes earlier, but were starting to reconsider.
As they headed toward the library, a time portal suddenly leaped out of the bushes, catching them unawares. Immediately, what appeared to be a small cyclone started up around them, whirling in various psychedelic colors until it would have given lesser mortals a splitting headache. However, Mona and Liza, who had spent way too much time on their favorite website reading Mary Sue stories, knew exactly what was going on.
Liza gasped. "Can it be? Yes...it is! It's an interspatial—"
"—Hypertemporal—" Mona added in awe.
"—Transreality wormhole!" they finished, looking at each other in disbelief.
"Wha?" the others chorused in unison, wondering what the heck was going on. But they had time for no more conversation before the intertempatial transworm realityhole thingy spirited them off to their destination. Which was, of course...
"Hey, this looks like Middle-earth!" Trina exclaimed in surprise as they stopped spinning and landed somehow even though their feet had never left the ground. Mindy shot her a somewhat frightened look.
"Um, Trina? How can you tell? I mean, it all kind of looks like forest to me," she said dubiously, looking around them with wide eyes. Mona nodded agreement with Mindy's question, mouth open in astonishment as she stared from the ground to the trees, from the trees to the ground, from the ground...
Trina looked down, a little embarrassed, and pretended to be very interested in some Middle-earthy-looking beetles. "Well, uh...I just feel it, okay? Let's say my instincts tell me a certain Ranger *coughAragorncough* is nearby," she explained defensively, poking the toe of her sneaker into the dirt on the forest floor. Liza smirked knowingly at her.
"So what do we do?" asked Karolyn, starting to panic. "If this is Middle-earth, we've got to get out of here before I go crazy!" The worst thing about Lord of the Rings, in her opinion, was that all the guys looked like either girls or sheepdogs. She just didn't think she could share a world with Legolas Greenleaf for more than five minutes without contracting hives.
Everyone looked expectantly at Liza, who shrugged. "Well, first I'd say we need to track down Gandalf—"
"Wait, how will that help?" Mindy interrupted. Liza gave her the Glare of Doom before continuing.
"AS I WAS SAYING! We need to track down Gandalf because incredibly wise and benevolent wizard people are always happy to help folks get back into their own reality when they're stranded in books." Folding her arms, Liza asked sternly, "Does anyone else have a better plan?"
Mona waved her hand in the air timidly. "Excuse me? Miss Liza? Won't going after Gandalf involve tramping off to Helm's Deep or Isengard or some other potentially dangerous place like that where we'll probably run into the middle of a battle?" Liza chose to ignore this question so as not to reveal the fact that she was really thinking the same thing.
"Halt! What is your business in Fangorn Forest?" asked a clear soprano—sorry, tenor—voice, making all the girls jump. Slowly, they turned around to see a very familiar-looking hot blond person with his bow pointed directly at them. Trina gulped. Liza tried totally unsuccessfully to hide a sappy smile at seeing her true love in person for the first time.
"Yeah...what he said!" came another voice, this one unbelievably strong and manly. Mindy snorted with laughter as Trina turned bright red. Karolyn was starting to shoot I-told-you-so looks at anyone and everyone, which really wasn't helping matters much.
Now all the party needed to be complete was— "I MEANT TO DO THAT!" yelled Gimli, plunging facefirst into the clearing. Apparently, he'd tripped over a rock quite deliberately so as to make a proper entrance.
"Um, uh, guys...you do realize they're only teenagers." Wait a second. Who was this? Nobody else was supposed to be there! The others were still too surprised to do any deductive thinking, but Mindy instantly knew who the new arrival was. After all, who could forget that voice?
"FRODO!!!!!!!" she yelled in bliss, ignoring Legolas's bow and throwing her arms around the three feet eleven-and-a-half inch hobbit. Everyone else backed away a step or two in fear, except Mona, who was trying to decide whether to run to Aragorn, Legolas, or Frodo first.
"You know, Frodo's right, Legolas," Aragorn realized slowly. "They probably won't try to kill us."
"Of course Frodo's right," Mindy snarled possessively, arms still wrapped around Frodo, who was now looking extremely frightened. "Frodo's always right!"
Blinking in shock, Legolas lowered his bow slowly. "Nobody ever tells me anything," he grumbled. " 'Look, Legolas, an intruder! Get your bow out!' Hmmmph."
"Frodo," Mindy asked adoringly, "will you marry me?" Taking their cues from her, Trina and Liza looked worshipfully at Aragorn and Legolas.
"Aragorn," Trina said, batting her eyelashes, "will you marry me?" Aragorn blinked.
"Legolas," Liza asked hopefully, "will you marry me?" Legolas screamed.
"Gimli..." Mona started.
"Yeeeeeeeeeesssss?" he asked a little too quickly.
"...You seem to have left your ax in that tree trunk over there." Grumbling with disappointment, Gimli went to get his ax.
What will happen to our strong, independent heroines? When will Ashlin, Morgan, and Bethany come into the story? What the heck is an interspatial hypertemporal transreality wormhole, anyway? Find the answers to these questions...somewhere else!
A/N: Just kidding, you will get the answers to at least the first two in the next chapter. I'm not sure anyone really knows what an interspatial hypertemporal transreality wormhole is. Official Sweepstakes: Review and guess which of the characters I am. If you answer correctly, the grand prize is...another chapter! If you answer wrong, the booby prize is...another chapter! Note: People actually featured in this story may not participate in this sweepstakes on the grounds that they'll probably spoil it for everyone else. The answer may be really obvious, but humor me and review anyway! Coming Soon: Chapter Two.