A/N Besides being insane, I am also very lazy. Many apologies for the lateness of this chapter (especially since the Red Alert is long over at HQ). Well, anyway, hope you enjoy it anyway, we'll be back to the HDM continuum in the next chapter, promise!
Chapter 4: Middle Earth, Meet Liana
(Also known as the reason Allie will be terribly confused the entire chapter)
"Got the cards?"
"Check."
"Weapons?"
"Check."
"Er…anything else we'll need?"
"Done and doner," Chelsea smiled and zipped up the backpack she held. "We are good to go!"
"That's good," said Allie, who looked slightly nervous; it was one thing to go into the different Worlds in her own fandom, but it was another entirely to go to Middle Earth.
"Alrighty then," said Chelsea with a grin. "Let's go!" Chelsea typed something into the computer and stepped through the portal with Allie closely following her.
The forest they arrived in could have been real, but the trees had the acid, plasticy look of fake flowers. The agents were more than a little disturbed by the manufactured look of the bark, and Allie especially thought that the shimmering dewdrops were a little too glassy. Or fiber-glassy...
"Well, that's more then slightly odd," observed Allie. Middle Earth was different from His Dark Materials only because HDM was more futurized; other then that though, it seemed pretty similar
"And there's the Sue," muttered Chelsea as she pulled Allie behind one of the trees. Near the Sue was something that looked rather canine...or it may have been a very large cat; it was hard to tell from their angle.
Allie looked over at Chelsea to ask her something and stopped. Ah, never mind, she thought. They were Elves, of course.
"The Sue talks to that dog for a bit and walks for a bit. Want to play cards?" Chelsea asked, after looking at the Words.
Allie shrugged. "Sure."
~*~
A few minutes, later, the girls heard signs of the feeble plot beginning to unfold.
The agents then watched in horror as the Sue elbowed Aragorn and then spin around and punch him in the jaw.
"I can't believe she hurt Aragorn!" grumbled Allie. Allie might not have known much about the Lord of the Rings continuum, but she did know that that wasn't going to happen.
"Charge number 2: pretending to be better then a canon character," Chelsea wrote on her little pad.
"What was charge number one?" questioned Allie.
"Speaking the language."
"Ah…"
[Sue]"Listen here. I know you don't like me or know me. I've just found out I've been sent into the past, into Middle Earth, or whatever you call it. I don't know who you are and why I'm here, so could you just let me go. I've gotta find a way back home!"
Chelsea growled and added "talking back to a canon character," to the list.
As the story went on, Allie got more and more confused.
"Wait…" Allie stood there for a moment, slightly confused. "Middle Earth is the past?"
"Some people think it is," answered Chelsea, "but it would be England's past, not the US'."
"Right…" Allie said uneasily. This was getting even more confusing.
"Which reminds me," Chelsea added "Characters telling secrets to a total stranger," on the charge list.
"Did you run this charge list by the SO?" Allie asked, looking at the list.
"No," muttered Chelsea, "but I have no official charge list for this fandom, so I figure it's something along these lines." Allie rolled her eyes and kept watching to see what the Sue would do next, waiting until Chelsea said they could kill her and go back to HQ.
"As I was saying, my name is Gandalf the Grey. This is," motioning to TD&H(Chelsea added 'annoying nicknames'), "Aragorn or Strider, that is," motioning to blondie, "Legolas, he who holds your animal is Gimli. The other man is Boromir and the halflings around him are Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry," motioning to the children. "Come join us at our fire. There is much explaining to do."
"You be-!" Allie put her hand over Chelsea's mouth before they could draw any attention.
I slowly sat down on a log, looking wearily at the rest of the men as they sat. I didn't feel to keen on sitting there, in the middle of the night, in a foreign land, with a bunch of guys I didn't know. Just dandy.
"Wait…" Chelsea looked oddly around at the landscape, "aren't we in Rivendell?" Allie looked at Chelsea, confused. "Er…Rivendell?"
"Yes, Rivendell." Chelsea pointed past the group to Imaldris, which was shimmering only a few feet away. Yet, the Fellowship sat here, on logs, in a forest that shouldn't even exsist.
Aragorn was a man, obviously, and destined to become the king of Gondor, I think it was. Cool, I was standing in the presence of royalty! He had a "lady-love", an elf by the name of Arwen in Rivendell. Damn….I couldn't have him.
"Ok, for the last friggn' time," Chelsea took a deep breath. "Aragorn does not go around telling random people who he is! It's not smart and not safe! AND NO YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM YOU BITCH!" Allie had to grab Chelsea, put a hand over the struggling girls' mouth and move quickly behind another tree. "How about I let you kill her," Allie whispered. Chelsea nodded vigorously.
I guessed I'd be the 10th member of this strange Fellowship.
At this point, the only way for Chelsea to yell out in anger once more was to let her recite 'Naturally Nine' under her breath over and over. "You shall count to nine; nine is the number of your counting. You shall not count to ten, nor to eleven. Nine is the number of the Fellowship…"
"What's with all the periods!" Allie whispered.
"Dunno," Chelsea muttered, "the rest is crap about her world and portals and stuff. How 'bout we play War."
"Sounds good." Allie smiled and started dealing out the cards.
~*~
"No! My lovely Frodo card!" Chelsea wailed as Allie won once again. It never mattered how the cards were dealt, Chelsea always lost at War. And she was even more pissed off at the moment, the Hobbits has snuggled up next to the Sue and the only way to vent her frustration was to blame it on the cards.
"They're getting up," observed Allie. Chelsea happily noted that the Sue didn't seem to thrilled about sleeping on the ground, but cringed again when she heard Merry say, "Gosh, she's a worser getting upper than we are, Pip."
"Can't kill yet…can't kill yet…can't kill yet…" Chelsea kept telling herself as Allie silently picked up the cards. A few additions to the charge list later (including the word "Elvin"), the Fellowship (plus one) continued with the agents following closely behind.
It wasn't until later, when the Sue asked how she'd get home, did the agents once again realize that the Sunflower was purposefully torturing them,
"We were just discussing that, Liana. We're not quite sure. Fangorn Forest is a very magical place, where strange things happen. Even with my magic, I cannot create a portal for you. It would be much too dangerous, in case something from your world or ours switched with you. It is difficult to explain, but we are going to Ulendiell, an Elvish wizard, who will be able to answer our questions."
"Oh crap! Another one!?" yelled Allie; they were luckily far enough away that none of the Fellowship noticed them.
"Ulendiell?! That's a bastardized version of 'Undomiel'!" Chelsea said angrily. Allie figured now was not the best time to ask who, or what, Undomiel was.
Through the rest of the walk, Chelsea pointed the CAD at random characters to see how OOC they were. They were rather high numbers, especially for the Hobbits, Gandalf, and Aragorn; but not Legolas…yet.
From explaining designer brands to the Hobbits to calling Longbottom leaf marijuana, the Sue was becoming more and more annoying (more so to Chelsea then to Allie, who was oblivious to most everything).
When the Sue and the Hobbits had a 'group hug,' both agents felt like they would surely be sick and went to hide behind some more trees.
~*~
That night, there was an Orc attack, during which the agents watched on the sidelines.
I, for one, was terrified. Sure I was slightly trained with the sword, but under this pressure, it all just flew out of my head. But I refused to be the Mary-Sue in this situation.
Chelsea choked, Allie laughed. "So," said Allie, once she'd recovered, "she really thinks she's not a Sue?"
"Apparently," Chelsea answered. It was amazing what went on in Sue authors' heads sometimes. Then the agents watched as the Sue saved Frodo's life by pushing him out of the way of an Orc's arrow.
"Not a Sue, eh?" muttered Chelsea.
Suddenly, the agents were jerked forward and to another place in the story (which looked oddly like Frodo's bedroom in Rivendell). After they hid, they searched for the Bleeprin.
"I hate stories that jump like that," muttered Allie.
Chelsea took a quick look at the Words and looked like she was about to be sick. "I hate this story…I hate this story…"
Allie looked at the words as well. "This wizard/elf/it/whatever, I can kill it, yes?"
"Go right ahead." So as soon as Allie killed the wizard/elf/it/whatever, they portaled to the next part of the story, where the "Fellowship" (with the now unconscious Legolas since he had earlier tried to save the Sue and was attacked by the wizard/elf/it/whatever).
"Lookit this!" Chelsea yelled. "They're riding on descendants of Shadowfax! Shadowfax was the last one, you…arg!"
"When can we kill her?" asked Allie, who now wanted to get home as soon as possible.
"As soon as she kisses Legolas," muttered Chelsea. "Cards?"
~*~
"Chelsea, you need to stop doing this to yourself," Allie said gleefully as she took the last of the cards in the deck. It is nearly impossible for one to actually fully win when you're playing War, except when you're playing with Chelsea. "I'll beat you one of these days, Vandarveen, you know I will!"
Allie rolled her eyes. "I'm sure you will, Miller. And why are we calling each other by our last names?"
Chelsea shrugged.
It was then that Legolas stirred and the Sue immediately went to his side. "If you'll excuse me," Chelsea got up and grabbed a bow and arrows, "I'll be searching for a good place to fully scare the crap out of the Sue when I jump out as this scene takes place because I fear that if I don't occupy myself I'll drown in the sheer sappyness. Would you like to come?"
Allie shrugged. "Sure."
So as the entire 'romantic' scene played out (with Chelsea complaining that she was drowning in sappyness and that it was sticky), the agents found a good place to stage their ambush.
The agents watched as the Sue drew close to the elf. "Legolas..."
He leaned closer to her, and Allie was interested to see that she pushed him away. "But I thought she wanted him!" she whispered to Chelsea, who ground her teeth.
"Do you take pleasure in my pain?"
"Only when I have no idea what's going on, therefore I can take pleasure."
"Ah."
The Sue, meanwhile, was still rather amateurishly playing hard-to-get. "Legolas, I'm sorry," she whispered, "I can't."
"Damn right you can't," said Chelsea as she came out with her bow drawn. "Liana, you are charged with…well, a lot of stuff, but mostly sending the entire Fellowship of the Ring out of character, making them tell you things that they know they should keep to themselves, speaking the language, putting a forest next to Rivendell, turning Legolas into a hopeless Romantic, hitting Aragorn, hitting on Aragorn (which you didn't really do but we wouldn't put it past you), being sappy, being angsty, having a 'group hug', making Merry say…whatever it was you made him say, and we're sure there's more, but I'm getting tired. You're basically charged with being a Mary-Sue and making me so angry that I think I'll take my frustration out on the computer or the Sunflower later, bye!" And Chelsea shot Liana.
Legolas sat there for a minute, blinked, then growled, "Another one?"
"Yep, sorry, see ya!" and with that, Allie and Chelsea disappeared.
~*~
"If I never kill a Middle Earth Sue again it'll be too soon," muttered Allie.
"Oh, and we didn't even get to the best part!" Chelsea said grinning, looking at the computer.
"And what exactly was that?" growled Allie.
"When she called Saruman 'Sarumon,'" Chelsea said. "I am Sar-u-mon! I come from Ja-ma-ca! Bermuda, Bahamas! Come on pretty momma!" That earned her a quick pillow to the head.
~*~
Chelsea's A/N Oh! That was fun! Though quite painful…well, I already have a few ficcys for the next few chapters, so…yeah…hope you enjoyed this!
FFeathers' (our beta)A/N: Again, lots of apologies for lateness. It was almost done a week ago, but then we went on vacation. I enjoyed this one. Despite Allie's reluctance, I hope you two go back to Middle-Earth soon. ^__^;;
