A Brief Word from Nazgul, Inc.

Or

The Chapter in Which the Laws of Physics are Thrown to the Wind

A/N: I apologize for the inexcusable amount of time it's taken me to update here, but there's this evil thing called school that has allowed me no time to get on the computer.

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you give me a signed review so I can get to your profile, I'll write you into an upcoming chapter! All the more opportunity for chaos, confusion and general insanity, if I know the ff.net crowd.

And so ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, The Queen of Fire once again proudly presents (Drumroll, please) the next chapter!

The Black Riders were definitely not happy. As soon as Frodo had accidentally put the Ring on his finger, they knew they'd been beaten to Bree. By a hobbit. A hobbit on foot, no less. Oh, the shame. They were never going to live this down, and if Sauron ever got wind of this, they'd be deader than they already were. Or weren't. But that didn't matter right at the moment. Not for the Witch King, anyway.

"I say we screw the stupid race and go get the Ring anyway!" he suggested.

"Yeah! Good idea!"

"But…but…that's not fair…"

"Shut up you stupid crybaby, nobody cares!"

"W-why isn't a-anything I s-say important?"

"'Cause you're too whiny. C'mon, let's go!"

"F-fine, you-you meanie…"

"Don't you dare call me a you-you! Let's go! Haaa!"

The Witch King kicked his horse into a gallop and the rest quickly followed suit.

They reached the gates of Bree in record time.

"Let's knock it down!" yelled the Witch King, urging his horse to go even faster.

"Dude…"

"That's really not a good idea…"

WHAM.

"Ow."

The gate failed to fall over when the horse ran into it. Unfortunately, the other Riders also failed to stop after they realized this, and impacted the gate in a similar manner as the first had.

WHAM.

WHAM.

WHAM.

WHAM.

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

Horses and Riders were tangled together in a hopeless heap at the foot of the gate, which still hadn't budged an inch. The words the unfortunate Nazgul were muttering as they tried to extract themselves from the mess were of the vilest adjectives that the Black Speech had available. Not that you could, or wanted to, translate them into the Common tongue anyway.

"Get up!" the Witch King called irritably from the bottom of the stack. "We're gonna try again!"

"Er, I think my horse is knocked out."

"No excuses! Get moving!"

"All right, all right. Get up, Bob."

"There's something wrong with you, dude."

They led their mounts back a little ways, then galloped at it again.

CRUNCH.

Miraculously, the gate gave way and toppled over into the mud. The King was about to let out a whoop of victory when the second Rider's horse stepped right on the edge where it was balanced on a stone in the road, giving it the leverage to swing back up and over, toppling right back over on the whole group.

SQUISH.

"Ow."

"Medic…"

Well, to make a rather long and tedious story short, they did eventually get the gate off themselves, and were all much more peeved than they were before, if that was even possible. There's nothing like adding a little injury to insult to get an already-pissed-off-Nazgul even madder.

A few minutes after the Gate Incident, as it came to be known, the Hobbits and Strider heard very weird noises from over in the next room, and Sam went to have a look. Very carefully he opened the door a crack and heard the Riders talking.

"Feathers? FEATHERS! Hobbits are made of FEATHERS?? Feathers can't take the Ring very far…"
Sam closed the door quietly and returned to the room, sniggering to himself.

"What was it?" asked Frodo as he came in.

"Our faceless friends mutilating bed pillows."

"Ah.."

"Faceless friends?" said Strider. "They guys who go trampling all over the countryside on black horses with no respect for bridle trail signs and the delicate vegetation?"

"Um, yeah, them," said Sam with a sideways glance over at Merry and Pippin, both rolling their eyes.

"Ringwraiths," Strider muttered. "Been a menace around here ever since Midsummer's Eve. They're so intent on getting the Ring that they'll stop at nothing to get it."

"Then maybe we'd better bug on outta here. They are right next door.." Pippin pointed out.

The next morning they found themselves hiking through the woods again, following Strider and leading a pony and gossiping about their newfound leader.

"So who's this Strider think he is? He's just leading us off into the Wild, and Bilbo's still in Bree, as far as we know," said Merry, speaking low so the Park Ranger couldn't hear.

"I didn't see a single Elf," muttered Sam. "Gandalf said there were Elves in Bree, didn't he?"

"Well, obviously Bilbo's not in Bree," Frodo said, ignoring Sam. "Whereas the Black Riders are. I don't know about you, but those things give me the collywobbles. Bilbo's loss if he doesn't have his precious Ring."

"How do we know we can trust him, anyway?" asked Merry. "my mom always said never talk to strangers, and he's a weird one, if I do say so."

"Well, he is an authority figure," Frodo said. "Look at the uniform."

"He coulda killed a Park Ranger and took it from him," Pippin suggested.

"I don't think so," said Sam. "No one can kill a Ranger."

"I wish that were so," Strider called back to them. "And that's the Phantom Menace script you got there, Pippin."

"Oops," the hobbits said in unison. "VerysorryStrider."

"Hey, where are we going anyway?" Sam asked suddenly.

"To Rivendell, Master Gamgee, to the House of Elrond."

"Cool! Rivendell! All right!" Pippin said. "Where's that?"

"Honestly, did you ever pay attention in geography class?"

"No."

"Hey, Merry! Stay on the path! The vegetation's very rare and delicate!"

"VerysorryStrider, won't happen again," Merry muttered as he stepped back onto the trail. He gave Pippin his best Glower of Doom as the hobbit sniggered behind his hand.

~*~*~*~*~*~*