*Disclaimer* Would you really sue a poor flu-striken teenager??? I OWN NOTHING, I TELL YOU!
A/N: Satiana, thanks for that nice review; it meant a lot to me.
Also, I know I haven't posted awhile, and I apologize. But I've been getting over a very nasty case of the flu that really kicked me in the you-know-where, so it would seem I have much catching up to do. But here we are, better late than never. Read on!
Chapter 11- A Glimmer of a Plan
Unfortunatly, Awaren didn't share her views. It made sense, he said, but he believed that he could decide the threat to his people, but thanks for your input. For the first time that she could remember, Rosellyn thought that Awaren wasn't as wise as she'd first suspected. She'd held out hope that Linka would help her cause, but all for nothing. Linka sided with her husband on the issue. It was as if someone had lifted a veil from her eyes. She saw that Awaren was a wise ruler, but a poor warlord. Linka merely followed her husband's lead, and provided a shoulder to cry on when things went wrong. But if they didn't listen, and she was adamant that she was correct, all would fall to ruin. A shoulder to cry on wouldn't cut it. Their forces might prevail, they knew their territory. But there were the niggling odds that the Riders just might overpower them, if they knew their strengths and weaknesses. And every day that Awaren didn't try to remedy the situation, the more those odds grew.
For all her claims that she never had anything to do with the fighting arts in this America place she came from, Delaney had a surprisingly weighty store of knowledge about such things. She would sit in her room for hours, letting Delaney take charge and write down all she could think of to do with the current situation. All her plans were brilliant, she thought...if Awaren would listen to her. One day, after she had chased away Meira and managed to closet herself in with Tracie, Forest, and Legolas, all who agreed with her, Delaney revealed the plan she had been sitting on. ~We need to spy. Just you. Me. Whatever.~ She gave a start at that, completely thrown.
"Hey, are you okay?" Her surprise had not gone unnoticed. Forest was the one who had spoken out. What were they talking about? Then, helped by Della, she recalled: they were discussing possible ways to implement Della's plans without help from Awaren. So far, they had nothing.
"What? Oh, uh, I'm fine." Tracie, however, knew her friend too well to be put off track. She leaned in eagerly, face bright with anticipation.
"You had an idea. I can just tell. What is it? Come on, tell." She racked her brains for an idea, one that would satisfy her friend. She finally gave up and told them Delaney's idea, sure that they would stop her.
"Someone could spy on them." To her absolute shock, they nodded to themselves.
"You know, you've got a point. If Awaren won't send spies, we have to." She was staring, as Forest was, at Legolas with frank astonishment. Tracie, though, was nodding in agreement. She finally found her voice.
"You-you're serious, aren't you?" She said, faintly. Forest jumped in at this point, his voice about two octaves higher than normal.
"Legolas, I hope you're joking! Do you realize how incredibly stupid and risky that is? We could be killed, and I don't just mean by the Riders. Awaren would banish us for life if he found out we even thought about it! Did you ever think about that? No, I don't suppose you did." Forest was always the voice of reason and caution, trying to ward off an attack. Unlike Awaren, however, he saw that the Riders were a threat. He just didn't want to fight, if it could be avoided. Legolas, on the other hand, wanted a fight from the off. He was of the opinion that the Riders should be crushed as quickly as possible, and, being all of 1,500, he was sure he could do it himself. Tracie was inclined to agree with whatever Legolas said. But Rosellyn wasn't sure where she fell. Probably somewhere between the two extremes, leaning slightly more towards the fighting side. Maybe she didn't like killing, but she found it preferrable to being killed. Legolas shrugged at Forest's sally. That was Legolas' way; he either erupted like Mount Doom or took it as calmly as news that lunch was ready.
"Hey, I said it was a good idea. You got a better one, Forest?" It was perfectly quiet, perfectly serious, but Forest turned a dull red.
"Here's an idea: let's try to keep ourselves alive and out of trouble!" Legolas jumped up, shedding his calm demeanor in a flash. Suddenly, he was radiating the dangerous energy Delaney had noticed about him the first time.
"How about this crazy idea, Forest: we try to keep ourselves alive and out from under the thumb of the Riders!" he shouted. Forest jumped up as well, looking him straight in the eye. Rose had to hand it to Forest; pacifist he might be, but it took nerve to look Legolas directly in the eye when he was this mad.
"I'd rather be under the rule of the Riders than shamed or dead!" There was a silence as both Elves stared, the anger a hot electric charge in the air around them, so palpable she could almost see it. Then, Forest backed down. He turned on his heel and slammed the door shut, without a word. It was a few moments before Legolas had controlled his anger and lowered his pulse. Finally, he took a deep breath, released it, then sat down again. It was only then that Tracie ventured to say anything.
"So-so you are serious about the whole spy deal?" Rosellyn was still shaken; she had never seen Forest that angry before. Della, however, remained stoic throughout the whole thing, as though she wasn't surprised. Legolas nodded once.
"Perfectly." She nudged the dormant Della, that little sensation in the back of her mind, for ideas. -Well? Any ideas? You're the one who suggested this.- Her friends saw the expression, the one that said she was thinking hard, and waited until she was ready to tell them what her brain wave was. ~Actually, I might. Do you have a map of Mirkwood somewhere? I can't work with just your memories. Let me come up.~ She allowed her friend to do so, saying out loud as she did,
"Here, let's go the map on my desk."
Actually, the map was tacked up on the wall; Delaney took it down and surveyed it, talking out loud as she drew from Rose's memories of the enemy's position.
"Now then, according to the reports we've been getting from the scouts around, there's a camp here," she laid a pink, polished pebble on the west side of the forest, "by the pass, where they got here to put the black steel in the water," another pebble was laid down. And so on. When she was finished, twelve pebbles roughly surrounded the forest. In a businesslike way, she took out a quill pen and a bottle of ink and started marking the strength of each camp, as of their last report. Delaney thought fast, mind working furiously, writing slowly to buy her some time. She'd been playing Zelda for far too long not to be able to work her way out of this situation with flying colors! But this wasn't a video game. She didn't have another life if she failed. The first time had to work, or...or...she didn't like to think about that. No level ups, no extra life if you gather all the crystals. No nothing. Fast fingers and cheat codes wouldn't avail her in the slightest here; in war, the only law was Darwin's, the only rule was the sword. What I wouldn't give for an AK-47, some land mines, and the National Guard, she thought.
"Do you really have an idea?" asked Tracie, always critical. Delaney nodded her head slowly, mind going a million miles a minute.
"Yeah...but I don't think it's a very realistic one..." Legolas brushed her misgivings away impatiently.
"We're already on thin ice. Just tell us the plan, and we'll be the judge of whether it's stupid or not." She sighed and dipped the quill pen again.
"Right. Here goes." She circle the pebbles in sets of fours. "Legolas: you, Tracie, and I will split up and scout out these sets of four camps. Write down any unusual cargo or machinery, take a head count, see how many, if any, reinforcements and supplies are coming in. That sort of thing. But..." She paused, wondering what her friends were thinking. Their faces betrayed nothing. "My hold back is that we have no back up. If one of us gets hurt, the others will never know, and they won't be there to help. Tracie and I have already made pretty good cases for the buddy system." As she mentioned this, the scars in her chest gave involuntary twinges. They always did whenever it was about to rain. Tracie examined the plan with pursed lips. Then she finally spoke.
"In theory, the plan's a good one. With a few tweaks, we can make it a great one in practice." They both instinctively looked at Legolas. He appeared to be doing some serious thinking. Finally, he looked up, and seemed slightly surprised that they were all looking at him.
"Oh! You want my opinion?" They looked at him like the answer was obvious.
"Uh, yeah...you're only the most war-literate among any of us!" snapped Delaney. Tracie nodded in agreement. He strode over to the front of the map and leaned over it, palms on the desk. Then, he nodded.
"Yeah. Tracie's right. And so are you, Rosellyn. We can't go alone. So here's what I say. We go in pairs, with one of us staying behind every time. Like so," He picked up the quill and scrawled their names on each group of four. "Now. Rose and Tracie. Tracie and me. Rosellyn and me. Oh dear..." Tracie leaped in with a quick solution to the problem of uneven groups.
"On the last one, we all go!" Delaney inwardly marveled at Tracie's tone. She reminded her of Ed, from the anime T.V. show Cowboy Be-Bop. Tracie, with her red hair and voice perky and high from excitement, bared an uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character. Legolas nodded in agreement, not even blinking at her tone.
"Works for me. When do we start?" That was all; they sat down around her desk, and the real plotting began.
A/N: Devious little teenagers... but how well will these plans go? Maybe not as well as they'd like.
A/N: Satiana, thanks for that nice review; it meant a lot to me.
Also, I know I haven't posted awhile, and I apologize. But I've been getting over a very nasty case of the flu that really kicked me in the you-know-where, so it would seem I have much catching up to do. But here we are, better late than never. Read on!
Chapter 11- A Glimmer of a Plan
Unfortunatly, Awaren didn't share her views. It made sense, he said, but he believed that he could decide the threat to his people, but thanks for your input. For the first time that she could remember, Rosellyn thought that Awaren wasn't as wise as she'd first suspected. She'd held out hope that Linka would help her cause, but all for nothing. Linka sided with her husband on the issue. It was as if someone had lifted a veil from her eyes. She saw that Awaren was a wise ruler, but a poor warlord. Linka merely followed her husband's lead, and provided a shoulder to cry on when things went wrong. But if they didn't listen, and she was adamant that she was correct, all would fall to ruin. A shoulder to cry on wouldn't cut it. Their forces might prevail, they knew their territory. But there were the niggling odds that the Riders just might overpower them, if they knew their strengths and weaknesses. And every day that Awaren didn't try to remedy the situation, the more those odds grew.
For all her claims that she never had anything to do with the fighting arts in this America place she came from, Delaney had a surprisingly weighty store of knowledge about such things. She would sit in her room for hours, letting Delaney take charge and write down all she could think of to do with the current situation. All her plans were brilliant, she thought...if Awaren would listen to her. One day, after she had chased away Meira and managed to closet herself in with Tracie, Forest, and Legolas, all who agreed with her, Delaney revealed the plan she had been sitting on. ~We need to spy. Just you. Me. Whatever.~ She gave a start at that, completely thrown.
"Hey, are you okay?" Her surprise had not gone unnoticed. Forest was the one who had spoken out. What were they talking about? Then, helped by Della, she recalled: they were discussing possible ways to implement Della's plans without help from Awaren. So far, they had nothing.
"What? Oh, uh, I'm fine." Tracie, however, knew her friend too well to be put off track. She leaned in eagerly, face bright with anticipation.
"You had an idea. I can just tell. What is it? Come on, tell." She racked her brains for an idea, one that would satisfy her friend. She finally gave up and told them Delaney's idea, sure that they would stop her.
"Someone could spy on them." To her absolute shock, they nodded to themselves.
"You know, you've got a point. If Awaren won't send spies, we have to." She was staring, as Forest was, at Legolas with frank astonishment. Tracie, though, was nodding in agreement. She finally found her voice.
"You-you're serious, aren't you?" She said, faintly. Forest jumped in at this point, his voice about two octaves higher than normal.
"Legolas, I hope you're joking! Do you realize how incredibly stupid and risky that is? We could be killed, and I don't just mean by the Riders. Awaren would banish us for life if he found out we even thought about it! Did you ever think about that? No, I don't suppose you did." Forest was always the voice of reason and caution, trying to ward off an attack. Unlike Awaren, however, he saw that the Riders were a threat. He just didn't want to fight, if it could be avoided. Legolas, on the other hand, wanted a fight from the off. He was of the opinion that the Riders should be crushed as quickly as possible, and, being all of 1,500, he was sure he could do it himself. Tracie was inclined to agree with whatever Legolas said. But Rosellyn wasn't sure where she fell. Probably somewhere between the two extremes, leaning slightly more towards the fighting side. Maybe she didn't like killing, but she found it preferrable to being killed. Legolas shrugged at Forest's sally. That was Legolas' way; he either erupted like Mount Doom or took it as calmly as news that lunch was ready.
"Hey, I said it was a good idea. You got a better one, Forest?" It was perfectly quiet, perfectly serious, but Forest turned a dull red.
"Here's an idea: let's try to keep ourselves alive and out of trouble!" Legolas jumped up, shedding his calm demeanor in a flash. Suddenly, he was radiating the dangerous energy Delaney had noticed about him the first time.
"How about this crazy idea, Forest: we try to keep ourselves alive and out from under the thumb of the Riders!" he shouted. Forest jumped up as well, looking him straight in the eye. Rose had to hand it to Forest; pacifist he might be, but it took nerve to look Legolas directly in the eye when he was this mad.
"I'd rather be under the rule of the Riders than shamed or dead!" There was a silence as both Elves stared, the anger a hot electric charge in the air around them, so palpable she could almost see it. Then, Forest backed down. He turned on his heel and slammed the door shut, without a word. It was a few moments before Legolas had controlled his anger and lowered his pulse. Finally, he took a deep breath, released it, then sat down again. It was only then that Tracie ventured to say anything.
"So-so you are serious about the whole spy deal?" Rosellyn was still shaken; she had never seen Forest that angry before. Della, however, remained stoic throughout the whole thing, as though she wasn't surprised. Legolas nodded once.
"Perfectly." She nudged the dormant Della, that little sensation in the back of her mind, for ideas. -Well? Any ideas? You're the one who suggested this.- Her friends saw the expression, the one that said she was thinking hard, and waited until she was ready to tell them what her brain wave was. ~Actually, I might. Do you have a map of Mirkwood somewhere? I can't work with just your memories. Let me come up.~ She allowed her friend to do so, saying out loud as she did,
"Here, let's go the map on my desk."
Actually, the map was tacked up on the wall; Delaney took it down and surveyed it, talking out loud as she drew from Rose's memories of the enemy's position.
"Now then, according to the reports we've been getting from the scouts around, there's a camp here," she laid a pink, polished pebble on the west side of the forest, "by the pass, where they got here to put the black steel in the water," another pebble was laid down. And so on. When she was finished, twelve pebbles roughly surrounded the forest. In a businesslike way, she took out a quill pen and a bottle of ink and started marking the strength of each camp, as of their last report. Delaney thought fast, mind working furiously, writing slowly to buy her some time. She'd been playing Zelda for far too long not to be able to work her way out of this situation with flying colors! But this wasn't a video game. She didn't have another life if she failed. The first time had to work, or...or...she didn't like to think about that. No level ups, no extra life if you gather all the crystals. No nothing. Fast fingers and cheat codes wouldn't avail her in the slightest here; in war, the only law was Darwin's, the only rule was the sword. What I wouldn't give for an AK-47, some land mines, and the National Guard, she thought.
"Do you really have an idea?" asked Tracie, always critical. Delaney nodded her head slowly, mind going a million miles a minute.
"Yeah...but I don't think it's a very realistic one..." Legolas brushed her misgivings away impatiently.
"We're already on thin ice. Just tell us the plan, and we'll be the judge of whether it's stupid or not." She sighed and dipped the quill pen again.
"Right. Here goes." She circle the pebbles in sets of fours. "Legolas: you, Tracie, and I will split up and scout out these sets of four camps. Write down any unusual cargo or machinery, take a head count, see how many, if any, reinforcements and supplies are coming in. That sort of thing. But..." She paused, wondering what her friends were thinking. Their faces betrayed nothing. "My hold back is that we have no back up. If one of us gets hurt, the others will never know, and they won't be there to help. Tracie and I have already made pretty good cases for the buddy system." As she mentioned this, the scars in her chest gave involuntary twinges. They always did whenever it was about to rain. Tracie examined the plan with pursed lips. Then she finally spoke.
"In theory, the plan's a good one. With a few tweaks, we can make it a great one in practice." They both instinctively looked at Legolas. He appeared to be doing some serious thinking. Finally, he looked up, and seemed slightly surprised that they were all looking at him.
"Oh! You want my opinion?" They looked at him like the answer was obvious.
"Uh, yeah...you're only the most war-literate among any of us!" snapped Delaney. Tracie nodded in agreement. He strode over to the front of the map and leaned over it, palms on the desk. Then, he nodded.
"Yeah. Tracie's right. And so are you, Rosellyn. We can't go alone. So here's what I say. We go in pairs, with one of us staying behind every time. Like so," He picked up the quill and scrawled their names on each group of four. "Now. Rose and Tracie. Tracie and me. Rosellyn and me. Oh dear..." Tracie leaped in with a quick solution to the problem of uneven groups.
"On the last one, we all go!" Delaney inwardly marveled at Tracie's tone. She reminded her of Ed, from the anime T.V. show Cowboy Be-Bop. Tracie, with her red hair and voice perky and high from excitement, bared an uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character. Legolas nodded in agreement, not even blinking at her tone.
"Works for me. When do we start?" That was all; they sat down around her desk, and the real plotting began.
A/N: Devious little teenagers... but how well will these plans go? Maybe not as well as they'd like.