A/N: Shoutouts!
Pyro: you forgot to review.
InsaneElvenPirate: -blinks at screen name- um. that has quite a similarity to something I came up with... Awhile ago, I decided that I wanted to be a pirate when I grow up, and marry a hobbit, and we'd sail the seven seas in a ship painted green with flowers like the shire, and lure other ships that thought we were an island, and capture them! Well, I guess that would be more of an insane hobbit pirate kind of thing... maybe we should start an alliance or something someday.
Pam: I agree, what a wonderful thing to wake up to every morning! Thanks. I like Gimli and the hobbits too!
Hippy Hobbit: Does your name refer to the fact that you are a hippie, or have hips, or does it have something to do with hip, hip, hizzah! Or something like that....
Freak and Proud: I'm glad that you think it's pretty bloody good. You know, I rarely ever have anyone actually use the word "bloody" in coversation with me. It makes me laugh... which may have something to do with the fact that I rarely ever have anyone say it to me...
The small entourage made their way through the forest, with Lilly walking in between the two hobbits.
"And Strider, Legolas, and Gimli came to visit us at the shire, and we decided that we needed another adventure!" Nodded Pip
Lilly nodded. "So one adventure is never enough?"
"We're going to find Frodo. We need to see our old friend."
"You do know where you are going, right?" Lilly asked her new friends.
"Nope." Stated Merry.
"Not an inkling." Added Pippin with a shake of his head that made his curly hair fly.
"Legolas does though." Merry said, his head bobbing up and down to emphasize his statement.
"Do you even know what you are in for? Or are you just along for the ride?" Lilly asked, stepping over a tree root.
"Well, it can't be any more dangerous than the last adventure that we had…" Pippin reasoned.
"That's true." Merry agreed, "After facing the ultimate evil, I suppose it's safer to do just about anything."
"Except swimming." Pippin smiled, "We can't swim."
"Hasn't anyone ever tried to teach you?" asked Lilly.
"None of the hobbits I am acquainted with know how to swim, most of them are afraid of water, and don't bother with learning. And there aren't too many out there that thinks of hobbits as worthy enough to teach anything." Pippin said thoughtfully.
"Well, I can teach you, I guess. That is, if we find a suitable place and time." Lilly said with a shrug.
As they were walking, Lilly, Pippin and Merry fell slightly behind. Not anticipating this, the rest of the group didn't notice until they heard Lilly scream.
Strider, Legolas, and Gimli rushed back to find Merry, Pippin, and Lilly each struggling to break the hold of a different man that tried to attack them.
As the trio burst through the brush to save them, the three thugs turned, shielding their bodies with their captives to keep Legolas's arrow pointed away from them.
The man holding Lilly had a dagger clenched in his fist, holding it to Lilly's throat.
Gimli fingered his axe, ready to throw it, but "Stay back!" the snarling man warned them.
Pippin latched his teeth into his captor's arm, and the man yelled and dropped him. As soon as the hobbit hit the ground, the man had an arrow embedded in his chest. Since Merry was being held the closest to him, Pippin started kicking Merry's captor in the shins.
Since the man had seen what had happened to his friend when he dropped his "shield", the burly man grimaced, from Merry's teeth embedded in his arm, and Pippin's kicks, and tried to knock Pippin over while keeping Merry in between himself and Legolas.
Jumping back up after he was kicked aside, Pippin unsheathed his minute sword, and slashed into the man's leg, and he finally let go. As Merry dropped to the ground, he felt an arrow whiz by his ear. Turning to look, he saw the man's blood spilling onto the grass, and an arrow still quivering as it protruded from his forehead.
"I'm warning you, stay away from me." The last man shouted over Lilly's shoulder, gripping the handle of his dagger better. "If you come any closer, she will die." He warned.
Backing away with their hands up in defeat, the hobbits carefully stepped over to where their friends were standing, careful to stay out of Legolas's line of fire.
Before anyone else could think of what to do, Lilly wrapped her ankle around the man's, and kicked his feet out from under him, and pulled the knife wielding arm out of her way. As he hit the ground, Lilly jumped to the side, and stumbled away, tripping on a tree root, and skinning her hand on a rough tree trunk. She heard the twang of Legolas's bow, but looked over her shoulder to make sure that she was safe from the fallen man.
Seeing his crumpled form, and the blood coming from the hole through his chest, she cringed, looked away, and scurried to her feet. Trembling, she rushed over to where her new friends were standing, and looked at them with a terror-stricken expression, her eyes wide, and her mouth half open, as if she were ready to say something, but her voice wouldn't work.
"Lassie?" Gimli asked, "How are you faring?"
Blinking her eyes, she put her hands to her throat, making sure that it was still whole, then she held her hands out, and turned them around, checking her arms out. Finding nothing serious, only a cut on the palm of her left hand from falling. "I… I'll live, I think."
"You're bleeding." Pippin stated, walking to her and taking her hand in his to examine the shallow cut.
Looking down at him, she pushed a clump of blood soaked curls off of his forehead, and laughed, "Well, so are you, and you're bleeding more than I am!"
Putting his hand up to his head, he found the cut, and grimaced. "Oh, that I am." He said as he tried to wipe away the blood that was running down his hairline at the side of his forehead.
After Legolas patched up Pippin's head, and Lilly's hand, they set out again, leaving the three fallen thugs in the thick brush a ways off of the path.
"Where did you learn how to kick his legs out from under him like that?" Gimli asked Lilly, who was now safely in the middle of the group, rather than straggling behind.
"Um, I took a self defense class after I was mugged once." She explained.
"What's mugged?" The dwarf asked quizzically.
"Well, someone attacked me and tried to steal my bag." She said.
"Oh, I see… Did they teach you in this class the fine art of fighting with an axe?" he said brandishing his war axe.
"No… If I were to carry an axe around my hometown, I would have gotten in trouble, we're not allowed weapons."
"You don't know how to use a weapon?" He asked, astounded. "Why, where I come from all the women are proficient fighters!
Legolas walked past Gimi, and said with a grin, "Where you come from, women have beards!"
"Watch it, Elf!" he threatened, shaking his fist at Legolas.
"I just know how to kick someone's legs from under them, and get a few punches in if I'm lucky."
"We shall have to remedy that." Gimli informed her.
"For real?" she asked, eagerly.
Not ever hearing that particular expression, but getting the gist of the meaning, he gave her a strange look, and said, "Yes. "
A/N: If you have reached this point in the story, and you do, indeed have a pulse, I would ask that you hit that button over there to the left, and send me a little review... or a long review, I love long reviews. I've written some extremely long ones myself. They are fun.