Author: Mirrordance

Title: For Every Evil

Summary: Legolas is a policeman in 2004. His colleagues start to wonder why the 10-yr veteran doesn't age & more trouble ahead after he runs across the Fellowship & some friends in modern incarnations, resurrected along with a new world-threatening peril.

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21: Not Here

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Imladris,

Vienna, Austria

Mid-2004

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"Hi," Adrian said quickly into his mobile phone, "Elladan, I strayed into one of your secret passages and I'm lost."

Eowyn glanced at the doctor and smiled wryly to herself. Oh, let them all deal with each other…

"Which one?" Adrian paused in thought, "Um… the one up the stairs, third door to the left, woman pointing to the skies…" Adrian rolled back his eyes in response to something the elf said at the other end of the line, "No, Greene didn't tell me the latch from the other side was broken… mmmhm… mmmhm…" Adrian stopped walking and the group stopped behind him. He turned a corner and walked straight down that corridor until he reached its end. "Okay, I found it. Thanks. How are things unfolding over there?" he paused to listen and actually smirked, "Oh yeah? That's funny. Um. Well since you're not very busy there, you may want to get here a bit fast… No," he said indignantly, defensively too quickly before reneging and saying, "Well, yes… I guess you can say the cocky elf locked us up for good reason…"

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Switzerland

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"Stay where you are!" Elladan barked, but apparently the really rather notoriously independent fellow at the other end of the line had already hung up on him. The oft-composed elf hissed a string of clever curses as he stalked out of the Altman cabin, flanked by his three companions.

"What happened?" Elrohir asked.

"Imladris is under attack," Elladan replied with his jaws set, "Crazy Mirkwood prince thought he could save the world so he goes off and locks everyone up in one of the secret passages."

"Legolas could always handle himself," Gandalf pointed out.

"Yes, well," Elladan growled, "Estel deceived me into telling him the way out."

Faramir's head shot up at him.

"Yes, your fair lady is likely to fight with them," Elladan winced, "So's mine."

"You cannot convince them to stay still?" Faramir asked edgily.

"You know the answer to that," Elrohir said gravely.

"We should not have left them," growled Elladan.

"We thought it was more safe there, brother," Elrohir said to him soothingly as they walked downhill to their concealed vehicle, "There is no blaming to be made here."

"Only speed," Gandalf said, "We can only get there as quickly as we can. And…" the wizards eyes glinted, "make a call to the police. Pretend you are a neighbor complaining of a rowdy party in the estate."

"Our closest neighbors live a five-minute drive away," Elladan pointed out.

"They don't know that," countered Gandalf, "Let the intruders scatter. They are there now and there is nothing we can do about it. We can only hasten their departure."

Elrohir immediately dialed the Vienna police in the area of Imladris.

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Imladris

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To Legolas' profound horror and dismay, they bounded down the stairs armed with everything they could find lying about the house that they deemed lethal: canes and vases and pointed things and Eowyn, in the hall, with a candlestick…

The invaders numbered about twenty or so men, garbed in black and armed in everything from guns and smoke and tear bombs to knives and shock-sticks. They were yet to resort to lethal force, a wonder to Legolas considering whoever was behind all this had once tried to kill Adrian Aarons in a rather gruesome and definitive way. Nevertheless, he was not complaining. Twenty was a small number, he reflected, even if he was armed with just a letter opener and already quaking from one of the rather unfortunate shocks his now-numbed leg had taken. He could not, however, quell the fact that he wished he had his trusty bow or his trusty gun (which of course he was not allowed to travel with) with him, or the great and trusty Gimli, who'd have raced him to the very last man of that invading twenty.

Breathlessly, he hurried with downing more men, deciding he wanted to finish long before any of those blasted fools he thought he had locked upstairs stepped on the landing.

With a triumphant cry he felled another man with a clever jab, and looked determinedly upon the last five who were ganging up on him and Halvor.

Just when he thought things were finally becoming simple, more of the invaders broke into the living room with a burst of glass and with drawn guns, the red lasers crowing their ends lighting the pitch dark like dots of stars.

"Surrender or be killed," one of the faceless men ordered coolly, but he really should have known that those whom he set out to capture would have absolutely none of that.

Muttering a dwarvish curse he had borrowed from his stout old friend Gimli, Legolas thought of defeat for the barest of moments but did not indulge in it for long. He fell to a knee upon his closest downed foe and unclasped a pair of smoke bombs from the utility vest. He tossed it upon the oncoming intruders, knowing that though his and his allies' vision would be equally impaired, their foes would not resort to the guns lest they fire upon their own men.

In his mind's eye he kept tabs of their positions. His elvish senses would serve him well even before the smoke cleared completely. He would remember where to find them. He felt for his downed foe's guns and prepared them as his own. Crouching low upon the ground, he waited as the smoke swirled and danced about him, shadows lurking here and there…

The room was deathly quiet as each side struggled to regain their bearings, struggled to know at the very least which way to aim. All each could hear was the final hissing of the last of the smoke's release, and the beating of their own hearts…

The silence was broken by a solitary shot, a man's exclamation of shock and pain, and a thud! as he hit the ground. It was the gun Legolas had commandeered, and he used it just about as easily as he used his old bow. The lasers danced as if in a panic, searching for who fired, who was hit. Legolas appreciated that the laser lights told him where the invaders stood.

He fired another shot, and another of his foes was downed. After the first two shots and fatalities, bullets started ripping across the air at random, in panicked bursts that stilled when it was made apparent that they were not hitting anything.

The smoke was clearing fast; Imladris always had a soothing wind about it. Legolas had to work faster. One by one he felled his foes in numbers that perfectly matched what bullets his gun held.

And then a burst of evening wind stripped him of the cover of the smoke, and suddenly he found himself looking across the room at a man whose gun was pointed straight at him by strange, strange chance.

Or ill luck…

The moments unfolded like a watery dream. There was something fluid, and languid and slow and clear about that time Brad came up from behind the shooter bearing a vase and crashing it over the man's head. There was something so slow and yet so unavoidably sure about how that bullet still bled from that gun and followed a ragged, raging streak that, though missing the elf's head or his heart, managed to find his arm. The momentum and the bite of the shot made Legolas step back, but it did not sweep him off his feet. He stood firmly even as Brad ran from across the room toward him.

"You're all right?" he asked over the din of the revived battle.

"Yes," Legolas said through grit teeth, "I've had it before. I am not much burdened by it."

"Good," Brad said, but Legolas noticed that the man still held the ground before the elf and seemed ready to defend it with all that he had… which was, Legolas realized to his profound alarm, now that he had already divested himself of his lethal vase, nothing much at all.

The elf pressed the guns into the adan's hands. He commandeered daggers from one of the bodies that littered the ground, and he stepped toward the onslaught of their foes.

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Halvor had taken it upon himself to look after the womenfolk. Eunice and Anatalia were none too pleased about how he hovered, but they soon fought around him, realizing that truly, perhaps he was just made that way.

Emmett took it upon himself toward this end too, of course, never leaving his younger sister's side although unbeknownst to him, she was protecting him too. All he knew was that she was presently felling more foes than he, and even if it made his manliness smart a bit, she was also making him fiercely proud of her.

Adrian turned away from the tight fighting unit of four, his eyes drifting to a concentration of the gunned intruders converged about a struggling Brad and an injured Leland Greene, favoring one arm over the other. He still fought like a mad devil (albeit a graceful one) but the battle was justly taking its toll and little by little, the pair's circle of defense was becoming cut up and infiltrated, making them drift further and further apart.

Setting his jaws in determination and armed with a commandeered shock stick, Adrian Aarons broke through lines of foes with courage and strength that surprised him, and he soon found himself fighting beside Leland.

"Adrian," Leland breathed, "Brad…"

"He's all right," Adrian assured the elf, "He's still standing."

"I'll clear the way," Leland told him determinedly, "I'll watch your back. But you have to go to him."

"You're the one who's hurt," Adrian pointed out, "You need back-up more."

"You've seen my genes, it's nothing," Leland said through gritted teeth as he downed another enemy, "Do not let Brad stand alone."

"And you?" Adrian asked.

"Nothing's going to happen to me," Leland insisted, "I know how the story ends, remember? I know how it all unfolds. Go to him. Do not let him stand alone."

Adrian's brows furrowed.

"I know how the story ends," Leland said more fiercely, "Adrian. You have to go to him."

With a frustrated shake of his head, Adrian did as the elf bid. He did not know then that it would be the last time this night that he would set his eyes on Leland Greene.

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The house was emptied right quick by the sound of the approaching sirens. Though it was a profound mystery how in the world they could explain to the cops what just happened in there, the group was more than relieved by the welcome interruption.

The remnants of the faceless, black-clad invaders hurriedly escaped, bearing their wounded and even spiriting away their dead… likely to keep from anything being traced back to them. The hit was highly efficient and professional, and though practically all of them escaped, the combined efforts of Halvor, Anatalia, Eowyn and Emmett managed to secure three unconscious prisoners for questioning.

As the police sirens neared, the hardly-presentable-looking group stared at each other in panic. It was like being caught between two stones. Eowyn reflected that the most difficult thing of fighting evil in the modern day was the multiplicity of complications associated with it; in the old days, one fought and killed one's enemy. It was a time of war, and that was all that there was to it. Now, though justly so, the cause was compounded by the interference of the human authorities whose knowledge of the situation was too limited and inextricably political. There was the feds, and the press, all that blasted red tape… It was like being caught against two stones, having to fight two foes.

"Get the lights back on," Adrian said to Halvor, "And then get dressed quickly. You'll get the door if they insist on it. I'll try and tell them to go away from the intercom at the gate."

"What are we going to say?" Ana asked, "They must not be let into house. They'll see the blood. They'll see the mess. They'll investigate, and they'll see the art. And they'll find out about the other things—"

"No one's getting into the house," Adrian winced, "Or at least, not the cops. Where's Leland?"

"Probably ran off after them," Brad said with a grimace, rolling a shoulder that had taken a rather bad hit. Leland, Adrian remembered, was totally correct. Adrian reached Brad just as he fell to the ground weaponless and beneath the poised guns of his enemies, reeling from the precise hit that was hurting him now.

"Guy thinks he's Spider-man," Brad growled, "I'll walk around and look for him."

"No, sit down," Eowyn commanded him, "You could use the rest. We will look." Anatalia nodded beside her.

"There might still be some of the scum littering the grounds," Brad pointed out.

"I'll go with them," Emmett said, breathing in relief when the lights shone over their heads again. Halvor had the electricity back on-line.

Adrian jogged over to the security console near the servant's quarters. The intercom at the gate was revived, and he could see two uniformed police officers dismount their striped car and walk to the speaker box from the view of the gate's cameras.

The police officers activated the com and spoke in their native tongue, making Adrian wince as he spoke to them from the intercom, "Repeat in English please. Um. I'm the new butler."

He saw the two officers glance at the security cameras in annoyance, and then complied with the request. "We received complaints about some noisy gathering there. A party."

"Complaints?" Adrian asked, "We're not having a party."

Not to mention the fact that we do not have any neighbors…

"Break it up," the cop said in his heavy accent, "Tell everyone to go home."

"There is nobody here," Adrian said plaintively, "We're not having a party."

"Well we were called with a complaint," the cop argued.

"Well can you hear anything?" Adrian snapped, "No party, officers. Perhaps you've been duped. A practical joke."

"Are you being a wise guy?"

Adrian sighed. It sounded like something the man watched from TV. "No sir," he said wearily, "I'm not. No parties, I promise."
"If we get called up here again…" the cop said threateningly, just before stalking back to his car. Adrian watched them leave with some relief, and he turned toward the door to find Eowyn, Emmett, Brad, Anatalia and Halvor looking at him with grave expressions on their faces.

"What?" Adrian asked.

"Greene's gone," Brad said flatly, and when the other man's eyes widened despairingly, he hurriedly expounded, "Not dead, man. He's just… he's not here."

TO BE CONTINUED…

Hey guys!!! Thanks for the c&c's… I've just been in a mad dash lately so I'm fervently trying to discipline myself and keep these posts regular… I for one hate waiting, after all, haha. Oh well. I'm still stuck on chapter 26… but I'll get this done. Thank you for the fire, as always, and I hope you're having fun. Chapter 22 will welcome another familiar face. Want a clue? In chapter 15, Elrohir was walking about 'going underground' and employing a 'hacker.' Some figurative lingo, yes, but in older times, if these were taken literally, I'd likely be referring to a very spirited dwarf, eh? ;)

'TIL THEN!!! :)