They woke up to a bright, sunny day and beams of light shining through the office part of the building. It promised to be an optimal day to test their new artillery.
Legolas only needed about three or four hours of sleep each day, so while his friends were sleeping, he kept an eye on the weather and the situation outside of the warehouse. Out of curiosity, he went down into the basement of their home. When he turned the light on, he was only mildly surprised at what he saw.
The basement was really a small parking lot, obviously for the former workers of the warehouse. It looked like it was the setting of several gunfights in the past and that there used to be several cars in the parking spaces. The parking lot was empty except for a single space in the corner where a car sat with a cover on it and several boxes around it. It was protected by a steel cage.
When Legolas tried to open it, the cage sent an electrical surge through his body. Foregoing all patience, he shot the lock open with his Magnum and the door flew open. The whole cage sparkled with electricity for a second before faint smoke appeared from the wires.
Uncovering the car, he discovered a spiffy tricked-out Honda Civic in a sleek royal blue.
"Well, well, well," he said to himself. "Look at what we have here. Somebody left their street-racing flashlight behind." He looked into the backseat of the car and saw a tied-up body with a plastic bag tightly tied around its head. "Or not."
Ignoring the stench of the decomposing body, he found the key for the car and decided to take the car for a test ride. When he started the car, the interior lights glowed neon blue to match the exterior. Not wishing to attract more attention than he wanted to, he turned the lights off and sped out of the building.
The car ran quietly through the dark city and turned corners very much like a cat. As he went through the ghostly metropolis, he realized how damaged the city really was. With the orange glow of the working street lamps and the silver beams of light from the moon and stars, he stared at the ruins of his city.
Buildings were wearing away from the repeated brawls of the Neos and Parasite hosts. Streaks of dried blood littered the buildings, sidewalks and the road. Red-tinted skeletons and bones lay around the foot of the buildings and many of them had shreds of muscle and skin hanging from the white enamel.
However, every now and then, he passed a fully fleshed human body part. He was particularly disturbed by a single dismembered human head. The head lay on the street with half of its skull smashed open, revealing the bloody innards. Its remaining eye and its mouth were open in a state of frozen terror. White, squirming larvae had made the brain and open mouth their home.
Trying to cast the horrific image of the severed head, he noticed that the stench of the carcass in his backseat had become almost unbearable. Trying to relieve the smell, he opened the back windows and continued on his way through the city.
After a few moments of driving, he sensed, rather than saw, something was wrong. Glancing at the rearview mirror, he confirmed his suspicion.
A pack of four Neos were following him and rapidly catching up with the car. Their yellow and blood red eyes hungrily looked back at him in the mirror.
"Oh, shit, I'm in trouble," he said. A Neo snapped at his rear bumper and the whole pack screeched in fury. Reacting to the attack, Legolas quickly shifted gears and sped through the silent downtown with the pack closely following.
"They must've smelled YOU," he angrily said to the corpse in the back. "When I opened the windows, they must've picked up your scent and now the want you as a midnight snack. Great. If they get you, they'll try to get me and I definitely don't want to be joining you anytime soon."
He dodged a second attack from the Neos and exited the heart of the city into the urban sprawl. Although it wasn't as ruined as downtown, the streets still carried an eerie feeling.
A new Neo appeared next to his car from an adjacent street and attacked the side of his car. When he swerved to avoid it, he slammed the Neo into a parked car. It wasn't too surprising that it simply got up from the destroyed car, but he noticed that it carried a slight limp in its gait.
"Well," he muttered, "if that's how you guys want to play..." He shifted gears again and sped through the deserted neighborhood. As expected, the Neos followed him closely.
Quite suddenly, he turned a corner. In the rearview mirror, he risked a glance at his hunters. The leader slammed into a car and struggled to get back on its feet but the other four Neos easily turned the corner and glared menacingly. He turned another sharp corner and the remaining Neos now followed him with ease.
His eyes widened with fear and surprise as he looked back on the road and slammed the brakes. He had just tried to avoid a rather large fallen branch, but he didn't use the brakes fast enough. The car crashed into the branch and flipped over a couple times on the road. Using his reflexes, Legolas had undone his seat belt and opened the car door. Unfortunately, the impact sent him flying onto an unkempt lawn. He lay there for a moment, unconscious.
The Neos had already torn apart the car like wrapping paper and were starting to devour the corpse in the backseat when he sat up slowly on the lawn. He felt a steady trickle of warm blood going down the left side of his head and was not at all surprised by it.
The constant screeching of the Neos suddenly changed its tone and grew louder. Even in the dark, he could see four pairs of demonic eyes turn towards him. His hand tentatively reached for his gun, the only weapon he brought out with him that night. He waited for the Neos to make a move as they waited for him.
One of them accidentally slipped on the car and caused a fast sequence that resulted in the end of the hunt.
A Neo jumped from the car to the lawn with talons outstretched where Legolas was hiding a split second before. Instantly, a gunshot was heard and black blood protruded from the Neo's head. Three more gunshots were then fired and three neat holes were made on the car, all in the lower-back section of the car. Legolas could have been seen jumping over the fence of the yard just before the Honda Civic exploded into a magnificent ball of blue flame, engulfing the Neos in fire.
"Nitrogen-oxide gas," he said out loud as he jogged through the suburbs. "You just have to love its many uses."
He slowed down to a bare walk after half an hour of running and decided that it would be easier if he put his gun away. As he did so, he realized that he recognized his surroundings. They had a definite sense of familiarity in them. As he walked down the road and his footsteps echoed quietly around him, he confirmed that he knew where he was.
He paused outside of his own house, now empty and desolate. As he stood there, he remembered his life inside that house before the chaos had started. With surprise, he realized that it was a mere six or seven months ago that the most he was worried about was the reaction of his schoolmates to his pointy ears. It had seemed so much longer than that.
A soft glow in his bedroom window attracted his attention.
"What the hell is that?" he whispered. He ran a list of possible sources in his head. He left his TV on? No, it was broken before he even left. Glow stick he was handed from the last time he went clubbing? Those things couldn't possibly last that long. His room was turned into a small warehouse for energy sources for aliens from outer space? His brain definitely needed a vacation from that crazy shit.
Out of curiosity, he climbed through a broken window and looked around his barren house. Everything was almost exactly the same as he left it, except for the fact that everything had a thin layer of dust and several things were overturned. A trail of dried blood ran from the broken window to the rest of the house.
Not wanting to know what lay at the end of the trail, he went straight to his room to investigate the mysterious glowing.
Opening his door slowly so he wouldn't draw attention to himself, he glanced around his room. The glowing had apparently disappeared and nothing was too out of the ordinary. But, a bundle of clothes say on his bed.
"That's weird," he voiced out loud. "Didn't leave anything on my bed when I left." He picked up the bundle and recognized it as his cloak from the museum. The emerald-green leaf of Lorien faintly shined as he looked at it. "I thought I put you in the closet..."
He glanced back at his closet fast enough to see his bedroom door swing silently towards him and a movement down the stairs. Whatever it was, it was giving off a slight glow.
"Hey, wait!" he yelled. He quickly put on the cloak around his shoulders and ran out the door. Just as he looked over the banister to see who it was, the front door slammed shut. He cursed and jumped over the banister to the ground floor. Unharmed, he ran out into the night.
The eerie glow was just outside of Aragorn's old house and it turned to Legolas, as if it was waiting for him. As Legolas approached the glow, he recognized its blue eyes and Middle-Earthen clothing.
"Boromir," he said with amazement. "You're back in our world. What are you here for?"
"My things," he replied. His voice echoed slightly with a sad tone. "I've been trying to find the lost spirits of Gondor, but I haven't found any. That's why I wanted to see my old things. For inspiration, you could say."
"Oh. Well, any luck about the Horn of Gondor, the Light of Earendil or the whereabouts of this mysterious Master who's apparently behind all this carnage? It'd really help us if you know anything because we have basically no fucking idea about any of them."
Legolas was honestly expecting Boromir to shake his head in despair, say "no", go inside to see his old belongings again or even disappear entirely at his question. That's why he was surprised when Boromir's glow was suddenly brighter and a smile cracked his usual stony face.
"Yeah, I actually do."
"What? Which one? Where is it?"
He scoffed. Legolas was again reminded that the two of them were still teenagers in this Age.
"I'm not going to tell you!" Boromir said with a look of disbelief on his face. Before Legolas could utter a sound of indignation, he added, "After I see my things, I'll show you." He left Legolas standing on the sidewalk with a look of annoyance and reluctant submission on his face.
"I see that charming wit of yours hasn't left you," Legolas said sarcastically as he caught up. He opened the door to Aragorn's house.
Boromir chuckled grimly at his remark. "Just like your princely arrogance stayed with you even after all these years? By the way, nice haircut." He silently walked up the stairs to Aragorn's bedroom.
"Shut up," he growled. He automatically ran his fingers through his short hair, which grew rather messily, giving him that permanent tousled look. He went inside and entered Aragorn's bedroom. "Still holding a grudge for that time I pushed you into a huge snow bank on Caradhras and ran away on the snow, leaving you stuck there for a couple hours?"
Boromir was already looking through Aragorn's closet when he came into the room. He was currently trying to move some clothes out of the way.
"Actually, no. The grudge is from that little war you and Aragorn waged against Jack and me. If I'm not mistaken, you stole my pants while I was changing for gym and threw them into the girl's washroom."
"Oh, yeah," he said, remembering the event and chuckling. "But you got me back by actually locking me in the girl's washroom. All's fair in love and war, isn't it? Do you want me to help you with that!"
Boromir was wrestling with the clothes in the closet the whole time they were talking and Legolas couldn't bear to see him struggle with something so simple any longer. He let go of the clothes and sighed in defeat.
"Beaten by a bunch of clothes... How pathetic. Well, if you don't mind, Legolas."
Carefully walking past him, Legolas easily pushed most of the contents of the closet aside and pulled out things and clothes from inside so he could get to the bottom.
"Aragorn has got to learn how to organize his clothes," he said from inside the closet. Digging at the bottom of a pile, he pulled out Boromir's re-forged sword, his golden belt from Galadriel, bracers that had the White Tree on it, and two cloaks each with a green leaf brooch and he tossed it all at Boromir's semi-transparent feet. "That's all of it, I believe. Too bad Aragorn stuck it all together to make a big, tangled mess."
They both crouched onto the floor and began to dismantle the pile of equipment.
"Galadriel actually found the remaining bits of my sword and put it all back together?" he muttered, voicing his thoughts. He managed to pull the sword from the confusing pile, with Legolas' help, and laid it on the floor. "She truly is an extraordinary elf, even of her stature."
"Actually, Aragorn, Gimli and I picked up the rest of your sword and your things and sent them with your body down the river Anduin." His eyes avoided Boromir's as he tried to untangle the golden belt from a cloak and the bracers. "What, no snide comment?"
"I don't have one. But, thanks, all the same."
Legolas grinned in what he had hoped was a nonchalant way, but he said quite warmly, "You're welcome."
After a few minutes of frustration, Legolas finally managed to separate Boromir's belongings and laid them on the floor. With grim satisfaction, he looked up. "So what're you going to do with them?"
"Use them," he replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"How? You can barely turn a doorknob, let alone use the sword."
Boromir simply took hold of the hilt of his sword and lifted a ghostly counterpart of it. He did the same to his golden belt and his bracers and put them on. He tried picking up a cloak, but it didn't work. Legolas held the other one out to him and he successfully duplicated it.
"Us... ghosts..." he started to explain grimly. "We can only replicate things from the living world to the dead one if the item was ours. That's something I learned from a few specters that hang around here."
"What do they say about all this?"
"They say that a single beam of Light can't stand a chance against the oncoming Darkness. But I told them that the world doesn't have a single beam of Light; it has nine. And I also told them that there's going to be a hell of a lot more rays of Light to battle the Darkness soon enough."
"All right, Boromir!" he said approvingly. He stood up and looked out the window. The sky was starting to turn from a dark, inky blue to a steely gray. He started to see tinges of gold on the horizon. "Dawn is coming. Are you going to tell me about whatever it is that you know or not?"
"Didn't I tell you? Or did you simply forget?" Boromir got up and floated out the window. "I'll show you."