Disclaimer: See chapter one…but in case you forgot, I own nothing you recognize.

A/N: Italics symbolize flashback scenes


"Noel, you're going to chew your fingers off at the rate you're going."

I looked up at Jack, and then down to my fingernails, which were withstanding my torture of biting them off amazingly well. I frowned when I saw the small amount of blood collecting around the top crest of my right index finger.

"I'm hungry." I responded, sucking on my bleeding finger.

Jack rolled his eyes at my response. "That's surprising, considering that you single-handedly cleaned out Adrian's supply of double chocolate chunk cookies last night."

I shrugged. Adrian was a God. He kept cookies in his house. I loved cookies with my life.

I saw that the discussion had ended when Jack wandered off, to pester Zeke I would imagine. The thought of someone annoying Zeke was rather far-fetched though. Zeke was the king of being annoying. This comes from experience. I looked around distractedly, silently noting what our surroundings were.

What I saw was trees, lots and lots and lots and lots of trees. Absolutely bloody everywhere!

Inventory of surroundings complete-wait…there were some leaves too, shame on me for leaving that out.

I paused in my thoughts when it occurred to me that I was inventorying my surroundings. Wow, was I bored. Continuing to look around I saw Erick and Adrian talking together. Actually, it looked like they were arguing together, but small difference. Adrian was motioning around with his hands, to which Erick responded my rolling his eyes and looking upwards in a "why me?" gesture. I saw Erick respond briefly, whatever he said appearing to calm Adrian down considerably. Ah, Erick, the one sensible person in the group. Without him we'd probably all be dead. I guess his calm comes from his philosophy that you learn more if you don't interfere. For the normal person that means shut up and you may learn something. I tried doing that once actually. I didn't succeed. When I told Erick he laughed and told me that's because I'll never shut up for anyone, which I had to admit was true.

"What are you so focused on?"

I turned around and smiled at Erick, who had apparently finished his conversation with Adrian, before responding to his question. "I don't know actually. It's like," I paused as I looked for a word to describe how I was feeling. "Really weird." I finished, nodding slightly, satisfied with my answer. "What were you and 'Drian talking about for so long?" I questioned, looking over Erick's shoulder at Adrian, who was pacing back and forth.

"Stuff."

"How descriptive." I said dryly.

"Well, we were." Erick replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Tell me." I demanded childishly.

Erick smiled slightly. "Fine. Not much to say. We were trying to figure out what to do now, seeing as we are in a random forest with, from what we can tell, nobody around. The situation brings up a few problems."

"No shit. Did you think up a good solution to our little dilemma?"

Erick took a deep breath as if he was going to say something, but then slowly let it out. "No."

"Joy to the world. So we're just going to sit here with no idea what to do until one of us has a brain blast and figures out a way to get back?"

"Sounds fun."

"You expected anything less?"

"Never."

I sighed and fell back onto the moist ground. It was at that second that the severity of the situation we were in hit me. We were honestly lost, with nowhere to go. And worse, the sun was starting to go down. Just what we needed, to be stuck in the middle of God knows where in the middle of the night with God knows what kind of animals. We were doing really well.

"Sun's setting." I pointed out to the guys, all of whom were now sitting closely nearby, almost identical expressions of worry and fear on each of their faces.

"Fuck." I heard Adrian mutter under his breath.

I sat against a tree trunk, my legs crossed in front of me, nervously playing with a lock of my hair that had escaped the long ponytail I had pulled my long strands of hair into earlier. I suppressed a slight shiver that went up my spine, half out of the cold that was settling as night fell, and half out of the chill deep in my bones that had slowly begun to settle when I realized how much trouble we were in.

"You cold?" My gaze, previously being occupied by the sight of random tree number 2374, shot to Jack, who was holding out his beloved duster jacket to me. Jack always wore that jacket. The only time I had seen him without it was when he was on stage and it was hot wherever we were playing. Therefore the fact that he was offering the black, leather duster to me in order to cover my bare arms, seeing as my dear fleece was back in normal land, was absolutely more than incredible. It was too good of an opportunity to give up.

"Thanks." I responded, grabbing the jacket from Jack's grasp and slipping it on. "Won't you be cold?" I asked Jack.

"I'll be fine. No worries on it." He said, winking at me.

The group of us sat in silence for a few minutes, each of us being left to our own thoughts on why we were here are how we were going to get back, I suppose.

After another few minutes I turned to Zeke, his gaze focused on nothing. "Zeke?" Upon hearing his name, the blue haired teen looked at me. The blue hair, in case you were wondering, which you probably weren't, was due to Zeke's apparent need to change his hair color every two weeks. This week it was a deep blue. Apparently Zeke's true hair color was blonde, something I could only imagine in my nightmares, as I had never seen his hair blonde in all the time I have known him. I've seen it every other color of the rainbow, even fluorescent pink for a short while, but never blonde. It was something I had an issue imagining.

Zeke grunted a response to me. How enthusiastic.

"You're good at telling stories, right?"

Zeke's eyebrows rose. "So I'm told." He answered, his tone voicing his curiosity. "Why?"

"Tell me a story." I demanded childishly.

I heard a slight chuckle for Zeke. "Why?"

"I dunno, to distract us from our problem I guess…" I trailed off, suddenly feeling stupid.

"C'mon Ezekiel, tell a story." Adrian insisted, using Zeke's full name, which he hated.

Zeke lightly punched Adrian in the arm. "Shut up dude." He said, pretending to be angry, even though his light tone spoke differently. Zeke looked at me. "What kind of story?"

"A good one."

Erick laughed. "He'll probably need something more specific than a good story."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine." I sighed, pretending to be annoyed. "How about the story of when Samantha combined your gel and paint together."

"How many times have I told this?" Zeke asked, pretending to be impatient. "Ok, anyways, so you all know how this starts, it was in October earlier this year…"


Zeke's POV:

"Samantha! What did you do!" I shouted, my voice echoing through the house. Angrily I stormed into my ten year old sister's room and shook her awake.

"What?" She sleepily replied.

"Did you add paint to my gel Samantha?"

I heard her suppress a giggle. "No, of course I didn't! I'm a good little sister," From hell, I silently added, "Who would never inconvenience her big brother in such a way. Especially since I know that you don't have much time and the mornings and wouldn't be able to wash the paint out."

"That's exactly why you did it! Because you know I have no time to wash it out!" I pulled on my hair, half wanting to rip it out due to the fact that the formerly plain, dark purple spikes had been streaked bright orange in random places, due to apparently the presence of some very fast drying paint in my gel.

"Why would I want to do that big brother?"

Because you're a demon spawned from the deepest pit of hell, I thought to myself, but not voicing my thoughts aloud, not wanting to get grounded on top of having purple and orange hair. "Because you know I would have to go to school like this." I said.

I saw my sister shrug.

I wanted to kill her so bad.

"Zeke, you have to go!" I heard our mom call from downstairs.

"Good-bye Zeke!" Samantha said, almost cheerfully as I trudged out of her room and down the stairs.

"Goodness Zeke! What happened?" My mother questioned, upon catching sight of my my hair as I attempted to make a silent escape to my car.

"Mix up." I said simply, hoping that would be a good enough answer for her.

Apparently it was, as my mom said nothing more, she just stood there, staring at my hair in raw horror. It was only when I caught my reflection in my car window as I was getting in did I see the real reason she was in shock.

Samantha had apparently decided a haircut was in order as well, as part of my hair looked like it had been run over by something akin to a law mower. I swore softly, realizing I had nothing to cover my new hairstyle up with.

I drove to school in tense silence, wondering at the field day my friends were going to have with me today. And I was right, as upon walking in I noticed Noel, Jack, Adrian, and Erick, all standing by my locker, looks of both horror and hilarity upon their faces.

"What the fuck happened to your head?" Good morning to you to Jack.

"Samantha."

My friends all had different looks on their faces. Actually, Erick, Jack, and Adrian all looked as if they were going to die from laughter, while Noel appeared to be wincing with sympathy, although I could tell she was holding back laughter as well.

"You are aware that you are going to have to play the show tonight like that?" I managed to hear through Jack's hysterical bouts of laughter.

I could feel myself pale. Joy to the world.


Back to Noel's POV:

"And that's my story!" Zeke finished triumphantly with a grin.

"Perfecto!" I said, remembering Zeke's hairstyle on that day with amazing clarity.

"Glad you liked it." He said.

The other guys were all smiling at the ever-so-clear memory of Zeke's hair that day. Zeke actually hadn't been forced to play the show that night with his hair, much to his relief. Adrian had found a spare beanie in his car, and, for something like twenty dollars, allowed Zeke to borrow it for the show. But the whole situation was completely hilarious.

I glanced around, suddenly aware that the sun had almost completely set, and dark was approaching with an almost haunting quality.

That's when I heard it.

My eyes narrowed and then widened dramatically when I found my predictions correct.

There were people coming.

I listened closely to them approach, listening to their voices mix with the voices of the guys in the band. I heard two of the people talk about finding a place to camp for the night soon, which ultimately confused me.

Unfortunately for me, I hadn't noticed that the people were as close as they were until I saw and arrow pointed right between my eyes.

"Holy shit!" I heard one of the guys, Jack I think, yell. At the moment, holy shit seemed like a very good think to be thinking. Having an arrow pointed at you by some random dude you didn't know at all was rather unnerving.

I moved slightly in order to see if the other guys were getting the same magnificent view of the end of an arrow as I was, but I quickly found the arrow grow closer to my head.

"Do not move." The command came from the person who was holding the arrow that was pointed at me. I noted that the voice had an almost musical quality to it, a weird observation in my position, but that was me, giving off weird observations all the time.

"Noel, shut up!"

"What do you mean Adrian?"

"You have been saying various forms of 'Oh my God' for the past ten seconds. Please shut up."

Oh. I hadn't even noticed that I had been saying anything. That's weird. And a little cool. Alarming, but still cool.

I heard someone say something in a language I didn't recognize, but I loved whoever said it, as the moment he said whatever he said, the dude pointing his sharp arrow at be brought it down to his side. I noted nervously that he kept it notched. I silently studied the guys closer, both amazed and horrified at what I saw. The man had long blonde hair, almost as long as mine, and was really tall. But there were two things that I saw on the man that totally freaked me out. One, his clothing. His clothes looked like they were pulled from a history book. And two, his ears. The man, if he actually was one, had pointed ears. I stumbled backwards, stepping on Erick's foot.

"What's wrong with you? You look like you're going to faint or be sick." I heard the note of panic in Erick's voice as he looked over my, probably very pale, face.

"Erick, guys, we are in deep shit."


A/N: Hey! There's chapter three for you guys who are reading this! I hope you guys still like the story at this point and you aren't planning on going off and running and screaming. Now to thank my dear reviewers…

cat.1.d. - Hey! I'm glad you liked the story, and I'm really flattered that you think of my story as one of the best "people in Middle Earth" stories, as there are so many of them! They're almost starting to take over. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Ravyn-Spirit- Nice to hear from you again. I'm glad you aren't planning on burning my story to little ciders anytime soon! I love name Noel as well, I dunno, bonds with me somehow. That makes no sense…How 'bout I call you Noel from now on? ;) I'll update soon!

moody- Also good to hear from you again. I'm glad you are still enjoying the story and that you feel that my chapters are getting better and better! As for the whole thing with why Noel's mom let's her stay with the guys, one of my good friends made me ask myself why Noel's mom wasn't concerned about all the time she spends with the band, so…Hope you liked the chapter!

Gives chocolate to reviewers You all rock my world! And thanks to those who don't leave a review, but just keep reading and enjoy the story! If you like this story you may want to give my other two story/poem/things a shot!

'Till Next Time!

Celebel