To My Wonderful Reviewers
Erulasse: Thank you for the lumberjack song, I'm sorry I wasn't able to use it in this chapter, but I'll think of somewhere to fit it in in future. As for the rest of your review….well, just….thanks, I guess! Hail Barney!
ShellMel: Thankies thankies, recognition and praise just make my day… did you know, dogs also crave recognition and praise?
fetch-thranduilion: Sorry I didn't specify, I meant Visa as in credit card. That's the whole point! Aragorn gave Mandos his credit card as kind of a ransom payment, so he could keep his life back in M E. hope that cleared it up 4 ya.
blaze-firestorm: Oh…my…god, that is an extremely funny (yet at the same time unbelievably scary) story! I mean, like, Arrie's already got 2 girls hanging on him in his own world…the crotch thing was just…like…weird…but anyway thank you very much for your reviews and I hope you enjoy chap. 6.
mrsblonde1503: have no idea what you said, but thanks anyway! hehehehehehehe!
Now, on wi' de' chappitterie!
Chapter 6: Strawberry-Scented Shampooeyness
Aragorn walked around inspecting things and looking important alongside Théoden, who was coincidentally also looking important, with his chest stuck out so far that he kept tripping over inanimate objects, such as rocks, children, and loaves of bread. After a while the people started to deliberately put loaves of bread in his way so he would trip over them, and after he had touched them the people would sell them on Ebay as "loaves of bread touched by the King," and so invented the practice of selling items that had (supposedly) once been within the required 50-foot radius of a celebrity.
Aragorn was pale and feverish, which Legolas noticed.
"Aragorn, you must rest," he urged. "You're no us to us half alive!"
The man in question turned and looked at him with a haggard expression.
"Don't you get it yet? My one love is leaving me forever, I'm trying hard not to fall in love with another woman, the other woman isn't helping, and it looks like I and all my friends are going to die before morning, so, in short, I'm depressed. I am going to completely expend my strength now to save others, so that when I die of exhaustion there will be somebody to mourn me. Get it?"
"Got it."
"Good!"
4 HOURS LATER
"Farmers, farriers, stable boys. These are no soldiers," Aragorn lamented as he walked away from okay-ing weapons. "And look at their weapons: chopsticks? spatulas? These are no fighting implements; they look more like kitchen implements, as do the men."
"Most have seen too many falls on the linoleum," Gimli observed in a low voice.
"Or too few. Look at them. They're frightened of pain. You can see it in their eyes. And they should be: 300, against 10,000?" Legolas stated, once more proclaiming himself as The One and Only Captain Obvious! Aragorn was too dense to realize that Legolas was asking a rhetorical question, so he answered it.
"They have a better chance defending themselves here than at Edoras," he replied in Elvish.
Captain Obvious was unconvinced. "They cannot pin dis plight. They are all going to be made into pie!" he said despairingly.
"Then I shall die as one of them!" Aragorn yelled back at him. He looked at Legolas, and then turned on his heel and left the room.
Legolas tried to follow, but in the process slipped on the linoleum and garnered a beautiful bruise on his backside. "Nothing I haven't had before; I'm not afraid of pain!" he said cheerfully.
In a different who-knows-where of Helm's Depp, the King was readying himself so he would look important on the field of battle.
"Every villager able to wield scissors or a chopstick has been sent to the armory," Gamling informed him, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "My Lord?"
"Who am I, Gamling?" Théoden seemed a bit deranged, but Gamling was smart enough to know that you have to be very careful in humoring crazy people, so he answered:
"You are our King, Sire."
"And do you trust your King?"
"Your men, my Lord, will follow you to whatever end."
"To whatever end," murmured Théoden, with a grimly pleased tone. Then, to Gamling's surprise, he started singing…
"There's something happenin' here,
What it is, ain't exactly clear,
There's an orc with a sword over there,
a-Tellin' me, I got to beware…
I think it's time we Stop, Children,
What's that sound, everybody watch Rohan go down..."
He trailed off, then turned and smiled at Gamling wanly. It was going to be a long night.
In yet another who-knows-where of Helm's Depp, Aragorn sat on some steps and watched young boys being prepared for battle by older warriors. One boy was handed a sword and looked at it confusedly. He didn't seem to know what to do with it.
"Give me your sword," Aragorn told him. He swung it around a couple of times, then concentrated very hard for a few seconds and succeeded in drawing a pink elephant in the air.
"You see that?" he told the boy, going over to stand next to him and pointing to the odd-looking 2-D mammalian specimen. "That," he said forcefully, "is a pink elephant. I'm not sure why, but that is supposed to signify that there is always hope." He clapped the boy on the shoulder, handed him his sword back, and disappeared down some steps, leaving behind a thoroughly bemused but very much encouraged young Soldier of Rohan.
He walked down the steps and into a chamber in which he had temporarily stored his battle gear. Just as he was about to reach for his double-whammy orc-choppin' battle-winnin' Elven-named fire-breathin' butt-kickin' trusty-with-no-rusty sword, it was handed to him by Legolas.
"Forgive me; I was wrong to despair," said the worthy elf.
"There is nothing to forgive," Aragorn said with a smile. They clasped each other on the shoulders in a gesture of goodwill, and just as slash fans were about to start holding their breathsesssss, Gimli waddled in with chain-mail stuck in a bundle across his chest. He looked rather like a little dwarf-woman and Legolas and Aragorn had a hard time to keep from laughing.
"If I had time I'd get this adjusted…" he trailed off as the hopelessly long mail slid to the floor. "It's a little tight across the chest," he observed, while looking helplessly at the others, who were still having a hard time of not smiling.
Suddenly, a horn sounded through the thick walls. "That is no orc horn," Captain Obvious deduced in yet another brilliant deduction. Duh; of course the screenwriters couldn't bring in the Uruk-Plaque when Gimli only had his armor half on.
Anyway Legolas immediately ran out of the room, closely followed by Aragorn, leaving Gimli stranded in his completely dysfunctional chain mail. "Pfft, always happens," he muttered to himself, and waddled over to the plush couch complete with 50-inch TV equipped with a DVD player and shelvescontaining every movie made in the history of man (except LOTR, of course, because then he would have to watch it, and that would make the plot line of this story too complicated to comprehend, and Gimli would become a mary-sue).
"Well, maybe getting left behind isn't so bad after all," he chuckled heartily.
"Open the gate!" yelled a guard, and the great doors creaked open, revealing the 1,000 or so elves who marched inside in formation, their leader falling back and out of the line to greet the King, who had just come down some stairs (lot of stairs in that place).
"How is this possible?" queried the awestruck Théoden.
"I bring word, from Elrond of Rivendell. An alliance once existed between Elves and Men. Long ago, we fought, and died, together. We come to honor that allegiance," he said as he shifted his gaze to Aragorn who was now practically jogging down the stairs (funny how that man has a tendency to hurry up and down stairs; methinks he's afraid of stairs).
"Mae Govannen, Haldir!" he said. "You are most welcome." As he said the last part, he looked over to where four Elves were carrying a bathtub towards a passage which led into the chamber with the complete home entertainment system. He turned back to Haldir with a questioning gaze.
"Oh, that," he said with a smirk. "Elven non-secret. Do you not wonder how we keep looking so nice all the time? Well it ain't magic," he ended as two elves walked past carrying ten Wal-Mart bags full of strawberry-scented shampoo. Suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream, and the laughter quickly died on Aragorn's lips. He and Haldir exchanged a look, and ran up the stairs towards the origin of the sound. They rounded the corner into the chamber where the Elves had carried the bathtub, and were met with one of those once-in-a-lifetime hilarity scenarios.
Gimli sat on the floor, covered in pink strawberry-scented shampoo. The room fairly reeked of it. Opposite to him was an elf, presumably one of the ones who had helped carry in the washing accessories. His golden hair was – unbelievably – standing up on end, like he had put on a shirt which contained a lot of static; of course this may have been partly due to the fact that he was hanging from the rafters in the ceiling, his knuckles white with the effort. Haldir immediately rushed to his comrade, while Aragorn tiptoed carefully through the spilled shampoo, eventually reaching his friend.
"Gimli?" He shook the dwarf. Gimli opened his eyes – and his nose.
"Eeeuuuguffempufflleduffmedifuddlebathtubelfy!" he roared incredulously. "Baruk Khazad!"
Aragorn stared at him. "D'what?" he asked. "Gimli, what happened?"
"Well I'll tell ya," said the dwarf after sitting up and recovering from his momentary shock. "This here Elf is too flighty to be around battle, that's what. He comes in 'ere, quiet like, carryin' a wallopin' big bag o' this here disgusting goop, and when he sees me, perfectly normal, doing my yoga, he gives a yell, see, and that startled me and brought me down to the floor, but not before this here Elf" – here he sent a dirty look in his direction – "drops his bag o' bottles, and I fell and rolled in 'em, so there it is."
Haldir had succeeded in getting the other elf down from the ceiling, and he now stood in the middle of the room looking sheepish.
"What he says is truth; I was so startled that I dropped my bag of strawberry-scented shampoo, and he had the great misfortune to collide with it," he said meekly.
"Wait a minute," said Aragorn, his brows creasing into thoughtful lines. "Gimli, did you say you do yoga?"
15 minutes later all four of the companions had very light heads and very sore stomach muscles – laughter can conquer anyone if they do it hard enough.
1,300 soldiers, Elven and Rohirric, stood on the battlements of Helm's Depp. The women and children were safe in the caves; for that they were glad, for the Uruk-Plaque could now be seen, marching relentlessly towards the mighty fortress that was the last wall between them and Rohan's survival.
1,300 soldiers were briefly illuminated in the first flash of lightning; 1,300 soldiers sighed when the first few drops of rain tinkled on their armor. Things looked about as bleak as possible; 1,300 soldiers reflected upon how strange it was that one night could change the fortunes of the world.
One of the elves started humming, softly at first, then rising into full-fledged song.
"Some things in life are bad, they can really make you mad;
Some things just make swear and curse.
When you're feeling in the dumps,
Don't be silly, chumps,
Just purse your lips and whistle, that's the thing,
And…" Here the elves on either side of him joined in, and in turn the elves next to them caught on, and the singing spread like wildfire. Eventually Gimli's deep baritone could be heard among the beautiful voices of the elves, belting out the song with real enthusiasm. Legolas laughed next to him: he could still smell the strawberry-scented shampoo. He would be known ever after as the living air freshener.
The Uruk-Plaque could hear something, only a hum at first, but then it rose into raucous singing, floating down upon them from the battlements.
"Always look on the bright side of life!
Always look on the bright side of life!
Always look on the bright side of death!
A-Just before you draw your terminal breath!
Life's a piece of dung,
When you look at it,
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true;
You'll see it's all a show,
Keep on laughing as you go,
Just remember that the last laugh is on you!
And…"
It went on raining.
The Uruk-Plaque were dumbfounded, but their captains drove them on. They only stopped when they were within a bowshot of the walls. Everything went quiet. Then they started they blood-chilling war taunt; they used no words, they didn't need them. All they had to do was beat their spears in time on the hard earth, pounding fear into their enemies' hearts.
One weak old man suddenly let go his arrow. It flew as if in slow motion toward the Uruk lines; when it hit, the sound of metal piercing metal was almost sickening. The Uruks growled and yelled and ran towards the walls.
They relentlessly pulled ladders up on to the battlements, but as the first orc neared the top, he suddenly felt a thud on his helm, then he fell back with a groan, stunned, onto his comrades coming up the ladder behind him. The same thing was happening all up and down the battlements; each time an orc neared the top, he was hurled back by a flower pot full of delphiniums. Soon, however, the Uruks below started using their powerful crossbows to send black-feathered arrows hurtling up to smite the flowerpot throwers.
We will leave them there, in the blackness, rain pelting down upon them – hey, at least it's keeping the dirt off!
Author's Note: I am sosososososososososososo sorry for not updating in so long! I feel so guilty, I know what it's like when an author doesn't update for weeks and weeks… I've just been extremely busy lately, and every time I sat down to the computer I had to get up again, so I just never got it done. Hopefully I've made up for my tardiness in quality and length of this chapter – 6 pages, phew! Anyway, dinner calls…
ArchimedesFactotum