Hello, everyone! I'm here trying my hand at humor; please review so I know what I need to work on! Thank you to everyone who has read my previous two stories; if you haven't yet, please check them out. Also, the idioms and phrases in the following story are not suited to Middle Earth; this is intentional. You could probably have figured that out yourself, but I'm pretty well known as the big-mouth-who-can't-take-a-modern-phrase-in-Tolkien-context, and I don't want to be called a hypocrite as well.
Disclaimer; I do not own any of the characters or settings and am not responsible for their actions :) Manwe's bling, however, is all mine.
P.S. Does anyone know how to puctuate this sentance; "Oh no!" S/she excalimed. Is it a capital or lowercase 's'? Please let me know; I have done it both ways in this story.
Let's see...anything else? Oh, yes. REVIEW! Now that I've got THAT out of my system...
Aragorn hacked his way through masses of orcs, searching the wall behind him for any familiar faces. Legolas and Gimli were nowhere to be found, but the future king was more annoyed than concerned at his friends' absence. The entire day, up to and including this battle, was going compleltely amiss, and Aragorn would feel far safer with his friends backing him up.
A shout of surprise caught Aragorn's attention. With one quick swipe, he eradicated a good percentage of Sauraman's army, then rushed off in the direction of sound.
He was forced to dispatch another thirty orcs or so as he battled his way to the place where Eomer was surrounded by the enemy. The Marshal was currently going head-to-head with an Uruk-hai roughly twice his size as the others closed in.
"Eomer!" Aragorn shouted.
Eomer turned and flashed a beaming smile, missing about 10 excellent opportunities to finish off the Uruk. Aragorn rushed in and severed the sword arm of the orc about to skewer the rider.
"Hey!" Eomer pouted, as Aragorn saved his posterior three times in rapid succession. "Go find your own orcs! I'm doing fine over here!"
"No, you aren't," Aragorn panted. He paused to stick his sword through the neck of the Uruk sneaking up behind him. "You do realize this is the fifth"--he broke off to decapitate another orc--"I mean, sixth time in less than a minute I've had to rescue you?"
Eromer stuck his tongue out and threw himself into valiant but otherwise completely useless combat.
The another voice sounded, this one calling a retreat.
"What?" Aragorn asked in surprise. "I thought we were winning!"
"I don't know about you, but I know I'm winning!" Eomer answered, finally killing his opponent. Aragorn had the nagging suspicion it had laughed itself to death.
"Then keep it up," he said to Eomer. "I'm going to see what's going on back there." He ran across the battlefield, dodging thorough the orcs, who had unexplainably turned their attention towards the wall and given him an unhindered route to the keep.
There, Aragorn found Theoden running around in progressively smaller circles and babbling incomprehensibly.
"King Theoden..." Aragorn began.
"Retreat, retreat, we're all gonna die!" The king shrieked, still running in circles.
"Actually, I think we're almost winning."
Theoden skid to a halt. "We are? And how would you know?"
"I was just out there, and I really think..."
"I don't care what you think. Last I checked, I was king of Rohan, and you were some annoying little Ranger who wants to be king of Gondor. So go on and do whatever it is you were doing, and I will do my job, thank you very much!" Then he turned and screamed, "Retreat, we're all gonna die, its a lost cause," and similar pessimistic mumbo-jumbo. With a long-suffering sigh, Aragorn left the wall in search of orcs to annialate.
Suddenly, there was a high-pitched squeal as someone hugged him from behind. "O-M-G! It's Estel!"
Aragorn pulled out of Arwen's chokehold. "What in Mordor are you doing here?"
"Fighting, silly!" Arwen giggled. "What else would I be doing?"
"I thought you were going to the Undying Lands!"
"Apparently, so did daddy."
Hundreds of questions crowed Aragorn's head, but a rather large orc with eyebrows reminisant of Elrond's appeared behind Arwen, and the Ranger nearly collided with his betrothed as she gorily disemboweled it.
"Ewww!" She squealed, then ran off before Aragorn could say anything. Well, he decided, there was really no reason to worry. If worst came to worst, she might save Eomer from certain death.
He had just come to this conclusion when the ground beneath him promptly opened up.
Upon regaining consciousness a few moments later, Aragorn took in his surroundings. He was in a cave of some sort, encircled with glittering stalagmites and stalactites. Off in the distance, he heard a voice singing a catchy jingle.
"Hi-ho, hi-ho, a-killin' orcs I go! With elven blades and hand grenades hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho!"
"Gimil?" Aragorn asked groggily.
The singing stopped abruptly as a short figure materialized out of the darkness. "What do you want?"
"Aren't you supposed to be helping fend off the orcs?"
Gimili snorted. "Shesh! Just because I'm singing something, you can't expect me to actually do it!"
"I thought that..."
"You quite obviously thought wrong. Now go find some orcs to kill. I'm otherwise occupied...oh look! A shiney..." Glassy-eyed, Gimili wanted off into the cavern's depths.
Aragorn dusted himself off and examined the hole in the cavern's ceiling far above him through which he had fallen. There was no way he could see to pull himself up, so he reluctantly followed the sound of Gimli's ghastly singing.
After crawling through what must have been miles worth of tunnels, he found himself face-to-face with Eowyn, quite literally.
"Thank the Valar!" He exclaimed, nearly hugging her in relief. "I'm trying to find a way up to the battle."
So am I," Eowyn answered haughtily. Then her face brightened. "Hey, I know! If you convince Uncle Theoden to let me fight, I'll show you the way out of here!"
"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Aragorn warned, thinking of Arwen and what might happen if his betrothed ran into the Rohan woman.
"You don't know the way out, either," Eowyn pointed out.
They glowered at each other for a moment before Aragorn threw his hands up in the air.
"Fine. You show me the way out, and you can run off and kill as many orcs as you like. I'll keep your uncle and brother from noticing. Deal?"
"Deal!" Eowyn exclaimed, brimming with sunshine. She pulled Aragorn into a tight hug. "Come on, this way!"
They wound their way through even more low tunnels, down a precaroius ladder, over a rope bridge, under a busy road and up an elevator before finding themselves right along the inside of the curtain wall. "Thanks..."Aragorn began, but Eowyn was already skipping away, gleefully decapitating Uruk-hai right and left.
Massaging his temples, Aragorn ran up the stairs to the wall. The battle didn't appear to be going well in the least; there was an unexplained hole in the defenses with a large banner proclaiming "Welcome Orcs!" Theoden's gibbering had gone so high-pitched as to be beyond the threshold of human hearing.
"Yo-yo, my bro!" A strange voice said just over Aragorn's left shoulder. The Ranger turned to see a tall elf with long silver hair and a gigantic golden rune around his neck. It appeared to be an 'S' crossed with two vertical lines and encrusted with diamonds.
"Yeah, you!" The Elf said, snapping the gold chain with his thumbs. "Just sos y'all know, your Haldir homie's about to kick the proverbial bucket. Just thought y'all might wanna know that." Then he disappeared.
Realizing he had just been in the presence of Manwe himself, Aragorn consciously resisted the urge to sink to his knees and instead began searching for Haldir.
"Does anybody know where Haldir is?" He shouted. The Elves around him shrugged, a few pointing in the direction of the keep. Aragorn leapt off the wall (not very gracefully, as was noted by the Elves) and ran to the center of Helm's Deep.
In the Great Hall, a strange sight awaited him. Legolas and Haldir were sitting at a table, sipping something warm from cups marked with curious emblems and the word "Starbucks" across the rim. Haldir was shooting rubber bands at a tapestry of Eorl the Not-All-There; Legolas was using a nail file to engrave his name in the table-top.
"There you two are!" Aragorn complained. The two Elves guiltily looked up from their vandalism. "Haldir, Manwe just showed up and pronounced your death eminent."
"Don't mind him!" Legolas interrupted, admiring a particularly large and intricate LG. "He's pretty much always wrong. Ever since that Morgoth incident he's been kind of, you know..." Legolas rotated his finger in the air next to his ear in the universal symbol for mental instability.
Haldir laughed so hard he chocked on his coffee and died.
"Then again," Legolas amended, glancing at his newly deceased companion, "I could be wrong about that."
Before Aragorn could respond, a swarm of orcs burst through the doors and surrounded the table. The Ranger whipped out his sword as Legolas quickly fashioned a makeshift bow with his nail file and a rubber band.
The orcs glared threateningly.
They glared back.
All the glaring nonsense continued for about five minutes before Arwen and Eomer burst through the door.
"Die, vile orc scum!" Eomer cried. "This room is half full of em' buggers! There's enough for both of us!"
"Yeah!" Arwen giggled. "Though I like to see it as half-empty..."
Between the two Elves and the two Men, the two hundred orcs were dead in well under five minutes.
"Great job, team!" Eomer declared proudly, giving the sniggering Arwen a high five. The two of them skipped happily out of the room, nearly running--er, skipping--over a flustered Eowyn.
"Who's in charge here?" She demanded. Legolas and Aragorn pointed at each other, announcing "It's all his fault!" in rapid succession.
"Who's in charge?" Lady Bitter Irony asked, appearing in the fanfic for no particular reason. "I thought he played first base."
Eowyn rolled her eyes. "You're all idiots. Anyway, I'm officially taking over command of this place as of now. If Theoden notices--which I doubt--throw him in a hole in the ground!"
"I don't think..." Aragorn began, but Eowyn had already left.
"Tough luck," Legolas said, sipping his coffee. "Well, who's up for throwing Theoden in a hole in the ground?"
Aragorn shook his head. "Whatever."
The Elf tossed his coffee cup onto the table, pocketed his nail file, and cheerfully went off to find the King of Rohan.
Aragorn wearily sank into Legolas's chair, pointedly ignoring the surrounding carnage. Off in the distance, he heard a distinctive high-pitched squeal and ominous 'thump' as Theoden was--quite literally--brought down a level.
"Waz'up, my man?" Manwe asked, popping into existence across the table.
"Manwe!"
The Vala waved his hand absently. "That's my name, its all the same, insanity's my game. So, my foreboding forecast came true after all, hey? Sometimes I get lucky like that."
Aragorn nodded miserably, flicking a rubber band. "Everything's going wrong. Eowyn and Arwen are trying to take charge of this battle, and Eomer's suicidal. Legolas just threw Theoden into the mines. Gimil's gone mineral obsessed. What in Middle Earth..."
"Not as to make light of your problems, buddy, but look out the window over there."
And lo! out of the west like the rising of the sun if the earth spun backwards came Gandalf, bringing with him reinforcements!
"Thank you Valar!" Aragorn exclaimed.
"Don't mention it," Manwe said, and with a snap of his bling, he disappeared.
From that point on, the battle finally started going Aragorn's way. Eowyn proved a much worthier leader than Theoden; the temporarily displaced king found solace in the comforting shininess of the glittering caves. Eomer and Arwen worked together to slay many foes. Legolas convinced Gimli to come up to the wall and help shoot rubber bands at the orcs. Haldir remained dead; however, this did little to diminish the pointedly festive attitude of the defenders. Aragorn, seeing that most everything was under control, went to his temporary residence in the keep for some much-needed rest, mentally reminding himself never to get involved in other people's wars again.
As he lay in bed, he hummed a jaunty tune to himself; Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to sleep I go...with rubber bands and less demands hi-ho, hi-ho...