The Fellowship of the Squared Circle, I Mean Ring - Chapter 02: Foley Returns with Bad News; Kurt Ships Off
Date Uploaded: 06 December 2004
Chapter 02: Foley Returns with Bad News; Kurt Ships Off
Kurt hadn't done much in the few weeks since JR and Foley the wizard left. For the most part he just latched himself onto the Rock, mostly, and Edge and Christian, and kept spoiling parties left and right.
Now it was after a particularly late party, well late in his standards. Good Hobbits should always be in bed before nine in the evening, his mother had told him; it was already almost ten! Hence he was walking home alone. For one thing, everybody else was so drunk half of them hadn't made it out the front door of Trish Stratus' house, where the party had been. Kurt, being the milk-drinker that he was, was the only one who could stand on two feet without swaggering and falling over, then ultimately blowing chunks over the side of the road. Maybe there were a few perks to being Kurt. Not too many, but some nonetheless.
So he trotted down to Bag End whistling, opened the gate and then headed for the door. Right about that moment he should have noticed that the front door was ajar and there was a draught coming in from an open window, but well, he didn't. Nobody said he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Kurt walked in and took off his coat, hanging it on the coat hanger. He was about to go into the kitchen to get a glass of milk before going to bed when someone grabbed him from behind, scaring him out of his wits. He let out a squeal that made neighboring houses wonder who was being murdered. To his shock he was wheeled around and came face to face with none other than Foley. "Mick! What the hell…??"
"Where's the Ring??" Foley demanded, cutting him off, looking more agitated than he had ever been in his life.
"The what??" Kurt asked, trying to pry Mick's fingers from his shoulders.
"The Ring, jackass! The one I asked you to hold on to!" Foley yelled, shaking him even more.
"You did?" Kurt asked dumbly. "Ow, hey, stop that, it hurts!"
Foley's response was to shake him even harder, so hard that the Hobbit felt that parts of him were going to come off at the seams. "The one that JR left to you! The one with a capital R! It was in a freakin' envelope! Don't you remember?? I TOLD you to keep it safe! Don't tell me you bartered it off for booze!"
"Couldn't p-p-possibly b-be, I-I don't dr-rink anything b-but m-milk!!" Kurt protested, his teeth chattering from being shaken so much. "Stop shaking me…!"
Frustrated Foley actually stopped, this time taking a deep breath to control his frustration and looking Kurt sternly in the eye. "I'm not playing around, Kurt. I want you to think long and hard. Where is the Ring?"
Kurt rewarded his moment of patience with a blank look.
"So help me, Angle, if you lost that Ring I'll-" Mick dropped him and lifted his stick in a threatening manner. He straightened up, only to promptly hit his head on the ceiling again. "OW! Goddamnit! Curse these low Hobbit ceilings!!"
Fortunately as Foley was rubbing his head sorely a miracle happened and realization dawned on Kurt's face. "Oh, THAT Ring."
"Yes, yes, where is it??" Mick asked expectantly.
Kurt blinked and thought about it, and then his gaze fell on the cluttered desk, which was now piled even higher with Kurt's junk. The Rock may have consented to do neighbors' gardens as community service (and for what he never would tell anyone), but he drew the line at housekeeping. "I think I remember putting it there somewhere," Kurt said.
With a crazed cry Foley sprang for the desk. He frantically swiped everything off it and began to burrow through the mess in a desperate attempt to find the envelope with only a match for light. But after a while he held something up triumphantly. "Here it is!"
Kurt watched as the wizard quickly lit up a fire. "Uh, Foley? Is there something you want to tell me?" he asked, understandably very confused. Foley gave no answer and promptly threw the envelope in the fireplace. Kurt shrieked. "Are you crazy? What'd you do that for?? That's the last thing JR ever gave me!!"
"As well as everything else," Foley reminded him, gesturing to the house. He pushed Kurt away from trying to plunge his hand into the blaze to retrieve the envelope.
"But that Ring's special!" by this time Kurt knew to use the capital R.
"You never even knew about it until I gave it to you!" Mick pointed out.
"Well I want to know about it now! Doesn't that count??"
It was useless to argue with an idiot. Foley sighed and fished out the Ring from the embers by a poker. He turned to Kurt. "It isn't damaged. Now quit whining and hold out your hand."
"Huh?? No way!" Kurt declared. "What do you expect me to do, let you brand me with it?"
"It's quite cool, trust me," Mick assured.
Finally Kurt stopped bitching and reluctantly held out his hand. Foley dropped the Ring into his palm and Kurt let out another godawful yell, and then dropped it like a piece of smoldering charcoal. "It's burning!" he yelled at Foley.
Foley blinked. "Oh," he said simply. "Then I suppose it's a good thing I didn't touch it." He picked it up again by the poker and placed it on the kitchen table. "Now, Kurt, can you see anything on it?"
Kurt, still grumbling and blowing on his smarting hand, went over and peered at it. It was a while before he spoke again. "Nothing," he snapped, "there's nothing on the stupid Ring."
Foley breathed a sigh of relief and slumped into a chair.
"Except for really funky lettering that just appeared around now."
In dread and borderline excitement Foley jumped up, shoved him aside and looked at the Ring. "Aha, I knew it!" he declared, examining the flaming Elvish words carved on the band.
"What?? What is it?" Kurt asked, wondering if it was still a wedding band, only this time an Elvish one. He squinted at the letters and tried to make out if there were two names and a date on it somewhere.
"I've got some good news and some bad news, Kurt. What do you want first?" Mick said, giving a wry smile from across the table.
Kurt didn't like the sound of that or Mick's smile. "Give me the good news first, I suppose."
"All right," Foley sat down on a chair at the table. "What you're looking at is a gold mine, Kurt. Kings, lords, thieving politicians and Bill Gates would pay you a huge amount of money to get a hold of this thing. This Ring is one of a kind."
"Really?" Kurt's face lit up with interest. "Why?"
"It's a Ring of great power; it belonged to the Dark Lord Undertaker himself," Mick explained.
"Cool!" Kurt said, grinning despite his hand. He took the chair opposite Foley. "So what's the bad news?"
"The bad news is that he's looking for it," Mick said, still with that sardonic little smile.
Kurt stopped and looked at him for so long that Foley was afraid that he had had gone into cardiac arrest. Either that or he was trying to gauge if Mick was pulling his leg or not. Finally Kurt spoke again. "Wait, Undertaker was the really bad dude with a huge bike that went around trying to make people respect him, right? I think my mom used to tell me about him…"
"That's right," Mick nodded.
Kurt frowned. "But wasn't he destroyed like how many thousands of years ago?"
"His body was, yeah," Foley said, both of them still staring at the Ring, as if afraid it was going to jump up and bite them. "But believe it or not his spirit wasn't, and now it's out of Mirkwood and back at Mordor; probably got pissed off at the Elves and the spiders or something."
"So he's back, and he wants this?" Kurt pointed to the gold object on the table.
"What do you know? You do catch on quickly," Mick said, not actually meaning to be biting but still a little stunned at their find.
"If he found it on me, what would happen then?" Kurt suddenly asked in dread.
"What else?" Foley said with a shrug. "He'd have to kill you, I suppose."
"What??" Kurt shrieked for the nth time that night. Then he counted to four and forced himself to calm down. "But then he doesn't know it's here, right?" he asked hopefully. Foley said nothing, making Kurt's face fall. "Right, Mick?"
"Er, he knows," Foley answered at length.
"How could he have known???" Kurt wailed, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
"Well, there's someone else who knows about the Ring," Foley said slowly. "Some wretched creature JR stole, I mean, found it from. It's called X-Pac; an unpleasant fellow, always yelling here and there about unjustifiable pushes or something else. It had the Ring for I don't know how long. Then a couple of months ago it was captured by Undertaker's army and with just the threat of gagging it, it spilled everything. Undertaker knows the Ring is here."
"Then you have to take it away from here!" Kurt said, now fully panicked, thrusting the Ring to Foley.
"No!" Foley said, pushing it back with his stick, not even daring to touch the wretched object. "I can't take it!"
"Why not??" Kurt asked, picking up the Ring and looking like he was about to fling it to Foley.
Foley got up and braced himself, so it seemed like the two of them were having a Ping-Pong match on the kitchen table. "And have Undertaker kill me?? What are you, crazy??"
"Oh, so you'd rather he kill me??"
Mick thought about it and shrugged. "Well…"
"Hey, that's not fair! You're supposed to look out for me, right?? JR left me a letter saying that you're now my legal guardian. And now you're bailing out on me just because this ultra-powerful dude who could level Middle-Fed-Earth wants his stupid Ring back??" Kurt half-screamed, half-babbled incoherently.
"In my defense I was drunk the night JR made me sign those documents leaving you to me!" Mick said.
"Take it!" Kurt screamed, flinging the Ring at him.
Foley immediately sent it back with a swing of his stick, but Kurt had already taken a frying pan from the side and batted it back with ease. Years of ducking fruit taunting classmates threw at him as a kid kicked in. The Ring sailed over Foley's head and crashed into the front door as it opened. Foley and Kurt looked at it in dread.
In walked the Rock, patented sunglasses over his eyes. He looked at the two of them, then at the Ring on the floor, and then raised an eyebrow. "What in the blue hell is going on here?"
"Rocky!" Kurt said in relief.
"I told you never to call the Great One Rocky!" Rock snapped automatically at him. He looked at the Ring again. "Is that JR's Ring?"
"How do you know about it?" Kurt asked suspiciously.
"How could the Rock not know about it? He kept pulling it out of his pocket every six seconds wherever he went," Rock said. "It was trim the flowers, finger the Ring. Brag about the Sooners, touch the Ring. Tell you off for playing with his hat, make sure the Ring is still there. The Rock even knows to use the fucking capital R. Everyone in the Shire knew about it!"
"I didn't," Kurt said, blinking.
Rock snorted. "It figures."
"How much did you hear of our conversation?" Foley suddenly asked him, moving forward.
"Every goddamn word, jabroni," Rock responded. "You two were yelling so hard everybody in the entire Shire would have heard of it, if most of them weren't coming home drunk from Trish Stratus' party."
"Speaking of the party, why weren't you there, Rocky?" Kurt asked curiously.
"Mind your own business, Kirk," Rock snapped at him again. "Besides, what else does that skank have that the rest of Hobbiton hasn't seen?"
Foley shook his head. "Well that won't do," he said. He turned back to Kurt. "You'll have to leave, no buts about it." Then he turned back to the Rock. "And it seems like the Rock needs to come with you, he's heard far too much, and he'll do you good in having your back." Out of the two reasons Mick gave, though, the second one was the one he was counting on more. Rock would never talk if questioned, heck he barely gave out anything now.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa…" Rock said, holding a hand up to Mick's face. Well, as close as he could reach up to the wizard, that is. "Did the Rock hear correctly? You're ordering the Rock to come along with that Olympic moron? The Rock doesn't think so. The Rock would rather go over to the town square, build a bonfire and put all of his $500 dollar shirts in it."
Mick didn't doubt that. "I hoped it wouldn't had to have come to this, Rocky," he sighed, moved over to him and whispered something in his ear.
Rock's eyes widened, even over his ridiculously expensive sunglasses, and he jerked around to face the wizard. "You wouldn't dare blackmail the Rock."
"I would and I am, if that's what it takes to make you go with Kurt," Foley said. Kurt was a simpleton but Rock wasn't; he just hoped the latter wouldn't try to kill the former in the long run. He looked at the floor. "Pick up the Ring, Kurt, and this time put it in a safe place."
Kurt obeyed and picked up the Ring, putting it in his breast pocket. "So what do we do now?"
"Pack up," Foley said, starting to dig through a chest of drawers and throwing stuff into bags. "You two are going on a very long trip."
Rock and Kurt looked at each other. Kurt gave him a wide, dorky grin. The Rock groaned.
»»»
"…Now make your way to Bree, there's an inn there run by the name of the Prancing Pony. Do not give out your real names to anyone, you hear? I'll be there waiting for you. Are you sure you both understood everything I said?" Foley asked, looking back to the two who were trailing after his horse.
They were already in the woods bordering Hobbiton, some distance from Bag End. They had hurriedly gotten some supplies, the bare essentials, much to Rock's annoyance, and left. Now Foley had been rattling off directions like a robot on auto-drive and Kurt and the Rock, sick of listening, simply nodded after every statement.
"Good," Foley said, apparently not noticing their lack of attention, and swung up on his horse.
"Wait a minute," Kurt said, stopping him. "Why aren't you coming with us anyway?"
"I have more business to attend to," Foley said. "I must visit the wisest of my order. They're so wise nobody even understands them without a voiceover, but that's not the point. All you need to know is that I'm going, and I will be at Bree when you are," he reared his horse. "Go swiftly, my Hobbits, and may the Force be with you!" he galloped off.
Rock and Kurt watched him go for a while and then turned to each other. "That was from the wrong movie, wasn't it?" Kurt said finally.
"No shit, Kirk Skywalker," Rock replied. He started off down the road without another word.
Kurt hurried to keep up with him. "Hey Rocky, you got everything that Foley said, right?"
"You expected the Rock to listen to that piece of horse's ass?? No the Rock didn't listen to a thing he said!"
"Then what are we supposed to do now??" Kurt asked, frantically trying to recall the instructions. All he got was Mick in his head going, 'Blah-blah-blah Bree, blah-blah-blah Prancing Something, blah-blah-blah voiceover'.
"Keep walking," Rock mumbled grouchily, still trudging along and kicking at stuff in his path.
It was quiet again for a while as they went. Again Kurt broke the silence. "Hey Rocky, I'm glad you're with me on this journey."
"If you're a closet homosexual don't you dare let it come out now," Rock immediately snapped. "The only reason the Rock's here is that Foley unfortunately knows something that could ruin the Rock, and not because of you."
"What was it that Foley whispered to you back in Bag End?" Kurt asked curiously.
"The Rock would sooner kill himself than tell you," was the stubborn declaration.
"If you were dead, how would you be able to tell me?" Kurt then asked, confused.
The Rock groaned. "Somebody shoot the Rock, please…"
And thus the horribly unlikely duo set out.
The next morning all of Hobbiton woke up to find that Kurt had left town. There was much rejoicing that day.
cont'd