Chapter 09: The Council of Vince McMahon
As stated previously, Kurt was summoned to a secret meeting somewhere in Vince's house the very next day. However the Rock didn't like to be left out, so he hid himself in some bushes to eavesdrop. Hey, for a supposed secret meeting, the venue could have been a little more discreet; it was held on a freakin' porch, anybody could see it. Even Edge and Christian had hidden themselves behind the archway where they were in almost plain sight.
In the meeting there were gathered Men, Elves and Dwarves alike. Kurt sat in a chair and felt very unimportant while the other folk talked about their lives like a surge in the orc-infestation to the north and grumbled on the ridiculously low wages they received. Then Vince suddenly called for attention and motioned to Kurt. "Bring forth the Ring," he said.
Kurt nodded and stood up. He dipped his hand into his breast pocket and found to his horror that the Ring wasn't there. He began to pat his garments up and down, muttering a sheepish, "One moment," to Vince and the others. The rest of the council gave each other weird looks while Vince sighed.
Kurt spotted Rock among the bushes. He slowly edged over and whispered frantically, "Hey Rocky, where's the Ring?"
"They put it on a chain around your neck when you were out cold, jabroni," the Rock snapped. "And the Rock told you never to call the Great One Rocky! Now get back there before you blow the Rock's cover!"
"Oh, right," Kurt said, relieved and heading back to the middle of the council. He took hold of the chain around his neck and pulled it out. Then he took another five minutes trying to get the clasp undone and take the Ring off. Rock, Edge and Christian groaned, while the other members of the council shifted impatiently.
Finally Kurt managed to get it free and placed the Ring on the center of a stone table to the side of Vince. Then he scuffled back to his place and sat down, trying to make himself even smaller than he already was.
"This is the One Ring," Foley announced as everybody looked at it.
"No shit, Sherlock," Jericho exclaimed. "My brother was right about Bret Hart's Bane being held by some ass clown halfling! And I thought he was just stoned we he told me that. Damnit, now I owe him ten bucks!"
"After Bret was slain on the road home it vanished, but fell into the hands of a creature called X-Pac," Foley said. "I tried to question the damn thing myself when Triple H caught it in Mirkwood, but it just kept yelling like some idiot. Tough little bastard, though. I left it in the care of the Elves of Mirkwood."
Jeff Hardy grinned sheepishly at this. "Uh, can I say something?"
"Say it," Vince said.
"We kind of lost X-Pac," Jeff said hesitantly.
Vince raised an eyebrow. "And what do you mean by 'kind of'?"
"Well…" Jeff said, "It was particularly loud one night, and the guards decided that they would let it out in the open for a while, with escort, of course. But then this huge pack of orcs came out of nowhere and totally attacked them. That's when X-Pac got away."
Matt groaned and shook his head. "I knew I should have stayed home."
"Damn!" Foley groaned. Then he shrugged. "Oh well, I guess it can't be helped now. I thought you Elves were supposed to be reliable?"
Some of the Dwarves snorted derisively. "Right, very reliable. Trust the Elves to do something like that!" Paul Bearer said scornfully.
"Can we get back to the Ring, please?" Vince interjected before a fight could break out. Maybe he should have listened to his son Shane about not sticking all these different folk into one space to air out so many opinions. From his own seat near his father, Shane resisted the urge to say, 'I told you so.'
"Right. So what do we do with it?" Paul Bearer, the Dwarf asked.
"What the hell else?" Jericho snapped. "We use it against the Enemy! Think about it, it nearly leveled all of us like how many goddamn millennia ago, right? If we use it against the Dark Phenom Lord Undertaker Badass, and whatever other monikers that bastard has, then the battle is as good as ours!"
"Nothing good can come out of this ring, Jericho of the Walls," Shawn Michaels said gravely.
"What the hell do you care? You're hardly ever going to be in the picture anyway so you don't count," Jericho told him bluntly, making him bristle. "I say give it to me and I'll use it in the name of the Great Walls of my city to get rid of the Enemy Dumbass."
"That won't work," Triple H said, finally speaking up. "That Ring belongs to no one but the Undertaker. It will serve no one but him."
"What is this, Gang-up-on-Jericho day?" Jericho remarked, pissed off. "What would you know anyway? You're nothing but a half-assed Ranger guy!"
"That is Triple H, son of his father, whatever his name is," Jeff Hardy said, suddenly standing up. "He's Bret Hart's heir, even if proof of relation got lost amidst the last few centuries. Whatever I said aside, for some reason he's king so you owe him your allegiance."
"Thanks but no thanks, Jeff," Hunter snapped. "I know who I am."
"Fine, that's the last time I stick up for you," Jeff sulked, sitting back down on his chair.
"King, huh?" Jericho laughed. "I'm the Undisputed Champion, you think I care? We have no king, we need no king. Especially some jackass with a nose the size of the Horn of Gondor that I carry!"
"Why stupid you piece of…" Hunter stood up to beat him into submission but Shane and the rest of the Mean Street Posse held him back.
"So what do we do with it?" Matt Hardy asked, bringing the subject back to the Ring.
"What else? We have to destroy it!" Jeff said at once.
"Jackass," Jericho muttered.
Without a word Kane, the monstrously large son of Paul, stood up, drew an equally humongous axe and then brought it down with a roar on the golden object on the table. The axe broke instantly and Kane, despite his size, was thrown back into some of his fellow Dwarves.
The moment the axe had made contact with the Ring something flashed painfully in Kurt's cranium. "Ow, that hurt!" he moaned to no one in particular, grabbing his head.
"It cannot be destroyed by ordinary means, Kane son of Paul," Vince said, ignoring Kurt. Then he paused and looked at Kane in stupefaction. "Wait a minute, you're a Dwarf?" he asked incredulously, looking at the Big Red Machine.
"You have a problem with that?" Kane growled, having collected himself and standing up to his full height of nearly seven feet.
Vince did his patented big gulp of fear. "No, of course not. None at all."
"So how do we destroy the blasted thing?" William Regal asked, once again pulling the topic back towards the Ring.
"It must be brought into the fires where it was forged, in His Yard at Mount Doom," Vince said, calming down after Kane took a seat.
"Oh yeah, that's a walk in the park!" Jericho said, cutting back into the discussion. "Have you even seen that place? It's all dark and creepy, and full of creatures who have no business crawling on Middle-earth. You'd get your ass kicked before you even know what was going on!"
"Yet one of us must go," Shawn insisted.
"Who would you have go, you?" Kane asked with a harsh laugh. "I'd rather get burned at the stake, again, than see the Ring in the hands of some pretty boy Elf!"
At that every one of them started fighting. The Elves against the Dwarves, the Men against the Wizard, meaning Foley who had chosen to remain silent for some reason during most of the discussion. It was in all this commotion that Kurt, in some unknown show of bravado, stood up. "Hey, will you all stop squabbling like babies? I'll take the Ring!"
Everybody looked at him. Then they all burst out laughing.
"You? Give me a break!" Jericho said scornfully. "You wouldn't last a day!"
"I got the Ring here, didn't I?" Kurt defended himself.
"Barely," Triple H sneered. "You always needed me and the rest of the other Half-lings to watch your back, you dork."
Kurt immaturely stuck his tongue out at him then turned to Vince. "I said I'll go, but I don't know the way."
Vince frowned. Really Kurt was probably the biggest dork in all of Middle-earth, and he seriously didn't think anything good would come out of sending him. But it was probably the only way they could get him out of their hair. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. "All right, Kurt."
"Yes!" Kurt said.
"But I'm giving you eight companions to go along with you," Vince interjected. "God knows you'll need them."
"Darn," Kurt said. "Well, I suppose it could be worse. Any chance I could pick them?"
"I think I should do it," Vince said dryly. He looked around. "Any volunteers to go with Kurt?"
There was a heavy silence. Personally, most of them had no problem braving the plains of His Yard by themselves, but they all felt that it was better without the klutzy crybaby that was Kurt. But he unfortunately came with the package. Foley sighed. "All right, I guess I'll go. You'll probably get so lost you'd end up in Vegas for all I know."
"And I better come along too," Hunter said with a frown. "You'd go down in two minutes without me."
"I'll come!" Jeff volunteered instantly. "You'll need somebody who's cool and looks really good all the time, even in battle, in any journey." The other three groaned and rolled their eyes.
Kane rose and went over to them. "I'm coming," he said simply in a gruff voice, leaving no room for argument.
"And I'm going too," Jericho said, stepping up. "If I didn't know any better you jackasses would probably screw everything up like hell without me."
"But then you can't come, I won't be the only pretty boy with great hair!" Jeff whined. "That's illegal!"
Jericho smirked. "Tough luck, rookie."
"I'm technically two thousand years older that you, junior," Jeff shot back.
"Well, is that it?" Vince asked before the two could start a bitch fight.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, you weren't seriously thinking of excluding the Rock, were you?" the Rock demanded, coming out from where he was hiding. He went and stood in front of Vince McMahon. "There is no way these jabronies are going anywhere without the Great One."
"Rocky, you do care!" Kurt exclaimed.
"Shut the fuck up, Kirk," Rock snapped at him. "The Rock doesn't give a rat's ass about you, but somebody capable has to see that you don't get the Ring lost or give it to the Enemy himself or something."
"And we totally would make a great addition!" Edge called, running up to them with Christian. "We both reek of awesomeness, and you could always use two guys like that!"
"They've got great hair too…" Jeff sputtered.
"Eh, they're waist height anyway, so they don't count," Jericho said with a shrug.
"Good point," Jeff conceded.
Vince sighed and held up his hands. "Well, here they are. The Fellowship of the Ring. Hey, that's got a nice ring to it, no pun intended."
"Great, so where are we going again?" Christian asked, to which Mick thwacked him on the back of the head and muttered something about word for word movie line usage.
Shawn looked at all of them; Rock was trying to get Kurt to cry, Edge and Christian were slapping a high five, Kane was standing around looking intimidating, Jeff and Jericho glared at each other in a pretty-boy stare down, Triple H shook his head, and Foley was the only one with a goofy grin on his face. Shawn sighed. This was going to be big trouble, he just knew it.