The Wild Horse of Middle-Earth
I OWN NOTHING!
Ch. 4
Ranma and the others had been traveling through the mountains for several days now, and the best way to sum up the experience so far by Ranma was 'Mountains are cold!' That was reemphasized when a massive storm struck the mountain range and they were soaked by the ice cold rain. They had luckily found a cave that Fili and Kili had located and explored. He was currently shaking the water out of his black hair as the others started to set up camp. Grinning like a loon, he thought about how the others in Nerima would take what had happened to him.
The ones with curses would all be hounding him over how he had cured himself but he was sure that the sheer shock of him arriving with a little daughter in place of his curse would blow all of them away, though he had little doubt that Nabiki would be selling tickets to the fireworks after they recovered. When he chuckled for a moment the huge Dori looked over toward him, then shifted over to him and asked, "A copper for your thoughts?"
Ranma shrugged and said, "Just thinking about, how all the idiots back home would think of my being cured and having a daughter. Pretty sure Akane would find some way of calling me a pervert for it."
"I've heard you say something about her before. Your betrothed I think?" Dori answered.
"One of several." Seeing the look on Dori's face along with the others' nearby, he elaborated. "My Old Man was one of the most dishonest and greedy bums you could ever hope to meet. He's sold me before into an engagement just to get a meal, and sometimes not even that much of a meal."
"Your father has betrothed you for a meal?" Dwalin said, as he and Balin came in from sentry duty.
"Before I could even walk, he engaged me to a girl for a few pickles, a handful of rice, and a fish barely bigger then my hand then he stole me back and forgot about the whole thing though the man and her daughter didn't." Ranma said with apparent venom.
The others stared in shock as he decided to continue. "Then when I was six I had a friend I always called Uchan. I had always thought Uchan was a boy but it turned out she was a girl named Ukyou. She apparently liked me and her dad thought to engage us and offer his family Ookoyomi cart as a dowry." Seeing the confused looks at the name he elaborated, "Type of popular food back home. But when my pops accepted it he abandoned her and ran off with me and the cart. She ended up giving her girlness and acting like a guy for the next ten years to get revenge. Lately she came back looking to pummel me and pops and I was dumb enough to call her cute after I figured out her gender and now she's after me as well."
He took a deep breath to calm down a bit then went on, "But the worse one is the first girl my old man ever engaged me to. Our dads trained under the same old shriveled pervert of a man, after they had enough and buried him alive swore to combine their styles of martial arts by engaging their children to each other. She is the most uncute, mean tempered, troll strengthed, tomboy I've ever met. Not to mention she is an awful cook that could make a troll die of food poisoning."
When he saw that the others were skeptical of that last bit he reached into his storage space, (something he copied from Mousse) a bento that was wrapped in a steel chain and which continued to twitch and thrash as if there was something alive in it. The others stared at it in dumb horror before Thorin spoke and asked, "And what, pray tell, is that?"
"That, would be the last thing Akane made before I got blasted here, it's actually one of her better meals." He then put the thing away and continued to talk. "So considering what I had been through, I am still one happy man right now."
The rest of the night the group talked about their lives and what they planned to do with their share of the treasure. Then one by one they fell asleep as Ranma closed his eyes and nodded of the last thought on his mind was, 'I hope Anari's alright.'
The party was sleeping heavily, when Ranma was bolted awake by the shouting of Bilbo. He jerked up and saw a swarm of low slung creatures armed with pointed hunks of metal come pouring out of a hole in the cave wall that had not been there before, 'Sweet Kami! So there is something uglier then the pervert and the old ghoul.'
The goblins swarmed the Dwarves and Bilbo and dragged them down the hole. Gandalf however, in a flash of light killed the creature 'goblins that's what they are', and disappeared down the hole, Ranma saw where he went and after knocking out the goblins around him slipped in before the tunnel shut closed again.
The tunnel was nearly pitch-black dark, the only light came from the glow of the goblin torches far ahead. He quickly caught up with Gandalf who motioned him to be quiet and they sneaked down the tunnel after the goblins. They soon reached a massive room where easily hundreds of goblins were either glaring at the Dwarves or fighting over all their supplies, Ranma glared at the damn buggers and was about to jump out when Gandalf grabbed his shoulder and shook his head.
Ranma calmed down and sat to watch the argument between the Goblin King, who was even uglier, if that was even possible, and Thorin. When the goblins started to go ballistic over the Elf sword Thorin had and started calling it 'biter', Gandalf nodded and raised his staff, suddenly the torches and the central bonfire went out and all way dark for a moment, then all of them erupted into a great plumes of flames and sparks. Immediately Gandalf and Ranma bolted into the open, Gandalf pulled out his own Elf sword which glowed blue in the presence of the goblins, he then swung his sword and the Goblin King was dead and the goblins had flown into a panic screaming 'beater' perfect for the two to free the other and retrieve the sword, Ranma managed to grab one pack that luckily had not been torn into and held a fair amount of food in it.
After running through the tunnels for a while, Gandalf stopped and then proceeded to start cutting the chains the Dwarves had been clapped with. Ranma seeing this went on to help as well and shocked the other when he started to snap the chains himself.
When all had been released, Gandalf took an assessment of their situation. "Well all is not terrible but all is not good either. No ponies, one pack of food and a horde of angry goblins after us. Well come on we'd best be off and out of here, the torches will be relight soon.
After a while, the sound of angry goblins could be heard behind them. That set the Dwarves running a pace that Ranma didn't know they had, and even mildly impressed him. However, he noticed that Bilbo couldn't keep the pace with the Dwarves and was about to offer to carry him, when Dori bent down and offered himself.
Despite the new pace the Goblins were still closing in on them and they were forced to fight. Gandalf, Ranma, and Thorin went to the back and readied themselves to fight. Soon the goblins came round a corner and then the three shredded the goblins as they came, the twin swords Orcrist and Glamdring shone as they swung through the air, Ranma's limbs were instruments of death.
The goblins panicked and fled back down the tunnel and soon the company was running deeper in the roots of the mountain.
Ranma was smiling in relief, a moment ago he had seen a flash of light and Gandalf had said that the gate to the East side was near. As they neared the side tunnel, Dori who had been carrying Bilbo shouted in surprise as he was tripped by a goblin that had surprised both him and Gandalf. As they fought the goblins off again he berated himself for getting caught off guard, 'Man if pops ever heard about this I'd never hear the end of it. Not that he would have done any better.'
They continued their running fight as they made for the door, meeting and clashing with the gate guards that were there. Ranma blasted the doors open with the below of "Moko Takabashi!" the others could only stare at the blast of blue energy that blew the doors open and blinded the goblins. They recovered from their shock and immediately bolted through the door and thundered down the path.
Ranma was thanking whatever being was watching over them as he saw the sun start to rise from the East and cover the Eastern part of the mountains. The goblins cried a shriek of rage and pain as they were forced back into the tunnels of their dark kingdom.
Ranma looked around; it seemed that all of them had made it out of the mountains and were safe for the moment as he was about to ask Gandalf where to head now, his stomach dropped as he realized something, "Where's Bilbo?"
A/N: I am back baby and I hope to stay back.