Chapter Two – Looking for Trouble
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Estel was bored.
Legolas was bored.
After their recent escapade with the orcs, spiders, slavers, men, natural disasters, assassination attempts, and pine cones, the troublesome twosome were getting rather … well, bored.
Lord Elrond had given them specific orders not to "wander" off the borders of Imlandris, not to leave the borders of Imlandris on purpose, not to throw sharp objects, not to shoot anything at a speed over .0005 miles per hour, not to eat anything not given to them by the Lord of Rivendell himself, not to whack each other on the head with any object, be it feather or iron candle holder, not to jump off anything over one foot tall, not to spear each other with …anything, not to…Anyway, Lord Elrond's orders had been very specific, and the list had gone on for hours, until finally the never ending list came to a close. Besides what was on the list, they were free to do whatever they wanted.
Which was why they were currently bored out of their wits sitting on Legolas's bed, in Legolas's guest room, staring at Legolas's ceiling, wondering when Elrond's instructions expired.
"I'm bored."
"Who say's I'm not?!"
"Ada said not to yell."
"I'm not yelling."
"Ada said not to lie."
"I'm NOT yelling!"
"Ada said…"
/WHACK/
"OW! I'm telling Ada that you whacked me on the head!!! He gave us specific instructions, NOT to…"
-WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK WHUMP BAM POW CRUSH-
-thud-
"I'm telling Ada."
"Estel…"
"What?"
"Shut. Up."
…
…
…
"I'm bored."
And so this continued for a while, until Legolas was hit with inspiration.
thunk
"Ow…Hey! I've just been hit with inspiration!"
Legolas jumped to his feet and looked at Aragorn excitedly before announcing his grand idea;
"Let's go looking for trouble!!!"
There was a loud thump as the young human fell off the bed in surprise, followed by several smaller thumps as he then proceeded to crash into Legolas while getting up, and finally a large thump that resulted in an undignified tangle of limbs and clothes on the floor.
"What do we need to look for trouble for? You get us into enough trouble without even trying!" said Aragorn, picking himself up and dusting himself off.
Legolas, being the mature, grown up elf that he was, merely threw a pillow at Estel's head and did not throw him out the window. "Well what else can we do? You're bored, I'm bored, your father's paranoid, and your brothers are too busy betting on us to notice us, and everyone else in Imlandris refuses to let us do anything without a signed form from your Adar!!!"
…
…
"No need to get personal…"
groan
"I don't care anymore Estel, I'm going to go looking for trouble and if you're not coming with me, you can sit here and rot away in this safe, comfortable, sunny spot where you don't have the slightest chance of getting killed. See if I care." And with that very strange sentence, Legolas marched off towards the door (he would have jumped out the window, but Lord Elrond had specifically instructed him not to.)
Estel paused for a moment before finally giving in to the tempting offer and running after his friend. "Wait up!!!"
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"So how do we get out of the borders?"
"He only said we couldn't wander out of them, and that we couldn't go out of them on purpose, so, the only thing we CAN do, is…"
"AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!"
-thud- -crash- -roll- -groan-
Legolas smiled triumphantly after literally throwing Estel out of the borders, a rather clever idea in his opinion.
Or not…
He watched with no small bit of embarrassment and dread as his friend dragged himself up and stomped over towards him redder than an angry bull that just ate a box of chili peppers.
"And now…how do YOU expect to get over here, dear friend?" Estel seethed.
If his face could get any redder, Sauron would look frostbitten… Legolas thought to himself.
"Well…I was planning for you to pull me over the line…by some force of course…" He replied carefully.
"Oh I'll give you force…" And with that, Aragorn grabbed the front of the elf's shirt and flipped him as hard as he could over the border and onto the grass beyond.
Legolas gave a squeak of surprise as he was lifted off his feet and thrown 3 feet into the air before landing with a jolt … one inch beyond the border line.
This started another argument between them until Legolas remembered their original purpose. "Right then, let the search commence!"
"What exactly does trouble look like?" Aragorn asked after they had searched for about half an hour.
"I'm not sure, I thought you would know after having so many up close encounters." Legolas answered, a bit frustrated himself, "I know! We could go into some dangerous situations and then trouble will find us!"
"Ok, you may go first." Aragorn said.
Immediately afterwards, they heard the rumble of an orc stampede coming towards them, "Yes, luck is with us today Aragorn, watch and learn!" With that, Legolas raced towards the horde of orcs that were now easily visible.
"What was that!? That was pathetic! You rush into the center of a group of orcs, and you come out with one measly scratch on the hand?! It's not even poisoned!!!" Aragorn scoffed as Legolas hung his head rather embarrassed at his failure.
"Ha! If you want to get trouble, you must learn from the best." The ranger smirked and then proceeded to jump into a pit full of snakes and rats that had originally been used for trappers and poachers.
Legolas held is breath….then cracked up.
"AHAHAHAHAH!!!! You call that GOOD?! I could do better with my hands, and legs tied behind my back!!!"
"Oh shut up, I didn't mean to crush half of the animals down there when I jumped in, and it's not my fault that none of them even tried to bite me after seeing their dead companions…"
"Nay, nay," Legolas said between tears of mirth, "they must have avoided you due to your horrendous smell!"
A pine cone somehow found its way from Aragorn's hand to Legolas's forehead, which then started the competition.
"You want to do better?! Watch the expert!"
"That was pathetic! Lemme show you expert!"
And so the battle continued, each throwing themselves into the worst danger they could, trying to outdo the other in getting into trouble.
At the end however, the final injury count was:
One.
Well…one and a half if you counted the hair Aragorn lost sticking his head in a red anthill…
"AAARGH!!! I give up!!!! I spent all day looking for trouble, but all I get out of it is one measly SCRATCH!!!! It's not even two inches long!!!!" Legolas complained, then he stood up and declared in a loud voice "Ya hear that, trouble?! I'M GIVING UP!!!!!"
As if by magic, right after he said those words, three arrows suddenly appeared and embedded themselves in the elf, and while Legolas jerked backwards, he slipped on the muddy ground and fell on his arm, which resulted in its breaking, as he lay on the ground bleeding and moaning, a crowd of corsairs surrounded him, the most he could make out from the pounding in his ears was "make a fine price" or "this one looks too thin…"
He heard Aragorn groan behind him, and wondered what he had done to deserve such a fate.
It started raining after that.
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Several days later, two bedraggled, bleeding, shivering heaps of flesh and bone appeared at Imlandris's gate. From the looks of them, they might as well have been at death's doorway rather than the entrance to the last homely house.
The Lord of the house tore out a few of his hairs after seeing their condition, but not before knocking his head on the nearest tree a couple of times.
Sitting in the healing rooms, he had given them another lecture on being complete and total moronic idiots.
The reply he had gotten was "You never said we couldn't go looking for trouble…"
He had tied them both to the beds after that.
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Epilogue
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Outside the rooms of the currently healing patients, two brothers whispered under their breath to each other.
"I believe you owe me that nice basket of raspberries you picked yesterday…" said the one that was Elrohir.
"No way! You betted that they could do something for 20 minutes without getting into trouble! And look at them now!" His twin retorted.
"Ah, but they did….they managed to search for trouble for a whole 3 hours, 48 minutes and 27 seconds until they gave up and got into trouble!" Elrohir answered triumphantly.
"So the only thing they can do without getting into trouble is look for trouble?!" Elladan inquired, amazed.
"Yup, that's pretty much it. By the way, I still want those raspberries."
"We have such strange brothers…"
"Indeed."
Fin
Whew! 1,504 words! That's good practice for the NaNoWriMo I'm going to do starting Nov. 1st…. (you should all join by the way, it's just nanowrimo dot org it's gonna be awesome) Anyway, it's not Beta read this time, so forgive any errors I made please. Read and review! Tell me how you like it! (Or how you hated it)
Just don't be too harsh please.