Nori was the first to regain his bearings, and the sneakiest of the company immediately understood that something was terribly wrong. The air was different, the ground wasn't muddy, and most importantly of all, he could no longer feel the dreadful spell of Mirkwood's enchantments. Which could only mean either of two things; that somehow the Valar above pitied them and removed the darkness plaguing the forest, or they were not in the forest at all, anymore.

The dwarf did not bet on the former.

"Your shoe is in my mouth!"

"I can't help it, you're squishing my arm!"

"Please, my journal - !"

"Calm down will you lads? One at a time!"

"What did you say? Fishing with wine?"

"Aargh! Your spear's pokin' me backside!"

"If I had a gold coin for every time I heard that..."

Nori reacted to the ruckus the company was making with a roll of his eyes and a disgruntled sigh. At this rate it didn't matter where they were, discovery and capture seemed all too imminent by the way everyone was misbehaving. Though he had to admit, he pitied the young prince Fili whose entire body was being squished and turned into jam as he laid beneath Bombur. He maneuvered himself around the mass of dwarf men all trying to get to their feet, going straight for Thorin who was still lying flat on the floor.

"Thorin, wake up. Thorin!"

Thorin Oakenshield took a little longer to regain his consciousness, but when he had full control over his senses, he jolted forward and stood up in a flash, ignoring the sharp crack of his joints and the painful strain by his shoulder. Nori took a step back and accepted his leader's nod of appreciation.

He winced as he witnessed the dwarfs attempted to gather their bearings. There were weapons flying haphazardly into the air, limbs flailing about, and beards getting tangled together. When he stumbled backwards from the force of sheer vertigo, a dark grey wall made of some kind of stone caught his fall. He began to worry as understanding dawned on his features; the problem was that the room they found themselves in was too small. Every single dwarf was cramped together making it difficult to move. Not three or four steps later and the whole distance of one end of the room to the next could be traversed. Thorin turned to Nori, who was busy trying to help Ori retrieve his lost book.

"How long have we been down here? When did you awaken?"

Nori shook his head while Ori looked spooked, his head darting around left and right.

"We've been here naught an hour. I only woke up a few minutes ago, and even then I was still feeling the world spin around me." A beat. "If you're asking me if I've gotten any information about our whereabouts since I awoke, I have not."

Thorin frowned deeply.

"This is not good."

"Aye, a prudent observation." Dwalin hobbled from his spot on the floor as he tried to crack the kinks from his neck with his free hand. "By Mahal, where are we?"

"Look around, lads. We'll find answers soon." Balin spoke from the corner, bending his back with a slight bend. To his side, Bombur was being lifted by Bifur and Dori by the armpits while Bofur pulled Fili free. Kili groped around by the floor, trying to find his bow and arrow, while Dori and Gloin began re-braiding parts of their beards that came undone from Oin's incessant squirming.

Thorin closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose.

Dwalin patted him reassuringly on the shoulder, though he shared everyone's frustrations and anxiety. Moreso did the seasoned warrior frown at the fact that no one knew what happened, or where they were, or who was responsible.

"We keep running into more and more delays on this journey." Thorin sighed crossly. Balin attempted to maneuver himself by tiptoeing on the free spots the dwarfs did not occupy, and eventually made his way over to the duo. Nori excused himself by slinking away as quietly as he could.

"We're in an enclosed space, Thorin. Very little light, and only one window, up there." Balin gestured using his pointer finger, and Thorin followed its direction towards an extremely small, rectangular shaped window that looked locked from every side, a strange metal pane keeping it in place. The light that passed through the screen was bright, which meant they still had the day on their side, but it did not reveal enough of the room they were currently occupying to make a difference. The worst part of it was that none of the dwarfs could possibly fit into it if the need arose, as the smallness of its dimensions perfectly mimicked the room. Cramped, tight, and capable of inducing claustrophobia.

"Maybe we can break our way out." Dwalin suggested. "Bein' stealthy won't do us any good now. Better to make ourselves known to our captors than to wait for them to come to us."

"We don't know that yet, brother." Balin reasoned. "We don't know what lies beyond this room or whoever is responsible for this. I say we still proceed with caution."

Gloin spoke up loudly from the near corner of the room. Despite their attempts at whispering, the walls were hollow enough to provide an incredibly loud echo, amplifying all sounds. "Let's send a scout! Two at once, and then they report back the to company!"

"No, it's too risky. This isn't the time to separate from the group." Thorin replied. As soon as the last of them were able to get back up on their feet without too much fuss, Thorin began musing out loud. "We have very limited options. But I have my doubts about us being in a cage or a prison. Perhaps a dungeon of some kind, but if our captors were at the very least more clever than a cave troll, then they wouldn't have squeezed us all in one room that had no bars."

Everyone murmured all at once. Their voices grew in strength when Ori, who crawled on all fours to try and find his book, found something else besides his lost tome.

"Wait! Look around! Look!"

As their eyesight began to adjust to the dimness, Thorin began to growl in apprehension. Dwalin, Fili, and Kili looked panicked, while the rest tried to understand the strange contraptions that surrounded them. For the space they were occupying would not be nearly as cramped if the large, stout metal cylinders were not standing to their immediate sides, enclosing them further and further to the middle as if they were sentinels of an ancient grave. There were about five or six of them varying in shape, some shorter than the others, but as Thorin approached one, gently touching the surface with the tips of his fingers, he realized that their presence also explained why every sound they made reverberated. He frowned deeply, opting to flick one using his middle finger and thumb. It echoed all throughout the room.

"They're connected to each other!" Dori shouted. "Oh, what do they do?"

"We could break them and find out!" Gloin answered. Bofur touched his shoulder hurriedly. "No, don't do that! What if those things start movin' as soon as you touch 'em?"

"Why are they here, though? What's their purpose?" Kili followed his uncle's suit and began an inspection of the strange contraptions around them. Dwalin grunted, pushing himself to the side and slamming the underside of his axe's handle into the closest metal cylinder. It did not break, but the force caused a slight dent. Consequently, the echo was incredibly unpleasant, making most of them wince and shout in displeasure.

Then, as if to add to their panic, one of the cylinders began to hiss thinly, a cloud of hot and rapid steam bursting from the gaps between the long metallic pipes connecting them across the room and into one another. Immediately, the dwarfs went to arms and compressed, some making battle cries in preparation for an attack. Others were silent, holding their weapons close to their chests while observing in fear for what was to come. Thorin watched with wide eyes as the steam made the room grow hotter and the air become denser. He noticed the sound of the echo travel from one cylinder to the other, and then back again. However, the dwarfs were becoming more and more tense as the hissing did not stop.

"Lads, keep it close! Don't let it touch you!"

"Ow, some of it hit me!"

"It's becoming hot!"

"Argh!" One of the dwarfs grunted; Thorin was not quite sure who from the commotion that resumed. "It's all or nothing!"

Balin was the first to notice the movement. "No, don't!"

Gloin's halberd swung in a top-down motion, piercing the machine's facade easily. The steam erupted from the gap in its exterior, and the hissing sounds slowly faded as the air inside them was suddenly released into the room. At the end of the ordeal, every dwarf felt the sweat stick to their skin like glue. The air was so compressed and full of moisture that it was hard to breathe.

"See! T'was all that it needed to stop!"

Bofur groaned. "Yes but now we won't know what they were for! What if that did more harm than good?"

Dwalin held the rest of them back with his beefy arm. "We'll have to wait and see."

Fili and Kili looked at each other apprehensively. "Uncle...?"

Thorin's frown was set even deeper than it was before. "Steady, all of you. No one moves unless I command it."

And so the entire company held steadfast, weapons still at the ready. They carefully observed what else the machines would do, and after a few minutes of tense silence, Thorin was ready to call it off and continue searching the space. However, a sudden high pitched noise broke them out of their stance, small red lights bursting open from all corners of the room, basking everything it touched in an eerie glow. The sound was so irritating and obnoxious, repeating in two second intervals every time they thought the noise would stop, that the dwarfs thought they were finally being attacked by an invisible enemy. They shouted and called to each other to tighten the defense, Thorin's own voice being drowned out by the sheer volume of sound that suddenly exploded in such a short span of time.

There was too much going on. He needed time to think. Gripping Orcrist in his right hand, Thorin Oakenshield was at a loss for words, and could not for the life of him think of a plan to get them out of wherever hell they were in now. If not the window, would breaking down the walls truly be the only way to free themselves and find answers?

It would be Bifur who discovered a way out of the chaos. He gestured in Iglishmek to the closest person to his side - Oin, who was thankfully deaf enough to selective hear against the noise - that the red lights also led out into a hidden doorway that suddenly opened up behind them. The red lights ascended towards a set of narrow steps, leading into further darkness. Oin nodded and called out to the company. Needless to say, it took some time to get everyone's attention.

"We've found a way out! Lads, lads quickly!"

Thorin hurried to the passageway, eyeing it doubtfully. "Where would it take us?" Balin shook his head.

"It's this or nothing, Thorin. We have no choice."

Thorin weighed his options and concluded that there would be nothing wiser at this point than to just charge to whatever led away from their imprisonment and work their way from there. He nodded gravely and gripped his sword with two hands. By Mahal he would have answers and he would have them *now*.

"Fili and I will go first. Dwalin, take Kili next. The rest of you find a partner and move in pairs. We won't fit through the passageway if we move all at once. Come on!"

Ignoring the blaring sounds that continued to blast from the room, the dwarfs rallied and found themselves partners for the trek upwards. But Nori noticed that after Ori and Dori paired together again, he was lacking a partner. Silently, he counted heads and his tally only came up to thirteen. Raising his voice, the stealthy dwarf worriedly remarked; "Where's Bilbo?"

Thorin paled.

"What in Durin's name is going on?"

Wendell Weatherman considered himself a very laid-back individual. He was at times very high-maintenance, and maybe one or two of his peers in the Academy would call him unapproachable and too stoic for his own good, but all in all Wendell was always chill. He'd smile when the joke was good, he'd compliment the chef if the food was to his taste...appropriate times called for appropriate measures. It was his sister that seemed to overreact to everything. Thankfully, he had enough sense to balance out her unpredictability. His introversion outweighed her bipolarity. They made for an interesting pair on campus because people thought they were too far from each other on the personality spectrum that it was impossible their chemistry was unrealistically effective. So then even professors would wager; which Weatherman sibling would be better at this?

It was always a loss on their part, if Wendell were to be honest. And he was, though he didn't fancy on saying it out loud. Instead of trying to test the limits of their partnership, they should have just accepted it for what it was. At the end of the day, Wendell and his sister won out, because even though she was a bit too wonky at all the wrong times, she was both equally brilliant and massively better than him at charming the pants off of other people. They simply worked, and Wendell thought to himself, 'well, that's the end of that isn't it?' Why try to break something that functioned perfectly fine?

These are the reasons why Wendell thought it was no trouble to act as partners for their graduate school thesis. He preferred it. At least he could keep a better eye on her and her tendency to do too much for something that didn't ask for all the hard work. And to some extent, she inspired him to put a little bit more effort and enthusiasm in the things he was asked to do that normally would have taken him just half of his concern to finish.

Appropriate times called for appropriate measures; Wendell lived by that and would do so until the day that he died.

But things were not shaping up according to his expectations. Not only was his sister overdoing herself without taking his opinions into account, but Wendell himself faced particularly daunting circumstances which lacked appropriate reactions.

For instance, he expected to see faulty wiring in the boiler room. Instead, he came face-to-face with a whole chorus line of short, hairy men threatening him with Very Sharp Objects.

Wendell was halfway down the emergency hallway to investigate on what triggered the safety alarms when a stout and robust looking man of about five feet, sporting an impressive head of long ebony hair streaked with grey, came marching up with a look of rage and determination etched on his face. Behind him trailed even more stout and robust looking men, all of them looking none too pleased.

Wendell blinked at the figure blocking his path. The figure blinked right back, astonishment and shock briefly replacing his anger. They shared a moment of awkward silence before Wendell chose an uncharacteristically inappropriate time to mutter a very lame and very unhelpful,

"...What."

The figure took his cue. He growled fiercely, like a warrior out of the movies, and his band of merry men followed. Wendell had very little choice but to walk backwards, keeping his eyes on their weapons as to avoid getting chopped up like wood; pierced like a kebab on a summer's day barbeque. He tried to make peace with the mysterious people who sprouted from their boiler room, but all his hand gestures were taken as signs of assault, so they only managed to surround him even faster. They made it out of the narrow passageway and into the open hall before the presumed leader of the pack spoke. Wendell noticed that he was taller by at least a foot and a half, but an ironic twist of fate, he was the one who cowered in fear as the men of intimidatingly assertive bearing kept him in range of their renaissance-looking weapons.

"Answer our questions and you might live to see another day, brigand." The figure was menacing indeed, but Wendell frowned at his language.

"Wise choice of words for someone who broke into my home." Wendell quipped dryly. The short men took offense to his jab and inched their weapons against him even further. The leader did not look amused. In fact, Wendell recognized it; it was the condescending look of knowing you've got all the cards played right and your opponent only had to fall into your trap before claiming victory. Who did these people think they were?

"Let's try this again and perhaps you'd be wiser in holding your tongue." The man added, calmly. "First question: where are we?"

Wendell scrunched his eyebrows together, hands still in the air as if he was being held up by muggers. Yes, he was frightened. More than anything, he was shaken up beyond belief. But what kind of intruders demanded to know where they were instead of threatening him at sword-point for the location of their money? Their family jewels? The safe where they keep all their precious documents?

"You don't know...where you are." Wendell said. One of the men gruffly responded, "Don't play the fool now, son, if you know what's good for you!"

They made another ruckus of agreement, and as he stared into the reflection his face made against the sharp edge of the leader's sword, the cogs in Wendell's mind began to turn. He took in all of their appearances with great uncertainty until he finally realized that what happened inside the auditorium just a few moments ago, with the curly-haired man and his ginormous hairy feet, and what was happening right now with these short yet burly men were both connected. And if their hypothesis was correct...

Wendell dropped his hands and covered his face. He sighed loudly.

"This is some sort of joke, it's got to be. This can't be real."

The men were caught off-guard but another of them, a taller one with a thick beard and a bald scalp, began to voice out his own frustrations. He grabbed Wendell by the collar and pulled him down to eye-level, a fist covered in iron replacing the sword by his throat.

"Enough games, laddie. Talk or we'll make 'ye. Where are we, and who in the sacred halls of Moria are you?"

Wendell had just about enough of today. He huffed once, and then prepared to defend himself with sharply executed words and maybe a kick or two for good measure - height difference had to count for something, even if he was unarmed - but his sister, thank God she was learning, had the right mind to come in at the right time. He heard her call out his name, and afterwards, a second voice came.

"Wendell!"

"I'm here - I'm! Thorin! Everyone!"

The situation was momentarily dispelled as each party ran to their respective players. Wendell stood up straight at the rest of the little men welcomed the curly-haired creature back into the fold. His sister, who was originally running after him, detoured and crashed herself into Wendell's chest, pulling him back closer to the open doors of the auditorium while they both kept their gazes on the group of strangers convening in the hallway. He shared a look with her, and he hoped he could see how unhappy he was with the events unfolding. But unfortunately, his sister did not share his grief. In her eyes he could see it; her happiness, a profound sense of purpose, and renewed excitement that could only be rivaled by a five-year-old child opening Santa's gift a day early.

"Willow." He whispered harshly into her ear, his eyes still boring holes into the other group who were all bombarding the curly-haired thing with questions. Her smile grew wider. She too, kept her eyes on the group with a fascination Wendell could not understand.

"Amazing, right? But we have to get things under control first. I tried to explain it to him but he got away when he heard you guys."

She was interrupted by what Wendell was now sure was a hobbit. The hobbit. He pointed to their general direction, eyes wide and head nodding.

"I am completely certain that they know exactly what is going on." The small men - the dwarfs - turned to their direction again, ignoring everything else Bilbo was saying. Wendell tightened his hold on his sister's arm as they approached, that same menacing bearing returning full force.

"You're responsible for this, you got that?" Wendell stood full height to project himself against their threatening stance, because no matter how irritated he was at her, he was going to protect her if they decided she was to be their next interrogation. "You're going to set things straight, okay?"

Willow was still all smiles as she pried herself free from his grip. She nodded. "Okay. Just let me work."

And it was then that Willow and Wendell Weatherman were confronted with a company of thirteen dwarfs and their prolific hobbit in a world unlike Middle-Earth. Willow tentatively stepped forward, dismissing the weapons raised at the ready to keep her back, and flashed the group the most genuine of smiles. Bilbo was pushed into the center of their formation, and though he was trying to grab their attention again, Willow knew they would only listen to her now. So she spoke.

"Hi! Um. Okay. This is going to sound weird but you're not in danger, you're not in Middle-Earth, and if you could just follow me into the drawing room, I'll be able to explain to you in the fullest of details that if you hurt me in any way shape or form, your chances of returning back to where you came from will be reduced to zero."

She tilted her head to the side, invitingly.

"So...truce?"

I should point out now that if there's anything I carried over from my own life into the story, it would be that I have completed my own graduate studies early this year, and the theory I used in my thesis will be the theory the Weatherman siblings will expound on here. More on this and some sick reveals in the next chapter. It's all coming together, folks! Please do review! :)