A/N: Welp, I'm finally out of school. *angels singing* I thought I wouldn't make it, but I did. :D And I'm finally starting to get back into the swing of wanting to stay up until 3 AM to write, so lucky you guys. ;) I'm reworking how I want some of the plot for this story to play out, so forgive me if these next couple chapters aren't the best. :/ I do hope you enjoy this one, though! ^^ Happy reading!

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Eight

Kaia's POV

I grabbed another shirt off of a shelf and tossed it into the basket. "More t-shirts. More t-shirts. Even more t-shirts! This is great!" I exclaimed, glancing behind me. "We'll never need to go shopping again!"

Aragorn looked ridiculously uncomfortable. "Were you not planning on going to any other stores?" he asked, trying to squeeze between the racks in the tightly-packed shop.

"Do we need to? Hot Topic's the only store you should ever need." I'd managed to drag everyone inside when I noticed they were having a huge 'seventy-five percent off of everything' sale. The last forty-five minutes had been spent by me combing through the place, tossing anything I thought I could afford and would fit them into a big basket. So far I had a collection of seven graphic t-shirts to be distributed amongst them all, a new necklace and Nightmare Before Christmas tank top for myself, new shoes for Gimli, and a pair of bright red shorts that I knew Erin had been wanting for awhile.

Aragorn cringed as a screamo song that was playing throughout the store suddenly got really intense. "I understand that you're enjoying yourself, but...perhaps we could relocate to another area."

"Ahh, don't be such a downer," I said. "Gimli seems to be enjoying himself!" We both turned to look at the dwarf, who was doing some low-key headbanging while looking at a t-shirt wall several feet away.

"What about Frodo and Sam?" the man asked, looking around. "Where have they gone?"

"We're over here!" came Sam's voice from the checkout counter. I could just barely see the tops of their heads from where we stood. "Are we soon leavin'? N-not that this isn't a lovely place or nothin', but-" He was momentarily drowned out by the song's screaming bridge. "We were wanting to look elsewhere too, if you don't mind."

I sighed, then looked at the pile of stuff I'd gathered. "All right, I guess we can go. Just gotta pay for all this junk first." I maneuvered my way to the counter, and within ten minutes we were out of Hot Topic and back under the fluorescent glow of the main mall.

"Where to next?" Frodo asked as I handed one of my bags off to Gimli so I could pull out my phone.

"Uhh...dunno. Let me text Kathryn and find out where she's at." I started tapping away at my phone.

"Text?" Sam asked. "What's that?"

I showed him the tiny screen as we walked. "It's a way to talk to people when they're far away from you. You just type a message up using these buttons, choose who you want it to go to, and press 'send.' Then, within a matter of seconds..." I waited for the 'Message sent!' box to pop up. "See? Now Kathryn's going to get that same message from me on her phone."

All four of the guys seemed really impressed by that. "It does all that in seconds?" Aragorn asked.

"Yeah. It's pretty rad, huh?" I chuckled to myself, thinking about how Erin would be laughing at the fact that I said 'rad.' I checked the time. "Ahh...it's only 11:00. We've got time to kill." I glanced around at the others. "Where else do you guys think we should go?"

"Is there anything else that we'll need?" Aragorn asked.

I dug around through the bags that hung from my arms. "...We got you shirts...socks...deodorant...pants...I think that should be fine. Kathryn said she'd take care of getting you all underwear and stuff, so we don't have to deal with that. I guess that means we're done."

"Then what'll we do?" Sam piped up.

I shrugged. "You guys pick the next store. Any place you want, and we can mess around in there for as long as you'd like. How does that sound?"

Frodo raised a hand to get my attention, then pointed ahead of us. "What is in that one? Can we go there?"

A smile broke out on my face. "The arcade? Hell yeah! Let's go!"

oOo

Erin's POV

Tak. "Bored..." Tak. "Bored..." Tak. "Bored!" I tried standing the pen up on the smooth counter top for the fiftieth time unsuccessfully. I glanced around to make sure we didn't have any customers, then groaned in a way that sounded like a dying whale and draped myself across the counter. "This is mind-numbing," I muttered into the plastic.

"Erin? What are you doing?"

"I'm bored!" I shouted, snapping my head up to meet the eyes of my best friend and co-worker, Jared Heiss. "We've hardly had anyone in here all day!"

He laughed a bit, brushing his dark brown bangs out of his light blue eyes. "I know. I didn't expect it to be so quiet today." The eighteen-year-old finished his job of sweeping up the floors and put the broom and dustpan away, then came to join me in standing at the counter. "But hey, at least we're getting paid for it."

"True," I said with a nod. I stared out through the glass front walls of the store at the people passing by, then let my eyes wander around the interior of the place, looking at all the games we had. "Hey, did you ever get the chance to finish Ocarina of Time?"

"Nah," he said. "It was your game, after all. I didn't want to hold onto it for forever."

I shot him a look. "You know I trust you enough to let you keep it for as long as you need."

"I had it for over a month, though."

"It's a long game, Jared! How far did you end up getting?"

He blew air through his lips, trying to remember. "...I think I got a little ways past the Temple of Time, but I'm not sure."

"Then you should borrow it again so you can finish."

"I don't want to keep taking your games, though," he said sheepishly. "I feel like I'm constantly asking you for some."

"I offer them to you," I corrected him. "There's a difference." Jared was one of the coolest guys I knew, but the one thing that he was absolutely horrible at was letting people do nice things for him for no reason.

"You shouldn't have to, though. I feel like I owe you, Erin."

I rolled my eyes. "Here we go."

"No, I'm serious!" He turned a little so he was facing me. "I feel like an idiot for never paying you back for all your favors you've done for me."

"Then stop accepting them!" I said sarcastically. "Bam. There's your solution."

"But then I'd feel like a jerk for turning you down!" he replied. Then his tone became much more sincere. "And you know that I can never say no to you."

I looked over at him from where I was leaning forward with my elbows on the counter, and he smiled, which made me sigh mentally. Jared, what are you doing. JARED. STAHP. He was a sweet guy, he really was...and I couldn't ask for a better co-worker. The issue was that he made it painfully obvious that he wanted to be more than friends, and I...I didn't feel the same way. We were close, but not in a way that I'd be comfortable dating him. At the same time, though, I didn't want to totally crush his spirits and flat-out tell him 'no.' So I had to pretend like I was completely oblivious to everything, even though sometimes I just wanted to scream and punch him in the face for being the least subtle person ever.

After an awkward moment of silence (which by no means was a rare occurrence), I coughed and stood up straight. "So...how long do we have until lunch break?"

He seemed to immediately snap out of his 'I'm trying really hard to be slick while hitting on you' state and looked at his watch. "About forty minutes."

I groaned again, dragging this one out for a long time as I tilted my head back to look up at the ceiling. "Kill me." My mind began to wander within a few seconds, and I thought about Kaia, Kathryn, and the Fellowship. Surprisingly, none of them had passed by GameStop yet today, so I was curious as to where they'd been and how smoothly things were going. I really hope they're not blowing six hundred and some bucks through this. ...Well, Kathryn wouldn't, I know. But Kaia...God only knows what that girl's up to.

oOo

Kathryn's POV

I plopped down on the couch in the game room. "Well! That went better than expected!"

The others nodded in agreement. We'd all gathered in the game room after returning from our shopping expedition. Kaia and I had managed to get the guys plenty of stuff to help them blend in and become normal Earthlings, and afterward we'd all had a nice lunch at Chick-Fil-A before returning home. Legolas had been a bit picky about what he'd ordered (darn elf had insisted that the food 'wasn't being made for proper eating'), and it had taken us a complete fifteen minutes to convince Sam that public bathrooms were okay to use despite their less-than-sanitary conditions, but we'd survived.

"So what's next on the agenda?" Kaia asked from where she lazily sat on a beanbag.

"Beats me," I replied. "It's almost one now, and I gotta be at work in two hours, so...nothing too insane."

Merry then spoke up. "What's all these?" We turned to look at the young hobbit as he gestured to a shelf on the wall full of-

"Video games," Kaia said casually. Then her head snapped up a second later. "That's it! We'll play video games!"

I grinned. "Yes!"

"What's a video game?" Pippin asked next.

"Oh, only one of the greatest things mankind has ever invented," Kaia replied, already making her way over to the shelf and running a finger over them all to make a selection. "Hmm...what should we get you guys started with? Not something too difficult...and it should be multiplayer..." She stopped suddenly, the grin on her face widening as she pulled out a thin plastic case. "How about some Mario Kart?"

oOo

"HAHAHA! SUCK ON THAT, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BASTARDS!" Kaia cackled. The incessant clicking of her spinning joystick grew more intense as she rounded a sharp turn.

Merry let out a very girlish squeak as he drove Yoshi straight into a wall. "No! Not that way!"

"Merry, turn the Wii remote!" I yelled at him from behind.

"I'm trying!" he called back. He was twisting it at a crazy angle, which only ended up getting his kart turned around completely backwards.

"This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen," Legolas said from where he stood beside me.

"Maybe, but it sure is fun," I replied. My eyes widened then as I watched Toad smash through an item box. "Pippin! Pippin, throw your item!"

Kaia saw it, too. "NO! Kathryn's a liar! You absolutely should NOT throw that item!"

"Why?" the ginger asked. "What does that one do?"

"It's a blue shell!" I said. "It'll only hit whoever's in first place!"

"ASSHOLE!" Kaia yelled, though she was laughing. "Why did you tell him that?" She cringed a second later as Pippin pressed the right button, launching it forward. "NO!" She groaned in frustration as her character choice, Dry Bones, and his bike suffered a midair explosion and tumbled into a pit below.

"Kaia, you are still half a lap ahead of everyone else," Aragorn said. He was playing as Bowser, and had picked up on the game quite well, currently in third place.

"Not anymore!" she cried. "You're catching up!" She screamed as a red shell hit her from behind, slowing her down even more. "Who the hell threw that?" She frowned as Wario sped past her a second later, laughing. "WARIO! You know what? I've got something for you, Mr. Unoriginal Recolor!" She launched a green shell and sniped him easily. "YEAH! YEAH, FUCK YOU!"

I laughed as Pippin fell off of the same cliff for the fifth time. "Come on, Pip, you can do it!"

"Kathryn, how do you do a trick again?" Merry asked.

"Shake the remote as you do a jump," I said. A moment later, Yoshi did a successful flip on screen. "Yep!"

Merry then grinned devilishly from where he sat. "Ha!" He jammed the button to fire his item, and a second later the room was filled with groans (and some more swearing from Kaia) as the other players were struck by lightning.

"No!" Pippin cried. "I had a good item, too!"

"Sorry, Pip!" Merry laughed as he passed his cousin, now in tenth place.

"GOD DAMN YOU, MERRY!" Kaia yelled, leaning forward as she tried to concentrate. Aragorn was now creeping up behind her. "Get back, you! I said get back!" Out of nowhere, a banana peel found it's way between Bowser's wheels just as he was about to pull ahead, and Kaia broke out into a victory dance as she shot past the finish line in first. "Thank God! I was convinced I was gonna lose it on that last lap!"

Aragorn laughed; he was enjoying himself. "That was a good race."

As Merry and Pippin finished up in ninth and twelfth, I looked around. "That's it, then! Who won the tournament?"
Kaia's hand shot up. "I did. I'm pretty sure Aragorn came in second."

"I was third place," Boromir piped up.

I marked it down on a chart we'd drawn up to keep track of everyone. "Okay...then it was me in fourth, Gimli in fifth, Merry in sixth, Legolas in seventh, Frodo in eighth, Sam in ninth...and Pippin in last." I shot an apologetic look his way. "Sorry, Pip."

He shrugged, though he still seemed a bit upset. "It's alright. That was a fun game either way."

"I agree!" Gimli replied. "How many games like that do you have here, lass?"

I laughed. "Oh, we've got loads of them." Several people's eyes lit up at that, and Kaia nodded in agreement. "You guys can play more if you want, but I gotta go get ready for work. I leave in ten minutes." I gave a wave and then hurried up the stairs to my room, laughing to myself as I heard Kaia declare another match from below. "Oh my God...I have the Fellowship of the Ring playing Mario Kart in my house. This is awesome."