A/N: So, we're finally back with the next chapter! We're not even going to apologize for being late this time. The first part of this chapter is us giving in to our cravings for hilarious parody stuff. If you want to read that, go ahead. If you want this to continue to be a relatively funny drama, then start from the page break and ignore the stuff that doesn't make sense.
It was raining. Like, raining cats and dogs type of raining. Simply pouring. Everyone outside was completely drenched. It was a dark and stormy night. With the wind blowing and rain and everything. One of those typical haunted house sequences without the haunted house. And more rain to fill it in. The rain was wet and cold, like a dead fish, or a dead refrigerator. We mean a dead refrigerated fish. To be frank, the rain was a dead refrigerated fish. So you can picture a town, with dead refrigerated fish falling from the sky at night. Yup, that pretty much describes the situation. And now, let's get back to our heroes. The ones that were getting drenched in the dead refrigerated fish. Does that confuse you readers too much? Should we just say rain? Naaah, we like confusing you. Anyway.
"Is it just me, or does it smell fishy around here?" Merry commented, blinking away the rain as he trudged through the mud.
"Yeah, I think that's probably the Prancing Pony," Sam decided. "We must be getting close."
Sure enough, around the corner was a door with a sign hanging over it that said, 'The Prancing Pony'.
"How utterly convenient," Fay said. "Perhaps this is where we should be going."
"Almost, too convenient. It could be a trap..." Merry said ominously.
Paige groaned. "Merry, you think everything is a trap."
"Wait a minute," Sam interrupted, "then why did Merry go into Farmer Maggot's crop if he knew that he would be there?"
Merry and Paige stared at him blankly.
"Uh, there were carrots there," stated Merry.
"Oh, never mind. If you really want to look around some more before we go in, we can."
They continued on their way, as Fay quipped, "You know, this rain feels surprisingly like dead refrigerated fish."
After walking for while, they saw the Prancing Pony sign again.
"Well, we must have walked around in a circle then," Paige decided. "Let's go in, I'm starving!"
Fay stopped. "Wait a minute, this isn't the Prancing Pony, it's the Prancing Pony 2!" Thunder crashed overhead.
"Okay, that's it! This one is definitely the trap!" yelled Merry over the noise.
"So now you want us to look around until we find the Prancing Pony 3?!" complained Sam, about to lose his temper.
"No, no, I just want to go back to the first one. That one seemed very homey and cozy. I knew it was the right one as soon as we saw it."
"Oh come on," said Fay, "we have to walk all the way back? No way! I'm cold, and tired, and hungry, and most of all, wet!"
Sam sighed. "Alright guys, we're gonna go back to the other one, but no more switching after that!" He glared at them all for good measure before leading the way.
When they finally walked in the door, Paige let out a sigh of relief. "Finally, we can relax and have a pint of something. I'll get us a table!"
She ran off. Sam, in the meantime, was making a reservation at the front desk, while Merry went straight to the bar. Fay stood next to Sam, rubbing her arms as she tried to get warm.
Sam turned around. "Fay, are you okay? You look cold."
Fay nodded. "I'm fine, really. I just have a bit of a chill."
"Here, take my cape," he said kindly.
"Nah, I'm good. It looks good on you. It matches your eyes."
Sam's thought process here:
Fay marrying Gandalf + Compliments about my eyes = #confuzzled
"No, no, really, I'm a guy. I don't need stuff to match my eyes. You can take it." He took it off and held it out to her.
"No, I'm fine, I don't want to take it from you. You need it too!" Fay argued.
"Yeah, but I want you to have it."
"But I don't want it."
"Neither do I."
"Fine, if neither of us wants it, then just give it to Paige or something."
"No, I was giving it to you! If you don't want it, then I'll just keep it for myself."
"Fine, keep your stupid cape. I never wanted it anyway!"
"You made that very clear, alright?!"
They both paused.
Fay cleared her throat. "You know, I actually am cold. Can I have your cape?"
Sam's new and updated thought process:
Stuff + Other Stuff = #DeadRefrigeratedFish
Along with:
Fay not wanting cape + Fay wanting cape = 0, since they cancel each other out. In other words, superconfuzzledness.
Luckily, at that moment, Paige and Merry ran over. "There's a dude in a cape in the corner! We think it's Gandalf!" yelled Merry.
Sam threw his cape on the ground and walked away muttering to himself, "I am so stinkin' tired of capes! Everyone is so obsessed with capes! What is up with this whole cape thing?!"
Paige stared after him and asked wonderingly, "What's up with him?"
Fay shrugged. "I don't know. I wanted his cape."
"Anyway," continued Merry, "let's go and meet Gandalf!"
The three hobbits made their way into the corner, where the cloaked man was. They stood in awkward silence, until Fay asked, "Umm, Gandalf...?"
The man tossed his hood down, revealing someone much younger than Gandalf. He looked very strange; his hair was incredibly short except for one long, skinny braid falling down past his shoulder, and a red rubber ball that was covering his nose. "Who the heck's Gandalf?" he questioned. "I am a Padawan learner of the Order of the Jedi Clown."
The three gave each other questioning looks, before Paige replied, "Okay, yeah... Um... We just, uh, thought you were someone else, so... We'll just be leaving now..." They walked away in confusion. After a few minutes, they looked back at the Jedi Clown, but he was no more.
"Well," Merry commented, "That's odd. Like I said before, I think that the other Prancing Pony is the right one."
Paige and Fay gave him dirty looks, but complied, and went to get Sam, who was standing by the door, finally calm enough.
Merry cheerfully told him that they were going to The Prancing Pony 2, and after a few snide remarks, they were off.
By the time they got to the Prancing Pony, Sam was ready to destroy the universe, Paige was about thirty seconds from breaking up with Merry, Fay was wondering why she didn't go on this journey alone, and Merry was completely ecstatic that he finally got his choice as to which Prancing Pony they would be staying at. In short, comedy wasn't working out for them.
Upon entering and making reservations, they immediately noticed another sinister-looking man in a cloak, who the manager said was one of those cool Ranger dudes who was all dangerous and stuff. They decided it best not to bug him anyway.
So while Merry and Paige were busy at the bar, Sam and Fay sat at a table and talked.
"So, how did you and Gandalf meet?" Sam asked, not sure what exactly to say.
Fay, who had decided to keep him from knowing the truth as long as possible (which in retrospect was a terrible decision), replied, "Oh, Bilbo introduced me to him. And of course you know how they met..."
"Yeah, but I mean, Gandalf didn't come to the Shire very often, especially in the last few years. So when did you guys become, uh, good friends?"
This is getting awkward... Fay thought. "Uh, well, it just kind of happened. I mean, since Bilbo and he were such great friends, Gandalf took an interest in me too."
Sam looked a little red-faced. "Oh. I see."
Okay, that's it. I'm gonna tell him the truth. "Okay, Sam, I know what you've been thinking, but-"
Before she could finish, she heard Paige telling a group of men, "Oh yeah, Fay's right over there. She's a good friend of mine!"
Needless to say, Fay panicked. This whole time, Gandalf had been telling her to not tell anyone her true identity, to stay unnoticed if possible, and your typical don't talk to strangers. And here was Paige, telling a whole barful of rough men exactly who and where she was. So, she jumped out of her chair, tried to tell Paige to shut up (only making everyone notice her more), tripped, and then - lo and behold - the Ring was on her finger. Brilliant.
Everything looked really blurry and out-of-focus, and she couldn't hear anything except the rushing wind. Yeah, all that creepy stuff. Well, at least she could use this opportunity to get out of sight somewhere. So she struggled toward a table somewhere far away from Paige and those people, before pulling off the Ring. Ahhh, much better, she thought, right before she was yanked out from under the table by the creepy Ranger dude. Also notably brilliant.
"You draw far too much attention to yourself, Miss Baggins," Creepy Ranger Dude said ominously. "You have a very dangerous object in your possession, and it must be kept safe. Come with me."
Well, I don't exactly have a choice, do I? she thought, annoyed. Who was this guy who thought he could order her around? I mean, he wasn't some sort of king or anything.
In the meantime, the hobbits (especially Sam) were freaking out, wondering where the heck Fay could have gone. When they noticed that the creepy cloaked man in the corner was gone, they decided it was time to take action. Sam rushed up the stairs, ready to take someone out with his bare hands. Merry decided to grab a candlestick, while Paige stuck with the stool she had been sitting on. They both followed Sam, and made it there right before he knocked on the first door he came to.
As the door opened, Sam yelled, "Let her go!"
"Let who go?" asked the very confused old lady who had answered their knock.
Sam blushed. "Oh, I'm so sorry, ma'am. I was looking for my friend, who I think may have been kidnapped. But I'm so sorry for disturbing you. Thank you, ma'am!" He rushed off down the hall before she could say anything else, leaving her to wonder what young people were coming to these days.
After many embarrassing encounters, and a couple angry yells later, they finally got the right door. When the Ranger answered their knock, Sam cried, "WhathaveyoudonewithFay?!" (He was starting to get a little overly worked up at this point.)
Then the man spouted some medievalish serious stuff that kind of went right over Sam's head because he was busy looking for Fay somewhere in the room. However, Fay found him first.
"Sam, it's okay, Strider's on our side," she told him.
"How do you know?!" he said angrily. "He practically kidnapped you!"
"He says that we're in horrible danger, that Gandalf isn't coming, and that he's going to take us to Rivendell."
Sam stopped listening after "Gandalf isn't coming". All he could feel from that point on was utter bliss. He was so happy that he didn't even notice that her answer was a total logical fallacy.
"Gandalf isn't coming!" he laughed. "Gandalf isn't coming!" At this point he was practically dancing around the room.
"You know, that's not exactly a good thing..." Merry muttered from where he was still standing by the door.
"How is that not a good thing?" Sam asked. "He was going to marry Fay!"
The whole room went dead quiet. "Uh, you do know that Gandalf is already married to Galadriel, right?" Aragorn said.
Sam felt all the life drain out of him. "Wait, so you mean that we aren't traveling to the wedding? Then why are we traveling anyway?"
"Sam, we're trying to destroy the One Ring of power," Fay said quietly.
"Oooohhhh..." Sam swallowed. "Yeah..." He sat down on a nearby chair.
Paige grinned. "Yay! Now you can get back to normal! You were getting all out of character these past three chapters. It was getting a little weird."
A/N: So, we wrote the first paragraph way back before summer started, and then we had writer's block. Then today, we decided to start. Except, before we actually got anywhere, we: broke up all the canon couples for this story (which is why Gandalf and Galadriel are together), had peanut butter time, debated about bars, made lunch, broke the desk, and broke our Enter key. Well, it didn't exactly break, it just started malfunctioning. Now, when we try to use it, a settings panel pops up. Yay! Isn't that awesome? Anyway. Please review with all your thoughts about the weird things in this chapter! Oh, and be happy 'cause we broke the 2,000 word mark on this chapter.