Disclaimer: This is getting really, really redundant. You know what we do own. And it ain't Lord of the Rings.

Nor is it OFUM. OFUM belongs to our amazing webmistress Camilla Sandman, and is being used with her permission. (Duh. I mean, it's on her website, isn't it?)

*****

Suedom

by Andy and Saphie

Chapter Eighteen: Through the Looking Glass

(and What Mary Sue Found There)

*****

Kate was first aware of a throbbing pain throughout her entire body as she regained consciousness. She kept her eyes closed as she spread out her fingers, feeling the surface of the floor. It was stone, dirty and rough--and wherever she was, it was hot. Swelteringly hot. So hot that the stone floor was becoming very uncomfortable.

“Ow!” she cried, as she jumped up, first at the uncomfortable heat from the ground, then from the throbbing pain that gripped her head at her sudden movement. She weaved from side to side and pressed her temples. The pain coursed behind her eyes, and she squinted them shut tighter. Where was she? The last thing she remembered was falling through the plot hole with Kira into a field outside Minas Tirith, and being tackled by something small (and painful) only a few seconds later…

Slowly, she opened her eyes, drew in one long shuddering gasp of horror, paused for exactly two and a half seconds, and ran screaming in the opposite direction.

The countless horde of small, fiery demons cloaked in shadow let out what passed as a shriek of glee and thundered after her through the mini-lair as the terror-stricken girl made a break for it…right towards the mini-abyss.

“AAACK!” Kate shrieked, windmilling her arms to pull herself back from her precarious position at the edge of the (mini) gaping hole. Behind her, the mini-Balrogs roared excitedly, cracking miniature fiery whips in anticipation. She whipped her head to the left as another scream caught her attention. Kira was running like there was no tomorrow, the mini-Balrogs expertly herding her towards Kate while their companions kept Kate penned in at the same time, pressing closer to the terrified girl.

"FREAKIN' SSSSHIT!" Kira screamed as the minis herded her up to Kate. "Of all placesss, we had to come here! Why the hell here?!"

"We're going to die!" Kate screamed. The grins on the mini's smoldering faces widened, as they pressed towards the girls, who huddled together in terror, the crack of fiery whips echoing in their ears…

*****

Rincewind was confused.

She was currently high up in the air. The sun was bright and the sky was bluer than any sky had a right to be. There were a few clouds, bright white and wispy, far above her, languidly lining the sky like nature's fuzzy equivalent to man-made vapor trails. Green, grassy fields, rolling hills, and snow-capped mountains were spread out below her like the pages of an open book, rivers and streams winding through them, trees and forests filling every vale. The grass was greener than it should have been, just as the sky was too blue. It looked nice, though, Rincewind thought.

However, the fact that the bright/dark contrast of the scenery was out of whack wasn't the most unusual thing she had noticed. The most significant thing that caught Rincewind's attention was that…she was human.

Hence her current confusion. Human meant she wasn't a dragon, which is what she was sure she had been very recently, and she was pretty sure that if she had changed form or died and been reincarnated again she would have noticed.

Human also meant that she wasn't supposed to be able to fly. Which is what she was currently doing, despite a lack of wings, mutant abilities, magical powers, and/or a jetpack.

This meant either a) she was dreaming, b) she had finally cracked and was hallucinating, or c) she was dead and this was the afterlife. Truthfully, she was really hoping for the last one, after all she'd been through, but she realized it was more likely to be one of the first two. In any case, dreaming, delusional, or dead, the fact remained: she was human again. She had two skinny arms with hands at the end, five stubby fingers to each; two legs with two feet (bare, she noticed) each with five toes. Her body was back to normal, skinny and flat as a board, and she was dressed in what she remembered being dressed in before…well, before--a white peasant top and frayed bell-bottoms, typical of the times. Nothing entirely unusual.

She remembered it. The hands were just stubby enough, the feet were just skinny enough, the body was about as curvy as a pencil, as it should have been. It was familiar…

It was right.

But her face…she couldn't remember what it had looked like. And, more importantly, she couldn't remember her name. She wondered if…if she saw her face…would she remember her name? Would she remember everything else she had forgotten?

She needed to see her face. She needed to know her name. She needed to remember…

She needed a goddamned mirror!

She looked around. She supposed that she could use one of the streams below or a lake or pond…

That's when Rincewind heard the voices chattering, and to her annoyed ear, the sound was vaguely reminiscent of some very stupid squirrels that used to run around on the branches of a tree that was near her bedroom window when she was younger. She looked down and saw the two dark-haired girls in the field below her. One was slightly on the petite side, willowy and skinny, with long, dark brown hair. She seemed to be giggling far more than her companion. The other girl was a tiny bit shorter and built stockier, her thick body almost verging on chubby. She had shorter, darker hair, and even from that far above, Rincewind could tell that she had huge feet. She couldn't see their faces from that angle, but judging from the occasional glint of light that caught her eye, they were both spectacled.

What are they doing here? she wondered.

They walked into the clearing, talking to each-other and laughing with those obscenely stupid giggles of theirs. As she watched, something panged within her, an odd feeling she couldn’t really identify.

As a dragon, she'd had telepathy. And it was a double-edged sword, as far as she was concerned. Over the past few days she'd been…"listening" in, reading their minds (without their knowledge, of course) as they searched. On the upside, it let her know what they were up to, whether they had found the Bridge yet, and whether they were even still alive. On the downside…she was almost…almost starting to care.

She had listened, and while doing so she had heard their hopes, their fears, their longing for home, their doubts, their outrage, their anger, their sorrow, their awe and wonder at everything they saw. But out of everything she had seen through their eyes, heard from their minds, and felt with their souls, the thing that struck her the most was…was their compassion. An endless unrelenting desire to restore Middle-Earth to the way it should be. A pain that they felt when they saw others in pain. Even in Kira, the colder of the two, she had felt it…

And being one who had never been very compassionate, it had confused her.

What had confused her even more was the fact that every so often, like an effervescent soap bubble rising to the surface in the great bath of the mind, a thought came up in Kira’s mind about her. It was normally very short and simple, something along the lines of: I hope Rincewind’s okay. Rincewind even caught an occasional: I hope the dragons are okay…even Rincewind, from Kate. Understandably, the girls rarely thought of her what with all that they were going through, and when dragons came to Kate’s mind, it was normally Odorf that she worried about. But they thought about her every so often. That was what counted. They actually cared whether she lived or died. No one had cared about her like that since her mother and Professor Shirley Winholm, her mother’s best friend, had been alive. (Funny that, she could remember the professor’s name, but not her own…)

In any case, it was…nice. They were nice, really, genuinely nice. And as much as she acted like she detested “goodie-goodies,” in truth, she was actually becoming somewhat, well, fond of these particular do-gooders.

Which is why she shouted, “Hey! Dipwads!”

Neither girl looked up. They just chattered away. Rincewind wrinkled her nose in annoyance and tried again.

"Hey! Goodie-goodies!"

They still didn't hear her.

"Oh for chrissakes!"

She wiggled and flapped her arms in an effort to find a way to fly lower. After much flapping, she started to fly lower, but she got the feeling that she wasn't the one doing it.

She screamed at the girls a few more times, but still they were deaf to her cries.

Then, when she was perhaps ten feet over their heads, she stopped moving lower and something rather odd happened. As they both stepped forward, she saw two things shoot out of the ground in front of them. The objects were long and flat and about as wide and tall as they were. They were…mirrors.

What the…?

The girls stared at them in shock for a moment, then screamed bloody murder.

"What? What is it?!" Rincewind called.

She squinted her eyes and saw what they were screaming about.

"Holy shit!" she gasped.

The mirrors weren't reflecting their images back at them. Instead two women were the reflections, one black-haired and green-eyed, the other blond with annoyingly bright eyes. Arintalerthirialimsilira and Fishywishylishiel.

The reflections grinned wickedly at the girls, making them back away in fear. With long, distorted arms--arms that looked as if they were made of curved light and liquid glass merged together--the Mary Sues darted through the mirrors and grabbed their counterparts. The girls screamed in horror as they were dragged in through the mirrors by their reflections. They kicked and struggled and gave up the kind of fight Rincewind expected of them, but they couldn't escape the icy clutches of their captors. To Rincewind's complete and utter horror, the mouths of the Mary Sues widened and stretched to an unnatural size, black holes of nothingness. Grinning, they proceeded to devour the girls whole.

"Jesus Christ!" she screamed in shock. Revolted by the sight, she turned away, trying to ignore the screams--horrified, anguished screams that quickly became muffled…and then were silenced.

At the silence she opened her eyes again, shaking all over as she floated in the air. The mirrors fogged over as if someone had breathed on them, and with a loud skkrriiiik, cracks appeared all over their silvery surfaces. They started to bend, as if something was pressing from the inside and with a loud crack they shattered, shards of glass tinkling merrily as they flew into the air. Some of the slivers cut into Rincewind's face as they flew past, but she hardly noticed. The glass stopped in midair, frozen in time, and lo and behold, there were the Mary Sues below. Slowly, they looked up at Rincewind, and saw her for the first time. Anguish marked their faces.

"Help ussss," Kira hissed.

The glass crumbled and turned into a silver dust that swept through the air like a cyclone. Finally it trailed down and lined the ground like freshly fallen snow, where it flared up under their feet with a liquid glow akin to that of the moon.

As the glow lit up the earth, the ground started shaking, and they fell to their knees. The earth started cracking and falling apart, chasms and rifts appearing out of nowhere. Dirt and rock kept crumbling away, uncovering something underneath, until the whole clearing became a great pit, an endless, black void.

But they hadn't fallen in. They were standing on something. Something that had been uncovered…

A Bridge.

It was blacker than the darkest night, than the deepest cave, a terrible thing of adamant, cruel and hard and cold. It was darkness given form. Shadow made into stone.

And now it shifted beneath their feet and great chunks of it fell away, leaving the girls clinging pitifully to a ragged, stony edge.

At this point, gravity finally kicked in, and Rincewind dropped onto the Bridge with a thud.

"Oof!"

To her horror, the Bridge felt warm underneath her. It was throbbing, pulsating…like it was alive…

Ignoring the terrified nausea that was welling up within her, Rincewind scrambled to the edge and looked over. They both were clinging to a ledge, a crumbling, black, jagged ledge that was three feet down.

She couldn't reach them.

"Rincewind! Rincewind, help usss! PLEASSSSE!" Kira begged. Rincewind was too panicked to realize how odd it was that Kira even knew who she was in human form.

"AAAAAUGH! GETMEUPGETMEUPGETMEUP!" Kate cried out in fear.

"I can't--I can't reach you!" Rincewind called out, and to her complete amazement, she realized that she was sobbing. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes and cheeks with her sleeve so she could see better.

"Rincewind!" Kira called out again, her voice panicked and more than a little annoyed.

"I can't reach!"

"TRY!" yelled Kate.

Rincewind looked around, desperately trying to find something, anything she could use to help them, but nothing was in sight.

Except…

She sighed. "You know, you guys should consider yourselves lucky. The only other person that ever got me to do this was Jimmy Falwell, in my senior year of high school…"

Dwelling miserably on the fact that she could remember that pimply beanpole's name and not her own, and grumbling under her breath…she took off her shirt.

The girls blinked in shock.

"Dude! What the hell are you doing?!" Kira yelped.

"That's definitely not the last thing I wanna see before I die!" Kate yelled.

Rincewind leaned over the edge and dangled her shirt down Kate's way.

"Oh," Kira said. "That's what you're doing."

Rincewind rolled her eyes, and muttered "idiot" under her breath.

"Get Kira up first!" Kate shouted.

"No, get her up firssst, like you're doing!" Kira yelled in response.

"I'm going alphabetically! Both of you shut up!"

Kate reached a shaking hand out and grabbed the shirt…

There was a sudden crack, like a gunshot.

"Oh shit," all three of them intoned.

The stone crumbled away beneath the three of them and they were falling, falling into the black abyss, the light above them growing smaller and smaller, until it disappeared entirely. As they fell, Kate and Kira's screams pounding in her ears, there was only one thought going through Rincewind's mind, only one thought that could go through her mind…

I'm going to die topless! I'm going to die frigging topless!

Then, somehow defying the laws of physics…they stopped falling. Rincewind's shirt fluttered to a stop slightly above her, just out of arm's reach.

She cursed under her breath.

The girls dangled in the air, their arms and legs at odd angles, like puppets on strings. Their heads lolled onto their chests. They seemed to be unconscious now.

"Choose," a voice said in the dark, melodious and thoroughly masculine.

Rincewind's head whipped around as she looked for the source of the voice. There was nothing. Only the girls hanging in the air, a strange sourceless light on them, and darkness everywhere else.

"You must choose."

Rincewind kept looking, trying not to move too much because who the hell knew what would make her fall.

"Choose what?" she snapped.

"You must choose between them."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"One will live…One must die. You must choose."

"What?! Why?!"

"To save the world. To save more than the world, to save less. To save One."

"I'm sorry, I don't speak Enigma. Can you repeat that in English, please?" she snapped.

The voice sighed.

"How much clearer do I have to make it? One of them has to die to save the world. You have to choose which one is sacrificed and which one lives. Capiche?"

Rincewind raised her eyebrows.

"Why?" she asked the voice.

It sighed again.

"Because that's how it is, okay? If the girls survive long enough, you will be presented with a situation where one will have to die to save Middle-Earth."

"Why do I have to choose?"

The voice seemed taken aback. "What do you mean? You started all this! You have to finish it!"

"Shouldn't they choose? It's their lives."

The voice paused in thought. "I didn't think of that…"

"You're underestimating the powers the individual mind. One of them will choose to do it; I won't have to. They're both too, well, good for their own good."

The voice paused as it thought about this. It finally said, "Ah, but they'll never be able to decide it out amongst themselves, will they?"

This horrid realization washed over Rincewind like a flood of cold water. "You're right. They'll both try to be all noble and self-sacrificing. I will have to choose. I guess I could choose for Kate to die because she annoys me…but if I do, Kira will hate me. And I don't want to choose Kira at all…" Her face fell. "I can't--I can't choose! I can't do this!"

"You should have thought of this before you did what you did."

Anger flared within her. "All I did was write some stories!"

"You did more than that and you know it! You may have told the girls your own little lie, but I know the truth!"

Rincewind scowled into the darkness. "Why should I care if you know? Who are you, anyway? Coward!" she hissed. "You won't even show yourself."

"Coward? Coward?! How dare you, you insolent, little witch! You're lucky they let you live after what you did! You're lucky they let you live after what you did to me!"

Rincewind's face wrinkled in confusion. "Did to you? What are you--?"

"You know what I'm talking about! You--!"

In front of her, a young man appeared, floating in the air and spluttering in rage.

He could have been human.

That is, if being human meant that you glowed with a pale blue light, had lithe, muscular, limbs, went around completely stark naked all the time, and had a heaping helping of ethereal beauty thrown into the mix.

"You--!" he spluttered again, nonplussed, his blue hair waving wildly about his face. "You…" He paused in surprise, and started scratching his head confusedly. "--are, uh, shirtless…"

He blushed a bright blue. She blushed as well and crossed her arms over her chest. "Look who's talking, Mr. Exhibitionist."

"Hey, I'm a mysterious, ethereal being of unsurpassable beauty. I’m allowed to run around naked."

"Gimme my shirt!" Rincewind snapped, and the…thing floated up to the peasant blouse, snatched it out of the air, and held it out to her. "Could you stop staring please?"

"What difference does it make? I've already seen the goods."

"You're drooling, that's what difference it makes," Rincewind snapped, snatching her shirt back. "Turn around, pervert."

Blushing even more (and wiping drool from the corner of his mouth as surreptitiously as possible), the being turned around.

Rincewind closed her eyes as she put her shirt on, trying not to be a hypocrite by looking at the young man's finely sculptured buttocks as he floated right in front of her.

"Dressed," she muttered. She opened her eyes. The man turned around and looked at her sheepishly with glowing, blue eyes.

"Um…sorry about the, uh, shirt thing…" he stammered.

"Who are you? What are you?" she asked, desperately trying to keep her eyes above his waist.

The being crossed his arms obstinately. "You already know who I am. You've met me before."

"I have?"

"Um…yeah. You don't remember?"

"Being killed and reincarnated multiple times has a tendency to dull the razor edge of memory," she sarcasmed.

He uncrossed his arms in surprise and waved them wildly in the air. "But--but could you forget that?"

"I've forgotten a lot of things," Rincewind muttered ruefully.

The being sighed yet again. "Well, there's no time to explain who or what I am. I don't have a lot of time before this dream is over, and I can only communicate to you through your subconscious--"

"Whoa! Dream? I was hoping I was dead…"

"Yes! A dream! Now shut up and let me talk! I know where you have to go!" the being exclaimed, grinning, his face shining brighter with excitement. "You can find what you're looking for in--"

And then, either because of the cruel fates, or because of plot continuance, Rincewind woke up.

*****

It was very dark. That was pretty much all that Kate could tell. Wherever she was, it was very dark. And hot. Also, something was tugging at her ankles, and that was slightly disturbing.

And there was something else wrong (besides the obvious), something she couldn't quite place…

"Mrg…" someone groaned next to her. She turned and, in the dim, red-tinged light, saw Kira standing next to her, her hair standing on end for some incomprehensible reason.

"Kira?" she whispered. "Are you okay?"

"Oww…" Kira murmured vaguely.

"I'll take that as a yes; you can still talk."

"Arg…" Kira said.

Kate looked around curiously, trying to make out what was in the darkness around them. The nagging feeling that something was wrong--other than the sheer fact that they were wherever they were--refused to go away.

"All the blood is rushing to my head," Kira moaned.

Kate looked down at her feet and figured out what was wrong.

"Oh."

They were both upside-down, hanging from the rocky ceiling by manacles firmly secured around their ankles.

"Where are we?" Kira asked aloud.

"Mini-Balrog's abyss. Lovely this time of year, isn't it?" a voice said in the dark behind them.

They craned their necks and look behind so quickly it nearly gave them whiplash. A teenage girl was hanging by her ankles almost directly behind them, her bobbed hair fanning around her head like a frizzy, brown halo. Her baggy T-shirt was tucked securely into the waistband of her jeans, but despite that, it billowed around her anyway. It was emblazoned with an X-Men logo. She had an overall shaggy look, and gave the impression of being the type of lazy, easy-going person that threw on the first clothes she got her hands on when she reached into the closet every morning.

The girl looked at them under the frames of her wire-rimmed glasses (as her glasses were half falling off of her face, she couldn't possibly have looked over the frames), gave them a charming grin, and said, "Name's psychicsaphie, Saphie for short. What're your names?"

"Uh, name'sss, uh, Kira," Kira said, more than a little aghast. There was something extremely odd about this girl. And something disturbingly familiar…

"I'm Kate," Kate said cheerfully (or at least as cheerfully as the situation permitted.) Kira looked at her in surprise. Apparently she hadn't had the same odd feeling.

"So, what are you in for?" Saphie asked nonchalantly, swaying slightly as she hung upside down.

"Uh…we tried to sneak into the staff section?" Kate offered.

"Wow," Saphie said unenthusiastically. "That's really boring."

"Well, what were you doing?" Kira asked derisively. Already, she didn't like this chick, whoever she was.

"Gluing blue fur on the elves!"

Kira was about to ask why, but an odd look passed over Saphie's face…and she…asked it first…?

"Uh, why?" she asked herself. "Why do you glue fur on the Elves?"

Kate and Kira suddenly became very confused. More than a little alarmed, Kira stated, "Dude, we don't. You do." She was starting to get annoyed, and for some odd reason, somewhat uncomfortable. She started squirming slightly, which made her sway a little bit. "You just said you did."

"I did?" Saphie asked.

"Yeah."

"Oh. I'm just…really…confused," Saphie replied. "For a second I felt like…" She gave Kira an odd, wide-eyed stare. "I…dunno."

Kira stared back. "You're really freakin' weird, you know that?"

"Yeah," Saphie said resignedly. "That's what everyone always tells me."

"Hey, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with being weird," Kate assured her

"Ssso, could you answer, my--our--your--whoever'sss quessstion?" asked Kira.

"Oh. Oh, the fur. Right. Well, see, I really like Nightcrawler and he's a fuzzy Elf so…"

Kira snorted. Then she looked perplexed. "Uh…you like Nightcrawler, too?"

Saphie nodded furiously.

"Nightcrawler?" Kate asked, obliviously.

"Character from X-Men," both Kira and Saphie said at once. "He's cute."

They stopped and stared suspiciously at each-other.

"Jinx!" they both shouted.

"Personal jinx!" they both shouted again.

Kate blinked in surprise.

The two girls paused and stared at each-other warily.

"Okay, this is really, freakin' weird," they both said.

"Stop doing that!" they said in chorus again.

"You stop doing it!" It was simultaneous once more.

"How about you both stop it?" Kate said, a little angrily. Dangling by your ankles was not a fun position to be in while listening to people argue. "How are we going to get down from here?"

"Aren't you a rock climber?" Kira asked.

"Me? I've rock-climbed probably about five times in my life. I'm as flexible as an Ent," Kate said. "I can't even reach my manacles, see?" She tried to bend herself in the middle and reach down--well, up--to touch her ankles, but to no avail. She came back down, panting. "I can't get out of here."

"Oh. Ssso, I guesss my whole reassoning that you were a rock climber and therefore probably the only one who could sssit up and reach their manaclesss and sssomehow free yoursself iss a bit faulty, issn't it."

"Especially since I can't get past my knees even when I'm right-side up."

"Right," Kira said dejectedly. "If I had a hairpin and abdominal musclesss that weren't made of jello, I could probably sssit up and pick the lock..."

"Oh, you want to get out?" Saphie asked. "I can help you out there." After a moment's struggle with her tight jeans, she pulled a hairpin out of her pocket, sat up with a grunt, grabbed hold of Kira's manacles to steady herself, and picked Kira's lock. There was a click, and a wordless shriek, and Kira plummeted to the ground on her back, narrowly missing falling to it on her head. Saphie proceeded to do the same to Kate's manacles, and Kate followed right after, landing on top of Kira.

"OOF!"

"Whoa! How'd you do that?" Kate asked, sitting up and rubbing her back where she'd fallen on it.

"I forget my key all the time at home. One must make do with what one has…or one is stuck outside in the rain until one's mom gets home. Which can take a while." Saphie paused. "Especially when she's shopping," she added thoughtfully.

"Wait, so you can escape at any time?" Kira asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah."

Kate stared. "So…what are you still doing up there?"

"I like the ambiance."

"Um…okay."

Kira shook her head. "You're a nutter."

"Everyone says that, too…" Saphie sighed. "I really don't understand it. I mean, so maybe I do some odd things at times: gluing blue fur on Elves, randomly sticking bumper stickers on people's foreheads, throwing socks at people, being insanely obsessed with cheese--though that's AW's fault, really…"

"You're barking…"

"Anyway, I also stay in here to stay away from Tom Bombadil. I'm deathly afraid of bad poetry."

"Whatever," Kira muttered. "Let'sss go, Kate."

"Yeah."

The two started making their way out…but stopped. As nonchalantly as possible, they peered in all directions.

"The way out is that way," Saphie said helpfully, pointing.

"Uh, thanks," Kate said.

They ran.

Perhaps it was because the cruel fates figured that they had been through enough crap, or perhaps it was because the minis were all occupied with dangling various students by their feet, because no mini-Balrogs accosted them on their way out.

They ran out the door and into some sort of underground mini-Balrog tunnel, but before they ran out, Kira turned back, leaned through the doorway, and shouted "Ho, Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo! Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow!"

There was a feminine shriek of terror deep in the mini-Balrog lair and Kira cackled, before turning and running.

There was a period of prolonged running, during which Kate quietly upbraided Kira for doing something that could have gotten them caught by the minis again. Fortunately, her fears proved unjustified, most likely because even the mini-Balrogs were wary of bad poetry. After they were sure they weren't being followed, they started talking again.

"That was evil!" Kate huffed out as they ran.

Kira laughed. "I know."

"Why were you so mean to her?"

"She annoyed me!"

"She reminded me of you," Kate commented, and ducked as Kira took a swipe at her. "Well she did!"

Kira glared at her a moment, her arms crossed, then stopped and began to laugh.

"What? What's so funny?" Kate asked.

"Nice shirt," Kira sniggered, pointing at Kate's chest. Kate looked down at her chest and stared blankly at the small, white, midriff-baring T-shirt she was wearing. It had a picture of a blonde elf on it and bore the phrase: "I love Leggie!" There was a little heart where the word "love" should have been.

"I wasn't wearing that today," Kate said, stretching out the shirt a little bit to get a better look at it. Kira laughed some more.

"Aww, don't you look like a cute, little fangirl! Now how come you never told me you loved Leggie-kinssss, huh?" she giggled.

"Oh come off it," Kate grumbled. "I don't know how that got there. And I'd much rather have an 'I love Johnny' shirt, at that."

"Johnny who?"

"Depp, naturally."

Kira nodded approvingly. "His Deppnessss is worthy of admiration. A shame we might never get to see Pirates of the Caribbean."

“Oh, it’ll probably suck anyway . . . pirate movies often do.” Kate sighed. “And the theaters’ll probably be filled with squealy Orlando fans.”

“Probably,” Kira agreed. “But ssstill, Johnny Depp . . .”

"Yeah." Kate glanced up at Kira and sniggered. "Hey, you're one to talk! You've got the same shirt on!"

"What?" Kira looked down and yelped. "Get it off!"

"I don't think Miss Cam would appreciate it much if you walked around OFUM half-naked," Kate said reprovingly.

"Nah, I bet students try to flash Legolas all the time…" Kira said, but she left her shirt on.

*****

Over in the staff section of the Official Fanfiction University of Middle-earth, Miss Cam woke up infused with the feeling that this was going to be a very, very good day…

Which is exactly how she knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.

*****

"Gosh. It's so quiet in here," Kate muttered as the two walked down the empty halls of the school, having eventually found their way out of the dungeons and into the school's upper levels. "Must be pretty early, huh?"

"That or classsesss are in sssession," Kira muttered.

"Gonna be hard not to get noticed. I mean, there are lots of students here, but Elves probably have freakin' good memories."

"More to the point, how are we going to survive?" Kira wondered. "We're un-regisstered, bona-fide Mary Ssuess, remember? We're not enrolled. Misss Cam or Elrond will spot uss right away, I bet…"

"And if they don't, Galadriel will read it in our thoughts!" Kate moaned. "We're doomed. We're so doomed."

"Gimli and Éowyn don't know uss here, either," Kira said. "We gotta keep away from canon charactersss. I bet we can hide out in the dorms during classssesss or sssomething. No one will notice usss cutting becaussse we're not regissstered ssstudentsss."

"Assuming we can find the dorms, that is," Kate muttered.

"Maybe it'sss like in the PPC Headquartersss," Kira suggested. "The bessst way to find it isss to forget you're looking for it."

Kate brightened up a little. "And if all else fails, we've got Mary Sue senses of direction. Even though we really can't use them." She sagged dejectedly again. "And we've got to avoid mini-Balrogs too, don't forget that."

"Aren't you jussst a right little ray of sssunshine," Kira commented.

"Yes, aren't I?" Kate said, sticking out her tongue.

The two continued stalking up the hallway, keeping on the lookout for mini-Balrogs and staff-members, or--Eru forbid--Miss Cam herself. They soon started passing doors, to what most likely were dorm rooms.

"See?" Kira remarked smugly. "You jussst forget you're looking, and poof, you're there."

Kate rolled her eyes, but smiled tolerantly.

The hallways of OFUM were completely devoid of life, although…there seemed to be some noise in the dorms. It sounded as if the students were waking up and getting ready for their day.

As they passed each door, they heard snatches of muffled conversation.

"…the blue tube shirt and the black miniskirt or, like, the black tank top and the jeans miniskirt? Which do you think would impress Frodo more…?"

"…I'm going to read my Elvish love ballad to Legolas tonight. How does it sound? 'Oh, Leggy, my love, the stars are nought compared to your beautiful face, your sparkling blue eyes, your long-legged grace…'"

"…if I don't finish this essay before Elrond's class, I'm so screwed…"

"…then