A/N: I have been making the addicting mistake of re-reading some of my older stories. It is quite depressing sometimes. There's this really horrible spy thriller that is just… well… HORRIBLE. So badly written. So much depression. But anyhow, I hope my stories have improved! :D Maybe?

Thank you reviewers! I'm sorry I update this so infrequently. I've got so many stories going right now, and I'm working a job, and trying to get ready for college, and you know, life just gets in the way. If I could I would probably just spurt out fan fiction all day long. But don't worry, I won't give up on writing this story. I will make it to the end! (even though I'm only half way through Fellowship of the Ring… speaking of depression). -_- Enjoy!

Chapter 14.

Frodo awoke screaming.

Partly because his brain was damaged and it was taking him a while to remember anything, and partly because his diet for the last few days had been salad.

"Where am I?" was his first question, as soon as he could stop screaming.

"You are in The Wild, the restaurant of chef Elrond, and it's two o'clock on October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know," said a voice.

It was Gandalf, of course. Who else would be smoking like a chimney in somebody's sick room?

"Gandalf!" said Frodo, weak with the tobacco fumes.

"Yes, I'm here, and you're lucky to be here, too," said Gandalf. "A few more hours and you would have been beyond our aid. You have some strength in you, my dear fast food eater." Gandalf didn't mention at that time that he had a growing suspicion that McDonald's food actually promoted longevity.

Frodo's angst was returning quickly now that he was awake. He sat up.

"What happened, Gandalf? Why didn't you meet us?" he whined.

"I was delayed," said Gandalf shamefacedly. Then he fell into a trance and had a flashback.

His mind went to Starbucks, where he'd been trapped by the evil critic Saruman.

"Get up!" ordered the critic evilly, wielding his long coffee stirrer. "Submit to the power of the Cupcake or embrace your own destruction!"

Gandalf didn't like embracing things.

Except quarters. And he had finally managed to get ahold of the one on the floor. Now all he had to do was...

With one quick movement, Gandalf slid the quarter into the vending machine. Out popped a super caffeinated soda pop. Gandalf downed it in one gulp. Now he was Super!Gandalf. He grabbed his critic's pen and banged Saruman on the head! Then he ran away. And the moral is, that vending machines solve everything… if you can find a quarter.

"So you have chosen deasthththt," said Saruman chillingly. His head rather hurt.

And that was how Gandalf the critic escaped.

But he didn't tell Frodo any of this.

"Gandalf, what is it?" asked the fast food eater.

"Nothing," Gandalf lied. He was rather ashamed of his silly fight with Saruman.

"Frodo!" yelled Sam, running in. "Bless you, you're awake!" He was quite excited, because he didn't want to ever see a salad again in his life, and therefore wanted to leave The Wild as soon as possible.

"Sam has hardly left your side," said Gandalf.

"We were that worried about you, weren't we, Gandalf?" said Sam.

"By the cooking of chef Elrond, you're beginning to mend," Gandalf said. Elrond appeared at that moment, brandishing a plate of salad.

"Welcome to The Wild, Mr. Anderson," he said stoically. "You have found your way to the last salad bar east of the sea. The chefs of Vinaigrette have dwelled in this restaurant for thousands of years, though few fresh greens now remain."

It wasn't long until Frodo could get up and see his old friends; Merry, Pippin, and Bilbo.

"Hello, Frodo my lad!" said Bilbo, who had gotten pathetically skinny in his time at The Wild. He handed Frodo a book.

"'Eat and Eat Again, a fast foody's tale, by Bilbo Baggins,'" Frodo read, and laughed. "This is wonderful."

"I meant to go back," Bilbo confessed. "Wander the aisles of the Mirk Vineyard and Winery, visit Red Lobster, see the Erebor Pub again. But weight, it seems, has finally caught up with me."

Frodo turned a page of the book, and there before him was a McDonald's menu. "I miss McDonald's," he said quietly. "I spent all my childhood pretending I was eating something else… off eating with you on one of your food excursions. But my own food travels have turned out to be quite different. I'm not fat like you, Bilbo."

"My dear boy," said Bilbo, rather offended.

A little later, Frodo came across Sam packing.

"No, what have I forgotten?" asked Sam worriedly.

"Packed already?" asked Frodo.

"No harm in being prepared," said Sam, who was positively sick of spinach and strawberry salad.

"I thought you wanted to try salad, Sam," said Frodo.

"I do," said Sam. "I did. It's just, we did what Gandalf wanted, didn't we? We got the Cupcake this far, to The Wild. And I thought… seeing as how you're on the mend, we'd be off soon. Off to McDonald's."

"The Cupcake will be safe in The Wild," Frodo said. "I am ready to eat a Big Mac again."

Meanwhile, chef Elrond was talking with Gandalf. "His strength returns," he said, looking down at Frodo.

"That poison will never fully heal," said Gandalf cynically. "He will carry it with him for the rest of his life."

"And yet to have come so far without eating the Cupcake," said Elrond. "The fast food eater has shown extraordinary resilience to its evil."

"It is a burden he should have never had to bear," said Gandalf. "We can ask no more of Frodo."

"Gandalf, the enemy is moving," said Elrond urgently. "Sauron's cooks are massing in the east. His eye is fixed on The Wild. And Saruman, you tell me, has betrayed us. Our list of allies grows thin."

"His treachery runs deeper than you know," Gandalf agreed. "By foul craft, Saruman has crossed cooks with gingerbread men. He is cooking an army in the ovens of Starbuck's. An army that can cook in sunlight and cover great distance at speed. Saruman is coming for the Cupcake."

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the salad bar," said Elrond nervously. "We do not have the strength to fight both Melkor's and Starbuck's. Gandalf, the Cupcake cannot stay here."

Gandalf bit his fingernails and glanced down at Frodo through the window.

"This peril belongs to all restaurants," Elrond continued. "They must decide how to end it. Not just for themselves, but for those that come after." Elrond walked over to Gandalf. "The time of health food is over," he said quietly. "Health nuts are leaving these shores. Who will you look to when we are gone? The locals? They hide in their pubs watching rugby games. They care nothing for the troubles of others."

"It is in chocoholics that we must place our hope," said Gandalf.

"Chocoholics?" said Elrond disbelievingly. "Chocoholics are weak. The chocolate lovers are failing. The blood of them is all but spent, their pride and dignity forgotten in their consumption of cheap Palmer's chocolate. It is because of chocoholics that the Cupcake survives."

Now it was Elrond's turn to have a flashback.

"I was there, Gandalf," he said. "I was there when Isildur took the Cupcake. I was there the day that the strength of chocoholics failed."

Elrond saw himself motioning towards the oven of Doom. "Isildur, hurry! Follow me!" he was shouting.

"I led Isildur into the heart of the Oven of Doom," he said to Gandalf. "Where the Cupcake was baked, and the one place where it could be destroyed."

"Cast it into the fire!" he was shouting to Isildur the son of the critic. "Destroy it!"

But Isildur loved chocolate too much. "Noooo," he said evilly, turned, and left.

"Isildur!" Elrond was shouting after him, but it did no good.

"It should have ended that day," said Elrond again to Gandalf. "But evil was allowed to endure. Isildur kept the Cupcake, and the line of Chocoholics was broken. There is no strength left in the race of chocolate lovers. They're scattered, divided, leaderless."

"There is one who could unite them; one who could reclaim the chocolate of Hershey's," said Gandalf.

"He turned from that path a long time ago," said Elrond bitterly. "He has chosen Palmer's."

I hope you enjoyed! :) Naughty you-know-who, to choose Palmer's over Hershey's! }:(

Please, please, let me know in a review or PM if there are any continuity errors. After a while, this stuff gets really confusing. I mean, really confusing. Thanks a million.

In the online transcript of the Fellowship of the Ring I'm using, it says

Saruman

(Chilling)

So you have chosen death.

The way they put it made it look like Saruman's all like, 'yeah, just chillin' over here, Gandalf'

And did you notice that if present trends continue, there will be over eighty-four chapters to this fic when it's complete? And will take approximately five more years to finish? Oh yes! We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of this story. WOOT! Thank you guys for making this possible, and more than that, fun! :D

Anyhooooo please review! Love you guys. I'll be back.

8)