Revenge!

Summary: Ever heard of 'punishing your unruly actors'? Mordor as we know it has become animated before Frodo can destroy the ring and Gollum. Who's behind this scandal? The two best pranksters in all of Middle Earth, Merry and Pippin. R&R!

Disclaimer: I do not own The Lord of the Rings. I do not own any of the characters or the actors. The characters belong to J.R.R. Tolkein (I was told by my obsessed younger brother that if I didn't attach the J.R.R. part to the last name, I would be hunted down by everyone who read this fic… Would you really do that to me?). The actors belong to… themselves. I don't own anything, so stop asking me.

(A/N) Just a quick little note… Anything you see with a CM mark next to it belongs entirely to me… and in case you're wondering what it means… Well, it's a joke, so you'll have to read to the very end to find out. Thx. Enjoy!

"Only one more step to go before we reach the top," Frodo breathed just as he was about to get to the top of the volcano, Gollum following closely behind him, watching the ring almost possessively, "then no one shall have the ring."

When Gollum heard that, his eyes widened in horror at the thought of his precious being destroyed. "No!" he hissed just as Frodo dropped the ring so it fell towards the Fiery Pit of DoomCM.

As they watched it fall, there was a huge flash of light and, within the blink of an eye, they were standing on an animated flowery mountain instead of the volcano they had previously climbed. The two unlikely companions observed the ring in puzzlement as it instead landed amongst the flowers. Standing there in utter confusion, Frodo sighed as he and Gollum stared at the gold piece of jewelry in front of them.

"Mr. Frodo, hobbit, sir, I don't think it did anything," Gollum stated, taking deep breaths to try and force himself away from the ring, "What we do now?"

Frodo thought about it for a second before turning to him. "I don't know," he responded before looking around at the once barren land surrounding them. Instead of it being dark and scary, it was now a dark and pretty animated field of flowers, void of everything from its previous set up save the people standing down below.

Sauron looked around in his own bewilderment, frantically trying to find some sort of evil left about the place. "Where is all my stuff?" he ranted, getting angrier the more he thought about it, "Where's my big flaming mountain, my black gates, my tower, and the big eye? Whoever did this is going to meet my mace!" He reached for his mace, but just seconds before it reached his fingertips, it was turned into a pansy and he pulled away as if afraid to touch it. Sighing in frustration, he looked around at the gloomy clouds hanging about in the sky. "Well, at least I still have my darkness," he stated as a comfort to himself until the sun came out, lighting up the fields, "Why?"

Meanwhile, at the director's chair… Peter Jackson sat chuckling to himself almost suspiciously as he turned to the readers, "You ever heard of punishing your unruly actors?"

Back on the animated mountain…

Frodo and Gollum found themselves surrounded by animated bunnies. "Aww… they're so… cute," Frodo stated just as the bunnies made a lunge at the ring on the ground, "and dangerous!"

Gollum immediately leapt at them, knocking them away. "I get them leave precious alone, yes, yes," he said as Frodo snatched the ring off the ground so it wasn't in the open. Just then, Gollum grabbed one of the bunnies and ripped its throat out with his teeth.

Frodo watched in horror as he began to kill each of the power hungry bunnies. "What's going on?" he wondered out loud, too afraid to move.

~~~~~~ Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin stood at a control panel, watching what was happening on a screen. "I told you not to press that button!" Pippin turned to yell at Merry.

"Well, what was I supposed to do?" Merry answered defensively in response, holding his hands in the air innocently.

"I don't know… Maybe listen to me?" Pippin shot back in frustration before sighing, "You got us into this mess, now what do we do to undo it?"

Merry crossed his arms and thought really hard. "Un-press it?" he suggested.

"You can't un-press a button!" Pippin argued back.

Merry shook his head, trying to end the argument. "Then let's try pressing a bunch of other buttons until something happens," he finally said.

Pippin stopped and a smile crept across his face. "Alright," he agreed as they turned back to the control panel and looked over the buttons, "Start pressing."

Almost instantly, they both began pressing as many buttons as they could reach. "Middle Earth domination!" Merry exclaimed excitedly as he pressed any button that lit up or looked big enough to do something important.

Long contemplative pause… Awkward silence…

"That's not our job," Pippin finally replied, shaking his head, "How about we call it… revenge?"

The two laughed as they continued to press each button in any random order they could think up.

Back at the director's chair… Peter Jackson looked away from the two hobbits in the control room and glanced over at the readers. "Hey… I never said I was the one punishing them," he stated, looking back over at the hobbits one more time before adding, "I don't even know how those two got in here."

Back in Ana-Middle EarthCM…

Frodo and Gollum finally managed to break free of the bunnies and headed down the mountain. "I don't know how you managed to do that, but just know that if we ever get out of this, I will owe you one," Frodo told Gollum, who licked the bunny blood from his lips in thought while they ran away from the top of the mountain, where all the grotesque bunny bodies lay, "and no… you can't have the ring back… yet."

Gollum almost got upset until he heard the yet part of what Frodo said. Silently wondering what that meant, he continued to follow the hobbit.

When they reached the bottom of the mountain, they walked on until they found Sauron sitting in a fetal position on the ground. Stopping abruptly, they shared a questioning glance before cautiously moving forward. Sauron saw them approach and stopped chewing on his lip to explain. "I'm waiting for the melting process, but it isn't coming," he stated and the two briefly wondered if he had gone insane, "I just know it's supposed to happen."

Frodo and Gollum looked at each other before backing up a bit. "O…kay," Frodo said in a step-away-from-the-mental-patient kind of way, "Whatever you say."

~~~~~~ Back at the control panel with Merry and Pippin…

The two mischievous hobbits started mixing potions together. True, they had little to no experience with this kind of stuff, but they needed to break the laws of physics, which had been their goal from a while back and hopefully this would be their big chance.

"We're working on it!" Merry stated in exasperation upon hearing Sauron's comment from the screen they'd been using to observe the mayhem they'd concocted back at Middle Earth.

Pippin threw in the last handful of ingredients and started mixing it around. "Well, Merry, I think that should do it," he said with a sigh before smirking, "Let's try it out."

Merry's eyes lit up at the thought. "Okay, but maybe we should get Gandalf in here to help us, you know, duplicate it," he suggested, trying to hold in his excitement.

"Quite right," Pippin agreed before clearing his throat and calling out, "Gandalf! Would you help us in here?"

There was a shuffling from the other room as the wizard made his way to them. "Of course, but… with what, might I ask?" he questioned curiously, always the one to think before doing something uncertain for the two hobbits.

Pippin bravely formed a response, willing to be persistent if necessary. "Duplicate this, will you?" he stated simply, pointing to the potion they'd just concocted.

"Please, sir," Merry chimed in and the two gave him innocent smiles.

Gandalf looked at them suspiciously, attempting to deduce what they were trying to do. "Why?" he asked skeptically and the two whispered their plans in his ear, his eyes lighting up with every word they spoke, "Of course, I will. That's genius." Grabbing the bottles to examine them, the wizard left the room to head back into the kitchen.

Merry and Pippin silently cheered in accomplishment while they waited. Hearing sounds of bottle clanking in the other room, they couldn't wait for Gandalf to come back so they could begin their pranks once again. Gandalf soon returned with a few extra bottles of the duplicated potion. Placing them down on the table, he turned to them just as a ding came from the other room. He smiled as if just remembering something.

"Now, don't touch them until I get back," he instructed seriously before turning around to leave the room, "I left the Hot Pockets in the microwave."

Merry and Pippin stared at each other in confusion before looking back over at the wizard. "Why do we have to wait?" Pippin asked, almost pouted, and Merry nodded quickly in agreement, waiting for an answer.

"I don't want to miss all the fun," Gandalf responded on his way out of the room.

As soon as he was gone from sight, Merry leaned against the table and turned to his friend. "Pippin, I think we've outdone ourselves this time," Merry proudly stated and Pippin smiled in agreement.

Reaching out, he playfully slapped Merry on the arm, causing him to lose his balance and knock over one of the bottles which broke and landed on the two hobbits. As a result, they melted into puddles.

"Yeah, you've really outdone yourself," Pippin responded bluntly.

"Hey… Don't make me slip over there!" Merry threatened him.

"What are you going to do?" Pippin challenged, "Leak on me?"

"If that didn't sound so gross, I would," Merry continued to bicker.

Just then, Gandalf headed back into the room. "What did you do this time?" he called from the doorway, hearing their arguments and as he entered the room, he saw the two puddles on the floor by the table and the broken empty bottle, "Please tell me you created an antidote."

"Yes!" Merry and Pippin responded at once.

"Does it work?" Gandalf questioned knowingly and there was a pause while the two hobbits-turned-liquids thought about it.

"Well…" Pippin began hesitantly.

"You see…" Merry tried to explain before they both sighed, "We…"

"…don't know," Pippin finished simply.

Gandalf stared at them, not at all impressed. "You mean to tell me you just mixed a bunch of stuff together and slapped a label on it?" he quizzed, taking a bite out of the Hot Pocket in his hand.

"No," Pippin retorted quickly, "We don't label stuff."

"That's ridiculous," Merry said before adding strongly, "Who labels stuff?"

Gandalf quickly swallowed the bite of Hot Pocket in his mouth and gave them a look. "Normal beings!" he told them in duh tone.

"We're not normal," Merry and Pippin informed him and Gandalf could tell that if they still had a definite form, they would be placing their hands on their hips and crossing their arms in sync.

"I can see that," was his only reply to that as he glanced over the table to find the "antidote" they'd created, "I better duplicate this just in case it actually works." He picked up the bottle and went back to the kitchen to duplicate the "antidote".

Merry and Pippin would have glanced over at each other if they had needed to, but being nothing more than animated puddles, they found they didn't need eyes to see. Go figure. There was another ding that sounded like a microwave and the clinking of bottles coming from the kitchen right before Gandalf returned with a few more bottles of the potion.

"O…kay," Merry said in confusion, wondering what all that was about, "Now, just roll the bottle this way."

"But first…" Pippin interrupted and everyone in the room could tell he was grinning, a plan already forming in his mind.

~~~~~~ One short moment later in Ana-Middle EarthCM…

Sauron began to melt into a puddle. "I'm melting! I told you this would happen," he yelled overdramatically, "It always happens to the bad guys!"

Frodo and Gollum started backing up slowly, gradually taking larger and larger steps away from him, startled at his sudden reaction at this nonsensical occurrence.

~~~~~~ Back in the control room…

Merry and Pippin were sniggering to themselves while Gandalf took another mighty bite out of his pepperoni pizza Hot Pocket. "Okay, now that was worth it," Merry chuckled.

Pippin tried to calm himself from the laughter that had overcome him. "O-okay Gandalf… Pour the antidote on us now," he explained, trying to catch his breath.

Gandalf grabbed one of the many identical potion bottles from the table. "Sure, sure," he replied, barely paying attention to what he was doing as he watched the screen and dumped a bottle on them.

"Gandalf!" they screamed at him as they turn into clouds of gas, "Wrong potion!"

"You poured the melting potion on us again," Merry screamed in terror at the possibilities, "That turns us to gas!"

"One more time and we'll be…" Pippin trailed off into a small voice, "…plasma."

"Oh, well excuse me," Gandalf retorted defensively, "I'm sorry if I couldn't tell which is which. You don't label them, so I how could I?"

"Fine! Slap a label on them and put them away in the storage facility," Merry told the wizard, who harrumphed as he grabbed the bottles and left them alone, and then directed his next statement to his companion, "Now, we can take care of some unfinished business." They both floated back over to the screen and control panel.

~~~~~~ Meanwhile, Sauron the Puddle CM appeared outside the warehouse. Quickly sliding inside, he looked around at the shelves of labeled potions. "Whoever did this obviously wants me to pick the only one here labeled 'antidote', which will most likely end up being something even worse than this," he thought to himself out loud, since thoughts could no longer be kept to himself anymore in his current state of matter, "I'll go with one of the ones labeled 'melting potion'. I'm dealing with a genius here, so it must be a trick any other way."

Slipping over to one of the shelves, he noticed a rat slink through the shelves and spill one of the 'melting potion' bottles on him. As a result, he turned into a cloud of gas.

"What?" he stated in shock, not believing someone could have tricked him again.

Merry and Pippin the Clouds CM floated in and they 'tsk'ed at him teasingly. "We didn't know you were that dumb," Merry sniggered at the evil wizard's anger and disbelief. Pippin snorted in agreement.

"Where's the reason behind this whole matter?" Sauron worked to compose himself in his current form.

Just then, Frodo walked in with Gollum following closely behind, hovering near Frodo's pocket, where the One Ring had been stashed. "Yeah," Frodo chimed in curiously, "Why are you doing this in the first place?"

Merry and Pippin glanced over in the other's direction and they would have nodded to each other if they could have.

Once again looking back at the others in the room, they gave their answer: "You made us lose our mushrooms."

(A/N) Okay, so this took me forever to actually write. What did you think? Did you expect that to be their reason behind it? In one of the movies, Merry and Pippin had to sacrifice their mushrooms in order to save everyone (or something like that), am I right? So, that's where the whole joke comes in. And did you ever wonder what the CM stood for? Of course, since I can't really use ™ in a fanfiction, I decided to come up with my own symbol. It stands for Cloe's Mark. Teehee… Get it? Trademarked and Cloe's Mark? Right? Just imagine a paw print and you've got my mark there… I'm a werewolf in case you didn't read my profile.

EDIT:

Hello there once again, dear readers. I'm not quite sure how I like the way I wrote this, but… whatevsies… It's here now for your viewing "pleasure". Well, this is the 16th fic I posted to my profile. Yup. I write a lot and not all of it makes sense…

So, this story underwent my New Year's "spring cleaning" and… came out looking like this. I fixed grammatical errors and spelling fails as well as the format. And I don't think I did much more to it actually. Hopefully, you'll still enjoy it… but if not, then I don't blame you. I've never actually read the Lord of the Rings books. I've only really watched the movies. *hides* And even then, I'm no master at the fandom, so this is the only pure Lord of the Rings fic you'll see from me. Promise. *crosses heart*

Original Post: 4/24/09

Revised: 10/27/11

Reposted: 10/30/11