DISCLAIMER: This is a story that is written by numerous authors on the Mellon Chronicles list. It was written as a Christmas present for our mommies, Cassia and Siobhan. DO NOT FLAME! I have warned you what this is, so if you don't want to read it, don't.

Ch. 11

By Bill the Pony

While all manner of mayhem and conniving was afoot in adjacent and upper rooms, Cassia and Siobhan were both awakening with groggy yawns.

"Gee, must have been one bash up of a party," Sio mumbled, rubbing her tousled hair.

With a grunt, Cassia rolled over, colliding with the infamous inflatable banana. An eyeball peeled back. "I'm beginning to wonder if this was really Aragorn and Legolas's idea. At least, they certainly weren't in charge of the," she coughed, "décor."

Sio rolled a leftover cheese wheel closer with her foot. "You think?" She glanced down, a hiccupping chuckle brewing subconsciously. "Cheese wheel…"

Flipping onto her back, Cassia threw a bewildered look at her cohort. "What are you on about?"

"Kellen's as bad as us, you realize."

"Explain?"

"Cheese wheel…"

---

At that very moment, the very same authoress was prowling the halls in search of another lesser authoress. Matters were made a bit more complicated due to the slightly purplish hue of her appearance. There was her pride to consider after all.

She was just rounding the last turn to Aragorn's chambers when she was unexpectedly broadsided by a great mass of charm and villainy.

"What ho? A foe?" Kaldur windmilled wildly, just managing to keep his feet while Kellen staggered into the opposite wall. "Ah, a purple foe!"

"Bugger off, have no time. Must whoop Elladan's posterior. Find Bill. Wash hair. Eat cake."

"Slow down, slow down, Dear. Now," Kaldur stepped smoothly into Kellen's path, "what can a bandit do to help this maiden in distress?"

Kellen's former, congenial, attitude towards the bandit had been quite misplaced amongst a fit of purple. She had no time for wooing this time. "Clean the earwax out, man! I said bugger off! Come back when I'm back to my normal skin tone."

Kaldur blinked as if – and it was – the very first time any breathing female creature fended off his charm. This was to say; he had not yet in earlier meetings made any such moves towards a certain undesirable Bill. He would have found likewise the same disappointment from that front much earlier.

Kellen breezed past him, leaving the much-befuddled bandit in her wake. Kaldur could only chew a nail and wander back towards the main hub of the festivities with a puzzled expression.

---

"You!"

Elladan started, whirling around in a defensive stance with his back to the wall. From the doorway in the opposite wall, a face, a mirror to his own likeness, stared back at him. "Elrohir, really, must you persist on startling me like that?"

"You!"

A wrinkle creased Elladan's brow. His brother's mouth had not moved. No, he realized with terrifying clarity, came not from Elrohir's mouth, but from directly down the hall…

…From the mouth of one such purple fiend.

"By all the star's sake, Elrohir, let me in!" Elladan lunged towards the escape Elrohir blocked.

He collided with a very heavy oaken door – trapped, alone, left to fend off the purple-ified writer on his own.

Well, not completely alone. Muffled voices were coming from the other side of the door, and at the moment he was sure to be devoured, the door swung back open. Oh, joy! His savior had come, sure to appear in a blaze of glory to rescue him from torment's claws.

His savior it was, though not so magnificent as expected. She was rather short, stocky, dressed in a blue, cloud and squeaky yellow duck print bathrobe and wielding a fearsome squeegee.

"Kellen! Well it's about time you showed up." Both eyes squinted – since it is known that Bill cannot for the life of her harness her motor skills to master the skill of controlling only one eye over the other. "You haven't brought anymore of those squeally ones with you?"

However, Kellen had eyes only for revenge. She made a go at Elladan's throat. Bill got there first, catching the tail end of Elladan's dark hair and pulling him out of Kellen's reach inside the room.

She was just about to make another attempt after him when from inside, a noise – a voice more particularly – made her stop abruptly in her tracks. It was Trin, unmistakably, and she was cooing some endearment to one such Aragorn.

Bill hissed at Kellen, "Look, it wasn't my idea. That smelly chap got this strange notion to backfire the girls' scheme. I got stuck on this side of the line by pure chance of location." She glanced up and down the hall. "Well there's no use for it now, you're stuck with us, er, I mean them. Just," Bill looked at Kellen imploringly, "please keep the Elf intact?"

Pulling her inside, the pajama clad Bill shut the door hastily behind them. Trin stopped mid-giggle and stared long and hard at Kellen.

"What."

Trin made several attempts to form a legitimate string of words. Eventually she managed, "You're purple!"

Hackles rose. "I thought it was a rather nice shade, personally." A benevolent look pinned Elladan to the wall.

"Quit fretting, just a smudge, really."

"Bill," Kellen said slowly, tilting her head towards her shorter companion warningly.

"All right, all right."

---

Ten minutes later and all fingernails devoured, Trin had re-related her 'spilled beans' to the new comers.

"So you see, it was all a plot really… Elladan, Elrohir, stop looking so innocent! You were apart of this too if you remember." Trin poked the dosing Karine with her toe ill temperedly.

"I should have seen it from the start. The moment any gaggle of girls with strange new devilry named Inflatable Bananas show up, there is bound to be some foolery afoot." Aragorn tapped his chin. "At least we have you two in our custody, that is, you two and the Twin Terrors." He clicked his tongue, eyeing the floor absentmindedly. "Now if only we could get Legolas out of the battle field and out of harms way."

Trin perked up at the mention of new, desirous company. "Legolas you say? Oh, Karine and I could probably do that quite – "

"Not a chance," the Ranger interrupted. "Legolas is quite the proverbial chicken when it comes to dealing with the fairer sex. However I would hardly place you two in the genteel category," he leveled a withering glare on the duo.

Kellen, who had been occupying the plush armchair in the back corner of the room, waved a hand. "Now, if I may make so bold as to insert my professional eye witness information, last I saw of the chicken-elf as you named him, he was clinging to Elrond's robe like an elf babe." She coughed, "I fear that Trin's cohorts may have permanently damaged him. So…we could just forget him and get on with the business of sweet revenge?"

Except for the crunching of a macadamia nut chocolate that Bill had found under Estel's wardrobe, there was silence. Then Aragorn sighed. "Considering the situation, Kellen may be correct for once. After all, Legolas will have to learn to stand up to them eventually."

"Goody," Bill managed around the nut, "what's next?"

Aragorn turned towards the window, his finger still tapping against his chin. "For starters, how's your crawling?"

---

"Oh look Kellen, a crack in the tile. We should probably tell Elrond about that later."

Bill stopped crawling to inspect the crack, causing Kellen stop abruptly as well, causing Elladan to pile up on Kellen and Elrohir to do likewise to Elladan. "Bill!" all three hissed, "This is not the time to be inspecting his flooring!" Elladan added.

"Fine, fine, don't be so huffy. Really, whichever one you are, you're much to up tight all in all. It's not as if anyone huggled you or anything."

With that, they rearranged long tablecloth covering the equally long table and started crawling once more.

Bill by far had it the easiest, being the shortest of the four. In fact, this all came rather naturally to her as she spent most of her time either flat out on the floor, draped across chair in slumber or crawling about the floor in search off odd trinkets that tended to be shoved under furniture and the like. She being at the head of the table, with two eye holes cut out of the fine table cloth for visibility found no end to the enjoyment of traversing the halls and stairways on all fours, taking frequent abrupt swerves at the site of some glittering object – creating a mess of legs, arms and heads entangled in her wake.

Bill had been given a mission. Search and destroy. Take all they could and give nothing back (this being a direct quote from Aragorn who had obviously been spending excessive time in the company of Kaldur). Food pillaging and havoc. What more could she ask for? Stealth was essential, it was an assignment for which disguise was mandatory – what better than furniture! It was a mission to wreak paranoia.

Taking a peep through her eyeholes, Bill made a small squeak and swerved towards the top step of the stairs. "Red alert! Balrog in site!"

"What the…"

"Code words, Kellen," Bill hissed. "Haven't you ever watched a movie in your life? Yeesh. Now hush up! It's Kaldur."

Kellen gnashed her teeth. "I thought I told him to bugger off."

Bill wadded her bathrobe sash and pointed at Kellen's mouth. Silence fell and so did the legs of the table.

Kaldur was lost. The architect who laid the floor plan for this place obviously had no inclination to cater to practicality. Once hall led into another it seemed and one room to another. But wait, he must be getting somewhere. Even though he would have sworn on his toe jam that he'd been up this short flight of stairs before, he was positive that table was unfamiliar.

Inside that very table, Elrohir squirmed. It was terribly cramped and Elladan's hair was irritating his nose. It was becoming unbearable, this tight space. Bill was still crouched at the head of the table, peering through the eyeholes and gnawing on a knuckle. Would that insufferable bandit ever just go away? He had an uncanny knack to show up just when he wasn't wanted.

Then Elladan shifted and so did his hair – the hair that tickled that one spot under Elrohir's nose that was guaranteed to make him sneeze.

And sneeze he did.

The bandit was fed up, he was sure he was going mad. Not only was he lost in Imladris, wandering for goodness knew how long in this cursed place, but he could have sword the table had just sneezed. Narrowing his eyes, he inched forward.

Bill's left eye was beginning to twitch; Kellen knew that to be a pretty bad sign. It always tended to do that when Bill was anxious or aggravated. The shorter of the two nudged Kellen in the ribs. "He's coming over, blast you Unnamed Twin, you'll foil us!" she hissed as softly as she could.

The tablecloth flew up, and Kaldur's scraggly face replaced it. "Ah-ha! I – "

He didn't have a chance to finish before Kellen grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in under beneath the table. Bill pulled the cloth back in place.

"Wow, luv, slow down. You could dislocate something doing that," the bandit whined.

"Shut up, and listen for once," Kellen said, still gripping Kaldur's collar. "This is the price you pay for being nosey. Now, crawl, and do try and be quiet for once."

Elladan shook his head adamantly. "You are surely mad now! You actually think he'll fit under here?"

"There's no room." Elrohir finished. Bill was even beginning to look a bit green at all the close contact.

"It'll be fun." Kellen suddenly put on a bright face. "Just think of it. You, your demon double, the bandit, Bill and I…and with all the cheese and cake we could consume here under the table? What more could one ask for?"

Muttering something about chocolate and her horse, Bill started to crawl again.

So with one more added to their crew, four became five on their mission of revenge.

*****