A/N: Thank you, everyone who reviewed/has been reviewing!

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Legolas dangled upside down in the air, sucking on his little finger and rubbing his side with his other hand. After the rack Saruman, for his own perverse pleasure, decided to hang Legolas from his wrists and tickle him. Then, the elf was spun around in the air for a long time (A/N: the way Gandalf was in the movie). Finally, he took a bath in a tub of hot lye (with a container of bath gel hanging mockingly just out of his reach) before being strung up again.

Now he was watching Saruman bustle around the little kitchen in the tower, his hair pinned up and wearing a red and green plaid apron. The wizard seemed to have a strange penchant for plaid. Legolas had started to point out that the colors didn't correspond with the season, but Saruman just glared at him, and flung a deviled egg at him.

He seemed to be in a bad mood, for some reason.

Legolas presently heard some loud noise coming from the floors below him (they were on the fourth floor). He cocked his head, trying to listen. It seemed to be someone screaming.

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Gandalf tugged at the clawed hands that encircled his neck. Had the situation not been so dire, he would have started crying. His very own little pet, (who looked remarkably like Frodo) had turned against him.

The wizard frowned. Where exactly did Legolas get the rabbit from anyway?

Finally after much tussling he managed to get the upper hand. That is, the claws were no longer wrapped around his neck, but instead were firmly grasping his feet. As Gandalf stumbled along, he noticed he was going up. There was no other way- he had no idea how he got down here in the first place.

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After all that tumbling around in secret chutes and such, Pippin was hungry. Which was a good thing that he ended up in Saruman's basement storage room. All around him were bushels of potatoes, barrels of Granny Smith apples, tins of butter cookies and chocolate dipped eclairs… etc.

Pippin was exploring Saruman's collection of wine when he heard a soft wheezing sound. Looking around, he saw that suspended from the ceiling of the storage room were live cows, pigs, ducks, and chickens. Saruman's meat supplies. The chickens had, for some odd reason, motors attached to their back.

He wandered around the basement for a while, with a bottle of wine in one hand and a chunk of cheese in the other, exploring his situation. After all, he wasn't quite so silly as he appeared in the movie, probably. Because after much munching he found that, instead of taking the obvious way out through the big doors, he could climb what seemed to be a laundry chute. There was a pile of dirty plaid socks at the bottom.

Pippin regretfully left the food behind and started up the chute, but not before tucking a few (or more) cookies in his pockets. He used his hands and feet to go vertically up. Pippin climbed for a while, and had already passed one opening, when a light appeared above him. A pair of bony hands threw down a bundle of cloth. Saruman! Not to mention, a red and green plaid apron.

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Frodo squeezed his eyes shut.

"No, no!" Gimli shouted. "You must keep your eyes open! How else will you see not to crack that silly skull of yours on the ground again?" He pounded his hands together in example.

"Please, Gimli," Frodo said, "this is bad enough already."

"Bad? Why this is nothing. Wait until you try to scale the Lonely Mountain. Of course, I've never actually done it myself, but…"

"Gimli." Aragorn interrupted.

"Oh, fine. These young lads can kill themselves, if you and I don't mind them." But he shut up.

Frodo opened his eyes and made a grab for a stone jutting out about two feet above his head. Clutching on to that, he pulled his feet up. Then… yes, again. And… once again. And… oops.

"Easy there," Aragorn said as he set Frodo down. "How about you and I going together this time? I'll try it without the ropes." Without another word, he sprang up and hung onto the first story windowsill. Frodo looked glumly up at him and started to climb again.

"Why do I have to go anyway?"

"We might need someone small to distract Saruman, or get into small places." It was the first logical thing Frodo had heard all day. Not that that made him happy.

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Gandalf had managed to pry off the Orc at last, with a few well placed punches while the thing wasn't looking. He wandered up the torch-lit passageway. Occasionally, there were doors opening onto the passage. Gandalf looked in every one of these as he went along.

In one of them, he could see a room full of chickens with motors on their backs, being propelled around the room. In a glass observatory adjoining the room, some Orcs wearing white lab coats were jotting down notes.

Another one had posters of different people pinned onto bull's-eyes at the far side of the room. There was Galadriel, Elrond, Celeborn and… hey! He frowned, but smugly noted that there were fewer arrows in his picture than that of the others.

Gandalf walked on and on. He felt that he must be pretty high up. He passed… more motorized chickens… what looked like a boardroom, with plans for conquering Middle Earth scribbled on the white board… a room full of ducks… a room with an elf covered in baked beans sitting on a lace doily in the middle of the floor… Wait a minute.

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Legolas just knew he was in trouble. It wasn't his fault the baked beans had burned… not really, anyway. And if Saruman was so concerned about his culinary products, he shouldn't have turned the elf loose anyway! Right?

Now that old wizard was stalking around, muttering to himself and rubbing burn ointment on his hands… it was really creepy. Saruman didn't seem too pleased that the sauce had splattered all over him, either.

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A/N: This story should be finished in a few more chapters… I am going away for a month, but I am seeking a friend to post a few chapters during that time for me… if that doesn't work, DON'T FORGET ME!