Disclaimers, etc: see part 1

***

When Neo woke up in a strangely small bed, his first thought was the Matrix was rather girly. What was Morpheus thinking? It was so...bright and cheerful. And what was this mop of hair on the end of the bed?

He pulled on it and discovered to his surprise that the wig was actually someone's hair. The little person--actually, the guy was more of a midget--sat up, blinked and let out a confused "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!"

Neo, alarmed and confused by the midget let out an "Ahhhhhhhh!" of his own. Which grew into a "AHHHHHHHHHH!" as the midget pounced on the bed and began beating him into a bloody pulp.

When he managed to move away from the berserk dwarf, he tried a new strategy. "Whoa, little dude..."

"Where's Mr. Frodo?" The burly midget exclaimed as he proceeded to jump up and down on Neo's back.

"Mr. Who?"

Just then the door flung open and the midget stopped attacking him.

"Sam, what are you doing?"

Neo looked up at his new savior and sighed. Great, two more midgets. He was beginning to feel like Snow White. Hopefully, these two weren't like Psycho who was babbling on and on about some guy named Frodo.

The other midget who was stuffing his face with a variety of desserts moved over to Neo. "Who are you?"

"I'm Thomas Anderson, but you can call me Neo....Have you seen Morpheus?"

"No...and I don't think you've seen a hobbit by the name of Frodo Baggins, have you?"

He liked this dwarf. He had a funny accent. "What's a hobbit?"

"Well, me and Merry, we're hobbits. And so is the crazy one, his name's Sam."

"I'm not crazy, Mr. Frodo's gone!!!"

"Keep it together, Sam."

Neo shook his head and set about ignoring Merry and Sam and focusing his attention on Pippin. "So hobbits are really short people--"

"With furry feet, see?"

Neo could plainly see that this was the case once the hobbit stuffed his fuzzy foot in his face.

"....right."

The other midget, the one named Merry looked over at them from where he was trying to calm down the one named Sam. "Maybe we should take him to see Elrond?"

"Then we ought to finish off the food we stole from him first."

"Yes, that's probably wise."

Neo felt marginally better as Pippin handed him a crumpet.

***

By his third crumpet, Neo had reached the conclusion that he rather liked the muppets....er, the hobbits. Peregrin 'Call me Pippin' Took and Meridoc 'Call me Merry' Brandybuck were really fun. Though he did have to admit that Samwise 'Where's Mr. Frodo?' Gamgee was kind of a stuck in the mud.

Still, you had to feel sorry for a midget with a sexual identity crisis.

They went off looking for some Elf named Elrond after they gorged themselves. Neo was really starting to like the Matrix. It was kinda like a real awesome video game.

They burst into to some room where a private meeting was going on. He liked that the muppets didn't seem to care about stuff like that. They seemed pretty care-free.

The two men in the room didn't seem too cool though. Both looked like they were wearing dresses and neither one of the looked like they would know where Morpheus was. The old guy with the beard was the first to look at them.

"Fool of a Took! This is a private meeting!"

Pippin looked sheepishly at Merry who stammered a bit before getting the message across. "It's just that Frodo's missing and this weird bloke named Neo was sleeping in his bed. Neo's pretty nice though and..."

Merry continued talking but Neo didn't pay it much attention as he already knew what had happened. Instead he looked over at the other man who has just turned around and--

"Nooo!!! Run Muppets! It's Agent Smith!!!"

"...."

The others turned to look at him as he marched towards 'Agent Smith.'

"You thought you could fool me by dressing up like a woman and wearing a wig? And those ears? Ha, you're not fooling anyone."

'Agent Smith' stared at him like he was a complete and absolute nutcase....and so did everyone else.

"I'll show you guys! He's really Agent Smith!"

Neo rushed 'the Agent' and began trying to remove his fake ears and his wig. They didn't come off and 'the Agent' seemed to be getting rather pissed off.

He looked up at the muppets who were all wincing in anticipation of something dreadful. The old man looked torn between laughing and yelling at him.

'Agent Smith' growled rather fiercely and pulled away from Neo. "Now, I don't know what ails you, but I will have you know that I am wearing a robe not a dress and that these ears and my hair are permanently attached to my skull which is now in a good deal of pain because of you!!!!"

Pippin giggled softly until Merry smacked him upside the head. Neo tried to keep a straight face.

"....but...you look just like Agent Smith."

"Just tell us where Mr. Frodo is!" Sam begged.

The man who looked just like 'Agent Smith' if he had pointy ears and dressed in women's clothing sighed and sank into his chair. "So now we are not only missing the ring bearer but the ring as well?"

"No, I have the ring for safe-keeping," Pippin piped up.

"We're doomed."

Neo wondered if everyone in the Matrix was this odd.

***

"What do you mean Mr. Anderson is completely gone?"

Agent Jones and Brown looked a tad uncomfortable as Smith posed the question.

Jones cleared his throat and loosened his tie. "I'm not sure, but we believe it is linked to this." He handed Smith a bag of green jellybeans.

"....."

"We're not sure what it all means, but these green jellybeans were all that we found."

"Green jellybeans?"

"It's only a hypothesis, but we think that he must have disappeared completely some time after eating some of these jellybeans."

"Do you two have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"

Jones and Brown nodded.

Smith drummed his hands on his desk and stared at the jellybeans. Was this Morpheus' idea of some sort of sick joke? He hated humans. He hated them because of things like this. Only as human being would think this was remotely funny. Well, he was not amused.

"Then there's only one solution, we go in after them."

Jones nodded though Brown seemed to have some slight reservations. Smith looked over at him. "Yes, Brown?"

"Do we really have to eat green jellybeans? Couldn't we go get some grape or maybe coconut-flavored ones? The green ones taste like grass."

"....Brown, I think that is the weirdest thing you have ever said."


***

tbc