Chapter 3: Pippin is Not Very Good at Being Bad
Rated K
Pippin decided to destroy the world. Gandalf had just pushed him too far, and this time, Pippin would retaliate.
So Pippin borrowed a backhoe and traveled to Farmer Maggot's fields in the dead of night. He ripped up the entire cornfield, then burned up the corn and went to bed.
"After all," he said, "villains have to start small."
The next morning, a notice appeared in the local paper.
"Local farmer relieved of an entire diseased corn crop!" Pippin read. "Farmer Maggot stated 'I had been meaning to tear up that field before the blight could spread to my other crops, but a good Samaritan came by last night and burned the whole thing up for me. He didn't ask for a cent of money. It has restored my faith in hobbit-kind."
Pippin threw down the newspaper and said a word that I do not care to repeat.
That night, Pippin tried again. He showed up to Merry's birthday party in a dinosaur costume and drank a whole barrel of punch, leaving none for the other guests. After drinking all that punch, Pippin got very sick, threw up, and had to leave the party early. It wasn't until the next day that he discovered that someone had put sleeping powder in the punch, planning to steal the guests' possessions while they slept. Pippin had saved the pocketbooks and fancy jewelry of over 100 hobbits! And everyone praised Merry for having a real live dinosaur come to his party. Pippin spent the day in bed with a headache.
Pippin's mum was having a fancy dinner that evening, and so Pippin began building a cannon. He glued and stapled until he thought his cannon looked sturdy enough to fire paper balls at the guests. Then Pippin took his cannon to the balcony that overlooked the dining room, and he waited. When the guests were all sitting down to supper, Pippin fired. He shot his cannon again and again, but Pippin didn't have very good aim. Every paper ball landed in the recycling bin.
"Sticklebats!" said Pippin, and grabbed a fistful of flowers from a nearby vase. He stuffed the flowers into his cannon. "Maybe someone is allergic," he thought. But no. When Pippin fired his cannon, the guests all cheered.
"What a lovely idea, to have flowers fall from the ceiling!" a rich lady said. "However did you do it?"
The rich lady ended up making a business deal with Pippin's dad. Pippin went to bed early.
It was a good thing that Pippin got his rest that night, because the next day, while trying to get Merry thrown in jail for stealing, he and his cousin ran into Frodo and Sam. After falling down a hill, Pippin picked some mushrooms in hopes that he would slow everyone down, but actually his mushrooms were the perfect way to distract a Black Rider. Pippin cried himself to sleep.
It wasn't until Pippin stole a rock and ended up saving all of Middle Earth that he finally stopped trying to destroy the world.
The End