Disclaimer: As before we don't own anything, except Merry's child cos he doesn't actually exist- but you all knew that. Oh, and Narvi and Celebrimbor pats them

The Next Generation- The First Assembly

This was supposed to make Legolas and Gimli feel ashamed and sorry. They were supposed to cringe and grovel and beg for forgiveness. Instead, they were smirking at each other and struggling not to laugh, whilst pretending to take him so seriously it was irritating.

"You swore an oath of secrecy!" he hissed, ceasing his pacing and leaning over them.

"We did?" Legolas looked mildly surprised. "I don't recall that. Gimli?"

"Nope, can't say I can either."

Aragorn would happily have strangled them both. But maybe that wasn't painful enough. He took a deep breath and made a violent gesture in mid-air. Legolas' eyebrows shot skywards, and Gimli's moustache rustled as he tried not to laugh.

"One day… one day, I swear… I will… will… I'll…"

"You'll what, Aragorn?" Legolas asked.

"I will… I will… kill you so badly-"

"Just a question," Gimli interrupted, "but how can you kill us 'badly'? I mean, if we're killed, we're killed. I mean, you might have to clarify…"

"SHUT UP!" Aragorn gave the Dwarf a glare- now was not the time for his ridiculous pettiness. "One day, I am going to take your heads, and smash them together, then your skulls will explode, and your brains will fly everywhere! And then, I will burn your remains, until you are ashes, and then I will burn your ashes into even smaller ashes, and then feed them to the pigs!"

Legolas experimentally knocked on his skull with his knuckles, then Gimli's skull. Deciding they needed more proof as to whether this would work or not, the pair of them cracked their heads together.

"Nope," said Gimli. "Solid as a rock."

"I'm going to have a bruise now!" Legolas complained. "And there's white light flashing on my eyelids- I'm sure that's not normal."

Aragorn let out an impatient growl and flounced out of the room, making sure to slam the door behind him. He felt like screaming when he heard the Elf and Dwarf burst out laughing as soon as he had left.

Legolas struggled to hold together his composure, but found his facial muscles out of his control. Gimli clutched his aching stomach, wondering whether he would actually die of laughter.

"Well," Legolas gasped after a while, "I doubt with Aragorn in that sort of mood he'll be up to organising a school."

"Perhaps we might have to organise it for him," said Gimli. Evil plans began to form in their heads…

All the children were in the hall, running about, screaming, breaking things and generally wreaking havoc. Celebrimbor and Narvi were, naturally, at the heart of the chaos, standing on Aragorn's throne directing the destruction.

"Go on, tip that vase over! No, no, not that one! The big one! Oh… fine, whatever."

Suddenly the doors opened with a loud creak, and Éomer walked in, looking horrified at the noise. Immediately, Narvi and Celebrimbor changed tactics. Celebrimbor leapt from the throne and ran over to Éomer, shouting at the children as he sped past. "No, no! Stop it! What do you think you're doing? Aragorn will be furious!" he stopped in front of the Horse Lord and looked as pathetic as he possibly could. "Éomer, they won't listen to me!" he wailed.

Narvi took a different course of action. He strode over to young Faramir, who was busy drawing moustaches on all the statues he could reach, and the Dwarf pretended to box his ears. The hobbit, realising what was going on, instantly fell over, clutching his head and moaning. "Pack it in!" he exclaimed, glaring at Narvi.

"You deserved it."

Éomer decided to take control of the situation. He raised his hands palm-forward in a gesture of peace. "Alright, everybody, calm down!"

There was no change; if anything, the uproar became worse.

Éomer frowned. "Come on, now, stop it!" he called. A couple of young children ran past him, almost knocking his legs out from under him. This infuriated him, and his eyebrow began to twitch: always a danger sign. His slowly simmering annoyance reached the boil; his face began to turn red, and his scowled so deeply his eyes vanished under his brows. He ground his teeth and took in a deep breath through his nose.

"OI! SHUT UP!" he bellowed.

There was a brief pause, in which all the children froze and stared at him. Just as Éomer had begun to feel the beginnings of relief, however, the hubbub continued. If Éomer's face had become any redder steam would surely have been pouring out of his ears.

At that moment the doors swung open again, and Éomer spun around, preparing to attack whoever walked through. Legolas sauntered in, followed by Gimli who was holding a bag of frozen peas, which he immediately slapped to Éomer's head. The Horse Lord gently fizzled, soft curling steam rising from under his blonde hair. Éomer sighed. "Thank you," he said.

It was at least a minute before Gimli moved or said anything. Legolas came up to him.

"Gimli, are you alright?"

The Dwarf pointed at Éomer, mouthing silently, his eyes popping slightly.

"Éomer, what have you done to him?" Legolas turned to the Horse Lord.

"Nothing!" he exclaimed.

"He said 'thank you' to me!" Gimli whispered, still looking horrified.

Legolas turned to Éomer with concern. "Are you sick?" Before Éomer had a chance to reply, a paper aeroplane zoomed through the air and hit Legolas square on the forehead. Without a change in expression, the Elf turned to the children, whose hyperactivity had not abated in the slightest.

"STOP!"  An immediate quiet descended on the children, as they froze mid-activity. "Alright, everyone, could you sit down, please." Much to Éomer's annoyance, all of the children sat down straight away, without so much as a murmur.

All except one. Elfwine, Éomer's ten-year-old son, remained standing. "Father? I thought you said that the Lord Elessar was going to be taking these classes." Celebrimbor and Narvi exchanged smirks at the boy's cultured accent. [1]

"Well, there's been a little bit of a change of plan," Éomer explained. "He's not really available at the moment…"

"AAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Arwen leaned closer to the door, wondering whether she dared open it. At the sounds of heavy objects hitting a solid surface with considerable force, she decided that she didn't dare.

"AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH! I HATE THEM! I HATE THEM!"

Did Arwen value her life over her husband's, that was the question. There had been no mention of psychotic screaming and damage of property in her marriage vows as far as she could recall. "Are you alright, dear?" she called through the door.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!"

"I'll come back later, dear. I'll bring you some tea." Valar, she was turning into a real housewife!

When Legolas had finally gotten all the children assembled in front of the steps, Gimli climbed onto the black Steward's chair, smiling to himself as he considered how it's previous occupant would have reacted to seeing it used in this manner. He took extra care to wipe the dirt off of his boots onto the luxurious upholstery, standing up straight in order to make himself as tall as possible- which, admittedly, was still not all that tall.

"Right, everyone!" he called across the hall. Narvi waved at him, trying to put him off. "I know you're probably not all that interested in doing this, and frankly neither am I, but we've got to make the best of a bad situation, right?"

All the kids cried out happily. Legolas glared at Gimli, to make sure he didn't get them all wound up again. "You're probably also expecting Lord Aragorn to be teaching you, but there's been a slight problem, and he is no longer available."

There were more cheers.

"To be honest," Gimli continued, "There aren't actually any other teachers here apart from us three, because Faramir and Imrahil abandoned this as another of Aragorn's hair-brained schemes, and rightly so; so the classes are going to have to be bigger than expected. There are a few rules, unfortunately: don't kill anyone, try not to maim anybody too badly, don't break things-" at this, the Dwarf glanced doubtfully about the wrecked hall. "Don't break the rules, and, most importantly, don't look down on us short-arses, because we can't help it!" The taller children laughed. "Oh yes, on more thing, please try to listen to us, because there's a lot of you, and it would make this go a lot quicker. But only listen to us if we're talking sense, so if I tell you to walk off the edge of the tower don't bother, okay?"

"Right, everybody whose name begins with 'Z', you're with me!" Legolas called across the hall. Nobody moved. "That's my class sorted!" The Elf beamed.

[1] We have nothing against snooty accents- believe me; you won't find many people that much snootier than we are, darlings. We know how amusing they are, however, and as it's Éomer's child and has such a silly name, we decided he needed some more personality.

Legolas: It's different to how I thought it would be, but it's still fantastic, if I do say so myself.

Gimli: Apologies for the excess use of the words 'right', 'children', 'everybody' and 'everyone'. I have a love-hate relationship with spell-check so am refusing to use it's thesaurus.