On my eighth trek through Middle-earth, this is what I saw:

Eight in the Fellowship once Boromir bit it

Seven rings for the dwarf lords

Six Uruk-Hai

Five Narsil shards

Four traveling hobbits

Three rings for the elf kings

Two shades of Gandalf

And one ring to rule them all

More hands reached in to pull on the sword. With a sudden 'crack!' it broke into bits, sending the hobbits tumbling to the floor.

"Oof!" Merry got up and helped Sam to his feet. Frodo pulled Pippin up, who dusted off Sam, who offered a hand to Frodo, who had fallen on top of Merry, who tripped over Sam, who was stuck under the couch…

Suddenly the hobbits realized there were more of them than before. Twice as many, in fact.

"Well, will you look at that! Hullo, Sam!" said Sam.

"Wow, I never knew how good-looking I am," grinned Pippin.

"Now this is just strange," Merry told Merry. Merry nodded.

"Now this is just confusing," Aragorn told Legolas. "Four hobbits are hard enough to keep track of, but eight? Utter chaos. And identical twins, at that."

Legolas blinked. "And there's another Gandalf, as well."

"Okay, okay, hold still all of you," Aragorn said to the hobbits. "Right, now who's been here and who just got here? Separate yourselves." After a bit of shuffling, the hobbits ended up in two groups. "Right. You-" Aragorn pointed first at the group of old-timers, "are going to be Pippin. Yes, the Pippin in black. What are you, ninjas? …Never mind, I don't want to know. You're Pippin, and you're Peregrin. Merry and Meriadoc. Sam and Samwise. And Frodo and… the Other Frodo."

Frodo and Other Frodo looked at each other and laughed. "Maybe I should have gone by a nickname like everyone else," said Frodo.

Now Legolas took charge. "So, one of you who have been here the whole time, tell us who else is here? And only one of you, I don't need to try listening to four hobbits chattering at once."

"Well," said Merry, "there's Frodo, Pippin, Sam, me, Meriadoc, Peregrin, Samwise, Other Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf the White who just arrived, Gandalf the White who's actually wearing black, Gandalf the Grey who's turned invisible, seven dwarven rings somewhere down that hole, lots of pieces of Narsil, six Uruk-hai that haven't been doing anything so I guess they're still unconscious, and the one ring." Merry took a deep breath. "And the three elven rings, but they kind of melted. Wow, that's a lot."

"It would have been a lot less if you had left us in one piece," complained half a dozen bits of Narsil in unison.

"Shut up already," said four of the hobbits.

"So, what we have to do," Gimli summarized, "is take the one ring back from Gandalf the Invisible, find some way to destroy it while keeping away from six Uruks and an angry, possessed wizard, then reforge the three rings and Narsil, ally or fight with anything in the next four verses, and somehow find our way out of here?"

"Yes, that sounds like everything," Aragorn said.

"Impossible."

"No, just very, very improbable," Legolas told him.

"We need to have a strategy meeting," Aragorn suggested. "Can you get the two Gandalfs over here?"

"Sure. That means you get to round up the hobbits. Good luck."

Aragorn turned around to see utter chaos. He yelled, "Merry, Meriadoc, and Peregrin! Put the pillows down and stop hitting each other with them! Sam, Samwise, it doesn't matter which of you can cook better, stop arguing and get over here! Pippin and Other Frodo, leave Narsil alone, it's not a jigsaw puzzle. Frodo… what are you doing?"

"Watching the ant," Frodo said calmly.

"Ant? How did an ant get in?" Aragorn asked.

"That's what I was wondering."
"There must be a flaw in the plot." Gandalf the Black had arrived just in time to hear Frodo's ant problem. "The rings haven't dug through yet, so the ant must have gotten in here on its own. That means there's a place somewhere in this room where the song's control is weak. If we can find the plothole, we might be able to escape."

"Escape?" Aragorn asked. "Are we really that desperate?"

"This is verse eight," Gandalf the Black said. "So what comes in nines? Think about it."

Aragorn thought about it. "Nothing that I want to be in a room with. Follow that ant!"

"The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah-"

"Pippin, stop singing that song!" Gandalf the Black yelled.

"-go marching two by two, hurrah-"

"Peregrin!" Gandalf the Grey barked. "Shut up!"

Pippin and Peregrin cowered under the force of a double Gandalf Glare of Death. The other six hobbits glanced at Pippin and Peregrin, then at each other, and as one began to sing. "The ants go marching…"

(A/N: Ah, I thought this might be getting a little confusing, so let me explain really quick: there are now three different Gandalfs, so they need three different names or we'll all get really lost. The 'Gandalf the Grey' from chapter 2 is now called 'Gandalf the Invisible' because he's wearing the one ring. The 'Gandalf the White' from chapter 2 is now called 'Gandalf the Black' because he became a ninja. And the 'Gandalf the Grey' from chapter 8 is still called 'Gandalf the Grey'. Need it simpler? Grey(Ch2)- Invisible. White(Ch2)- Black. Grey(Ch8)- Grey. Got it? Good.)

(Oh yeah, and there was a line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in this chapter. If you noticed, kudos to you.)