"Holy crap, so many reviews!" Lordy Duffano said, looking at all the reviews the two had received. "I never got this many writing serious stuff. So screw the serious stuff!"
"YAY!" said Stephano, who did not like the serious stuff.
"Anyway, thank you all who reviewed. It made me happy. And it made Stephano full, because she ate your reviews," Duffano said.
Stephano burped.
Duffano continued, "Sorry about that. If anyone's offended, they can complain to our secretary."
"But we don't have a secretary," Stephano pointed out, giving Duffano a curious look.
"SHH!" Duffano hissed. "Don't tell them that! We must make them believe that we actually have enough money to hire a secretary."
Stephano stared at her friend. "If we had enough money to hire a secretary I have two questions. One, why would we waste it on hiring a secretary when we don't particularly need one? And two, why would we be writing FanFictions?"
"Have I ever told you that I hate you?" Duffano said, after a long pause.
"Yes."
"Okay, now just replay that moment in your head for about four years and you'll understand the hatred I feel for you at this moment."
"That's a long time," Stephano observed.
"I hate you a lot," Duffano said. "Now, isn't it about time that we disclaim the chapter and start it up already? I doubt even our wonderful reviewers are able to tolerate us for much longer."
Stephano shrugged. "Okay, sure."
"Yeah, so, peoples, we don't own any of this. You already knew that, but we're required to say this by law. And if we owned this, we might have enough money to hire a secretary," Duffano said.
Stephano muttered, "Waste of money…"
"SHUT UP!"
Chapter One
It was a wonderful day at the Baggins household. It was the day of Mr. Bilbo's traditional Labor Day Bar-B-Q. The whole gang was there: Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, and some random neighbors that no one particularly liked. Even Merry and Pippin had forfeited their fraternity's festivities to come to the party.
"Merry, Pippin! Uncle Bilbo says your not allowed to get within ten feet of the grill," Frodo called from the opposite end of the yard.
"Why not?" Merry demanded.
"I'm not sure, but I think it's the atmosphere of alcohol that follows you. He doesn't want a fire like last year when you assumed beer would put out the fire when his oven mitt burst into flames. He still has scars from that," Frodo answered disapprovingly.
"Well how was I supposed to know that alcohol was flammable?" Pippin snapped. "It's liquid!"
"So is gasoline, Pip. And you do know that gasoline is flammable, right?" Frodo retorted.
"Of course I knew that!" Pippin said indignantly. As soon as Frodo turned away to talk to the neighbors that no one liked, however, he turned to Merry. "Gasoline is flammable?"
"Twit!" Merry said, miraculously avoiding annunciation. The two staggered off to laugh at the hilarious antics of the juniper bushes.
"All right, everyone!" Bilbo said as he came out carrying a plate piled with uncooked steaks. "How do we want 'em cooked?"
There were choruses of rare, medium rare, and various other levels of being cooked. There were also calls of "Kitty!" and "Llama roast!" that obviously came from the tipsy Merry and Pippin. They were ignored. Bilbo also left theirs raw. They wouldn't notice. They might get food poisoning, but at least they wouldn't notice.
"Hey, Frodo?" called Sam. "Did you know you have a very large portable safe buried in your garden?"
"Portable safes are a waste of money," Stephano said. "If they're portable, couldn't the thieves just take the safe?"
Duffano gave Stephano an evil look. "You stole that from Jeff Foxworthy."
"SHHH!" Stephano hissed, eyeing the readers malevolently.
"Sam, are you digging in my garden again?" yelled Bilbo.
"No," Sam lied. The problem was, Sam was really quite a horrible liar. And he didn't have the sense to try and back up his lie with physical evidence. So as he said that he wasn't digging in Bilbo's garden, he was in fact sitting in a rather large hole, covered with topsoil and Miracle Grow.
"It certainly looks like you were," Bilbo said sternly, giving Sam "The Look."
"Cue evil music!" Stephano yelled.
Music kicked in, "DUN DUN DUN!"
Bilbo suddenly noticed the safe that Sam had in his hands. "MY SAFE!" he cried, running forward, and snatching it from a bewildered Sam. He then scurried up a tree, not unlike a squirrel. Oddly enough, he also sat on a branch and chattered at them, clicking his teeth.
"Stephano!"
"Okay, okay, I'll take it out."
Bilbo suddenly noticed the safe that Sam had in his hands. "MY SAFE!" he cried, running forward, and snatching it from a bewildered Sam. He then ran, all the way to Vermont.
"Duffano!"
"Sorry."
The readers were looking at each other, and wondering aloud, "Didn't they do this in the last chapter?"
"Hey, if Austin Powers can use the same penis and shadow jokes in all of the movies, we can damn well use the revision joke twice!" Duffano snapped.
Bilbo suddenly noticed the safe that Sam had in his hands. "MY SAFE!" he cried, running forward, and snatching it from a bewildered Sam. He then ran into the house and locked the door behind him. Everyone except for Frodo just looked bewildered and left.
Gandalf, the old appraisal expert, hammered on the door. "Bilbo! Bilbo, open this door! I say, open this-" He paused to look at the door. Several minutes passed, in which he inspected the door thoroughly. "This $450 door!"
"NO! And I'll have you know, it was $550!"
"Then you were ripped off! I mean, look at this. The lock is horrible quality. If I twist the handle like this it opens," Gandalf shouted back, giving the knob an extra hard twist. The door swung open, revealing Bilbo sitting in the corner, hunched over the safe. "I'll be out in a moment," Gandalf said to Frodo. "I think he can only handle one person at a time at the moment."
"Oookay," Frodo said, not really wanting to be anywhere near Bilbo for at least an hour.
Gandalf entered the house and skewered Bilbo with "The Look."
"EVIL MUSIC!"
"DUN DUN DUN!"
"Now, Bilbo. I demand you tell me exactly what you've done," Gandalf said.
"Nothing. I just like the contents of this portable safe," Bilbo said.
"What's in it?" Gandalf inquired.
"No! I can't tell you!"
"Why not?"
"Well, you'll either steal it or start appraising it. I'm not sure which is worse," Bilbo said thoughtfully.
"HOW DARE YOU!" shrieked Gandalf.
"God that made him seem feminine," Duffano said.
"Well I don't think we can use the revision gag again, so it'll have to do," Stephano mused.
"Right," Duffano said, resigning herself to sub-par writing.
"Well, you do go on for HOURS about things, Gandalf. It's really quite annoying. So I don't want to show you this, because you might start appraising it and then we'll be here until March," complained Bilbo.
"Give me the safe," Gandalf demanded.
"No!" shouted Bilbo.
"Give me the safe," Gandalf reiterated.
"No!" Bilbo screamed.
"Give me the safe," Gandalf replied.
"No!" Bilbo cried.
"Give me the safe," Gandalf insisted.
"How long do you think they can keep this up?" Stephano whispered to Duffano.
"Until we run out of synonyms," Duffano told her.
"Oh." Stephano took out her thesaurus.
The readers groaned.
FOUR HOURS LATER…Some readers were sleeping. The synonym war was continuing.
"Give me the safe!" Gandalf recapitulated.
"No!" Bilbo vociferated.
"Got anymore?" Duffano asked Stephano.
Stephano scanned the pages of her thesaurus. "Nope. You?"
"Nope. Guess we can continue the story."
"Yeah."
Gandalf then wrestled the safe out of Bilbo's hands, and opened it. "I see you have a poorly constructed, erm, $20 safe here, Bilbo," he said. Then he removed the contents of the safe, and tossed the safe back to Bilbo. Don't worry, it was made of plastic. "I say, Bilbo," Gandalf said. "This looks like A Really Expensive Ring!"
"Oh, does it?" Bilbo said, trying to sound indifferent. If it was really expensive, that meant it would take Gandalf a lot longer to appraise it. He was well aware of this, and began looking for escape routes.
"Yes, it does," Gandalf said thoughtfully. He inspected the ring, and an inkling grew in the back of his mind. "Oh no," he muttered.
"What?" Bilbo demanded.
"I think you need to go on a vacation, Bilbo."
Bilbo smiled. "You know, Gandalf, I've been thinking about a nice long vacation for years! Maybe to Rivendell!"
"Don't be a prat, Bilbo. You can't go on vacation at FBI Headquarters," Gandalf said derisively.
Bilbo pouted. "Elrond said I could! He said they needed a new secretary. You know how good my typing skills are, it'd be perfect for me!"
"Say, don't you want a secretary, Stephano?"
"No. Stop poking me, Duffano! I don't want a flipping secretary!"
"Whatever," Gandalf said, rolling his eyes.
Bilbo decided to leave at once. He packed quickly, and went to the door. Gandalf had the feeling that he had wanted to tell Bilbo something else….
"Oh, and Bilbo!" Gandalf said quickly, before Bilbo could leave. "I think you should leave that Really Expensive Ring here."
"Why?" Bilbo asked, perplexed.
"It's worth a lot of money. So if Frodo needs financial help anytime while you're gone, he can pawn it off," Gandalf said.
"It's worth a lot of money?" Bilbo asked eagerly.
Gandalf realized his folly in telling Bilbo it was worth a lot of money. The Really Expensive Rings all created an unnatural greed in their bearers. And if this was the Really Expensive Ring he thought it was, then the greed power it held over Bilbo was insanely strong. "No, I lied," Gandalf lied quickly. "It's a forgery! If you were caught with it, you could be killed!"
"Oh. Screw that then," Bilbo said, tossing the ring to the floor and going out to the waiting taxi.
Frodo came in the back door tentatively. "Is it safe to come in, now?" he wanted to know.
Duffano waved her hand in front of her face. "Stephano, did you just fart?"
"Yes."
"Ugh. It is definitely not safe to enter this room, at any rate," Duffano said, plugging in seven or eight air fresheners.
"Yes, Frodo, it's safe to come in now. Bilbo left for Rivendell."
"Yes, he's been talking about vacationing there for a while. He wouldn't listen to me when I told him that was stupid, that he couldn't vacation at FBI Headquarters. He said something about becoming a secretary…" Frodo said, remembering the odd conversation.
"Stephano! I WANT A SECRETARY!"
"Oh, shut up, Duffano."
"Yes, we just had the same discussion," Gandalf said. "Oh, and he left this ring for you?" Gandalf picked up the Ring, and handed it to Frodo.
"Why?"
"Because I think it might be evil," Gandalf said calmly.
Frodo threw the Ring across the room as if burned.
"Hey!" shouted Gandalf. "That's A Really Expensive Ring! You can't just throw it around!"
"Oh," Frodo said, going to get the Ring.
"Well, I'm off," Gandalf said, going to the hall closet and extracting his umbrella, even though it wasn't raining. Gandalf liked his umbrella.
"Stephano, why are we giving Gandalf an umbrella fetish?"
"Because I want to."
The Tolkien Purists began crying.
"Just think of it as a replacement for his pipe," Duffano consoled them. They ignored her.
"But you just got here!" Frodo protested. "Besides, who'll eat all the cake? Everyone else left! I'll get fat if you leave it here with me."
"Oh okay, I'll have a bit of cake in a box," Gandalf said.
Ten minutes later, Gandalf was again on his way out, this time with a large portion of the cake in a box under his arm. "I'll see you soon, Frodo!"
"How soon is soon?"
Gandalf thought about this. "Hell, I don't know. But I'll see you then!" And with that, he got in his car, and drove off.
Frodo didn't know it, but Gandalf was on his way to New York City, where The Museum was. He had to find some record of the One Really Expensive Ring, to see if his hunch was correct.
He went into the archive section of The Museum, and began looking through the filing cabinet "R." Finally, he found what he was looking for, a photograph of the One Really Expensive Ring and some background information.
"Oh. Shit," he said.
"THE END!" shouted Stephano.
"Of the chapter, anyway," corrected Duffano.
"Nope," Stephano said cheerfully. "That's where the story ends!"
Duffano glared at Stephano, and hit Stephano with her shoe. "Don't be stupid. That's not where it ends."
"It isn't?"
"Where were you when we watched all of those movies? And read that damned long book?" Duffano demanded.
"The bathroom."
"Do you realize that it took us roughly four months and twelve days to read the book and watch the movies?"
"I was constipated."
"I didn't need to know that."
