In the Middle of the Night

Pippin didn't look forward to sneaking over to Isengard Imports in the middle of the night to do Denethor's dirty work for him, but he figured one more misdeed couldn't hurt. He was already a disgrace to the family name, after all, so he might as well keep up his reputation for causing trouble. After drinking about three cans of Red Bull to keep himself awake, he snuck out of the house with his black ski mask, black gloves, and flashlight and caught a late bus to Isengard Imports. Pippin wasn't allowed to drive, for very good reasons.

There were all sorts of creepy passengers on the bus so late at night and he was stuck sitting near a group of orcs who looked like they dearly wanted to eat him. "Um, I have high cholesterol," Pippin told them nervously. "I'm also an alcoholic."

The orcs still looked hungry, and Pippin hoped his family would sue Denethor if he didn't make it through this mission alive.

Isengard Imports, as the name suggested, was a dealership that specialized in imported cars, and Pippin practically ran off the bus when it got to his stop. "Hey, you," a voice said in his ear, making Pippin jump with terror. "What would you do… for a Klondike Bar?"

Once Pippin's eyes adjusted to the dark street he realized that Grima had sidled up to him, looking as creepy as ever. "Can we just get this over with please? My dad's gonna deprive me of second breakfast for the rest of my life if he catches me out here."

Grima licked his lips and sidled off amongst the shadows. "This way, my hobbity little friend. I know where old Saruman keeps all the best cars."

Pippin sighed and scooped up some rocks to stuff into his pockets, then followed Grima to a far corner of the car lot where rows of cars waited for him. Grima whipped out a pocketknife and started slashing tires, and Pippin hurled rocks through the windows with perfect accuracy. He used to play baseball for college before he accidentally set the dorms on fire and got expelled, though they always had to put a chair on top of the pitcher's mound so he could be tall enough. It was pretty embarrassing.

Suddenly Grima pulled out a cell phone and said, "Hey cops? There's a case of vandalism over at Isengard Imports. You oughtta check it out."

"What are you doing?" cried Pippin.

"Getting you arrested, of course. Saruman happens to be my boss, genius."

Soon there were police sirens wailing through the air and Pippin tried to hide inside one of the cars, but the door was locked and Grima grabbed him by the wrist so he couldn't run off.

"Great," said Pippin. "I should have listened to my parents when they told me not to talk to strangers."

Celeborn shivered and tried to warm his hands inside his luxurious beard. He was currently sitting under a tree in the middle of the night, gazing forlornly at the nice warm house that he should have been sleeping in. Galadriel was so furious over his beard that she forced him to sleep out in the backyard. Perhaps they needed marriage counseling. He heard that Gandalf had worked wonders between Elrond and his wife by sending Celebrian off to Las Vegas or something.

Celeborn shivered again. All this night air was bad for his pores. "Hey Galadriel?" he called out pitifully.

"What?" Galadriel growled from inside.

"Can I please come inside now? I'm going to get split ends if I stay out here."

"Well you should have thought of that before you put on that horrible beard."

Celeborn sighed and crawled across both the backyard and the front yard until he was in the street, then started walking in search of a neighbor he could stay with. Elrond lived a couple of streets away and Celeborn would surely freeze to death before he reached him, Haldir's tree house was nearby but Haldir was awfully grumpy most of the time, so that left him with one option.

Shivering harder than ever, Celeborn knocked on his near neighbor's door and waited for an answer. Soon the door opened and an elf around his own age appeared, holding a half-empty bottle of elven wine in one hand and a CD in the other. He was wearing a green bathrobe and had some sort of crown made out of berries and flowers on his head. "Celeborn, my man. How's it hanging? I was just about to put in some nature music and let myself go, bro."

"Um, hi Thranduil," Celeborn said nervously. "Is it okay if I stay here tonight?"

Thranduil laughed and took a swig from his bottle. "Of course. Tonight we are going to par-tay like it's the First Age. Love the beard, by the way. It's very edgy and hip, my man."

"Uh, thanks."

Thranduil pranced—there was no better word for it—over to the stereo and popped in his nature CD, then grabbed some bottles from the kitchen and passed one to Celeborn. "I hope you're ready to get your groove on, my elvish buddy. Time to part-aaay." He began thrusting his hips to the sound of wind rustling through the leaves of a forest that came from the stereo.

Suddenly Legolas came down the stairs, wide-eyed with fear, and gazed at Thranduil "getting his groove on" to nature. "Dad, what are you doing?"

"Just having some fun with my bro," said Thranduil. "Come on, Legoboy, get over here and work what me and your mama gave you."

Legolas hated it when his dad called him Legoboy. "I'm gonna go stay at a friend's house. The neighbors better not call the cops on you again."

Thranduil wasn't listening, as he was too busy shaking it to the sound of a roaring waterfall, while Celeborn stood around awkwardly and tried to drink himself into passing out. Legolas got out of there as fast as possible.

Pippin always assumed that if he were to ever get arrested, it would be for getting drunk in public or stealing from the neighbor's mushroom garden or selling pipe-weed to underage hobbit children. Getting arrested for vandalizing cars and getting blamed by a creep with no eyebrows was definitely not in his plans, but that was exactly what had happened and now he was being held in a jail cell while the police decided what to do with him.

"You get one phone call," snarled the orc guard who was watching Pippin.

Pippin tried not to cry like a scared little hobbit lass and accepted the phone that the guard thrust at him. He definitely couldn't call home or else his father would disown him for sure, and Pippin was going to need that inheritance because he kept drinking away all his wages from Denethor. Frodo was also out of the question, since his oldest cousin would claim that he was too ill to go outside, and he couldn't call Faramir because Denethor might find out about his arrest and fire him.

"Hey Merry?" Pippin said into the phone. "Can you come get me out of jail please?"

"Legolas, it's one o'clock in the morning," Haldir stated, sounding both tired and annoyed. "If you came knocking on my door to lecture me about tree discrimination, I will have to hurt you."

Legolas stood at his front door holding a pillow tucked under one arm. "No, it's nothing like that. Celeborn came over to our house and now my dad is being super weird and I can't sleep. Can I please please please spend the night here?"

"Legodude!" Rumil appeared out of nowhere and slapped Legolas a high-five. "Sweet, man, you wanna play Guitar Hero? I hit a new high score last night."

"No," Haldir said firmly. "Get back to bed, Rumil."

"Oh, hi there Legolas," said Orophin, also coming out of nowhere. "I tried that conditioner you recommended and it is just magical. Everyone down at the salon just loves it."

"You get to bed as well," Haldir snapped. "I will handle this."

"Um, I really just want to get some sleep," said Legolas. "It's really hard when my dad insists on getting drunk and partying in the middle of the night. I'll just… lie down on the floor and I won't bother anyone, I swear."

"You can take the living room couch," said Haldir. "Consider yourself lucky."

After chasing Rumil and Orophin back to their rooms, Haldir got Legolas situated on the couch. "Hey, is that a Frodo Baggins novel?" said Legolas, his eyes lighting up. He grabbed Secret and Safe: a mystery tale by Frodo Baggins from off the coffee table and flipped through it eagerly. "Oh my Valar, I love his books! He's so sensitive towards nature."

Haldir wondered if there was anyone in the city who didn't read Frodo's novels. "So you're a fan as well? I've been reading him since his first book came out."

"I just started reading him two months ago, but I'm hooked. Man, he is so deep about the human emotional state."

"You know, you should join the Frodo Baggins Admirers Club," said Haldir. "It's a million times better than the Fan Club because we choose to respect Mr. Baggins instead of shamelessly fanboy and fangirl him. Are you in?"

"Sure!" said Legolas. "As long as it doesn't get in the way of my Treehugger's Club duties, because trees come first of course."

"Fantastic," said Haldir. "Now get to bed, treehugger."

When Merry received a phone call from Pippin at one-thirty in the morning, begging him to get him out of jail, he was tempted to ignore him and go back to sleep, but then he realized that this was his chance to go on a real police mission. All he ever did was give out speeding tickets all day long and whenever he asked Theoden, the chief of police, if he could do something a little more exciting, Theoden would spend about an hour lecturing him about how dangerous that was.

Theoden was a nice guy and everything, but sometimes he was a little too protective over Merry. And sometimes he would get all senile and accidentally call him Theodred, which was kind of creepy.

After promising Pippin that he would come get him as soon as possible, Merry went through his drawers and grabbed all the police officer accessories that he never ever got a chance to use, like handcuffs and taser guns and a bullet proof vest. He then got into his special police car that was modified for hobbit drivers and headed off for the jail, blasting his siren at full volume simply because he could.

Pippin ought to get arrested more often.

Celeborn had never been so drunk in his life.

Sometime in the last thirty minutes he managed to lose his pants, somehow tripped over a wine bottle and crashed into Thranduil's television, and almost set his (false) beard on fire. Thranduil didn't seem alarmed by any of these incidents and insisted that they keep on "rolling with the groove," whatever that meant.

"Hey C-Man," said Thranduil, throwing a drunken arm across Celeborn's shoulders. "You should like, call up your wife. Man, it'll be funny."

"Ha," Celeborn laughed stupidly. "I should. Where's the phone, bro?"

"I don't know, buddy."

They spent ten minutes hunting for the phone and finally found it inside the microwave in the kitchen. Celeborn dialed up his home number and waited, giggling all the while.

"Hello?" said Galadriel, sounding groggy.

"Heyyy baby," Celeborn slurred. "I'm too sexy for my beard, too sexy for my beard, it's so totally weeeiiird."

"Celeborn, is that you?"

"And I'm too sexy for my wife, too sexy for my wife, who wants to rule my life. And I'm an elf lord, you know what I mean, and I do my little dance in the foreeest!"

"Celeborn, you are in so much trouble," Galadriel snarled. "I am locking you out of the house until you remove your beard and formally apologize for this."

"Ohoho, I love you too, babe," said Celeborn. "Now get some beauty sleep, 'cause you need it, lady." He hung up the phone, and he and Thranduil both collapsed into a fit of giggles.

"You are the most bro-tastic bro-man in the history of bros, bro," said Thranduil. "This is gonna, like, go down in the history of bro-ship for sure. Man, this reminds me of the time I told my wife that her dresses look better on me. She took off after that, and me and the Legoboy never saw her again."

"Ha, I'm gonna be in soooo much trouble," said Celeborn, grinning like an idiot. He then passed out in a heap on the floor, and Thranduil followed suit a few minutes later.

At least the neighbors didn't call the cops that night.

Pippin went from sitting in a dark cold jail cell to sitting in the passenger seat of a police car with the siren blaring for no reason, and he couldn't decide if this was an improvement or not. "Merry, couldn't you have talked to the other cops and asked them to let me go?"

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning by now, and Merry refused to turn off his siren even though it was most likely disturbing citizens of all races. "That would have been too easy," he said.

"Did you really have to taser the guards, blow up my jail cell, and put me in handcuffs?" said Pippin, gazing forlornly down at his handcuffed wrists.

"You have no idea how necessary that was, Pip."

Pippin privately wondered if his favorite cousin was going a bit crazy, but he was too tired and traumatized to say so. As the car approached the fancy hobbit neighborhood that the Tooks' house was located in, his eyes went wide with panic and he tried to swat at the steering wheel with his bound hands. "Wait, wait! Don't take me home! Mom and Dad are going to kill me and starve me and ban me from both second breakfast and elevenses if they find out what happened!"

"What do you want me to do?" asked Merry. "Leave you out on the street?"

"Can I stay at your place? Please? I'll tell my parents I spent the night there." Pippin looked at Merry with the same pitiful, heartbreaking expression he used on customers at Gondorian Motors, and it must have worked because Merry sighed and started driving in the opposite direction.

"Just for one night, okay?"

"Actually, I was thinking a week or two. It will be fun!"

Merry resisted the urge to shoot Pippin with his taser gun and kept on driving, wishing he had never answered that phone call after all.