Live Journal FeedDISCLAIMER-ADO: I’m not sure why I’m still using that disclaimer. Ah well…Fandom and all of its Fandom-ness belongs to me, as does Digget. All of the fandoms therein belong to whoever first came up with them.
IN FANDOM, WE MARCH ON
“Fr’t last time, it wasn’ oor fault!”
Aragorn had Merry and Pippin cornered in the cupboard under the stairs, each of them tied to one of the crocheted chairs from the Dining Room (all of the kitchen chairs had been blown to bits). A small lightbulb dangled between them. The scene would not have been out of place in one of the dozens of old mysteries that resided in the Mysterio Condominiums and Apartments, if it were not for the shelf of discarded board games behind Aragorn’s back. (There had been a time when the Fellowship had enjoyed board games, despite the fact that all of them had been beaten soundly by Gimli on several occasions, something that nobody could quite understand. That time had lasted until the day Star Wars came round to watch the Quidditch World Cup on the Fellowship’s television, as their cable had gone out, and they all ended up playing Scrabble after the Cup. Yoda and Gimli had been on a team together, and had ended up winning $379.84 and a T-shirt that said “Fleetwood Mac 1994” collectively from everyone else. Since then, everyone on Fantasia Lane had steered well clear of board games.)
“It was your pizza, wasn’t it?” Aragorn snarled, interrupting the authoress’ backstory tangent. “You left it in the oven to explode, didn’t you?”
“It weren’t oor fault the bloody thing exploded!” Merry snapped. He had been tied to this chair for forty five minutes, and wasn’t happy about it. “It should’ve just burnt the kitchen down!”
“And that’s so much better.”
“Look, y’cannae blame us for things blowin’ up instead o’ burnin’ down,” Pippin said in as condescending a voice as he could manage while secured to a crocheted chair with Hèrmes scarves (Gimli had won them from Queen Clarisse, over in St. Disney Park, in a ferocious game of Trivial Pursuit that had lasted for twenty-seven hours straight, with the necessary coffee breaks). “Tha’s just Fandom. Things like explodin’ here. It weren’t oor fault the kitchen exploded any more’n it were your fault the grill blew up at the barbecue last June.”
Aragorn leaned forward very suddenly and hastily, accidentally hitting his forehead on the lightbulb, and grabbed Pippin by the shoulders. “How many times have I told you,” he gritted out, “not to bring that up!”
“Even if we do say it was our fault,” Merry interrupted, “it won’ solve anythin’. T’kitchen’s gone.” He eyed the traces of ash and other explosion-related residue in Aragorn’s hair ironically.
“At least the roaches are dead,” Pippin said after a moment.
----------------------
Aragorn was Grilling.
He hadn’t been allowed to use his beloved Charbroil Big Easy since June, when it had blown up. Well, the grill itself hadn’t actually blown up, but the things on it had, and since then the Fellowship had roped off the corner of the back porch that contained the Charbroil Big Easy and even gone so far as to hide the George Foreman Grill that had once graced the kitchen with its presence. Incidentally, the safety of the George Foreman Grill had been his primary concern when the kitchen exploded, but Sam had assured him that it hadn’t been in the kitchen anyway, and so was perfectly unharmed.
Now that they had no kitchen, however, the Fellowship had put Aragorn on grill probation, which meant that if anything went wrong that was even indirectly grill-related, the grill would be taken over and donated to Hidalgo. Initially, Legolas and Frodo had both protested the idea of grill probation – Frodo because he felt that grilling was unhealthy, and Legolas because he felt that it was unnatural (however, when Boromir informed him that Whole Foods sold veggie burgers, he had been considerably less opposed to the idea). But the fact that there was now no kitchen in the Fellowship house (and nobody felt like driving up to EatZi’s to pick up any food) had led both of them to agree in the end, although Frodo had immediately called for a carpenter to come repair the kitchen.
And so now Aragorn was Grilling. His menu included seven hot dogs, four hamburgers, two chickens, one veggie burger, and a mishmash of vegetables (which Frodo had insisted was good, really). The rest of the Fellowship was sat around the picnic table that they had stolen from a city park a few years ago, playing a card game that involved the very loud yelling of “BS!” every so often.
It was a rather peaceful scene, and Aragorn was starting to enjoy it (aside from the mosquitos that seemed to have some strange fascination with his butt), when he heard a voice that he was certain none of the Fellowship had made.
“Oh, are you guys having a barbecue?”
The Fellowship turned as one to face Elle Woods, who was standing on the porch, looking expectant. Bruiser was at her side, looking up at Digget with an unmistakable air of superiority. Digget barked enthusiastically.
“Not exactly,” Aragorn replied carefully. “We – it’s – our kitchen exploded.”
Elle nodded sympathetically. “The same thing happened to one of my girlfriends back in August,” she said. “You might know her – Betty Anson, over on Historical Fiction? Anyway, do you mind if I join you? I haven’t got anything good to eat at home.”
“Och, have a seat, lassie,” Gimli said gruffly. Elle beamed and seated herself next to Boromir, who looked completely nonplussed. “I’ll have a veggie burger, by the way,” she said to Aragorn (Legolas gave her an approving look).
And so the peaceful evening continued, until there was a most unwelcome sound.
“We’re the Knights of the Round Table, we dance whene’er we’re able…”
“Not them,” Sam groaned. “They’ve got a bloody castle to live in, can’t they stay there?”
Legolas stood, his keen Elven-eyes piercing the gathering dusk. “Apparently not.” He squinted almost imperceptibly.
A head popped over the fence from nextdoor. “Are you grilling?” Arthur Weasley asked in fascination.
“Why don’t you come on over, Mr. Weasley?” Elle called cheerily. Mr. Weasley didn’t need to be asked twice – as a matter of fact, he probably didn’t need to be asked once – and immediately scrambled over the wall in an undignified manner that would have made both his wife and the Minister of Magic die of shame.
“Halt!” King Arthur called out loudly, and the four knights (and Patsy, who was sporting a black eye) behind him halted obediently. “Good sirs and sweet lady, may we dine with you this eve?”
“Only someone’s delivered a dozen boxes of coconuts to our house as a joke, and we can’t get ‘round the kitchen ‘cos there’s coconuts everywhere,” Galahad said, looking disgruntled.
“Come, sit,” Aragorn said, looking surly. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you just ask the whole neighborhood to join us?”
“Ah! A feast!” Arthur turned to Patsy, who procured a horn from nowhere and blew it loudly. Heads began popping out of windows all over the neighborhood and the neighborhoods on either side.
“Please, sir, some of us need to sleep!” Jack Aubrey – whose house was behind the Fellowship’s, on Historical Fiction Place – shouted.
“Oy, drinks all around!” Jack Sparrow shouted from nextdoor to Master and Commander, emerging from his own house and climbing, with annoying agility, over the fence at the back of the yard. “Salutations,” he said to Gollum, who hissed peevishly.
“Svine! Svine!” a distinctly German voice shouted, and a moment later Franz Liebkind – the movie version – strode onto the scene and marched up to Aragorn. “Zat is not how we cook ze wurst!” he bellowed, and Aragorn hastily surrendered the grill. Close ties to his grill be damned, he thought, Liebkind had been known to shoot at people.
“Hey, baby,” a voice said from behind Liebkind, and a hippie dressed as Adolf Hitler emerged. “Lorenzo St. Dubois at your service, but most call me LSD. I don’t think we’ve met before, baby. What can I call you? No, wait, don’t tell me,” he said, holding up a hand, as Aragorn opened his mouth. “Let me read your aura.” He closed his eyes and hummed for a moment, then opened them again. “Your name is Flower-brother.”
Merry and Pippin snickered. Legolas smirked at Aragorn, who tried to send the message “It’s better than Greenleaf” using mainly his eyebrows.
Arthur was eyeing the horn in alarm. “This bloody thing’s louder than we thought,” he said to Patsy, “if they heard it on Mel Brooks Marketplace.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Fetch the coconuts, Patsy, we’re leaving.”
“Leaving, my lord? We haven’t even got our food yet, my lord.”
“What do you suppose will happen if Young Frankenstein arrives?” Arthur shot back. “I don’t want you and Igor starting another rough-and-tumble. You’ve barely recovered from the last one.”
Patsy frowned but fetched the coconuts, muttering darkly under his breath as he did so. The Knights of the Round table cantered gallantly out of the backyard. Jack leaned across the stolen picnic table until his face was inches from Legolas’.
“Dear William sends a message.”
“Oh?” Legolas managed to look disgusted, disdainful, and long-suffering at the same time. All assembled marveled.
“Oh.” Jack grinned and made a rude hand gesture in Legolas’ face, then leaned back. “Or perhaps he didn’t send that message, but it’s certainly what he would’ve done if he’d been here, eh?”
Legolas turned pink and began cursing in various forms of Elvish. Frodo and Aragorn, the only two present who could understand him, stared in mingled amazement and horror.
“Legolas!” Frodo admonished when the Elf paused for breath.
“Ze wurst is done!” Liebkind roared suddenly, and there was a mad rush for the grill. Frodo watched sadly as his neat stack of paper plates, which he had placed carefully beside the grill, was completely ignored in favor of good old-fashioned hand eating.
There was a sudden shout and Boromir dashed into the backyard. The Fellowship and company, who hadn’t noticed he was gone, looked around in confusion.
“Fans approaching,” Boromir gasped. “They – oh, thank you,” he said, as Mr. Weasley handed him a hot dog. “They’re coming with one of the tours.”
The effect this sentence had on the rest of the company was astounding. The Cursed – Jack, Legolas, Aragorn, Frodo, and Pippin – paled. Mr. Weasley swore and Apparated back to his own home, presumably to protect his sons and Harry. Jack gave a weak, “So long, mates,” and vanished over the fence. The Fellowship raced for the house. Elle, Liebkind, and LSD looked puzzled.
“Fans, fans, what is zis fans?” Liebkind asked, but there was no answer, and the three departed after a few minutes of random and unnecessary silence.
Inside the Fellowship house, red alarms and sirens were going off. Frodo pressed a red button in the television room marked CODE F.A.N and all of the blinds in every room went down. Steel bars appeared over each window and door. Life-size blow-up dolls of the Fellowship appeared in the living room window. The real Fellowship dove into the hidden bomb shelter in the hall.
“We’re going to have to talk to Miracle Max about giving Fandom tours,” Sam muttered. The bomb shelter was rather small and very uncomfortable, and he was currently sitting on Legolas – he desperately hoped it was Legolas, at any rate, as Legolas was the only member of the Fellowship who had bathed anytime in the last seventy-two hours – with Pippin’s foot in his face.
“How did you see them, Boromir?” Aragorn asked somewhere to the left. “We thought you were with us.”
“I was going to ask my brother if he wanted to come round since everyone else was,” Boromir said. “I got lost, though, and ended up on Horror Street – ”
“How could you get lost?” Legolas asked from under Sam. “They live three houses down!”
“It was dark!”
“Not that dark, it’s only seven!”
“Well, anyway, I ended up on Horror Street, and I heard all these screams coming from the The Ring house, and I was thinking, hell, most of the people on this street are at least as frightening as Samara, she shouldn’t frighten them – and then I saw this bus, so I ran back to warn y—”
They were interrupted by the sound of hundreds of high-pitched, enraptured shrieks from the front door. Immediately, the Fellowship caught their collective breath and fell silent. After what felt like an hour, and most likely was, there was the sound of hundreds of high heels boarding a bus. The Fellowship exhaled.
“Thank the Valar that’s over,” Frodo murmured. Legolas whispered an Elven prayer. The Fellowship waited a few extra moments for safety, then extracted themselves from the bomb shelter. Gimli – who most fans found uninteresting – was sent to look out the living room window. After a moment, he gave the “all clear” signal. Legolas press the CODE F.A.N button again: the steel bars vanished from all the windows and doors, and the blow-up Fellowship deflated again.
“Go turn off the grill, Aragorn,” Frodo said briskly. “We don’t want another explosion.” Aragorn disappeared out the back door. Boromir vanished into the television room, where Gandalf was still asleep, and immediately fell into a three-hour Full House special. Merry and Pippin, after a few minutes of continuing to snigger over the name “Flower-brother”, followed. Sam hurried out the front door, muttering that he had to “make sure everything was all right.”
“I think everything’s fine, Sam,” Frodo called, but Sam was scurrying down the street and didn’t hear him, so he shrugged and went to play chess with Gimli.
An hour later, the Fellowship’s normal evening activities were interrupted by the doorbell, which played the overture from The Producers. They looked at each other uneasily. In Fandom, people generally didn’t use doorbells, unless they were being very polite, which was unlikely; they preferred to just walk into a house and surprise the jigging hell out of its occupants. Once again, Gimli was sent to investigate for lost (or perhaps just very sneaky) fans.
After a moment, he shouted “Och, it’s all right, ye kin come out!” into the living room. The Fellowship looked at each other again, aware that Gimli was not always the best judge of character; however, they gave a collective shrug and gathered in the foyer.
Upon their arrival, they were confronted by every single member of the Money Pit household.
Walter Fielding tipped his baseball cap cordially at the Fellowship.
“I hear you’re in need of a carpenter,” he said.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: For those of you who haven’t ever seen Money Pit, it’s the story of a couple who buys a gigantic dreamhouse that needs desperate renovation, so they hire carpenters. It’s a carpentry movie. It’s funny. It starts Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. Rent it.
Anyway, I realize this was a short chapter, but I’m desperately typing this before my parents whisk me off to someplace I really don’t want to go for a week. Read and review, and there’ll be more when I return!
