.

Merry and Pippin glared up at the wizard suspiciously. "Two hundred and twenty-five million," Merry growled.

Gandalf's eyebrows knit together. "Yes, more or less," he answered, then blew a smoke ring. Merry batted it aside.

"How much is that in silver pennies?" Pippin asked Merry.

"More than any of us'll ever see, I warrant," Sam flared. Frodo stood next to him, arms crossed (his right hand conspicuously showing) and lips pressed tight. He'd let Sam do the talking here, he thought.

Sam obliged. "I know it's not my place to ask, Mr. Gandalf," he went on, "but seein' as how your job pays so well, just what did you need Mr. Frodo for? With all that gold, seems to me you could'a bought yourself a fine army to go stormin' the Black Land, and left my master in peace where he belonged!"

Gandalf pulled his pipe from his lips and frowned at the angry faces. "My dear hobbits," he scolded. "Being country folk as you are, you clearly know nothing of how these things are done. The revenue from a back-end deal can take years to sort out, which is why such numbers can be deceiving. I had to take whatever funding I could get, and Imladris Productions was already spread thin, what with the breakup of White Council Pictures, and the losses on the Rangers and their backwoods DIY indies. We barely had enough to bankroll a Fellowship of nine; we were lucky the dwarf agreed to work for scale."

"Don't talk down to me, you Maian ponce," Merry snapped. Pippin squeaked, while Sam smirked and Frodo just covered his eyes. "I may be just a hobbit, but my people were drawing up contracts when you were still in...um, well no, they weren't," Merry ran out of steam for a moment, then resumed with vigor, "But we've been at it a bloody long time. You could have found other sources. Don't you have contacts abroad? What about all that Easterling money? We've heard a couple of you lot went out that way."

Frodo had never seen Gandalf turn red before, but now he was approaching quite a ripe shade. You see something new every day, he thought.

"Watch your tongue, Brandybuck," the wizard thundered at Merry, "or I'll..."

"What?" Merry asked. To Mithrandir's extreme annoyance, the hobbit remained resolutely unthundered. "You'll what? Make sure I never work in this town again? Psh!" Merry threw up his hands. "As if I'd want to stay here, as if any of us would want to work here amongst you longshank power players!" He turned to Pippin.

"Come on, Pip," Merry said with an air of disgust, and turned towards the door. "It's back to community theater for us!" Pippin fell in beside him. Frodo joined them, as did Sam, after a moment of looking like he had more to say and then thought better of it. As the door was closing, the wizard heard Pippin's voice from the hallway, "I told you we should have signed with Kevin Huvane..."

Gandalf took up his pipe again and smoked, puffing out three squares of smoke and a triangle. "Hmpf," he muttered under his breath. "Bloody SAG contracts."

.