h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

< - need to get Arthur, X etc off of the ski slope - I'll apply some thought in that direction. Then we can all work on the bank raid itself. Legion, stellar job as usual. Aplogies all round for my absenteeism, hopefully now we san get ST3 back on track.
I think somewhere in the backlog we sort of agreed that in the vault isn't the diamond itself - but the final piece of the map or whatever; that shows it's real location. Give us an excuse to leave Central Europe, as it were. may light a little fire under the narrative. Comments? Suggestions?

Clive.>

<>

< I'd just like to mention that I suggested a Last Crusade style just a mere 24 hours before... >

< And I refer to the thread where I mention there being a tablet which bleeds a location onto a big map... like raiders ofthe lost Ark... >

< Slepp versus the PM.... >

"Oh isn't this just wonderful, Harold?" boomed the voice of a large Americantourist as she skied down the slope.

"Mm," sighed her hawaian style skisuit with camera and and glasses, struggling to keep up.
"Wow look at that," he cooed in the direction of a group fronted by a circus bear, "a sheep! haven't seen many of those round here!" he stopped to take a photograph as a ski lift moved behind the group in the shot. A picture which would later have a Swiss PM dressing to stay covert.

<<Oh yeah, I knew we were going for a whole Indy vibe - it's why I suggested it.

Who is Anna? Who are the family she was going to meet? Mysterious...

You nearly forgot UPS Guy vs. the Leicestercat, Clive! He must avenge the death of his mentor, after all. I'd imagine scratching will be involved. As for leaving London - absolutely, I didn't mean to bring it in until ST2 and ST3 converge anyway.

And if you're planning a Moonraker ending, start thinking about a good line for it *right now*, because:

"I think he's attempting re-entry."

will be pretty hard to beat.

< and about UPS Guy and Leicestcat you are quite correct, I did forget them! - however if we do stage the ultimate coup - we already know Guy will loose.

It would make for an interesting arc don't-cha-think: Guy has fought Leicester two times (bottom of the silo and now) maybe the final confrontation in some hereto as yet unwritten edition of Storytime will be where Leicester get's his cumuppence at Guy's hands? (Though how you top being killed, sent to hell and reincarnated as a cat, I am not quite certain...)?

<>

Arthur was trudging down the ski-slope humming 'Winter Wonderland' to himself in a vain effort to keep his spirits up, when there was a terrific impact on the back of his head. His instincts immediately kicking into overdrive he dropped, rolled, pivoted, whipped his pistol out and fired in one blurred movement.
"Ach die Menge!" shrieked Hertzel. "You haff shot Flossy!"
The sheep looked up at him reproachfully, and baa-ed weakly. Hertzel dived onto his knees and started mouth-to-mouth.
Behind the touching tableau of sheep and shepherd, X paused in the act of rolling another snowball and looked embarassed.
"Erm. The Premier has, erm, called a ski-lift. So..."
He stopped. Both Agents looked in mutual incomprehension at the medical emergency. Arthur rubbed his hands in the icy wind, cleared his throat:
"If that's a flesh wound, applying pressure to the wound will do more good than mouth-to..."
Hertzel looked up and growled -
"Don't presume to tell me what's best for my own sheep, Durchfallkopf! Pah! Leave me..."
- and, pausing only to spray something in his mouth, he went back to his work.

Weaving occasionally to avoid the skiers barrelling past, the pair sloped up the slope towards the ski-lift platform where the Premier and Sfret stood. The Premier was grunting to himself impatiently and hitting the lift-poles till the ice cracked and fell. The monk was tracing hermetic symbols in the snow and singing quietly. When the Agents appeared over the brow of the hill, the Premier waved his arms impatiently.
"Come! We are wasting time..."

At this moment the lift juddered to a halt at the platform.
"Put your hands in the air, bags of scum! Polizei!"
A phalanx of armed, uniformed men piled out of the cab and took up strategic positions in the immediate environment, another handful forming a small corridor down which walked...
"Vice-Premier Gustav Knett!"
The second-most senior politician in Switzerland sneered at his superior's exclamation, and clicked his booted heels together.
"At your service, sir..."
"My greatest nemesis...!" The Premier backed off slightly, and the unsettling sound of guns being cocked filled the mountain air. Sfret scratched his head and tried to look inoffensive.
"Or should I say that I *was* at your service..." Arms folded behind his back, flanked by his masked gunmen, Knett advanced on the Premier and smiled like a satisfied watermelon. "Until your unfortunate death while taking a ski holiday. You should have had the good grace to die back in your office, Herr Premier."
The Premier growled and cracked his knuckles. "It was *you* who organised it! For the love of God, Knett, does my job mean that *much* to you? What of the nation?"

At the first sign of trouble, Arthur and X had taken cover behind a recumbent American lady-tourist who was having difficulty getting up. Peering around her flanks, they observed the drama unfolding.
X chambered a round in his pistol, and Arthur grabbed his right arm.
"Too many, old friend. But...good God! Look at that..."
X followed his partner's gaze, and grinned.
"It would just be *criminal* not to steal that..."

Knett arched an eyebrow.
"What of it? I have in mind a new nation...a nation governed by myself and my new colleagues, a glorious new theocracy where the weakness and vacillation of your democracy are cast aside and replaced wth the glorious certainties of the whip and the barbed wire..."
He spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture and closed his eyes ecstatically.

"...one nation under the Pilchard!"

Caressing a pistol in his gloved hands, he stepped closer to the Premier, his thugs advancing alongside him.
"Now. On your knees, old man."
The Premier clambered onto the aforementioned knees with bad grace, hissing to Sfret:
"When I move, dive behind the pole and stay there." More loudly, he declared "You'll never get away with this, Gustav, you madman..."
The Vice-Premier chortled.
"Mad, Herr Premier? There is such a fine line between madness and...and...and bloody well killing you. Hah. Yes. Now..."
He levelled the pistol at the Premier's head, the dark barrel a bare inch from the old politician's forehead.
"...I propose a motion of no confidence. Ahah..."
His finger tensed on the trigger...
...and the world went very fast for a moment, which ended with Knett clutching at his throat, sprawled on his back in the snow, with the Premier standing over him, gun in hand. The Premier flicked an errant strand from his combover and drawled:
"Motion not carried."
The elite police gunmen were backing off in confusion, and Sfret scrambled to his feet.
"Now Herr Premier, don't do anything you'll regret!" he quavered. The Premier's eyes didn't leave Knett, who had started twitching.
"What...what are you going to do to me, sir?" asked the treacherous Vice-Premier, and his master smiled horribly.
"I'm going to fire you, Gustav."
There was a hot, tense moment in which the Premier's arm flexed and Knett threw up his arms, then he spoke again.
"You're fired. Have your ministry cleared out by five o' clock."
Sfret sagged in relief as the Premier turned and walked away.

Seconds later, the Premier could read the horrified expression on his face quite accurately, and swung around even before he heard the strangled cry...
"Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Premier!"
...he fired, and the knife flew from his attacker's hands to thump gently into the snow which was, coincidentally, also what the Vice-Premier had just done. Either he had messily removed his own head as an elaborate bluff - or he was dead.
The Premier curled his lip.
"Auf Wiedershen, Knett."
A triumphant little guitar riff hung in the air for a moment, the origin of which was never detected.

Now a volley of shots rang out from behind them.
"Freeze, criminals!"
At this opportune moment, Arthur and X made their long-delayed arrival in what appeared to be a sleigh drawn by a small team of reindeer, and the pair hopped in. X whipped up the team, swung the sleigh round madly and careened down the slope.
Arthur stuck his head over the back of the sleigh.
"Not to pressure you, old friend..."
A shot rang out, and a shower of woodchips erupted from the back of the sleigh.
"...but they're following us on skis. Aha."
He turned around, to find a more pressing concern approaching, and yelled with Sfret and the Premier:

"Watch out for that tree!"

...and X *did* mind it, very deftly slipping to one side just before it whipped by up the slope. One of their pursuers was not so mindful, and broke several ribs in a hilarious *crump* noise.
X blinked some sweat out of his eyes, and peered over the straining backs of the team of reindeer. Machine-gun fire whined over his head, and he flinched. There seemed to be rather less mountain than he remembered...
But by the time the three passengers yelled:

"Watch out for that cliff!"

...there was honestly very little he could do.

Legs flailing in the empty air, the reindeer shot over the edge of the cliff pulling the hapless sleigh behind them.
In a perfect world, it wuld have been sillhouetted against a full moon - but it wasn't.
In a perfect world, it would have flown - but it didn't.
The fact that this is regrettably not a perfect world was not foremost in the minds of our heroes as they plunged screaming towards the rooftops of the town far below...

<>

< Auf Wedersehen, Knett???? Let me at him! I'm gonna kill him! Gargh! >

The remaining 'poletzei' slushed over the side and moved into diving positions.
A crane, a swan, a duck...

Each taking their guns to their sights.

A lighter rolling 'rumpling' noise followed them creating an significant shadow in the sky and went past and a head made its way off the back of the sleigh with a wet bounce.


X tried to be logical as his brain yelled YOU'REFLING OFF A CLIFF AND GONNA DIE! THIS IS NO TIME TOTHINK!

A biiig branch? Oh wait... missed it. Now if we could just defy physics enough to hit either that pillow factory over the--


-------------------------


Bjorn the daredevil trapeize artist carefully crossed his tightrope (don't ask) as the crowd stared in awe. More toward the shadow in the big top's roof growing larger.

Bjorn the daredevil trapeize artist had arranged this all himself, he was very proud. His friends and family were all in the front row. several local newpapers formed a tight circle, huddled together sipping coffee and exchanging pleasentries in that way that journalists do. This was his grandest ever stunt - and all for charity. The orphans would get that new extension he had promised them.

All those months of practicing in the barn would pay off today: Carefully placing one foot across the taught wire, he once again steadied his balence and looked out to his goal. 'Just need to concentrate' he thought. He was not quite a third across when the most unexpected thing happened.
A distant gasp from below distracted him and like the rest of the crowd and assembled media looked up.

A bright red sleigh eclipsed the sky and all Bjorn managed was an "oh sh! - " before it hit.

It landed astide the wire that held Bjron aloft, bending the poles and pulling the wire into an unatural dip, Bjorn began to slide uncontrolably toward the sleigh. He gripped his pole and mutter a few 'hail mary's'.
The Reindeer fell into a thankfully deep drift of snow and their harnesses broke. Suddenly freed of this slight balast the sleigh did what came natural to it and that was to flip head over-heels and fling the occupants out in a high arc.

The sleigh pinwheeled to the ground and smashed into a thousand splinters.

The rope, devoid of this great weight snapped back to it's former taught state and Bjoron was catapulted 100 feet into the air.

(When he regained consciousness several months later - Bjorn would be gratified to learn that he now held several world records and a letter of sympathy from The Pope; after Reuters had taken the pictures from the shutter-bugs and the story had run around the world. They built seven oprhaphanges with the sponsorship money.)

Arthur, X and Sfret who had been sat in the front of the sleigh tumbled through the air.

Above the wind Arthur managed "This...is...going...to...hurt." before the three dissappeared through the upper skylight of a local warehouse.

The Swiss Premier, who had been sat in the back and had been shot at a different arc, landed abruptly and unceramoniously near the reindeer with a sort of "flumpf" sound as he dissapeared up to his ankles in snow.

He wriggled and pulled himself free of the snow bank and stared into the lenses of the assembled media some of whom were looking for survivors but others knew better and feared their editors more so had hung around for a few more shots.

The were as surprised as the Prime Minister when he emereged looking , well shall we just say, a bit bedraggled, from the drift of snow.

"Um did you see where the others went?" he asked.

The papperazi not letting their fingers off of the shutters
used their others hands to point the way to the Pillow factory across the way.

"Much obliged fellas." he gave them a quick salute and none of them open-jawed, eyes agape, could help but salute back.

The Prime Minister jogged off to see where his friend Sfret and those British Agents had got to....

Arthur, Sfret and X had come crashing through the fragile window pane and landed in a vast vat of king-sized mattresses and stuffing material.

Oweing the relative softness of the material that had afforded them no injuries whatever, Arthur was finding it very difficult to stand up.

For the fifth time he tried to raise himself before sinking unequally on one side, his balence went and he collapsed back down on top of X.

"Quit it" said X mildly irritated.

"Sorry."

Assuming the lotus position Sfret rode out the crests and bobs of the matress blob - "We should roll our way to the edge." He suggested with Zen like calm.

"We are Agents of The Crown. WE do not roll" said X a trifle indignantly.

Arthur having given up on achieving a meaningful vertical position for more than five seconds had meanwhile begun scratching his back in a funny manner.

This caught X's attention - "Whatever are you doing?"

"I wonder why it didn't...

But that was as far as Arthur got because suddenly his jacket inflated at an alarming rate, tearing at the seams - before exploding into the largest Union Jack Parachute X had ever seen (and being a secret agent - he'd seen quit a few.)

The Parachute settled over them with a small sigh as the air beneath it escaped around the edges.

"oh bugger" said said Arthur disspiritingly.

At this moment the Swiss Secret Service appeaed over the top of the vat and tranined the guns on the misscreants beneath.

"Hands up where we can see them!" ordered the commander.

Six small spikes of cloths slowy raised themselves.

< I just had a wicked idea....

Who remember's Armin? A1036531 - what if God transported Armin to some lucrative management job of a top banking firm to handle oh I dunno Foreign Investors? I realise timing might be a bit awkward. but maybe we could introduce him later on. once the Cult are on the run with the map fragment. he's running a small road-side diner and bar - his life's dream - when the agents turn up and inadvertantly end up wrecking the place?

Thought opinions? >

<>