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

A little bothered by how worthless (but very funny) the scroll was the group started heading to the castle. Santa started to talk: "You know, while I am on vacation I really don't think I should be called Santa Claus. That's my work name, before I was Chris Cringle I was Possibly Arthur, no wait I was called death, no wait I was Bernard. Arthur quickly explained that Santa was confusing Arthur with himself. So Santa racked his brain and decided to call himself Mrs. Fussypotz. Everyone was a little weirded out by that and didn't really want a guy named Mrs. Fussypotz to deliver things to kids but he demanded they call him that so they did. As they approached the castle they jumped for cover as...

the gam of flying mauve weasels flew out and began throwing overripe fruit at them.

It was lucky for the group that Arnold turned out to be a fantastically good overripe fruit deflector, and he towered above them with his typically dinosaurish height, protecting them from the worst of the barrage until his skin was all covered in smelly, mouldy fruit juice.
Suddenly, the weasels stopped throwing fruit. Everybody looked up to see why, and realised it was because the weasels had run out of ammunition.
"Why did you take our friend?" Arthur asked them, but they simply giggled and flew back to the castle to find something else to throw.

But they couldn't find anything. So they took up tap-dancing.

The group moved towards the castle unsure whether the weasels were coming back. As they approached the castle Mrs. Fussypotz (santa remember) recognized the crest on the wall. It was wintergreen with tartar fighting power. But he also recognized the family shield on the castle's entrance. The castle was obviously run by the old Elve employment service he used to use. As they entered...

Mrs. Fusszypotz regretted the licensing fight as the entry chamber filled with some kind of gas. Twelve hours later, they all simultaneously woke up in the throne roome of the Vice-President of ElfCo International! The Vice-President said . . .

..."ickles pcokan (unpronouncable or writable in english) yickel maria foodle [rough translation, get these people the elve to english translator's maria.]"
A female elve (or is it elf) brought in some odd looking (nope not babelfish, think originally) walk men. They said elfco on them and when the group reluctantly plugged them in they were able to converse with the vice-president.
He said "before I tell you why I brought you here, I'd like to introduce myself, I am (translator incapable of finding english equivalent) but do to the constraints of the translator just call me flozter. Now I have been having some problems lately that you may be able to help me with. If you want to see your friend again then you will stop the sassy robot rebellion by kidnapping their leader the sock, who is believed to contain the spirit of mr. Clean (the robots got "cleaning essence" and "cleaning power" confused with "Divine bringer of power to robots who inhabits a sock")
Arthur replied:...

"What???? You could have asked us first, instead of kidnapping poor Lucy! Anyway, give me an hour, and I'll talk it over with the rest of my friends."
They were shown into a little room, that reminded them of the office of a privat detective from the thirties.. Merlin placed himself in a chair, put his feet on the table, and litted a sigar...
"So?" He asked, while making a circle of the cigar smoke. "You know, Arthur, if we decide not to take this... hm.. mission... I can always get you another girl for christmas... "

"Really?!" exclaimed Arthur. "With green hair? And pencil sharpeners for eyes? I've always had a fetish about girls with pencil sharpeners for eyes..."

"Hmm, no," Merlin decided. "I'm not sure I could manage pencil sharpeners for eyes. I mean, how would she be able to see?"
Arthur was about to explain that he was speaking metaphorically when Arnold interrupted his almost-sentence.
"I was just wondering," the enormous, dinsosaur-sized dinosaur said, "How I fitted through that door?"
This bought silence to the room, broken only by the sound of Merlin breathing out cigar smoke.
"Well..." the wizard began, but was forced to stop because he did not have an explanation.

"Well, no," began Merlin, "but ---"

Just then there was a crackling noise, with something like a voice behind it. At first they ignored shrugged it off, but it became louder and more insistent. They looked around suspiciously, trying to figure out where it was coming from.

"Phfzitseeze schrwritsme in, afsasnt scrawlin," in blared. A startled Merlin peered at his wrist, where an odd-looking thing with numbers on it was suddenly strapped. He realized there was a button on it's side and pushed it.

"Ahem," he began, "Yes, this is agent Double-oh Merlin. Can we help you?"

Death and Arthur looked at each other questioningly, each shrugging, but they soon became caught up in the ...

"We have a mission for you, Double-Oh. Utmost urgency."

"Erm, sorry HQ, but we're in the middle of one right now," Merlin advised.

"We?" the voice continued. "Are agents D109-con and King Questionable there with you? Or even better, Agent LSD?"

"I'm afraid LSD.. uhm.. LSD -is- our current mission, Sir. She's been abducted. We also have some guy dressed up as Santa Claus who says he's on vacation."

"Oh! I see you've met up with agent Fuzz-12. Well, I guess [s]he can handle this one. Can you put him/her on?"

"Hello - Fuzz-12 reporting to base" said Mrs FussyPotz. "What the f***'s going on???" said Arthur, "You two know each other? What's this special agent stuff?". "Er.. nothing said Merlin". "And Lucy too? - you're all in this together" said Arthur in disbelief. "I'm not" said Death, "Me neither" said Arnold, "Me neither" said a small yellow weasel in the corner of the room. "OK - let me explain" said Merlin....

"I'm not technically Merlin. And he's not technically Santa. We belong to an elite crimefighting division of Hostess Inc., the manufacturers of Twinkies," he explained. "We had to choose the names of fictional characters, and all the really interesting ones were taken." Arnold raised his claw and asked "If you're not Merlin, why do you have magic powers?" "Er..." Merlin replied. "It's...umm...well, you see there's...and then...uh..," he elaborated. Santa chimed in to assist. "It's really quite straightforward," he said. "The Hostess Board of Directors...yeah...Look! Something really distracting!" Everybody looked to where he was pointing, and Merlin and Santa disappeared. Not technically turning invisible, just hiding behind each other.

"Ever since chapter . . . well, we've known for a long time that I couldn't possibly be the *REAL* Merlin because of the fact that I had a twin brother named Elvis, who turned the hit man into a kangaroo that wanted backwards jumping rights. Now, I am actually a descendant of the original Elvis, and I am a proud member in standing of the "Residence Of Time Guild." Everyone is a member, but only certain people know about it. Now, because of the time interferences, I was unable to have you pull the sword from the stone in the past, which is why I've been tailing you ever since Chapter One where I originally posed as an interrigator working for a royal family that shall remain nameless. However, the fact that we're all members of this guild is fairly irrelevant. We've been on several missions since chapter one, so . . ."

"Let's just figure out how to get Lucy, ok?"

"Oh, I know how!" said Death in an oddly cheerful tone, instead of the usual deep/hollow voiceless voice he used. "This is my plan . . ."

(AHH which entry do I reply to, umm, I will go with the one put up first.)
Merlin finally had a good explanation: "remember I don't have any powers arthur has merlin's powers." Mrs. fussypotz and I have a plan involving 562.234568645466 ounces of bacon. Now listen up...

"Ounces?" said the dinosaur. "Oh come on... ounces are SO out-of-date! How much is that in kilograms?"

[Nice recap, Af. ]

"It really doesn't matter," was the reply, "As I don't have a kg scale. All I have is this old thing I found in some catacombs sometime back in the past. Now, as I was saying..."

"I've noticed that whenever something important has to happen, or whenever there's a plan to be thought up, it's often left to the Next Researcher. So I figure this Next Researcher must be some kind of god or something. Now, my sources tell me that the all-powerful Next Researcher likes bacon. So I figure if we burn some bacon for the Next Researcher, something nice will happen, becaue gods like offerings to be burnt."

"Stop right there!" said Lucy. "If this is going to evolve into burnt water jokes ---"

"-- that maybe we could..." Arthur stopped. "Uhm, Lucy, do you mind? We all know you can't even --" he stopped again, noticing Lucy's icy stare. "Uhm... as I was saying about fixing bacon.."

"Bacon?" inquired Arnold, perkily.

"Sorry, Arnold," consoled Death, "It was something after your time."

Merlin, who by this time was becoming quite infuriated with all the interruptions, stepped out from behind FuzzywasShe. "Look," he said, "We get the point about bribing Next Researcher. But what is it you hope to get Next Researcher to -do-?"

"Well that doesn't matter NOW," Arthur said, staring at Lucy. "We were trying to save Lucy remember? How the #¤%## did you get in here?? You're supposed to be a prison in the mauve weasles castle!! Would you secret agents please stop messing with my brain???"
Lucy and Merlin, the secret agent giggled... Then Lucy became serious again.
"Listen, we really have to stop these mauve weasles.. they have kidnapped the belgium government in attempt to make them all sing "Follow the yellow brick road", and all that...