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

"The story really isn't three posts long," said Merlin, "Mom's a shapeshifter."

Arthur countered, "But the researcher said it was going to take three posts, so you'll have to make something up."

"Well," began Merlin, "I could ---"

"Oh fiddlefaddle!" said the INH The Mouse, "Just use filler for two more posts and you'll be in compliance."

"Oh!" Merlin thought for a moment. "Okay, here goes," he said. "Once upon a time, in a land oh so far away, on a dark and stormy night, where the Unicorns used to play ..."

a little girl was born. She was brought up by uniorns, but realised quite early that she was different than them.

"Because not only did she have the ability to look like a Unicorn, she could also look like a mouse, or a wolf, or... anything else. She was a shapeshifter." Merlin finished.

Arthur thought.

"So, could your . . . mom . . . transfer your powers back to you?"

"Well," Mom Mouse began, ". . .

"Yes," she replied. "But..." Everyone looked at her expectantly. "I would need everything on this list," She finished. "And which list is that?" asked Death. "Well," said the mouse (who for the sake of argument, shall henceforth be referred to as "The Mouse, former Unicorn and Shapeshifter Extrordinaire." Or not.) "It's..."

"...written on that mountain in flaming pits."
The group looked up and to the left (somewhere someone said "and now cough"), they were amazed that they hadn't seen this huge 14,000 foot mountain with a large grocery style list written in flaming pits. Arthur began to read aloud: "1) The toe-nails of an H2G2 researcher, having been clipped and then dipped in spam. 2)5,627.3809 illegally stolen rental copies of 'SPARTACUS'. 3)A 4,000 ft. by 5,000 ft. pink floppy disk with an ellipsis written on the front. 4)..."

three golden frogheads"...

"Oh, what a coindidence," Lucy smiled.. "I just happen to have those pink floppy disks right here!!"
"Yeah, and come to think about it.. the other story we were mixed into happen to have at least two frogs.. " Merlin said, grinning.

What followed was a huge and lengthy interstory war, in which this story's heroes managed to breed some frogs with golden mares to create some frogs with golden heads, the other story's heroes sat around watching some copies of themselves (generated by one of those trans-story temporal rifts) get bred from and got annoyed that the copies got all the sex, some more pretzels were oversalted, Luxembourg was flooded, a lost Shakespeare play was uncovered, Mickey Mouse died and the researcher from four posts back accidentally got his/her toenails ripped off.

Merlin's mousy mum looked at Merlin sternly and said, "You're such a messy boy... why did you have to do all that when they sell golden frog heads at Kwik-E-Mart? Look at you... now you've got your cloak all dirty. It all comes from not eating your brussels sprouts, I say. Now clean up your mess!"

Merlin looked at the dusty desert. "this'll take a while . . ." he began.

"No complaining, or I won't give your powers back at all!"

Merlin grumbled under his breath, but, with some help from Arthur, Death, Lucy, and Arnold, managed to sweep up the desert.

The mouse stared for a second, and said, "Now all I need you to do is . . ."

"...throw away all that junk you grabbed, and P.S. I wanted huge a huge giant floppy disk not many small ones."
Arthur started to yell: "You crazy old bat, I mean mouse, why the heck did you have us grab all that stuff?"
Merlin kneed Arthur for yelling at his mom, but just then the mouse said: "I am sorry I lied, but I needed to check your loyalties. I see now that you are loyal to your mother, but that doesn't make me happy because I am your father! (P.S. the mouse proclaimed himself a he) You know I hate her since the divorce so you can just cram it with rasberries." The mouse promptly started walking away.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch..," Arthur yelled after her, then he realized she was a he, and changed it to 'Unclefucker' in the best of South Park style. The mouse turned around, sending them a hostile look.
"Don't talk like that to my dad,"Merling sobbed.
"Shut up, you two!" Lucy shouted. "We have more important things to deal with...

we just need to collect the 13 PIII chips, 35 cents, and a visa card. It shouldn't be too hard, let's just head to the nearest town. The nearest town was oddly named nearburg. They entered and noticed a large pink and green brick road that traveled through the middle and which had no further effect on this story what so ever.

"Aren't these things needed in a different story?" Arthur asked.

"No, I'm sure that they're in this story." Lucy said.

"No, it's in the other story, I'm positive," said Death. "Arthur's right."

"Well, . . ." Merlin began . . .

"...You are right, some evil researcher put that in to check if anyone would notice."
Arthur replied: "Well if we don't need that stuff, then what are we trying to do again? All those researchers making crossovers and this latest trick by the evil researcher have really confused me."

"Well... I think we have to find som wizards and some American police men riding an icebear.." One in the group said.
"Yeah, and while we are talking about things to do..." Merlin started. "I really would like to have my magic powers back, and.."
He never had the time to continue, as four flying beasts were coming towards them.
"What are you doing here?????" Death asked. "Can't you ever leave me alone?"

The beasts swooped about in a highly dramatic fashion indicitave of their pilots having just watched Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" and attemptin to emulate it. The beasts then landed directly in front of the group. "What the heck is that?" asked Lucy, gesturing to one of the beasts. "What does it look like?" asked the creature's rider. "A pegasus with bat wings," replied Lucy. "Would it astonish you at all if you were to discover that's precisely what it is?" he asked, dismounting. The other riders followed suit. Lucy looked horribly confused at the logic of this line of inquiry and sat down heavily on a nearby rock. The riders removed their helmets. "Hi," said War. This is Krieg," he said, gesturing to his red pegasus. Famine waved a black-gloved hand at his ebony pegasus. "This is Carestia," he said. Pestilence coughed and pointed shakily at his pegasus, saying merely "Praga." "And this," said War, "Is Morte." He glanced at the yellow-green pegasus tethered to his. "And don't ask why he's yellow-green. I know it says 'Pale' in Revelations, but if you look it up it's really yellow-green."

Death shook his scythe menacingly. "Why can't you people accept that I've quit! You know, some people out there LIKE immortality!"

"Look," War said, "we can't have it. The four of us can't really work effectively without you, but we can make your entire group here suffer! And don't even *THINK* about doing that "NO CARRIER" trick again!"

"Drat," Merlin mumbled as he stopped rooting through his pocket for another signal scrambler.

"Look," said War. "If you're not going to come with us, I'm afraid we're going to have to sue you for breach of contract." He pulled out a scroll, untied the ribbon holding it shut, and waved it in Death's face. "Look here." He tapped a red-gloved finger on the scroll. "It plainly says in Section 4, Subsection A, Clause XVII 'the party of the fourth part, herinafter referred to as 'Death' agrees to work with War, Famine, and Pestilence in a group henceforth known as 'The Four Horsemen' in bringing about the apocolypse.' So either come with us or we'll sue you. And we might have to kill your horse." Death shook his scythe furiously. "You leave Morte out of this! He never did anything to you! And nothing dies without my say so! So there!" About this point he would have stuck out his tongue, but being Death and therefore having a corporeal form amounting to an animated skeleton he didn't have one. So he settled for making a rude gesture with his middle finger.

Just then Arthur spoke out: "Now I really don't think of death as a friend, but it sure is nice to know I am not gonna die anytime soon so let me point something out. That contract you are holding is completely worthless."
The horseman replied in unison: "WHAT! oh come on!"

Lucy continued what Arthur had been saying: "No, he's right, look right there (she pointed on the scroll). The contract is supposed to be renewed every millenia or it becomes invalid, and this hasn't been renewed since 54,623 B.C. Also, Death's signature is nowhere on it and so you can't prove he agreed in court. Not to mention that the scroll appears to be printed on some sort of cracker (she bit off a piece to demonstrate) <name the source of the cracker thing and win two points towards an Arby's sandwhich!)."

(I'm going to let someone else take off with the Horsemen for the moment. The only reason I'm posting is that I think the cracker bit is also from "The Simpsons")