Three years of living on a prehistoric Earth is enough to make any sane man consider going mad. Hajime Hinata was lucky that he had made it to five.
He was not born on prehistoric Earth, no, for that would be a phenomenon that the scientists of what we like to call the present day would just laugh at as if it was a legitimate theory the new guy in the corner brought up over lunch break. However, most of what Hinata had seen over the days, or weeks, or months even, would probably gain the same reaction. After all, if he hadn't been born on it (Or at least not yet), he had to have gotten on it through a series of very unfortunate events through the space-time continuum. He had a semblance of a slightly more specific explanation to offer, but every time he thought about it his head started to feel the pain akin to someone who had just watched the entirety of Neon Genesis Evangelion in one day without any food or bathroom breaks.
His last memories of any intelligent life form still floated around in his mind, a little foggy, but still there. He had been shoved downward into a spiral of dark nothingness by a woman with bright strawberry pigtails in a tight school girl outfit. She carried around a two-faced teddy bear that would constantly make sexual remarks about itself. Initially, that memory made him not want to ever talk to any intelligent life form ever again, but within a day or two, life on prehistoric Earth became a real bitch to deal with.
He found a cave, and with upmost effort made a fire, and while he stuck to vegetarianism for the first few months to save himself the trouble of hunting, he eventually had to work up a skill in the catching of small mammals and birds that looked only slightly like the ones he was used to seeing on Earth when his life was normal. Though the adventures throughout every crevice of the universe couldn't really be considered "normal" in any way, maybe life on prehistoric Earth could, especially given he had spent, as previously mentioned, five years there, and they had become a very empty and tedious five years at that. Nothing had even drastically changed about Hinata during that time period aside from a fraying mental state due to isolation and a very fraying physical state due to not having any tolerance to various prehistoric diseases. Hell, he still hadn't grown any facial hair within the time frame. What's with that?
This kind of ordinary was different than the one before, however. The one before made Hinata feel a bit fed up with the world and much more fed up with himself, but it was life all the same, and he couldn't hate it. He did hate this life though. He hated it very, very much because it made him feel so lonely and longing that he thought the best way to handle it after all this time was to just let it out through insane rage.
He didn't quite know how one would go insane on prehistoric Earth though. There's nothing to burn down, and there's really no one to voice his sorrows on to through maniacal behavior, so he decided to fill his odd prehistoric mammal-skinned bag with the most unusual stones he had collected over some time, and went out to find a tree to throw them at, because that wasn't necessarily acceptable behavior at any period of time.
After a bit wandering, he came across a tree that would do. The words that popped into Hinata's mind upon seeing it were "big" and "thick", but he still had enough sanity (Or hormones) inside of him for his mind to race to a substitute for at least one of those words because he felt like those choices were strangely dirty. In any event, the tree looked like a Spruce tree, if Spruce trees had existed during prehistoric times.
Beginning to question himself, he drew a stone out of the bag, this one a gray ovular shape with red speckles dotting it. It was actually an egg of a very large bird species, but he wasn't aware of this fact, and at this point, it'd take a very scary sort of looking bird to make him care if he was aware of it.
"This better pay off," he said to himself, or rather, he thought to himself with his mouth saying a very broken language as a result of him not really speaking at all for the past five years. He sometimes practiced to himself, but he felt kind of stupid just talking to himself, even if no one else was around to hear him but a bunch of animals he had once seen fossils of in a museum. He closed one eye tightly, figuring that he'd get the best aim at his non-existent target if he could only see through one eye.
"Hinata-kun, what are you doing?" a soft, innocent voice asked from behind him. Soft and innocent as it was, Hinata's whole body bristled with electricity, whipping around to face a petite figure that looked like it belonged on an anime body pillow only the skeeviest of men would buy.
"Na-na-na-na...," Hinata stuttered out the lyrics to one too many different songs, "Na-Nanami! You're here! I was just- I..."
Nanami cocked her head at him, her hoodie tipped with cat ears drooping to the side. She didn't look any different than she had when Hinata had last saw her, but he supposed robots don't tend to age.
"I...I was going to throw a rock at this tree..."
Nanami's eyes dropped from Hinata's to what he held in his hand. "That's an egg," she told him.
"Oh. Well, whatever, I guess."
"Hinata-kun, you're probably wondering why I'm here. And maybe why you're here as well."
"I-I think I've given up trying to find an answer for the second one...but I guess I'd like to know why you're here."
Nanami sighed, lips curving into a pleasant smile. "Well, since we were all separated years ago, I knew I had to go out searching for you. I only found you now due to a stroke of luck. Otherwise, it definitely would have taken much longer...out of all the places, I don't think I ever would have thought to look on prehistoric Earth."
Hinata blinked. Something perked up in his chest. "You...went searching for all that time? Searching for me?"
Nanami's head cocked to the side as if she was expecting a few very different questions. "Of course. We never did complete the mission, and I'm only supposed to be a 'helper' on it, so I thought I'd go find you."
"O-Oh, right. That." Hinata shook his head again to remind himself for the second time that she was a robot. A very cute robot who looked more like a teenaged gamer guy's dream girl out of a dating simulator, but a robot nonetheless. "Still though...it's really great to see you again. The five years I've spent on here haven't really been the best time of my life. I haven't talked to anyone. Have you?"
"Other than giving directions to the ship's artificial intelligence, for the most part, I haven't really talked to anyone either. You're right, it is boring when you don't have someone there. That is, until recently..."
"Huh? You met up with someone? Who was it?"
"Hinata-kun, do you know how I said that the only reason I was able to find you was because of a stroke of luck?"
"Yeah...and?"
"It wasn't mine."
Suddenly, some odd sense in Hinata's brain forced his head to turn approximately 120 degrees to the right as if something that would make that answer so much clearer was there. Nothing was, so he turned his head back to Nanami and then another 120 degrees to the left. That made more sense, he thought, as he saw another one of his companions sitting on a rock, scribbling something unintelligible in the dirt with a stick.
"Komaeda...no wonder why you found me. How did you find him though?"
"It was more like he found me. I was searching on this uninhabited planet that he was on at the time, and he recognized the ship...he still had his key, apparently, so while I was out looking he sort of just walked on himself. He was watching a movie when I got back."
"Well, at least that makes three of us," Hinata grunted, "Hey, Komaeda!"
"Hmm?" Komaeda looked up, then closed his eyes as he threw the stick to the side, grinning to himself as he stood up and walked over, stretching out his back. "Oh, hi Hinata-kun! It's nice to see you again! So, prehistoric Earth is...quite the fascinating place, isn't it?"
"Hardly. So, if I've been here, and Nanami's been on the search, where have you been for the past five years?"
"I've just been around."
"Around...?"
"Around and about. Given the circumstances of my departure from your lives, I was virtually left with no where to go and no one to talk to, so I wasn't left with much to do other than to wander around the universe aimlessly for awhile. It was almost a bit relaxing being relieved from the pressures of the mission...but a bit miserable as well. I figured, however, that I could handle my own life not really having any need for me, but seeing Nanami-san's ship was sort of like a callback for me, so I think joining in on it again was the best choice. I've missed you, you know, haha."
"Yeah, but, did you do anything?"
"Not much. With me not really having any goal in life to pursue, I've been left a bit stranded with only a few broken down spaceships to rely on to take me from planet to planet...they were desolate ones though, so desolate that I even decided to go mad and completely lose my mind for a little bit on one of them! It all started with me hitting a tree with a stone..." Hinata nearly choked. "...and the next thing I knew, I was believing I was a mango. Only later did I realize that I didn't actually throw a stone, but a bird egg! A speckled bird egg. Apparently, that particular egg has a serious effect on how one perceives reality."
Hinata nearly scoffed, because for one, neither him or Nanami could really imagine Komaeda being madder than he already appeared to be, and two, he himself could have also believed that he was a mango. He would thank him and Nanami for their sudden appearance later for preventing this fate. "That's...I was...never mind. Let's just all...collect ourselves. Preferably back at the ship." Ah yes, the good old S.S. Sonia Nevermind. The remembrance of such a name made Hinata feel slightly despondent that there were still other crew members out there, including its engineer.
"Oh...the ship?" Nanami asked, as if it were another unexpected thing to say.
"Well, yeah, I mean, it's here, right?" Hinata was beginning to realize that even though Nanami and Komaeda were there, and they had definitely mentioned the ship a few times, the actual ship itself was nowhere to be found.
"It was here," Komaeda told him, "But the strangest things can happen in just a split of a second."
"Wait, wait, it's not here?" The realization that the ship wasn't there hit Hinata harder than a car would hit a brick wall if it just so happened to be positioned on a Nascar race track. He seriously started to consider throwing the egg at this point just because being a mango didn't seem so bad for a second.
"It...a piece of it was blown off in space and it was pretty much disintegrated," Nanami explained, "We just so happened to fall here...and found you."
Hinata looked at the egg again. "Can one of you say something that will stop me from throwing this at the tree."
Komaeda opened his mouth to speak, but Nanami placed a hand over it. "Given that we're all here together, the improbability of events in both time and space might cause a nearly impossible event that will get us all out of here soon enough."
Hinata didn't seem all that convinced but he felt as if he shouldn't throw it anymore.
"Besides," Nanami continued, "We need some time to get our bearings anyway. For now, we should probably recount what has happened so far...before our separation."
A/N- Please don't try to take this seriously because I can guarantee you you'll fail.
I decided to pick of Douglas Adam's books again, and it inspired me to write this...I've worked on like 10 different things and this is what I publish after a year of not posting anything...don't trust me to make promises kids. Just don't.
If the ending was clear enough, the following updates will pick up the story from the very beginning! Because starting here would be a bit confusing. It'll be like a recap. A very, very long recap. Though not very many chapters long, the chapters themselves will be long. You get me? Most characters in the series will have a role to play, probably some of the new ones from the Future Arc as well. The more the merrier, I guess.
Also, the name of the ship was originally going to be the S.S. Koizumi for fandom-wide joke purposes, but given that I always intended for Souda to be the engineer, I had to go with something a bit more fitting, haha.