Good evening! This one-shot makes very little sense, unless you're in love with Douglas Adams (I saw him first, girls). I've been mulling a LONG time over what would happen if something Hitchhiker-ish suddenly happened to our favorite odd couple. Although now that I think about it, it would have been infinitely more hilarious if it featured Fuujin. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the trilogy it belongs in are copyright Douglas Adams, may his soul be happy (despite reading this). Final Fantasy 8 and its characters and concepts are copyright Square and Square's involved parties. As for the fact that the only differences between this and an actual existing chapter in the Hitchhiker's Guide, well, you know what they say. Imitation, and ultimately good-natured mockery, are the highest forms of flattery. And I mean, come on. I can't be the ONLY one who thought of this. ;D
A computer chattered to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason.
This was because reason was, in fact, out to lunch.
A hole had just appeared near the Sorceress Containment Station. It was exactly a nothingth of a second long, a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of millions of light-years from end to end.
As it closed up, lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of it and drifted off through the Universe. A team of seven three-foot-high market analysts fell out of it and died, partly of asphyxiation, partly of surprise.
Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it too, materializing in a large wobbly heap on the famine-struck continent of Centra.
The whole of Centra's population had died out from famine except for one last man, who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
The nothingth of a second for which the hole existed reverberated backward and forward through time in a most improbable fashion. Somewhere in the deeply remote past, it seriously traumatized a small random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility of space and made them cling together in the most extraordinarily unlikely patterns. These patterns quickly learned to copy themselves (this was part of what was so extraordinary about the patterns) and went on to cause massive trouble on every planet they drifted on to. That was how life began in the Universe.
Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms or unreason and spewed up a pavement.
On the pavement lay Squall Leonhart and Zell Dincht, gulping like half-spent fish.
"Man! THERE you are," gasped Zell. scrabbling a finger hold on the pavement as it raced through the Third Reach of the Unknown, "I told you we could wing it."
"Whatever," Squall grunted.
"Yeah! Good idea, huh? Thumbin' a passing shuttle for a rescue! Whodaman!"
The real Universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various pretend ones flitted silently by, like skittish mesmerizes. Primal light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of Jell-O. Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away forever.
"Zell, shut up. The odds against that were so far out of sight you'd have to get a fucking telescope to see them."
"Hey, man, don't knock it. It worked!" Zell grinned and flashed a thumbs-up.
"What kind of ship are we in, anyway?" asked Squall as the pit of eternity yawned beneath them.
"Hell, I don't know," laughed Zell. "I ain't even opened my eyes yet."
"Yeah, me neither," mumbled Squall.
The Universe jumped, froze, quivered and splayed out in several unexpected directions.
Squall and Zell opened their eyes and looked about in considerable surprise.
"By Hyne," breathed Squall, "It looks just like the beach near downtown Balamb."
"I am SO glad you said that, dude," said Zell.
"Why?"
"Because I thought I was going nuts!"
"Maybe you are. Maybe... you only thought I said that."
Zell pondered this.
"Well, did you say it or not?" he finally asked.
"I think so," said Squall.
"Huh. Maybe we're BOTH going nuts!"
"Well, yeah," said Squall. "We'd be pretty crazy, all things considered, to think this was Balamb."
"Do YOU think this is Balamb?" Zell inquired.
"Well, yeah."
"Yeah, man... so do I."
"So we must be crazy."
"Nice weather for it," drawled Zell, stretching out on the sidewalk comfortably.
"Yes," said a passing maniac.
"Who was that?" asked Squall.
"Who? That guy with the five heads and the yggberry bush full of fastitocalons?"
"Yeah..."
"I don't know. Just some guy, I guess."
"Oh."
They both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as huge children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses thundered through the sky taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the Uncertain Areas.
"Uhh... you know," coughed Squall, "if this is Balamb... there's something REALLY weird about it..."
"You mean the way the sea is still as rocks and the buildings keep sloshing around in waves?" said Zell. "Yeah... I thought that was weird too, man. You know," he continued as, with a huge bang, Balamb split itself into six equal segments which danced and spun giddily round each other in lewd and licentious formations, "there's something kinda creepy going on."
Wild yowling noises of pipes and strings seared through the wind, hot dogs popped out of the road for ten gil each, horrid fish stormed out of the sky and Squall and Zell decided to make a run for it.
They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling bats, and suddenly heard Rinoa's voice.
It was a quite sensible voice, but it only said, "Two to the power of one hundred thousand to one against and falling." That was all.
Zell skidded down a beam of light and spun round trying to find a source for the voice, but could see nothing he could seriously believe in.
"Was that Rin?" shouted Squall.
"I don't know, man!" howled Zell. "I don't know! It sounded like a measurement of probability or something!"
"Probability? What are you talking about?"
"Dude.., probability! You know, like, two to one, three to one, five to four against. She said two to the power of one hundred thousand to one against. That's pretty damn improbable, man!"
A million-gallon vat of custard upended itself over them without warning.
"But what the hell does it MEAN?" cried Squall.
"What, the custard?"
"No! The Measurement of improbability!"
"How the hell should I know? I think we're on some kind of spaceship!"
"I'm guessing," growled Squall, "that this ISN'T part of Ragnarok's fleet."
Bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges.
"... Huuuaaarrrgghhh..." mumbled Squall, as he felt his body softening and bending in unusual directions. "Balamb... seems to be melting away... the stars are swirling... a dustbowl... my legs are drifting off into the sunset... damn! My left arm's gone off too!" A frightening thought struck him. "Hyne burn it all," he swore, "how am I give my Gunblade a victory spin NOW?" He wound his eyes desperately in Zell's direction.
"Damn it all, Zell," he sputtered. "You're turning into a turtapod. Stop it!"
Again came the voice.
"Two to the power of seventy-five thousand to one against and falling."
Zell waddled around on his rock in a furious circle.
"Hey! Who are you?" he croaked. "WHERE are you? What the hell is going on, and how the hell do we make it stop?"
"Please relax," murmured the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess on a train with one rail and two wheels, one of which is loose and melting, "you're perfectly safe."
"But that's not the POINT!" raged Zell. "The point is that I'm a safe fucking TURTAPOD! And my buddy here's REALLY losing his head!"
"It's okay... I think I got it all back now," said Squall.
"Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling," cooed the voice.
"Well," mused Squall, "the arms are kinda... longer than I want'em to be, but..."
"Hey! Hey, lady!" hollered Zell in amphibian fury, "Ain't there something you need to be telling us?"
The voice cleared its throat. a giant hamburger lolloped off into the distance.
"Welcome," the voice said, "to the Starship Golden Highwind."
The voice continued.
"Please do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you. Two to the power of twenty thousand to one against and falling."
The voice cut out.
Zell and Squall were in a small luminous pink cubicle.
Zell was wildly excited... more wildly than normal, at any rate.
"SQUALL!" he said, "This is AWESOME! We got picked up by a ship powered with the Infinite Improbability Force! This is SO COOL! I heard rumors about it before! They said the rumors were fake but I guess they did it! They awakened the Improbability Force! Squall, this is SO... yo, Squall? What's going on?"
Squall had jammed himself against the door to the cubicle, trying to hold it closed, but it was ill fitting. Tiny prickly nubs were squeezing themselves through the cracks, their quills were ink-stained; tiny voices whistled insanely.
Squall looked up.
"Zell!" he gasped, "There's an infinite number of cactuars outside who want to talk to us about this script for The Sorceress' Knight they've worked out."