Summary: Time-traveling sofas are incredibly troublesome, especially when they deposit you on a future warship of a planet that has been mysteriously restored from non-existence. And poor Arthur, already shaken by the discovery of humanity's true origins, is in for yet another disturbing surprise.
Disclaimer: I own neither Gundam SEED Destiny nor the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Warnings: Spoilers for both GSD and The Trilogy of Four.
Timeline: At the point in Life, the Universe and Everything where Arthur is transported back to the future, and not long before Athrun's defection.
A/N: I watched the HHGTG movie for a second time today, and I suppose being subjected to the intense randomness of it rubbed off on me. I must warn you, this deviates from the space-opera style of GSD a great deal. Not only that, but people who have not read the full Trilogy of Four are likely to be highly confused by what's going on. Heck, people who have read it might be confused with what's going on- I know I certainly am. This is divergent from the actual novel, as there will be no killer robots from Krikkit (at least, not yet), and Arthur and Ford have been sent farther into the future. Slartibartfast might be showing up though.
At Least It's Mostly HarmlessChapter One:
Shinn Asuka was more than a little confused. The reason for said confusion was due to the fact that there was a sofa, with two men sitting on it, in the middle of the room. Now, seeing two men on a sofa, in the middle of a room, was not an entirely unusual thing in and of itself, but the fact that this room just happened to be a mobile suit hanger changed the usual-ness of it entirely. So, you can imagine a soldier's bafflement at seeing such a thing. Perhaps the fact that the two men themselves were decidedly out-of-place contributed to this reaction as well.
For however much confused Shinn Asuka was, Arthur Dent was doubly so. He was not sure where he had been expecting to be taken by a time-traveling sofa, but he was almost entirely sure that wherever he was now was a place that he least expected to be. All around him, people were shouting and pointing, and he could see a great deal of rather intimidating machinery.
He looked over at Ford, who appeared impassive for all but a slightly dazed expression on his face. "You wouldn't happen to know where we are, would you?"
"Not a clue," he said, swiveling his eyes to scan the immediate area, "but it bares an eerie resemblance to a Triggal warship hanger. All you'd need is a little bit of slime on the walls." He grinned, recalling a pleasant childhood memory.
"Uhh…is there any particular reason why the two of you are, well, you know, just sitting there?" Inquired one of the bystanders who had stopped mewling about.
"Oh no," said Ford, "You see, we've been trapped on prehistoric earth for the past five years. There was a rather noticeable lack of sofas back then, so we're quite enjoying the opportunity to sit on one now."
The teenager looked decidedly confounded. "Uhh…right, then." He then bounded off, shouting something about getting the captain.
Arthur scratched his beard, and was mildly surprised to find a rabbit bone stuck in it. However, due to the extenuating circumstances, he decided that he would remove it later. "Why did we chase this thing, again?"
"I suppose you were content to stay in that cave and go insane, were you?"
"Right. Just reminding myself." Arthur saw one of the people staring at them with particular interest. "I think it may be a good idea to find out where--or when--we are now." With that, he got up, dusted off his perpetually (and now irreversibly) grimy dressing gown, and walked over to the boy who had been staring at them.
Now, one must remember that Arthur Dent had been estranged from any sort of 'normality' for a good seven years. It is due to this that he had become completely accustomed to strange things happening. However, it had also made him desensitized to the fact that other people were generally used to strange things not happening. Ford had never been very sensitive to this fact to begin with.
"Hi. Would you mind telling us when and where we are?" The red-eyed boy continued doing a very good impersonation of a fish. "Well?"
As if snapped from a trance, the boy blinked hard. After a few moments of this, though, his face contorted into a rather angry scowl, which Arthur couldn't help thinking was this boy's customary expression.
"Why would you want to ask something like that?" Snapped the boy.
"Because I don't know it."
The boy's brows drew together in a frown which, combined with his scowl, made him look to be in either intense pain, or to be experiencing a severe case of constipation. Arthur was beginning to suspect the latter to be true.
"So, you expect to just show up in the middle of our hanger for no apparent reason, while we're getting prepared to launch an attack, and still have the privilege to ask us questions?"
Arthur, though normally quite a patient person, had just spent the past five years stuck in a cave. As somebody who had only recently decided to become sane again, he was not in the most amiable of moods. "Listen here, you uniform-toting delinquent; I really couldn't care less what you think I do or do not have the privilege of doing! Are you going to tell me the bloody time period, or are you just going to stand there scowling at me like a constipated fish?"
The boy seemed to consider this. "Well, you're on the military vessel Minerva, and we're currently on Earth. The year is Cosmic Era 73."
It was Arthur's turn to blink. "Did you just say…Earth?"
"Yeah. Are you deaf or something?" Replied the boy caustically. But Arthur was not listening, already having gone back to the sofa, where Ford was consulting something very familiar.
"Is that the Guide? I was sure that I threw it into a river."
"Yes, well--I got it out again." Ford was scrolling through some information that seemed to have him dumbstruck. "Listen, Arthur. I'm not sure if you're going to believe this—but for some reason all the things that I actually wrote about the earth have suddenly shown up in the Guide."
Arthur's face gained an expression that was some kind of cross between disbelief and mania. "Yeah, that kid over there told me that we're on earth right now. I mean, future earth. Not prehistoric earth, not earth right before it was blown up by the Vogons; future earth. As in, an earth that was never blown up by the Vogons."
Ford gave his companion a look of surprise. "What makes you say it's the future?"
Arthur gestured weakly to the robots in the room.
"Right. There is that."
There was a sudden burst of activity as everyone else in the hangar began to move aside. Who they were moving aside for became apparent, when a woman with blond hair dressed in military paraphernalia stood before the two hitchhikers.
"Who are you, and what are you doing on my ship?"
A/N: Yeah, I know- I 'm no Douglas Adams. I can dream though, can't I?