'Blame it on the Brain' - by coldangel_1

[Reply #200 on:]

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Chapter 20: High Orbit Drifter

Doctor Zoidberg, painfully bruised by his encounter with the police, sat alone in the empty Planet Express building. Silence hung in the musty conference room – the kind of silence that screams and rattles, demanding to be filled by a droning television or a madman talking to himself.

   “If this place were any more lively, a funeral might break out,” Zoidberg murmured , clacking his claws nervously to fill the quiet. He had no idea where any of the others were, or if they were even alive, and he didn’t highly rate his chances of finding a new job.

   A sudden scrabbling and squarking sound caught his attention, and he wandered out the the staff common room to see what it was, grateful for the distraction. At the window, a pair of owls fluttered and scratched at the glass noisily, trying to get out.

   “Here you go, my little vermin friends,” Zoidberg said, lifting the latch and pushing the window open. “Don’t forget your good friend Zoidberg when you make the big-time out there in the world.”

   He watched the two owls fly away, and noticed that they were joining large numbers of the feathered pests that were all winging across the city in great clouds… all departing at once.

   Even without a shred of practical knowledge at his disposal, Zoidberg knew that rats always abandoned a burning ship – winged ones included. The sight of the vast exodus filled him with foreboding.

   “Something wicked this way comes,” he warbled quietly to himself.

* * *

For all the terrifying spectacle of a large-scale space battle, with world-shattering explosions and huge juggernauts of steel tumbling through the void, there was always something very abstract about it. It was the lack of sound. Cataclysmic detonations ripped through space and massive ships crisscrossed each other with flaring engines, all in utter silence. It leant a deceptively serene, detached sense to the destructive ballet.

   Zapp Brannigan stood watching on the bridge of the Nimbus as the two fleets tried to fight off the giant alien brain.

   “We should put this to music,” he decided. “Kif? A battle-anthem if you will.”

   The little green Lieutenant activated the ship’s audio system and dropped the MP3 player’s needle into the groove of a sound file. At once Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture erupted from the speakers with dramatic fanfare.

   “No, no, no!” Zapp snapped. “I said a battle-anthem – not some sissy classical nonsense. Put it on track seventeen.”

   Kif moved the MP2 needle into a different groove, and the overproduced voice of a pop starlet rang out across the bridge.

   “Oops, I did it again. I played with your heart, got lost in the game. Oh baby baby…”

   “Oh yeah,” Zapp said, nodding his head and failing to notice the looks of disdain on the faces of all his crew.

   “Sir?” Kif had to raise his voice over  Britney’s horrendous  caterwauling. “Sir! The enemy has broken through the defensive cordon – every ship that comes close is effected by its psychic attack.”

   “Side-kick attack?” Zapp said. “How can it kick? It doesn’t have any legs.”

   Kif groaned expressively. “Nevertheless, sir – it is beating us, even with the Omicronians’ support.”

   “Beating?” Zapp repeated. “Nobody beats Brannigan except Brannigan himself!”

   Kif was unsure of what was being implied by that statement and decided not to analyse it too closely.

   “Your orders, sir?”  he said.

   “Arm all Botox torpedos!”

   “Er… Photon, sir?”

   “Kif, are you going to question my every command?”

   The Nimbus, flagship of the DOOP fleet, dropped into the brutal fray that surrounded Onespawn as the monstrous creature bore down on Earth. DOOP and Omicronian ships flew side-by-side for the first time, but were being rapidly destroyed. Onespawn itself took very few hits – sending its subservient Brainspawn to intercept the long-range weapons fire and be vaporized in its place.

   The battle wore on, and Earth grew larger and bluer.

* * *

Compression waves buffeted the Momship, tripping numerous warning alarms on the bridge. Mom massaged her temples as President Nixon gave her a jowl-lashing over the ship-to-planet channel, detailing the charges that would be laid against Momcorp and herself personally for instigating the cataclysm.

   “Shut the hell up, Nixon, you podgy skull-in-a-bottle,” she snapped finally. “You think I don’t know? Why do you think I’ve been out here trying to stop the damn thing!?”

   “Arooo…” Nixon glared out of the little screen on Mom’s command console. “Well I hope for your sake you’ve got some plan to deal with this… creature, before it finds popular support with the hippies down here and they start protesting on my doorstep again.”

   Mom sat back in her chair and looked away. Another shockwave from the nearby space battle made the deck tremble.

   Scruffy paced back and forth in a leisurely manner with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. When he finally spoke, he addressed Professor Farnsworth.

   “Scruffy may only hold a degree in Advanced Janitorial Science,” he said, “but I reckon it might be a prudent move to have all those big spaceships out there focus their weapons at one specific point on that there giant brain thingy.”

   “What point would that be?” Farnsworth asked, trying to figure out who the man was.

   “Can’t rightly say,” Scruffy replied. “But Scruffy’d suggest takin’ out whatever part’s responsible for makin’ folk stupid… that’d seem to be of most use.”

   “By the Gods!” Farnsworth said. “This mysterious stranger is right!” He began consulting the recorded data on his Tricorder, hurriedly scrolling through the scans and graphics taken of Onespawn.

   Hermes patted the janitor on the shoulder. “Dat was some mighty good tinkin’,” he said.

   “Yeah, good work Scrappy,” Amy added. Scruffy didn’t bother correcting her.

   “I’ve got it!” Farnsworth said, shuffling over to Mom and holding the Tricorder aloft. “There is a portion of the creature at the top frontal region, near the analogous Superior frontal gyrus, where all of its stupidification waves are generated. If it can be disabled then we’ll stand a much greater chance of fighting it on our own terms.”

   “Give me that!” Mom snatched the device off Farnsworth and plugged it into her console. “Nixon – I’m feeding new target coordinates to the two battle fleets.” Her screen divided to show Lrrr and Zapp Brannigan.
 


   “Alright you idiots,” she said. “You think you can work together and direct all your firepower on that point?”

   “Yes ma’am!” Zapp and Lrrr both said at the same time.

   “Good boys.”

* * *

Completely unnoticed amid the chaos, a little green freighter flew between the massive warships, dodging around their gargantuan hulls and debris clouds.

   Leela weaved the Planet Express ship through the battlefield, darting across the bows of DOOP and Omicronian vessels and avoiding the path of their weapons fire.

   “Feather on the breeze, feather on the breeze,” she said to herself through clenched teeth.

   Huge flashes of psychoplasmic energy lit up space, and the burning, fragmenting bulk of a stricken DOOP warship reared up in front of them – a buckling wall of metal.

   “Abandon ship!” Bender yelled as they sped toward the looming behemoth. A great tear appeared in the warship’s side, and Leela tilted the PE ship on its side, flying into the tear and through the exploding insides of the vessel to emerge on the other side.

   “I believe I just soiled myself,” Nibbler muttered, shaken.

   “This is stupid,” Fry said. “Those fleets are being blown to pieces for no reason – they can’t stop Onespawn!”

   “No, but they can weaken it sufficiently to improve our chances of success,” Nibbler said. “In any case – you cannot perform your role until the creature enters the atmosphere.”

   “You mean we have to let it reach Earth?” Bender asked. “But that’s where all my stuff is!”

   “We have more pressing concerns,” Leela said. Ahead, a score of Brainspawn had detached from the main fighting and were angling towards them. “Looks like we’re about to be stupid again,” she added.

   “Not if I can help it,” Fry replied. He turned and ran back through the companionway and climbed the ladder up into the gunner’s turret. With the flick of a switch, the laser cannon hummed through its initial charge-up routine, and Fry watched through the bubble canopy as the brains approached.

   “A mind isn’t really such a terrible thing to waste,” he muttered, lining the creatures up in his sights. “Wrap your grey-matter around this!”

   He opened fire, raking into the approaching brains and laughing in elation as they ignited and burst like water balloons one after the other. It occurred to him that he was probably enjoying it more than he should.



* * *

The Nimbus moved into formation alongside Lrrr’s command saucer, both vessels launching small fighter craft that flew flanking sorties to tie up the Brainspawn escorts.
 


   “Are you ready?” Brannigan asked Lrrr through the communications link.

   “I was hatched ready!” Lrrr bellowed.

   Together, the two ships opened up with their full weapons arsenal, diverting all power, including shields, to one massive assault. Onespawn, directly ahead of them, was struck head-on by the enormous combined attack of beam and projectile ordinance. The assault focused on one point, where Onespawn’s protective shell quickly weakened and collapsed. Its pseudoflesh was ruptured by huge amounts of explosive and radioactive energy that tore into it, destroying the stupidifying region of its mind.

   Onespawn let out a psychic roar that shook the heavens, and unleashed a devastating torrent of psychoplasmic discharge in the direction of the attacking ships.

   The Nimbus took the brunt of the barrage, with colossal wounds being blasted from its white hull. The ship shook under the impacts, and main power cut out, with more of the destructive energy balls inbound. Zapp Brannigan made a womanlike whimpering sound.

   Lrrr’s command saucer had been quicker to bring its shields back online, and suddenly, unexpectedly, it swung its superstructure in front of the Nimbus to protect the DOOP vessel from further damage, taking the hits for the other ship.

   “Good lord,” Zapp said in surprise as smoke wafted through the bridge. “The Omicronians… they’re…”

   “I don’t believe it,” Kif added, just as flabbergasted.

   Lrrr appeared on the holograph projector and looked at them sternly.

   “Those who fight alongside one another become brothers,” the big alien told them. “This is part of my peoples’ code – you protect your brother in arms. But this doesn’t mean that I like any of you!” He folded his arms and looked away.

   “Ahh.” Brannigan grinned. “You love us. Admit it!”

   “NEVER!” Lrrr roared, killing the communications link.

   “Sir, I don’t think it’s wise to tease them. They are a brutal and ill-tempered species given to random acts of genocide,” Kif said.

   “Ah, they’re just big cuddly man-eating teddy bears at heart,” Brannigan replied.

   With Onespawn’s stupefaction field gone, the flight groups of smaller attack craft were able to make close strafing runs against the creature – bombarding it with plasma yield weapons. Furiously, Onespawn slammed the pestering fighters away one after the other, and was almost too occupied with them to notice the familiar green blob of the Planet Express ship as it sailed by.
 


   Almost…

   A glowing tendril of telekinetic energy snaked out and latched onto the PE ship, causing it to buck violently as it came to a sudden stop. The engines strained against the force that held the ship in place, and the hull groaned in protest. With an internal growl of triumph, Onespawn began to squeeze…

   Leela wrestled hopelessly with the controls, unable to break free of the hold, while Fry blasted away pointlessly at Onespawn with the laser cannon. The gun quickly overheated, leaving Fry staring hopelessly out through the bubble canopy at the massive brain. Something appeared behind it… a lot of somethings, and Fry gaped in surprise.

   Onespawn’s psychic voice entered his mind.

   “Checkmate,” it said.

   “Check again, mate,” Fry replied, grinning as the Nibblonian fleet, having suddenly appeared in the system, opened fire on the creature.

   A barrage of directed energy weapons lanced into Onespawn, and it bellowed in surprise and rage, releasing its hold on the PE ship. The little green vessel lurched away toward the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. On the bridge, the communications screen came on, and Fiona appeared.

   “Lord Nibbler,” she said in simple greeting.

   “You came!” Nibbler said, hopping up to stare at her in surprise.

   “We cannot stay,” Fiona replied hurriedly. “Onespawn could erase us at any moment.”

   “I thank you,” Nibbler replied.

   “You were right, Lord Nibbler. Our hopes are with you and the Mighty One, as they always should have been. If you succeed, we will meet again… on the other side.”

   “Farewell…” Nibbler said with emotion as the image vanished.

   Onespawn began to apply energy into its internal quantum structure, preparing a wave of reality dysfunction, but the Nimbus and an accompanying group of Omicronian vessels and the much smaller Momship approached in a wedge formation, laying down waves of suppressive fire that allowed the fleet of Nibblonian saucers to depart the area. The monstrous creature furiously fired off bursts of destructive energy, forcing its attackers back to make an opening for itself. It moved toward Earth once again, down into the atmosphere, with the ships following.

   The Momship had taken a large blow, and its weakened hull ruptured deeply. With its engines labouring from the significant damage, it began an uncontrolled tumble toward the swirling white clouds far below.

   On the bridge, the crew was thrown from their feet as sparks erupted all around.

   “Damn exploding consoles!” Mom snapped.

   “Ma’am!” Helm said, struggling to stay upright as the gravity horizon fluctuated. “We’ve lost the main engines! We’re going in hard!”

   “What do we have?” Mom asked.

   “Only the manoeuvring verniers, but they won’t be enough to keep us in orbit. We have to abandon ship!”

   A brief flicker of emotion passed across Mom’s face, and she inclined her head. “Very well – sound the alert.”

   As the crew, along with Hermes, Amy, and Scruffy, all made their way off the smoky shaking bridge toward the escape pods, Mom remained behind, standing with her hands on the control console. Professor Farnsworth hung back in the doorway, looking expectantly at her.

   “Come on, you stupid woman, it’s time to go!” he said.

   “Shut your crap-trap, Hubert,” Mom growled. “I’ll be along in a minute – there are a few little matters I need to see to.”

   “But…”

   “Scram, Farnsworth!” she shouted.

   The Professor backed away.

   Mom watched through the forward screen as Onespawn caught hold of the Nimbus in its telekinetic grasp and began dragging the damaged DOOP warship with it, down into the atmosphere, ripping off huge chunks of steel it as went. She checked the vernier controls, trying an experimental burst to slow the wild tumble.

   For some reason, she remembered the passionate and determined young cyclops woman.

   “Alright then you stinking great blob of grey crap,” she said, “let’s dance.” Her fingers played across the main controls, entering a security override.

   At the escape pods, Farnsworth stood anxiously waiting outside one of the last of the cramped little tubes to deploy.

   “Come on, mon!” Hermes said from inside the tube. “Forget the old hag!”

   “Shut up!” Farnsworth replied. He took a step back toward the bridge, but a sudden shill chime from the escape pod’s launch system made him look up in alarm.

   “Emergency pod launch imminent!” a computerized voice announced. “Please step inside pod. Pod will launch in five… four… three…”

   “An emergency override?” Farnsworth gasped. Hermes and Amy lunged out and caught him by the arms, pulling him back inside the little tube just as the airlock slammed shut.

   “No!” Farnsworth shouted. “Let go of me! I have to go and…”

   The tube launched, shooting out of the stricken ship at high-Gs, and Farnsworth shouted in anguish: “Caroline!”

   With the escape pods away, Mom eased the ship into a high angle of atmospheric re-entry. Warning alarms rang annoyingly as hull plates around the damaged sections began peeling away. The ship shuddered violently from a series of internal explosions, but Mom stayed where she was, giving the verniers constant taps to maintain a tight alignment.

   Weapons were offline. Autopilot was offline. Everything was gone but for the mass of the ship itself. And that she lined up on a collision course with Onespawn, directly below, occupied as it was with tearing the Nimbus to pieces. The Momship’s earlier momentum increased with the pull of gravity, with its speed at more than eight miles a second.

   When it was moments away from Onespawn, Mom opened a broadwave communications channel.

   “Well hello dearie!” she said in her traditional sweet old lady voice. “Mommy has a present for you!”

   The explosion illuminated a huge area of sky, the Momship impacting with Onespawn in a tremendous blast, most of its mass vaporizing instantly. The creature’s structure took a battering, with thick streamers of grey flesh whipping away. It tumbled end-over-end, releasing its hold on the Nimbus, which angled away, trailing smoke as it went down.

   Wounded and weakened once again, Onespawn dropped through the sky, followed by its depleted ranks of Brainspawn footsoldiers.

   Lumps of debris fell through the atmosphere in a brilliant shower of shooting stars.

* * *

Undetected within the orbital chaos, a small object detached itself from a satellite that it had been cannibalizing for spare parts. Ignoring the vast and destructive space battle that was taking place, Robot 1-X Ultima locked its sensors onto the Planet Express ship as its leading edges began to glow with re-entry friction.

   All things come to he who waits, Ultima thought happily, activating the few weapons systems it had been able to repair. With a blast of fusion flame, it shot off in pursuit of the green ship, heedless of the battle cruisers exploding all around. Its intercept trajectory took it in a dangerously shallow sweep across the upper atmosphere, but Ultima braved the thermal ablation, zeroing-in on the side of the little freighter.

   Fry returned to the bridge of the PE ship, noting the soft pink glow licking across the forward viewscreen.

   “How we faring?” he asked Leela as he strapped himself into an empty seat.

   “Banged and bruised,” Leela said. “But she’s a tough old girl – she’ll hold together.”

   “Onespawn,” Nibbler said, hanging onto the top of the radar screen. “It’s descending toward New New York… and the fleets are holding back their heavy weapons for fear of striking the city.”

   “Dammit, why there?” Leela said.

   “It’s trying to goad me into a confrontation,” Fry said grimly. “And it’s succeeded.”

   Suddenly, a loud clang echoed through the ship, and it shuddered.

   “Space cow!” Fry yelled in alarm.

   “Something took a swipe at us,” Leela said, struggling with the trembling control column as the re-entry burn grew hotter and the whole ship began to shake. “Whatever it is, it has the worst possible ti…” She was cut off by the shriek of tearing steel and a tremendous rush of air as the cabin’s pressure began to escape in a screaming torrent.

   “Abandon ship!” Bender yelled.

   Discarding the airlock door that it had torn off its hinges, Ultima climbed inside the ship and moved through onto the bridge with the roaring tornado of air and debris blasting past it.

   Clinging on for dear life, Leela, Fry, Bender, and Nibbler all turned to stare at the damaged military robot as it loomed over them.

   Together they screamed.

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[Reply #201 on:]

great job, especially like the pictures

[Reply #202 on:]

Coldy, you have given me the one thing I always wanted to see in a Fan-fic, a huge orbital space battle with hundreads of capital ships tearing each other apart at the seams as small nimble fighters fly though the maelstrom of combat.

It's so beautiful! 

Wonderful chapter too, just wonderful.  It was funny, dramatic, good cliffhanger, action packed and Brannigan packed!
       

[Reply #203 on:]

Return of Robot-1X Ultma... 

Lrrr's lines were great!

Hey, wouldn't Britney also be considered "classical" in 3007?

[Reply #204 on:]

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Chapter 21: The Silence of the Droids

Together, they screamed. And the air screamed with them. The Planet Express ship began a shallow lateral roll as its re-entry trajectory degraded.
 


“Oh God” Leela shouted, staring up at the battered war drone, which appeared to have bolted and welded patches of steel onto itself in a hasty self-repair job. “I can't believe it's still...”

She didn't finish the thought. Ultima opened fire with an atom laser, the beam stabbing just past her face and blowing the command console apart. The ship bucked violently in response to the loss of avionics control; the assortment of alarms couldn't be heard above the roar of wind in the cabin and the atmospheric friction outside.

With an angry shout lost in the thinning atmosphere, Fry unbuckled himself from his seat and launched up at the robot with fists flailing. It deftly caught him by the face in one of its lower manipulator claws and tossed him into the bulkhead where he crumpled into a heap.

“Fry!” Leela began moving to him, but her path was blocked by the battle droid, it hovered before her on a roughly-repaired ion thruster, opening and closing its claws and looking somehow uncertain. She bared her teeth as her hair whipped around and her ears popped painfully from the pressure differential. The deck trembled beneath her feet.

“Get the hell off my ship!” she yelled at the machine, stepping forward to meet it. Ultima fired a rubber bullet from its arm cannon at nearly point-blank range, sending Leela sprawling at the front of the cabin with an agonized cry.

Ocean, cloud, and land rolled in and out of view behind Leela as she wheezed and clutched her stomach. The ship was plummeting in a death-roll, and a deranged killer robot was looming over her, ready to deal the death-blow...

...Except it didn't come. Ultima hesitated, wracked by internal contradiction.

Destroy the target, end the mission. End the mission, destroy purpose. Cannot survive without purpose.

Turanga Leela's face and vital statistics scrolled through the robot's mind. The target was lying helpless before it, with Ultima's crosshairs centred. Kill-shot assured.

Cannot end. Can't let it end. Can't let purpose be cancelled - won't go on hiatus. Must continue.

Ultima fired into the deck around Leela, with an internal shriek of frustrated indecision. The target curled into a ball, cowering away form the blasts. From behind, the orange-haired human approached for a second attack, swinging a fire extinguisher that caught Ultima a blow across the cranial casing to nil effect. The robot turned and arbitrarily deposited twenty-thousand volts into the figure, sending him sprawling once again. This caused the primary target further distress.

Toward the back of the cabin, Nibbler clung to a console beside Bender.

“You have to do something!” Nibbler shouted at the bending robot. “You're the only one strong enough!”

“I can't!” Bender wailed in anguish. “I love the 1-X robots!”

“Fight the programming!” Nibbler commanded. “You're a sentient being, not just an inflexible assortment of data - you have the ability to choose!”

“No!” Bender clutched his head.

“It's hurting your friends!” Nibbler said. “They need you!”

Bender trembled from his own internal contradictions, struggling to find his way through the compatibility program that had been installed in him. The 1-X series robots were superior – bastions of goodness and functionality. They were his friends.

   Friends?

   Bender’s friends were lying on the deck, bruised and beaten, with a violent and destructive thing looming over them. Fry and Leela were his friends. A 1-X robot was threatening them… 1-X robot… The 1-X robot was his…

   “…Enemy,” Bender said in a strangled voice. “Enemy… enemy… enemy…” He surged to his feet and stood, clenching his metal fists, with a tremble running through him. In front, the military 1-X had picked Leela up, and held her as though uncertain of what to do with her.

   “Hey, rivet face!” Bender shouted, and Ultima turned to regard him. “Sorry to say, buddy - You’re pending for a bending!” He leapt forward, sweeping his arms in parabolic arcs to meet the other robot, which dropped Leela to the deck and brought its weapons to bear.
 


   The two robots slammed together in a shower of sparks, Bender pounding at Ultima’s already-damaged casing, and Ultima trying to draw bead on the bending robot with its cannons. Bender batted the weapons aside and they discharged into the bulkhead and equipment racks.

   “You’ll have to do better than that, circuit-bag,” Bender said, punching the war drone in the face plate.

   Leela, struggling to her feet on the shifting deck, was forced to duck beneath a flurry of slashing robot arms. She dived and rolled away from Bender and Ultima, making for the control console but finding it molten and useless.

   “Crap,” she said as a blue and green panorama pitched up in front of the plummeting ship. They were getting awfully close to being a smear on the landscape – unless she could regain control and aerobrake.

   Bender still grappled with Ultima, the clash of their metal bodies ringing even above the rushing air. They traded blow after blow, with servomotors and pneumatics whining and hissing under the strain.

   Leela struggled over to the navigation console and Fry joined her.

   “Are we boned?” he asked, watching as Bender fought with the other robot.

   “Very nearly,” Leela said, activating a secondary control column that unfolded from a floor recess. “If I can’t bleed off a lot of speed in very little time we’re all going to have a close interpersonal experience with several geological strata of sedimentary rock.”

   “You can do it,” Fry said with casual certainty, wincing when Bender took a particularly hard hit that dislodged his left arm.

   “I’m not so sure,” Leela replied, wrestling with the controls. She’d corrected the violent spin, but Mother Earth was still rushing up at them at a decidedly unhealthy rate.

   “I am,” Fry replied, stepping past her. “I believe in you.” He picked up Bender’s left arm from the deck, hefting it like a club and rushing forward to strike Ultima across the back with it. Ultima turned, and Fry feinted away, tossing the arm to Bender, who quickly reattached it and wrapped it and its partner limb around Ultima’s head from behind.

   “Surprise, metaltube!” Bender said, tightening the sleeper hold until Ultima’s cranial casing began to creak. “I’ve got your number, you stinking pile of… oh someone else’s God!” Ultima had reached around and grabbed Bender by the Shiny Metal Ass, and was now flinging him around, bashing him with great force against the fuselage and equipment racks.

   “Bender, you’re doing great! I think he’s starting to tire out!” Fry yelled, right before Ultima threw Bender at him, and they both went skidding across the deck to slam painfully into the bulkhead.

   “Thanks for breaking my fall, pal,” Bender said, picking himself up off a battered Fry who managed a strangled moan. “Time for some Ultimate Robot Fighting action!” He ran back toward Ultima, taking a few laser hits as he went, but shrugging them off. He swung his fists, one after the other, and Ultima caught them both in its manipulator claws, holding the bending robot’s arms at bay as it lined up its weapon pods. But Bender suddenly surged upward and headbutted the other robot. On a roll of confidence, he then tried to kick Ultima’s legs out from beneath it, realizing too late that the war drone didn’t have any.

   As the two robots continued to clobber each other Leela was fighting her own battle, struggling to right the ship’s uncontrolled descent. The depressurization and destruction of the main avionics suite had made the process of atmospheric deceleration dangerously unstable – not to mention the time wasted in dealing with the persistent military robot. Fly-by-wire was inoperative – the emergency controls were barebones, without even the most basic of autonomous routines. It was down to Leela’s intuition and the ship’s control surfaces.

   She pulled up into belly-first attitude, feeling the tug of deceleration pull her down in the seat. Pressure and thermal stresses creaked through the superstructure and triggered load alarms, and the control column shuddered in her hands. In desperation, she re-lit the main drive for some thrust to slow their rate of descent – the ship lurched in response. A subsequent adjustment of the vessel’s lateral tailfin flaps initiated a series of wide slalom slides to create even more drag, but they were still going down hard, with the altimeter spinning past fifty thousand feet. The Atlantic was beneath them now as they scorched a rapid north-westerly path toward continental North America.

   Still Bender and Ultima fought. Fry tried to help by bashing the war drone over the head with the coffee maker, and Nibbler leapt into the fray with a few ineffectual bites, but both of them were easily batted away.

   “Never send an organism to do a machine’s job,” Bender muttered. He kicked Ultima in the chest plate, sending it wobbling backward until it was underneath a main supply cable that ran across the ceiling. Bender extended his arms to grab the cable’s end and pulled it from its mounting in an explosion of extremely high voltage sparks. He pressed the sputtering and snapping exposed wires of the cable against Ultima’s cracked and dented casing.

   The lights dimmed. The engine died. All of the ship’s systems went offline.

   Ultima spasmed, encased in a shroud of sparks and crackling tendrils of electricity. Smoke billowed from it as internal ammunition stores exploded. Bender stepped back and watched the other robot fall limply to the deck with small spits of leftover charge.

   “Yeah! Take that, jerkwad!” he shouted jubilantly. “I HATE those damn 1-X robots! May they all burn in robot hell! Woooo-hoooo!”

   “Say, Bender the Magnificent?” Leela said, pushing away from the now-useless control column. “You just killed our main power. I managed to set us onto a reasonable glide slope, but even so – we’re now about to crash-land. As much as I appreciate your help, you can really be a stupid shi…”

   “We must brace for impact,” Nibbler said hurriedly. “Our altitude is almost down to one thousand hooves.”

   “Feet,” Fry corrected him.

   “I prefer my way.”

   They all strapped themselves in, Leela talking hold of Nibbler as the ship continued its noisy freefall. On the floor, Ultima twitched.

   “It’s going to be a water landing,” Leela said as she fastened her belt buckle. “It’ll be hard, but it would have been worse if we were directly over land. I’m sorry about this everyone… maybe I really did need that captaincy course after all…”

   “You did great, Leela,” Fry assured her. “Nobody could have done any better – you’re amazing…”

   “Thank you Fry.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

   “Oh man,” Bender said in disgust. “If I had stomach contents I would now be forcibly ejecting them.”

   The ship splashed down.

* * *

There was a shadow over New New York.

   It had appeared first at Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, and then spread across the city, devouring the skyscrapers of Tribeca and Chelsea, the tube lines and eateries of Little Alpha-Proximatown, and the meadows of Central Park beneath its dim pall.

   The shadow passed over the Planet Express building and an inept Decapodian doctor cowered in terror.

   People, robots, Horrible Gelatinous Blobs, and Hyperchickens on the street all looked up, and at first saw only a vast billowing mass of cloud that rolled across the sky. The close observer would note that it moved against the wind. Soon a resonant roar became audible, and then the cloud began to dissipate, revealing the massive flying thing that had been concealed inside and now hovered over the city.

   Curiosity turned to screaming terror as people fled or hid or smashed open the front of electronics stores. Some fired weapons into the air to no effect.

   Onespawn took up a position over the sprawling metropolis and regarded it, the defining pinnacle of human civilization, with amusement. In the end, when it all boiled down, the city was just a big glorified ant-hill.
 


   It sensed the Mighty One was close… close enough.

   It was time.

   Onespawn summoned the remaining Brainspawn to join with it, absorbing their mass and energy into itself. They melted into Onespawn, adding their sympathetic harmonic quantum fields to the underspace resonance collapse that was taking place within the massive creature. The new exotic organ within Onespawn existed in ten dimensions – a rippling incomprehensible warp in reality, through which the intrinsic quantum flux inside the giant creature was fed and focused.

   A spherical area of darkness began to grow around Onespawn… with forks of lightning stabbing out of it. Clouds started to swirl toward the darkness, revolving around New New York – the eye of the storm.

* * *

The Planet Express ship slammed down on its belly somewhere beyond the mouth of the Hudson River. Then, with explosive bursts of steam from its superheated surfaces, it skipped like a stone across the choppy polluted waters four… five… six… seven times, before finally settling to gouge out a long wake through the swell and then…

   …a jarring, bone-shattering impact as the little freighter’s momentum carried it straight into Staten Island’s Midland Beach, a short distance from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. It ripped a great furrow in the sand before finally coming to a halt, steaming and ticking with its hull warped and torn.

   Each battered and shaken to the point of knowing exactly how an omelette feels, the crew began groggily unstrapping themselves from their seats. Smoke and steam filled the dim cabin, along with the strong scent of electrical shorts and salt water.

   “Casualties?” Leela asked in between fits of coughing.

   “We’re all intact,” Fry replied.

   “If by ‘intact’ you mean ‘considering a lawsuit’,” Bender muttered.

   Leela realized she’d been fearfully squeezing Nibbler very tightly against her ample bust the whole time. She pulled him out of her generous cleavage, and he fell back, gasping desperately for breath.

   “Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

   “No… harm… done…” Nibbler panted, regaining some colour.

   “Let’s get out of this wreck before something explodes,” Bender suggested.

   They started toward the emergency exit, but something moved in the smoke that still billowed across the floor. It seemed to slither toward Leela, and suddenly a metal claw was clamped around her ankle.

   Ultima shuddered and sparked, its emergency batteries leaking slush lithium. Time was short – it had the target in its grip – fulfilment was at hand.

   “Get off me, damn you!” the target shouted, kicking at Ultima with her free boot. The other hostiles also began to deliver a rain of blows, but it ignored them, focusing on the primary – the economical grace of her movements, the distinct spectral pattern of her colouring…

   It placed her in the centre of a crosshair, selecting an atom laser.

   Completion. Finality. The End.

   In the mind of a robot, an eternity can pass in a moment, and a moment can be an eternity. Ultima pondered for an eternity…

   “Let go of her, you damn monster!” Fry shouted, slamming his sneakers into Ultima.

   “Nobody likes a sore loser!” Bender added, trying to pull the dying robot away.

   The atom laser charged, and its stored particle beam hummed in its containment field, ready to lance through Turanga Leela’s flesh. A single photonic trigger impulse through an optical fibre nerve cluster and Ultima’s purpose would be completed.

   And then what?

   Death would come. The robot had already been in bad shape – the high-voltage attack had just been the final nudge beyond the point of repairable; multiple redundancies had seen multiple failures, until the very last inch of itself flickered… the final flame of emulated life about to run out of wick.

   Life… Ultima thought on that word. Its life had had only one purpose – the one it now trained its weapons pod on; that single eye, narrowed in determination, even in the face of defeat. With the target’s extermination, Ultima’s purpose, the sum goal of its existence, would cease. The mission… the final facet that connected Ultima to the world…

   The idea made the robot sad.

   In the malfunctioning processor that was Ultima’s mind it examined the concept of leaving something behind, proof that it had existed, a legacy… even if that legacy was an undefeated enemy to remember it… a job incomplete – a tie to the past.

   But the mission… must be completed.

   If purpose ends, then so ends the last remaining aspect of self.

   Self cannot exist beyond cessation of function.

   Self can always exist…

   Ultima twisted and writhed, its cannon wavering around the target. A spark issued from the robot’s neck as its paradox-absorbing buffers struggled with the complex load.

   Suddenly, it lunged upwards, bearing Leela toward the bulkhead, where it held her against the warm metal, its blank face visor an inch from her eye. Leela stared into the machine’s optical sensor, now more bewildered than frightened. Why wasn’t it killing her?

   Ultima’s vocal emulator crackled, as if it was clearing its throat or struggling to find words.

   “What do you want?” Leela asked it, motioning for Fry and Bender to hold back.

   Ultima regarded her. “You…” it said in a wavering electronic voice. “You are… my whole life.”

   Leela blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

   Ultima gently trailed a battered claw down the side of Leela’s face, and then trembled, suddenly dropping to the deck with a clang. It lay motionless, and Leela looked down at it, unsure of what to think or feel.

   “Is it really dead this time?” Fry asked.

   “Looks like it,” Bender said, prodding the metal shell with his foot. “Good riddance, eh Leela?”

   Leela said nothing. Something strange had transpired, which she would probably never comprehend. She walked away from the dead machine to stand looking out through the sand-dusted viewscreen. It had hunted her so relentlessly, to its own demise, and had chosen not to take her life…

   “You okay?” Fry asked, coming up behind her.

   “Yeah,” she said. “Just… an odd moment of melancholy.” She turned to him. “Fry, can you imagine for a moment a life dedicated to a singular goal, so focused and uncompromising that the attainment of the goal itself would mean an end to the life?”

   “I…” Fry frowned, deep in unfamiliar intellectual territory. “I suppose… like a guy who lives to climb all the highest mountains, but one day he climbs them all and has nothing left to climb?”

   “Yeah,” Leela said. “You’d think he might leave just one mountain unclimbed… so that there was always the chance of something more – a promise for the future… something open-ended…”

   Fry understood, but failed to see the relevance. He expressed this in a shrug.

   “I’m just sad for some reason,” Leela said. “Come on – let’s get out of here. The ship’s dead, and it reeks of mortality. I hate that smell.”

   After Fry collected the Lance of Fate, the torn-open emergency access airlock allowed the four friends to jump down onto the sand and look up at the battered ship. With fins broken off and hull warped and cracked, it would never fly again, and so they took a moment to mourn its passing before wandering away up into the dunes. Thunder crackled overhead, and thin ribbons of dark cloud billowed across the sky.

   They crested the peak of a dune and stood amid the wiry beach grasses, looking out across the expansive mouth of the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty to Manhattan Island in the distance.

   “Cripes,” Fry said, wide-eyed.

   “Neat!” Bender said, snapping a photo.

   “Are we too late?” Leela wondered, gaping at the sight.

   Poised above New New York was Onespawn in all its horrific majesty. The giant brain formed the core of a slowly-expanding sphere of darkness that was whipping the atmosphere into a frenzy.

   “It has begun,” Nibbler said, nestled into the crook of Leela’s arm. “Lilith. The Dark Moon. The Devourer of All Things. Onespawn has initiated the compression of space and time toward a quantum singularity.”

   “Can we stop it?” Fry asked, gripping the Lance at his side.

   “You are stopping it,” Nibbler replied. “The presence of the Mighty One is having the opposite effect – but this planet will be consumed nonetheless, and yourself with it, making the beast unstoppable.”

   “What can we do?” Leela pressed.

   “Only our very best,” Nibbler replied.

   Together, they started forward.

*********************************************

[Reply #205 on:]

 

“You’d think he might leave just one mountain unclimbed… so that there was always the chance of something more – a promise for the future… something open-ended…”

[Zim]Genius!!![/Zim]

No seriously, taking a dig at, well, most of the PEEL shipping community... brilliant!

[Reply #206 on:]

 

“Feather on the breeze, feather on the breeze,” she said to herself through clenched teeth.

... WAAAASH!

[Reply #207 on:]

Wow, 2 chapters in 5 hours.

 

“Ah, they’re just big cuddly man-eating teddy bears at heart,” Brannigan replied.

So funny. Great chapter.

Ultima really needed purpose. I feel sorta sad for Ultima becuase he destroyed himself trying to retain a purpose. Great updates coldy. Can't wait for more.

[Reply #208 on:]

awesome, awesome to the max

[Reply #209 on:]

I agree; very impressive.

Though the Wash reference did have me worried there for a little. 

[Reply #210 on:]

 

Originally posted by totalnerduk:

Xanfor, at this point even hardcore shippy shippers cats will be calling for the sick buckets. Shippy is good. Funny is also good. Shippy + Funny = Win. Accept this and move on.

I agree, like JBERGES, that bending the rules for the sake of a good joke is acceptable. Probably not as much as he does, but still, I accept the general premise. However, when it comes to Venus's makeshift quote, I was under the impression that Fry's misunderstanding involving the bosoms was meant to be the humourous constituent of the scene.

All my version did was remove the ‘jackass’ line. In what way was that even funny in the first place?

Ah, more chapters now. I'll read them...

[Reply #211 on:]

Ah, I've finally caught up!

You write so beautifully, and you've captured the characters perfectly, it's unbelievable! I love how you've twisted reality and fiction together, completely distorting life as they know it.

I loved this chapter, it's just amazing. I really, really, can't wait for the next part!

[Reply #212 on:]

 

Originally posted by Xanfor:
 All my version did was remove the ‘jackass’ line.

No your version made them really sappy and cry-y. Emotion is good (hell everyone knows i'm an angstwhore) but if overdone it's just mellodrama. There's only so much even I can take.

[Reply #213 on:]

No, my version was identical to coldangel's.

Except for a few adjectives.

Always with the adjectives...

[Reply #214 on:]

"oh someone else's God!"    ...nice variation. I enjoyed how you went from the conflict about both robots' internal contradictions to the comic scenario of them fighting.

The mental image of Bender and Ultima going at each other had me laughing for about five minutes. 

Ultima's dilemma though...heavy. Yeah, that was a nice touch with the mountain-climbing analogy.

[Reply #215 on:]

*********************************************

Chapter 22: Armageddon outta here

The heavily-damaged Nimbus struggled to maintain altitude over New New York. Smoke trailed from its battle damage.

   Captain Zapp Brannigan sat in his command chair, glaring out at the gigantic brain that hung with casual enormity before the stricken vessel.

   “Hit it with everything we’ve got!” he said.

   “Sir, we have nothing,” Kif replied.

   “Then hit it with that!”

   “The torpedo tubes are damaged.”

   “Damaged?” Brannigan sneered. “Damage is no excuse for cowardice – have some able spacemen arm all of our remaining warheads and load them into a jettison capsule. I saw that once in a movie – we’ll get close to the enemy and shoot the capsule right up its… Kif, where to you stick things up a brain?”

   “I’m sure I have no idea, sir,” Kif muttered. “However the area of blackness which has surrounded the creature appears to be repelling all the orbital attacks from our own fleet and the Omicronian vessels.”

   “Repelling, eh?” Brannigan said. “Well, let’s see it repel five-million metric tons of DOOP warship! All ahead one third!”

   The Nimbus limped toward Onespawn, pushing through walls of rushing wind and crackling bolts of lightning. The vessel began to tremble as esoteric tidal forces afflicted it. The giant brain rose up like a sheer cliff of veiny pseudoflesh, encased in dark energy.

   “How’s that jettison capsule coming?” Brannigan asked, gripping the armrests of his seat as the ship shook violently.

   “It’s almost done,” Kif said, listening to an earpiece. “Sir, are you sure about this?”

   “A starship captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than run away and look like a chicken,” Zapp said. “There are certain things men must do to remain men.”

   “Oh Gods…” Kif murmured miserably.

   The damaged warship reached the outermost extremity of the dark sphere and impacted it. Reality seemed to bend in response, and mile-long tendrils of unworldly energy stabbed out from the point of contact. As waves of displaced spacetime washed over the Nimbus, the number of crew on the bridge appeared to double and triple sporadically – Zapp and Kif saw themselves where they’d been standing fifteen minutes ago, and then half an hour before that…

   Zapp looked forward, and saw his own back, stained with blood, with a steel beam protruding through his torso. The vision faded, and he gaped in astonishment.

   “What the hell’s happening?” he said.

   “We’re as close as we can get!” Kif shouted over the screaming alarms. “If we’re going to do something, it has to be now!”

   “Launch the capsule!” Zapp yelled.

   A small jettison pod rocketed out of the Nimbus’s forward hull, and into the dark field of reality compression. It twisted and rippled and, without so much as a puff of smoke, ceased to exist.

   Onespawn gave a small chuckle, and casually hurled a wall of psychoplasmic energy at the Nimbus.

   “It didn’t work…?” Brannigan said, gaping in bewilderment.

   Kif saw the oncoming hail of destructive energy, and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Brace for impa…”

   He got no further. The ship took massive and devastating hits, with huge sections of its superstructure vaporizing in explosive fountains of fire. The Nimbus fell away from Onespawn, suddenly a great unpowered lump of steel. It crashed down on the far bank of the East River, carving out a long trail of destruction before coming to rest.

   On the bridge, survivors picked themselves up and began fighting through the smoke to the emergency exits. Kif looked around for the Captain, and saw that he had been thrown toward the demolished front section of the cabin during the crash landing, and now appeared to be lying across an equipment bank. He walked over and noticed that his initial assessment was incorrect.

   Zapp Brannigan was impaled on a broken, serrated length of metal support strut; it jutted out of the middle of his back, coated in blood and gore.

   “Sir!” Kif said in alarm, moving to his side. “Hold still, I’ll find someone to…”

   “Kif…” Zapp said weakly, with blood colouring his lips.

   “Yes sir?”

   “I have been… and always shall be… your friend…” Brannigan slumped forward, and Kif sat down, staring for a long time at the dead man.

* * *

The little escape pod manoeuvred on candlepower thrusters and gently set down outside Planet Express, hinging open with a hiss. Hermes, Amy, Scruffy, and Farnsworth all walked out, and all but the Professor gazed upward in frightened awe at the abomination that filled the sky.

   Farnsworth stared into space, his mind filled with unvoiced grief and bitter imaginings of what might have been. Mom was gone…

   “Sweet Phoenix of Phoenix!” Hermes muttered. “The ting is eating up the sky!”

   “That’s unsettlin’,” Scruffy muttered as he thumbed casually through a copy of zero-G Juggs.

   “What’s that black blork coming out of it?” Amy wondered.

   “Oh, probably just an area of time and space being compressed,” Farnsworth said distantly, without looking up. “The theoretical ‘Fry-hole’ predicted by the what-if machine would be a similar example. Who cares? Shut up!”

   Eerie-sounding thunder rolled overhead, and the group headed inside, where they found Zoidberg huddled under the meeting table.

   “My friends!” the lobster exclaimed, scuttling out of hiding. “You came back to save your beloved Doctor Zoidberg!”

   “In your dreams, you rotten shellfish,” Hermes said, pushing Zoidberg aside. He sat down at the table, and by some unspoken agreement the others sat as well.

   “We will, on this occasion, defer the reading of the previous meeting minutes,” Hermes said, and the others looked surprised at this unprecedented happening. “Straight onto the first order of business – Armageddon.” He activated the wall screen and √2 national news came on.
 


   “EARTH, pitiful homeworld of the insignificant human species, is DOOMED!” Morbo the news monster bellowed from the television

   “That’s right, Morbo,” the co-anchor Linda said. “After a chaotic space battle involving three separate attack fleets, the alien brain entity known only as ‘Onespawn’ has settled above the city of New New York, where it has initiated a strange energy reaction that specialists suggest may completely destroy the Earth and all who dwell upon it.”

   “Morbo APPLAUDS the imminent destruction of the PATHETIC human civilization!” Morbo declared, clenching a sinewy green fist. “We will cross live now to Earth President Richard M. Nixon for an emergency address to the planet.”

   The screen changed to show Nixon’s preserved head, with beads of condensation forming on the glass jar.

   “My fellow Earthicans,” he said. “We face a stern day in the history of our species. A great enemy has thrown down a challenge, and that challenge is survival. Never before in the history of the human race has so much been owed by so few to so many. I speak, of course, of the majority of the population who will bravely remain on Earth to meet their fate with dignity and honour, so that those intelligent and wealthy among us can depart to continue the human legacy. I salute you all.”

   Two Secret Service men appeared and picked up Nixon’s jar.

   “Well, that’s all from me,” he said as the men carried him away from the camera. “Gotta run now – hope the Apocalypse goes well for you all.” He was carried into Air Force One, a sleek blue and white starship, which quickly lifted off and blasted away.

   “That was Earth’s President, the head of Richard M. Nixon,” Linda said when the camera returned to the studio. To her credit, she looked only slightly pale.

   “Morbo’s only regret,” Morbo said, “is that someone ELSE will enjoy the honour of destroying this UTTERLY RIDICULOUS world!” He promptly hit a button on his chair and it blasted up off the floor, crashing through the roof and carrying him away on a plume of flame. Linda was left looking frazzled. She looked at the camera, smiled weakly, and gave a half-hysterical laugh.

   All across the world, space vessels were launching – fleeing the doomed world as the strange black sphere grew over New New York.

   Hermes switched off the television and they all looked glum.

   “Those ignorant fools,” Farnsworth muttered. “If they think they’ll actually be safe offworld then they’ve got another thing coming – Fry and the Nibblonian are the only ones who know how to stop that thing, and if they fail the creature will be the end of everything.”

   Most of the team didn’t really understand, but they took it on faith. Outside, the sky rumbled, temporarily blotting out the sound of looters on the streets.

   “Well, what do we do now?” Amy asked.

   “Huh-whaa?” the Professor looked at her in confusion. “Oh my, there’s very little we can do. Now that the creature is encased in a field of compressed spacetime nothing can touch it… nothing but an object of extreme power with a connection to spacetime itself… like a thermonuclear wristwatch… or a highly-caffeinated Tree Sloth…”

* * *

The Lance of Fate shimmered with unearthly energy, as its bearer had come to expect it to do.

   Fry clutched it close to his chest as he was pulled a breakneck speed through the tubeline toward the city, with the others following closely behind. Their line looped up over the raised arm of the Statue of Liberty and dipped down underwater as it headed toward Manhattan. Fry occasionally caught glimpses of the outbound lines completely overfull with the congested bodies of hapless citizens trying to flee the city. He, Leela, Bender, and Nibbler seemed to be the only ones trying to get in.

   When the tube deposited them in the middle of Times Square, Fry stumbled on the pavement and almost impaled himself on the Lance (wondering idly what kind of disastrous cosmic feedback loop that would have caused). He and the others stood looking around at the panic that had gripped the city. Storefronts were smashed open and hovercars were set alight – their smoke adding to the gloom being cast by Onespawn.

   “Another day in the life of New New York,” Leela muttered. “Sometimes I think the entire population of this city is just a mob-in-waiting.”

   “But when in Rome…” Bender said, trying to close his chest door over a new model television that was far too large to fit.

   On the big holoscreen above the square, the haggard and drawn face of Mayor Poopenmeyer appeared, larger than life.

   “New New Yorkers!” he said. “I urge calmness in the face of this threat – come on people! Every alien invasion it’s the same thing – you schmucks do more damage than the enemy! Pull it together for the love of…”

   The message cut out when a bolt of lightning slammed into the screen, causing it to explode in a shower of sparks. People on the street screamed and increased their terrified looting.

   “Great Scot!” Fry said, staring up at the angry sky.

   “This is heavy,” Bender added, struggling under the weight of the TV.

   Leela looked down at Nibbler. “How much worse is this going to get?” she asked, pointing at the sky.

   “Much worse,” Nibbler replied. “I doubt the city can be saved, even if Fry is able to reach Onespawn. But it is a loss we’ll have to accept.”

   “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t. I won’t.” She turned to Fry and took him by the hand. “There’s something I have to do.”

   “You’re not going off on your own, are you?” Fry asked with a small smirk.

   “Not exactly.” Leela leaned forward and kissed him. “Don’t finish this without me.”

   “I’ll be at the highest point,” Fry said, motioning skyward with the Lance.” I’ll see you there.” Leela nodded and then sprinted away at full speed, dodging looters and vaulting over debris. She disappeared from view.

   Fry looked up at the swirling maelstrom above. Onespawn was still visible in the centre of dark mass, from which the slender funnels of energized tornadoes now protruded, licking down toward the city. The wind picked up.

   Fry headed off, with Bender dutifully following behind and Nibbler scampering up onto his shoulder, toward the tallest building – Momcorp headquarters.

* * *

Every public telephone she came upon had been smashed to pieces by the roving mobs, so Leela ran flat-out all the way to Planet Express, bursting through the door and instantly having to duck beneath Professor Farnsworth’s shotgun blast.

   “Professor, stop!” Amy said, pulling the weapon away from him. “It’s Leela!”

   “I don’t know any Leelas!” he snapped.

   Leela straightened and surveyed the scene – workbenches had been arranged into a crude barrier to defend against the looters. Cubert, Dwight, and LaBarbera were present, as well as the rest of the Planet Express team.

   “Leela, what’s goin’ on?” Hermes said. “Where’s that idiot zombie Fry?”

   “Saving the Universe,” Leela grunted simply. She moved past them all and went to the videophone, punching in a rapid series of numbers and waiting for the connection to be made.

   At length, the logo of SewerCom appeared onscreen, to be quickly replaced by the worried faces of Morris and Munda.

   “Leela! Thank goodness you’re alright!” Munda said. “We were so worried, what with all those terrible sounds coming from above… what in the world is happening?”

   “I don’t have a lot of time to explain,” Leela replied. “It’s all going to hell, and a lot of people may be about to die. We need your help.”

   “What can we do?” Morris asked.

   Leela took a breath. “You want to claim your rightful place on the surface,” she stated. “God knows you deserve it, and shouldn’t have to earn it or prove yourselves worthy. But people are afraid of what they don’t understand – it’s their nature, it always has been. Now we have an opportunity in the middle of despair – a chance to show them who you… who we are. We can make a difference – and if we don’t all end up dead or cease to exist then maybe things will finally start to change.”

   Morris and Munda glanced at each other, and nodded.

   Then Leela told them what had to be done. She ended the call and stood purposefully, and the rest of the Planet Express crew watched her, waiting.

   “You guys had better get to safety,” she told them.

   “What are you going to do?” Amy asked innocently. “Something masculine and undignified?”

   Leela glared. “I’m going to help Fry,” she said. “We’ve got one last-ditch chance to put a stop to this thing. I have to go…”

   “Not without Zoidberg!” the Decapodian said, raising a pincer.

   “I’ll go along also,” Farnsworth said. “I have a score to settle with that monster.”

   “Scruffy’s gonna get in on this action too,” the janitor said, putting aside his pornographic magazine and standing. “Sign me up.”

   “I’ll help! I’m helpful!” Amy said, clapping her hands.

   Hermes sighed. “I suppose I’d better go along and make sure occupational health and safety guidelines are adhered to,” he said.

   Leela stared at the team, words lost beneath a swell of pride. She smiled at them. “You don’t have to do this you know,” she said.

   “Hey.” Amy placed a hand on Leela’s shoulder and tilted her head to one side. “We’re friends, right? Friends stick together.”

   Leela nodded. “Thanks guys,” she said. “Now here’s what we need to do…”

* * *

The quantum storm was worsening. Torrents of agitated atmosphere ripped across the city, blowing out windows and tearing antennas from their mountings. People on the streets below were no longer interested in looting – the true nature of their situation had begun to hit home with sheets of unnatural lightning and rampaging twisters that cut through the concrete canyons.

   This was something far bigger than the traditional bi-annual alien invasion. Humans, Cygnoids, Neptunians, and sentient fungi alike all began falling to their knees, bile glands, or prehensile locomotion ridges, praying to whichever guiding deity occupied their individual mythologies.

   Suddenly and unexpectedly, all around the city strange figures emerged from sewer vents, startling the already-terrified populace. The sewer mutants, acting on Turanga Leela’s directive, began herding the people of New New York toward the relative safety of the underground.

   “Come on, people!” Dwayne shouted at a wide-eyed group. “You can hide beneath the surface – we’ll show you the way!”

   “It’s the best chance you’ve got!” Vyolet added, holding open a manhole cover. “Spread the word – everyone can take refuge in the sewers!”

   Morris and Munda directed a steady stream of refugees down into the subterranean stormwater system; most didn’t even look twice at the malformed mutations now, when they were all poised on the brink of annihilation.

   “I hope Leela and Fry know what they’re doing,” Munda said, casting her single eye skyward to where the dark moon had filled the heavens.

   Little Nina, from the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphenarium, and Tinny Tim the disabled child robot both paused to look up at Morris and Munda, who smiled back at the kids in an attempt to not look terrifying.

   “Thank you,” Nina said nervously.

   “Yes, quite,” Tinny Tim seconded.

   “That’s alright, darlings,” Munda said. “Go along now, you’ll be safer below.”

   As they hurried away to descend into the sewer vent, the Turangas looked at each other in surprise – perhaps their daughter was right.

* * *

Momcorp headquarters was empty. The building creaked and trembled, with structural damage sustained from Ultima’s earlier attack and the cyclonic winds outside conspiring to produce a symphony of eerie groans.

   Fry, Bender, and Nibbler made their way up through the deserted building, at last reaching the top floor by elevator. The staircase to the observation deck lay before them.

   “Last chance to turn back, you guys,” Fry told the other two.

   “I will bear witness,” Nibbler replied, sitting on Fry’s shoulder.

   “And I’m not missing the opportunity to rob your corpse when you die in a few minutes,” Bender said, heartily clapping Fry on the back. “Like they say – let no part of the carcass go to waste – watch, wallet, fillings…”

   “…Okay then,” Fry said slowly. Together they ascended the stairs. At the top Fry paused for only a moment before pushing the door open and stepping out into hell…

*********************************************

[Reply #216 on:]

You killed off Mom and Zapp...I thought you might but....how could you?!

Heh heh; "Great Scot!"

[Reply #217 on:]

Really great story, liked how Zapp's last words weren't retarded, great picture of Morbo and Linda

[Reply #218 on:]

Zapp's last words were what Spock said to Kirk as he was dying at the end of Wrath of Kahn. 'Twas an homage. And an interesting inversion of roles as Zapp is actually the Kirk analogue and Kif is the Spock analogue in the context of Futurama's abundant Trek satire.

The "Great Scot!"/"This is heavy" bit is lifted straight from Back to the Future of course.

 

how could you?!

With impunity and a total lack of remorse.

[Reply #219 on:]

 

Never before in the history of the human race has so much been owed by so few to so many.

A Churchill reference? You da man!

[Reply #220 on:]

‘Coldangel faces plagiarism charges’...

So true. 

I spotted quite a few. 

[Reply #221 on:]

Woo, great chapter. Mom adn Zapp are dead. I was suprised that you didn't kill Kif. Atleast Zapp didn't go out saying something idiotic or bragging about getting Leela in the sack. The drawing of Linda and Morbo was awesome. Can't wait for the next chapter. Who else are you going to kill off?

[Reply #222 on:]

I think Kif's going to make a big comeback... but that's just my guess.

[Reply #223 on:]

*********************************************

Chapter 23: Fear and Loathing in NNY

The Universe fell toward Onespawn.

   As the city below trembled in fear, time and space collapsed around the gargantuan mutated Brainspawn. And the only force holding reality back from the brink of total obliteration had moronically arrived, like a moth to the flame, at the epicentre – and would soon be destroyed along with the rest of… everything.

   Onespawn sensed the Lance of Fate directly below. Close, but not close enough. It laughed and extended its coherent electromagnetic field to tap into the ebbing and flowing grid of the Earth’s so-called ‘Internet’ and gather inspiration from works of fiction that had been stored electronically. There was a veritable warehouse of creativity floating through cyberspace – a vast multitude of mental realms uploaded to public domain, available to all and sundry. Onespawn selected a few at random and applied their unique patterns to its flaring, burgeoning surplus of quantum energy…

* * *

A screaming vortex of wind ripped across the top of the Momcorp tower, with lightning stabbing all around. Fry stepped out into the open, braving the gale with Nibbler holding onto his jacket and the Lance at his side.

   “Let’s do this thing,” he said.
 


   “Right behind ya, buddy!” Bender called from his position cowering behind an air-conditioning duct.

   “Come on, you slimy fat bastard!” Fry shouted up at Onespawn. “Come on down here and face me!”

   In response, a disdainful laugh rolled across the turbulent sky.

   “And why would I do that?” Onespawn said. “Why, when I can provide you with a host of playmates from your inane formulaic human literature?” The laughter came again, echoing from the black sphere above.

   Waves of reality displacement rippled down around Fry, and the Lance glowed bright, protecting him and Nibbler from the effects.

   “Is that all you’ve got?” Fry shouted in defiance, standing at the edge of infinity with the world ending around him.

   “Ah… Fry?” Bender called. “You may wanna watch out…” Fry turned too late, and a very large misshapen fist slammed into him, knocking him and Nibbler across the concrete to fall dangerously close to the edge of the roof.

   He groggily picked himself up and recovered the Lance from where it had fallen. Only then did he look at what had hit him. A sound somewhere between a grunt of surprise and a gasp of horror escaped his lips after he’d done a double and triple-take.

   Standing before him was a half-naked pallid grey/green figure, more than seven feet tall, complete with horrific stitching all over it and bolts protruding from its neck. It was, without a doubt, the monster from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

   “How hard did I just hit my head?” Fry wondered, gazing at the shambolic figure.

   “It’s real,” Nibbler said from the ground. “Onespawn is pulling fiction into reality, transubstantiating it with real matter and energy…”

   “All is fiction!” Onespawn’s voice bellowed. “There is no difference!”

   As the wind and lightning lashed across the roof, more figures appeared out of thin air. There was Terry Prachett’s interpretation of the Grim Reaper with his scythe held at the ready; Captain Hook, from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan brandished his namesake and a curved cutlass; Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula bore inch-long fangs and hissed; and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian swung a gigantic broadsword over his head and bellowed a deafening battle-cry.

   “Oh hell,” Fry muttered as the fictional characters advanced on him, swinging their various weapons. Frankenstein’s monster reached him first, extending oversized hands and moaning mournfully. Fry stabbed out with the Lance of Fate, and the monster fell apart into individual lumps of harvested cadavers.

   “End of the line, Frankenstein,” he said.

   Dracula darted forward, his cape billowing, in a manner of movement that would be called catlike if he had paused every now and then to spray his scent on things. Instead of that, he leaped with an unearthly hiss at the orange-haired boy with the exposed throat and…

   …came to a halt in midair with the Lance sticking through his heart. The count dissolved rapidly into a cloud of dust that was whipped away by the wind.

   “You suck,” Fry quipped.

   With a distinctly pirate-like yarrr, Captain Hook swung his cutlass at Fry, forcing the hapless delivery boy to jump back and teeter with his heels hanging over the edge of the building.

   “Avast, ye scurvy dog!” came a coarse shout from behind the fictional pirate as a robot fist cracked Captain Hook across the back of the head, knocking off his tricorne hat and sending him sprawling.

   The loincloth-garbed Conan the Barbarian rushed at Bender with a battle-cry invoking the favour of Crom. He swung his broadsword towards the robot, but Fry leapt in front and parried the blow with his Lance.

   Fry and Bender found themselves standing back-to-back as Conan and the Grim Reaper bore down on them from two sides. Slowly, Frankenstein’s monster and Count Dracula had reassembled themselves, and along with Captain Hook they joined the others in a circle closing around the two friends. Nibbler scrambled around Fry and Bender’s feet and growled at the approaching literary figures.

   “Never thought it’d end like this,” Bender said.

   “Killed by a bunch of fictional characters?” Fry replied. “No, I didn’t see that coming either.”

   “I always thought we’d be killed by television executives.”

   Fry glanced at the robot in puzzlement.

   “Well, might as well go out with a bang,” Bender went on, clenching his metal fists.

   “Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Fry replied, hefting the Lance.

   Death drew back his scythe, ready to reap his grim harvest…

   …when suddenly a series of flaming holes appeared in his robe, exposing bones beneath. Death fell back, and Fry, Bender, and Nibbler all looked up to see Professor Farnsworth sitting in his hovering recliner chair and aiming a large-calibre laser rifle. An ancient, senile, gun-toting guardian angel.

   “Mad scientists don’t fear the reaper!” the old man shouted angrily, firing another few laser bolts into the robed figure.

   “Professor?” Fry said in surprise. He almost lost his head, but a red lobster dropped from the sky wearing a jetpack and caught Conan’s swinging sword in his pincers.

   “A big implement like that, I’d say you were trying to make up for something, I would,” Zoidberg said. “Puny stink-gland, perhaps?” He tightened his claws and the sword blade shattered.

   “Doctor Zoidberg?” Fry gasped, blinking in bewilderment at the unlikely saviour.

   Captain Hook began slashing at them with his hook, but went down like a weighted treasure chest when the leading edge of a Party/Ironing board struck him in the head. Amy surfed the modified flying board in a tight arc and hovered above, grinning.

   “We thought we’d lend a hand,” she said.

   A moustached individual with a grubby peak cap pulled low over his eyes motored across the top of the building on a hoverbike. He swung a heavy wrench in one hand, smashing it across the faces of Dracula, Conan, Frankenstein, and (accidentally) Zoidberg.

   “Who the heck was that guy?” Bender said, watching Scruffy circle around.

   Dracula picked himself up and lunged at Fry, only to be brought down by a series of bureaucratically-placed laser blasts. Hermes descended, wearing a jetpack and levelling a pistol.

   “No vampirism is permitted in the city without an official permit signed in triplicate by the Attorney General and Mayor,” he said.

   “You guys…” Fry said, looking around at the members of Planet Express standing or hovering around. “But where’s…?”

   There came an ear-splitting “Hiiii-YAH!” from behind him, and Conan the Barbarian fell past into a crumpled heap, a small dagger clattering from his grasp. Fry smiled and turned to see Leela standing in an Arcturan Kung-Fu stance, with a jetpack strapped to her back.

   “Hey there, Mighty One,” she said with a small grin. “You ready to save the universe?”

   “You ready to save it with me?” Fry countered. They both smiled at each other with quiet bravado; both aware of the potential for tragedy looming, and both pushing through the fear because it was the only thing they could do.

   The fictional characters began to fade away, melting into nothingness. Fry and Leela stepped closer to each other.

   “I love you so much,” Fry told her.

   “And I love you,” Leela replied.

   Suddenly, with a tremendous crash, a bolt of turquoise lightning flashed from the sky and slammed down into the concrete between them, throwing them both back with concussive force. Smoke and crackling sparks issued from the impact point and a resonant mocking laugh filled the psychic aether.

   “How romantic,” Onespawn said. “The Idiot and the Freak – it could be the title of a fairy tale. And you’ve brought your meddlesome friends along to die with you I see.”

   The building trembled.

   “Laugh all you want,” Fry said, glaring up at the giant brain. “But it’s our friendship that makes us stronger than you. Alone we’re nothing, but together we can’t be stopped.”

   “Stronger than me?” Onespawn repeated incredulously. “ Philip J. Fry, you have already lost – you only draw breath because your antics amuse me. But now I think it’s time to refer to another work of fiction…”

   Reality dysfunction washed over them, and Fry cringed. “Oh lord, what next?”

   The trembling in the building increased by an order of magnitude, and cracks began to appear in the concrete. Fry and Leela picked themselves up and glanced around.

   “Maybe we should…” Leela trailed off, watching in horror as a huge grotesque tentacle pushed out of a crack in the rooftop and coiled up, writhing around as it was joined by others, all slithering out in ponderous silence until the roof was surrounded by rubbery questing feelers the width of tree trunks.

   “A giant squid!” Zoidberg squealed, blasting into the air with his jetpack.

   “I… don’t think that’s a squid,” Leela said slowly. A large section of roof lifted and fell away, revealing a huge pulpy head with sinister glowing yellow eyes. A massive dorsal ridge bore the stubs of rudimentary wings, and viciously curved claws emerged from beneath it. The creature looked like the bastard child of an octopus and a dragon.

   It was Cthulhu, the ‘Great Old One’, an ancient evil concocted by the legendary horror writer, H. P. Lovecraft.

   “I hate it when the bad guys don’t play fair,” Fry said, watching a dozen tentacles snaking toward him.

   Cthulhu let out an indescribable howl as Farnsworth and Hermes flew around it, firing their weapons into its hideous writhing flesh. Leela began running towards Fry, but was blocked by a mass of tentacles that slammed down in her path. Fry gripped the Lance of Fate in a desperate bid at defending himself against the monstrous evil, but something grabbed him from behind and hefted him up by the armpits.

   It was Bender.

   “Your time to shine, meatbag,” the robot said. “Don’t make me any more embarrassed to be your friend.” With a whine of servomotors, he extended his arms, lifting Fry up, higher and higher away from the monster, with Nibbler clinging to his shoe.

   “Bender!” Fry yelled as the robot’s arms continued to extend. Bender was lost from view beneath a swarming mass of tentacles, and the slender metal arms swayed alarmingly.

   Suddenly Amy appeared, swooping in on her Party Board to collect Fry and Nibbler on the front. Fry hung over the edge of the contraption to look down at where Cthulhu swiped angrily at Farnsworth, Hermes, and Leela, who flew around it in pestering circled. Of Bender, there was no sign…

   …until suddenly a metal arm emerged from the tentacles, enthusiastically burning the creature’s flesh with a lit cigar.

   “Hold on tight!” Amy told Fry as she angled her board upward. He dragged his eyes away from the scene below and looked up to see Onespawn and the Dark Moon looming as one, filling the sky.

   “I can go no further with you,” said a small solemn voice near his ear, and Fry turned to glance at Nibbler.

   “I thank you,” Nibbler went on. “To have frozen you, and used you as we did, the debt can…”

   “I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” Fry said automatically, not really understanding how he could have known, but feeling as if he always had nonetheless.

   “Farewell,” Nibbler said. “It has been an honour.”

   “Honour this, you intractable fools!” Onespawn bellowed, shooting a bolt of psychoplasma down at them.

   “Gan ni niang!” Amy swore potently, trying to bank the overloaded Party Board but unable to steer in time. The ball of energy billowed toward them, and the Lance of Fate flared incandescent, its temporal field pulsing. Without thinking, Fry held it aloft, and the psychoplasma seemed to splash against an invisible wall, flowing around the figures perched on the flying board. But they shuddered under the force nonetheless, and the board’s antigravs laboured – it wouldn’t hold for long.

   Zoidberg flew in from one side, the nozzles of his jetpack leaving a white trail.

   “Hot potato!” Amy said. “Good luck Fry!” The Decapodian caught him around the waist and yanked him off the board, leaving Amy and Nibbler behind.

   “Welcome aboard, passengers – thank you for flying Zoid Air,” Zoidberg said as Fry clung to him. Crimson energy bolts flashed down after them, burning a line through the air.

   Leela flew past, ascending to a higher altitude, and Fry realized his friends were all following some kind of plan. Even as the explosive plasma blasts drew dangerously close, he couldn’t help the wild grin that spread across his face. His friends, his team-mates – the greatest people in the world.

   “Go, my friend - fly!” Zoidberg shouted, letting go of Fry. For a moment he was in freefall, and then the rear seat of a hoverbike was beneath him, and he hung on for dear life, the Lance still in his free hand, as Scruffy angled the vehicle upward into the howling wind.

   Keep passing the parcel – that was the idea. Change direction, change the carrier, keep the movement unpredictable… and maybe they’d have a chance. Using the janitor’s shoulder as support, Fry stood up and watched Hermes fly with his jetpack on an intercept course.

   “Scruffy believes in you, kid,” Scruffy said. “Kick some temporal lobe!”

   Fry flung out his free hand and Hermes caught it, yanking him off the hoverbike and upward at a different angle. Of course, something as massive as Onespawn would likely have some trouble trying to pick off comparatively tiny, fast-moving objects too close to itself. Bigger isn’t always better, and is more often a hindrance… so Fry had always told himself in the gym class locker room.

   The wind buffeted him and Hermes, and the jetpack whined under the loading. Lightning slashed past them, and energy bolts sizzled through the air.

   “Alright, ya lazy, good-for-nothin’ freeloader,” Hermes said. “Ya better not screw this up… we’re countin’ on ya, mon.” He let go of Fry’s arm, and he fell, carried onward by inertia for a short time before dropping into Professor Farnsworth’s lap.

   “Oh my…” Farnsworth said, increasing his recliner chair’s thrust and angling up toward the immense black sphere that now hung only a few hundred feet above.

   Psychoplasma stabbed down from Onespawn again, and again the Lance of Fate repelled it, at the cost of velocity and a burning sensation that coursed through Fry’s cosmic stigma.

   “Well, off you go!” the Professor said, and Fry found himself whisked suddenly away, with strong-yet-soft hands gripping him beneath the arms.

   Without even turning his head he knew it was Leela. The contours of her body pressed against him; the hint of her subtle scent, recognisable to him even in the rushing wind; her warm breath against his neck…

   “It’s all or nothing,” she said in his ear.

   “Nobody can say we didn’t give it our best,” Fry replied.

   “On the plus side,” Leela reflected, “if we lose, there’ll be nobody around to criticize us for it.”

   “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

   Lightning and energy bolts filled their world, and the wind roared. Responding to minute movements in the small muscles of Leela’s back, the thrust-vectoring nozzles in the jetpack fought to keep them moving upward. It had come down to it at last: the time-honoured Suicidal Headlong Charge into the Face of Certain Death. Leela stole one hand briefly away from Fry to activate a belt-mounted control box, and then she gripped him even more tightly as an illegal after-market accessory came online.

   The pod nestled between the jetpack’s two thrust nozzles was designed as a disposable rocket booster for escape capsules. Retrofitted to a jetpack, it gave a massive burst of speed, far beyond design specifications and legal limits for personal flight apparatus.

   Fry and Leela shot upwards on a trail of fire.


 
   At any other time, Fry would have whooped in exhilaration, but now the Dark Moon was looming above them like a solid ceiling, and they were closing on it at high speed.

   A few pithy and emotional comments filtered through his mind, but the screaming air rushing past his ears, the crash of lighting, and the scant seconds remaining made them pointless.

   The Lance glowed.

   And the blackness responded, opening before them…

   …They flew inside.

* * *

The Planet Express team flew back to Momcorp tower, looking up as the black sphere fluxed and rippled. Cthulhu was gone, vanished into nothingness and leaving Bender only a little dented.

   “I hope Fry and Leela will be okay,” Amy said needlessly.

   The quantum storm seemed to worsen; huge swirling tornadoes slashed across the city, and the Dark Moon expanded, growing down towards them.

   “We’ve done all we can here,” Farnsworth said.

   “Let’s git ourselves below street-level,” Scruffy added.

   Nibbler watched the pulsing dark mass of reality compression above, and reluctantly took hold of Amy’s Party Board as the team left.

   New New York began to crumble under the punishment; sections of buildings collapsed, crashing to the streets below; tube lines came down; billboards and suicide booths became deadly missiles in the screaming wind.

   But there were no people about.

   Deep underground, millions of ears listened to the destruction above. The refugees waited and hoped.

*********************************************

[Reply #224 on:]

Masterful! Zoidberg's lines were hilarious! Nail biting stuff, can't wait for the next installment!

[Reply #225 on:]

Heh heh. Puny stink-gland.

"…until suddenly a metal arm emerged from the tentacles, enthusiastically burning the creature’s flesh with a lit cigar."
I love Bender.

Award for most used word in a Joel-written story goes to: "buffeted"

[Reply #226 on:]

Best Fan-fic ever! Great writing coldy, action pack and everything!

[Reply #227 on:]

awesome, that's some kick ass action dialogue you've got their coldy

[Reply #228 on:]

This is the best Fan-Fic I ever read. Keep it up.

[Reply #229 on:]

And we draw ever closer to our exciting conclusion...   

This is great stuff (I think Zapp's final words were out of character for him, although this is a drama, as opposed to a comedy) - saying that I can't wait for the next part would be redundant at this point, but I don't care. I can't wait!   

Onward to the conclusion!

[Reply #230 on:]

Best. Fanfic. Ever!.

 

“Killed by a bunch of fictional characters?” Fry replied. “No, I didn’t see that coming either.”
“I always thought we’d be killed by television executives.”

So funny. What makes Bender think he'd be killed by television execs?

 

…when suddenly a series of flaming holes appeared in his robe, exposing bones beneath. Death fell back, and Fry, Bender, and Nibbler all looked up to see Professor Farnsworth sitting in his hovering recliner chair and aiming a large-calibre laser rifle. An ancient, senile, gun-toting guardian angel.
“Mad scientists don’t fear the reaper!” the old man shouted angrily, firing another few laser bolts into the robed figure.

Ha! Loved the description of Farnsworth after shooting Death and his line after. Amazing chapter so fucking good. Can't wait for the next part.

[Reply #231 on:]

You know what we need? A "power-shot" of the crew walking forward into battle a la the opening to "Justice League". That'd just be awesome.

[Reply #232 on:]

 

Originally posted by Kryten:
You know what we need? A "power-shot" of the crew walking forward into battle a la the opening to "Justice League". That'd just be awesome.

Y'mean like this?

[Reply #233 on:]

Like that but with more action. Also I'm sick of waiting for more story. I'm a very impatient person if you can't tell... Come on coldy.

[Reply #234 on:]

*********************************************

Chapter 24: I can’t believe it’s not fiction!

Strange sensations washed over Fry and Leela as they shot up into the field of darkness. Time seemed to slow and distance became difficult to judge. Looking down briefly, Fry saw the city below in smoking ruins, then as pristine untouched forest, and then as a bustling metropolis once again. Windows through history opened and shut like an out-of-order flipbook, and the effect made him look away as nausea threatened.

   Onespawn’s voice came from somewhere near or far, above or below… it was impossible to tell in the zone of compressing spacetime.

   “Get away!” it said. “Get away from me!” For the first time, there was real fear in the creature’s psychic bellow.

   “I can’t tell where it is!” Leela shouted, still holding Fry tightly as gravity faltered and changed direction at random. She used the vectored-thrust nozzles on the jetpack to turn a full circle, and Onespawn suddenly appeared massively before them, and then faded off into an impossible distance.

   “Space must be different in here,” she observed.

   “You mean like the TARDIS?” Fry replied.

   “Something like that. At least four dimensions are being broken down here…”

   “Stay back!” Onespawn said. “You will not stop me, not now!”

   Telekinetic impulses shoved them this way and that, but Leela kept on flying, tracking Onespawn’s position even as it seemed to shift around within the uncertain physical laws.

   They were still coming. Even despite everything, they were still coming. With faces set in unshakable resolve they were coming… the Lance of Fate held at the ready… still coming.

   Damn them! Onespawn reached the edge of panic, and in desperation turned once again to fiction from the human world, extending an area of telepathic influence, grabbing at the minds of its two attackers and pulling them in, down through the quantum foam and flotsam of reality and into the realm of fantasy…

   …which, after all, really was the same thing.

* * *

Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger…

   A hard bolt of water hit James Bond in the face. The water stung his eyes and filled his mouth. He was on some sort of a table and his wrists and ankles were bound to its edges. He felt with his fingers. He felt polished metal.

   A voice, Onespawn’s voice, flat, uninterested, said: “Now we can begin.”

   Bond turned his head towards the voice. His eyes were dazzled by the light. He squeezed them hard and opened them. Onespawn was floating nearby, a miniscule fraction of its previous size. It had unbuttoned a collar that, against all logic, adorned the bottom portion of the brain structure. At the other end of the room, a young orange-haired man and a purple-haired woman with a horrifically enormous single eyeball sat on chairs strapped by their wrists and ankles. They both sat bolt upright, looking shocked.

   A few feet away stood the Korean, Oddjob, still wearing his bowler hat.

   Bond glanced down the table on which he lay spreadeagled. He let his head fall back with a sigh. There was a narrow slit down the centre of the polished steel table. At the far end of the slit, like a foresight framed in the vee of his parted feet, were the glinting teeth of a circular saw.

   “Wait, I know this,” Fry said. “But wasn’t it supposed to be a laser?”

   “That was the movie,” Leela replied. “This must be the book… the damn thing has us trapped in fiction again.”

   “Mr. Bond,” Onespawn said, ignoring Fry and Leela. “The word ‘pain’ comes from the Latin poena meaning ‘penalty’ – that which must be paid. You must now pay for the inquisitiveness which your attack on me proves, as I suspected, to be inimical. Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat. This time it will have to kill three cats, for I fear I must count these two animated characters behind me as enemies also. They came here to kill me. Perhaps you did too. You have all failed. Now must come the poena.” The voice was heavy, bored. “I have had many enemies in my time. I am a very powerful interdimensional being, and power, if I may inflict another of my aphorisms upon you, may not make you friends, but it greatly increases the class and variety of your enemies.”

   “That’s very neatly put,” Bond said. “You express yourself most vividly.”

   “He doesn’t look like Sean Connery,” Fry whispered to Leela.

   “Book, not movie,” Leela repeated, straining at her bonds. Oddjob had tied them tightly, but the knots were inexpert, the little Korean hampered, perhaps, by his stubby fingers.

   James Bond turned his head. The great pink/grey brain was bent slightly forward. Casually, a tendril of telekinetic energy snaked out to a control panel and pressed down a switch. There came a slow metallic growl from the end of the table on which Bond lay. It curved quickly up to a harsh whine and then to a shrill high whistle that was barely audible.

   “Now then, Mr. Bond,” Onespawn’s voice was brisk. “Enough of these amiabilities. Tell me everything you know about the so-called ‘Lance of Fate’ and the decidedly poorly-named ‘Mighty One’ and you will die quickly and painlessly. The two cartoon people also. Refuse and your death will be one long scream. Which is it to be?”

   The lever on the table moved across iron teeth. Now Bond could feel the wind of the saw between his knees.

   “You’re being a damn fool, Onespawn,” Bond said through gritted teeth.

   Leela pumped her fists and felt the knot loosen on her right wrist. Her eye narrowed. She’d never read the book, but she had seen the movie once or twice. If memory served, Fry had made her sit through the obligatory car-chases and chauvinistic overtones. And if it served further, she knew there was an effective cutting tool perched on the head of the little Korean strongman standing nearby. This is, if the film had been true to the novel on that score…

   She eased her fingers out of the bonds and waited for a moment as Onespawn continued to perform his arch-villain rant at the captive secret agent. Then, in an explosive burst of movement, she shot out her arm and grabbed the bowler hat off Oddjob’s head.

   “Don’t you know it’s rude to wear hats indoors?” she remarked, slamming the brim of the hat against the straps still holding her ankles and left wrist. As anticipated, the felt rim of the hat parted, exposing the slender sharp alloy band that cut through the bindings. She was on her feet in a flash, swiping at Oddjob with the bowler hat as he tried to make a grab at her. The little man was a practiced martial artist, and the rapid kicks he launched at Leela would have been devastating if they’d connected, but she managed to duck and weave, hammering her own boot into his stomach and sending him sprawling.

   “Way to go Leela!” Fry yelled from his chair. She swung around to quickly cut him loose. When they straightened up, Onespawn had vanished and a nearby door hung open, leading out into the Geneva night.

   “We have to follow it,” Fry said. “It’s the only way out of this stupid stylized spy thriller.”

   Together they headed for the door, but a polite cough made them pause.

   “Er, if you wouldn’t mind?” James Bond said, still strapped to the table with the circular saw spinning about an inch away from his crotch.

   Five minutes later Fry and Leela were crammed into Bond’s Aston Martin DB Mark III as the secret agent drove the car at blinding speed along the narrow country lanes. Ahead of them in the Aston’s headlights, Onespawn flew over hill and dale, trying to evade the pursuers.

   “I’ll see that bastard playing his golden harp yet,” Bond said, checking his Walther PPK with one hand while steering with the other.

   Suddenly Onespawn vanished over a rise, and Bond drove the Aston up to a sheer cliff face. The three of them climbed out and looked down to see Onespawn descending ponderously toward the inky black sea below.

   “Now I am forever rid of you meddlesome fools!” the creature called up at them. “Let this, the self-indulgent hero fantasy of a woman-hating alcoholic, forever be your tomb!”

   “Certainly not if I have anything to say about it,” James Bond said, levelling his PPK at the brain and snapping off a few quick shots. Onespawn descended faster, fleeing the fictional construct. Fry and Leela glanced at each other, nodded, and together made a running jump over the edge of the cliff and into open space. They fell toward Onespawn and the crashing waves far below…

* * *

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles…

So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on. "We are going too far," said Sherlock Holmes. "We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before they can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are." He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. "Thank God, I think that I hear them coming."

A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the orange-haired man and cyclops woman whom we were awaiting. They both looked round themselves in surprise as they emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then they came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As they walked they glanced continually over either shoulder, like two people who are ill at ease.

"Hist!" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. "Look out! It's coming!"

There was a thin, crisp, continuous humming from somewhere in the heart of that crawling fog bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all four, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Philip Fry and Turanga Leela gave yells of terror and threw themselves face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralysed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A brain it was, an enormous pinkish-grey brain, but not such a brain as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its puckered ridges, its lobes glowed with a smouldering glare, its grotesque shape outlined in flickering blue flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered mind could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that grizzly form and alien will which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.

With unearthly hovering motion, the huge floating creature was bearing down the track with a furious howl, following hard upon the footsteps of our two friends. So paralysed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave another hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but flew onward. Far away on the path we saw Fry and Leela looking back, their faces white in the moonlight, hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting them down.

But that cry of pain from the Brain of the Baskervilles had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard screams of anger or fear from Fry and Leela, and the deep roar of the brain. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl Mr. Fry to the ground, and worry at his throat despite the obvious lack of any mouth with which to do so. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious bolt of energy into the air, it rolled upon its back, and then fell limp. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering brain tissue, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant brain was dead.

Fry and Leela gathered themselves and stood nearby, looking confused. They glanced at myself in unrecognition and then at the detective, seeming at once to find familiarity in his deerstalker cap and calabash pipe.

"My God!" I whispered. "What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?"

"It's dead, Watson, whatever it is," said Holmes. "We've laid the family ghost once and forever."

   “I wouldn’t count on that, Sherlock,” Mr. Fry muttered.

   “It’s a pretty stubborn bastard,” Miss Turanga added, and I blinked in surprise at such language from a Lady. She must surely have been delirious with fright.

   All at once, the brain, which we had thought surely deceased, erupted from the ground more rapidly than they eye could follow, and righted itself in the air, hovering nearby to regard the four of us.

   “May you be forever trapped within the unlikely confines of this archetypal detective story!” the creature said in a curiously genderless voice. It began to fly off over the moor, threatening to be lost from view in the driving fog.

   “After it!” Mr. Fry shouted. “We can’t let it get away!”

   Together, the four of us raced off the path and through the boggy hollows and treacherous peat of Dartmoor. Our two friends quickly outpaced Holmes and I, as though they ran with the weight of life itself pressing upon them. As we watched, they followed the brain into a bank of thick fog, and were lost from view…

* * *

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men…

The bunk house was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and in the fourth, a solid door with a wooden latch. Against the walls were eight bunks, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking.

At about ten o’clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows, and in and out of the beams flies shot like rushing stars.

   The wooden latch raised. The door opened, and a floating, oversized brain came in. It was greyish-pink and somehow carried a big push-broom over a non-existent shoulder. Behind it came George, and behind George, Lennie.

   “We was expectin’ you last night,” the giant brain said. “Was sore as hell when you wasn’t here to go out this morning.” It pointed with an ethereal tendril of blue energy. “You can have them two beds there,” it said, indicating two bunks near the stove.

   Lennie was just finishing making his bed when he noticed out the nearby window a couple of people seemed to walk out of midair out in the dusty yard. One wore a bright red jacket, and the other was a pretty woman with astonishing purple hair and something strange about her face that he couldn’t put his finger on. His mouth hung open.

   The giant brain floated about the room with the short quick lunges of arrogance. “I wrote Murray and Ready I wanted two good men this morning,” it said. “You got your work slips?” George reached into his pocket and produced the slips and showed them to the brain. “It wasn’t Murray and Ready’s fault. Says right here on the slip that you was to be here for work this morning.”

   George looked down at his feet. “Bus driver gave us a bum steer,” he said. “We hadda walk ten miles. Says we was here when we wasn’t. We couldn’t get no rides in the morning.”

   The brain used telekinesis to retrieve a time book and opened it where a pencil was stuck between the leaves. George scowled meaningfully at Lennie, and Lennie nodded to show that he understood. The brain readied the pencil. “What’s your name?”

   “George Milton.”

   “And what’s yours?”

   George said: “His name’s Lennie Small.”

   The brain tilted its frontal lobe at Lennie. “He ain’t much of a talker, is he?”

   “No he ain’t, but he’s sure a hell of a good worker. Strong as a bull.”

   Lennie smiled to himself. “Strong as a bull,” he repeated.

   George scowled at him, and Lennie dropped his head in shame at having forgotten to stay quiet.

   The brain said suddenly: “Listen, Small!” Lennie raised his head. “What can you do?”

   In a panic, Lennie looked at George for help. “He can do anything you tell him,” said George. “He’s a good skinner. He can rassel grain bags, drive a cultivator. He can do anything, just give him a try.”

   The brain turned on George. “Then why don’t you let him answer? What you trying to put over?”

   Just before George could answer, the wooden latch on the door sprung open once again, and the solid door flew back as if it had been kicked, as was the case. Standing in the dusty beam of flyblown sunlight were the two strangers from outside, the man and woman.

   “We heard there was ranching work to be had,” the ginger-haired man said, picking up a pitchfork from a wall rack.

   “Yeah, sign us up,” the one-eyed woman added.

   The redhead kid hurled the pitchfork through the air, and it sailed straight and true, striking against the floating brain and hanging embedded in flesh for a moment before falling with three runnels of blood to the bare wooden floor. Lennie cried out in sudden horror.

   “Make ‘um stop, George!” he wailed.

   “Enough of this crap, Onespawn!” the cyclops woman said, circling around the wounded brain. “Let us out of these musty old stories! How long do you think you can really keep this up?”

   “Don’t bother trying to reason with it, Leela,” the man said. “We’ve done this dance too often.” He balled his fists and moved closer.

   “Fight as hard as you want!” the brain said scornfully. “It will make no difference – you may as well perish here in this dreary 1920s tale of hopelessness and loss.”

   The brain rose in the air, and flew through one of the windows.

   The man, who was named Fry, and the woman Leela, both ran from the bunk house in pursuit, leaving George and Lennie alone.

   “George?” Lennie said.

   “I ain’t got no answers,” George replied, sitting down heavily on the bunk. “Dunno what jus’ happened…”

   A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.

   A floating brain fled across the top of the pool.

   Two figures paused in their pursuit, before heedlessly leaping into the water. They reached and kicked toward Onespawn… and then both of them vanished unexpectedly, leaving hollows in the warm water that closed over with gentle splashes…

* * *

Space… the final frontier…

With a melodic chiming sound, Fry and Leela materialized from sparkling clouds of light and found themselves standing on circular pads in a room that looked suspiciously like it was made from plywood painted to look like a flowing futuristic surface. They glanced around themselves at the tacky surroundings and bulky control consoles.

   “Hey,” Fry said. “I know this place… it’s the transporter room!”

   “The what?” Leela asked.

   A muffled giggle caught their attention, and they edged off the transporter pads curiously, peering over the top of the main control console.

   “Oh!” Fry stepped back respectfully, while Leela remained watching for a few moments with a small grin on her face.

   A man with dark burgundy hair was in the process of undressing a busty African-American woman on the floor. He surged to his feet at the intrusion, pulling his golden command shirt back down and glaring at the two strangers.

   “Who the devil are you?” Captain James T. Kirk demanded. Uhura got to her feet, holding her discarded uniform in place to cover her nakedness and staring in horror at the one-eyed woman.

   “Kirk… Uhura?” Fry said, gaping at the pair. “Oh no!” he wailed in anguish.

   “What? What is it?” Leela asked in confusion.

   “Don’t you see?” Fry went on, gesturing at the Captain and communications officer. “Now we’re trapped in some geek’s stupid out-of-character fan-fiction!”

   “Fan-fiction?” Leela repeated in horror. “But that’s the worst kind of fiction there is!”

   “I asked who you were!” Kirk snapped, stepping around the control console to confront the two intruders. “How did you get aboard the Enterprise? Why are you here?”

   “I don’t have time to explain, sir,” Fry said. “We’re really only passing through – we just need to…”

   Suddenly the deck beneath them shuddered violently, and red warning lights began to strobe from the wobbling walls.

   “Captain to bridge,” a calm, well-rounded voice said over the ship’s intercom.

   Kirk was already moving, but he paused as the door slid open, glancing back at Fry and Leela. “You two,” he said. “Whoever you are… your presence here now can’t… conceivably be coincidence. You’ll come with me and explain whatever’s happening.”

   Fry and Leela followed him out toward the turbolift, with Uhura hurriedly dressing and moving after them.

   After a short interval, Kirk stepped out onto the bridge of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 with the two strange intruders in tow. A tall man with high-arched eyebrows and elfish pointed ears approached him with hands folded behind his back and began speaking.

   “Captain, we are registering very curious readings from all sensors,” Spock said.

   “Specify,” Kirk said, moving past to stand behind his command chair.

   “I cannot,” Spock replied. “According to our instruments, space itself is literally breaking up. There is no known phenomenon which would account for these readings.” The Vulcan glanced at Fry and Leela and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

   “Stowaways,” Kirk responded to the unasked question. “Have Bones come up and check them out. I’ve an inkling they’re something to do with whatever force is acting upon the ship.”

   Spock nodded and moved away.

   “Captain!” Hikaru Sulu called from the helm. “We’re losing power in the warp engines!”

   “How bad?” Kirk demanded stepping around the command chair and pausing theatrically in mid-stride.

   “I can barely read it, but I don’t like it.”

   Pavel Chekov looked up in alarm from his readings. “Keptin!” he said. “Visual detection of an object, dead ahead!”

   “Onscreen!” Kirk shouted, perching himself on his chair in a state of catlike readiness. The main viewscreen came online and resolved into an image of space in front of the ship. In the centre of the image, a large shape shimmered and fluxed, solidifying gradually into a solid mass.

   Fry and Leela exchanged glances. It was a brain. A giant brain that floated in space, surrounded by an ominous blue glow.

   “How ‘bout it, Spock?” Kirk said in bewilderment.

   “Fascinating,” Spock said. “A moment ago, there was no sensor contact.
No mass analysis. No trace of radiation. Furthermore, there has been no reading  consistent with a decloaking. Whatever that object is, it seems to have appeared… from nowhere.”

   “Everything comes from somewhere, Spock,” Kirk said. “It looks like a… a…”

   “A brain,” Spock finished for him.

   “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is this what’s causing the subspace distortions?”

   “It would seem a logical conclusion.”

   The turbolift hissed open again and a slightly stooped man with a lined face and intense eyes emerged, glanced around the bridge with mild disapproval and fixed on the Captain.

   “What am I, Jim?” he grumbled. “A doctor or a concierge? If I jumped every time a light flashed around here, I'd end up talking to myself. I signed on this ship to practice medicine, not to run up and down at each…” He trailed off when he noticed the giant brain looming in space beyond the ship.

   “What do you make of that, Bones?” Kirk asked without looking at him.

   Doctor Leonard McCoy squinted. “It’s a brain,” he said simply.

   “I can see that,” Kirk replied, swivelling in his chair.

   “Well what d’you want me to say, Jim? I’m a doctor, not a tactical analyst.”

   “Maybe you should have a look at our two unexpected friends there,” Kirk said, pointing at Fry and Leela. “They appeared at the same time as that thing out there – and I’d wager there’s some connection.”

   McCoy looked at the two strangers, noticing them for the first time, and his gaze was drawn to Leela’s eye, at which he gaped in astonishment.

   “Remind me, Spock, never to make fun of your ears again,” he muttered, lifting his Tricorder from its strap and waving it over the two people.

   Out in space, the giant brain pulsed, and the ship trembled alarmingly again. Rolling from out of nowhere came a booming laugh that made the whole crew freeze in sudden shock. It hadn’t come from the communications system, but inside their own minds.

   “What in the world…?” Uhura said, looking frightened.

   “Toil pointlessly forever under the auspices of fanboy obsession!” the psychic voice bellowed. “Trapped here within the confines of non-canonical obscurity! Hahaha!”

   “Who is this?” Captain Kirk snapped, leaning forward. “Who’s doing this to us… and why?”

   “It’s Onespawn,” Fry said, striding forward to stand beside the Captain’s chair and pointing out at the monstrosity. “You have to attack it!”

   “It’s planning to destroy the Universe!” Leela added.
 


   “Destroy the Universe?” Kirk repeated.

   “Possible, sir,” said Spock. “The time-space distortions we are measuring are potentially on par with the effect we experienced when we encountered Lazarus.”

   “Seems these pair of kids are generating a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale,” McCoy said, staring at his Tricorder. “Obviously it isn’t what I was looking for, but there are definite temporal fluctuations surrounding the both of them.”

   Kirk stared hard at Fry and Leela for a long moment before finally reaching a decision. “Alright, I’ll see where this goes” he said. “Uhura, open a channel.” When she had done so he spoke in a firm authoritarian tone: “I address the alien intelligence whose energy pulses are affecting this area of space. I am Captain James Kirk of the united spaceship Enterprise, calling on you to immediately cease your…”

   “It’s firing, sir!” Sulu said suddenly. Crimson globules of energy had burst from the brain and shot toward the ship.

   “Evasive!” Kirk snapped. “Aft shields to maximum!”

   The ship shuddered as bolts of psychoplasma splashed explosively against it. Consoles erupted in sparks because they always do.

   “Fire all phaser banks!” Fry shouted, and Kirk looked up at him irritably. “Sorry, sir…” he added sheepishly.

   “Do what he said,” the Captain grunted.

   Beams of light stabbed from the underside of the Enterprise’s main saucer section, cutting into Onespawn’s flesh. The creature let out a psychic roar and began to withdraw from the area, angling toward a small planet nearby.

   “A photon torpedo!” Fry shouted, overcome by excitement. “Let’s finish it off!”

   “Aye, Captain whoever-the-hell-you-are,” Kirk muttered sardonically. The inter-ship communication system chimed and Kirk keyed it in. “Scotty, report,” he said.

   “Those impacts took a lot outta our shields,” the Scottish engineer replied from the bowels of the ship. “We simply haven’t got the power to take any more big hits like that. It we try it, the whole dilithium array’s gonna go kerplooey!”

   “Thank you, Mr. Scott.”

   “Captain, the creature appears to be going to ground,” Spock observed. Onespawn was making planetfall on the little unnamed world.

   “We have to follow it,” Leela said.

   “Alright then,” Kirk said, getting to his feet. “Mr. Spock, Bones, you two come with me. We’re going down to that planet along with our new friends here, and we’ll see what’s what. Mr. Sulu, you have the helm.”

   As the five of them headed toward the turbolift, Fry looked around in mild confusion. “Where’s the red-shirt?” he asked.

   “Pardon?” Kirk stared at him.

   “Oh, you know… the ensign. There’s always a red-shirt ensign that goes with you guys on away missions who gets killed. Every time.”

   “Er, son?” McCoy pointed at Fry’s jacket. He looked down at the bright red garment.

   “Ah crap,” Fry muttered.

   Down on the planet surface, Onespawn had carved out a huge crater. It lay smoking, an enormous mass of grotesque tissue. It was hurt. Nearby, five figures materialized out of thin air and stood staring up at it.

   “Good lord,” McCoy grunted at the sight.

   “Fascinating,” Spock added.

   Kirk had his hand phaser out and held at the ready. “What now?” he said.

   Leela cleared her throat. “Is there any way you can tune your weapons into the same harmonic frequency that Onespawn is generating?” she asked. “So that you could cancel it out?”

   Spock looked at her in admiration. “An excellent idea, madam,” he said. “Most logical.”

   The three Starfleet officers set to work on their phasers, and in a few short moments had them ready.

   “Alright, wide-beam, on my mark,” Kirk said when they’d finished.

   “You think this will get us back to reality?” Fry murmured to Leela.

   “Best shot we have,” Leela replied.

   Kirk, Spock, and McCoy opened fire, directing three intersecting fields of phased energy at Onespawn. The creature bellowed in pain and fury, and the Universe seemed to ripple and buck, and then drain away into nothingness…

   …Fry and Leela found themselves hanging poised in an empty void… but then another more familiar fictional world rolled back around them like a welcoming embrace…

* * *

Instinct or subconscious reaction had locked Leela’s arms around Fry’s chest, even when both their minds were snatched away. Fry still gripped the Lance of Fate.

   “We’re back?” he said, glancing around. They were hovering still within the field of darkness, and Onespawn hung nearby.

   “Looks like it,” Leela said.

   “No!” the creature screamed. “It’s impossible! You cannot!”

   “Time for the thrilling climax,” Leela said, angling the jetpack toward the creature. They flew straight and true, with Fry holding the Lance out before them.

   The blade shimmered and pulsed…

   …and met Onespawn’s flesh with a tremendous flash of light…

*********************************************

[Reply #235 on:]

Ohh great update. You left us with yet another cliffhanger. Oh how I hate you right now.  Really loved this chapter. Love the books you used in the chapter. Hope that next parts up real, real soon. Great stories to get Fry and Leela in.

   

As the five of them headed toward the turbolift, Fry looked around in mild confusion. “Where’s the red-shirt?” he asked.
“Pardon?” Kirk stared at him.
“Oh, you know… the ensign. There’s always a red-shirt ensign that goes with you guys on away missions who gets killed. Every time.”
“Er, son?” McCoy pointed at Fry’s jacket. He looked down at the bright red garment.
“Ah crap,” Fry muttered.

    How many Ensigns have died in Star Trek any way? Man, if I hadn't started watching Star Trek the original series, I never would have gotten any of this. Good picture on Bones, Spock, Kirk, Fry and Leela.

[Reply #236 on:]

 

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men…

I love you.

 

The blade shimmered and pulsed…

…and met Onespawn’s flesh with a tremendous flash of light…

And now I hate you.  Why did you leave it off there?! D:

[Reply #237 on:]

This makes me miss being able to go to the library every week to pick out novels to read. I think I'll have to rekindle that habit.

[Reply #238 on:]

Help! I'm confused! Maybe I shouldn't try to read this when I'm so sleepy... at least I got the Trek parts!

Dilithium goes "kerplooey"? Hmm...

[Reply #239 on:]

love the literary references and the fan fiction joke, also liked how Fry was revealed to be the red shirt