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Author Topic: Esso-teric: soylentOrange's Fanfic Thread  (Read 47663 times)
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km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #520 on: 08-03-2009 21:52 »

Hopefully it's not hot enough there to ionize circumstellar envelopes...


Mm, it's good that you updated over at other places, too, though I suppose you keep deliberately behind there.

Don't get too excited.  I send my writing to JN for editing in massive, thirty page chunks. These last few updates have all been part of the most recent one of those.  I havent actually done any writing in a couple of months now, so there'll be a big lull in the updates coming up soon. Every year I seem to stop writing sometime in early June, and then start up again in mid September.

Ah, yes, those supermassive nugget-style chunks that JN sometimes burns through in like 20 minutes.  Unless he's in Alaska or something.  Well, Summer Vacation from Writing, or whatnot.  S'all good, as long as you are going at your own pace.
Quality > quantity, [or rather > frequency], et cetera.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #521 on: 08-03-2009 22:06 »

Quote
Mm, it's good that you updated over at other places, too, though I suppose you keep deliberately behind there.
  Uh, yeah, it's uhh, totally deliberate.  It's not because I'm too lazy, no no, oh my no...
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #522 on: 08-03-2009 22:37 »

:laff:
Okay.

Hey, with all the stuffs you do, there is no way you could be considered lazy.  But seriously, as always, and as is the case with Sine and JN also, fic stuff can wait.


Besides, you're probably working on your physics research or something even now.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #523 on: 08-12-2009 04:19 »

yay explosions!
_____________________________ _____________________________ _____

Tura dashed for the ship’s controls just as the first volley hit.  She ship shook violently under the impact, throwing everyone to the deck.  Tura was up in a flash and was securely behind the wheel before the second round of incoming fire had crossed the space between the Planet Express Ship and the rapidly closing DOOP warship.  Fry managed to regain his footing and started to run toward the rear hatch.  Tura grabbed him as he passed by.

“Don’t waste your time.”  She yelled over the sound of fresh impacts.  “Our gun won’t do anything against that.”

Fry didn’t have time to argue.  Tura sent the ship into a tight roll to port, and the delivery boy was immediately sprawling on the floor again. 

Fry managed to heave himself into the chair by the nearest work station and buckle himself into it.  He could no longer see the Nimbus.  The blue marble of the Earth had replaced it in the front viewport.

A sheet of plasma fire tore by overhead, and Tura pushed the throttle forward.  Everyone present knew from past experience that the Planet Express Ship couldn’t outrun the Nimbus, and they couldn’t hope to win in a gunfight.  If we fight, we’re dead.  If we run away, we’re dead.  I just hope Tura has a plan.  Something big impacted astern, sending the ship lurching forward.  Why is the Nimbus shooting at us, anyway?

Up ahead, Earth was growing at an alarming rate.  Fry looked over at Tura with concern.  “Uhh, Tura, what are we doing?”  He asked. 

“Hold on.”

“But Tura-”

“Trust me, Fry.”

Now the Earth loomed in front of them.

“But-”

“Just hold on.”

North America swelled in the viewscreen.  What had to be New New York became visible as a tiny blemish on the continent’s Eastern face, and then disappeared as the ship hit the atmosphere and became encased in a screaming maelstrom of white-hot plasma.

“Tura, we need to slow down.”  Fry said as panic started to build in him.  He couldn’t see anything in the glare, but he knew the ground was somewhere nearby ready to swat them like an oversized mosquito.

Still Tura waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Then, sensing somehow that it was the right moment, she pulled up on the stick with every ounce of her strength, and then cut the engines.  The sudden deceleration was, for Fry, like a blow to the stomach.  The ship shook hard enough that the delivery boy was certain it would break apart.  Then the view cleared as the ship slowed below orbital speeds, and Tura had just enough time to react, sending her ship into a halfway-controlled roll away from the skyscraper that was in the middle of their flight path.

Aimee and Bender were screaming.  Fry couldn’t stop yelling “slow down, slow down!” over and over again. 

Tura ignored the noise and dodged another building.  The death grip she had on the steering yolk was the only visible sign of her own stark terror.  “Everybody get ready to run.”  She said.  Fry caught the slight flick of her wrist as she made a final correction to their trajectory.  Up ahead was Central Park.

Fry looked from Tura to the rapidly approaching swath of green that marked the park, and then back to Tura.  Bizarrely, all he could think when he realized what was about to happen was that the Cygnoids from the pizza place across the street from Planet Express would be upset when they discovered that the Blernsball field was out of commission.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________

As crash landings went, Fry would have rated this one a two out of ten.  He was alive; somehow.  So was everybody else, but he was pretty sure that his body felt a bit more liquidy then it had before. 

Apparently, shell shock was no excuse, because the ground hadn’t even stopped heaving before Tura was dragging him by the scruff of the neck toward the ship’s rear outer hatch.  Bender followed behind them with Aimee leaning on his shoulder for support.  The robot wasn’t likely to put up with that for long.  Once he decided that he wasn’t going to need any repairs, his mechanic would no doubt find herself discarded like so much excess baggage.

The world started to clear and the ringing in Fry’s ears faded as Tura half threw him out of the hatch.  His reaction times were still a little too slow to keep him from plowing face-first into a pile of upturned sod.  The ship lay on its belly; Tura hadn’t even bothered to waste time with such trivial matters as landing gear.

Tura, Aimee, and Bender dropped down next to the delivery boy, and he was promptly hauled to his feet again.

“Move!”  Tura ordered.  A look skyward at the smooth, white shape of the Nimbus, which was quickly descending in their direction, was all the motivation that Fry needed.  He ran. 
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #524 on: 08-12-2009 22:23 »
« Last Edit on: 08-12-2009 22:29 »

And thus continues the "they-are-boned" theme.  At least they're used to it by now..  Ha, the Cygnoids would be upset about the blernsball field, yeah.  Your description of the crash landing actually sort of intensified the headache I have right now...  you know I mean that in a good way.  Turbulent and jarring.  You have that visual style..   I remembered - for some reason this brief installment reminded me of that haunting torpedo maneuver you used in Talora...   When the ship had no power, and they were trying to get away.  Such a very effective technique/device; both plotwise, within the confines of the plot, and stylistically/in terms of style.  Back here though - wonder if they'll meet up with their alternate selves in the sewers somehow, or elsewhere. Again, intrigued about imminent impending looming confrontations.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #525 on: 08-12-2009 22:57 »

Quote
I remembered - for some reason this brief installment reminded me of that haunting torpedo maneuver you used in Talora...   
  Oh yeah, I'd completely forgotten about that scene.  The rest of that fic read like it was written by a retarded monkey on acid, but I have really always liked the descriptive space scenes.

Quote
Back here though - wonder if they'll meet up with their alternate selves in the sewers somehow, or elsewhere. Again, intrigued about imminent impending looming confrontations
  I don't think it would be giving away much to say that a meeting between the characters is coming up in the not-to-distant future.  I've still got one twist to post before that happens, though...
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #526 on: 08-13-2009 02:51 »

RETARDED MONKEYS ON ACID DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

...I can think of any number of fics I've come across that read like they were written by retarded monkeys on acid.  Or at least retarded tapirs, anyway.  Talora is decidedly not one of them.

Also, I only just now got caught up on your thread at a certain place where one might find some of the above-mentioned fics...  Some very interesting stuff there.  "Certain anonymous people"?  Hmm.   Oh myriad gods, you were considering writing a fake ending to Disillusionment where everyone died?  Wow.  That would have been..  amazing on so many levels.   Also your professors sound nutty.  Also maybe try to lay off on the copious Mountain Dew consumption?

And finally, mm-hm, as I've said, you do excel at all the space minutiae.
Sine Wave

Liquid Emperor
**
« Reply #527 on: 08-14-2009 06:34 »

Also maybe try to lay off on the copious Mountain Dew consumption?

Mountain Dew makes you lose your teeth, I saw it on a Dateline NBC special on West Virginia.

And a big "Eh? Ehhhh??" and rib-elbowing at km73.

Will read and review asap.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #528 on: 08-14-2009 07:36 »

Quote
And a big "Eh? Ehhhh??" and rib-elbowing at km73.
  uhoh.  Why do I get the sudden impression that I did something lolworthy?
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #529 on: 08-14-2009 19:43 »

Well, you did!   You posted loldogs!

:p
No, no, though, Sine just likes to rib-elbow me.
Plus, you know, West Virginia jokes.

Ribbing on West Virginia.

*pokes Sine back*
*also tickles*
JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #530 on: 08-16-2009 15:55 »

Hi SO, I've been locked out of PEEL apparently for a couple of weeks--glad to see you are still posting.  Good stuff as usual, the storm is about to break full force!
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #531 on: 08-19-2009 02:09 »

hi JN.  I'd heard that you were having login problems.  That happened to me right after the switch to PEEL 2.0; I couldn't login for two weeks, and then everything got better for no raisin.  Glad to see you were able to get around whatever was causing it.

But yes, the green storm breakith...
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

There were two things that the crew of Planet Express had become exceptionally skilled at through long years of practice.  One was sensing that they were in immediate danger of losing their lives.  The other was running away.  It was not surprising, then, that Fry, Tura, Bender, and Aimee easily lost the gaggle of DOOP soldiers that were sent after them.

As soon as Fry had caught up with his friends at the edge of Central Park, he was being shoved into an open manhole.  He nearly ended up falling head-first into the river of brown sludge at the bottom, but, in what felt like the first bit of good luck he’d had in months, his jacket got caught on one of the rusty ladder rungs and, though he banged his head against the wall of the shaft, he was able to get his hands around the ladder and hobble down to the ground with at least some of his dignity still intact.

After leading her friends on a random course through the sewers for about ten minutes, Tura called a halt.  The DOOP had been close enough behind them to see them disappear into the manhole, but even Fry knew that they had no realistic chance of finding them in the maze of sewer tunnels that snaked under the city. For the moment, they were safe.

“Alright.”  Bender said as he scrambled his way out of the knee high sewage onto a small concrete shelf built into the side of the tunnel that the others were standing on.  “So. does anybody have an idea what that was all about?”  he asked. 

Fry shook his head, and then realized that no one could see it in the dim glow cast by the light that was built into the thing Tura wore on her wrist.  “No.”  He said.

“Wait.”  Aimee said suddenly, putting a grime-covered hand on Fry’s shoulder.  Fry jumped, having not realized in the darkness that she was that close to him.  “Fry, you said that you thought Leela and the others were running from something last night.  It must have been the DOOP.  Poopenmeyer must have called in Zapp Brannigan, or something.”

“Looks like it.”  Tura agreed.  “But lets not worry about that now.  We need to concentrate on finding Leela and the others.”  Her voice became a low growl.  “They can explain what’s going on here.”

Fry frowned.  He didn’t like Tura’s tone.  It had ‘going to make things worse’ written all over it.  All this time he’d been hoping for Tura’s sake that the Professor would find a way to send Tura back home; funny that it hadn’t occurred to him until just now that it might not necessarily have been a good idea to do so.

“Umm, Tura?”  Fry asked uncertainly.

“What is it, Fry?”  Tura asked.

“Where are we going, anyway?”

Tura turned to him in surprise, as if she thought the answer was obvious.

“To my parents’ house.”  She said.

Fry, Bender, and Aimee exchanged glances.

“Uhh, Tura, wasn’t Fry in the middle of telling us about how he spent half of last night running away from that particular location?  Bender reminded the cyclops.

“That’s why I’ve got to go.”  Tura replied.  “I have to find out what happened.”

Bender laughed.  “Yeah, you have fun with that.  I’ll stay here.  I’ve been shot at enough today, thanks.”

Tura jumped down from the ledge and landed in the sludge with a soft splashing sound.  She turned to face the robot.

“Fine.  You’ll be safe here until we get back.  Killer tapeworms hardly ever wander into this part of the sewer system.” 

“Killer tape worms?”  Bender’s voice had gone up in pitch by about an octave.

“Oh yeah, Leela and I saw one once.”  Fry said.  “Teeth as big as your head.”

Bender processed that for a moment.  “You know.”  He said, finally, “on second thought, I’d better come with you.  I mean, it would be irresponsible to let three humans wander around in the sewers without supervision.”
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________

Trying to traverse the sewer system on foot was hard, treacherous work.  It was hot, it stank, and it was riddled with chunks of broken concrete, potholes, and feral owls.  Progress was slow, and it was no time at all before Fry was bone tired.  It didn’t help that he was becoming absolutely certain that Tura had no idea where she was going.

Behind him, there was a familiar, piercing scream followed by a loud splash.  Turgid water cascaded over Fry’s back.  He turned just in time to see Aimee’s head reappear from under the brownish ooze. 

“Dasinae!” The intern sputtered.  “I’ve had enough of this.  Tura, just admit that you’re lost, already!”

 “I am inot lost!”  Tura snapped.  “The village is about half a mile north of the park.  We should be there any moment n- Ow!”  The meager light streaming from the thing Tura wore on her wrist  abruptly vanished as her forearm collided with the tunnel wall. “Dammit, Fry!”

“What did I do?”  The delivery boy whined.

 Tura, unable to come up with anything, just muttered something under her breath. 

“Are you alright?”  Fry asked, his hurt feelings immediately forgotten.  It was pitch dark now, and Fry had to fumble his way the half dozen feet or so to Tura’s side with nothing more than the woefully inadequate blue glow cast by the tiny screen on his cell phone. 

Tura was cradling her right arm with her left.  She looked angrier than hurt. 

“I think I’ll survive.”  She said drily.  ”Get that cell phone out of my face.”

  Fry withdrew slightly.  “Sorry.”

Tura grunted dismissively.  “I don’t think its broken.”

“What, your arm or the thing you wear on your wrist?”

“Either one.”  Tura replied.  “Shine the light on the wristcomp so I can see what it looks like.”

Fry obliged.  The little computer had a nasty dent running down its length.

“Damn.”  Tura randomly tapped a few buttons with her left hand, but the thing didn’t respond.   “This is why I don’t buy American anymore.  Anybody else have a li-”

What happened next occurred much too quickly for Fry’s brain to process.  Tura reached for a small button set into the face of her wrist computer that would allow her to take it off, but the motion was never carried through all the way.  Instead, Tura jumped about two feet into the air.  Fry never even saw the roundhouse kick to the side of the head coming.  By the time he’d even interpreted the information that he was flying through the air, he’d already struck the tunnel wall and was in the process of sliding into the sludge like a damp rag into a swimming pool.
_____________________________ _____________________________ _________________

“Fry, wake up!”

The delivery boy’s eyes fluttered open.  “Ungh.  What happened?”  He moaned.  “I feel like I got hit by a flying cement mixer.”  There was a tremendous throbbing pain right above his left temple.  He was sitting up to his waist in dirty water with his back against the tunnel wall.  Apparently he hadn’t been out long, since no one had tried to move him yet.  There was a brilliant white light shining on him; the source soon coalesced into Bender’s familiar shape.  Oh right, his eyes light up.  Why didn’t we remember that before?  Next to the robot were Aimee and Tura.  Tura was bent over him and had a hand on his knee.  She wore one of the guiltiest expressions that he’d ever seen. 

“I’m so sorry.”  Tura was saying.  “I didn’t know it was you.  I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t know it was me?”  Fry replied doubtfully and with a little anger now that he was remembering what had just happened to him.  “We were in the middle of a conversation!” 

“Not quite.”  Aimee said, and, for some reason, Tura held up her ponytail for him to see, as if that explained absolutely anyth-

Comprehension dawned.  Tura wears her hair down.  “Leela?!” 

The cyclops nodded, holding up her hands to quiet him.  “Don’t ask how.  I don’t have a clue.  Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I think so.”  He said after looking himself over.  It’s not like you haven’t kicked me in the head before.  I’m getting used to it.  Leela offered him a hand and, with her help, he managed to regain his feet.

“So, you and Tura are swapping places again?  Is that why I just got kicked in the face?”

“Looks like it.”  Leela nodded.  “All I know is that, one moment, I’m in Old New York helping Phil search for food, and then, all of the sudden, I’m standing in the dark with some shadowy figure standing next to me.  I don’t know what could’ve changed that would let us swap places again.  We’ll have to tell the Professor as soon as we can.” 

I bet I know what changed.  Fry thought.  We’re all in the same timeline now.  Wow, I feel dizzy all of the sudden.

“So, what are we-”  Leela grabbed Fry around the waist as the delivery boy began to fall over.  Apparently he wasn’t quite as unfazed as he claimed.  “-doing in the sewers?  Did you guys get lost trying to visit my parents, or something?”

Fry looked to Aimee in surprise.  Leela doesn’t know that we’re in the Beta Timeline?  “Didn’t you guys tell her?”  He asked.

Aimee shook her head.  “Haven’t had time to yet.”

“But you just volunteered.”  Bender added.

“Tell me what?”  Leela asked.  “Are we in the sewers for some other reason?” 

“Uhh, well, yes and no.”  Fry replied.  “We were sorta in the sewers to go see Tura’s parents… and you.”

Leela cocked her head, unknowingly parroting Tura’s earlier look of confusion on the bridge of the Planet Express ship.  “But Tura’s parents are in the beta timeline like I was.”

Fry nodded.

There was a slight pause.  “Which means you wouldn’t find them by going into the sewers back home.”

Again, Fry nodded.

Another pause.  “Which means we’re not in the sewers back home, are we?”

Fry shook his head.

Leela digested that for a moment.  “Huh.  Well, that might explain why Tura and I are switching places again.  So, the Professor found a way to send people from one timeline to another?”

“Yes!”  Aimee replied.  “Which means you’ll finally get to go home, Leela.”

“I can’t go home.  Not yet.  There have been a few changes to the situation since the last time either of you have been over here.”

“I was here last night.”  Fry said.  “I almost fell off a cliff, and you wouldn’t tell me what was going on.”  He wasn’t quite able to keep the accusation out of his voice.

Leela blinked.  “That was you?  I thought Phil just was being clumsy and couldn’t keep his mouth shut like I told him too.  I’ve been yelling at him about that all day.” 
 
Fry nodded.  And he didn’t tell you that he was in the other timeline?  And wait a sec, if Phil was in the alpha timeline while I was with Leela, then what was he doing all that time?  I was still in Tura’s apartment when we switched places! 

“If you were here, then I guess you saw that we were retreating into the old city.”  Leela said.

“Yeah.  Why?  What happened?”

“I’ll bet is has something to do with Zapp trying to kill us.”  Amy grumbled.

“The DOOP saw you?”  Leela suddenly grew tense.  “Do they have any idea where you went?”

Bender made an offended noise.  “Saw us?  Yeah, they saw us.  They saw us right into a crater in the middle of Central Park.”

Leela, now realizing that maybe she didn’t have her priorities straight, grimaced a little.  “Sorry.  Is everyone alright?”  Clearly, everyone was, minus the welt sprouting from the side of Fry’s forehead, but it still should have been the first thing she’d asked.

“We’re alright.”  Amy said.  “The Nimbus came at us out of nowhere, but Tura managed to get away by flying us back to Earth so we could land and hide.”

Leela jerked in surprise.  Fry, who still had one of her arms around his waist to hold him up, was yanked about like a limp ragdoll.  “Wait, you have a ship?!”  The cyclops exclaimed.  “Where is it?!”

Fry carefully extracted himself from Leela’s iron grip.  He didn’t need the support anymore, and, although Leela seemed not to have remembered it yet, things between them were a little too awkward for him to be comfortable being that close to her. 

“Well, uh, maybe ‘land’ isn’t the right word.”  Aimee said hesitantly.

“You kidding?  Wiggles over there has caused crashes that weren’t that bad.”  That was Bender, of course.

“Hey!”  Fry protested.

Now Leela looked annoyed.  “Just answer my question!  Do we have a ship, or don’t we?”

“It’s pretty smashed up.”  Aimee replied, undaunted as ever by Leela’s tone.  The woman seemed to have made it a hobby to be oblivious to her captain’s anger.  “We had to run, so I didn’t get to look at the damage, but it’s crawling with DOOP soldiers by now, so we can’t get to it anyway.”

Leela seemed to deflate a little at the news, which Fry found a little disconcerting.  “Why is having a ship so important?”  The delivery boy asked. 
   
 “Because the mutants can’t hide in Old New York forever. Things are… not going well.  If we don’t find a way off the planet soon…”  She fell silent, apparently unable to complete the thought.

“Leela, what happened here?”  Aimee asked gently.  The switch from clueless airhead to sympathetic friend was so sudden and so complete that it left Fry wondering if one of them might possibly be an act.  The million dollar question was, of course, which one.
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

last update for awhile.  I'm out of buffer again, and I don't have enough to send another chunk to get beta'd.  I'll try and do some writing again after school's started up.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #532 on: 08-19-2009 05:32 »

Ooh, no more buffer..   Here, have a mirthy link then.  It is a fanfic-comment-'review'-generator...
http://nine.frenchboys.net/ffnet.php    :D

Parodically "plebey".

Also hi JN too as well...  Yes, glad to see you got on and were able to post -
So did you ever find out what the problem was..?

Thus they are all in the sewers as I anticipated.   They must be so confused.  Hasty to attack, aren't both Leela and DOOP.  Wow, Leela, way to be presumptuous, you might want to check things out first before jumping to conclusions.  Also, killer tapeworms and feral owls, nice...  maybe they can hang out and keep El Chupanibre company.
Guess we'll wait for the breaking storm.

And sorry about your potted chile pepper plant too sO..              Aw perhaps the thieves will taste the bitter fruits of their thievery.
Or something.
Mmm chiles.

Douchebag plant stealers are douchebags.

Quote
Seriously, how lame do you have to be to steal a potted plant?

As lame as certain cheating football players maybe?
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #533 on: 09-25-2009 00:41 »

w00t...  Double post and bump, dual action...

Happy 4th PEELiversary, sO!  :D


_
             

This post has been brought to you by the number four.

Have one of those circum-stellar days again, and with no 'dark matters'.  :p
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #534 on: 09-25-2009 06:52 »

thanks for remembering my PEELiversary, km73.  I sure didn't :D
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #535 on: 10-17-2009 21:20 »

Leela tried as best she could to keep her emotions in check while she explained what had occurred over the last couple days.  She was more or less successful, although she couldn’t help but choke up a little when she described the solemn march out of the village.  All those mutants that stayed… I wonder what happened to them?

“So you found a way from the sewers into the ruins of Old New York, and now you’re hiding there?”  Aimee asked.  “The DOOP hasn’t found you?”

“The mutants don’t really go into the old city much,” Leela replied.  “But there are ways to get down there when they- we- want.  We took one down into what used to be Manhattan.  So far, the DOOP hasn’t figured out where we’ve gone, and I’m sure that finding the Planet Express Ship flying around past the orbit of the Moon will have them even more confused, especially when they remember that there is another ship sitting in the hangar back at Planet Express.  But, even if that buys us a little time, it’s only a matter of time before somebody starts going over Old New York with a fine toothed comb.” 

Something made a dull splash a long way down the tunnel from which Fry, Aimee, and Bender had come.  It could have been anything: a harmless sewer owl, a piece of concrete falling from the crumbling ceiling… In the darkness there was no way to know.  Still, it made the hairs on Leela’s neck stand up.  We’ve been here too long.

“Should we, umm, be going somewhere?”  Fry whispered as he nervously cast a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the sound. 

“Yeah.”  Leela said slowly.  “Yeah, I think so.”  She gestured for Bender to cut off his spotlights, then cursed when the much dimmer light on her wrist computer didn’t activate.

“Why is my wrist light not working?” she hissed.  “Bender, turn on your eye lights again, but keep them on low.” 

The robot complied.  Just as Leela motioned for her crew to follow her there was another splash, closer this time.  Later, she would realize that she’d let herself over react.  DOOP soldiers wouldn’t be sneaking around in the dark like bogeymen.  They’d be well lit, and making enough noise to be heard a mile off.  Some primal fear had overwhelmed her sensibility at that moment, and her imagination conjured up all sorts of shadowy figures hiding just beyond the dim pool of light that surrounded them like a shield.  Or a beacon. 
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________

Nothing sinister attacked them as Leela led her friends deeper into the sewers.  She soon began to recognize tunnels.  We’re almost at the village!  She realized.  Tura must have been leading Fry, Aimee, and Bender there.  She couldn’t help but be a little annoyed that no one had bothered to tell her that.  She wouldn’t have let them stand around and talk for as long as they had if she’d known they were only a couple blocks from the town, which was no doubt still crawling with DOOP soldiers.  She briefly thought about changing direction and heading for the relative safety of the old city, but, in the end, she couldn’t make herself do it.  She had to know what had happened.

The four of them emerged from the tunnel through which the mutants’ sewage lake overflowed.  It was the same tunnel that they’d taken when their hunt for Nibbler had led them to the mutants so many years earlier.  Thankfully, the sewage was much shallower this time, as all of the demolition occurring elsewhere in the sewer had diverted much of the flow.

The mutant village looked to be fairly intact.  Leela had expected scorched Earth, gutted houses, and fires burning unchecked across the town.  Zapp Brannigan did not use the term ‘fire bombing’ as a figure of speech.  She sensed Kif’s work.

 The streets of the village were clear.  Leela cautiously led her band down one of the main arteries that bisected the village, keeping to the shadows as much as possible.  Here and there a window was broken, or a door kicked in.  A discarded combat helmet and a handful of wrappers that Leela recognized from her brief stint as a soldier as coming from an MRE lay forlornly on a street corner.  There was none of the senseless carnage that was inevitably produced by men operating under the orders of Zapp Brannigan.  It looks like the DOOP swept the town, realized that we’d already gone, and then left.  The question, of course was why.

“Leela.”  Fry whined from the rear.  “I don’t like it here.  It’s creepy.”

It always amazed Leela how Fry’s brain worked.  Whereas she had to systematically think through a situation, considering the ramifications of every minute detail with which she was presented before coming to a conclusion based on logic and experience, Fry seemed to work on instinct alone.  If she asked him why the town was creepy- after all, he’d spent so much time in it lately that, by now, it had to almost feel like home to him- he would undoubtedly have no answer.  But, somehow, without even knowing how he’d done it, he’d come to the same conclusion that she had.

 Something’s off.  Leela told herself.  The town shouldn’t be deserted.  Most likely, the DOOP, having found the town more or less abandoned and unable to figure out where the mutants had gone, were waiting for their quarry to come blundering back into their arms.  Which is precisely what we’re doing.  Leela admonished herself.  You’re stupid for coming here.

“Fry’s right.”  Leela said to her companions.  “This has ‘trap’ written all over it.  I’ll bet a couple of these buildings are less deserted than they look.  Let’s get out of here before we get ourselves shot.”

Leela led her friends down a side street, through a dirt lot, and then across a wide boulevard to the safety of a sewer tunnel that would lead them to an entrance into the old city.  She called a halt several times and waited silently for the sound of pursuit, but there was nothing.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #536 on: 10-18-2009 01:59 »
« Last Edit on: 10-18-2009 02:02 »

Oh, okay, glad you updated.  Presumably must be holding back some for a buffer again,
huh?  You are very effective in building atmosphere; and the insight in analyzing the different ways Fry's and Leela's minds might work seems psychologically plausible.

Also, I don't know if you saw this, http://www.peelified.com/index.php?topic=18366.msg1072745#msg1072745, besides the moon thing and the blackish holish thing, from where I posted it in the Science thread last night, I didn't bother to make a boson pun but I thought it was kind of interesting.
Archonix

Space Pope
****
« Reply #537 on: 10-18-2009 02:00 »

Short and sweet. :) The tension builds nicely.
JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #538 on: 10-18-2009 05:28 »

Short and sweet. :) The tension builds nicely.

<TheJazzSinger> You ain't heard nothing yet!<TheJazzSinger>  SO is sitting on a lot of material, and I'm happy to say the plot makes sense!
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #539 on: 10-20-2009 00:27 »

@km73: I've got a little bit of a buffer.  I've barely written anything in the past couple months because real life keeps getting in the way so I can't dish out gobs of writing every week or so like I was doing before.

@arch: thanks.  But like JMN said, this is nothing compared to where the tension will be in another couple of updates.

@JN: Huh-wha?  The plot makes sense?  Oh my, when did that happen?  It was completely by accident, I swear :D
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #540 on: 10-20-2009 03:58 »

But like JMN said,

We need to go back to calling him JustMibblin.



Also don't worry, I'm sure the plot doesn't make that much sense.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #541 on: 10-24-2009 18:29 »

here's another little bit.  The big meeting scene between the two crews is coming up next
_____________________________ _____________________________ _____

Fry found himself on yet another grueling march through knee-deep sludge.  By this point, Fry was exhausted, soaking wet, and freezing cold.  He could tell from her look of pure misery that Aimee was in as bad a shape, but neither of them had energy to waste trying to complain to Leela.  Even Bender, who hadn’t had any alcohol to fuel his power cells since that morning, had gone quiet to save energy.  In the almost total darkness, with the tunnels stretching away into the distance, the only sound the steady sloshing of the water as they moved through it, Fry’s mind began playing tricks on him.  He started seeing shapes and colors, even entire shadowy figures out of the corner of his eye.  When he turned to look, however, they were always gone. 

Finally, the tunnel turned a corner and dead-ended at a sealed metal hatch.  Fry took one look at the thing and felt his heart sink, but Leela put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry.”  She said.  “We didn’t make a wrong turn.  Hatches like this one keep sewer water from flooding the ruins.”  The PE Captain began running her hand along the tunnel wall a few feet from the hatch.  “The lever should be… Ah, here we go.”  Her hand disappeared into a small alcove that was hidden in shadow.  She apparently found what she was looking for, because she gave a forceful yank, and something protested loudly with the sound of rusty metal being forced into motion.  The hatch squealed and groaned, but the four of them together managed to get it open far enough to let them squeeze through. 

To Fry’s surprise, the space on the other side of the hatch was brightly lit.  His eyes, accustomed to the paltry light given off by the lamps built into Bender’s eyes, were momentarily overwhelmed by the glare.

“Oh yeah, sorry.”  Leela said.  “I forgot to mention, the DOOP installed lights in the ceiling above the ruins, probably so they could search for us easier.  They don’t know for sure that the mutants are hiding here, but they’ve had a few patrols around all day looking.  We shouldn’t stay in the open long.”

 It took a moment for Leela’s words to reach Fry, distracted as he was by the spectacle that surrounded him.  New York City- his home- was laid out before him, still breathtaking even in its state of near total decay.  This was the first time that he’d seen the ruins lit in any meaningful way, and the sight of what was still recognizable as the old skyline was so heartbreaking that it almost brought him to tears.  He was standing on what had once been a high-rise office building, but had long since tipped over and fallen against the wall that had been built around the old city.  The resulting pile of twisted wreckage served as a steep ramp that led from the sewer hatch down to street level.  Directly in front of him were a handful of apartment buildings that had survived better than most.  They partially blocked his view of the towering behemoth that was the Empire State, one of only a handful of buildings to survive the third millennium intact.  It’s not right.  Fry thought as he took in the scene.  They shouldn’t have let this happen to New York.  It’s not right.

Leela was about to scold Fry for not paying attention, but, when she saw the emotion in his eyes, she understood.  While Aimee and Bender nervously watched the street below for soldiers, Leela waited for Fry to come back to her from wherever it was that he’d gone.  When his eyes refocused at last, he looked at her, nodded curtly, and followed her quickly down to the street.
_____________________________ _____________________________ __________________

There was no way that any of them could have known, but the rotting skyscraper that the mutants were using as a hideout was aptly chosen.  The tall, twisting obelisk of glass and steel was none other than New York’s old Freedom Tower, still standing proud amidst the rubble.  Now Leela found herself leading a second band of refugees into the protection of its colossal shadow.

Leela and her crew had made it through the mile or so of broken city streets completely uncontested.  The DOOP patrols had seemingly disappeared.  Finding Tura in Earth orbit probably confused Zapp to no end.  Leela thought.  The image of him giving himself a hernia trying to figure out how the Planet Express ship could be under guard at Planet Express and yet, at the same time, be at the bottom of a smoldering crater in the middle of Central Park brought a rare smile to her lips.  That confusion will buy us some time.

The Freedom Tower looked deserted, which was, of course, the whole point.  It was only when Leela and her group got within a few dozen feet that two shadows detached themselves from the gaping thirty-foot hole that served as an entrance and moved to intercept them.  The two sentries were Vyolet and Dwayne, and they looked very confused.

Vyolet waved in greeting and tucked the pistol that Leela had loaned her into the strip of torn fabric that she was using as a belt.  Leela waved back. “Hi Vy, hi Dwayne.  We’re back.”

Vyolet and Dwayne exchanged puzzled looks.  Leela had been out with Phil to hunt through the nearby buildings for supplies when she and Tura had swapped places.  For now, the plan was not to give away that there was two of everybody.  Until both PE crews had had a chance to come up with a plan of action, telling the mutants about the whole parallel timeline thing would just make an already complicated situation that much worse.  Of course, there was always the chance that Tura had already told everyone what was going on, but the body language of the two mutants that were standing in front of Leela gave no sign that they knew what was really going on.

“Uhh…  Leela?  How did you get back outside?”  Vyolet asked

Leela feigned confusion.  “Back outside?  What do you mean?”

“After you came back from scouting for food with Phillip.”  Dwayne replied.  “We didn’t see you leave again after that.”

 Leela’s nodded to herself.  She’d expected something like this.  If they think they’ve seen Fry and me come through here in the last few hours, then that means they really saw Tura and Phil.  “Uhh, Bender found another way out of the building.  It’s well hidden; I’m sure nobody saw us leave.”

That seemed to satisfy Dwayne, but Vyolet seemed to be about to ask another question.  Leela quickly cut her off.  “Do either of you guys know where my parents are?”  She asked.  “I need to talk to them.”

Vyolet shrugged.  “I haven’t seen them since you, Phillip, your parents, and Raoul disappeared into that little conference room by the elevator shafts.  I really thought you were all still in there.”

“Maybe we are.”  Leela muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.  Come on guys.”  Leela gestured for Fry, Aimee, and Bender to follow her into the building.  After everyone had passed she turned back to Vyolet and gestured to the weapon that lay at her hip.  “Sorry, Vy, but I think I’m going to need that back now.”

“Why, is something wrong?” 

Leela smiled darkly.  “Ask me again in an hour.” She said, before disappearing into the building.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #542 on: 10-25-2009 07:18 »

Heh, Zapp giving himself a hernia...  he doesn't really have the mental or intellectual capacity to pontificate over the conundrum much, anyway.  (Some scene of him trying to figure it out would probably be mirthful, however).  I can well imagine how Fry must feel seeing the decaying ruins of Old New York.  Disturbing for him to witness it all laid waste and decrepit like that..      I forgot, you didn't ever say you'd lived in New York, did you?      Oh, and by the way, caught a couple of things - "the only sound was the steady sloshing of the water", and you do still spell it "Phillip" in a couple of places.
Anticipating the critical meeting and impactful scene on deck ahead.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #543 on: 10-25-2009 19:52 »
« Last Edit on: 10-25-2009 19:53 »

yeah, I know I used the word 'Phillip' a few times.  The mutants don't know that their are two of everybody (yet), so they don't know to call the Fry from their timeline 'Phil', and I didn't want some of the characters to refer to Phil as 'Phil' and then have others call him 'Fry'.  The least confusing thing I could come up with is to have all of the mutants call both versions of Fry 'Phillip'- for now- whenver there might be some confusion as to which Fry was where.  Whenever somebody refers to 'Phillip' in the past tense, it just means that they're talking about whichever Fry happened to be there at the time and that it doesn't really matter which one it happened to be.

oh and nope, I've never lived in New York.  I've been there a couple of times though and I really like it.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #544 on: 10-26-2009 01:55 »
« Last Edit on: 10-26-2009 01:56 »

No, I just meant that it should be "Philip" with one L... :D

...but it's interesting about the mutants calling him that...

you really are thinking everything out, you plan every detail out.
JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #545 on: 10-26-2009 06:56 »

No, I just meant that it should be "Philip" with one L... :D


you really are thinking everything out, you plan every detail out.

I make that missstake all the time with repeatted letters....

Teasing us with little bits at a time, ain't you, SO?
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #546 on: 10-26-2009 23:46 »

I don't have that much story that I can post so, yeah, I've been doling it out in bite sized pieces. 
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #547 on: 10-30-2009 01:44 »
« Last Edit on: 10-30-2009 01:46 »

It was worse than she’d expected, finally meeting Tura face-to-face.  Even having met her parallel-universe self once before, there was just no way that she could prepare herself for opening a door and finding herself on the other side.  It was simply a situation that the human brain was not equipped to deal with.  

Equipped for it or not, there really hadn’t been much of a choice, so, swallowing her misgivings, Leela had opened the door to the room that Vyolet had pointed out to her.  On the other side, she found Tura, her parents, Raoul, Phil, Amy, the Professor, Hermes, and Bender all sitting on the floor huddled in a half-circle around a small camp-lantern, which was the room’s only illumination.  With Leela blocking the doorway, Fry and Aimee had to lean in over her shoulders to see into the room.  When the two groups laid eyes on each other, they froze.  No one spoke for a good thirty seconds before Leela finally took the initiative and stepped forward into the pool of lamp light.  Tura stood and faced her, and the two women regarded each other.

To anyone else, Tura’s face would have been an inscrutable mask, but, to Leela, it was an open book.  She read anger, fear, and just a hint of shame in Tura’s expression, and couldn’t help but wonder what Tura was reading in hers.  

The tension in the room had risen to the point that it could have been cut with a knife.  Everyone was waiting for the two Leelas to make the next move.  And what’s it going to be?  Leela wondered silently.  I’ll let her choose.  Leela was now wearing her pistol at her waist.  She truly hoped that she wouldn’t need it, but it was there, just in case things got out of hand.  At least Tura seemed to be unarmed.  

Finally, the silence was broken.  With what was clearly a colossal effort, Tura smiled and held out a hand.  “It’s good to finally meet you” she said with a tightness that rendered her words hollow.  “We have a lot to talk about.”
_____________________________ _____________________________ ________________

The moment that Leela’s hand touched Tura’s, both women experienced a jolt almost like a mild electric shock.  For the slightest of instants, there was a sensation of being in two places at once followed by a wave of vertigo, and then nothing.  

Leela blinked in surprise at what had just happened, but her counterpart was unfazed as she withdrew her hand.  

“According to your Professor, that’ll stop us from jumping into each other’s bodies again.”  Tura explained.

Fry, Aimee, and Bender waited to make sure that nothing else unexpected was going to happen, and then cautiously made their way into the room.  Tura retook her seat in the middle of her group, and the newcomers sat down across from her, effectively completing the ring that surrounded the lantern.  

Leela waited for Tura to say something, but soon realized that Tura was herself waiting for Leela to start.  Why is it that we’ve wanted to rip each other’s heads off for weeks, and now that we finally meet, neither of us can even figure out what to say?

“Well, now that everybody’s decided not to kill each other, I suggest we figure out what to do next.”  

It was Hermes that had spoken. Leela turned toward the Jamaican and wished she had the proper equipment to raise an eyebrow.  Hermes was sitting up straight with his hands clasped in front of him as if he was about to give the morning mission briefing.  

“Easy.”  Tura replied coolly.  She nodded in Leela’s direction.  “She goes home.”

“Now, Tura, we talked about this.”  Munda replied soothingly.  “Leela did the best she could."  

Tura shot her mother an annoyed look.  “Mom, why do you insist on defending her?!  She got you all kicked out of your homes, and now the DOOP is trying to hunt you down like animals!”

The words hit Leela in the chest like a fist.  Fry saw her cringe and felt his anger start to rise.  No one talked about his Leela that way.  Not even his… other… Leela…  This is going to give me a headache.  Hey, that’s not fair!”  He protested.  

“Isn’t it?”  Tura spat.  “Look at us.” She said, gesturing around the room.  “We’re sitting huddled around a lantern in an abandoned building, waiting for someone in a tank to come crashing through the front door!  Don’t tell me it isn’t fair!”

Much to Fry’s surprise, Leela immediately jumped to his defense.  “Don’t you yell at Fry!”  she growled.  “You don’t have the right!  Besides, you’re mad at me; he didn’t do anything wrong, and you know it!”

“Actually, you know what?  You’re absolutely right.”  Tura replied as she leaned in over the lamp.  “I’m not mad at Fry.  And I certainly wouldn’t want him to get caught in the middle of our fight.  Maybe I should just kick your big fat ass now so we can all move forward, hmm?”

Leela crossed her arms and rolled her eye.  “Yeah, right, because you’re so far above using Fry to fight your battles.  And it’s your fat ass too, big-nose.”  Okay, weak comeback.

The insult may have been weak, but even a meager attack can be effective if it hits a sensitive enough target.  Tura’s eye flashed, and it was only with clear effort that she kept herself from leaping across the room at Leela’s throat.  “Hey, that’s not fair either, Leela.”  Fry said tentatively.  He was beginning to realize how precarious his situation was becoming.  The two Leelas looked like they were going to tear each other apart at any moment, and he had ended up thrust right into the middle of it.  

Off to Fry’s left, one of the Bender’s tapped the other on the shoulder.  “Hey buddy, check it out.  Fry’s girlfriend and his nanny are going to kill each other!”

The other Bender laughed.  “Yeah.  I got twenty bucks riding on the girlfriend!”

Leela whirled on the robots.  “I do not act like Fry’s nanny!”  There was a beat before the cyclops added:  “And she’s not his girlfriend!”

“Pfft, yeah.  I’m sure there was some other reason why Fry spent all of last night in Tura’s apartment.”  Bender retorted, high-fiving his double.  

“Bender!”  Fry hollered.  But it was too late.  The damage was done.

Leela’s eye swiveled and bored into Fry’s head in the terrifyingly dangerous way that only an angry woman can seem to manage.  The delivery boy tried to meet her gaze, but the weight of her accusation was too much.  He looked down at the ground.

“You- you slept with her?”  Leela couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it.  She felt as if someone had come along and sucked all of the air out of the room.  It was as if she was suffocating.  How could he do that to me?  She wondered.  How could he sleep with her?  Doesn’t he know that- can he really be so dense that he doesn’t realize that I- That we…?

  “I- I can’t tell you.”  Fry mumbled, still staring down at the dirty concrete floor.  “I made a promise.”

“You can’t tell me?!”  Leela repeated incredulously.  “You’d damn well better believe you’re going to tell me!”  Leela’s anger was starting to rise to the boiling point, smoothly covering any sign that she’d been wounded at all.

“He didn’t.”  Fry’s voice replied.  But it wasn’t Fry that was speaking, it was Phil.  “He didn’t sleep with her, I mean.”

Everyone looked at Phil in surprise.  Fry felt his pulse quicken.  How much did his duplicate know about the night before?  What exactly had happened while Fry had been in the beta timeline?

“What?  Phil, how do you know what happened?”  Leela asked.

“Because I was there!”  Phil replied.  “Ever since this whole mess started you guys all kinda forgot about me.”  His eyes lingered on Tura to drive home the point.  The cyclops’s gaze slid away uneasily at the accusation.  “Everything’s been ‘Fry’ this and ‘Tura’ that, but I’m here too!”  Another pointed look in Tura’s direction.

Fry watched Tura react to Phil’s accusations.  She was trying her best to hide whatever it was that she was feeling, but she turned bright red when she saw that Fry was watching her.  The delivery boy gave her a confused look.  Why is she embarrassed?  He wondered.  We didn’t do anything that should embarrass her.  I never made a move, and she never… well, nothing happened.  I don’t even understand why she asked me to keep this secret in the first place.  

Since Phil had spilled the beans anyway, it seemed to Fry that it was probably safe for him to open his mouth.  He knew Leela well enough to know that she’d always be suspicious that something had happened between him and Tura unless he swore otherwise a few times.  He was in the middle of deciding exactly what to say when he caught a change in Tura’s expression.  The embarrassment had abruptly changed to something else.  Her eye opened a little wider, and her mouth opened slightly.  Her eye darted in Phil’s direction, and then locked on Fry.  The color slowly drained out of her face.

Before Fry could say anything, Amy, who had remained oblivious to what Fry had just witnessed, turned to Phil in surprise.  “Wait, you were in Tura’s apartment last night?”  She asked.  “But you and Fry couldn’t have been there at the same time, so how could you know what happened?”

Leela caught Tura mouth the words “Oh no.”  She looked like she was going to be sick, and with a sudden certainty, Leela knew exactly what had transpired.  She offered, but Fry refused.  Except, it wasn’t the Fry that she thought it was.

With a jolt, Leela realized that Phil was about to answer Amy’s question.  Fry will die if he finds out!  Before the delivery boy could say anything, Leela jumped in.  “It doesn’t matter how he knows.”  She said quickly.  “But if Phil says he can vouch for Fry, then I believe him.”

“Uhh, Leela, that doesn’t make any sense.”  Aimee protested.   When faced with withering stares from two Leelas at once, however, she quickly added “I’ll just, ah, shut up now.”
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #548 on: 10-30-2009 07:43 »
« Last Edit on: 10-30-2009 07:46 »

Ooh the big dramatic meeting.  Okay..  So Tura 'offered' Phil to sleep with her, and he refused..?  hmm...  Why would he refuse when one would think/assume he would've wanted to.. I guess presumably because he felt it would be kind of like taking advantage of her?   Not wanting to do it in the middle of their troubled situation.      Or because she didn't know it was him, she thought it was the "other" Fry?; she wasn't aware of who she was propositioning.
Or, maybe more because of what you hinted, that he's sort of jealous/upset that he hasn't been getting as much attention.
(I do get why Tura is distressed to find out about that, of course; I know you had made it so that her primary reason for avoiding a relationship with Phil was that she was his captain, whereas it was okay to open up to Fry because she didn't have that issue with him).
But also I don't think I'm fully clear on why Fry seems to have apparently thought it was him there all along when it wasn't, either...
That is, he himself is wondering "how much did his duplicate know about the night before", which seems to indicate that he somehow doesn't know when it was him there and when it was Phil.
I guess I'm a little fuddled.

I'm probably just not fully remembering the entire situation right now.
Otherwise I see you leave off on a bit of a climactic cliffhanger again.

Also then - From the photog thread, so that radio-telescope-deal in the desert was a recent thing?  Must've been interesting anyway, even if you only pounded some bolts and such.  AND FINALLY, if you saw that article about the exploding mega-star and black holes and the galaxy I stuck in the science thread last night..  did any of that have any relevance to any of your work on post-AGB luminosity variations at all?   If not really the intermediate-mass black
holes I suppose...
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #549 on: 10-31-2009 00:43 »

Phil refused because he knew that Tura didn't know who he was.  He's not the type of guy to take advantage of Tura like that by pretending to be somebody else.

Fry knows that Tura and Phil were alone together in Leela's apartment for some period of time.  What he doesnt know is what happened during that period of time, or what Phil was able to figure out about what had happened before he and Fry had switched places.  Fry has no idea that Tura made a move; he's still just worried that Phil might know about the making out that Fry and Tura had done earlier.

I was out putting radio telescopes (telescope is actually a poor choice of words.  the things are more like giant radio antennas that function together like a telescope) two weeks ago.  We have something like 250 to put together, so I'm headed back out this weekend to build some more.  I did read that article, by the way.  Very cool.  It doesn't really have much to do with that research I did a few years ago, no.  Stars back at the beginning of the universe didn't have much in common with stars that are around today, and it's only small stars that are a couple of times the size of the sun or smaller that go through the AGB and post-AGB phases of evolution.  Maybe it made an intermediate-mass black hole.  that's a possibility.  I'd bet that the black hole that formed was still a little too small to be intermediate mass though.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #550 on: 10-31-2009 05:51 »

Ah, 'kay..  compris..   Thus continuing my patchy PEEL Correspondence Course in
physics.      : D

Phil refused because he knew that Tura didn't know who he was.  He's not the type of guy to take advantage of Tura like that by pretending to be somebody else.

Okay, yeah, that was pretty much my first choice.  Actually it combines two options.

Quote
We have something like 250 to put together, so I'm headed back out this weekend to build some more.

Cool.  So it's basically like a volunteering thing?  Mm with the snow you guys got out there it will probably look oddly scenic.  Craggy peaks!  Have a good time..
Maybe try to get your free food to be Mexican.
BedRock

Crustacean
*
« Reply #551 on: 12-15-2009 15:35 »

Do any of you futurama fans read Hitchiker's guide? you must
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #552 on: 12-15-2009 15:56 »

and you bumped my thread to ask that, why exactly?
Archonix

Space Pope
****
« Reply #553 on: 12-15-2009 16:26 »

Perhaps he thought you were the most Douglas Adams-like.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #554 on: 12-15-2009 17:31 »



Do any of you futurama fans read Hitchiker's guide? you must

Hey, yeah, I have!!1!

and you bumped my thread to ask that, why exactly?

Yeah, I'm gonna go waaaay out on a limb here and guess that it's a fake account..

Also, considering his first post was apparently in the "I was watching Futurama while high" thread...  :p


Anycase, enjoy your negative-kelvins and stuff, soybean.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #555 on: 01-19-2010 21:21 »

oh my god, an update!
_____________________________ _____________________________ ______

Oddly enough, the revelation that Tura had wanted to sleep with Fry- and had almost actually done it with Phil- did more to defuse the situation than to make it worse. The two Leelas withdrew into themselves while each tried to get a handle on the situation.  The others knew that they had missed something significant, though not a one of them knew exactly what.  Nor did they particularly care, as long as it meant that the chances of the room erupting into laser fire had decreased somewhat. So while the two Leelas mainly sat staring at the floor, one looking horrified and the other grim (and just a tiny bit spiteful), the conversation continued around them.

After everyone had finally caught up with what was going on in whichever timeline he or she hadn’t been to recently, the matter of what to do next arose again.  No one that had been part of the supposed ‘rescue mission’ was really clear on what the plan had been once they’d actually gotten to the beta timeline.  Getting there had been the priority, and then they’d been too busy dodging the DOOP and trying to find the mutants to worry about what was going to happen afterward. 

The whole purpose of the mission was supposedly to fix the reality jumping problem and send everyone that was originally from the alpha timeline back home.  The first of those two objectives had already been accomplished.  A simple handshake between duplicates seemed to have been enough physical contact to put an end to it.  The trouble was that no one present from the alpha timeline, except for Bender, whose opinion didn't count for much, could quite bring themselves to proclaim mission success and walk away.  Over the past couple of months, the beta timeline had become just as much home to them as to their duplicates.  They’d made friends with the mutants and with their crewmates from the beta timeline; they couldn’t just leave, not now.  Not that there was much of a choice, really.  The only way back into the alpha timeline was with the device that they’d brought with them.  There had been no time to find it after the crash.  No doubt it was still somewhere at the bottom of the crater that the Planet Express Ship had dug into the turf of Central Park.

If going home wasn’t an option, then neither was staying.  The mutants had needed someone that could lead alongside Raoul, someone that was familiar with the surface world and yet that they could still trust.  Tura had been that person.  Unfortunately, Tura had, until now, been stuck in an alternate timeline, and Leela had had to take her place.  Other than Tura’s parents, only Raoul- and he only at Leela’s insistence- had been told that Leela wasn’t quite who she was pretending to be.  Most likely, it would have been safe to tell anyone that had known the Turangas even remotely well what was really going on, but the mutants as a whole would never have agreed to take advice from someone that wasn’t even from their reality.  It had been easy enough to keep the secret thus far, but no one could help but notice that Tura and three of her friends from the surface suddenly each had identical twins.  And when they found out, they were not likely to be very pleased about it.

“Da way I see it, everyone from de other timeline will have to go.”  Hermes said.  “Unless anyone ‘as a good idea for explainin' dis to everybody.”

No one did.  “We can’t just leave!”  Fry protested.  “Where would we even go?  We don’t have a ship, and that briefcase doohickey that sends us home is gone!”

“Nobody wants you to leave, Fry.”  Aimee assured the delivery boy.  But, if you stay here, the mutants will probably kick all of us out, and then what will we do?”

“Ooh, I could teach you how to take care of your hair!”  Amy offered excitedly.  “We have got to do something about that blonde... thing on your head.”

Aimee’s eyes flared.  Whatever her response was, it was in the wrong language for anyone but Amy to understand.  From the way Amy had looked down at herself, Leela guessed that, whatever Aimee had said, it had something to do with her double’s grime-soaked pink sweatsuit.  That seemed a bit odd though, considering that Aimee was dressed in an identical suit that was soaked in sewage from seam to seam.

As the two Martian interns’ contribution to the group deteriorated into a string of insults that Bender would have found impressive had he been able to understand them, the others tried to think. 

Presently, Leela stirred.  “You know, I just might know how to get us all out of this.”  She said, nodding to herself.  “Yeah.”  She laughed.  “I can’t quite believe it, but I really think I do.”

Tura gave her a distasteful look.  “And what part of this situation is it exactly that you can possibly find funny?”

Leela was too distracted to react to the insult.  “I was just thinking, we can’t all stay here, whether the mutants accept that there’s two of everybody or not.  You and I have… issues to deal with, the Amys are already screaming at each other, and it probably won’t be long before the Frys are too.  The only thing keeping the Benders from ripping each other’s arms off like a couple of titanium wookies is their love for anything that reminds them of themselves, and that’ll wear off the moment one of them steals a beer from the other.  We’ll all probably be trying to kill our respective duplicates before too much longer.”

Phil and Fry looked at each other, wondering.

“Leela, I’m afraid I don’t see where this is going.”  Raoul interrupted.

“Don’t you get it?”  Leela replied enthusiastically.  “That’s exactly how we’ll fix this!  By trying to kill each other!”

“Leela!”  Munda gasped in horror.

“Uhh, Leela, I’m not sure that really solves our problems…”  Phil pointed out.  The others just sort of looked at each other uneasily.

“Wait, I actually think I see where Leela is going with this.”  Tura said slowly.  She nodded.  “I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do.  We’ll just have to make sure we tell Kif what’s really going on.”

“Of course.”  Leela replied.

“By Jah!”  Hermes shouted in exasperation.  “Are you two looney toons plannin’ on telling us what you’re talkin’ about, or should we just go find the doctor and ask for a couple of strait jackets?”

“Sorry, Hermes.”  Leela apologized.  “I was thinking earlier about how confused Zapp would have been if he’d broken down the front door, and found Tura and me trying to poke each other full of laser holes.”  She gestured toward her duplicate.  “It just occurred to me a few seconds ago that we could use that confusion to our advantage.”

“How?”  Fry asked.

“Easy.”  Tura said.  “The DOOP thinks the mutants are being led by some sinister mutant terrorist, right?  And that I’m her?”

Fry nodded.

“Well, then we’ll give them their mutant terrorist.”  She gestured at Leela.  The two women met each other’s eye, and, just for that moment, forgot any animosity that they had for each other.

Whatever tenuous bonds of mutual respect might have been growing between the two Leelas, the bonds that kept the others’ sanity from evaporating into smoke were slowly starting to fray.  Leela saw the looks of total confusion and decided to take pity on her friends.

“It’s like this,” she explained.  “The government thinks that Tura is leading some kind of mutant uprising against the upper city.  The fact that she’s not, and that she couldn’t even if she wanted to, doesn’t matter.  The news has them all pumped up on fear, which blew up into full hysteria when they found the Professor’s doomsday devices.  They’re not going to stop hunting the mutants until the ‘mutant leader’ and her ‘co-conspirators’ from Planet Express are hunted down, captured, or killed.”

“What’s a coke-on-spear-ator?”  Fry and Phil asked at the same time.  No one paid them any attention.

Without missing a beat, Leela continued.  “But, what if the mutant leader isn’t who we all think she is?  What if it turns out she’s an evil imposter from another timeline trying to destabilize the government for some sort of evil, moustache-twitching invasion?”

“Wait.”  Farnsworth said.  It was the first thing that the scientist had said since Leela and the others had arrived.  No one had even realized that the old scientist was paying attention to what was going on.

 The Professor coughed once before continuing.  “Let me make sure I understand what you’re advocating, here.”

“Professor, whatever Leela’s plan is, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve avocadoes.”  Amy said gently.

“Uh, right, moving along.”  Tura shook her head in exasperation.  “What Leela and I are planning-” there was a marked emphasis on the I- “is to trick the DOOP into thinking that Leela and her crew are the ones that are responsible for everything. Once we convince them, my crew and the mutants will help ‘capture’ Leela’s crew-”

“-And, even though Fry, Amy, Bender and I will slip back into our own timeline right before we can be captured, Tura and the mutants will have saved the day,” Leela concluded.

Something in Tura’s expression hardened momentarily when Leela included Fry’s name in the list of people that would be going, but it quickly vanished.  “With a little help from Kif to keep the top DOOP brass too distracted to ask questions, we might even be able to convince the Mayor that the mutants helped save the city.  They’d be hard-pressed to try and kick us out after that.”
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

Archonix

Space Pope
****
« Reply #556 on: 01-20-2010 00:52 »

The best laid plans of mice and mutants...
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #557 on: 01-20-2010 01:23 »

and hookers!  don't forget hookers!
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #558 on: 01-20-2010 06:38 »

First off, uhh, look out for opuses.
Then, ye gods, wow, yeah, you actually updated!  w00t.  Good job.  This was a nice surprise.  Managed to get some writing done, even with classes starting and all?  Maybe you can cram some more in, before you start the dark matter stuff.   Well I have already done QUITE A BIT of writing today, but no I am not at all cranky  :p, thus therefore I will note that I foresee more problems ahead from Leela's scheme.   So they're all going to pretend to try to kill each other?...   ..Sounds like a plan.    Interesting.    I suppose it could actually work, in the context of the government wanting to believe a mutant plot / uprising.
Characterization remains solid.  Would be cool if you had used that 'Dumbbell Nebula' somehow, yeah, heh.  Have to enjoy scientists' names for things.  Good device to have the timeline-invention-briefcase-thinglet be gone so that they couldn't just go straight back, I guess, also.

Quote
“Professor, whatever Leela’s plan is, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve avocadoes.”  Amy said gently.

Maybe if it did, it might have a better chance of succeeding.

Or at least if it involved mango chutney.
JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #559 on: 01-20-2010 21:30 »

yay!  SO is alive! With a pulse!  And a plot!  That makes sense!  Without unnecessary punctuation!
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