Leela woke up to the sound of somebody knocking on her door. It was late, and hell have no fury like an angry, sleep deprived Cyclops. She put on a light purple colored rob and answered the door.
"Bender if this is one of your lame schemes to mail a nude picture of me to Teenage Mutant Play Boy, I'm going to kill you!"
There was no answer from the familiar robot, she struggled to find the button to open the door to her modest, furniture lacking apartment. The door opened with a hiss.
"What do you want?" Leela yawned.
"Turranga Leela?" A dark figure asked.
Leela was still drowsy from being so rudely awaken this late and began to yawn again. She rubbed her single eye.
"Yes, I'm Turranga Leela. Who the hell are you?" She began to get her familiar rude personality back.
"Nobody." The dark figure announced. He snapped his finger and two more men crept out of the shadows of the hallway outside of her apartment.
The 3 men burst through her front door, knocking her to the floor and began to rummage her apartment.
"Gee, Walt. She really doesn't have anything to break."
"You moron, don't use my real name!" Walt whispered.
Leela got to her feet and turned on the lights and recognized the trio of bumbling brothers.
"What do you 3 stooges want?" Leela yelled.
Ignar knocked over a vase that was on Leela's coffee table. Walt snapped his fingers once again and the two brothers headed out of the door.
"Let that be a lesson to you. Stay out of Mom Corp's way!" Walt warned.
"You come into my apartment at 4am and knock over a plastic vase to intimidate me? Get the hell out of here, or I will make you." Leela replied.
Leela decided on taking back the warning and kicked Walt in his face and watched him tumble out of the front door. She dusted her hands off and returned to bed.
The next morning the clumsy, naïve intern walked into the Professor's laboratory wrecked. Nothing appeared to be missing. She saw the Professor lying silent and ran to him. Thankfully he was just sleeping he would live at least another few seconds. The Martian girl gently shook him.
"Duh, what? Where am I?" The Professor asked surprised.
"Gluh, Professor you're in the lab. What happened in here, it's completely destroyed!" Amy helped him to his feet.
"My lab. Oh the humanity. I know who did this! Zoidberg!" The Professor yelled.
The lonely lobster scuttled in the room, his mouth tentacles shaking like trees in the wind. His blue eyes lit up with pure joy, somebody had called for him.
"You dim wit, you destroyed my lab! Zoidberg your fired!" The Professor shouted.
"Awwwwwwww. Looks like I'll have to beg for my old job back at the Apollo, I will." The sad lonely lobster scuttled out.
Everyone gathered around the conference table and watched Dr. Zoidberg walk out with a cardboard box of his belongings. He gave one last look of pity and walked out of the building.
"In today's world, a doctor of my endless credentials will have to beat the job offers away with a stick, I will!" Zoidberg glared at the Planet Express building and walked off his sandaled feet clacking all the way.
That thing referred to as a brain started to feel hurty inside of Phillip J. Fry's head. This occurred only in 3 instances. First, he had drank to much alcohol and was about to pass out. 2 he had suffered severe head trauma but thankfully his lack of a delta brain wave wouldn't allow him to pass out, simply have a small stinging sensation. And 3rd, and the most rare of cases, he had a thought.
"How do you know Zoidberg busted up your lab? I have a funny feeling about this." Fry asked.
"That blasted sea urchin has destroyed more things with those claws of his then lives he has ended in open heart surgery." The Professor went on.
"Call me stupid, but I think somebody is trying to tear this company apart." Fry theorized.
"Fry, you're stupid, mon." Hermes muttered.
"Oh yeah, I forgot, thanks!" Fry thanked the Jamaican bureaucrat.
Tell them about the 3 idiots that tried to wreck your apartment! Come on Leela do it! Fry's eyes seemed to beg Leela. She stopped looking in his direction and began tapping a pencil she took notes with. She took another glimpse and the same look was still in his sad eyes.
"I'm just an intern and everything, but shouldn't you have checked the security videos before making an assumption Professor?" Amy asked.
"Good news Amy! You're fired!" The Professor yelled from his seat at the head of the table.
The blocky haired Asian girl ran out of the conference room crying hysterically. Fry looked towards the locker room as he heard Amy begin to throw her belongings into an expensive purse; she had begun swearing in Cantonese now.
"Anyone else care to share their opinion?" The Professor said, slamming his frail hands onto the conference table, the sound of bones snapping emitted from them.
The remaining employees jumped out of their chairs and stood at attention, like soldiers during an inspection. Bender even saluted. The Professor got out of his chair and walked around them like a general taking command of a new unit.
"Professor, umm, can I go to the bathroom?" Fry asked.
The ancient man stood eye to eye with Fry. The delivery boy couldn't see his eyes through the dense lenses of his glasses. The Professor let out a snort of dissatisfaction. Fry felt that somehow this wasn't his great X 40 nephew.
"Its time this company really makes some changes! Leela I want that ship at 100 operating capabilities by closing time today! You are a poor space captain, now redeem yourself or you can have a reunion in the gutter with that smelly lobster and that moron Amy! Get these pieces of crap in line!" The Professor began to go on a tirade.
After he was finished he stormed out of the room toward his laboratory to clean up the mess and repair the damage to his beloved inventions. Leela looked at Hermes nervously.
"You heard the mon. Now get to work" Hermes ordered.
Mom sat at her desk turning off the switch on a device with a remote control to it. She gazed at Professor Farnsworth who was tied up in a chair adjacent to her desk.
"Its the newest in cyborg engineering made it in your likely hood, are you pleased? The evil business woman asked.
"Tell it I don't like it, and I hate it!" The Professor childishly pouted. " He is a pooh pooh head!"
Leela took a sip of water from her water bottle and watched as Fry and Bender continued to clean any sign of space dust, make sure every single bolt was tightened and any other problems she could think of.
"This job sucks noodles; I don't come here to do any actual work! What do you think I am some kind of robot?" Bender asked in an annoyed tone.
"The answers are yes it does, and yes you are." Leela tossed the empty plastic bottle into the recycle bin.
She had been doing the hardest job of all, making sure Bender and Fry were actually doing their job, and not breaking, stealing or God knows what else.
"I'm going to start my own interstellar delivery company! With black jack and hookers!" Bender waved his hands in anger.
"Well you can start after you put another coat of wax on the ship. Fry get your head out of that bucket!"
Fry began to pull and pull at the metal bucket. Leela sighed, this was the 20th time she had to help him remove the bucket from his head, and it was kind of getting annoying she watched disgusted as he ran into a wall, his arms waving wildly. Bender did nothing more than shoot the hose at Fry, laughing sinisterly.
The "Professor" walked into the docking bay to check on the progress of his crew. He walked around the ship looking for any sign of imperfection; Leela caught up to him and stood by his side.
"And what do we have here? What the hell is this?" The Professor asked angrily.
The Professor was pointing to a tiny, almost invisible chip in the paint of the large ship. Leela couldn't believe how attentive to detail the Professor was being, he was acting worse than a machine.
"It's just a chip in the paint Professor; I'll get on it right away!" Leela began to type something on her wrist a ma jig, and began to spray the little area with a mist of lime paint.
The Professor crossed his arms and shot her a glance. His face showed no sign of emotion. "Leela, I am demoting you. You are now the delivery boy. Fry will be acting captain until I see fit that you're able to resume command of this ship!"
"Oh why, why! Just fire me! Anything but that!" Leela dropped to her knees and cried.
The "Professor" shook his head from left to right, this meant NO almost universally, unless you live in Singapore where it just happens to be YES. (Don't ask me, my 9th grade government teacher told me this)
Leela grit her brilliant white teeth and squinted her eye.
"I quit!" Leela announced.
Fry and Bender gasped. Without Leela this place was sure to hit rock bottom. The turned to the imposter Professor, maybe he was bluffing, and it was all some kind of senile old man joke.
"Ohhh, like I care. Clean out your locker, and give Hermes the keys back to the ship. Also, turn in all of your stationary as well!" The imposter Farnsworth demanded.
Bender lied, and said he would finish the rest of the work that needed to be tended to on the ship. Instead he sat lazily in the cockpit watching a saucey puppet show on the ship's view screen. Fry sat on the bench in the Planet Express locker room watching the female Cyclops pack her bag.
"Leela, please don't quit. I'll never make it, we both know this!" Fry pleaded.
"Fry, I wasn't suppose to be a space captain. I'm going to try to go back to Applied Cryogenics, maybe they'll let me back if I beg. Allowing you to go free into the world without your career assignment chip was already a huge mistake. I can't believe I was so dumb!" Leela said slamming a few personal effects into a box.
"Well maybe it was a mistake. But remember this, I think that was the nicest and most heartfelt anyone has ever done for me. Except that one time Mr. Pannuci at my old job let me take the day off since I hit my head and went into a month long coma, but that's another story." Fry babbled on.
Leela slammed the door to her locker and pulled off the name plate with her name engraved into it. She glanced at it and took in her reflection. With a sigh she turned around and faced Fry.
"You've been a good friend. I had my doubts, but you're a nice person Phillip. Here, something to remember me by." Leela handed Fry the copper name plate from her now empty locker.
Fry couldn't find anymore words and was left baffled. He watched as his friend, and love left the locker room. Leela waved to Bender who was still in the ship enjoying his saucey puppet show. The robot returned the wave, pretending he didn't care she was leaving either way. Fry ran to the window overlooking the front entrance and watched as she calmly walked out. She stopped once she got outside of the building and the two made eye contact for one final time.
The real Professor shook his chair violently. Even in his prime he wouldn't have been able to break the diamond tether rope Mom's 3 sons tied him up with.
"You evil hussy! Your ruining my company!" The Professor growled through his false teeth.
"That's business, survival of the fittest!" Mom said, filing her nails.
"Ha. Darwinism was proved false when Scientology became the dominant religion when Tom Cruise became God." The Professor retorted.
" I don't believe in Tom Cruise!" Mom slammed her file into the desk.
The Professor gulped and surrendered the argument. He knew it was over, his company was now almost completely destroyed, unless his Uncle could some how be a licensed ship pilot.
"Woohooo! Only 200 tries!" Fry cheered himself from the front of a computer screen. The test was so simple a chimp could pass it with its eyes closed, for Fry to get it in such a record time was nothing less than amazing.