Author's Note: Sorry about the lack of updates over the last 2 days. I was busy driving from the sierra nevadas back home. Norway awaits soon!
Hope you guys enjoy this section.
(I know "pucker" doesn't mean "bite." But it sounded so good when Bender said it in my head!)
Zapp edged around a corner of the ship, back to the wall. Then he jumped out into the open, gun in hand, pointed at… empty air.
"Just missed it!" said Zapp.
Leela sighed. Obviously, the weapon-creature-thing wasn't anywhere near here, anymore. And Zapp's feats of 'heroics' were having exactly no effect on her whatsoever. As usual.
Kif was examining a life-sign tracking device he'd gotten from the Nimbus, earlier. "We are picking up one unknown life-sign," he said. He pressed some buttons on the device. "I'll just see if I can work out where it's—"
Zapp grabbed the device out of Kif's hands. "Give me that!" He examined it, his brow furrowed in concentration. "It looks like it's headed to… somewhere. Very fast. And… what are those little… circley thingies?"
"That's the text," said Kif, with a weary sigh. "You read it."
"Reading is for wusses!" Zapp declared, dashing the equipment to the floor, its casing shattering and the interior workings flying across the corridor.
"You guys! You guys!" said Bender, as he came running into the corridor, hands in the air. "You'll never believe it!"
"You found the weapon?" Leela asked.
"No! I found my book," said Bender. He showed her his copy of the Idiot's Guide to Illegal Arms Sales, which now consisted of a front and back cover, and a lot of torn out pages in the middle.
"You realize what this means," said Zapp. "The weapon is trying to illegally sell itself!"
Kif gave a weary sigh.
"Or maybe it was upset that you were trying to sell it on the black market like it was some kind of not-cute, not-cuddly creature," said Leela to Bender.
"Yeah, well, if I ever get my hands on it, I'm gonna bend it like it's never been bent befo…" Bender trailed off, as Fry entered the corridor.
Fry didn't look up at them, however. He was fixated on a little drinky-bird toy in his hands, watching as it bobbed up and down, up and down.
"Fry, where have you been?" asked Leela. "You shouldn't wander around on the ship by yourself."
"Yeah," said Bender. "You might accidentally damage the black market value of my…" He looked at the others around him. "I mean, you might get hurt or something. Yeah, that's it."
Fry looked up at them, confused. "I was just looking for the talking monkey."
"Talking monkey!" Zapp shrieked. He jerked his head from side to side, waving his gun in sudden panic. "Where?"
Fry shrugged.
"Fry, for the last time, we're not looking for a talking monkey," said Leela. "We're looking for… something that we don't know what it looks like."
Which sounded far less stupid in her head than it had when she said it.
"Oh," said Fry. "Well, I didn't see any talking monkeys, anyways."
"Where'd you get the bird, Fry?" asked Bender. "And why are you paying it more attention than me, Bender?"
Fry ignored him, staring in fascination at the bird. Bender ran up to Fry, waving his arms and darting around and trying to get back his attention. But Fry was too intent on that bird.
"Gimme that!" said Bender, as he reached out to snatch the bird away from Fry.
Fry jumped back, yanking the toy up and out of Bender's reach.
"Hey, stop it!" said Fry. "That's mine!"
Bender mocked Fry's words in a whiny, high-pitched tone of voice.
"I never thought I'd say this, but Bender's right," said Leela. "Where did you get that bird?"
Fry shrugged. "English guy."
Everyone looked at everyone else.
"What English guy?" asked Leela.
"The one I met," said Fry. "A few minutes ago."
"Fry," said Leela. "There are no British people on board this ship or the Nimbus. English or otherwise."
Fry scratched his head. "There aren't?"
Everyone there shook their heads.
"I'm Welsh!" one of the soldiers offered.
"You're nothing!" Zapp shouted at him.
"Oh," said Fry to Leela. He frowned. "So… who did I speak to?"
"The weapon," said Kif, with a sigh.
"The weapon's English?" said Bender. "Crikey, blimey, pucker me shiny metal bum!"
Everyone looked at Bender for a moment, then shrugged and ignored him.
"Fry," said Leela, "what was the weapon doing when you found it?"
"I dunno," said Fry. "He just said that if we knew what was best for us, we should leave. Or we'd die. Then he gave me this bird."
"If we know what's best for us!" Zapp cried. "Ha! A simple intimidation tactic. I say, Zapp Brannigan never knows what's best for anyone!"
Kif gave a weary sigh.
"Fry, think very, very hard," said Leela. "Where, exactly, did you see this 'English guy'?"
Fry scratched his head. "I think it was on a space ship." He considered. "Yeah, it was definitely on a space ship."
"We're on a space ship now, meatbag," said Bender.
Fry looked around. "No, this wasn't it. It was another one."
Leela looked over at Kif. "The Nimbus!" they both shouted at once.
They turned and raced off towards the docking point between the two ships, but, all of a sudden, the Planet Express ship shook, violently. Leela raced over to the windows, and found that the Nimbus was pulling away from their ship, undocking, and heading off into space.
The others all joined Leela, gawping at the departing Nimbus.
"Kif," said Zapp. "Contact the crew on board the Nimbus. Tell them to apprehend this weapon at once."
Kif sighed. "There is no crew on board that ship. You made me order them to leave."
"Then contact the cafeteria crew!" said Zapp.
"We are the cafeteria crew," said one of the 'soldiers'.
The 'soldiers' all raised up their 'weapons' — which consisted of assorted ladles, spoons, forks, and knives.
Zapp thought a moment. "Oh, yeah, that's right," he remembered. "My normal crew died three weeks ago, in that invasion of radioactive space weasels."
"Cool," said Fry, his nose pressed against the window. "A talking monkey that steals space ships."
"Aw, man!" said Bender, crossing his arms. "Here I am, talking about hawking illegal merchandise, and the illegal merchandise goes off and hawks a space ship!"
Fry patted Bender on the arm. "Don't worry, Bender," he said. "This doesn't make you any less evil in my eyes."
"Yeah, well, stealing a space ship is nothing," insisted Bender. "You think that's impressive? I've stolen whole star systems before!"
Leela ignored the others, and raced into the main flight deck of Planet Express. She thudded into the captain's seat, and started dialing up settings on the ship's computer.
"I think I can track where it's going!" said Leela. She pulled a lever, and the Planet Express ship surged into life.
"Stand aside!" said Zapp, as he sidled over to Leela. "This is no job for a woman. This is a job for Zapp—"
Leela swerved the ship hard to the right, so that Zapp was knocked away from her, crashing against the far side of the ship.
"Do you have any idea where it could be heading?" asked Kif.
Leela tapped a few more things on the Planet Express computer. "Planet Doom," she said.
"You mean we could have just stayed at home and watched TV, and the package would have delivered itself?" asked Fry, slumping into a nearby chair. "We work way too hard!"
As they approached the Nimbus, which was now orbiting the Planet Doom, Leela maneuvered the Planet Express ship so that it docked with the Nimbus. They searched the Nimbus, but it was soon clear that whatever or whoever had hijacked the ship had left.
No life signs onboard the Nimbus, and the ship was down one escape pod.
"I'll blast that escape pod clear into next year!" shouted Zapp.
"Why don't you just leave it?" said Leela. "Maybe it's happier out in the wild."
"Or maybe it would be happier in little tiny pieces!" said Zapp, as he pressed a button on the control panel of the flight deck.
The panel blinked, gave an annoyed beep, and suddenly, all the computer monitors around them went black.
Writing lit up the monitors.
Zapp jumped as he saw the writing. "It's those circley thingies again!" he shouted.
Leela squinted.
"What… what does it say?" asked Fry, nervously.
"It says, 'leave at once, or you'll all be in terrible danger,'" Leela read.
"Another intimidation tactic!" said Zapp. "Kif, tell this weapon that, when Zapp Brannigan is your captain, you're always in terrible danger."
"We can't tell the weapon anything," said Kif, with a weary sigh. "This is just a message."
"I'll show you a message!" said Zapp, pressing the 'fire' button again on the control panel.
As before, the button did absolutely nothing.
"Well, good luck with that," said Leela. "Our work is done. We'll be going home, now."
She, Fry, and Bender all turned around and started heading back to the Planet Express Ship.
"Stop!" Zapp Brannigan commanded, waving his gun at them. "Under article... something of the Earth… something… I hereby place you under arrest for piracy and the illegal sale of dangerous weapons to Earth's enemies." He turned to the crew. "Arrest them."
The crew grumbled, but took out their kitchen implements and did their best to follow orders.
"We didn't do anything," Leela protested, as she was handcuffed with an industrial masher and an egg whisk. "This whatever-thing stole your spaceship, not us!"
"Yeah, we didn't even get any money for it!" said Bender, as his hands were secured with an oversized carrot peeler.
"The sentence for the sale of illegal firearms to the enemy during a time of war is death," said Zapp.
"We're not at war!" Leela shouted.
"We could be," said Zapp. "Now that you've just sold weapons to someone we might have been able to invade."
"We're going to die, aren't we?" asked Fry, his own hands secured with a garlic peeler.
Zapp sidled up to Leela. "There are always ways we could negotiate," he suggested.
"He means you could sleep with him!" Bender shouted at her.
"The weapon's the one that stole your ship and ran away!" said Leela. "Sleep with it!"
Zapp Brannigan thought this over. "Kif," said Zapp Brannigan, "apprehend this weapon and sleep with it. At once."
Kif's green face went pale.
"In the meantime," said Zapp, sidling up to Leela, again, "I will be getting better acquainted with this erotic spaceship captain."
Leela looked away in disgust.
"Wait, wait, what if we got the weapon back?" Fry proposed.
"Yeah!" Leela agreed. "Fry's the only one who's seen what it looks like. We could go down, get it back, and give it to you. Then no one would have to sleep with anyone!"
"Unless they really, really liked them," Fry said, hopefully, his eyes fixed on Leela.
"A likely story…" said Zapp.
"Sir, if these three are willing to do something as suicidally dangerous as recapturing that weapon, it'd mean we wouldn't have to," Kif pointed out. "And it would also give you a few hours to admire the sound of your own voice."
Zapp considered. "Very well," he decided. "Uncuff them."
The crew grumbled, but did as they were told.
"Aw, does this mean we actually have to do stuff?" Bender complained.
"Think, Bender!" said Fry. "There could be all kinds of things you could steal on the Planet Doom! And robot hookers! And casinos!"
Bender thought about it. "Hey, yeah," he said. "All right, count me in!"
"Planet Doom, here we come!" said Leela.