And now chptr 3. I bet you're surprised that Leela is Oola Hinani huh? Well it was a bit obvious. Anyway, in this chapter our heros find some interesting wildlife on safari, and Zoidberg meets up with his grandfather. Forward!
A day later, the Planet Express ship was flying over a grassy feild while the hot suns bared down over the planet surface. However, the captain, Leela's concern was pointed more at the plight of the planet's wildlife.
Robby the sailback hippopotamus sat in a corner, watching Leela. Robby knew from the moment the cyclops woman had given him water that Leela was Oola Hinani, the deity from the sky whose coming had been foretold long ago. Now she was here, and she was destined to save them all with her life-giving water. Robby knew it. The grootslangs knew it, as did the wild buggalo. Leela was Oola Hinani, and though she herself did not yet know of her identity, she would soon. Robby's little herd knew that the prophecy had come true as well, and in fact were conversing of it down in the hold. They had never given up faith that Oola Hinani would come, and she did. Robby had been with a herd of his own kind once, but not anymore. They were all dead. When the water had disappeared, the aquatic animals were hit hardest. Robby had been lucky. But had he been? He was forced to watch his entire herd die before his eyes, including his big sister. She had always looked out for Robby, but she was gone now, and she was never coming back. A tear slid down Robby's cheek. All he wanted right now was for one last nuzzle from his sister, one last memory of her. He got up and went into the empty halls, where he lay down and sobbed.
Leela had seen Robby walk out sullenly into the halls out of the corner of her eye. She felt so sorry for him, a little animal trapped in a suffering world. Leela sighed as she landed the ship near a dried-up riverbed.
The crew, now clothed in casual safari attire, stepped out of the ship and onto the dry earth.
"Alright everyone, we're going to find out where this drought came from if it takes all day." Leela said to her crew and Zoidberg. "Fry and Bender, I want you to go and collect samples of the soil so we can analyze it and find out when this drought started." Fry and Bender grumbled and went to work, shoveling dirt into glass jars.
"Ok, Dr. Zoidberg, you can go and find your grandfather, and if you see any animals dying of thirst, you CAN'T eat them." Leela told the crustacean.
"Fine, fine. I will not feed myself like every living this has to in order to survive." Zoidberg emphasized, earning a groan from Leela.
"Fine." She said dejectedly. "You can eat a few animals, but only if their already dead. And poke them a few times to make sure they're dead."
"I can agree with that, I can." The docter said as he sand-crabbed away in search of his relative. As the spineless physician crawled away, the animals that Leela had rescued walked out of the ship and looked around the surroundings. The giant stork walked over to Bender and Fry and started pecking them on the heads.
"Ow! Hey, that hurt!" Fry said angrily as the towering ave jabbed his skull.
"Haha! I think he likes you, Fry!" Bender chuckled, prompting the bird to jab him in the head. "Youch! Leela! Make this dumb bird stop peckin' me!"
"Lighten up guys, he's just playing." Leela said as the large bird continued to strike her friends with its bill. The land whale then waddled over and dug into the dry earth. It reached its snout into the dirt and pulled out a large, dry tuber which it took a hungry bite out of. The spike-chinned rhinos ran over and ate up the rest of it, but also shared with the fanged lizards. Leela watched as the animals shared their food, a smile growing on her face. Suddenly, the giant stork screeched a warning. Out of nowhere, a huge bear with a crocodile-like snout roared. The animals ran back to ship, as did the crew, but Leela tripped on a root and fell. The bear stood on its hind legs and roared, about to tear the screaming cyclops apart, but suddenly, Robby leaped in front of Leela and roared at the hulking carnivore. The croc-bear roared and swung a clawed arm at the sailback hippo, missing him by an inch. Robby snorted and was joined by the land whale and the female wild buggalo, who bellowed at the predator. Leela suddenly felt herself being dragged away by the two ground birds towards the ship. Leela looked back at the battle, and saw that the croc-bear had dropped back on all fours, and Robby was grunting and growling at it, seemingly speaking to it. Leela heard Robby snarl the words, ''Oola Hinani'', in his animal voice, causing the croc-bear to instantly back down and mewl shamefully.
"That was weird." Leela said as she stood up and dusted herself off. She wondered what Robby had said to the croc-bear to make it act this way. She walked over to the ashamed repto-mammal and patted it on the snout. The croc-bear growled happily and licked Leela's hand, getting a little laugh out of the cyclops. Robby then came over and sniffed the larger creature suspiciously.
"It's alright, Robby. He's just hungry." Leela said to her animal friend. By this point, Fry and Bender had returned.
"Yet again, Leela has gone off-topic for an animal." Bender said mockingly. Leela- and the animals- glared at him.
"Shut your talking unit, Bender." Leela said. "This croc-bear is just hungry. It probably hasn't had food or water in days!"
"If he's hungry, I've got a fresh sheep carcass he can snack on." Bender stated as he pulled a still-bloody sheep carcass out of his chest cabinet.
"Uhh, Bender? Why do you have a sheep carcass on you at this precise moment?" Fry asked.
"I was planning on cooking the bones and hair for you guys to eat, but I had a hard enough time killing this thing, so I aint cooking it!" The robot replied. Bender tossed the bloody body to the ground and, after eyeballing it for a second, the croc-bear tore into the flesh and began devouring whole chunks of tender, dripping meat. Leela, Fry, Bender, and the other animals looked away in disgust as the croc-bear ravenously satisfied its meatlust. When it finished eating, the croc-bear had left the carcass nearly picked clean. The croc-bear joyfully licked the blood off its face and went back to Leela, and gave her a lick on the cheek before it walked away back into the tall grass and roared goodbye.
"So what are gonna do now?" Fry said as he casually walked up.
"Well, i don't know about you guys, but I'm going to help some more animals." Leela said confidently.
"You have fun with that." Bender said as he lit a cigar. Suddenly, earth-shaking footsteps rumbled in the crew's direction, and a humongous behemoth stampeded into the riverbed. The creature looked like an elephant, but was roughly 10 feet taller and about 40,000 pounds heavier. The giant pachyderm was an indigionous species to the planet, known as a spinetrunk. The beast roared and quickly revealed the reason for its name when hundreds of short but razor-sharp spines and spikes covered its long trunk. The beast targeted the screaming Bender, and knocked the robot 30 yards away with its trunk. Bender hit the hard ground with dozens of small holes littering his metal. The spinetrunk roared again, and Leela and Fry screamed in terror.
"Dum te dum, walking on the savanna, going to see my great-grandfather.." Zoidberg pleasantly hummed as he walked east across the savanna in search of Professor Hermelton Zoidberg. Along the way, Dr. Zoidberg had seen many natural wonders of Afrocadia 1, including Redbugger's canyon, the largest canyon in the solar system, named after the largely unknown Wallace Redbugger, the first man to discover the canyon and simaltaniously fall into it. Professor Redbugger named the canyon after himself while he was falling 13,000 feet to his doom, which is the main reason he was not very famous. Zoidberg traveled on, carefully studying the map that he did not actually have with him.
"Hmm hmm hmm. Hey! My foot just stepped on something!" The lobster gasped. He looked down and lifted his sandaled foot to reveal a curled up, scaly, red ball.
"Hmm, what is this thing I found, I did?" Zoidberg tapped the ball with his claw, and it instantly uncurled, revealing itself as a 10-inch-long scorpion-like creature with a shrimp's head, which hissed threateningly at the doctor.
"What's this? A spined scorpian shrimp? An arthropod- like myself- native to Afrocadia 1 but has recently been introduced to Shrimplonia 12? How cute!" Zoidberg said as the scorpion shrimp flared up a red fin on its back and hissed again. Zoidberg just chuckled to himself.
"I know that is a defence tactic among your kind, but two can play at this game!" Zoidberg aroused his own fin and squealed. The two crustaceans circled eachother, each one flaring their fins and snapping their claws, both trying to intimidate the other. Suddenly, the scorpion shrimp leaped at Zoidberg, only to have his tail caught by the Decapodian's fast claw.
"Ha ha! Foiled! Just like that clamping mafia robet I gave a good snipping to not long back." The angry scorpion shrimp snarled and continued to make grabs for Zoidberg's face with his claws. "It seems that someone doesn't know when to give up." The lobster said to himself. "Perhaps this can be resolved with phychological help." Zoidberg sat on the ground and held the small creature in his open claw.
"Now, tell me about your childhood. Where there any bad turns? Any good ones maybe?" For a moment, the scorpion shrimp looked puzzled, and then began speaking to Zoidberg in a weird language of garbly noises and hisses. After about an hour or so, he was finished.
"I see now." Zoidberg said. "Since your parents abandoned you and all of the larger invertabrates bullied you when you were young, you felt compelled to be violent and aggressive as you grew up. Very good, my friend! Explaining your troubled past helps you realize that the problem is not with you, but the world." Zoidberg set the now happy and gentle creature back on the ground.
"Keep up the good work, my friend. Farewell!" Zoidberg began to leave, but then felt something clinging to his leg. He looked down and saw that it was the scorpion shrimp. The critter looked up at Zoidberg in total admiration with its tongue lolling out of its mouth. Zoidberg chortled and picked the creature up in his claw again.
"Very well, my friend. You may come with me. I'll name you Zoider." Zoider liked his new name. He squeaked happily and scuttled onto Zoidberg's shoulder. The two new friends then walked into the horizon as the sun lowered in the sky.
Lol I lied. Sorry! Like the cliffhanger? And Zoidberg found a new friend! This just gets better.
