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

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

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

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

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

"Space must be different in here," she observed.

"You mean like the TARDIS?" Fry replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian Fleming's Goldfinger…

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

A voice, Onespawn's voice, flat, uninterested, said: "Now we can begin."

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

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

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

"Wait, I know this," Fry said. "But wasn't it supposed to be a laser?"

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

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

"That's very neatly put," Bond said. "You express yourself most vividly."

"He doesn't look like Sean Connery," Fry whispered to Leela.

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

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

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

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

"You're being a damn fool, Onespawn," Bond said through gritted teeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I wouldn't count on that, Sherlock," Mr. Fry muttered.

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

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

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

"After it!" Mr. Fry shouted. "We can't let it get away!"

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

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"George Milton."

"And what's yours?"

George said: "His name's Lennie Small."

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

"No he ain't, but he's sure a hell of a good worker. Strong as a bull."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Make 'um stop, George!" he wailed.

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

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

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

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

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

"George?" Lennie said.

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

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

A floating brain fled across the top of the pool.

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

Space, the Final Frontier...

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

"Hey," Fry said. "I know this place… it's the transporter room!"

"The what?" Leela asked.

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

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

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

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

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

"What? What is it?" Leela asked in confusion.

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

"Fan-fiction?" Leela repeated in horror. "But that's the worst kind of fiction there is!"

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

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

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

"Captain to bridge," a calm, well-rounded voice said over the ship's intercom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spock nodded and moved away.

"Captain!" Hikaru Sulu called from the helm. "We're losing power in the warp engines!"

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

"I can barely read it, but I don't like it."

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

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

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

"How 'bout it, Spock?" Kirk said in bewilderment.

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

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

"A brain," Spock finished for him.

"I've never seen anything like it. Is this what's causing the subspace distortions?"

"It would seem a logical conclusion."

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

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

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

Doctor Leonard McCoy squinted. "It's a brain," he said simply.

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

"Well what d'you want me to say, Jim? I'm a doctor, not a tactical analyst."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who is this?" Captain Kirk snapped, leaning forward. "Who's doing this to us… and why?"

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

"It's planning to destroy the Universe!" Leela added.

"Destroy the Universe?" Kirk repeated.

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

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

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

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

"Evasive!" Kirk snapped. "Aft shields to maximum!"

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

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

"Do what he said," the Captain grunted.

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

"A photon torpedo!" Fry shouted, overcome by excitement. "Let's finish it off!"

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

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

"Thank you, Mr. Scott."

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

"We have to follow it," Leela said.

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

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

"Pardon?" Kirk stared at him.

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

"Er, son?" McCoy pointed at Fry's jacket. He looked down at the bright red garment.

"Ah crap," Fry muttered.

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

"Good lord," McCoy grunted at the sight.

"Fascinating," Spock added.

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

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

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

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

"Alright, wide-beam, on my mark," Kirk said when they'd finished.

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

"Best shot we have," Leela replied.

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

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

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

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

"Looks like it," Leela said.

"No!" the creature screamed. "It's impossible! You cannot!"

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

The blade shimmered and pulsed…

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