"Unnh," she mumbled. "My head's killing me. I haven't felt this bad since the morning after Scruffy's retirement party."
It was almost completely dark, and she was unable to move her hands and feet. "You okay, mon?" uttered a friendly voice.
"I think so, Hermes," Amy responded. "Where the schmell are we?"
"Inside Raven's cargo hold, from the looks of it," said the Jamaican.
Amy rolled onto her side. Her hands bound firmly behind her back, she could only move by slithering like a worm. This required too much exertion, so she gave up. "What happened to us?" she asked Hermes.
"The last thing I remember is Leela…I mean, Mildred sneaking up on me and blasting me with some kind of gas," her friend replied.
"That's what happened to me," said Amy, who expressed sudden concern. "Omigosh, I must've dropped the professor!"
An odd noise from the darkness greeted their ears: "Woowoowoo…woowoo…"
"She got Zoidberg, too," said Hermes.
"I've got to get free," said Amy, tugging with all her might against the cold chains around her wrists. "The professor's lost in an alley somewhere. He can only survive for a few hours outside of his jar."
"Woowoowoo…huh?" Zoidberg's eyes popped open. "What is? Where am I?"
"He's awake!" uttered Leela's, or rather Mildred's, voice. "Zoidberg, scuttle over here and snap these chains off so I can find Mildred and tear her limb from limb."
"I can't feel my claws," said Zoidberg dolefully.
"That's 'cause you got no nerves in your claws, mon," Hermes pointed out.
"No, really," said the lobster. "My claws are gone. The bitch took my claws!"
"Oh, my God," said Leela.
The cargo hold began to resonate with the sound of Zoidberg's blubbering. "My career is ruined," he moaned. "I'll never be able to handle a precision instrument again."
"They'll grow back…won't they?" said Amy.
"They won't be the same," the lobster lamented. "They'll be big, useless hams."
A sudden burst of light struck Amy, Leela, Hermes, and Zoidberg in the eyes, causing them to squint. The door to the hold had opened, and a purple-haired, Rubenesque cyclops in boots and a tank top stood over the helpless captives. Her face displayed no emotion at all as she tossed to the floor one of Delta's arms, then the other, then both her legs. Reaching behind her, she dragged in the broken fembot's still-connected head and torso.
"You won't get away with this, Mildred Sykes!" bellowed Leela, squirming furiously in a vain attempt to break her chains.
"I am not Mildred," uttered the monster that had stolen her face and voice, "and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm trying to get away with, so don't be presumptuous."
Delta, who had landed face-down, turned her head and gasped at the sight of Zoidberg's shattered stumps. "Good Lord, John," she remarked. "You've been hobbled."
"If you're not Mildred," said Leela, her voice swelling with rage, "then who the hell are you?"
The cyclops shot her a patronizing smirk, and then her body started to vibrate and shimmer. Her flesh contracted. Her skin turned the color of titanium. Her face reshaped itself into a round, metallic mass, featureless but for a pair of red, laser-like eyes. The creature that towered over them appeared to be the bare skeleton of a robot in its first phase of assembly.
"I AM PROTEUS," it intoned in a soulless bass voice.
"A shapeshifting robot," Delta marveled. "How modern."
"What do you want with us?" Hermes demanded to know.
"I want you out of the way," said Proteus, its tone devoid of anything resembling humanity. "You know too much about our work."
"Where's the professor?" Amy inquired.
"Halfway to the water treatment center, if he's survived this long," answered the slender robot.
"Since you're gonna kill us," said Hermes, "you may as well tell us all about your evil plan."
"Another time, perhaps," said Proteus. "Farewell."
The robot's knees bent backwards as it stepped out of the cargo hold. The door slid closed, drenching the chained captives in darkness once again.
"My life is over, it is," sobbed Zoidberg.
"It's a good thing I can't move," said Mildred/Leela. "As angry as I am right now, I don't care who I kill."
"Stay calm, everyone," said Delta. "John, now that your claws have been broken off, you should have no trouble slipping out of your wrist chains."
"What's the point?" said Zoidberg glumly. "All I have to look forward to is a life of freakish misery and begging for food."
"That's your life now, mon," Hermes reminded him.
"You can do it, Zoidberg," said Amy. "The professor's counting on you. We all are."
Mustering his strength and courage, Zoidberg rubbed his wrists together in hopes of loosening the uncomfortable chains. Seconds passed, and they gave way only slightly. Then, unexpectedly, the walls began to rumble.
"We're taking off!" exclaimed Hermes.
The cargo bay floor seemed to tug at their internal organs—the ship was ascending. "Raven!" Leela screamed. "Raven, can you hear me? Abort the launch!"
The female voice of the ship's artificial intelligence sounded above their heads. "Only Captain Turanga Leela is authorized to give such an order," it said matter-of-factly.
"I'm Captain Leela!"
"Your voiceprint identifies you as Mildred Sykes." Raven said a few more words, but they were drowned out by Leela's stream of unprintable obscenities.
The muffled roar of Raven's dark-matter engines filled the large chamber. Zoidberg persisted in his struggle, eventually pushing his chains as far as the base of what remained of his claws. "It's no use," said the lobster in despair. "She left behind just enough claw to get in the way."
On a street corner near the Planet Express building, Bender and Foss watched in bemusement as the bay doors flew open, permitting the black ship Raven to soar into the sky and vanish. "Where do you suppose they're going?" Foss wondered.
"Damned if I know," said Bender. "It's not like them to take off for a delivery without lettin' me know first. No, that's the sorta thing I'd do."
Lowering their eyes from the stratosphere, they noticed that the PE building's doors were opening. To their astonishment, Leela walked out. She glanced at them through the corner of her eye, then strolled along the sidewalk in another direction.
"That's odd," remarked Foss. "She didn't seem to recognize us."
"That is odd," Bender agreed. "Who's piloting the ship?"
Again and again, Hermes slammed down upon Zoidberg's fractured claw with his patent leather shoes. Again and again, the crustacean wailed in agony. After eleven attempts the claw finally cracked, and Zoidberg's wrist chains dropped to the floor with a clatter. For the first time he looked down at his claws, his ruined claws, and the fragment that dangled on a ligament where Hermes had crushed it. "Oh, the horror," he groaned, and tears sprang freely to his eyes.
"Quit moisturizing yourself and free the rest of us, mon!" snapped Hermes.
"With what?" said the weeping lobster. "All I have are these worthless stumps."
"John, I have an idea," said Delta. "If you can use your stumps to hold my arm up to its socket, my internal repair mechanisms will do the rest."
Zoidberg wiped his tears with the sleeve of his smock and went to work. Once Delta's right arm had welded itself in place with his assistance, she succeeded in reattaching her left arm and her legs. Now fully mobile, she quickly broke the chains that bound Amy, Hermes, and Zoidberg. "You'd better leave the chains on my wrists alone," Leela suggested. "I'm having a very, very hard time managing my anger."
Her arms were still tied behind her back when she followed the others to Raven's bridge. To their astonishment, no one, not even the dreaded Proteus, was present. "The ship's on auto-pilot," Amy observed.
"Well, spluh," said Hermes sarcastically.
"Raven," Leela demanded, "what's your current course and speed?"
"Speed, 45c," the computer replied. "Course, direct route to star Nubia Upsilon B."
"Nubia Upsilon B?" said Hermes as he gazed through the viewscreen at empty space. "That's six million light years away."
"We don't have enough fuel to make it there," said Leela.
"If you want my opinion," said Delta, "Proteus never intended for us to make it there."
Hermes, Amy, Zoidberg, and Leela turned to the fembot and gaped in horror.
"Raven, set a course for Earth," Leela ordered.
"Insufficient authorization," said the ship's intelligence.
"Set a course for Earth," Leela snarled, "or I'll rip you apart with my bare hands."
"Does not compute," said Raven.
"Leela," Amy asked the red-haired girl, "how far will the fuel we have get us?"
"At top speed?" said Leela thoughtfully. "About two hundred thousand light years."
"Two hundred thousand light years in any direction is uncharted space," said Hermes. "We got to get control of the ship back, before we end up just like the Robinsons."
To be continued
