THREE:
TO BONEVALD
Bruno thought that the humans were weird. When he looked over all of them as they sat around the table with him, he wondered how he could possibly work with them.
"Is my little Bruno comfortable?" Amy inquired.
Bruno groaned. The girl, who had introduced herself and the others to him after he had introduced himself, was smothering him in a death grip.
"I think he might be able to talk if you actually let go of him," Leela suggested coldly.
Bruno sighed with relief as Amy loosened her grip on him, snarling like a demon cat and causing him to leap from her lap unto the table, above which the Professor had suspended a glowing map of Bonevald.
Bruno was fascinated by this technology. He loved how the map, which was a green
hologram, illuminated all the continents and rivers of his home planet.
"That's shiny," Bruno couldn't help but say, sticking his nose up to the map only to back away from it seconds later when his muzzle went through it.
"Stupid mutt," Bender muttered under his breath. Bruno turned to snap at him but stopped, for the Professor, who had pointed a gnarled finger at the map, began to speak.
FRY
"Good news everyone!" my nephew said.
I felt like crying my brains out. Those three words meant so much: doom, destruction, ruin…and I just didn't feel like putting up with any of that crap right now. My hands, which Dr. Zoidberg had heavily bandaged earlier, were flaring and itching like crazy
"Don't worry Fry," Zoidberg reassuringly draped one of his crimson claws over my shoulders and making me wince. One time that claw had ripped my entire arm off.
"As long as you don't scratch it too much the scars should heal over quickly."
"Easy for you to say," I griped, but actually kept my mouth shut long enough to listen to the Professor, who was pointing out Bonevald's most important landmarks and continents.
"You all get to go to the largest and most dangerous continent of them all… the Dead Land, which our dear King Rufus so violently rules," he ominously replied.
"But I live on this one!" Bruno protested, pointing at a smaller continent that the Professor had called Meatrock earlier.
"How did Rufus throw you off then?" I asked.
Bruno looked up at me guiltily. He had apologized for mauling me earlier but I wasn't going to let him by that easily.
"You don't understand how vast his powers and resources are." Bruno shook his head. "He has people working for him in all three continents and he sends out messages to them. That's how my people got thrown off Meatrock to your planet."
"But how?" Amy folded her arms atop the table and resting her head on them. "I thought Bonevald was in another galaxy at the edge of the universe."
"It is," Bruno confirmed. "But every thousand years it rotates around the universe and returns back to where it was. No one knows why. You guys just got unlucky when it came around this time thanks to Rufus."
"Look, this is really fascinating and all," Bender interjected, not fooling me one bit, "But could we skip the geography lessons and hit the road? My shiny metal ass is itching to get out of this dump."
"Well said, Bender," I concurred.
Everyone gave me mean looks for some reason.
LEELA
Though I was glaring at Fry and Bender along with everybody else, I silently agreed with my friends; my hands were just dying to grip the Planet Express Ship's helm again.
"What?" Fry looked around at everyone with his big round eyes. He was so stumped that he was still sitting in his seat long after everyone had left the table. If Bender hadn't went back and got him I think that he would've still been sitting there long after the ship was out of HQ.
"Fasten you're seatbelts everyone," I warned once we had all climbed into the cockpit. Fry and Bender took their usual places in the seats that sat on either side of my captain's chair while the others left to do whatever. Then, we were out of there.
ZOIDBERG
I hated flying. Being a Crustacean crab I preferred to be a bit closer to the land and water, not in the sky while trapped in a ship with a wild assortment of humans.
"Ya need to ease up a little, Zoidberg," Hermes advised. I groaned. He had walked in on me as I hunched over the bathroom toilet, retching my guts out.
"If I ease up anymore I'm going to –" I began, but didn't finish the rest of the sentence. All of a sudden a loud BOOM resounded against the starboard side of the ship, rocking it and causing me to slide away from the toilet and into Hermes, who tumbled into the corridor.
"What in da God's name was dat?" Hermes shouted, pushing me off of him.
I shrugged. With Leela as captain, that boom could mean anything.
HERMES
"What's da matter with ya, woman?" I shouted, running into the cockpit as fast as I could, which wasn't very fast at all due to the fact that I hadn't participated in a limbo match for years, a sad truth that my wife LaBarbara never let me forget.
Leela didn't have to answer. I saw what was wrong the instant my eyes landed outside the cockpit, which was surrounded on all sides by some kind of defensive force field.
"What in the world is that, Bruno?" the Professor, who had just walked in after
me and Zoidberg, questioned. I realized with horror that he looked scared.
"Where we are closer to Bonevald the king's defense mechanism activates and renders any ship in its path helpless," Bruno said, looking as scared as the rest of us.
"We're boned," Bender said needlessly.
Everyone cried out as the force field knocked the ship in a violent dive straight toward Bonevald.