FIVE:

A ROYAL PAIN

AMY

"I have to pee," Fry announced an hour after we had started our trek toward the carriages, which we could see glittering miles away in the northwestern direction from the ship.

I snorted. Fry's mood had changed much since we left the ship. I guess this was because he was now decked in a black leather jacket, which was draped over a blue t-shirt, and a decent pair of pants and shoes, all of which the crew had dug out of the wreckage of the ship.

Having ditched my pink sweater, I was adorned in new clothes to and they included a red tank top and bell-bottom jeans. The others had new clothes as well, and I had to say that we all looked rather sexy, even the Professor, who had gotten rid of the scary lab jacket and had replaced it with a black tuxedo and bowler hat.

"If you must, Fry, go do it somewhere else," Leela suggested. I looked at her.

Instead of wearing her white tank top, Leela now had on a pink, long-sleeved shirt and a purple skirt, which actually looked good with her hair.

"Yes, mon, and take Nibbler with you," Hermes said, looking spiffy in a black tuxedo of his own. Nibbler had been nipping at everyone's feet for awhile now, and I was glad that he had said something because my high heels had just recently became Nibbler's favorite chew toy.

"All right then, come on Nibbler," Fry took Nibbler's leash away from Leela and heading away from the group. "You get to watch me take a leak, you lucky three-eyed little beast."

I stared after Fry as he limped away, shaking my head and wondering how he'd lasted this long in the future.

FRY

"I don't have to actually watch you spill your urine, do I?" Nibbler asked in his surprisingly deep voice.

I shrugged. "Nah, I just wanted to say that. You can do whatever you want – hey, did you hear that?"

We both stopped. I could hear whimpering noise, you know, like puppy sounds. When I told Nibbler this he looked at me and said, "Are you sure that your not hearing things, Fry?"

"Positive," I confirmed, and went into a jog at an awkward gait. Apparently, one of my legs had gotten busted up pretty good in the crash. Ouch.

That didn't stop me from finding that noise. With Nibbler's help, we had located it within seconds, and when we did Nibbler licked his chops.

"Ummm…puppy chow, delicious," he said when we stumbled upon the two scared puppies that I had heard. They were a couple of cowards, trembling against each other under a puny rock but that didn't stop Nibbler from opening his jaws wide and biting down on their heads with his sharp fangs.

"Yikes, that was cold, Nibbler," I said.

Nibbler burped and rubbed his tummy. Gross. I suddenly had to do more then just pee.

ZOIDBERG

Riding in the carriage was like living in that nice, roomy shell that I had found back during the crew's underwater adventure in Atlanta, where Fry had fallen in love with a mermaid. The only difference was that the carriage had cushioned seats and its interior was decorated in a rich, gold color while my shell had been completely empty and perfect…

Sigh…it was a shame that that stupid Bender had to accidentally burnt it to the ocean floor with one of his cigarettes. Stupid robot…

As we rode on, I fell into a depression, and was silent and boring through the rest of the trip and none of my friends talked to me, as usual.

"All right all of you losers, out," one of the servants ordered sometime later, and everyone piled out of the carriages, which were drawn by these big ugly wolves, and beheld a sight that I could never forget.

We were seeing a castle, a huge sand castle that was built from the ground up by sand, glorious sand like the kind my people used on their home planet to build their houses. Its windows were made out of bones, as well as the foundation and entrance, which was a pair of large double doors.

"Some of my family is buried in those walls," Bruno pointed out.

I began to vomit again.

"Looks like this trip isn't actually agreeing with Zoidberg," Bender said, chuckling. Bruno pointed his nose at him, not knowing what to think.

He was glad to be home, of course, but for some reason this didn't feel like home, not with all the weird people about…

"He's in the Dog Bowl," a cat, who had been one of the servants, hissed in a grating voice as she leaped from the front seat of the carriage. "We will take you to him."

The Dog Bowl, or the Great Hall in King Rufus' castle, was where the king held his most fanciful dinners and when, after the cats had lead them down countless corridors filled with portraits of the kings ancient ancestors, they were all in the Bowl Bruno felt his mouth drop open as drool spilled out of it.

He was in paradise.

BENDER

I was in a thief's heaven. Everywhere you looked in this room there was gold…Gold walls, gold sand, gold tables, hell, even the food was gold.

"Don't get any ideas, Bender," Leela warned. I mimicked her quietly as she turned away from me.

"How are we supposed to eat this?" Fry walked up to one of the bronze tables and picking a golden piece of chicken from a… you guessed it, a gold plate. I laughed when he bit into and let out a high-pitched "Yowch!"

"Oh, I see you're here already," Rufus sauntered into the room like he was a saint prince or something. "Please, have as much as you like."

"But how are we supposed to eat this crap?" Fry shouted. His mouth flew open when Bruno walked passed him and, leaping upon the table, began to gnaw on the rock-hard food.

"He is," Amy pointed at Bruno and Nibbler dragged Leela behind on his leash and went toward the food to have his try at it.

"Oh well," I walked up to Fry. "At least it'll make for some good stealing later, right?"

"Guess so," Fry replied, sounding a little distant and I could tell that his mind was wondering in another universe. "Say, Rufus, do all dogs that kill over end up here?"

"Mostly," Rufus said, with an evil gleam in his eyes. "Some do go to hell though, or purgatory."

"Oh, I know who you're thinking about," I said, remembering that Fry had had a dog named Seymour that had died.

"Yup, Seymour," Fry said. "Do you know him? He's small, with brown fur and he knows how to sing Walking on Sunshine. I taught him that," he finished with a proud, lop-sided grin on his face and I sighed.

"Oh, you mean Sir Seymour?" Rufus looked shocked. "Why he's one of my good-for-nothing knights-"

'Go fetch him, boy!" Fry ordered, pointing off in a random direction and I howled with laughter as Rufus stalked away. Fry was grinning like a hopeless fool the entire time.

LEELA

"What did you guys just do?" I asked Fry and Bender after Rufus had moped off. I was judging those merry smiles on their faces to be sure signs of guilt.

"Seymour's here!" Fry cried out joyously. "I just told Rufus to go fetch him."

I couldn't help but smile.

"Yeah, and while he's gone," Bender said, strutting over to a nearby wall and plucking piles of sand from it to store them into his chest compartment, "we'll just still all his shiny dough."

He began to hum as he went about his work and Fry and I just stood there and watched him, enjoying ourselves.

"We need to think of a plan to overthrow Rufus while he's gone," the Professor said, and I nodded my head in agreement. "Anybody got any ideas?"

"Well, the cats hate him," Fry noted rubbing his nose. Sometimes he did that when he had to think too hard. "Why don't we just use them to mutiny against him?"

"That's the smartest thing you've ever said, mon," Hermes joked. Fry glowered at him

"Hermes, you and Zoidberg can be the ones that round them all up," I said.

Fry chuckled.

The mutiny was on.

HERMES

"Here kitty, kitty, kitty," I chanted with Zoidberg, feeling stupid as I stood next to the crab and motioned for the cat servants, who were standing on their hind legs, to come to us.

It wasn't working. We had been doing this for at least ten minutes, ever since we had first discovered the cats toiling about in the courtyard, looking evil as they worked, and we still hadn't gotten a communicative response from them.

Zoidberg sighed. "I don't think that they like us being here."

I nodded. They didn't like us, all right, but we had to get this plan to work.

"Yo, cats! We need to talk with one of ya, mon!" I smiled broadly when one of the big male cats walked over to us, his Persian fur rippling suspiciously as he approached us.

It hit me then that we were completely outnumbered. What if one of these cats decided that they wanted a couple of new scratching posts? Then what?

Ask me later when I'm not in a deadly situation. .

FRY

"So, what's taking him so long?" Bender asked. I hushed him. I was waiting for the opening lines of Walking on Sunshine in dog speak.

It wasn't too long afterwards that I got what I was hoping for but it wasn't exactly what I had expected. Seymour was actually singing the song as Rufus brought him in, not howling it as used to and I burst into song with him.

"I'm walking on sunshine, whoa, whoa!"

We sung it together, our voices tuned in perfect harmony with each other. When it was all over, Seymour leaped into my lap and started to lick every inch of my face that he could reach with his slimy tongue.

"So, you still like pizza?" he asked in a fast, cheerful voice whenever he had finished bathing me.

"Sure," I said, once I could breathe again. I was wiping Seymour's salvia off my face with my shirt sleeve as I asked him: "So, why are you working for Rufus?"

Seymour wasn't so cheerful anymore. "That's a long story that I wish not to tell," he said, and I respected his wishes by not asking anymore questions.

"Here comes the cavalry!" a voice shouted.

I turned around to see Hermes and Zoidberg charging into the room, leading the scariest army of cats that I've ever seen.

"Beautiful, man," Seymour breathed. I ran my fingers through his fur. It felt so good to be able to touch it again, after all these years…

The room turned into a madhouse. Rufus didn't stand a chance; the cat army was on him within seconds, and in a flash there was nothing left of the dog king but his eyes, nose, and bones for the cats had tore apart the rest of him into shreds.

"Now that was a royal pain in the ass," One of the cats said after he had filled his tummy and crapped in the floor.

"Ewww," I said, along with everyone else.