Futurama

Stranger In A Strange Land, part 5
By La Belle Leela

(Planet Express Ship, 06/04/3008, approaching Earth, 0134 NNY time)

"Wooo hoo hoo, I see a certain kitty still knows how to scratch!" said a dumpy looking middle aged man dressed in a ridiculously tight red velour uniform. Dave noticed the man had an ill-fitting hairpiece, and a huge pot belly. "Just what the hell do you want Zapp?" shouted Leela. "Oh, it's nothing, your ship is being held oh-so-sensously by my tractor beam, and you've been selected, completely at "random", for an inspection by the DOOP's Transport Spacecraft Administration (TSA), prepare to be very seductivley boarded." said Brannigan. After a few minutes, the Planet Express ship was brought inside the cavernous hangar bay of the large DOOP command ship, Nimbus. The Planet Express ship's flight deck door slid open, Dave noticed Brannigan standing there, flanked by two teen-aged looking TSA inspectors. Brannigan shouted "Ok, you go that way, and you go that way.", motioning to them by waving his arms in a rather silly manner. "Your ship's manifest & crew list, let's see em'" said Zapp. "Hmmmm, Metalon-6 eh? buncha long-haired, leathered degenerates if you ask me!" While going over the crew list, Brannigan looked around at everyone. He obviously recognized Leela, Fry, and Bender, but had never seen Dave before. "Soooo Leela, I see there's another rooster in the hen house!" Leela gave Zapp a mocking laugh, and said "Dave, allow me to introduce you to this pompous, chauvanistic, idiot with the over inflated ego, this is Capt Zapp Brannigan. Zapp had raised his hand, cutting Leela off mid-sentence, "Leela, I forgot how sexifully you are when you're angry, and insulting towards me!" he said with a dumb, sleazy grin on his face.

"Just do your stupid inspection, and let us go!" snapped Leela. Zapp couldn't resist, "Leela, what's say you & me go back to my quarters for a more in-depth inspection of the sexilectual kind, followed by some sham-pag-n." Dave couldn't hide his laughter anymore, and after composing himself he said "Ohh my god, not even the sleaziest 1970s pimps talked, or used pick up lines as bad as this guy does, HAAA!" Zapp lookedover at Dave, narrowing his eyes angrily. "What's this punk's name?" Zapp said while walking over to where Dave was standing. "He's not on the crew list sir!" squeeked one of the TSA inspectors. "Sooo, it appears we have an unauthorized person on board." said Brannigan. "*sigh* He's with us you fat idiot! He was accidentally transported here from the 21st century two days ago by one of Farnsworth's malfunctioning inventions. We were just letting him come along on a routine delivery to see how we work." Leela knew better than to try and be rational with Brannigan, she knew he was only detaining them so he could make more vain attempts at hitting on her. "He's only here until The Professor can fix his machine, and send him home." Zapp turned to her, "Leela!, how could you do this to me? As soon as I turn my back, you're hooking up with another guy!" Dave had realised the situation had turned serious. He saw Leela was getting angrier, and aggressive towards Brannigan, and Dave didn't like what Zapp was doing at all. "I'm arresting this unauthorized stowaway!" said Zapp. Bender and Fry gasped, Leela stood off to the side with an incendiary look in her eye.

Zapp reached out, grabbed Dave by his right arm, and with one lightning-quick reaction, Dave swung his left arm through the air, and across Brannigan's face with a loud, metallic *POP*! Leela shouted, "DAVE, NO!" when she saw the hand Dave struck Zapp with was holding his .45 pistol. Leela hadn't seen what Dave actually did, she though he was going shoot Brannigan, but what Leela, Fry, and Bender didn't know was that Dave had only pistol-whipped Zapp. Dave had hit him so fast, nobody saw the gun in Dave's hand, until he seated it back in it's holster under his arm. Brannigan collapsed to the floor in pain, about the same time another DOOP officer appeared, telling his captain they had no authority to arrest Dave, since they had no file, or information on him. "What?" said Zapp, trying to gather himself from the savage blow he just received to his head. "Sir, this man is an Unknown, under DOOP regulation N728DA-385-1C, he is considered non-Earthican, and has immunity, unless he is openly engaged in an act of war sir!" Zapp angrily replied "What the hell do you call this soldier?" he said while still sprawled out on the floor of the Planet Express ship's bridge, holding his head in pain. "Sir, I did not witness anything, sir!" replied the DOOP officer. Zapp struggled to get to his feet, he looked at the side of his face in the reflection from an overhead console, noticing the huge, ugly welt that the big steel frame of Dave's .45 auto had left. Brannigan breathed raggedly as he spoke, "Leela, come over here, help me out, but I want you to walk reeeally slow sweet cheeks!" Before Leela took one step, Dave turned, grabbed Brannigan by the collar, shoved him to the ground, hard, picked him back up by the collar, until they were face to face, and spoke to him in a demonic tone "DON'T YOU EVER! talk to her like that again, or I swear to god, I will end you where you stand!!!" Dave slammed Brannigan back down to the floor, Zapp slowly began to crawl away, his eyes wide with fear, and sucking in air like a dying fish. Just as Zapp made it to his feet at the front of the Planet Express ship's forward stairwell, Leela shouted "Hey Zapp, no hard feelings!" she gave him a savage flying kick to his backside, sending him careening down the stairwell, and onto the cold, hard floor of the Nimbus's hangar bay. Brannigan staggered to his feet, muttering "Oooooh, daddy was bad, daddy was very bad!" still wearing his nasty, sleazy grin.

"Dave, what the HELL were you thinking? That was totally uncalled for!!!" growled Leela. Bender chortled "Heh heh heh, I thought that was freakin' awesome! You whacked that guy better than Joey Mousepad Dave!" Fry said nothing, but was nodding in agreement with what Bender said. Fry ran over to the ship's window, pointing and laughing at Brannigan as he limped across the hangar bay. "LOOK AT ME!" shouted Leela. Dave, Fry, and Bender's full attention centered on the infuriated Leela. "I wanna know, what the hell were you thinking?" Dave still said nothing. Leela paused, looked at the wall for a minute, trying to find her next sentence. "You could have gotten us all arrested, our ship confiscated, and VERY long jail sentences!" Fry interrupted "I can't go to jail, I'm too pretty! I can't even stand the catcalls when I have to go bail Bender out!" Leela continued, "You're lucky those two TSA inspectors left before you clobbered Zapp." Dave replied "Well, you kicked him down the stairs, what the hell did you do that for?" Leela shot back, "I owed him that, plus that sick bastard gets a rise outta being struck by women, so I did it for the sake of saving our asses!" Dave walked over to Leela, "Look, I'm sorry Leela. I don't know what came over me, he put his hands on me with hostile intent, all I wanted to do was defend myself." Leela felt a small pang of regret for yelling at Dave, she was the same way, she remembered doing the same to Zapp on numerous occasions. "Even if he is a gross, perverted pig, did you have hit him with your gun?" said Leela. Dave replied "No,,,,but I certainly put the fear of god into him!" cracking a little smile as he finished. Leela didn't find that amusing, but still felt angry towards Dave, "Well next time, leave it in the holster mister!", "No problem Leela." said Dave, as he turned & walked back to the crew rest area, sat down & tried to think about what had just happened. Dave felt the floor vibrate as the ship's engines came on line, and begin to power the ship out of the Nimbus's hangar. Dave stared out of the adjacent porthole as the Nimbus slipped from view. Dave watched the ship re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, it was very quiet, Dave turned away, thinking to himself,,, "Just what the hell was I thinking?"