Fred the Krab

"Not him again" said an overburdened octopus.

"I'm afraid so" said another harried-looking octopus who tried to comfort the first one.

"How did I get into this mess?"

Just then everything became wavy.

"What's this?" said the first octopus.

"Looks like a flashback" said the second octopus.

* * *

The scene resolves to a throne room. Fred the Krab is racing across the floor pursued hotly by some octopus guards. As he passes the throne, he nabs the crown jewels.

"I did it! I'm King now!" he chortles.

Fred races out of the building to another one that just happens to be there. A sign on the front of the building reads "Ted's pawn shop." Fred goes into the building.

A bored looking fish is sitting in the back behind the counter. Fred approaches him.

"Hi Ted." Says Fred as he approaches.

"Hi Fred." Ted puts down the newspaper he was reading. On the front page it says 'Fred is back in Atlantis. Housing prices plummet!'

"How much will you give me for these?" Fred takes out the crown jewels.

Ted looks over the crown jewels and announces "One moldy snail."

Fred becomes upset. "They're worth 100 times that!"

Ted goes back to looking bored. "They're stolen."

"Would I do that?" Fred contrives to look innocent.

"Just last week..." Ted goes back to his newspaper.

"You drive a hard bargain!" Fred cuts in. Fred pushes the crown jewels towards Ted who grudgingly flips over one snail.

Fred runs out of the establishment and goes into the next building that just happens to be there. Its sign reads 'Booze.'

Fred comes running out with a bottle that says 'Thunderbird' on it. He scuttles a little bit and then takes a long pull on the bottle and passes out.

* * *

The octopus guards catch up with Fred. Guard #1 searches Fred.

"Well, the jewels aren't on him."

"Better try the pawn shop." says guard #1.

"He'd have to be pretty stupid to pawn them there." Guard #2 says.

"He'd have to be pretty stupid to steal the crown jewels period." guard #1 responds.

"Good point." says guard #2 who sets off in the direction of the pawn shop.

* * *

"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen." Fred sings, off key.

Guard #1; whose name turns out to be Jerry, sighs.

"He's singing again." says Jerry to guard #2 whose name turns out to be Greg.

"Well, he is a criminal." Greg and Jerry are sitting at desks. Jerry has his tentacles covering his face.

"Judging from the last time, he won't sing for very long." Greg tries to console Jerry.

"Why did we have to arrest him?" Jerry sinks below the desktop.

"Well, he did steal the crown jewels." Greg points out.

"You mean he was dumb enough to steal the crown jewels." Jerry sits up enough to play with a pen.

"Well, he did steal them. Besides..." Gerry said.

"Besides what?"

"He's stopped singing." Greg points out.

Jerry sighs, gets up, and swims to the door leading to the cells. Then he stops. "He has also escaped."

Greg swims over.

"You know what this means?" Jerry asks.

"That we have to catch him again?" Greg volunteers.

"That too, but he could have broken out before he started singing!" Jerry finishes triumphantly.

Greg just stares at him.

Things go wavy again and then resolve to Jerry, sitting at a desk.

"What has he done this time?" Jerry asks.

"Well, according to Arnold from the booze shop, he stole some Thunderbird." answers Greg; while hanging up the phone.

"Do we have to arrest him?" Jerry looks dejected.

"I suppose so; but look on the bright side!" Greg is striving to be a 'the glass is half full!' kind of octopus.

"And what might that be?" Jerry replies. He is very much 'the glass is half empty' sort of octopus.

"He'll probably be two steps away from the exit; we won't have to search!" Greg declares.

* * *

Jerry and Greg are looking at Fred, who is passed out two steps from Arnold's Booze shop. He has a bottle gripped in one klaw. The bottle says 'Thunderbird.'

"Do we have to take him in; I mean, he'll sing if we do." Jerry complains.

"Well, he was stealing..."

Jerry rolls his eyes and sulks.

Greg tries to pick up the krab but he weighs too much. "Will you give me a tentacle here? This krab weighs a ton!"

Jerry rolls his eyes again, but swims over to help.

"Jezz! This krab should lose some weight!" Jerry complains.

"True! But getting him to exercise is harder than keeping him in jail!" Greg points out.

Jerry grunts but says nothing.

"Maybe we should give the bottle back to Arnold." Greg observes.

"I tried, but he's gripping it too tightly." Jerry says.

"Who could have imagined that?"

"I could!" Jerry says under his breath.

"What was that?" says Greg.

"Oh nothing." Jerry responds.

* * *

"Nobody knows the troubles I've seen." Fred is awake and singing.

"Shaddup!" Jerry perks up enough to say that, then he sinks back down into depression.

Just then a rather attractive female crab stomps into the room. She has a turban on her head.

"Who are you?" Jerry has perked up enough to ask that question.

"I'm Swami, Fred's ex-wife." she says.

"Don't you run that temple off of main flow?" Greg chimes in.

"Yeah, I'm here to pay you..." she says, but is cut off by Jerry.

"You're here to post bail for Fred?" Jerry looks incredulous.

"Not exactly I'm here to give you 100 snails to keep him locked up." Swami states.

"Now that's more believable!" Jerry slams his desk with a tentacle.

"I'm sorry, but you can't pay us to keep him locked up." Greg says.

"What are you talking about, Greg, we could take up a collection and retire!"

"I'm sorry but we can't start accepting money for suspects that people want to see jailed there'd be no end to it!" Greg stated, ignoring Jerry.

"So, you were married to this guy..." stated Jerry.

"He got me drunk." Swami said by way of explanation.

"Now that sounds more believable." Jerry responded.

Faintly from the cells..."Nobody knows the troubles I've seen..."

"Did he sing then?" Jerry asks Swami.

"Don't get me started." Swami declares.

"You mean it gets worse?" Jerry asks desperately.

Swami just stares at Jerry as if to say, 'This is your second warning.'

Another crab comes in. This one is on a broomstick.

"You're too late Wanda, they won't accept money." Swami says without looking up.

"How many ex-wives does this krab have?!" Jerry stops covering his face with his tentacles.

"Dozens." Swami states.

"How did you end up married to him?" asks Jerry who now looks truly wretched.

"Well, it's a long story"

Things get wavey again.

"Ooh what's happening?" says an alarmed Swami.

"Just a flash-back" interjects Greg.

* * *

The scene opens on Swami's place. Her living quarters are neat and tidy. Swami is sitting on the couch. Suddenly, there is a knock on the door.

"That must be my blind date!" Swami says as she gets up.

She opens the door to find Fred standing there. Fred grins sheepishly.

Swami stares at him a while in silence, then shrugs, and leaves with him. "At least it's a free meal."

They walk to a nearby Burger King.

"You really know how to treat a girl," Swami says without enthusiasm.

"You like it? I own it!" Fred says encouragingly.

They go in and order.

"I seem to have left my wallet in my other shell; would you mind...?" says Fred as he roots around in his shell.

"So much for the free meal!" says Swami, taking out her wallet.

"I'm surprised that they charged us at all if you own the place," Swami says while sitting down.

"Yeah, the guy must be new," Fred says while reaching for his whopper.

"You do own the place? You didn't just make that up, right?" Swami asks as she picks up her whopper.

"Oh totally, you can believe Fred!" the krab responds.

"You there!" Swami says to a passing Burger King employee.

"Did you know that this krab owns this Burger King?" Swami says to the employee.

"He doesn’t look like Francis the fish," the employee says.

"He must be new." Fred says nervously.

"How long have you worked here?" Swami asks.

The employee looks down. "About 10 years."

Swami confronts the krab "You lied to me!"

"Alright! What I should have said was I own it because I'm the KING and the king owns everything!" Fred pounds the table.

"Let me guess...you left your wallet in your other shell so you can't pay for the movie." Swami says, saying the words as if they taste bad.

Fred just grins.

Swami shrugs and hands over the money.

When they get into the theater Fred stops at the concession stand and grins.

They make their way to their seats. Fred immediately starts eating.

"Slow down! The movie hasn't even started yet!" says Swami watching the krab.

Fred ignores her and continues eating.

The movie starts "Hey! We're out of popcorn." says Fred.

"I told you to slow down; but would you listen...of course not!" Swami says, in that 'I told you so!' tone of voice.

Fred just grins.

"Oh alright!" Swami says in a martyred tone of voice, and gets up to get more popcorn.

Swami is sitting there with her claws crossed. Fred gives a yawn to try and cover the fact that he is putting a klaw around Swami. She bats his klaw away. What follows is an attempted groping by Fred, and batting klaws away by Swami.

<60 more minutes of this>

Swami and Fred are making their way to Swami's place. They arrive and Swami says:

"Well there goes that evening!"

Fred stands there as if he were expecting something.

"What?!" says an exacerbated Swami.

"I took you out on a date, you owe me something!"

"But I paid for everything, and besides date stunk." says a flustered Swami.

"Even so, it's traditional to give me a good-night kiss."

"I'll give you that kiss if ever pay me back! Till then good-night, Fred." she gives him a klaw shake, goes to her door and slams it after going inside.

"Some girls..." grumbles Fred as he scuttles away.

Fred scuttles back and knocks on the door and says "Hey, do you want to go to a party?"

Swami considers this and shrugs "It can't be worse than the movie..."

* * *

The scene opens on Fred dancing; say what you want about Fred, but that krab can dance.

The music playing sounds like "Celllllabrate krab times c'mon!"

Just then the krab approaches a crab. He stops dancing and tries to act suave

"Hey baby!"

"Oh hi," responds the crab.

"Would you like another drink?" ask the krab.

"Don't mind if I do," she responds.

"Here, let me get it," he says, going over to the drinks table and fetching two drinks. Unseen by the crab, he spikes hers with something. He hands her the drink, guzzles his and goes back to dancing.

The same action is taken for each babe...

Fast forward to the next morning...

Fred awakens with a hangover. There are many babes near him. All of them have splitting headaches.

Fred takes a haggard look around. "I must have scored last night" He says absent mindedly.

A froggy babe wakes up, puts a forelimb to her head, looks at Fred and screams. The froggy babe hops out of the room.

"So you're the lucky one!" the krab shouts. He immediately puts a klaw to his shell, and groans (quietly).

"What have you done to me?!" the crab demands.

Fred puts another klaw to his shell and says "I've gotten you pregnant with krablets. Could you breathe more quietly?"

The other critters wake up, see Fred, scream, and move out of the suite. All of them fit through the doorway.

"T-T-Then you'll have to marry me!" the tearful crab says.

"Certainly not! We got married last night." Fred responds and holds up a paper napkin.

"What's that?" Asks the pregnant crab.

"Damn it! It must be here somewhere!" Fred roots about the floor some and triumphantly displays a receipt-like piece of paper. The paper says marriage license.

"Oh no!" the soon-to-be mother moans.

Fred just grins.

"By the way, what's your name?"

"Swami..."

They are interrupted by Swami screaming with pain.

"What's happening?" swami says through gritted mandibles.

"You're giving birth." Fred replies.

A krablet comes shooting out of Swami. It is smoking a foul, seaweed cigar.

"Hey dad, gimme dough!" krablet #1 says to Fred.

The krablet is soon joined by other krablets until the room is filled with them and Swami has shrunken down to her normal size.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I want a divorce!" the new mother says.

"Yeah" says a krablet, and the rest of the krablets chime in with "Yeah!"

"Before we do that, can I borrow some money?" Fred asks.

A krablet perks up and says "I wish I had thought of that, how about it, Ma?" in a second the other krablets join him in asking.

"The good news is they don't they last the week," says the krab, as the krablets shove him and Swami apart.

"Why, what happens after a week?" Swami asks.

"I dunno, they just...leave" Fred answers.

* * *

"And that's how I ended up married to that krab!" an angry Swami states.

"That's terrible." Jerry says.

"Ummm.. yeah." Greg opines with somewhat less force than Jerry.

"But we still can't accept money to keep him locked up."

"Yeah! ...you mean we can't?" Jerry says and then looks at Greg

"No! Someone may come and bail him out." Greg says.

"Yeah! Like that's ever gonna happen!" Jerry responds.

Just then an Octopus enters the room. His name is Octavius. "I know you may find this hard to believe, but I'm here to bail Fred out."

"Why?" Jerry says, turning to him.

"Well I'll tell you..." Octavius says as things become wavy.

"What's happening?" Octavius asks.

"Flash-back!" says everyone in the room except Mr. Octavious.

* * *

The scene opens on Fred, he is scuttling through the kelp forest when he happens upon 4 beings playing cards. There is Mr. Octavius the Octopus, Booda the gawd (no relation to the Indian god Buddha), Great Qthulu, and Fuzzie the flurndebit (he is a genius).

"Do you have any sevens?" Booda asks of Great Qthulu.

"Go fish" Great Q responds.

"Aw shucks" Booda exclaims as he picks up a card.

Fred scuttles into the room and asks "Go Fish is a boring game, have you guys ever tried poker?"

"It's gotta be more interesting than this." Great Q opines

<10 minutes later>

"Great Q owes me $500, Mr. Octavius you owe me $300, same for the rest of you." Fred cuts the cards with one klaw.

"This sucks!" says Octavius, he then squirts ink.

Great Qthulu chuckles as he hands over some coins. "It's worth it just to see the big B squirm!"

"I...I don't have the money." quavers Booda.

"Same here. Though I don't remember there being 5 aces in the deck!" Fuzzie is messing with a slide-ruler.

"Don't worry, we can work something out." says Fred, idly tossing the deck from klaw to klaw.

"You have spare bodies...don't you?" Fred points a klaw at Booda, who nods.

"And you have new inventions, right?" Fred turns to Fuzzie.

"Well, with all my force-fields I have some spares. As I get ready to cream you in a rematch!" Fuzzie shakes a tentacle at the Krab.

"And you could get me out of the occasional trouble with the law?" Fred turns to Mr. Octavius.

"Ok" says a sullen Mr. Octavious.

"Then we're fine" says Fred as he tosses the deck into the air and then catching it with the same klaw.

* * *

"And that's why." Mr. Octavious explains.

"OK. So now he has a get-out-of-jail free card, and a new body if he dies, and free inventions. Octopus! This krab keeps getting better and better!" Jerry then slumps to the ground in depression.

"Why is he always talking about being everyone's uncle?" asks Greg as he looks at Jerry

"Well, that has to do with Fuzzy..." answers Mr. Octavious." As he says that things go wavey.

"Here we go again..." says Greg.

* * *

The scene opens on Fuzzy's space station. Fred is there along with Fuzzy. Fred is busy talking to Fuzzy, who is a flurndebit. But not just any flurndebit, Fuzzy was budded directly from Curly, who was frisking under a UV lamp at the time, making Fuzzy a mutant flurndebit. In Fuzzy's case this made him super-intelligent. He is droning on about making adjustments to a device that looks like it's a cross between a bicycle and that device in Men in Black 2 that Jack Jeeves used to deneuralize agent K. Fred is sitting in the device, talking to Fuzzy. He says,

"Come on Fuzzy! Can this contraption send me back in time or not?!"

"I'm just trying to figure out if I should do this..." Fuzzy responds, making a minor adjustment to his Time Machine.

Fred looks around as if he just bought the place. "I'd hate to have to take your space station as payment but you leave me with little choice..."

"I've just made up my mind: I should send you back in time!" Fuzzy hastily interrupts.

"Good! I didn't want to take your space station anyways!" Fred says. "Remember: just do this one little thing for me and you won't owe me anything. Who cares why I want this. I just do."

Fuzzy throws a switch and Fred experiences a maelstrom-like sensation and along with other, cheesy effects along with some dated music. He seems to be being sucked into the maelstrom.

Fred awakens from being passed out. As this is Fred we are talking about, this happens all the time to him, so he is not too disoriented.

He scuttles around some and then runs into a brontosaurus. He stops and says, "Hey babee my name's Fred what's yours?"

"Bob and this is Rob the raptor." The brontosaurus responds pointing out a much smaller dino, who turns to look at Fred.

Rob takes a look at Fred, and says, "Nice to meet you! Now that we've been introduced, I think I'll eat you! Goodbye Fred!"

Rob starts running towards Fred.

"Doesn’t he know what I taste like? Of course not, they haven't heard of me yet!" Fred says to himself as he regards Rob.

Rob closes with Fred and a cloud surrounds them as they fight.

To his great surprise Rob finds himself fighting completely defensively to fend off Fred's perverted attacks. Ultimately, he finds himself losing and then Fred has his way with him.

Fred's witty (actually witless) comment about the "Friendly natives" is cut off as he is yanked back to the "present day" of Fuzzey's lab.

"What did you find out, uncle Fred?" says Fuzzey somewhat breathlessly.

"That I should have stayed because no one had heard of me! Hey, waitaminnute, since when am I your uncle?" Fred asks.

"I don't know: you've always been my uncle." Fuzzey replies, confused.

"Perving Rob must have disrupted the timeline!" Fred declares. "Now I'm everybody's uncle! That time jump was very useful. Seeya!" says Fred as he leaves.

Fuzzey ponders this for a moment when the doorbell rings.

"Who is it?" Fuzzey asks.

"The mad scientists guild! We'd like to talk to you Fuzzey!" says the rep from the MSG.

"What's this about? My check didn't bounce did it?" says Fuzzey testily.

"No everything with your dues is fine. We're here about Fred." says the rep.

"What's wrong with de Krab?" Fuzzey asks, and he thinks for a moment and adds "Aside from the obvious?"

"We're upset to have him as an uncle!" says the rep angrily. After a moment he adds "I mean we're mad! Not crazy..." the other reps repeat the "We're mad, not crazy" line.

"So, we're wondering if you've changed the timeline?" asks the rep angrily. The other reps back him up.

"Now why would you think that?" Fuzzey says trying to "casually" hide his time machine.

One rep notices the time machine and points it out to the senior rep.

"Ha! caught you red handed!" says the rep pointing to the machine. "Unless you want to be kicked out of the guild, you'd better fix the timeline!"

The reps leave. Fuzzey mutters to himself as he floats about the lab (he’s using a force field).

"Fix the timeline just like that eh? There’s a little more to it than that!"

Fuzzey flips a couple of switches and floats into the transfer area and then disappears.

Fuzzey reappears some distance from Fred just as Rob is closing in on him. Before Rob can reach Fred, Fred disappears.

Fuzzey says "This will be easier than I thought!" Then he too disappears, leaving a very confused Rob and Bob.

Fuzzey reappears in the transit area of the lab and says "Done! That was easy! Let’s see if De Krab is anyone’s uncle!"

Fuzzey flips a couple of switches and consults a monitor.

"Nope! De Krab isn’t anyone’s uncle!"

Just then De Krab muscles in (more like flabs in, in Fred's case).

"Hey! What's the big idea with you messing with the timeline?"

Fuzzey turns to face Fred and says.

"What? I'm mad, not crazy!

* * *

"And that's why he says he's everyone's uncle!" Mr. Octavious says.

"But Fuzzie fixed the timeline! He's not anyone's uncle!" Points out Greg.

"Since when has the truth ever slowed De Krab down?" Octavious says.

"Good point..." Greg says.

"Listen, he’s stopped singing." Jerry says.

"I wonder if..." Greg says as he ducks into the cells.

Greg pops back in and says "It’s just as I thought. He’s escaped again." Jerry looks depressed.