Invader Scorned: In Mockery of Irk

Chapter 1: “In Mockery Of Irk!”

Beaming proudly, Zim holds up a smoldering bucket of Southern-fried roaches. “Once again, sirs, I have thwarted an attempt by the foolish forces of Earth to infiltrate my base and compromise the mission.”

“Well...erm, that's great, Zim.” Red forces a smile as his co-ruler Purple leans off camera, retching and barfing violently.

“There's no need to praise me, your Tallest. I was only doing my Irken duty. Besides, the security of my fortress is so...secure that not even germs...shivers... can get within a 100-mile radius of here with immediately alerting me to their... filthy ...presence.”

As he gloats about his base being impenetrable, the arrogant alien fails to see Dib wandering around the lab with a camcorder filming everything in sight. Purple, still a bit queasy, notices the betrench-coated boy as he zooms in one the monitor. He starts to say something, but Red nudges him sharply in the ribs, trying not to burst out laughing.

“Wow! This is going to get me the `Mysterious Mysteries' E.T. Award for sure!”

“What the...” Zim whirls around to confront his persistent adversary. “YOU?!”

“Yes, ME!” Dib grins in triumph. “Not only have I penetrated your fortress and have definitive proof of your foul plans, but evidence of a whole race of evil infesting the cosmos! Soon, the WORLD shall know the truth and I'll finally be hailed as a hero!”

“Not if you're oh-so-very dead, Dib.” With that, Zim deploys his spider-leg-thingies and lunges for him.

Jumping aside in the nick of time, Dib dashes frantically down one of the halls running off of the main lab. As the clanking scuttle of impending Irken doom begins to gain on him, Dib blindly opens a door and leaps into the room. To his surprise, he lands on or in something squishy and squirming. Cautiously, he fumble around and turns on the light to reveal that he is now knee-deep in malodorous, soiled...

“Pigs? PIGS?! Who the hell keeps a roomful of pigs in their secret underground lab of DOOM?!”

With a shrieking laugh, GIR pops out of a pile of...nastiness. “Hi there! Wanna play `Roll in the Mud' with me and the piggies?”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Eh...”

Suddenly, a pair of metallic limbs pierces the door and rips it open. Thinking quickly, Dib dives underneath the masses of pig...stuff as Zim angrily strides into the room...and promptly slips in the filth, landing flat on his butt.

“Hi Master!” chirps the hyper robot, bouncing over to him. “Ah, you must like this game too...”

“G.I.R.! This is no time for games!” Zim roars with much drama. “The Dib has penetrated our base's defenses and is at this hiding somewhere! We have to find him before he can escape and expose our mission to the Earthen forces!”

“Understood.” G.I.R.'s eyes turn red as he salutes smartly before powering up and jumps...back into the pig-pile.

Zim stands there a moment, glaring icily. “G.I.R.?”

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“Digging in the piggy mud.”

“I see that, G.I.R.” the invader hisses, grinding his teeth. “And what was the order I just gave you?”

“Uh...hmmm....to...uh...” Him-hawing for a few moments, the little robot sits on a large heap of muck, thinking very hard. “OH! I remember now!” Gleefully, G.I.R. smiles and cries, “I've gotta find the big-head boy!”

“Very good.” Zim sneers, slowly losing his temper. “Now tell me G.I.R., why aren't you searching the base?”

“But, Master...” Hopelessly, G.I.R. gestures toward the pig pile.

“I gave you an order to search out and destroy the Dib, not play in the... filth!”

“But Dib's right over...”

“SILENCE!” Glaring, Zim points down the hall. “I want you to check the Voot Cruiser dock while I go take a look around the storage chambers. He can't have gotten too far.”

With a shrug, the robot skips down the hallway and his master bolts off in the opposite direction. After a moment, Dib burst out from under the pigs, gasping for clean air. As soon as he's recover from the pig stench, our intrepid paranormalist wannabe darts out in the same direction his nemesis went.

“Hmm...he's not in there.” Zim mutters as steps back out into hall just in time to be run over by a fleeing Dib. Growling with rage, he lunges for his opponent... and gets a face-full of flung pig poop. While he is busy spazzing out, Dib makes for the exit and runs past the monitor.

Unable to help himself, he pauses before the confused looking Tallests to get in one last dig (and makes sure to point the camera at himself for dramatic emphasis). “See? Once again I, Dib, have thwarted your evil alien plot to invade Earth and enslave mankind! And, once this...” His voice trails off as Red and Purple burst out laughing.

“This is GREAT!” barks Purple. “The little Earth monkey really thinks that we want to conquer this stink planet!”

“Yah. This is even better than the time we blew up all those gaseous morons on Anu-S!”

“Wait a second,” Dib says, looking at them skeptically. “You aren't going to take over Earth and enslave all of humankind?”

Red snorts back another laugh. “Of course not! We just sent Zim there to keep him out of the way long enough to complete Mission IMPENDING DOOM! 2.”

“He personally destroyed the entire invasion fleet for IMPENDING DOOM! 1 and most of Irk last time...” added Purple.

Did gapes at them. “You mean he destroyed his own planet?!”

“Yes. Yes he did.” Red grumbled, wincing at the bad memories. “And because of that, we exiled Zim to a life of miserable servitude and toil as a fry-cook in the hellish grease-pits of Food Courtia. Then we went about scouting enemy planets and strategic targets for the Irken army's next great mission of galactic conquest-- Operation IMPENDEING DOOM! 2! And everything was going smoooooothly... Well, smoothly until Zim heard about IMPENDING DOOM! 2 and decided to quit being banished.”

“Yah, the moron.” Purple quipped. “He crashed the Great Assigning, and demand that we give him a planet to conquer. Even after we were nice enough to award him that sandwich.”

“The ingrate. Since Purple and I didn't really want him razing anything important-”

“Like our palace...”

Red glares at his co-ruler. “Excuse me? Who's telling the story here?”

“You are” meeps Purple.

“Right. ahem! Anyway, to spare our beautiful home world from destruction, I cleverly devised a plan to keep us Zim-free for life by assigning him to some random dirt-ball in the most distant part of the universe. That would be you're pathetic worm-planet, Earth.”

“Ooh-ooh! Can I tell the monkey about the part were we gave Zim that defective trash-bot G.I.R.!”

“Why not? You're going to anyway...”

Grinning, Purple begins cheerily talking at Dib. “You see, earth-monkey, every Irken Invader gets their own robot slave to do any drudge work when they are assigned a mission. Of course, since we had to convince Zim that he really was going on a mission, he had to get a S.I.R. unit. So what I did was dig a paperclip and some coins out of my pocket for the `brains' while Mister Grumpy-butthead here pulled crap out of the trash and slap them together, then handed it over to Zim. Oh, and I made the whoo-ooosh noise!. ” He adds. hugging Red around the neck.

“All you did was put some lint and crap in it's head...” he muttered, blushing as Purple cuddles closer.

“So let me get this straight: You guys sent Zim to invade Earth just to keep him out of your way.”

Red nods. “That, and we thought it was pretty damn funny.”

Dib balks. “You mean Zim's entire mission has been a joke?”

“Why of course!” snorts Red, looking a bit...flustered by the attention his fellow tyrant is lavishing on him. “Do you think we'd even care about his stupid little reports if they didn't tend to be so frickin' funny to watch? Hell, his entire existence is a joke! He's a complete and total failure as an Invader. Just a worthless, annoying, shrieky little meat-puppet flesh bag! I mean, one would have to have the brain worms to even consider Zim an actual threat by any stretch of the word! Course, since you're from a species of sub-intelligent filth-maggots, I'm not surprised that his incompetence would scare you.”

“Wow.” Dib stares blankly at the Tallest. “That has to be the single most mean-spirited and petty thing I've ever heard. Even from an evil alien overlord, that's pretty damn insulting...”

“See this?” Red made a gesture with his claws. “This is the smallest violin in the universe playing for Zim and you, worm-boy.”

“Yah! Now be gone, stink-beast. We're busy, busy overlords here...” Smirked Purple as he started to tug Red away from the monitor.

Red blinked. “Eh? We are?”

“Yes, we are...Now, come `ere! ” came the rather breathy coo, then he yanked his fellow Tallest off-screen.

For several moments, Dib stared at the empty screen listening to the various nasty squishing noises, clangs, and rubbery squeaks before the monitor cut off. He turned, his 12-year-old mind shuddering at the trauma of mental images it was producing, and noticed his green-skinned nemesis standing behind him in shocked silence.

“Did you hear them?” he asked nervously.

“Well...Yes.” Zim groused, still vaguely in a stupor. “It's all the hydraulics and anti-grav pods.”

“No-no! I meant the bit about you're mission being a joke!”

“Oooh...that.” The alien blinked once, then suddenly began laughing and gesturing wildly. “Pathetic human! Did you really think that such a thing could be true?! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! It was all a clever, clever ruse to make you think that I, ZIM!, was no threat and that you're pitiful attempts to thwart my incredible plans were all the more useless because my glorious mission is a joke! Oh-ho-ho! The Tallest truly had you going there now, didn't they? Why, even I almost fell for it!”

“OH, SHUT UP!” Did snapped, suddenly overwhelmed by anger. “That wasn't a trick and you know it! I can't believe that for the past year I've been practically living in you underpants to stop you from conquering Earth only to find out it's all been a fucking hoax! Do you have any idea how much time, energy, and money I've spent trying to save this planet from your stupid invasion?! I could've used those resource on hunting down those zombie monkeys or studying to rat-people in the mall! But, noooooooooooo, Zim! You lead me on, thinking that there really was a menace from beyond the stars! I thought that I'd finally have to chance to fight a REAL villain! Something worthy of my skills as a paranormal investigator! Instead, I'm out here chasing a egotistical megalomaniac dumbass!”

Zim, thoroughly immersed in the Sea of Denial, snorted. “See? It's working.”

Seconds stretched lazily by as Dib gave the alien a deadpan glare.

“Here.” he growled finally, handing over the tape. “I don't know why I even bothered...”

“Ah!” purred the (mock) Invader. “So you are finally admitting defeat at the mighty hands of Zim! A wise move, earth monkey.”

“Actually, I feel sorry for you Zim.” Dib replied dryly. “It`d be a mockery of scientific investigation to dissect a worthless little moron like you. I just couldn't bear to face myself if I turned you in and proved that there really is no intelligent life in the universe after all. But do you want to know what the saddest part is for me, Zim? Finding out that even your own species doesn`t want you. Now, that is truly pathetic.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the lab.

Next afternoon...

The final skool bell rang, releasing a flood of squealing students out into the streets to frolic and enjoy their weekend. All were merry and full of warm gooey glee, save the two kids trailing behind that mass of personhood.

Of course, for Gaz, being merry was something that happened to other people. But she was feeling rather...satisfied at beating five major bosses on ultra-death-doom mode during the course of that day. If only her brother shared such a feeling.

Dib had spent much of the day feeling strangely disappointed that, for the first time in months, he wasn't going to spend the next two days planning to foil Zim's plans. He had realized that it was going to take some time before he could get use to idea of the little alien not being a threat. Only natural, after all. And he did have other projects waiting for him at home, vital cases of VITAL SIGNIFICANCE that he put on the backburner while he chased that damn jerk around. But even the thought of finally capturing that Bigfoot in his gym class didn't make Dib feel better.

`It's going to be a loooong weekend...' he thought with a sullen sigh as he trudged home alongside his Game Slave addicted sister.

“AH-HA!” cried Zim triumphantly, jumping out at them as they rounded the corner. “There you are, Dib-human!”

“Oh, hi Zim.”

“Still reeling for your defeat I see?” cooed the alien with a smug grin.

“Whatever, Zim.” Dib continued past him.

“Eh?” He jogged a bit to keep up with them. “Aren't you curious to hear my latest plan for unleashing DOOM upon you're filth planet?”

“Not really, Zim”

“It's simple, really.” Continued the alien, ignoring Dib's indifference. “You see, earth monkey, quite a time back I had gotten lost in your...hideous city during a test run on some navigational equipment. During this period, I encounter a thing of such potency that it could render even me, ZIM!, to a state of absolute, organ-grinding terror. Yet I realized that, if I could magnify this effect, I'd have a weapon of such ingenious subtlety and awesome power that enslaving you pathetic planet would be a pound of streusel! And, since only you can truly appreciate the magnitude of my genius, I have decided that you shall be the first to suffer by my greatest weapon!” He leapt in front of Dib, thrusting the infernal thing up high above his head. “Now, tremble, worm-baby, before the MADNESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!”

Both Dib and Gaz stared up at the chihuahua Zim held aloft.

“Nice puppy, Zim.” Dib gave him a deadpan head shake as he walked by the alien and his chihuahua of MADNESS.

Zim stood there surprised for a moment. Then the chihuahua pee-ed on his wig.

Tossing the dog away in a fit of rage, he turned and charged after his enemy.

“Do you think that was funny, Dib?” He snarled, skidding to a halt before his rival, again. “Just walk past me like I was some silly Earth babbler, eh? It's all part of you're little scheme, isn't Dib? Ignore me and all my plans while you slowly undermine my confidence in my abilities as an Invader, right...Dib?” Zim was now leaning in his face, punctuating each word with a poke of his claw to Dib's chest. “I'm not giving up, worm-baby. For I am the INVADER ZIM!” His face darkened with a dangerously quiet madness. “And I will not be ignored, Dib.”

“Yah. Whatever, Zim.” He brushed off the alien and continued on home.

As he stood watching the young paranormalist walk away, Zim clenched his gloved fists tightly.

“I will not be ignored, Dib...” he repeated darkly at the human's back.