Domo Arigato, Miss Roboto: Beautiful Bird

Chapter 3: My Beautiful Bird Has Flown Away...

Zim marched at a quick clip down the winding hallways, glancing frantically about for a speedy exit. To the casual observer, it would appear that Zim was fleeing the scene of his acoustic outburst, but he would never be so cowardly. After all, an Invader never fled from the enemy. But they did make the occasional well-planned tactical retreat.

Cursing the building's labyrinthine design and lack of escape pods, Zim found himself at the grim steel doors of the Skool Library. He paused his retreating and stood staring at the doors for a moment. From his AMAZING research into Earthenoid institutions, Zim knew that not only could one find any information known in the Universe at a library, but also that weirdo-bashing jocks were so deathly allergic to the merest presence of books that they never went in here. Thus, confident of sanctuary and a fast means to get the coordinates to the nearest exit, Zim stepped boldly through the doors.

Instead of a regular lobby, Zim found himself standing in the middle of what looked like an airlock. As he glanced around in confusion, he noticed that above the inner hatch doors was a monitor bearing a smiley face graphic underneath a scrolling text.

“Please wait while we prep for disinfection, delousing, and personal fumigation,” the message ran.

“Disinfection?” Zim muttered, cocking a non-existent eyebrow. “How DARE you imply that Zim has GERMS! I—”

Before he got the chance to scream threats at the smiley, the touchy alien was buried under a masse of cleansing foam. But maybe that was for the best since it prevented Zim from seeing the scrubbing brushes and the mandatory enema tubes descend out of the ceiling.

After several minutes of scrubbing and screaming, the hatch finally popped open and Zim stumbled into the Library, feeling dirty despite his germ-free freshness. Recovering quickly from the massive violation he just underwent, our intrepid mock-Invader marched up to the circulation desk towering between the dual archways leading into the stacks. Several minutes pass before the librarian notices him standing there.

“Welcome to the Library. How may I help you?” she asked, turning from her web surfing to look down at the strange little guy. She blinks, then quipped, “Hey, aren't you that alien that was on Mysterious Mysteries last year? The one that got his ass kicked by Dib?”

“SILENCE BOOK-DRONE!” Zim spat, then realizing the she was staring at him, added, “Eh, I mean- No! I'm not an alien! It's just a skin-condition... You must be thinking of some other guy. I'm completely normal.”

“Sure you are...” she muttered, giving Zim the `I know you're lying your ass off but I'll play along for now because I'm working' look. “So, what do you want?”

“I have a MIGHTY need to find an exit out of this infernal Skool building. Now, direct to the closest one at once!”

“Why?”

Zim gritted his teeth. “Listen here...” He squinted at her nametag. “...V--. I am a member of the military elite whereas you are a mere desk-working drudge beast. That means you give me whatever information I request without question. I order you to take me the nearest exit this instant!”

Annoyed, V-- leans in closer. “Oh, I'm so sorry sir! The exit is to the left, just past the last set of shelves in the stacks.” She gestured toward an archway.

“Finally!” Zim stomped away from the desk, failing to see the vindictive grin. As he walks through the narrow, poorly lit aisle, Zim soon loses track of his position. He turned to backtrack only to discover that a colossal shelving unit now blocked his way. Surprised, he started forward but another shelf of books blocks his path. Growling in frustration, Zim bolted down the stacks erratically as he tries to find the exit. As the shelves begin to thin out, a oval of light appears and Zim, believing that he has thwarted the librarian, marches smugly back to the circulation desk.

“Huh!” Confused, Zim ran back through the stacks over and over and over again, but still he kept ending up at the circulation desk. After about the nineteenth time, the alien falls to his knees and began screaming dramatically, “HOW CAN THIS BE! HOW CAN THIS BE! HOW CAN THIS-- thump! ouch...”

“This is a library, you know.” V-- muttered smugly, lifting the massive encyclopedia she'd dropped onto Zim off and reshelving it. “Now, are you ready to play nice?”

Growling, Zim painfully getting to his feet and succeeded in staring threateningly down at the 5'9” librarian. For some, having a very pissed off green-man glaring homicidally at them would be at least a little worried, but the only reaction Zim got from the dreadful little women was a nasty grin. He started to say something, then a thought struck him. If this library monster had the ability deceive his remarkable sense direction and enforce the will of the library with one well-place book, then it may have even more terrible powers. And engaging it in its home territory would surely be a foolish and deadly mistake. Which was way Zim took a very wary step back, and, smiling the careful smile of someone faced with a man-eating tiger while chanting `nice kitty...', attempted to be nice.

“Would you, erm...please direct me to the exit from this HELLISH-eh, I mean, `instructive' establishment?”

“Oh sure! It's right over there.” Still wearing that evil grin, V-- pointed toward to the doors to the immediate right of the circulation desk. A gigantic sign with `EXIT' written in foot-tall, glowing red letters hung very noticeably over them in such a way that any idiot would see it as they walked in.

“...” Zim glared death at the sign, then noticing that the library monster was still there. “Thank you very much,” came the agonized words that squeezed out of the alien's mouth as he made his way quickly toward the doors.

“Welcome. Have a nice day.” V-- cooed cheerfully after him, smirking evilly as she added in a whisper, “You Irken jackass.”

Whirling around to deny that accusation, Zim found himself facing the solid brick of the High Skool's outer wall. He blinked at it in bafflement for a second.

“Clever, V-- .” he sneered contemptuously, glaring at where the exit doors should've been. “Very clever indeed. You may have thwarted me this time, but know that I shall have my vengeance upon your desk-jockeying jell-o butt! So bask triumphant in your papery lair for now, evil book fiend! For one day, one day very, very, very soon, Zim shall return to your ink-stench hovel and wreak havoc upon your lard-filled carcass! I will rain flaming ANNIHILATION upon you and your precious library! With Napalm! Yessss... NAPALM! Do you hear that! Burning painful death! BURNING PAINFUL--”

“Um, pardon me but why are you screaming at that wall?”

Zim snapped around to face this fool monkey. “Oh-ho-ho! I'm...I'm...eh...”

His reply fizzled out when he got a good look at the girl. For that was indeed what was now looking quizzically at the failed Invader. And even to Zim's defective alien brain she registered all the ideal qualities of femaleness. The saccharinely cute red pigtails, the excessively huge brown doe-eyes, the tiny little pink mouth pursed into the slightest of frowns, and a body that supermodels' would kill to have. In her extremely tasteful little sailor-skirt uniform, she was the incarnation of the girl. That mythical creature Zim had only seen in those sickeningly melodramatic Japanese cartoons G.I.R. and Skoodge had become obsessed with. And it made Zim think of...

“Tentacles...”

The girl cocked her head at a cutesy angle. “Huh?”

“The TENTACLES!” shrieked Zim in horror as he grabbed hold of the girl's blouse. “Those oozing, dripping, pulsating tentacles! Writhing and poking around... trying to get into the orifices... not my orifices... No, never-never again!”

“You're funny.” she giggled, oblivious to his fear. “My name's Mary-Anne Duesexmachina. What's yours?”

Before he could snap out of his tentacle trauma to answer, a familiar bigheaded figure came dashing around the corner.

“There you, Mary-Anne! Listen, I talked with Principal Garrison and...” Dib stop short when he saw Zim practically hanging off his girl's boobs. His voice held a quietly murderous note to it as he asked, “What the hell are you doing here, Zim?”

“Huh!” Letting go quickly, Zim grimaced in disgust when he realized what he had been clinging to. Making several sicky noises, the alien turned to face his favorite enemy. “None of you're business, worm baby! So,--as you scum monkeys so fondly put it-- Fuck off!”

“It is my business because Mary-Anne happens to by my girlfriend!”

“Girlfriend? HA!” Zim spits out the word with nasty laugh. “What sane creature would want your stink? That evil bitch Tak was only interested in you so she could get revenge on me! And that Gretchen girl's just too stupid to realize she's so unworthy of your attention. They're all unworthy...”

“And just who is worthy of me, Zim?” hissed Dib, locking with his unearthly nemesis in a tense stare down. In the hypercharged atmosphere, everything else dropped away into the spiraling black void to leave the pair alone in a whirlpool of passionate hatred and unresolved tensions.

“Surely you would have realized it by now, Dib.” Zim sneered, sliding closer to the boy with every word. “None of these blind fools are worthy of you. They mocked you're brilliant perceptive powers, laughing and pointing with their meaty fingers of meat. And even now, after you succeed in proving the Rightness of nearly all your theories and become the grand hero of this pathetic Earth, they still secretly ridicule your greatness. Contempt brews on in their wretched, stinking organs filled with the vile juices of stupidity. No human has ever been capable of full appreciating the enormity of your big-headedness. And you know it, Dib. You've always known.”

Barely millimeters separated Zim from his rival. “There's only one being that is capable of realizing the power you possess. Only one who recognized your skills and matched them with an AMAZING prowess of his own. Only one single, solitary being was ever worthy enough of you that you spent every waking moment studying, planning, plotting, obsessing over every detail of his existence!” Now they were practically touching. “And though he wants to eradicate you down the your very last cell, he's the only one who deserves you utter devotion!”

“You're right, Zim...” The manic grin slithered its way across Dib's mouth. “I suppose he'll be happy as hell when I strap him onto the autopsy table and rend his filthy alien carcass apart!”

Deploying the razor-claws hidden in his cyborg-hand, Dib reared back to inflict a slashy coup d'etat on Zim. Just as the fatal blow was about to land, Mary-Anne grabbed the back of Dib's trench coat and pulled him away.

“It was nice to met you, Zim,” cooed Mary-Anne sweetly, dragging Dib across the sidewalk. “But we've gotta run. Dibby dear promised to show me around the Skool today.”

“I did?”

“Yes, Dib... You did.” At that, she yanked Dib back toward the safety of sanity.

Zim was left standing alone by the wall. He stared after the `happy' couple, feeling oscillating waves of colossal rage and violent cravings. It wasn't supposed to happen like that. Dib was suppose to make a futile attempt to kill him, but then Zim'd dodge and retaliate with an attack of his own, and the traditional battle between the Invader and the Human would begin. That girl had no right to interrupt them with her infernal girliness. No right to drag the Dib off before they could continue their game... This `Mary-Anne' didn't belong here with her unnatural perfection that went against nature. And Dib definitely didn't belong to her as she so foolishly presumed...

Reaching into his PAK, Zim extracted a high-tech dart gun and leveled it the retreating backs of Dib and his girl. Slowly, he took aim, pulling the trigger back with an expression of malicious glee.

“Ouch!”

By the time Dib turned to confront the crazy little menace, Zim had clambered over the razor wire topped fence and fled down the street.

A/N: There'll be porn soon enough, kids. Just be patient.