Greetings, readers! I'm avatarjk137, and I'm starting my most ambitious project yet. Okay, not my MOST ambitious, but that's beside the point. This is supposed to be a long-runner. It's rated T, and will contain langauge, violence, a degree of romance, and eventually some gore and unpleasant imagery. It will contain characters from, among other things, Invader Zim, Ed, Edd, n Eddy, Bat Boy the Musical, Titan Maximum, Dexter's Laboratory, Naruto, G Gundam, Star Fox, Megas XLR, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Skin Horse... seriously, I could go on. Admittedly, not all of these characters are really cartoon characters, but the majority are, so I thought this fandom was the best fit. Please do not attempt to correct me on this, and trust that I know what I'm doing. However, I encourage comments and critiques. Really, anything you want to say to me, from declarations of love to flames, and especially everything in between.
I do not own any of the characters used in this story. Seriously, none of them. This story is OC-free. Well, except for extras. Nobody of plot importance.
Defending Earth Attack Force: Act Zero
Chapter 1
Dib stared out his bedroom window, peering through the blinds. The electric fence on his front lawn had been shut off to make room for the media and government vans (and the force field in his room). Right now, he could hear the first of them charging up his stairs, clamoring to get the first snapshot of his finds. The very thought set his heart all a-flutter. "I'd say it was too good to be true, if I hadn't checked so thoroughly myself," Dib said.
Zim, sans disguise, clutched the wound on his arm where Dib had cut him not an hour ago. It was deep, and without his PAK he would have passed out from blood loss by now. As it was, he was weak and fuzzy-headed enough to be easier for Dib to handle. He was also quieter. "Shut up," he hissed.
"How long have I been chasing you, Zim?" Dib asked, rounding on the alien. When they had met, they had been the same height. That was just a memory now. "Ten years?" Dib looked at a picture he had taken of himself outside Zim's house a few hours after Zim's first day of school. Dib hadn't changed much aside from his height and his face – he had the weak beginnings of a mustache, and some acne scars. And some other faint scars, and a couple of false teeth – chasing Zim was a dangerous job.
"Eleven of your years," Zim growled. He gnawed at his cuffs again, but they wouldn't budge. His head was too big to slip under the cuffs, so he couldn't get his hands behind his back to work at the duct tape holding his PAK shut, either.
"Yeah, eleven since February. But who's counting?"
"YOU are, filthstink!"
"That's right, I am!" Dib pressed his face up against the force field surrounding Zim with a bit of mania evident in his voice. "I wanted glory and fame when I first started trying to catch you. I still do, but I'd be happy just to get to watch when they finally cut you open!"
Zim grinned back at him. "It's a consolation to see you at least learned some proper Irken values from me."
Dib's expression soured for a minute, but it brightened again when there was a knock on the door. "Come in!"
The door swung open, and Dib was instantly struck with a rush of the smell of mouthwash. Squinting through the mintiness, he saw a man with rosy cheeks, prominent white teeth, horn-rimmed glasses, and a pink tie. "Howdy, roving reporter Spark Brushel, and I am so PSYCHED to get this scoop-" Spark suddenly collapsed inside the doorway, a dart sticking out of the back of his neck. Behind him were two thin, older gentlemen (judging by their close-cropped light grey hair) in identical black suits and fedoras and identical red ties. One was pink-skinned, with reflective blue sunglasses; the other was more peach-skinned and had a cleft chin.
"Men in Black?" Dib asked cautiously. His right hand tensed; twenty-two years of paranoid life had taught him to keep a forearm-mounted Gauss pistol concealed under his sleeve, and he was readying it.
"Close, kid," the bespectacled man replied, kicking Mr. Brushel out of the door's path so he could close it behind himself. "I'm Mr. Doe and this is Mr. Cardholder. We're with the OSI – Office of Secret Intelligence."
"Real hush-hush," Mr. Cardholder added. "But with you yammering to the press like this, it's not going to be a secret no more."
"You're shrinking our territory, kid," Mr. Doe accused. "We were really hoping if you got a real alien you'd come straight to us…"
"And not go telling every John, Dick and Sally with a blog, like you did," Mr. Cardholder finished.
"WHO ARE YOU?" Zim shouted, fear creeping into his voice.
"They're here to wipe my memory before they take you away, I think," Dib replied, teeth gritted.
"No, it's too late for that."
"You're paranoid, kid."
"It's a good trait."
"Oh, real good trait."
"Wait, you're… not gonna erase my memory?"
"No, the whole Godforsaken country knows you captured an alien by now," Cardholder said with a heaved sigh.
"It'd be another Roswell if we tried to cover this up," Doe chimed in, patting his counterpart on the back.
"Roswell doesn't end well," said Cardholder, eyes downcast.
Dib got the feeling that they had practiced this. Also, that they were mocking him. "WHO ARE YOU?" Zim screamed again. Dib pressed a button that made the force field soundproof.
"You're not going to erase my memory or kill me… so I assume you're going to offer me a deal," Dib said, hiding the width of his smile. He had all the chips. He could bargain.
"Actually, we're going to offer you a job," Doe said.
"A career," said Cardholder.
"An occupation." Doe stressed every syllable.
"Now that you've made the existence of aliens-"
"HOSTILE aliens!" Doe elaborated.
"Now that you've made the existence of HOSTILE aliens common knowledge, we risk mass panic."
"Widespread terror."
"Anarchy in the streets!"
"What a way to GO!Of course, the government is prepared to deal with this."
"We're gonna put a team together," Cardholder proposed
"From all over the world," Doe promised.
"And they'll be government-funded."
"LAVISHLY government-funded."
"And they'll defend the world from alien attacks!"
"IF and WHEN aliens attack!"
"And until then, they'll stand there."
"And look pretty for the cameras."
"And watch little Zimmy for us." Cardholder leaned down and raised an eyebrow at Zim, who bared his teeth.
"And maybe take him apart." Doe raised his glasses, exaggeratedly taking a better look at the Irken.
"And YOU'LL be part of it," Cardholder concluded, pointing at Dib, who had been waiting with his arms crossed for them to finish lobbing the conversation back and forth.
"I like the sound of that! Will I be team leader?" Doe and Cardholder both started laughing. "You could've just said no…"
"You have no leadership experience."
"And no training."
"And a no-good reputation, except for your famous father."
"No, what we're gonna pay you for is to be an expert on Irkens in particular."
"Maybe with some time and a bachelor's degree, you can be an all-around alien expert."
"I AM an all-around alien expert," Dib insisted. "I've dealt with way more aliens than just Zim and the other Irkens that have been to Earth."
"Kid, you don't have a clue," Doe shot back. "You've spent half your life chasing the little green guy, here, and you've missed what's really going on. The man we're putting in charge of this little operation has been living with a grey since you were in pull-ups."
"Fresh out of your dad's clone vat. And we've already lined up two of America's best fighter pilots and one of Japan's brightest new orbital mecha pilots."
"The team strategist has years of nonhuman entity experience."
"And we're gonna get ourselves a linguist from NASAPLACE."
"That's just the beginning. We're lining up new team members all over the globe."
"Wait, you guys… knew about aliens?" Dib blinked.
"Damn, kid, I thought you were a conspiracy theorist! We know about all kinds of aliens. We even heard about the Irkens, although we didn't know there was an infestation."
"We were expecting you to call us aliens!"
"You just got them out to the public."
"That's why you're coming with us, kid!" Cardholder announced. "Can't have you blabbing to the press anymore."
"It's bad for business."
"Plus I'm sure you'll feel better about us taking the alien if you get to see where we take him."
It was a lot to take in at once, what with the verbal tag-team. Luckily, Dib was mentally no slouch. He sighed. "Alright… you guys can take Zim and me with you. Gaz would tear me apart when she gets home and spots all these paparazzi anyway."
Doe grinned. "It's cute how you thought you had a choice in the matter."
"C'mon, kid, you'll love government work. It's got room for error, like horseshoes and hand grenades. Now, how do you pack up the midget without letting him loose?"
"Here, let me…" Dib adjusted the force field and it contracted around Zim like a burlap sack, leaving him struggling. Dib heaved him up with a grunt. "He's not very heavy…"
"Nice tech, kid. It'll be convenient having a team member with access to exclusive Membrane gear, at least until our own tech team gets airborne. We'll take him from here." Cardholder more or less snatched the sack from Dib and swung it roughly over his shoulder.
Meanwhile, Doe was making a call on a sleek cell phone. "Goblin One, we're ready for extraction. Right." He snapped the phone shut. "He's landing on the roof. Lead us upstairs, kid."
"Black government helicopters landing on my roof?" Dib grinned, gathering up some of his gadgets, a laptop, and a change of clothes into a backpack that looked like it had been through seven circles of Hell. "This day just keeps getting better and better!"
"Don't get too high-spirited, kid," Cardholder said, his face deadpan.
"Not until we've told you we're giving you the front seat," Doe added.
Dib's squee was so loud as to be embarrassing.
Elsewhere, in NASAPLACE, the director crumpled the memo letting him know he needed to contribute a 'language expert' to the new anti-alien project. It would have to be somebody smart, but disposable. Not a natural combination of traits. Scratching his chin, the director decided to start asking people he rather disliked. "Rosewater!" He barked, venturing into a pit of cubicles.
A grey-haired, enthusiastic-looking man spun his chair around. "Yeah?"
"How many languages do you speak?"
"…Just English, sir."
"Shit. Stryborski! How many languages do you speak?"
"Two, boss."
"Crap. We've got to transfer a language expert to a project. "Who here speaks like, four or more languages? Fluently, I mean." There were no hands raised. "Well, fuck, why not?"
"I don't know," Rosewater deadpanned, "maybe because we're all rocket scientists and took physics in college instead?"
The director laughed. "Yeah… these guys must not have a clue. They should be asking a university or something… just because we're astronauts doesn't mean we'll be better at figuring out alien languages…"
"Your coffee, sir." The director spun to face a man with his intern, a college student who spent his Mondays and Fridays bringing rocket scientists coffee and learning over their shoulders. He still hadn't entirely graduated past acne, his button-down shirt and red-orange tie hung off his rail-thin frame, and stringy dark hair peeked out from under a sock-like black hat. "Triple grande vanilla soy latte, just like you asked."
"Oh, thanks, uh…"
"Eddward, sir." To his credit, the intern gave no indication that he felt the least bit demeaned, even though his name tag was right there on his shirt.
"Yeah, Eddward. Hey, what languages do you speak, kid?"
"Well, besides English, I speak Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Greek, Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean. I can fake my way through some Portuguese and Romanian, and I'm learning Tagalog next year… what?"
"Hey Eddward, how'd you like a promotion? We'll triple your pay… what are we paying you?"
"Nothing, sir."
"We'll quadruple that. And I guarantee you'll be getting others at least 50 percent less coffee in this new job."
Eddward smiled, revealing a gap between his front teeth. "That sounds delightful, sir. I'd be happy to take you up on that offer!"
"Great. How soon can you be ready for a plane trip?"
"Er… Come again?"
"I can't believe I'm in the front seat of a government VTOL!" Dib sputtered. "This is crazy!"
The pilot, a pale young man wearing a dark grey uniform with a mirror-polished helmet that covered his head above the mouth, glanced at Dib. "Were you talking to me, or yourself?" he asked with a smile. He had a light Southern accent of that particular variety of Southern accent that sounded almost British.
"Myself, I guess," Dib admitted. "I do a fair amount of it."
"That's fine. A little soliloquy never hurt anybody." The pilot stretched. "I should warn you, though, that the only reason they're letting you sit in front is so they get the back to themselves. This ride's built like a limo; the front is the boring part."
Dib shrugged. "That's fine. I'm mostly just psyched because, you know, I'm joining a government team to fight aliens."
"Congrats, me too. I'm Edgar Parker, and I'm one of the fighter pilots… in retrospect, they probably also sat you up here to meet me."
"Yeah… so, are you psyched to protect the human race from aliens?"
"I think it'll be the aliens who need protecting, if anything," Edgar responded, his voice taking a dark edge. "I can think of no greater monster than homo sapiens." He heaved a sigh. "In all seriousness, though, I'm still prepared to fight. If Earth is really threatened… well, it's my home."
"I've had my moments where I wondered whether the human race was worth the effort," Dib admitted. "I always come back to defending them, though. I guess because it's like, we're monsters, but we're our monsters. Does that make any sense?"
"Absolutely none. I can't even understand my own conflicted feelings on the subject… did you think I could puzzle out yours?"
Dib heaved a sigh of his own. "Now you've got me nervous."
"Dib, I should be the one to tell you this. If you have any doubts, any at all…" Edgar turned to Dib. "…it's too late to back up. You're entirely within the rabbit hole now." The grey-clad pilot grinned, revealing a very inhuman row of razor-sharp teeth. "Your only choice is to see how deep it goes."
End of Chapter
I'll be the first to admit that including Edgar was a bit of a concession to myself. But we all have relatively obscure characters we like to use, right?
Oh, hey, speaking of concessions to myself, it would be lovely if you'd take a quick look at this fanfiction tournament I'm doing here: .net/forum/A_Winn3r_Is_You/78799/ Everybody picks a group of characters from a single canon and pits them against each other, testing each other's writing skill! It'll be DYNAMIC! I offer a fic request to the winner, and even the losers generally make a bunch of great friends and improve their writing skills! But there's not much longer left to enter; you need to be in by New Year's!
Next chapter, we meet Japan's new additions to the team, the government liaison/man in charge, America's star pilot, and the random schlub who's a greater pilot still. Also, sows the seeds of his escape!