A/N: Written for a contest on the LJ community "wormbabies." We had to use ten of twenty words from a provided list in a story.

Deep within the towering office building of International Mega-conglomerate Gigglywhatsit Co., the finance department shivered with fear, cold, and possibly the after-effects of ingesting too much lighter fluid with powdered sugar within their ooze-covered, dank cubicles.

"Did you hear?" Simmons, an accountant distinguished from his brethren only by his striking blue eyes and extra head, whispered to his colleagues. "According the latest stupid office gossip, the boss is calling one of us into his office this afternoon!"

The girl in the cubicle across from him shuddered. "That's horrible! I hear he'll fire someone just because he's having a bad day! I hear he eats employees alive! I hear he owns a little hamster figurine that tells him to kill people! I hear he...wears a suit!"

Simmons snorted. "That's because he's a former prosecuting attorney, circus clown, psychic Ivy League graduate who was in the mafia!"

"WHAT?" A dark head poked up over an adjacent wall. "That's preposterous! None of those ridiculous rumors are true. The truth is that he's an alien! An evil space monster! From...space!"

The girl rolled her eyes. "Not this again. You're crazy!"

Dib scowled at her. "Oh, come on, Zita! Haven't you wondered why he forced his entire class to work here when we're still so young it's technically illegal? Or why we're working alongside middle-aged professionals with M.B.A.'s when we're still in grade school?"

"Yeah, big deal, Dib." Simmons sighed. "MY company didn't complain when he suddenly bought us out. Or when he hired YOU as head of finance. Or when he implanted blinking implants into our bodies and removed some of our organs and started making expensive long distance calls to his home planet."

A voice reverberated from the intimidating office door towards the back of the room. "DIB! Get in here."

Zita snickered. "Someone's innn trou-ble."

"Shut up." Dib grabbed his briefcase and stormed into the boss's office.

"What is it now, ZIM-"

"A-HEM." Zim shuffled some papers behind his desk. "You'll have to check with my secretary to see if I'm available first, meatstink."

Dib sighed. "But you just ASKED me to come in here!"

Zim just looked up at the ceiling, ignoring him. Dib growled and ran outside to the secretary's desk.

"Is Mr...ZIM in?"

GIR stuck his tongue out. "Let me cheeeeck." GIR folded his hands and sat there, staring at Dib.

Dib buried his face in his hands and waited.

Five minutes later...

"Um...aren't you going to call him, or something?" Nothing. "IS ZIM AVAILABLE NOW?"

"I...don't know!" GIR giggled crazily, and went back to using a nail file on his forehead.

Dib screamed and ran back into the office. "What do you want?"

Zim spun around coolly in his office chair. "Ah, you must be the hotshot head of finance I've been hearing so much about."

"You know who I am, Zim! Just answer the question!"

"Very well, DIB," Zim sneered. "Now, I'd imagine you're probably curious to know how all of this happened."

"I already KNOW how it-"

"A not unreasonable request. Very well! Now, as you know, I have been interested in tasting the sweet ANNIHILATION of your pathetic ball of dooky for some time now, a taste I'd imagine to be PARTICULARLY sweet, and not especially filling, like peppermint. However, a minor SETBACK occurred, as I noticed that I was being beaten at my own game by something else! And no SOMETHING ELSE beats ZIM!"

Zim sprang from his chair and pulled down a chart with a picture of a large goldfish on it. He pointed at the fish with a plastic toy wand.

"This SOMETHING was what you call co-oper-ations. These giant, slimy herds of Earthenoids seem to control MUCH of your planet's resources, and attempts to dilute their power have been, for the most part, INEFFECTIVE. And thus, using the same SUPERIOR IRKEN TECHNOLOGY that enabled me to sell many more POOP COLA BARS than you in our pitiful skool fundraiser, I made a simple product, the Gigglywhatsit, all the 'rave'! And the brilliance of it is, it's nothing more than an ODDLY-SHAPED VASE, the prototype of which I acquired from the city cesspool!" Zim looked very pleased with himself. "Then, with my newly earned finances, I was able to HOSTILLY take over many different co-oper-ations, such as the Membrane Empire, and FORCE their employees to work for ME!"

"That's right, son! We're all wage slaves here now!" Professor Membrane piped cheerily as he walked by, carrying a wastebasket out to be emptied.

"Dad?"

"Soon, EVERYONE had to work for me." Zim folded his arms behind his back, and walked towards the window. "Even my archnemesis, a young boy named...DIB."

Dib rubbed his forehead. "Okay, I DEFINITELY already knew THAT part."

"But now..." Zim finished, grinned. "I have finally BEATEN you, DIB. You are utterly DEFEATED, trapped in a job with good pay, excellent company benefits, and even 401k, but with little to no PERSONAL FULFILLMENT!" He laughed maniacally. "Even a THERAPIST would just tell you that you should be happy to have such an excellent job, and that your UNHAPPINESS is all in your head! Oh, it's simply MAGICAL!"

Dib raised an eyebrow. He blinked.

Zim grinned gleefully, then calmed down. "Oh, yeah, and I'm using company profits to build a giant laser to blow up the Earth."

"NOOOOO! We'll see about that, ZIM! You won't get away with this! ...more!"

"Oh, I believe I SHALL, DIB. I shall get away with it MUCH more." Zim closed in on Dib, grinning in his face. "And if you try to stop me, I shall give you a promotion! A horrible promotion of DOOM! I will make you my Vice-President, and you can work WITH ME, in MY OFFICE, all day long!"

All the color drained from Dib's face, and he ran screaming from the office, dogged by Zim's evil laughter.

The next day, in therapy...

"And that's how it happened!"

The therapist sighed. "Well, Dib, the truth is, you should be happy to have such an excellent job. Your unhappiness is all in your head."

He pulled out a large rubber stamp, and stamped "CRAZY" onto Dib's forehead in blue ink.

"Wh...WHAT?" Dib shook violently. "Didn't you hear what I said? He's using company funds to build a giant laser orbiting the Earth, which he plans to use to destroy us all!"

The psychiatrist coughed. "Well, Dib, the truth is, I'm the company therapist. We all are, now. Because I work for Zim, he could start eating live kittens and I wouldn't do anything."

"Mmmmm!" Zim smacked his lips from somewhere behind the door. "Them's good kittens!"

Dib was furious. "Fine! If you won't help me, then I'll find someone who can!"

"Now, calm down, son. Maybe there's something I can do." He handed a bottle of pills to Dib. "Just take this medicine. But I must warn you, it will make you break out in blue splotches for a few weeks."

"Why? What else will it do?"

The therapist smiled. "Nothing. But wouldn't blue splotches look COOL?"

Dib decided that there was only one place left to go for an employee with complaints about an employer attempting to bring about the Apocalypse: Human Resources. He stomped purposely up the office of the HR Director, and threw open the door.

"Excuse me, I have an employee complaint to file. The boss is an alien and he's trying to..."

Dib stopped in his tracks. He blinked a few times. He stared down at the job title plate on the desk, and up at the person sitting behind it.

"...GAZ?"

"Well, YEAH," Gaz barely looked up from her Gameslave as she furiously pressed buttons. "It's not like I had anyplace BETTER to hang around, now that he's closed down all the skools. Besides, he owns the Gameslave Corporation now, and I needed to get Vampire Beach Volleyball III from SOMEwhere." She opened one eye a slit and finished, "DUH."

"Oh. Well..." Dib took a deep breath, and continued. "You have to do something, Gaz! He'll kill EVERYONE!"

"Yeah, right, Dib. Whatever. Look, just do me a favor and come back to BOTHER me when you have something worth my time. Like a really FUNNY injury, or at least, I don't know, a 'special' harassment case to pin on Zim."

"'Special'...?" Dib's eyes flew open. "EW! Gaz, this is ZIM we're talking about! And I'm only ten! I'd have to be MUCH OLDER before I'd even THINK about any of that stuff."

Gaz reached over to press a large button sticking out of her desk. "Well, then I guess you'll have a long time to wait, won't you?" She pressed the button. "Oh, and Dib?"

"Hmm?" Dib looked at her, feeling extremely nervous.

"My vengeance is complete."

Before Dib had the time to ask what he'd done wrong, a catapult shot him out of her office and right back into his cage...er...cubicle. A complimentary gift basket, thanking him for his interest in the well-being of the company's employees and filled with rocks, hit him on the head as he sat up.

Zim looked out at the city, surveying his vast domain. Ah, the world was his, ALL his, and soon, it would be a disgusting pile of filthy Earth rubble.

He had EVERYTHING, everything he could possibly want. He was a rich man. Er, alien.

And yet...

Something nagged at his brain.

He looked down wistfully into his hand, where he held a small snow globe, and gazed into its depths. "Rosebud..."

"What is it, Master?"

Zim snapped out of it. "Oh, nothing, GIR. I was just thinking about that WORTHLESS sled company we bought out. Commence with the burning of the captured assets!"

GIR howled happily and threw another sled into the fire with its brothers. The flames crept higher and higher, onto the walls.

"Excellent, GIR!"

"Your office is on fire!"

"ENOUGH! Now, GIR, while we were becoming a MIGHTY force in the Earth economy, your brilliant stock advice never led me astray..."

GIR pulled a coin out of his head, flipped it, and examined the result carefully, putting his hand to his chin. "Invest in BISCUITS!"

"Mmm, yes," Zim continued. "So now, I will grant the honor of TRUSTING you with my new ideas. This year, we will be producing SUVS, waffles, brain parasites, killer robotic flying squirrels, and an anime about a lonely teenaged boy with a harem of beautiful women from across the galaxy! Are you not AMAZED by my keen business sense, GIR?"

"Whooo! WHOOOHEEE! Yay!"

"GIR!"

"I got Chinese!" GIR cracked a fortune cookie on the top of his head, pulled out the message inside, and rolled it open to read it. He examined the message. "Oh boy!"

Zim reached down and snatched it from the robot's...er, hands. "Give me that!"

Zim read the fortune. It said, "You will die today:)" Zim gasped in horror.

"GIR! The cookie is THREATENING us! Quickly, abandon the building! Before we're killed by the horrible cookie gnomes!"

He swept GIR up into his arms, and ran from the building.

"Hang on for dear life, GIR! Agh! Our empire is COLLAPSING like a tower of GLOOPEY NACHO CHEESE!"

"I like gloopey cheese!"

Hissing, Zim ran with his robot servant out of the building. Dib caught sight of him, and couldn't help by chuckle to himself at the little alien's insane paranoia while munching on a fortune cookie. Life is good, he thought.

Ten minutes later, the office building was attacked by a giant mutant goldfish.

There were no causalities except for the Marketing Director, Iggins, who was killed almost instantly.

THE END.

Words used:

1. powdered sugar
2. peppermint
3. oddly-shaped vase
4. therapy
5. medicine
6. basket
7. waffles
8. anime
9. fortune cookie
10. 'hang on for dear life'