This was just a weird idea I had and decided to write out. I really have a thing for holiday stories, don't I? Anyway, it's a quick two-shot; Part II, hopefully, with be coming this Thursday. Hope you enjoy!

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Part I: Pilg-Irkens
(Zim's POV)

The skool.

Oh, how I detest that place. That horrible, horrible place with its horrible horrible...ness. And yet here I was, day after day, five miserable Earth-days out of every miserable Earth-week, sitting in the classroom with a bunch of pathetic hyuman child-things.

Ah well, I thought as I walked into the class. At least this was the last day this week. Though it was only the day the pitiful hyumans designated as "Wednes," we had been informed by the horrible teaching-drone that classes would not be held for the next two days, as part of yet another ridiculous holiday that I had not bothered to find any information about. What was it called...?

"Hey, buddy!"

Oh no. I knew that voice. It was the one that was usually immediately followed by---

"Oof!"

---a tight, painful squeezing to the midsection.

"Aren't you glad it's the last day of skool this week, buddy? Huh?! Aren'tcha? Hey!" The Keef-hyuman suddenly released me from his horribly death-hug---I staggered back, rubbing my chest and gasping for air. "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

Ah, that was it. Thanks-gi-ving. But his question had me stymied. "I am doing...the usual normal hyuman Earth-things," I said vaguely, waving my hand in a casual way.

"So you'll be in town?"

"Er---yes."

"That's great! Because I asked my mom, and she said I could invite you over to my house for dinner if you want---you could come and your parents could come, and even GIR could come if you want, it would be so cool and we could feed him table scraps and that really gross bag of turkey parts, and then you and I could break the wishbone and---"

"Save your breath, Keef!" yet another familiarly-annoying hyuman voice said, and as Keef turned I saw the Dib, standing with his arms crossed behind him. "Zim won't be celebrating Thanksgiving at all, I bet. And he wouldn't be eating turkey anyway. He'd be eating your brain! Or...something."

"That's a lie, Dib!" I shot back, pointing at him angrily. "You know as well as I do that the Keef-boy has no brain fit for consumption!"

"Oh, good," Keef said, looking relieved.

"And I will so be celebrating your pathetic hyuman Fangs-taking---"

"Thanks-giving."

"That too! I will be doing completely normal hyuman activities such as all completely normal hyumans do. Because I am a completely normal hyuman. So there."

I smirked and crossed my arms, glaring at him victoriously. But to my amazement, the foolish little pig-child kept the same pose, almost a mirror of my own. The arrogance! "Oh, yeah? What kind of completely normal human activities, Zim?"

Uh-oh. By now several of the other students were watching our argument, and I could not betray a shred of ignorance on this topic. I nervously waved my hand again. "Well...uh, I..."

"Class! Take your seats!"

The Bitters-hyuman (...or whatever she was) had just swept into the room, glaring malevolently out of her glasses as they flashed in the florescent lights. Shooting me an angry look, the Dib-weasel rushed away to his seat as I rushed over to mine. For once I was actually thankful that class was to start.

Ms. Bitters sat down and glared over the room, hands clasped before her on her desk. "Well, class, as you all know, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so this will be the last day we meet until Monday."

"Whoo-hoo!"

"Yay!"

"QUIET!" she snapped, and silence filled the room. "To celebrate this horrible day of gratuitous gluttony, I have been instructed to teach you all the story of how this annual idiocy began. Our story begins more than three hundred years ago, in a doomed country called England. Back then, the King (who was doomed, incidently)..."

She began to drone on. I sat back, listening closely; I had to discover as much as possible about this horrible Earth-holiday, so that I would know what to say if the Dib-monkey tried to question me again. But, as with so many of Ms. Bitters lectures, this one proved both boring and difficult to follow---words like "Pilgrims," "Puritan," and "antidisestablishmentarianism," for which my PAK had no translation, soon caused me to lose track of the story, and I slumped down in my desk, watching through my lenses as she droned on...and on...and on...

I yawned. I had been up too late the previous night, working on my newest plan with the hypnotic robot-squirrels, and I had so lost track of time I had not been able to recharge my PAK before skool began. The battery must be low...it wouldn't shut down my life-support, of course, after only a few days, but I could tell it was struggling to maintain secondary bodily functions.

On and on the Bitters-beast droned...

My eyelids began to close...

"...and so they commissioned a doomed ship called the Mayflower..."

My chin fell to the desk...

"...across the Atlantic Ocean..."

My eyes shot open for a moment, then fell back...

"...doom, doom, doom..."

........

The Rev. Zim, leader of the Puny-tans, was walking down the street of Lun-pun, capital of Irk-land.

"Good morrow, Goody Tak!" he called to a Puny-tan female, dressed (as all Puny-tans) in black and white.

She gave him a cold look. "Why are you talking that way, Zim?"

"Shut up! It's Rev. Zim to you."

"Ooh!" called Skoodge, another Puny-tan, running up to the pair. "Do I get some cool, old-fashioned title too?"

"No!"

Just then, a voice boomed through the air.

"Make way! Make way for the Kings of Irk-land!"

Rev. Zim suddenly felt Tak push him roughly down.

"Oof! Hey!" he stumbled forward, grabbing his black, inexplicably-buckled hat to keep it from falling off. "Who dares to hit Rev. Zim on the back of his amazing head?!"

"Shut up and get down, you idiot!" Tak snapped, looking annoyed as she straightened out her black skirt, kneeling on the ground. Grumbling, Zim got down into standard grovelling position along with everyone else on the street, as the open-air hover-carriage flew through the city streets with the two Kings.

"Whooooo! Hey!" King Purple called, his crown tipped jauntily on his high head, violet fur coats majestically hanging from his thin frame. To his side King Red was a bit more subdued, but still grinning triumphantly as he looked down at all the small Irkens on the street, in their drab black and white clothes, bowing down before him.

"This blows," Tak muttered, purple eyes hard. Even as she spoke, though, her antennae---sticking out of her white bonnet by two small holes---wiggled in ceremonial applause.

"Agreed!" Zim snapped angrily, as his own antennae waved wildly through the holes in his hat.

The carriage came to a stop. "Attention, short, pathetic little nothings!"

"That's not nice!" one of the assembled Puny-tans called.

The Kings turned and looked at each other dryly. King Red tapped a button on their carriage dashboard; instantly the ground opened under the Irken who had spoken, and he fell with a long cry.

"Agh! It burns!" came the voice before the inexplicable street-trapdoor closed, and King Red clapped his hands and smiled brightly at the other assembled peons.

"O-kay. Well, now, pathetic subjects, King Purple and I just want to make an announcement about a few more changes taking place with the Church of Irk-land." He pulled out a scroll and read from it. "A-hem. 'Effective today, Church of Irk-land services will now include singing, dancing, drinking, gambling, snacking, smoking, and, on special occasions, wild naked sex orgies.'"

"Whoo!" "Yeah!" came various voices from the crowd.

"'But, of course, short Irkens are still not allowed to attend.'"

"What?!" "Hey!" "YOU SUCK!"

"Ha!" King Purple cried, pointing at them all. He put his hands to the side of his face and stuck his tongue out. "Stinks to be you losers, doesn't it?!"

"Yes. Yes it truly does," King Red said, nodding thoughtfully. "...Anyway. Bye!"

He pressed another button on his carriage, and it blasted off down the street.

"Ugh! This blows!" Tak screamed, rising from the ground with an angry glint in her purple eyes. She wiped bits of dirt from her white apron and crossed her arms angrily over her plain black dress.

"Yeah! I love snacking and sex orgies," Zim grumbled, rising to his feet and looking moody.

"Yeah," said Skoodge, frowning. "Too bad short Irkens are all oppressed and stuff. Oh well," he shrugged. "Nothing we can do about it."

"Oh yes we can!" Zim cried, pointing suddenly (and dramatically) at the sky. "For we shall leave this oppressive planet and start our own civilization! One with ten times as much snacks and sex orgies as this crummy planet!"

"Huh?"

"That's stupid."

"Shut up! I'm the leader of the Puny-tans, so I get to decide! Now come hither, mine brethren, and let us to my laboratory whence we shall sup upon nachos and make congress of my mach-in-at-ions."

Still posing, he marched dramatically away. The others looked at each other, Skoodge confused, Tak sarcastic.

"I SAID 'COME HITHER, MINE BRETHREN!'"

"Oh, whatever," Tak muttered, rolling her eyes as she followed.

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"Behold!"

Rev. Zim pulled a sheet from his holo-projector, revealing a floating image of what looked like a metal sailing ship with a high mast and wide sails emblazoned with the Irk-land facial symbol.

"Ooh," said Skoodge. "What is it?"

"Issa cheeze-monkey!"

"Yes, GIR, it's a---no!" Zim said, giving his robotic assistant a back-handed slap and knocking the buckled hat off of his head. He motioned to the image. "These art the schematics of mine newest invention. I calleth it...the Doomflower!"

"Why?" SLAP! "OW!"

"No interrupting, Skoodge! Now, in yonder vessel, we shall setteth sail across the wide galaxies for a new home, whence we Puny-tans can liveth in peace away from the oppression of the vile Kings of Irk-land."

"And have snacks and hookers?"

"And have snacks and hookers, yes."

"Neat!"

"And when, pray tell, did you come up with this brilliant idea, Rev. Zim?"

"Twenty-six minutes ago. NOW! We must begineth construction on this vessel, which shalt take us all to our new home!...eth."

And so, under Rev. Zim's directions, the Puny-tans began construction of the Doomflower.It was a long and arduous process---not least because their work exploded three times, and a fourth time GIR got the insides all cheezy and ye olde sprinkler system caused quite a few injuries to the Irkens assembled. But in the end, the vessel was complete, and after solemnly burying the cheeze-coated dead, the ship was ready to begins its voyage.

A fact which Rev. Zim was eager to announce to the world.

"Attention, puny non-Puny-tans!" he called; his voice was magnified out of the ship's speakers as it floated, out of place, above the vast Irk-land city. Many Lun-punners were gaping up at it in confusion.

"We, the amazing Puny-tans, hath constructedeth this amazing VESS-el! And now, pathetic nothings, behold, for soon, it shall begin to rain for forty days and forty nights, and in the ensuing storm all but we shall perish!...eth."

"What?!"

"Oh no!"

"WE'RE DOOMED!"

The people down on the street below began to panic and scream. Rev. Zim, beaming, turned back to the other inhabitants of the ship.

"HA! Pitiful talls. Now all we have to do is sit back and wait for them all to die." Grinning, he sat back in his seat and kicked up his feet onto the control panel, claws cushioning the back of his head.

Tak gave him her patented "oh what an idiot" look. "That's the wrong story, Zim!"

"Hyeh?" He sat up. "Aren't we doing Noah's Ark?"

"No, you idiot! We're doing the voyage of the Mayflower!"

"Oh..."

A moment later, the panicking people below heard a new message. "Um---never mind. We're just leaving."

"Oh..."

"Whatever."

"Good riddance."

"NOW!" Zim cried, sitting back in his seat. "From this day forth, we shall be known as---the Pilg-Irkens! And with our new name, we shall fly this ship to a new and better world, where we shall be free to do as we please!"

"YAY! I'm gonna sing the Doom Song now. Doom, doom, da-doom-doom-doom, doom-doom, doom---"

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Zim?" Skoodge asked worriedly over the sound of GIR's singing, as Zim piloted the Doomflower up out of Irk-land's orbit and into the vast blackness of space.

"Ah, thy worrieth too much, good Skoodge," Zim said. "Forsoo-ooth, soon we shall be enjoying the plenteous and bountiful harvests and goodies of the new civilization we shall foundeth..." He gazed longingly out at the space before them. "...on our new home."

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The Pilg-Irkens stood the middle of their tiny village, buildings half-fallen down, made from the puny sticks and twigs of their new planet. Their green skin was now blue from the cold. All around, on all the ground, all the crude buildings and all the trees, was a horrible frozen white substance that, while freezing, burned them to the touch. Amidst the snow lay the remains of their last snack wrappers and bags, while no more than a few crumbs worth of food remained to be eaten.

"Well," said Tak, arms wrapped around herself as she shivered, purple eyes glaring. "This whole 'pilgrimage' idea just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?"

"Shut up!"

"No, no, really Zim, this is just working out fabulously. We're stuck on some backwater planet, our only shelter is made of twigs, it's twenty degrees below zero, and the entire ground is covered with frozen water that will burn us to the touch!"

"I said shut up!"

"I mean, really, what could be better than freezing to death on this Irk-forsaken wasteland on a planet that you've driven us all to?!"

"Shut up!"

"Agh!"

Zim leapt at Tak---Tak's PAK-legs burst out and she rose into the air, kicking him hard. He flew backwards, landing on the cold snow---

"ZIM!"

"AGH!"

I jerked awake, jumped back, and fell onto the cold tile floor of the classroom.

Ms. Bitters loomed over me, glaring. "Sleeping in class?" she snarled.

"Er...heh-heh...sorry," I muttered, climbing off the floor and back into my seat.

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I hope this didn't come out rushed; I like the concept, but wonder if I was a bit clanky in the writing. What do you think? Please tell me in review form, and be on the lookout for Part II. (Then go read another one of my stories...you know, if you want.) Thanks!