Disoriented, limping and covered from head to foot in maple syrup, Dib stumbled down the street. He was fairly certain that GIR was no longer pursuing him, " That robot likes maple syrup way too much."
The buzzing began as Dib rounded the corner onto his street. A red light pulsed from his garage. An observer might have thought that a car alarm had gone off, but Dib knew what was hidden in there. The feeling was altogether more ominous.
Inside the garage lay deafness and blindness. The fusion of light and sound was almost continuous, and so complete that sight and sound were driven out and replaced with The Call. Even Dib, who had made the journey hundreds of times, had trouble navigating to the ship. He fell into the cockpit, slamming his head against a control panel. Something was pressed, something else beeped and the world gradually fell into silence and darkness…
… Which was replaced by movement.
A slow vibration, growing stronger by the second, and a sound like a jet turbine. Rubbing the back of his head, Dib rose into a sitting position, lingering blissfully in the few seconds between concussion and realization. A sudden change of altitude forced all thoughts of head injuries and brain damage from his mind as the ship burst through the roof, Irken metal shouldering Professor Membranes' space-age super-roof aside as if it wasn't there.
The ship continued to ascend, and Dib pressed his nose against the viewing dome, peering out in panic at the rapidly disappearing view of his house. If he squinted, Dib could see a small gray form rolling around on the floor through the hole in the roof. It appeared to be leaking maple syrup.
A tiny, resigned squeak penetrated the dome, and several screens flickered to life, advanced diagnostic software locating the source of the sound. A 3D model of the ship was projected into the air; it rotated in front of Dibs' eyes, revealing the underside of the Irken cruiser. There, stuck to one of the rear spikes with a glob of syrup that seemed to have no immediate plans of letting go, was a tiny purple moose.
" Squeak!" It squeaked.
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An embarrassed silence filled the cockpit of the Voot Cruiser. Zim sat with clenched teeth as he keyed in the command to delete a portion of the flight log. No one need ever know that he had been flying in the wrong direction for the past three hours.
The problem was, a Voot could cover a lot of ground in three hours. Luckily, a wormhole was due to open nearby in an hour that would drop Zim right on top of Meekrob. The Tallest need never know.
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Lard Nar squirmed uncomfortably in his command chair. The inbuilt motion sensors took this to mean he wanted to turn, and the chair swiveled left. He was getting tired of that.
This new ship wasn't as good as the old Vortian one. The chair was only the first of its' problems: the radar rarely worked properly, there were consistent problems with the power core, and the weapons sometimes fired by themselves. The Meekrob had promised to fix it, and the captain wondered when they would start.
" Uh, Captain? The prisoner has escaped. She's heading for the escape pods."
" Oh? Well… send some men down there to wait for her. Let's not make it too easy for her." Lard Nar grinned at his own genius, " Any word on the Armada?"
" Last reports state they've mobilized. The current route and local wormhole activity suggest they'll converge on this point in about an hour. They're going for a full frontal assault. Take us all out in one go, sir."
" Notify the planet, watch their progress carefully, and-" the chair suddenly began rotating wildly, " GET A MECHANIC UP HERE NOW!"
