She traced the bodies of energy that were moving with Dib. Once they were isolated, she inputted a few commands into her ship's computer, and she was after them.
"What's taking so long Zim?"
"You said that Dib's worm-coat seemed to have a blueish glow to it before it disappeared?" Gaz nodded in reply, which caused Zim to frown as he continued to work at his ship's computers. "Hopefully those Meekrob are still in range," he muttered. After a moment, something beeped, and Zim laughed triumphantly.
Before he could say anything to Gaz about it, though, the ship abruptly rose and started to hurtle towards space. Before either of them could draw a breath in surprise, they had already past the moon and were heading into the blackness of space.
"So, Zim, I ask again. What took so long?" Gaz said, once she had overcome the physical shock of the very high takeoff speed and being in space.
"Well, you see, Dib-sister, from the blueish glow you indicated surrounded his worm-coat, I realized the Meekrob must have taken him," Gaz didn't have to ask, because Zim continued his explanation without her prompting. "The Meekrob are a people of pure energy that are at war with my people, the Irkens. Because of this, all Irken vessels are equipped with specialized Meekrob-fighting technology, incase of an encounter while on a mission. For example, there is a tracker that can isolate a Meekrob's energy print, and lead the voot right to the Meekrob it's tracking. It was this tracker that delayed us - we had to wait for it to pick up the energy trail of a Meekrob traveling from Earth to Tikop to follow. Because of the print it is picking up, the voot is able to travel at the same speed the Meekrob do through space, which is several times faster than what it's normally capable of, by harnessing that energy." Zim was smiling, proud in the intelligence and technology of his people.
"So why would they need Dib? Do they eat annoying things with big heads for dinner?"
Zim shook his head. "No, Zim does not think they do. Zim has no idea why they would want the Gaz-brother. He's much more trouble than his big head is worth." Both of them smiled at this. This much they had in common - a hatred of Dib and a love of insulting his big head.
"So how long until we get to - wherever we're going?" Gaz asked.
"Four point two human minutes."
It took Dib and the two Meekrob about five minutes to travel from Earth to Tikop. While Dib was thrilled to be in outer space, he couldn't fully relish the experience because the Meekrob were explaining to him why they needed him.
"Two other planets inhabited by humans," one of the Meekrob explained. "Seeltra and Tikop, have gone to war against each other. They do not know of our existence, but we need to stop this war. This is where you come in, young Dib: you shall stop the war for us."
"How? And how am I able to hear you? We're in the vacuum of space, where there's supposed to be no sound."
"We are communicating with you telepathically," the Meekrob said as if it was obvious. "And as to how you stop the war, that will be up to you to figure out. We can't do everything, you know."
"But I have to be home for seven, or else Gaz will kill me!" Dib remembered, panicking. He knew full well she could do so if she tried.
"You need not worry. The time on Tikop and Seeltra passes at a different rate than that of Earth."
"But wait - shouldn't, technically, we be falling behind in time compared to the rest of the universe since we're traveling so fast?" As Dib said this, he looked to his left, unable to concentrate on the stars he should be seeing because they were traveling so fast.
"We Meekrob have the ability to manipulate time to our liking - as we travel, we are keeping time with most of the normal universe."
At this point the three approached and then landed on a very earth-like planet. The sky was a slightly darker blue than on Earth, but the buildings were almost identical. No one was out, even though it appeared to be mid-afternoon. Dib saw all of this from the edge of a forest, where he and the Meekrob landed.
"This is Tikop. Seeltra," it said, pointing one limb of energy. "Is that circle to the left of the sun. Even in the time of war, they have constant transportation between the two. We'll take you to Seeltra now though, where you'll be able to find lodgings easier." And so once again Dib was surrounded by blue light, and after what seemed like less than a second was on Seeltra.
Tak's thoughts were blank during her five-minute trip. She sat calmly with her arms crossed, her eyes never leaving a small dot of blue light ahead of her that others might mistake for a star. Of course her seeing the light like this what a physical impossibility - but the Meekrob already broke so many of those with their powers that it really wasn't all that strange.
Eventually a planet was in her sight - and she had less than a second to react and stop using the Meekrob's energy before she would have crashed into the planet's surface. This done, she quickly but very cautiously lowered her ship down to the surface near where Dib and the Meekrob were, but out of their sight. The door of her ship had barely begun to open before she saw three blurs of blue light fly off towards a nearby planet, easily visible in the afternoon sky. Tak sighed inwardly, and manually flew her ship there, keeping careful watch on Dib and the Meekrobs' location incase they decided to switch planets on a moment's notice again.
By the time her ship got to the second planet, Seeltra according to the ship's database, the Meekrob and Dib were still there. She landed her ship quickly and got out. From where she stood she could hear the Meekrob speaking to Dib.
"We'll leave you to it then, young Dib. Good luck," the Meekrob said, and just like that they were gone, leaving Dib alone and seemingly still confused.
Tak activated her human disguise, entirely unchanged from when she was on Earth, and walked out to Dib. "Dib, what are you doing here?" she asked.
He started, and turned around. "Tak!?" his mouth hung open in surprise, and he blinked several times. "But you - your ship - Zim - ???"
"So my ship reached you I take it?" she nodded, not waiting for a reply from Dib. "I have a new ship now, if that's why you're so surprised."
"No, it's just - actually, never mind. What are you doing here?"
"I asked that first Dib."
"Oh, right. You see, Zim captured me because he wanted to find out if I threw a muffin at his head during lunch," this got a smile from Tak. "And these aliens that called themselves Meekrob brainwashed Zim's simulator thing or something to give me some 'Meekrob powers' or something like that while they were disguised as giant sneakers. So then once I got home and was in my room the Meekrob came back - not as giant sneakers this time though - and brought me here. And because of all this Gaz is going to kill me because I won't be on time for dinner with Dad."
"Well, as I'm sure the Meekrob told you, time does pass differently here. Much faster, in fact. I'd estimate about one day here for five minutes on Earth."
"Really? But isn't that impossible? I thought the Meekrob were just saying that to make me shut up."
"For normal beings, yes it is impossible, but the Meekrob usually mess up the passing of time on their study planets for the fun of it."
"Study planets?"
"Honestly Dib, did the Meekrob not tell you anything?" Tak cried, getting frustrated. Recovering from her momentary outburst, she said "The Meekrob and the Irkens are at war. In hopes of making our lives more difficult, they make study planets that have abducted members of a species from a planet that an Irken Invader is or will try to take over. They study the inhabitants of their study planets to see how the species adapts to new technologies and other things. Once they have enough data, they go to the original planet, and if it's not too late, give some Meekrob powers to one of the inhabitants so that they can fight off the Irken 'threat.' The powers they give them depends on what they observed on their study planet. Any more questions?" she asked, crossing her arms impatiently.
"Yeah. What are you doing here?"
"I followed you here from Earth. No more questions right now," she said holding up her hand, seeing Dib's mouth about to open. "First, let's get back to my ship."
"So, what now?"
Gaz hopped out of Zim's ship, looking back at him. "We go look for Dib. You brought the DNA tracker, right?" Zim smiled guiltily and rubbed the back of his head. Gaz's eyes flamed in anger, but she knew there was nothing she could do about it at that point. She just vowed to herself that she would doom Zim for his stupidity after they had destroyed Dib. "Come on, you're going to help me look," she said to Zim angrily. Today was just not her day.
"I agreed to help you get to where the Dib-weasel was. Zim never said he'd help you find him," Zim said, opening a can of Poop Cola.
"I'LL HELP YA' LOOK GAZZY!" an all too familiar voice cried as the little robot jumped out of the ship with his dog disguise half on.
"I thought. You said. You left him ON EARTH!" seethed Gaz as she resisted the urge to bang her head on the side of Zim's ship. Instead, she reached out and grabbed the green alien by the neck just as he was about to take his first sip of Poop Cola. She grabbed the can out of his hand and downed the entire can in two gulps. She sighed and threw the empty can back into the ship. "I needed that. Got any pizza?" Zim shook his head as he struggled in Gaz's grip.
She grunted as she let go of his neck and dragged him along by the arm. Zim had to put on his human disguise (wasn't he smart to bring it?) one handed, which resulted in an extremely crocked wig. As he trailed behind Gaz, he realized that she had just drunk an Irken pop. He watched her back suspiciously, expecting her to mutate in some way or another at any moment.
Zim had landed his ship deep in the woods on Seeltra, so it took a few minutes to make their way out. Once they were at the edge, Gaz stopped. Noticing that the houses looked much like the ones on Earth, she turned to Zim to tell him to put his disguise on (for his sake, she hoped he had). She frowned, roughly adjusted his wig, and pulled him out into the deserted street.
Another chapter with the original Invader Zim characters =) I really don't know what to say about this. All comments that were once fresh in my brain are gone now DX Oh, here's one: I put a reference to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in this chapter, though I changed it slightly so that it wasn't painfully obvious. Maybe you'll still be able to find it =P Good luck! See y'all at the next chapter installment! Please R&R in the meantime. Grav out.